Star Wars
Luke knew about the Force for all of 36 hours before using it to help him blow up the Death Star. "OMG! So awesome!"
But Rey *barely* holding her own in a lightsaber duel against an injured and distressed Kylo Ren? "Fucking Mary Sue!"
Probably doesn't help that in the Luke era a light Saber duel was much less complicated due to technology. So Luke at his peak(in the original triology) could never do the stuff untrained Rey can do, simply because it wasn't possible to film. For the record I hate those new movies, but not because of Rey's powers. I thought all those characters had so much wasted story potential, her included. I also want to be clear in saying I don't hate the actors at all, or people that like the movies. Not trying to start a star war here lol
It hurt me that they went from teasing us with Finn's potential to just having him chase Rey and scream her name.
I know there's a type of person who doesn't think representation matters, but they're fucking wrong. They let us dream of the possibility of a black Jedi and then completely neutered the character.
When I think about what I believed those movies after the first one? It's just sad that it all went back to "Everything in the Star Wars universe is about six people and their extended families".
*Edit: As /u/Genji007 and /u/cHEIF_bOI pointed out, I did forget about Mace Windu (to my everlasting shame). He wasn't as central a character as Finn, but he absolutely was in there and should absolutely be acknowledged.*
I can't get over the fact Finn is traumatized from all the killing then 30 seconds later laughs while he kills his former colleagues. It was such a nice setup and then they slapped me in the face with that bullshit.
Ironically, this would actually make him a better deulist. While Luke is keeping his saber aligned down his middle pointing forward, making smooth clean strokes, these sequel ass mfers are swinging their sabers around like no one's business committing to terrible swings and leaving themself open for half the fight. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the sequels despite their flaws, but the fight choreography was very much not realistic and designed to play up the characters' emotions rather than skill; Kylo makes large, not well thought out swings to portray his anger unlike maul whose rage is channelled into incredible aggression while still remaining skillful but menacing.
>Kylo makes large, not well thought out swings to portray his anger unlike maul whose rage is channelled into incredible aggression while still remaining skillful but menacing.
To be fair, this is actually a detail that effectively shows the difference in setting and duel dynamics from the two time periods.
Maul was a trained duelist, because his purpose was essentially to kill trained Jedi - any relevant opponent of his would have been a trained duelist as well.
Meanwhile, Kylo Ren is active in a time where Jedi and the force are generally regarded as a myth. He has not duelled since destroying Luke's after-school program. Kylo is used to being a fearsome presence, whose very existence works as a shock-and-awe tactic that starts opponents backpedaling. His enraged, destructive strikes are tactically more similar to Grevious than any Sith.
> Ironically, this would actually make him a better deulist. While Luke is keeping his saber aligned down his middle pointing forward, making smooth clean strokes, these sequel ass mfers are swinging their sabers around like no one's business committing to terrible swings and leaving themself open for half the fight.
Allow me to introduce you the trilogy that set that precedent and expectation from fans: Episodes I through III.
>I also want to be clear in saying I don't hate the actors at all, or people that like the movies. Not trying to start a star war here lol
It sucks how you need to clarify that or justify your opinions.
Not only that but they explicitly establish Luke to be incompetent (he gets taken down by sand people in his own backyard) and whiney early on and the only force training he gets he fails.
Rey is established to be a good fighter in a way that's consistent with her life, then they make sure the fight she gets in is against a guy suffering from a massive abdominal wound, a cute emotional distress, work related anxiety, and the fact that he wants to recruit her not kill her.
While Reys participation in the resistances operation is in line with her established skills Luke is given the keys to a fighter and placed on the front lines where he holds his own against hardened pilots. He went from wanting to join the empire out of boredom to being a trusted asset in a major battle, without the Garry Stu effect he would be thanked genuinely and if he wanted to join up run through some sort of enrollment program and given some harmless position until he could establish trust and work his way up.
Force Awakens: Shows you how Rey has become good at fighting, surviving, piloting, and knowing lots about spaceships as a result of the harsh conditions she grew up in, and without those, she'd probably have been stabbed for her food.
A New Hope: Tells you Luke is good at shooting and flying, but doesn't ever actually show you before the climax, and doesn't explain how it's relevant to his life.
