Better than Granny Weatherwax who started off like that and never got any more interesting.
What is a Mary Sue to you?
- Thread starter Odin
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Whether or not he's likeable is a matter of opinion. I enjoyed him just fine, his personality reminded me of Andy Sipowics (spelling?) character from the old show NYPD Blue. Regardless, that's not a Mary Sue. Mary Sue's, at least in the insanely nebulous and constantly shifting character that has that label on them, doesn't EARN their stuff. It's all handed to them without any effort or struggle. Sam Vimes struggled, in EVERY book, sometimes on his own, after all his friends had lost, sometimes with his allies. If you're definition of Mary Sue is apparently just "someone really powerful", well then every powerful protagonist is a Mary Sue, because any time they get a power up, it's apparently Mary Sue.
That's not Vimes.
I'm going to use the definition used by Overly Sarcastic Productions and its a character that derails the story to showcase how awesome they are. Other competent charecters become less competent so not to over shadow the sue.
Maybe this can be done well, but most instances of sueness people used are not necessary sues, or they forget that there are Stews as well but either ignore that or blot that out.
Maybe this can be done well, but most instances of sueness people used are not necessary sues, or they forget that there are Stews as well but either ignore that or blot that out.
This... and in case someone here needs a refresher...
tl;dr: Mary Sue isn't a list of character traits, it's a symptom of poor writing where the author prioritizes the glorification of a specific character over the story they are trying to tell. You can't have a Mary Sue without the rest of the universe wanting to be like them or always paying attention to them for no compelling reason.
To me it's basically unearned skill. I am fine with the apotheosis of anyone as long as it feels deserved.
Due to this, there can sometimes be disagreement about who is or isn't one because different people feel different things about what a character deserves. Some people go into it thinking "well, this is a woman, and women are oppressed, so she deserves everything she has to offset her being a woman!" and you can't really reason with that approach lol.
Due to this, there can sometimes be disagreement about who is or isn't one because different people feel different things about what a character deserves. Some people go into it thinking "well, this is a woman, and women are oppressed, so she deserves everything she has to offset her being a woman!" and you can't really reason with that approach lol.
Now that I think of it, the only sue I can think of that works is "Haven't You Head? I'm Sakamoto" due to that's most of the humor.
An insult thrown around by redpilled incels anytime a female does anything competent.
The term has been watered down so absolutely that I never use it myself... since no one would understand what I meant by it unless I spent extra time explaining it... and at that point I may as well just drop the buzzword and keep the explanation.
I will say that for me it's the "self insert" part that's most important. People forget that the defining trait of the Mary Sue was that she was a way for the writer of the fanfic to lead an idealized fantasy life... and without that very important component you don't have a sue. Rey isn't a mary sue to me, regardless of how some may feel about her talents, because at no point while watching the new trilogy did I look at her, and think "man... JJ Abrams is living vicariously through her."
Likewise, aspirational characters aren't sues to me. Superman isn't a Sue because his status as a paragon who is too good to be real is the point of his existence. He's a symbol of the ultimate good humanity is capable of, and the interesting elements of stories involving him involve him affecting positive change in others. As an aside, that's why grim and gritty, objectivist reframes of Superman fail so bad... well, that and the fact that "objectivist superman" would never be a hero in the first place.
Japanese media has a lot of characters who would be considered Sues by western perspective... pick a light novel, any light novel, basically. I'm not sure if there's cultural context to be had there. I've noticed that, in general -while audiences like to be pandered to all over the world- audiences here in the west like a little bit of subtlety to their pandering... a little bit of plausible deniability so they can try to feel better about their junk food media. Japan largely has no such hangup... their pandering stuff panders completely and shamelessly... for better or for worse.
For western media, the archetype of characters I would be most tempted to label "Sues" is actually a male one. Basically, the one that's made up of characters like Dr. House, Tony Stark, or BBC Sherlock. The self-centered hardass who treats everyone like dirt, but everyone has no choice but to put up with it because, goddamnit! They're the best at what they do, and they know it. That seems to be a bit of a self fantasy brought to life, which fulfills the 'self insert' criteria, and while those three characters do eventually get character development that enables them to ascend from that status to me, there are plenty of less well-written copycats out there.
I will say that for me it's the "self insert" part that's most important. People forget that the defining trait of the Mary Sue was that she was a way for the writer of the fanfic to lead an idealized fantasy life... and without that very important component you don't have a sue. Rey isn't a mary sue to me, regardless of how some may feel about her talents, because at no point while watching the new trilogy did I look at her, and think "man... JJ Abrams is living vicariously through her."
