A Dock Full of Litas!

If I had to choose one blog entry that I could force a Suethor to read, it may just be this one. I've discussed this occurrence before but I want to bring it up again because it's the first sin most Mary Sues commit. If you are a Mary Sue and you are reading this, consider it an open letter:

Upon joining an rpg: READ THE RULES! If you don't like the rules, learn to adjust or don't play in the rpg. It's as simple as that. If you don't follow the rules you will instantly be tagged as a Mary Sue and you have no one to blame but yourself and your giant ego.

I have found a "Pirates of the Caribbean" rpg who suffered with a Mary Sue pulling a text book example of what I just mentioned. Here she is:

Character Name: Lita Von Danna

Country of Origin: Britain

Age: 21

Birthdate: 5th November

Carried: Pistol, cutlass and her fathers hat.

Appearance: She wears blue leggings and a white pirate blouse, Black knee high boots with a black Captains Hat that belonged to her father. She has a claw mark on her right thigh from the wench she was left with as a baby.

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Hazel

Weight: 60kg

Height: 5"8

Personality: Lita Von Danna is a strong willed and calm girl; she makes her thoughts clear and is not afraid of a challenge. She doesn’t have much time for lazy people and she drives a hard bargain. Hard work is nothing to her, although for all her muscle she is remarkably graceful and beautiful. She is a naturally kind soul but if you make her angry she is known to be ruthless.Lita values her friends and is always willing to make new ones but she is generally weary of shady characters, so that includes most pirates. Her kind nature gets her into trouble but her skill and strong will gets her out of it again. Lita is usually easy going but she has an aura of command around her.

HAW!! She's a pirate who is 'weary' of pirates. I'm weary of her also. She is a kind, calm soul who can get very angry and hates lazy people. She has muscles but they doesn't get in the way of her beauty. She's so sweet that it fucking hurts her but she has a sixth sense when shit is about to happen. Damn! There should be a Sue alarm that ought to be going off now. Instead of a "Woop! Woop! Woop!" it should say, "Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Step away from the rpg and go back to the grave of your parents killed by vampires!"

You may be asking yourself, how did Lita become such a deadly, bad ass bitch when it seems the poor girl is as meek and mild as a newborn babe:

Specialty: One of Lita’s main specialtys is her accuracy and skill with a pistol; she is quick and efficient, killing without wasting more bullets than she has to.Lita is deadly in hand to hand combat, she doesn’t need weapons to kill someone, Lita trained from a very young age, teaching herself everything she needed to survive on the violent and dangerous streets.

Oh! Street violence taught her how to be good at being violent but she remains a good person at heart. She has a calming influence, I see:

Friends: Mina De Chiko, her captain and the sister she never had.

This would be an Asian pirate who saved her from her horrible pre-Mary Sue life.

Brief Backstory: : Lita Von Danna is a British girl who was orphaned at an early age; she begged and stole food just to keep herself alive. Lita’s mother had been a wealthy noble who had dallied with a sailor, who had turned out to be a pirate, upon realizing his profession; her mother had run away from Port Royale in shame, leaving behind her baby daughter with a street wench.

I've heard this scenario before with the noble woman who fucked a pirate but where? Oh yeah... THE LAST Pirates of the Caribbean Mary Sue I made fun of. Remember Kitty Draven the Dreaded, the pirate with a heart of gold.

The ship her parents escaped on was sunk near Tortuga and their baby girl was abandoned at the age of 6. When Lita was 12 she met a girl named Mina who showed her how to dance, Mina filled the hole in Lita’s heart and they became sisters of a sort.Lita grew up with the other street urchins and when she was 14 she shipped out on a pirate vessel, giving into the heritage that screamed her name.

She's destined to Sue. *sigh!*

So what's the problem? The admin just didn't like this character:

Sorry, but I cannot accept your character. She doesn't have enough backstory. If you're going to make your own character up, please flesh them out. Also, I'm iffy with this ship that seems to be run by only females. This is not believable and nowhere close to history. I understand POTC is not historical, but all female pirates have been on crews with guys. Please flesh out some more stuff, and then I'll re-look at your application.

Huh. So the owner of the club didn't like Lita. Why? Well why not. The rules say:

Not everyone can be a pirate. Sorry guys and gals. It's not possible. PotC takes place in the 18th century and the days of piracy in the Spanish Main are drawing to a close.

And this:

ADMINS RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DENY ANY APPLICATION. If we don't like your original, we don't like it.

And here's a rule I ought to add to my rpg:

WANK AND DRAMA WILL NOT BE PERMITTED. I’m just letting you know. I hate drama so much. It’s annoying.

So how did Lita react?

You need to check your history... there have in fact been crews run mainly by females but if you choose to deny it oh well... just please dont say stuff like "nowhere close to history" when it has in fact been done...

And the owner's reply?

While there have been female pirates in history, it was a rare occurrence and I have never heard of any ship being run by mostly females. Please, I'm curious, where did you find out about these crews run by women?

Lita's rebuttal?

In a history book at school, I was reading up about famous female pirates at school and i found a book detailing some of the most infamous pirates, on of these was a Korean ship run by a female captain and it was said she had 3 other girl pirates on her ship but the females all dressed as men which is aparently why most female pirates were thought to be (and recorded in history) to be men, its how they escaped notice. Its amazing what you can find out when your bored in a english lesson and you have access to the school library.

The owner's final word?

Bottom line is there isn't any historical basis for a ship of female pirates, while there are ships who might've tolerated or accepted female captaincy at sometime this was incredibly rare to the point where saying a ship of pirate girls is historically inaccurate. This is a potc rp not Xena Warrior princess at sea.

Bottomest line, the admins aint accepting this scenario as kosher, change it. Or walk the plank.

Haw! I like these admins. If I were into role playing in a PotC rpg, this would be the one I'd join.

So, Lita is a dealt with and she acts like she's accepting that she can't role play because she's breaking a rule but she continues onward to press her Mary Sue needs:

well from what my sister told me after reading that, there are only two females aboard her ship... but if thats not ok then she wont continue with these two characters... however is she allowed to play a female character if the character is not a captain?

Even the other members of this rpg are sick of Lita and they throw in also:

She could be a civilian, like me. x_X This is Pirate of the Caribbean, but does everyone have to be a super, uber amazing pirate?

Haw, again! Needless to say, Lita never came back to this rpg. It didn't suit her need to be more awesomely awesome than someone awesome.

It's truly not that hard to read the rules, if for no other reason, than to find out if you can play your character the way you want to. Don't bicker with the mods and the owner about bending their rules for you just so you can wank.

For this reason, Lita and all her Mary Sue clones will forever be standing on these figurative docks wondering why they weren't taken aboard. Maybe the first rule Lita should have taken to heart, one rule in many rpgs that Mary Sues have a habit of skipping right the Hell over:

NO MARY-SUES/MARTY-STUS.