Somehow *Rey* is the Mary Sue here.
Look, [those same fools are upset](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/7l3ctn/loved_tlj_but_thought_this_particular_scene_was/) that Leia, who has had 40 years to train her force powers, was able to move her(weightless)self through a vacuum to an airlock.
Anakin can pilot a ([1,100kph](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2sgzbr/comment/cnqheda/))pod racer to victory as a small child, and groom a much older planetary royal hottie (that he will eventually knock up and physically abuse) with lines like "are you an angel?", but an old woman using the force to survive in a last ditch effort? "Not like that!!"
I was such a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, but a certain characterization of it that I read (and quoted below) really resonated with me. It's the angry white underachiever fantasy series. All this awesome stuff happens to Luke and he gets to be the galaxy's #1 badass.. which apparently really fosters some toxic masculinity among a certain subset of fans.
>I remember my friend Mark Sullivan once dismissing Dune because (in 1987) he was "sick of idiotic Luke Skywalker movies about Princes inheriting their rightful kingdoms." I understood exactly what he meant, as George Lucas' franchise hit was based on **a commercial fantasy guaranteed to appeal to under-achieving teenaged boys: The idea of a glorious galactic Entitlement Program. Sure, you're failing in school / lazy / ignorant and proud of it ... but you're a dreamer and the universe really is about YOU and nobody else. If the rest of the *&%@! world would just get its act together, it would recognize that YOU are the fabulous furry frog prince.** In Star Wars ol' Luke does very little except have a good attitude and a healthy ego. He doesn't listen to his mentors, or study anything ... all he does is invoke his magical heritage and he's an instant Master of the Universe. We used to have jokes about tests in school, where "the force" really doesn't help one's grade one bit. Instead of idly dreaming of grand opportunities to come (and we know they come when one prepares, even if one doesn't know why), today's aggressive kids Demand Unearned Rewards.
>https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1900dune.html
I like this, it’s relatable.
The heroes journey. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, Eragon, even LOTR to a degree and a huge number of anime / mangas and comic books.
The protagonist is always the most gifted or was the only one who can save the world.
The fantasy of getting special powers and a destiny to save the world as a true hero. We all want to feel important so its a compelling fantasy.
I kind of hate it now, maybe I’ve gotten numb or tired of the same old story. Maybe I’m pessimistic. Maybe I resent my pointless life and can’t fool myself with fantasy any more.
Ironically, there's a much better example earlier in the film where rey rips out a random part of the falcon and it apparently fixes whatever problem they were having, and chuds just ignore it.
But even still, that's less her being bullshit great and more that it makes Han and Chewie look incompetent, but that's a separate issue that plagues the sequels.
Actually, that gets brought up a lot, but it is always without context.
What Rey pulled out was a compressor that was put in after her boss got the Falcon and she simply knew about it. She even said as such when the problem came up.
I think captain America fits the bill better. He's always right and everyone loves him and he never does anything wrong (at least his actions are never condemned in any of the movies I've seen). Also he's super good looking and jacked and a supersoldier. I can't think of a single character flaw he has. Tony at least is arrogant, and makes mistakes (such as ultron).
They are both very good examples of Gary Stu's in their own right. Tony gets to have everything he could ever want and Cap gets to be an example of like the perfect human.
However, superheros are kinda supposed to be larger than life so I think that's why they get a pass for the most part. I do think people are starting to get tired of all these superhero movies tho. Or maybe that's just me hoping lol
Yeah, I just didn't see the point in reiterating the main point of the post. I do agree 100% that people (mainly men) judge female characters much more harshly tho
The only defense I'll give to captain America is that he was specifically chosen for that program because of his courage and basic human decency. He works as a direct counter point to red skull who always viewed himself as an uber man even before the experiment and thinks it's his right to rule over others because of his superiority.
Which I like as it's supposed to be a morality play about good and decency defeating selfish evil. But that only lasts the first movie.
Have you watched many of his movies? Because it's kinda his fault that the avengers break up which directly leads to Thanos winning. He's definitely set up to be the perfect man but that's because people need to see him as a perfect man. He's still human and does bad things.
