canadamus_prime said:
If I'm not mistaken Mary/Gary Sue characters were characters that were perfect at everything, loved by everyone (except the antagonist), and had no character flaws what-so-ever. You know, like pretty much everyone's self-insert fan fiction characters. Nowadays I suspect it's become another synonym for " I don't like."
It can be that.
The idea of a Mary Sue character is "Wish fulfillment". It's just a symbolism for "shitty" writing in most cases, because a poorly created character is one that you feel nothing for when they win or lose, or more commonly, they break your suspension of disbelief by doing something that's unnatural to the story.
It's not a question of "like/dislike", it is the essential part of writing characters; that becomes a problem when people become genre savvy and have seen everything before, that they have a sense of belief and disbelief.
And it's the difference between an average writer, and a great writer in that they can create and use characters to do things that don't just fit in like puzzle pieces to fulfill the limitations of the plot and scope of the plot. i.e. there has to be a reason that the bad guy shows up and travels to the various locations in each chapter/arc/volume/episode, and for all of the other characters to be there too. If somehow the characters just show up, it's not co-incidence, it's deus ex machina by the author(s). If they then win this contrived situation, and get better as a result, that's where it becomes Mary Sue.
Heroes often break into bullshit territory if they are poorly written, or the author does not know how to write characters or make them believable or flawed. So instead, they will insert a perfect version of themselves into the scene to get past the plot or the universe, because they only need the character to be there.
From TFA, there's the example of R2D2 suddenly powering up with the final puzzle piece, for no explicable reason other than "it's time to get luke". There's nothing in the story that explains why R2D2 is prevented from doing so before or after. Deus Ex Machina.
For reasons that have to be ignored, Rey survives and thrives when confronted, using abilities she's never known or seen before. i.e. If rey had started floating down to the ground in TFA during her opening salvage scene, that would have been enough to explain "oh, she's a magical girl then", etc. Everything she does from that point onwards, is shaped by her abilities and as a character, second. And, if you know she's capable early on, then her motives change accordingly.
If she uses the force earlier on, the audience doesn't know, but the character suspects/is ignorant of the force/jedi, then things work differently too. in some sense, TFA breaks because she's appropriately "normal", and then she becomes powerful enough to get out of a bad situation without help, or any kind of extrapolation or explanation.
I don't really care that Kylo Ren is mortally wounded as a descriptive element to that fight, he has enough dexterity to fight Finn, and Rey together, and that's not a defensive bluff, that's his motive as a character. In a realistic setting, he has had combat experience with a lightsaber, and has defeated other jedi, even trainees with a lightsaber. It's to be expected that he's defeated Luke or another jedi teacher (are there any others ?), before Luke walked away from his job as a teacher, but regardless, in a regular universe, Finn and Rey are going to die unless they have some magical plot armor to defend them.
As a jedi character, Rey fails in the same way that a lot of hero characters do, they don't Exist in the same world as anyone else, because they can evade or survive against fantastic opposition and thrive on it.
The more infamous examples are characters that "don't" fail, because they're just apparently that good. Han, for example, is Sue-Riffic, but it's likeable because he ends up doing stupid things. That's his job. Rey and Finn, survive the attack in the Falcon, and get picked up by Han's ship because the plot required it to happen, and warped around to suit that outcome. Rey survives a lightsaber fight, because she has to. She won't be injured or calloused, because she's the new disney princess of the story. Neither, does Phasma.
Jedi are Sue Territory, in the Republic of Sue, led by President Sue and her harem of Sue's. And every week, some villains show up.
The former EU is littered with so many examples, its laughable, but so are the prequels and animated adaptations (Clone wars, Rebels, etc.). It's only when a Mary Sue Villain shows up that the jedi even face losses, ie a superweapon that devours solar plasma, and can fire coherent plasma beams across a solar system, let alone several solar systems, is a contrivance of epic proportion that not even the first movie gets away with. The rebels know about the death star at the beginning, and it's the central plot device.
Even the Sith, like Snoke, Ren, are the buttmokeys of this superweapon in a sense, because they're not defeating anyone who's a central character yet. Not even Finn. Jedi, are Mary Sue characters when written poorly because they have no impact on other characters when they lose, and also no impact when they win.
Very, very rarely, does the Mary Sue let anyone die if they don't have to, very rarely does the Mary Sue face an even battle, very rarely does the Mary Sue not fight. They win, because that's their job in the story. Odds, challenges, opposition, travel time, equipment, logistics, etc. are placed in between to pad out the eventual victory and make it more compelling. Or, they're not, and there's no sense of victory, only inevitability.