Likewise, aspirational characters aren't sues to me. Superman isn't a Sue because his status as a paragon who is too good to be real is the point of his existence. He's a symbol of the ultimate good humanity is capable of, and the interesting elements of stories involving him involve him affecting positive change in others. As an aside, that's why grim and gritty, objectivist reframes of Superman fail so bad... well, that and the fact that "objectivist superman" would never be a hero in the first place.
Japanese media has a lot of characters who would be considered Sues by western perspective... pick a light novel, any light novel, basically. I'm not sure if there's cultural context to be had there. I've noticed that, in general -while audiences like to be pandered to all over the world- audiences here in the west like a little bit of subtlety to their pandering... a little bit of plausible deniability so they can try to feel better about their junk food media. Japan largely has no such hangup... their pandering stuff panders completely and shamelessly... for better or for worse.
For western media, the archetype of characters I would be most tempted to label "Sues" is actually a male one. Basically, the one that's made up of characters like Dr. House, Tony Stark, or BBC Sherlock. The self-centered hardass who treats everyone like dirt, but everyone has no choice but to put up with it because, goddamnit! They're the best at what they do, and they know it. That seems to be a bit of a self fantasy brought to life, which fulfills the 'self insert' criteria, and while those three characters do eventually get character development that enables them to ascend from that status to me, there are plenty of less well-written copycats out there.
I'd avoid defining a Mary Sue character in terms of a self insert as you would either need to have access to information about the writer/creator or make assumptions about them. Especially in reference to movies where they would likely be a group of people holding influence over the development of characters. Besides which a self insert character isn't inherently badly written, a lot of authors base characters at least partly on their own lives and experiences.
Instead I'd look at the end result - is the character believable in the established context? For me Rey is a Mary Sue both in terms of having skills which don't mesh with her background, and the way other characters react to her. Rey is pretty cold and distant, yet every character she meets seems to immediately form a bond with her.
Instead I'd look at the end result - is the character believable in the established context? For me Rey is a Mary Sue both in terms of having skills which don't mesh with her background, and the way other characters react to her. Rey is pretty cold and distant, yet every character she meets seems to immediately form a bond with her.
You're right, but when has that ever stopped a buzzword? Take "virtue signaling", for instance. By definition, it's a person who pretends to care about some important cause because they want to be seen as caring about it, despite not actually giving a crap... but unless the person using that term is the person in question, they can't be 100% sure that's what someone else is doing. They're just making their own assumption based on their own interpretation of the person's actions.
At the end of the day, the perception by the audience that the character in question was an avatar for the author was a vital part of the definition of the term. Definitions are fluid, of course, and words/language are constantly evolving... it's the reason "literally" now means basically nothing, after all... but my point was that I don't use "Mary Sue" because, even coloquially, there's no fixed definition for it. Just look at how many definitions have appeared in this thread.
Like, for instance:
That take on the character is fine, of course. It's as impossible to be wrong about whether a character's background works, or whether people are too nice to a character as it is to be right about it, but if you'd only told me "Rey is a Mary Sue" and left it at that, I'd have had no idea this was what you meant. The term contributed basically nothing to the dialogue about her character.
Really? Because she was fangirling all over Han when she first met him. Including things like gleefully showing off the thing she ripped out of the falcon to allow them to escape, presenting it with a grin so big it was like she was a 5 year old girl showing her dad her latest art school project. And once Finn wasn't being a complete and bumbling fool in FA, thus forcing her to be the calm, rational, not bumbling fool in their slapstick pair (which is how that kind of stuff works, you have a goof and a straight man), they got along just fine. She was genuinely happy to see him when they were on starkiller base, including smiling as she hugged him, even doing that "second hug" thing people do when they are really happy to be touching someone, where they kind of sink into the hug even more. She was grief stricken when Han died, tons of other examples. So yeah I don't really see the "cold and distant." when talking about Rey. She's fairly reserved in her emotions when things aren't really high stakes yeah, but otherwise she was perfectly normal in her emotional range. For a character portrayed as being somewhat even keeled with her emotions. *shrugs* I dunno, maybe it's because I'm fairly reserved with my emotions, and only really EXPRESS them big scale when I'm around family, in situations that probably wouldn't end up in a film, but she seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
Yeah she's not as boisterous as Poe, but honestly I don't know hardly anyone in real life that is as boisterous as he was in Force Awakens. I do know plenty of people who are like Rey though.