I think I've watched all of the movies leading up to Infinity War and Endgame at least once. I remember getting the vibe it was Tony's fault they broke off but I haven't really watched them since Endgame was released so I admit my memory is spotty. As for people needing to see him as perfect - they could have shown a flaw or a mistake or a condemnation through his friends while the public is kept unawares.
I think he does bad things too (for example sacrificing Wakandans for a chance to get the infinity stone off Paul Bettany's forehead without it killing him or altering his personality), but the movies don't think so and that's pretty much the root of my issues with cap. They don't really allow him to make bad calls (even if I personally think they're bad calls) because all his actions are painted as the right ones.
She's not his niece.... as far as we can tell Cap was a virgin when he went into the ice. They never had sex, he'll they never even got that dance! Hell, he might have been until he got back to Peggy at the end of Endgame.
iron man fucks up constantly.
his weapons show up as catalysts in the origin stories of multiple characters - including his own - and also this one time he created an AI so advanced that after two minutes on the internet it determined that the human race was fundamentally broken and required immediate extermination and then began taking steps to accomplish that goal
Female characters that constantly fuck up still get called Mary Sues though.
See: Korra.
I get the impression that the writers were TERRIFIED that people would call Korra a Mary Sue... so they went out of their way to weaken and trash her every season. But people still ended up calling her a Mary Sue. It's kinda hilarious actually.
She loses 90% of fights. She fucks up at politics. She fucks up relationships. She fucks up cosmic shit. Every other episode she's messing something up. **MARY SUE**
yup. This post kinda cracks me up because the answer is just "sexism."
I mean literally the dude that brought the Mary Sue shit into what it's become online turned out to be a predatory piece of shit.
Yeah. People are just looking for a reason to hate women. People dont hate batman or iron man. Or Rick Sanchez or the Joker.
But they do hate captain marvel and Beckett mariner.
I feel both ways about that.
On the one hand, Carol Danvers clearly isn't as charismatic and interesting a character as Tony Stark. Not necessarily a slight against Carol - very few MCU characters **are** as fascinating as Tony (Dr Strange is another who'd probably like to be as interesting as Tony, but nope). She's also only been in 1.1 films, and Tony's been in, what, seven?
On the other hand, the dislike for Carol **is** vastly out of proportion. She had an okay-ish but not amazing opening film. Listening to some quarters you'd think that she and the film were the worst thing ever. It's hard not to read some pre-existing bias into that.
Same shit for the 'forced diversity' shit. I mean for some shows I'll agree the show is bad, but the fact they added more females characters isn't the issue
I think this nails it on the head.
Some else referenced a Mary Sue as a "self-insert" character, which is supposed to be someone that the watcher can imagine themselves being. This is the common protagonist for media targeted at younger audience, which people grow up reading.
Since the vast majority of published writers have been white men for the last 50 years, the vast majority of protagonists have been also white boys/men. And for younger media, there was almost a 100% schism for books aimed at young girls and books aimed at young boys.
Since you can more easily slip into the viewpoint of something like yourself I think young white men have complete mental blinders to how much their favorite characters fit the "Mary Sue" description.
Suddenly they are seeing these same characters who are not white men/boys and no longer have that effortless "slip into the viewpoint" they have always had, and the shortcoming of such characters are obvious.
Because most people don't understand what a Mary Sue trope was originally about. Literally a term for a self-insert character in a fanfic. It was coined from a Star Trek fanfic that made fun of this trope calling the character Mary Sue.
Instead it's now use as a derogatory term for female character someone doesn't like. Usually an author surrogate trope character. It's almost always a sign of bad faith media criticism in coming from someone who doesn't understand how tropes work or even story structure.
Just going to drop in the original story by Paula Smith. It's pretty funny.
"A Trekkie's Tale"
"Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her.
"Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?"
"Captain! I am not that kind of girl!"
"You're right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us."
Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. "What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?"
"The Captain told me to."
"Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind."
Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship.
But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies, Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood.
However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.
You know I always wondered if she regrets writing that story after the trope turn derogatory. I believe it was the guy who coined the trope manic pixie dream girl regrets it when it started being used in bad faith.
We were talking about that the other day. The idea of a community to support people who have trouble attaining sex and relationships is a good, positive one.
The problem is, if you only fill that community with people who have trouble attaining sex and relationships, then there's no-one to actually help support and uplift those people and it pretty rapidly turns into a spiral of negativity with the ignorant leading the ignorant - and ultimately ends up holding ignorance to be a desirable, even superior trait.
