This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW Working Title: Thirty Sue Pileup
The Toon Geekette: Oh, hey! Thanks for launching this - after my last update on the original YKTTW, I was beginning to worry there weren't enough examples to make it into an actual page, so I sort of abandoned it. Guess I was wrong!
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Unknown Troper : I'd even like a Troper Tales page for this. I once ran every PC in my high-level D&D party through the Mary Sue Litmus Test, and ALL OF THEM qualified. Look, my character is an impossibly beautiful Lawful Evil Elf necromancer chick who fills all Villain Sue cliché slots, but she's FRIENDS with the Half-Radiant-Dragon of Goodness, who never fell from Good even though he raped, lied, cheated, consorted with Evil (a whole lot), made pacts with obvious servants of Terror, Domination, Tyranny, Terror, Fear, Torture, Necromancy, and Terror, did nothing to prevent his own mother from getting sacrificed to the evil dragon god, and generally sees/hears/speaks no evil. Then we had the Something Inquisitor (sorry, don't have the splatbook in English) who has levels in Rogue, Priest, Warrior and Paladin, too, and rides a Silver dragon, and is generally unkillable, our very own local Elminster. The ridiculously overpowered Overlord (yes, that Overlord), Paladin of Tyranny, Master of Terror, whose Save Difficulty Class vs Terror is over 100 on a d20... Now, the giant pixie (actually an amnesiac, saint, winged, bard, elf chick, with 36 Charisma) who has both Radiant Beauty and Blinding Beauty at-will... The evil dwarf who sacrificed his wife and son upon coming back from Gehenna and losing all his possessions, then began worshipping an evil dragon-god and sacrificed an army of : ents (yeah, treants, right) and made them into a bed for my elf necromancer chick and the Overlord when they married, unicorns (used its corpse to make a highly-cursed map of our world), pixies, trixies, dryads etc. The Drow that the Half-Dragon welcomed into our group without question, the worst roleplay ever I swear, who is now master of the GOOD Magical University despite being a Corrupt creature now, Neutral Evil, serving both Loth and our Evil Dragon God, who fills the special place of Ugly Sue, what with he's bald, halfway possessed by a demon, and his unholy gem of control in the forehead, and his Mark of Loth on his face (eight eyes protruding around the gem, the rest of the spider distending the skin beneath which it obviously hides) and he's the only character who can use Divination spells... and I'm too stoned to continue. It's been three year of play and more P Cs than I care to even count...
Sabre Justice: What you need is a Killer Game Master. That would also be a great test for my theories.
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DracMonster: Ok, glad you weren't mad or anything that I did it. :) People were screaming Just Launch It Already and I didn't want it to disappear.
Unknown Troper: Pulled the Star Wars example. Seriously, you have got to justify how any of those characters are Sues before you even begin to label that as a 30-Sue Pileup.
DracMonster: That's fine. Luke could be argued to be a Sue but not the others, really, so it's not a pileup.
- Unknown Troper: Only on the flimsiest of evidence. Luke makes a lot of mistakes, even in Jedi.
- DracMonster: He could be argued to be a sue from the perspective that he doesn't have the personality to justify being a main character. Luke is remembered for two things: His lightsaber and Darth-Frigging-Vader being his father. Take away those and you are left with a whiny straight man nobody would even remember was in the movies (Which would be called Han Solo Wars.) Han and Leia have no magic powers, and are far more remembered and quoted, due to better writing of their parts. (In Mark Hamill's defense, he was apparently aware of this and reportedly complained to Lucas about it during the filming of the first movie.)
DA I'm glad you got rid of it. It sounded more to me like someone had been desperate to make an example.
Sabre Justice: Star Wars could almost be an argument for my 'if everyone is a Sue, no one is' theory. Which is already making my head hurt.
Hmm, to assist my testing... I wonder how the Mary Sue types could be arranged into a Five-Man Band?
