Ooooookay. Why is the term "Mary Sue" being thrown around like paint?

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Probably (recently) cause of Star Wars Episode VII. A lot of people took umbrage with Rey never being in danger and being kind of boring as a result, since Finn is the one who has to fight out of bad situations and lose more often than she does, yet he has less in-universe importance.

It's also a quick way to jump to conclusions: Witcher 3 springs to mind. However, that's more of a lack of commitment to getting into a story rather than poor judgement on the person calling Geralt a Mary Sue is.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Because the term Mary Sue has been applied to so much crap that its almost a useless word. TVTropes, a site that's purpose is to define author tools and provide examples, gave the fuck up on Mary Sue because it's just impossible. Instead, they have what seems like 5 pages of conflicting usages of the term.

Mary Sue...

-as Protagonist You Don't Like
-as Poorly Written Character
-as Cliched character
-as Author Avatar
-as Idealized Character
-as Power Fantasy
-as Infallible Character
-as Center of Attention
-as Alien Element
-as Original Character Protagonist
-as a Sturgeon's Law Character
-as Character Type

You start looking through all the definitions people have for Mary Sue, and you realize that with enough twisting (And in many cases, with none at all), just about any character can fit into it. Han Solo is a Mary Sue, as is Finn, Leia, Poe, Luke, Calvin (Calvin&Hobbes), John McClane, Furiosa, all four of the original Ghostbusters, and 90% of Western (Genre) protagonists.

It's simply a meaningless term.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Yeah, it's one of those things that just means "protagonist I don't like" these days.

Spoiler: Star Wars Spoilers

"Can mostly get a starship off the ground for a chase then win a 3rd act sword fight against an emotionally-compromised guy who took a light anti-vehicle round to the abdomen and a laser sword wound fighting the other guy."

doesn't quite meet the "obvious authorial OC who joins the Enterprise crew as a newbie, has all of the cast fawning over her, and is the only one who can figure out how to save everyone and she's just sooo cool" baseline that the original example sets.

I mean, at the very least you'd need the character to break existing, set-up universe "rules". Boy from a backwater planet gets 20 minutes of force training and then runs rampant through a high-security starbase without a scratch, then pilots a cutting-edge military starfighter to destroy said starbase while not using the missile guidance system? Then learns how to force pull a frozen laser sword from a block of ice while wounded and hung upside-down by a man-eating ice monster?

Somehow, not a Mary(Gary/Marty?) Sue.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Now we have "Mary Sue." I tried looking up the meaning towards this term and I haven't really found a straightforward answer. You can tell me what it means, please do, but I just want to mostly know if it's being used correctly in debates or it's just another buzzword being overused and misused?

Okay, bit of a history lesson as part of the definition.

The term "Mary Sue" originated with a piece of Star Trek (I think it was the Next Generation) fan fiction. Someone wrote a bad story with an author-insert character named Mary Sue, someone so extraordinary and charismatic the main characters of the cast all fawned over her and abandoned their own competence to react to her.

To add to this, IIRC, this story was a parody of an existing problem in fan fic (and elsewhere), not a badly written attempt at a normal story.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's the internet. Dumb voices are usually the loudest. And dumb people like to use "fancy" terminology to appear smart and educated. They want to look like they know more about a topic than others without actually going through the process of learning and then analyzing based on the acquired knowledge. Mary Sue is one of those things that geeks here heard Yahtzee use once, so they embraced it and now they're going around pretending to know what they're talking about.

You can see that kind of behavior regularly on the internet about pretty much any issue. Politics and religion is the worst when it comes to dumb people trying to look smart. People just can't shut up about things they know nothing about. Their opinion must be heard. Otherwise the importance of their entire existence is called into question.

 

[EyeReaper]

Essentially, In popular, non-fanwork media, a Mary Sue is a character you don't like. Because as soon as you call any character a Mary Sue, someone who is a bigger fan of the franchise than you will go "Uhh, Technically Isn't a Mary Sue, because they almost lost a fight, or in the lore there is someone better than them at something." And then, according to this thread, they might call you cisgendered patriarchs.

The word basically has no meaning. It carries as much weight as an anemic mosquito.

 

[Dazzle Novak]

Honestly, The Force Awakens is written like fan fiction. Large swaths of it is about recapturing old glory and ingratiating one's self to established characters. The main villain is a fanboy of the old villain for Chissakes.

As Zontar said (ugh, but welcome back anyway), this accusation isn't being lobbed at Furiosa or Jessica Jones.

The use of "Mary Sue" understandable if still inaccurate. The crux is "protagonist whose importance is disproportionate to what's been established by lore or possible given their typically young age and whose challenges don't measure up to their skills": everything comes easy to them.