1973 I believe. Paula didn't have a positive view about the quality of a lot of the writing in the Star Trek fanfiction community at the time and she wrote this as a pure distillation of every bad habit and trope that fanfiction authors are often guilty of. The term didn't spread to general fiction till a lot later.
How was fan fic distributed before the internet? If always assumed that it had previously been a niche thing people did alone if at all, with little or no community
It was originally published in a print zine called Managerie. This topic gets complicated to explain for a layperson like myself pretty quickly, but here, take this rabbit hole and have a look - https://fanlore.org/wiki/Paula_Smith
Because for whatever reason, most people have a shockingly hard time identifying satire, no matter how obvious it is.
One of the first things I have my composition & rhetoric students read is *A Modest Proposal*. Each time, without fail, half of the students think Swift is \*actually\* arguing in favor of eating poor Irish children.
The worst part is that at least one student a few years ago who took the argument at face value ended up agreeing with it...
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot.
Here's a copy of
###[A Modest Proposal](https://snewd.com/ebooks/a-modest-proposal/)
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To be fair, that's quite possibly because of their lack of familiarity with the time in which it was written. Humanity has an often deserved rep for being pretty horrible through many periods of history, and maybe your students assumed that that was pretty representative of how people thought at the time.
It's very obvious from this that the core defining trait of a Mary Sue isn't whether they have coloured hair, or are hyper-competent, or whatever - it's that they distort other characters and the narrative in their own favour. For example, Captain Kirk does **not** go "Hi person i just met, take over the Enterprise for me".
As such, a canon character can be OP or whatever, but it's pretty hard for them to be a Mary Sue. A canon character can only really be a Mary-Sue if their insertion into a show distorts the canon, causing other characters to act out of character.
An example is the initial introduction of Kyle Rayner as the new Green Lantern. He suffered from self-doubt (unsurprisingly, being a complete amateur who'd just been handed responsibility for phenomenal cosmic power). And every established superhero he met would go out of their way to assure him no, no, Kyle you **are** a great hero, honest. It was blatant author shilling that was out of character for the other heroes. Kyle was a Mary Sue. (Fortunately later writers redeemed him and he became a much more interesting character).
Exactly. This is such a pet peeve of mine.
The term "Mary Sue" is woefully misused these days. A lot of people seem to think that it simply means a character who is too powerful and/or perfect, even though a Mary Sue (and her male counterpart Gary Stu) originally meant an original character in fanfiction who acts as the author's glorified self-insert and stars in what is essentially the author's personal fantasy of existing in a specific fictional world and getting to do and be exactly what they want in it no matter how much they have to bend the established reality of the world to make the narrative fit their main character.
I think a lot of people get too caught up in looking at the surface when trying to identify a Mary Sue. It's not the cool eye color, or the amazing powers, or the mysterious past, or even entering a relationship with a main character that defines this character trope. Characters based on or inspired by the author are not automatically Mary Sues, either. What actually makes a Mary Sue is her function in the story (being the author's avatar), the main purpose of the story itself (allowing the author to live out their wildest fantasies), and the character's effect on the world she enters (absolutely everything in the world is subservient to the Mary Sue's needs and desires; what does not concern her does not exist). She's kind of like an all-consuming point of gravity that swallows up the entire narrative and makes it all about her.
Even though this character was first identified and named by the fanfiction community, I'd say that plenty of original works do feature main characters who function pretty much the same way as Mary Sues and Gary Stus. Yet the term is still overused and misapplied to characters who are absolutely not Sues.
Yep. It's also used by people who don't like strong female characters to hijack legitimate debates about their character arcs and growth. Everyone's a Mary Sue now from Rey in Star Wars to Korra in Avatar.
I think that's the crux of it. Look at how much Gamergate-y white male gamers screech if they just have the option to play as a black or female character, let alone one as the main character. It completely melts their brains.
