No, I meant everything before Daniel Craig was potentially Gary Stu. I.e. I agree with you. I’ve never liked a James Bond til Daniel Craig
What is a Mary Sue to you?
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You know, James Bond's reputation is kind of like Captain Kirk's. Vastly overblown and informed more by parody than by his canon. Does Bond win in the end? Of course he fucking does, he's the goddamn protagonist. But he very rarely swans through the movie with no delay or expending no effort. I mean he legitimately gets the shit kicked out of him in the Connery and Dalton movies, Moore's were a lighter touch but even then guys like Scaramanga and Orlov gave him a run for his money.
I don't deny that Craig's are the most grounded and willing to hurt Bond the series has ever been, but its never treated him with kid gloves.
I've never understood how Wesley Crusher is a Mary Sue. Mary Sue's supposedly never make mistakes, but given how often the plot of an episode is "Some project/activity Wesley was doing screws up and now they have to fix it." It seems contrary to the "Mary Sue" status.
OT: I don't really care about the status of Mary Sue really. I rarely find them bothersome to the point that it detracts from my enjoyment of the story. It's usually other details in a piece of media that irk me more than a really competent protagonist.
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I think Wesley is more of a viewer insert then a Mary Sue. Like, he felt like he was deliberately added to appeal to a specific portion of the audience so they could see themselves in his position.
If you want a game example of a Mary Sue, I think Doom Eternal's Doom Slayer could qualify, well, maybe not totally but the game really does seem determined to give the player a slow blowjob through him. With all the audio stuff talking about how special and amazing he is, like to the point of being uncomfortable.
Considering my first name is Wesley, and my last name is incredibly close to Crusher, and I was a gangly, awkward nerd who liked science and math when that show came out, and for the FIRST time, saw someone on TV with MY name (and who was incredibly close to me in body type/hair/age/etc)....yeah I think it's safe to say he was meant to be an audience insert for young fans to enjoy. Because Wesley Crusher is most definitely the reason I got interested in TNG when it first started.
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Eh, that's not quite right. It's not that a Mary Sue never makes mistakes, or is entirely without flaw. While there are writers that are legitimately that bad, that kind of egregiousness is largely confined to exaggerated satires of such characters. With that being said, however, the Mary Sue at its worst does tend to lack meaningful flaws. Indeed, they often have a lot of good number of flaws that serve the functional purpose of make them more endearing, like being [cutely] clumsy, [intriguingly] emotionally distant/shy, [infectiously] overly enthusiastic, or - the all time favorite - secretly living on borrowed time so the story will cap off with their beautifully tragic death. Alternatively, see largely informed traits that are utterly irrelevant, such as being an awful cook or tone deaf.
To clarify, this does not mean that those flaws cannot be meaningful, just that they almost never are meaningful in the case of a Mary Sue. To jump back to Mistborn again for the sake of example, Vin's character arc in the trilogy centers largely on her personal insecurity and reflexive distrust of everyone. It takes her a full book to break out of the mentality that everyone is out for themselves and just waiting for a good opportunity to betray anyone stupid enough to trust them. And it takes another book after that before she understands that the people in her life (including her love interest) actually like her as a person and don't just see her as a tool to be discarded if she doesn't keep proving her worth. That is not a token flaw. That's a flaw that the author committed to and both naturally flows from the character's backstory and plays off of the roles she performs in the course of the stories.
By contrast, Mary Sues with the emotionally distant flaw tend strongly towards...simply being cool and broody. You know, cold but caing, the misunderstood loner, troubled but cute, the enigmatically dark roommate (yeah, the link's more or less parody, but it more or less hits the heart of it)...to make a long story short, the Mary Sue variation might as well have walked out of a dating sim. Much like the "bad cook" and "bad singer" flaws, it's invoked not to be a flaw but to give the character a harmless quirk.
I'm surprised that in all this discussion of Wesley Crusher, nobody's brought up that:
A) Roddenberry's on record as saying that he based the character "a little bit" on his 14 year old self, although "I was never a genius like Wesley"
B) That Roddenberry's middle name was Wesley
C) That Wesley's role and his ability to solve the crisis of the week only began to be tuned down after Roddenberry was kicked off of the series
They all seem pretty relevant in a discussion about Mary Sues.
Edit: Apparently Wesley's ensign badge was the same as Roddenberry's during his time in the Navy.
If author insert is the prime requisite of a Mary Sue... c'mon.
A) Roddenberry's on record as saying that he based the character "a little bit" on his 14 year old self, although "I was never a genius like Wesley"
B) That Roddenberry's middle name was Wesley
C) That Wesley's role and his ability to solve the crisis of the week only began to be tuned down after Roddenberry was kicked off of the series
They all seem pretty relevant in a discussion about Mary Sues.
Edit: Apparently Wesley's ensign badge was the same as Roddenberry's during his time in the Navy.
If author insert is the prime requisite of a Mary Sue... c'mon.
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Aside from everything else, there's often a tendency to not truly morally test characters and have them see lasting consequences for difficult decisions. A Mary Sue's moral code can be vindicated without effort or sacrifice, or can be blatantly hypocritical without rebuttal.
You forgot to mention that the being that "acts like a lens to focus thought", The Traveler, being drawn to Wesley as his evolution from Humanity has begun.
It gets weird, yo.
Nah, I just didn't see how Wesley leaving to explore the universe with an obvious pedophile pertained to the question of him being a Mary Sue.
Oh, sorry. Forgot to mention. Wesley Has ZA WARUDO
Which is one of the first steps of him becoming a Traveler or Space Jesus or something...
Considering Isekai and Mary Sue, i would propose "Ascendance of a bookworm".