It's all part of the motivation and change of the character through the events of the story, and what they change about themselves to get there. In a Mary Sue, they don't change. They just need to be in Chapter 5 to fight the bad guy, so now they need something to dramatically get them there.
If the hulk has to ride the elevator to get to Loki at the end of the Avengers, that doesn't make it less hokey, it makes an unreal character that reeks of Mary Sue, hilariously parodied and inverted. It also doesn't change the impact of him just arriving for the monologue, at all. Does the hero need to board a train ? just have the hero/villain jump on top of the moving train/car. That's believable, right ? it can be, but that's a Mary Sue Universe.
To some degree, a Sue character has to do something that is unexplainable, or has no explanation in the universe. Sometimes, this is just parody, i.e. Austin Powers, Deadpool, etc. Other times, it's Author License, where there's no flaws in the character that affects the story going forward. Suspension of Disbelief is useful, but it's usually a character that faces all problems and wins, because the story needs them to win.
Jedi are in this "wiggle room" area of Mary Sue-dom because they don't have inherent weaknesses, they're not allowed to lose as a type of character unless they turn into a villain. And because of movie censorship, the villain has to pay a price, always.
Essentially, all heroes end up being Mary Sue characters because there's "not enough time" to show them as being regular people, but that's why good hero movies are hard to pull off if you don't build up characters that people can be willing to suspend disbelief for. it becomes a parody of a person instead of a strength to overcome the villain.
And by extension, Mary Sue can also extend to creating a wimpy villain when exposed to the Mary Sue hero. Aka holding the Idiot Ball, and other tropes, where smart people do infinitely dumb things because the hero is the only character that can move the plot formwards, right ?
Jedi OTOH, are walking plot armor. They survive until they're needed to undo the bad guys plot, pull out a Deus Ex Machina or checkov's toolkit, and win the day, keeping their friends and family alive, getting the girl/boy/tentacled alien, etc. It takes a universe destroying threat for Jedi to have a bad day where they don't immediately win. Most of this is due to the extended universe writers accommodating the YA audience / universe.
The Star Wars EU villians are worse in comparison, but the ability for even trainee jedi to survive unwinnable situations is what makes it tentative to use them in situations where you want dramatic tension.
Because, and this becomes evident/telling in the prequels, Jedi aren't supposed to lose, and when they do, they don't know how to handle defeat or subterfuge / betrayal, because everyone that they've ever fought with, has been on their side before.
Japanese Anime/ Manga characters regularly try to talk and walk that fine line between "god mode" and human being, and sometimes they pull it off. Examples like, One-Punch Man, who just wins every fight, to the point where he's using the moon as a springpad to jump back to earth to get back into the fight, because. He. has. to.
And, there's no ramp there. In every other facet of his life, he's depressingly unspectacular. And, that's part of a compelling story in some degree, because when he doesn't fight, he's wholly tragic.
There's also a few types of Sue's. One is the perfect character, easily seen as the hero. more often, they're really the villain for every other character, because they cannot be defeated. Author fantasy contrives these perfect characters (Bella Swan, Princesses, etc.)
Another is the reality warping character that changes other people to do what they want. Even the villains. (this is the jedi in a nutshell, and emperor palpatine in the prequels, etc.)
There's the character that exists solely to prevent the hero/villain from becoming too strong or unlikeable that conveniently shows up and then is never seen again, usually the foil or the romantic interest of the villain, or the seductress. Mary Sue's don't have to be the central protagonist either.
Another is the "detective" / analytical Sue, that can read other people's motives or action before they know what they're doing and formulate the required gambit, i.e. Ozymandias, Sherlock and some versions of Batman, etc, and Thrawn fit into this Gambit Mary Sue.
Having a Good Mary Sue rather than a Poorly written Mary Sue is important to character development. As Max Landis puts it in his reviews (and ultimately the Rey = Mary Sue) thing, Heroes can be Mary Sue characters. It just takes more effort to make characters "Good" and not two-dimensional. Superman is the exceptional Gary Sue/Stu, because when he's given extraordinary ability as an infant, he's still just a farmboy that helps people out, with the ability to destroy human civilization if he so chooses on a whim. And this is (apparently) the crux of the Superman reboot(s), trying to show this moral character in an immoral / disconnected reality, because we could never trust Clark's parents to be altruistic anymore in a modern storytelling.
Which is arguably why Rey is orphaned on a planet rather than be brought up by a single parent or Alien parent, cousins, uncle's, etc. Family is no longer a sacred or pure element in cinematic story because it takes too long to show development as a character.