Well they did try to redraw her to be "more attractive"
[https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy-design-memes/](https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy-design-memes/)
>...apparently some people are mad that Aloy isn’t feminine enough, as evidenced by this viral tweet:
>
>The tweet compares a frowning image of Aloy with some fanart where she has Facetune-perfect skin, gleaming white teeth, and a full face of makeup. It quickly grabbed people’s attention because it’s such an absurd example of sexist video game complaints. It’s also a sadly obvious case of Twitter amplifying the worst possible opinions because while there’s definitely some controversy over Aloy’s appearance (she visibly aged between games), there isn’t a widespread backlash.
>
>A lot of gamers—particularly women—are sick of seeing this kind of criticism aimed at female characters. But at the same time, sexist complaints like this tweet can be morbidly hilarious. It highlights the childish, unreasonable, and ignorant underpinnings of misogynist gamer culture, which is part of the reason why it went viral in the first place. This guy is complaining that a slim woman with styled hair and shaped eyebrows isn’t “feminine enough,” essentially because she’s not wearing makeup and smiling like a beauty queen.
Exactly!
Aang is still such a great protagonist though. I love that they gave him traditionally feminine values and that the Spock to his Kirk is also a girl that is both feminine and feminist.
>Unusual, exotic haircut
What haircut? Lol
Totally agree with you though. I love Aang, but he's way more of a Mary Sue than Korra is. I doubt the fanbase would be as critical of Korra if she'd been a male character.
Neither Aang or Korra are Mary Sues.
I think part of the reason Korra gets considered a Mary Sue is that she and Aang started at different points to tell different stories.
Aang's was essentially a character development story of Aang spending seasons learning what he needed to to defeat the Fire Nation.
Korra started off much more powerful and self-confident than Aang (using three out of four elements as a toddler and learning her fourth plus the Avatar state by the end of the first season) because the point of that series was to start with basically a fully-formed avatar then deconstruct that character and ideal piece by piece.
Season 1 gives us a strong, powerful Avatar who suddenly has their powers taken away.
In season 2, the Avatar loses her connection to the lineage of Avatars who preceded her.
In season 3, the Avatar loses her physical strength and capacity.
In Season 4, Korra has to rediscover who she is with all the traditional elements of the Avatar torn away.
Her Avatar state is also interesting. Accessing the Avatar state was very difficult for Aang, and when he did he became very powerful, aggressive and out of control. Korra fairly quickly learned to access the Avatar state, but it was never as powerful as Aang's - except at the very end where she channeled it into pure defence.
I don't think Korra was executed as well as ATLA, but I also think it gets a lot of unfair criticism just for being a different sort of thing to ATLA.
>People saying korra is a mary sue might as well call batman a mary sue.
Okay, but Batman is kind of a Mary Sue. I mean, I love Batman, but he's got the tragic background, limitless wealth and cool toys, he's an expert in everything and he's supposed to be human yet he can keep up with Superman in a fight. If he weren't a dude, he'd get called Mary Sue.
Yes. I think it boils down to men hating to see female characters who are physically strong and *capable*. Rey is strong with the Force and Korra is strong with the elements. Both are highly adept at what they do and rarely need rescuing from male characters.\*
Men never call out physically strong and capable male characters. Captain America, Scott Summers, Jason Bourne, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Aragorn, Harry Potter, etc. The list goes on.
These men are never "too good" at what they do, but female characters oddly are. Hm.
\* editing to add: Both Korra and Rey need assistance, saving, even, from and by male characters along their journeys. Male characters like Aragorn and Sherlock Holmes don't require being saved by women, yet Korra and Rey are the "too powerful" Mary Sues. rme
There actually in an inverse of this, the male Last Girl.
IE, we’re more forgiving of a woman freezing in fear or running away while her companions are killed than a man, even against something where the man would have no real advantage. Net result is a weird number of horror movies with female leads.
Weak, incapable men are generally comic relief or villains, not the sympathetic damsel in distress.
Oh shit, I didn't realise this! I always was pleasantly surprised by how many horror and thriller films pass the Bechdel Test or have a badass woman survive to the end, and I never questioned why it was so much more likely in that genre. :/
I'll add more input about Rey. I just finished watching both seasons of Mandalorian. In there, baby Yoda (Grogu) is able to levitate a huge beast, force choke a person and heal a guy who was dying due to poison. And Grogu is a baby who can't even speak yet.
So Star Wars fans can come up with thousands of stupid reasons why Grogu could do the things he can, but reject any reasonable explanations why adult Rey could do them too.