Main/Myne/Rosemain is certainly a Mary Sue and the trait becomes more and more obvious with the later books.
Surprisingly it is still quite enjoyable and recommendable. In most other cases i find it a big turnoff somehow. I have trouble understanding what the difference is.
Main/Myne/Rosemain is certainly a Mary Sue and the trait becomes more and more obvious with the later books.
Surprisingly it is still quite enjoyable and recommendable. In most other cases i find it a big turnoff somehow. I have trouble understanding what the difference is.
Controversially, I'd say that Samuel Vimes from the Discworld series is a Mary Sue. Not in his first few appearances, but eventually he reaches a point where he's incredibly rich and powerful, he's a perfect detective who can solve any crime, he's unbeatable in a fight, and also somehow picks up supernatural powers from somewhere.
I never saw Wesley Crusher as a Mary Sue, just not a particularly interesting character. Had his moments, but I get the impression the writers never really figured out what to do with him. I always feel like what crosses the line into being a Mary Sue to me is when the lopsided characterization starts calling unnecessary attention to itself. When it starts getting in the way of the story.
I think the idea of "author insert" is important. A writer might create a character as a fantasy, an idealised vision of something, but I don't think there's any particular reason to believe that Ian Fleming thought of Bond as a fictionalised version of himself. That a man who served in military intelligence and special ops wrote a book about a spy seems to me mostly just about the common trend for authors to write about the things they know about.
I wonder how much of the Sue debates are due to the distinction between an author insert and a fan insert. One is meant to pander to the author, the other to fans. And I make a distinction between fan insert and audience insert: the former is meant to pander, the latter is meant to serve as an excuse for exposition.
James Bond is not an author insert, but he is a fan insert. It was Fleming's stated goal to give the British people a hero to vicariously live through, which is why he is suave, gets to travel the world, lives as a member of high society, gets all the girls, and who single-handedly projects British power after the emasculation of the break-up of the empire. I now consider Rey to be a fan insert, a role very much made initially with the goal of getting millineal and zoomer fans to live vicariously through Rey in the Star Wars universe, which is why she's instantly so good at all the Star Wars things: the Force, lightsaber combat, flying, mechanics, gets both Luke's lightsaber and Han's ship (and BFF) and Leia's maternal instincts.
I've already stated all the things that pointed to Wesley Crusher being an author insert on Gene Rondenberry'd part. I hope folks can compare and contrast this post and that one to see my point.
James Bond is not an author insert, but he is a fan insert. It was Fleming's stated goal to give the British people a hero to vicariously live through, which is why he is suave, gets to travel the world, lives as a member of high society, gets all the girls, and who single-handedly projects British power after the emasculation of the break-up of the empire. I now consider Rey to be a fan insert, a role very much made initially with the goal of getting millineal and zoomer fans to live vicariously through Rey in the Star Wars universe, which is why she's instantly so good at all the Star Wars things: the Force, lightsaber combat, flying, mechanics, gets both Luke's lightsaber and Han's ship (and BFF) and Leia's maternal instincts.
I've already stated all the things that pointed to Wesley Crusher being an author insert on Gene Rondenberry'd part. I hope folks can compare and contrast this post and that one to see my point.
I think the fundamental problem with most people's understanding of "Mary Sue" is that it's become pointlessly synonymous with overpowered.
I think you're right though that lots of readers want awesome heroes. Thieves who can sneak past vigilant guards three feet away in broad daylight, warriors who can carve through a legion of elite veterans with only some cosmetic scratches, mages who can flatten cities with a flick of their spindly wrist, hackers who can break into top corporate networks with 20 seconds on a rusty library terminal. Writers will see readers that want that, and cater to it. Then other readers come along and complain.
How is someone who starts out broken and beaten, at the bottom of the social world, about to give up and abandon all of his morals and dreams, but who slowly, and methodically improves himself over time, with the help of friends and allies, cleaning himself up and struggling with the addictions he has, and eventually making his own life, and the life of those around him better.....a Mary Sue?
He earned all that stuff he got, aside from the wealth from marrying his wife. His promotions were for services rendered to the city and the realm. For defending the people from threats, which was his sworn duty. He didn't want the promotions or titles or any of it, so it's not like he sought them out.
Also him picking up supernatural powers? What are you referring to specifically, because I'm drawing a blank on this one. Granted it's been years since I read those books, but the closest I can think of to him having a power, was in....Snuff? I think? It's the book where the subplot for him was he will ALWAYS read to Young Sam at 6oclock. And he does so via some strange methods in that book. Or was that in THUD? Is that what you mean? I'm genuinely curious what powers you say he's got, because I don't really recall any.
But, really, that's hardly a criticism anyway in Discworld, as that setting actually has Narrative Magic, that impacts like, everyone. So random characters in a Narrative, suddenly doing crazy things Because Narrative Demands, is hardly new, or unique to Sam.
But yeah, I fail to see how a character becoming stronger through trial and struggle, and growth and effort, over the course of YEARS and decades, is a Mary Sue. That's not Mary Sueness, that's simply a character arc.
As I said, not in the first few Nights Watch books, but by the time that Snuff was released, the old, flawed and relatable character was gone and in his place was an unlikable prick who was right all the time, could beat anybody in a fight, solve any crime, and was always ten steps ahead of everybody else, even though the plot revolved around Vimes being out of his element in an unfamiliar setting. Maybe he isn't exactly a Mary Sue character as such, more that Pratchett was too close to the character and lost perspective.
It's been a while since I read Snuff, but from what I remember Vimes could see in total darkness, and could somehow witness a murder being committed without being present.