James Bond is seen as somewhat troubled.
I'm not super familiar with the original novels but in the films (not just Daniel Craig ones) he's:
Been too blinded by his desire for the girl he didn't think she could be the villain.
Had to go into agent assessment to prove he was still field worthy (at least twice)
Got people killed or nearly got people round him killed due to lack of awareness.
Also Bond normally gets captured at least once per film so even
Going by the genesis of the term (the parody Star Trek fanfic), it's a fictional character who is shoehorned into a pre-existing canon and becomes the center of the attention by immediately being liked by everyone and great at everything.
Rey, for example.
Rey, for example.
...what does Rey actually accomplish in the first two movies besides "not die"?
Serious question
Serious question
I think the turning point for most people is that Rey (within two seconds of feeling the force) was able to learn how to harness it, redirect it, and overpower an extremely powerful Force User that was trained by Luke Skywalker and Snoke.
Can't tell if this is a serious defense of the character or an indictment of those movies.
She overpowered Kylo Ren for the same reason Luke overpowered his father; she was angry and Ren wasn't trying to kill her. Plus, you know, gut wound. That would kill anyone's fighting efficacy. Plus, Rey already knows how to fight: you don't grow up on a lawless pit like Jakku and not learn to defend yourself.
It's not that the hero beats the bad guy at the end.
It's that everybody is so goddamn impressed by her, and keeps telling her.
It's her co-piloting the Falcon on the spot as good as Chewbacca, and Han repeatedly praising her and offering her the ship after knowing her for a few hours.
Han, whose very character requires him to be dismissive of pretty much everyone. Like he was with Luke in the original movie. As was Leia, from their first scene together.
It took Luke three movies, one hand and profuse training to best anybody in lightsaber combat. Whereas Rey just picks it up and never loses a fight from movie one.
And then Rey has to know better than Luke, too, and chastise him over his choices in life.
She's the poster girl for having your cake and eating it. She's an orphan who grew up foraging dumpsters in a desert planet... who is impeccably coiffed and groomed and speaks in a posh accent that screams royal court. She's better or at least equal to every character at anything they're famous for, and is constantly reminded of it.
Why? This is an unsafe assumption that people don't change.
A huge amount of story time has passed since Han was first introduced. Han Solo enters ep.4 as cynical smuggler, and then he joins a rebellion where he saw heroism and himself acted heroically, saw amazing force users, won a huge victory against the odds. Why should that not temper his cynicism and teach him that people like Rey - as also himself and Luke before - have the capacity to achieve great and good things? Outside the films, he has had a child and decades have passed. Although his son turned bad why might that not still give him a "fatherly" perspective he might apply to Rey? Why might he not feel his life has gone astray after his son's fall and his return to smuggling, and sees in Rey an opportunity to bring back his best days? And so on.
Leia is either force sensitive or user, if the level of her training is unclear. She can surely sense Rey and her potential.
I'm not going to deny that ep7 hustles through giving Rey huge powers too quickly. But I think that's a convenience because JJ Abrams couldn't be bothered with development: he just wanted to hustle through to the big showdown, and didn't have an ageing Jedi master around to take on the duty of setpiece lightsaber duel as George Lucas did for Star Wars.
One can rationalise it to an extent - although I don't find the rationale entirely convincing. Rey may not be force trained, but she is in fighting. Kylo Ren has taken a serious abdominal wound, and (by my watching) appears to be more interested in converting her than killing her. He doesn't really seem to use his force powers much, if it all (perhaps he's using them to hold his intestines in). He's also much younger, inexperienced and temperamentally unstable compared to Darth Vader, so likely a lesser opponent.
It's been a while since I watched TFA but from what I remember Rey spends most of the film being irritated at the people around her. Even that scene you mentioned where she met Han Solo, I watched that again on Youtube and after about a minute she's shouting and making demands. Han later asks her to join his crew and she turns him down, so not much of a fan girl. Rey is generally propelled along by events outside her control, but whenever she does get to make a decision it's always "go back to Jakoo, leave the rest of you behind". So you know, distant.
By the end of the movie she has changed a bit and goes off to find Luke, but even that's a bit suspect. The Resistance and the First Order have spent a lot of time and resources trying to find Luke's location, but when Leia eventually gets the map she turns it over to some newbie she only just met.