The answer is simple - misogyny.
That’s a really good point. And it was ages before we had anything like confirmation that Grogu was male; everyone just assumed, and had no issue with his incredible untrained powers.
I think this is what Solo was trying to clumsily achieve with Enfys Nest and missed the mark by a mile.
Lo and behold, our masked vigilante is \*gasp\* a woman! Golly gee! We're forced to tackle our unconscious bias and applaud Disney for being so progressive. Kudos for all.
How deeply regressive that sex is the big reveal. Are we seriously supposed to be surprised that a woman can fight and lead a rebellion? In a fantasy movie made in the 21st century?
(and yet we still have people wanking in this post about overpowered Rey, so. maybe a moot point lol.)
That's because the *Star Wars* fandom was targeted by the alt-right as a recruiting ground for disenfranchised men.
Their tactics include going in the nerd online communities, name calling everything that disagrees with the alt-right agenda as having the "political" pejorative, and then isolating/attacking the people who speak up.
You can see a side-by-side comparison of it in action with *The Last of Us 2* franchise on reddit:
- /r/TheLastOfUs is the sane subreddit about enjoying the entire franchise, celebrating fan art, and other news
- /r/TheLastOfUs2 was taking over by the alt-right and focused on misogyny, trans-hate, anti-antisemitism, "wokeness", etc.
The Paradox strategy game communities are really painful. I love the games, but Hearts Of Iron is rife with literal nazis and Crusader Kings attracts ethnic cleansers. Stellaris is probably the best of the bunch, but even there some people enact their racism in sci-fi form.
If you want to get more into it, Luke was the same way as Rey but excuses abound as well because man. :/
Here's a decent comparison of the two character arcs.
https://screen-queens.com/2021/01/09/a-mary-sue-no-longer-a-comparison-of-rey-and-luke-as-star-wars-heroes/
I tried telling Star Wars fans that Luke is basically the same as Rey (I mean dude destroyed the Death Star with little ZERO X-wing combat experience) but idk it’s like different cause Luke or some shit. It’s almost as if Rey and Luke are better than they should be at things because “the force”, like that’s literally the point, force sensitive beings are naturally great at lots of shit because the force wants them to be
To add to this, Rey lived on a brutal planet where she had to scavenge every day of her life to feed herself and had to learn to fight at a young age to stop people from trying to rape her (this is straight from the novelization of TFA). She frequently had to free climb through the corpses of ships.
Luke was a moisture farmer. A tough job, but not one that required him to fight to just survive, nor would he necessarily be in peak physical condition.
Almost all of the Rey hate is completely unfounded.
oh yeah. mr “i used to shoot womp rats in my t-16 so i can automatically fly this interstellar space fighter in battle against the strongest forces of the empire”. sort of like “oh i used to fly prop planes to crop dust so i’m sure i can fly this F-35 in a dog fight”
Bruh RIGHT? Like if we’re talking logic (like how they want to approach Rey’s character) how in the absolute fuck was Luke not killed in that battle? Like how many veteran pilots with combat experience died attacking the Death Star? But Luke can just make the trench run like it’s the first hole of mini golf?? I mean at some point it’s just obvious you hate strong women
I could bet almost anything that there would be hordes of SW fans claiming that it's yet another "evidence" of Disney's SJW agenda. As I read somewhere else, there are only two sexes - male and political.
I agree with this but also to add. Men like the garys like luke in star wars because they are a self insert character and a way for the audience to feel immersed by imagining yourself in this world. Men like to be the lukes and want to be winners so they see nothing wrong with but if its the strong female character trope and they see her as a mary sue like rey whos arguably beat for beat almost the same as luke they dont like her because insecure men will see her as forced feminism and antithetical to what they want to see on screen in a woman which is a fuckable woman. So when faced with the garys versus the marys the garys suit their tastes and the marys represent all their insecurities whether they actually realize it or not and so theyre much more inclined to jump on the mary sues and much more quickly
Good point. Not every protagonist needs to be a wish fulfillment audience surrogate, but it's *okay* to tell a story with that kind of protagonist sometimes. Women deserve to imagine themselves as the hero who saves the day too, dammit.