Kirk from Nu-Trek is even worse in my eyes. Mary Sue, while again inaccurate, hones in on that intangible sentiment of why I dislike the character: he's captain for no other reason than he's "supposed to be". He doesn't need to study (unless boinking green chicks counts as studyong); he doesn't need to develop discipline or respect; nor does he need to possess nobility of any kind or an admirable ethos. He simply sneaks aboard the ship and leapfrogs the eight military ranks made vacant that day into the captain's chair.

Like with the originals, the cast is engaging and on point. So I'm not anti-Rey. The script is weak as fuck and pandering, though.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I think there's some interesting lessons to be learned here from another trope which has become way too overused [http://www.salon.com/2014/07/15/im_sorry_for_coining_the_phrase_manic_pixie_dream_girl/].

The problem with the Mary Sue is that, in the fairly black and white world of internet media commentary, people use the phrase as if it's in and of itself a condemnation or criticism of a piece of media, and it kind of isn't. Mary Sue characters can be atrociously transparent and poorly written (they can be pure examples of the trope), or they can actually be quite strong and well written characters who use elements of the trope to promote engagement.

Harry Potter, for example, is "technically" a Mary Sue. He's young and low rank in the Wizard hierarchy yet somehow always manages to save the day. Him and people he likes are written as heroes, people he doesn't like are written as villains irrespective of personal character flaws or whether they're actually kind of dicks. The universe seems to revolve around him and allow him to succeed when he really shouldn't. However, I don't think calling him a Mary Sue works because all of these features are part of what makes him so successful in the medium for which he's written.

The Mary Sue exists as a trope and a part of our culture, but sometimes parts of our culture exist because they work, because they capture or fulfil a particular need on the part of an audience. The audience often likes to engage in wish fulfilment too. That isn't, fundamentally, a bad thing or a sign of bad writing.

 

[Saltyk]

I believe there is a reason that TVTropes doesn't really allow examples on the Mary Sue topic. It is thrown around so much as to be meaningless. I can name virtually any character in fiction and accuse them of being a Mary Sue. Dr Grant from Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones. Michael Swain from After Hours. Mary Sues. Mary Sues everywhere!

Except it is relevant because these small groups are the ones very vocally shouting about how characters, even Jones and Furiosa, are "Mary Sues".

So what? So what if they're crying Mary Sue because it suits their narrative? They would shout that women are inherently evil if they thought it would fly. What you're doing here is just like saying "people are accusing Bill Cosby of being a rapist but some of those people are nasty and stupid tumblrinas so it must be bullshit."

The only person I've seen calling Rey a Mary Sue is Max Landis (a writer) on his youtube channel, and considering that youtube channel has a series called "Girl Stories" that focus' entirely on the experiences of women I'm fairly confident he's not an MRA or whatever.

You need to let go of your tribalism, you'll see the world in a much more nuanced way if you do.

I've already learned the hard way that some of the people that preach acceptance the most on this forum are some of the most pig headed and close minded. "If you aren't 100% with us, you are 100% against us."

Simply for not accepting that some things, even some terms, are not always always garbage, is enough to insult them. Don't waste your time telling them that there is grey. The world is black and white. Those they disagree with are evil. Those that they agree with, but make them look bad, are fiction or parody. As you said, it's tribalism at it's worst.

I'm not sure that applies to Kyuubi, out of hand, but I can't say I've seen too many interactions with him/her. Really just venting after a particularly bad and pissy interaction I had a while back.

As for Rey being a Mary Sue, I can kinda see it, but don't think she is. As I already said, the term is largely meaningless.

 

[THM]

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact Rey is a horribly written, overpowered, underdeveloped bore of a character with no arc and an instant mastery of everything she does.

Or at the very least, an overpowered, underdeveloped character with no arc and instant mastery of everything she does at the moment. It depends on when and if various points get fleshed out. (i.e., how/why she's so good with the Force so quickly, not to mention her 'skill' with a sword) Plus, they could've taken the time to explain her expertise with ships (especially re: the Falcon) just a little more, and with two basic points - 1) 'I've been crawling all over ships and vehicles since I was a kid', and 2) 'Who's been looking after/around the Falcon for the last X years, you or me? (silence) Right; gimme that spanner'

I wouldn't say she's a bore - yet. If they take the time in the next two movies to flesh her out, she could end up a decent character. If they just pass over what was brought up in TFA in silence, and continue on in that vein...then yeah, boring, overpowered chore of a character that just gets handed everything without any real effort.

Time will tell.

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

Futurama lampooned this with Melllvar's fan script

Props for spelling Melllvar's name right! (I love that episode so much)

OT: Yes, people throw out Mary Sue too casually, just as too many cry 'political correctness' or 'SJW' at any lead character or character change that goes against the norm.

