Mary Sue + Edge Lords = complete disaster.

Theory: albinism is an edgelord trope because (a) it immediately sets them apart from normal people without actually being a physical limitation, (b) it riffs on vampire aesthetics, and (c) high contrast makes their all-black outfits pop more

Hmm, how could we fix this backstory...The orphan from the streets is a solid childhood.  If you want the mutagens then just be a nameless orphan who got grabbed up by some thugs for illegal human testing.  Replace the "solo killed high-level monsters" with something like "got thrown into testing arenas and was good at not dying".
Maybe have the lab be doing some test-work and discover something horrifying, this kid may be a royal bastard!  Of course the character doesn't know anything about this, he just knows that some well dressed men that he had never seen before came to take a look at him.  These unknown men discussed something with the lab staff that he couldn't hear and then demanded the lab "dispose of him".
One botched poisoning and a disposal shoot later and he is badly poisoned and drowning in the nearby river.  A voice asks him if he wishes to live, if he wishes to have revenge, and he gives the only answer he could think of.  Bonus points if the demon never tells him that he has royal blood as part of its devious plans.

I know how to fix this Gary Stue. Keep everything exactly the same, but later have it revealed the character made it all up. He's just a runaway from a noble family he hated and when he ran he wanted to scare off pursuers so he came up with this backstory as a way to hide himself and he puts on this act to ensure nobody would ever think he's the spoiled son of a noble house.

Damien's player saying, "Everyone keeps saying I made a Mary Sue character!"  This makes me think of the adage: "If you meet a jerk during your day, you've met a jerk.  If everyone you meet is a jerk during your day, YOU were the jerk."

Writing over Darth Vader, one of the most iconic villains of cinema and pop culture in general, one of the biggest badasses ever, with your own Gary Stu shitheel should be labeled a capital offense in Nerd Law.

When you mix a mary sue with an edge lord you get both a terrible D&D game and an amazing den of the drake video!

I made a character who everyone thought would be a Mary Sue, turns out he was embellished by rumours and stories told because of a wrong place right time scenario. Think about accidentally thwarting a break in by stumbling up to his neighbors's house drunk thinking it's his own but on a much grander scale

One small correction, Drake:

It's not that the writers take everything too seriously; it's that they take THEMSELVES too seriously.  They can't take anything that isn't themselves seriously at all.  Everything exists either in service to them, or in opposition to them--and thus, whatever isn't going to serve them, must be destroyed and replaced with something that can.

Overthrowing Asmodeus strikes me as a pretty stupid, insanely egomaniacal idea rather than a "good one".

Anyone else think humanoid Drake looks like Ganondorf?

Maybe we should call him Drakendorf. And he's Drake as his final boss form, despite being a dragon.

Just not the one Daemion raised.

I'd be tempted to have him play some of his backstory battles, to show him how much he was overestimating his power level.
"Your level 1 PC won a 1v1 against a beholder? OK, show me how. You’re here, beholder is there. Roll initiative."

I re-worked my Paladin in my third run of COS. I made him an Asimar (dad was a War Cleric, mom was a Celestial of his god). Dad died in battle before my character was born. Mom couldn't remain in the mortal plane so had to give him up, eventually my character ended up in the service of his dad's religious order.
My character isn't aware he's an Asimar. He finds out during the campaign

I remember the first character I played. Her entire design philosophy was meant to be anti-edgelord. Her whole deal was she was a GOOlock who's nobility parents were into bad occult shit who were willing to sacrifice their infant daughter just to try to obtain power, but messed up the ritual horribly and instead of performing a ritual to wake up their sleeping eldritch god with an innocent sacrifice performed a ritual to sacrifice everyone else in the vicinity to make one individual a kind of champion (as a Warlock). The next day guards stumbled on this horrible
awful sight with all these bodies ripped apart, and there in the center was a little baby amusing herself by splashing the blood and blowing raspberries. And that was the tone of the whole character- she had cryptic and macabre outlooks on a lot of things, but was still really jovial and friendly more often than not to completely contrast when shew as saying or doing something messed up. At one point the party realized they needed blood of nobility to proceed and she just stuck out her left arm like "lets fukkin GO-" and was more than willing to let the party cut off her left hand if need be (they didn't, of course). She was a team player who loved her traveling companions despite actively rooting for an eldritch abomination that'd probably destroy the world if it had its way... also the god's name wasn't able to be pronounced by mortal tongue so it just had a lot of titles, but since he was usually asleep, she just tended to call him Mr. Sleepy when talking about him. And in turn she sort of became his idiot warlock daughter

One of those old PCs I'd love to have another chance at playing, tbh.

Daemion. Valdegar.

DAEMION. VALDEGAR.

If I read that as DM, I'd burst out laughing and throw it back, going "spell Damian right or I'm not even bothering with the rest."

I just wanted to make a Rogue that looks like one of those "I'm planning on how to kill everyone in the room" but is in actuality a coward.  A farm boy that just happens to look like Billy Badass with a wicked scar on his face from a tragic whittling accident 😂

This edgelord is half self aware because no one but them said their character was a Mary Sue

12:05 I did this with my first D&D character! She was a wizard named Bellatrix, and I knew from the beginning that I wanted her to have a similar "aesthetic" to Bellatrix Lestrange. But I didn't want her to just be a clone of Bellatrix. So I started by, among other things, making her good-aligned as a very obvious way to distance her from her inspiration.

"Admittedly, you have to have a very high IQ go understand Daemion Valdegar..." - This guy, probably

What a scam! “Nuclear Edgelord”? I was expecting more Atomic Bombs!