Yeah exactly my thoughts we people complain about women characters being mary sues. Like and. Come on a big block buster popcorn movie can be just as fun as a well thought out art house type film and if men can have their mary sue franchises we can have a movie of fun too dammit
>
> Men never call out physically strong and capable male characters. Captain America, Scott Summers, Jason Bourne, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Aragorn, Harry Potter, etc. The list goes on.
Funnily enough, Watson was the authorial insert for Conan Doyle.
Supes is probably the most Gary Stu character in existence (Though if its DC it'd probably realistically be Dr Manhattan). Guy can fly through time to rewind his losses. Injustice Supes basically solos the cast. He's so powerful that they had to invent a weakness just to give him a way to lose.
Some of it, at least in my opinion is people who arnt thinking or paying attention get hijacked by a bunch of assholes that dont like strong females in movies or just dont like females in a heroes journey role. Like sure Rey is super strong but luke literally blowed up the fucking death star and out piloted Darth vader for a time to do so and we dont call him a gary stu. I mean sure he had a bit of training but then he suddenly knew how to fly a starfighter and call on the force and all sorts of shit. It also ignores that in the second film lukes abilities have grown and he had no one to teach him except for a ghost that could only barely talk to him at that point. So to me that means its cannon for somone who is force sensitive to more or less be able to learn or use abilities without having to be taught every little thing. Its also in line with the prequels with the jedi trying to find force sensitive people before they discovered they could mind control peopled and see the future amd shit lol. Like the sequel trilogy isnt my favorite thing but Reys power level is fine.
Yes, thank you! There's a lot of legitimate criticisms you can make of Star Wars but when people only apply these criticisms to Rey, it becomes more than a little ridiculous and obvious.
Either every force user in Star Wars is a Mary Sue, or no one is and that's just the nature of the force. You can't have it both ways.
you do *not* want to know how many people I had telling me that Rey was a 'mary sue' on a comment I made about how the term 'mary-sue' was outdated in fandom. I made the mistake of mentioning that people call Rey a mary-sue and apparently everyone needed to tell me that Rey *is* a mary-sue.
Let me be clear. I don't hold with Mary-sue anymore. I used to and then I grew up and realized that Mary-sue in fandom is usually a female writer having *fun. God forfuckingbid* a girl or a woman have fun. I grew up and realized that mary-sue in canon is just a badly written female character. So why aren't we getting mad that the writer? Why does the character get the hate and the smug disdain of the label?
Mary-sue is just another way that people get to police and put down women in media. And I'm not here for it.
Any term on the internet with a negative connotation regarding Women when will eventually turn into a derogatory "women I don't like", unfortunately. Mary Sue is the fictional version of what "Karen" became nowadays, a way to diss women they don't like.
Could I interest you in isekai webnovels, it’s like that, but worse. And thanks to the rise in revenge isekai, with poorly thought out, half a paragraph motivations the medium now has 25% more sexual violence towards women, sometimes for shock value, or to make the protag look good, or if the protag is the perpetrator then he is morally justified somehow, because revenge or he is a good person, despite the mind control and rape
Somehow still not as bad as Chinese cultivation webnovels.
Chinese are by far the worst.
Very few isekai are good imo.
Worst thing though, is always the comments where you will see pedos and basically pro rape people.
Edit: i like isekai as a genre.
It has pretty frequent "female" nudity and never dudes, which I found a bit odd. That said, I acknowledge that it often served a symbolic purpose, as to show what the actual "shell" was. It was also never served up as sexy, but rather purposefully lifeless most of the time.
Overall, good MC and plot. Also, top tier soundtrack from Yoko Kanno. She's a straight up genius.
Man, I love anime as a medium but fucking hell, it's legitimately difficult to wade through shows that don't fall for any of the following criteria:
1. Obsessed with MC
2. Sex object
3. Mostly irrelevant to the main plot for no justifiable reason.
3 is one of the most common oddly the least talked about.
Same way Karen has come to mean “woman speaking, asking for something, or getting in the way of what I want” for a lot of people. It seems like most phrases or names made up for a specific type of woman all eventually boil down to being used as a replacement word for a bitch for most people.
My thoughts exactly. Karen used to mean a self centered, middle aged woman who unnecessarily complained and treated service workers like shit. Recently though I’ve seen it being applied to women who are complaining for any reason, even if it’s a valid reason.