For any laymen who might be here: a male Mary Sue is a Gary Stu, while a Mary Tzu is a character with impeccable strategical acumen; everything that happens is part of their master plan and nothing will go wrong.

 

[JoJo]

I think the term itself can have value, in describing it's original meaning of a character based on the author who has no flaws and the rest of the cast fawn around like they're the second coming of Jesus. Use of other meanings such as a character being over-powered or solely being an author avatar however have diluted the term to the point where it's best to say what type of Mary Sue you're referring to in conversation, otherwise it's fairly meaningless. Lots of "Mary Sue tests" online exemplify this by adding Mary Sue points for cliches, even though there's only a casual correlation between the two (inexperienced authors who write Sues are also likely to rely on cliches).

I'm not a fan of the extended family of Mary Sues you'll find on a place like TvTropes either, such as the Anti-Sue or Villain Sue. The former is a character that is the complete opposite of a Sue, so absolutely useless at everything and hated by everyone with no redeeming features. I struggle however to think of any characters who fit that bill, so it certainly doesn't seem to be a widespread problem. Even after reading the description to a Villain Sue, I'm still not entirely sure what one is. A villain who has no flaws... except that generally, being a villain by definition means a character must be flawed in a pretty big way. Maybe they mean an overpowered villain, but then that isn't necessarily a problem unless we're talking about a villain protagonist.

 

[JimB]

Props for spelling Melllvar's name right!

I think I've done enough conventions to know how to spell "Melllvar."

 

[Zen Bard]

The term is thrown around so much because most people aren't really using it correctly.

While it's come to represent the perfect, infallible character, the initial intent was to satirize author wish fulfillment. The Mary Sue, Marty Stu or Gary Stu is usually perfect because he/she is an author avatar existing in his/her own universe.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

http://io9.gizmodo.com/please-stop-spreading-this-nonsense-that-rey-from-star-1749134275

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

Hell, even the folks at Cracked.com weighed in on this:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-good-ideas-that-got-ruined-by-idiots_p2/

The current use of the term isn't necessarily wrong, but it's definitely strayed from the original definition and focuses on the symptom (the perfect character) and not the cause (author wish fulfillment).

I think people tend to use "Mary Sue" interchangeably with "Chosen One". The Chosen One is that amazing, overpowered character because s/he is the lynchpin on which the universe's destiny hangs.

I'd say Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker and Rey are "Chosen Ones", whereas Bella Swan, Wesley Crusher and perhaps even James Bond are "Mary Sues".

 

[K12]

I think people have started to use the term "Mary Sue" as a catch all criticism for when a character gets more attention, praise or skill than the audience feels they deserve. That's definitely worth criticising but there's no need to jump straight to the "Mary Sue" accusation. It's a much more serious criticism than people are treating it as, since a Mary Sue completely dominates every aspect of a work and renders it almost unenjoyable unless you happen to be the author (who's personal fantasy this comes from).

Any "chosen one" character will be treated as mega-important for flimsy "take our word for it" reasons.

Any gifted/ genius character is likely to be highly skilled with little training, maybe even besting experts on their first try.

Any highly charismatic or charming character will be liked or desired by most people with seemingly little effort.

Characters can be these things without being a Mary Sue. To me the most telling signs for a Mary Sue are that you instantly tell who the writer is expecting us to like or dislike by how they treat the character. The one member of team good guy who's a bit rude or dismissive invariably turns out to be the double-agen. The other main indicator is that the Mary Sue is always proven right, people who disagree with them (often implausibly aggressively) are bad and always get their come-uppance.

Really the whole Mary Sue thing is a fan-fiction phenomenon and its only started to feel more relevant now because of all the revivals of old universes with new or rebooted characters.

 

[elvor0]

A Mary Sue is an unbelievable perfect and successful (in universe) female character.
This has been extended to any female character that's not utterly useless by certain types who have an odd idea on how successful women can/should be.

Don't do that. That's not having a discussion or adding to the debate, it's just you passively aggressively setting yourself up to paint anyone you disagree with as sexist.

Perhaps, instead of indirectly calling people sexist because they believe a character to be a mary sue and you don't (whom doesn't necessarily need to be a female character), engage them in discussion, rather than just personally attacking them and stonewalling them with an ad hominem.

 

[JimB]

A Mary Sue is an unbelievable perfect and successful (in universe) female character. This has been extended to any female character that's not utterly useless by certain types who have an odd idea on how successful women can/should be.

Don't do that. That's not having a discussion or adding to the debate, it's just you passively aggressively setting yourself up to paint anyone you disagree with as sexist.

No, it's not. The underlined text very clearly indicates that not everyone who makes this complaint does so for sexist motivations. Anyone who feels that thaluikain has called him a sexist in this post when thlauikain said no such thing is someone who needs to examine his own conscience, because he seems to have difficulty telling the difference between thaluikain's voice and Jiminy Cricket's.

 

[Dazzle Novak]

A Mary Sue is an unbelievable perfect and successful (in universe) female character. This has been extended to any female character that's not utterly useless by certain types who have an odd idea on how successful women can/should be.

Don't do that. That's not having a discussion or adding to the debate, it's just you passively aggressively setting yourself up to paint anyone you disagree with as sexist.

No, it's not. The underlined text very clearly indicates that not everyone who makes this complaint does so for sexist motivations. Anyone who feels that thaluikain has called him a sexist in this post when thlauikain said no such thing is someone who needs to examine his own conscience, because he seems to have difficulty telling the difference between thaluikain's voice and Jiminy Cricket's.

At best it was muddying the waters by association. He has no rebuttal for thr non-sexist criticisms, but makes sure to point out a lot of it is coming from MRA-types.

So let's be clear (if we're playing the game I think is being played):

Rey (and let's throw in Poe "best pilot in the galaxy" Damaran) in this film is the baseline for a "competent" minority character. Yet, black people shouldn't feel shafted by the fact Finn is a decoy protagonist who's comparatively bumbling and inept getting his ass handed to him every fight (including by a stormtrooper). Is that right?

If asking for Rey to be dialed back a bit and show vulnerability every now and again is asking for a "weak" and "useless" female character and inherently sexist, Finn is a fucking minstrel sideshow.

Finn was my favorite character, btw. I'm just pointing out that bit of inconsistency.

 

[astrav1]

Now are we all cleared up here? Would you kindly refrain from putting words in my mouth and making assumptions about what I'm saying now?

Just in case, even though you are responding to somebody else, I hope you didn't think I was putting words in your mouth with my reply. I was just agreeing with the point you made while proposing an additional caveat of the statement that you may or may not have agreed with or felt it went without saying.

Not at all, I agree with what you've said for the most part when you replied to my post, it's just that we were talking about two different, but related things.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I read your point to say that there are characters to whom the Mary Sue tag can easily be applied correctly. Like Alice from the Resident Evil movies, as you pointed out. Which is more the statement "I think that [insert character] is a Mary Sue, because they're too perfect/overpowered/skilled/whatever". Am I correct? Because if that's the case then it's a perfectly valid criticism of the character, even if others don't agree, it's still valid because such opinions are subjective and personal.

On the other hand what I was calling out is basically this: "Rey/Finn/Furiosa/etc is a Mary Sue character that is specifically designed to make white men look stupid and evil! [insert long winded nonsensical misogynistic and/or racist rant]." Which isn't a valid criticism, it's basically using a character that the "critic" has a problem with because they even exist, then using it to fly off into a hate filled political spiel about society.

The latter use of Mary Sue is the one I've been seeing a lot of, though a lot do say the same of Rey, but I find that dishonest because the description of Rey sounds like a word for word description of Luke in A New Hope. Partially I think it's dishonest because people are holding Luke and Rey to different standards, despite them filling basically the same role in the respect movie they're each introduced in. So it comes off sounding a bit sexist to me, because people take Luke on face value, but not Rey, which sounds a lot like this:Robot Hugs comic on how people get treated different based on gender, in relation to being trusted, or dismissed as professional. [http://www.robot-hugs.com/technigal/]

Have you even seen any of these movies? Or read the news? And then actually thought about them critically? I feel like you need to rethink a lot of what you're saying, not that some of your previous points don't have merit.

 

[Erttheking]

I've already learned the hard way that some of the people that preach acceptance the most on this forum are some of the most pig headed and close minded. "If you aren't 100% with us, you are 100% against us."

Simply for not accepting that some things, even some terms, are not always always garbage, is enough to insult them. Don't waste your time telling them that there is grey. The world is black and white. Those they disagree with are evil. Those that they agree with, but make them look bad, are fiction or parody. As you said, it's tribalism at it's worst.

Let's be honest, being open minded towards what other people think when they don't agree with you is something that's been stamped out of this website a long time ago. Just about everyone who gets involved in serious discussions seems unwilling to conceded even the most trivial of points because it's giving ground to "the enemy."

No one is really open minded anymore, it's just "I'm always right, fuck you if you disagree with me, you're wrong." With everyone. You don't "Win" arguments, you just see which poster gets sick of the argument first. As a result, arguing online become more of a competition of endurance more than anything else, because someone saying "I'm wrong, I'm going to change my mind," is good cause to look outside to make sure the world isn't ending.