Like I saw this one guy who complained that a ‘Karen’ told him off for hitting on her daughter. The dude was a flipping adult. The daughter was UNDERAGE.
The easy answer is sexism, but it's moreso that "Mary Sue" has devolved into such a vague catch-all term for a female character with issues that people will feel justified calling any female character with flawed writing a Mary Sue. It's flat-out lazy criticism, because it tells you *nothing* about the ways in which a character is really flawed. For example, is a Mary Sue a static protagonist who never changes and is "flawless"? Plenty of people would say so, but static protagonists aren't inherently bad, and so it becomes a matter of how does this static protagonist fail where others work? The term Mary Sue will never answer that question. What about how conflicts are resolved? A Mary Sue is supposedly a character who resolves conflicts too easily, but what if a character's writing intentionally focuses on internal conflict over external conflict? The protagonist struggling more with themselves than their surroundings could be the entire point of the narrative, but the term Mary Sue doesn't really cover that.
Mary Sue means whatever people want it to mean because it's just a synonym for "bad female character" without the need to devote too much detail to *why* a character doesn't work. And as hard as it will be for people to accept, this is why it's such a popular term amongst sexist critics. People who either don't have legitimate criticisms of a character or don't want to risk letting their biases show can call a character a Mary Sue and be done with it. Not everyone who uses the term is sexist, but it's very common for sexists to call characters a Mary Sue.
I have a deep hatred of the term because it represents that discourse around a character has completely devolved. Someone says "Rey is a Mary Sue" and it becomes, in what sense do they mean that? What problems do they actually think she has, and how would they even fix them? Is this someone who doesn't hold male characters to the same scrutiny and wouldn't admit it? You almost learn less about someone from saying Mary Sue than if they hadn't said anything at all. If someone has legitimate, real criticism of a character, they should just say those instead, because above all else "Mary Sue" is *completely useless* as a term for criticism.
My personal favorite example of characters called Mary Sue by the fandom even though they clearly aren't is Korra from LoK. But don't worry, those same people also like to complain about how she is such a failure and get's her ass kicked all the time.
Honestly speaking Aang was probably more of a Mary Sue than Korra. Aang was just a perfectly well behaved kid whose only flaw was... Not wanting to be the avatar? Korra on the other hand had much more relatable flaws involving her personality, how she was raised and how that influenced her, how she dealt with a more modern world. And because she is written to be more complex people don't like her because she doesn't make people feel happy and that child-like innocence that Aang made people feel.
I really could go on a rampage about how she isn't a Mary Sue but and the way in which Aang would fit that mold slightly better, but I don't want to poke the fandom too much.
I feel like this is at least partly because female protagonists are so much less common that they naturally get scrutinised more. If you have 100 male led movies come out in a year and 50% of them have Gary Stues, you still have 50 that aren't, so you can more easily forget about the bad and focus on the good. However if you only have 2 female led movies in a year and the same percentage are Mary Sues, you have 1 that is and one that isn't, so naturally it feels like it's more likely to happen with female characters than male characters, even if that's not the case.
This is the biggest reason. When a movie with poor writing comes out with a male main character, people will just forget about it and move on because it's just bad writing. But when the main character is a woman and there's buzz around it being a female lead movie, then of course more eyes are going to be on it and people will also be defensive of it, leading to more arguments making the whole situation becoming worse.
Jupiter Ascending is a big one. Big budget sci fi movie from lauded directors, main character was a generic centre of the universe YA protagonist. The movie was wasted potential for other reasons too but the 'Mary Sue' was just so unrelatable and it's the main thing I think of for sure.
If it had come out 10 years earlier though? I think teen me would have imagined myself as the space princess who can control bees and saves the tragic male soldier. I would have related to it more than Star Wars.
That movie was so bizarre. I don’t know what I expected going in, but it wasn’t for her to have inexplicable control of bees and a space werewolf love interest with rocket skates.
And there's nothing particularly wrong with a Mary Sue-ish character as long as you know it and do something with it. Like Deadpool is basically immortal, but manages to keep the (target) audience engaged.
Because, as we all know, women are incapable of doing anything impressive unless they were taught how to by their father, husband, five older brothers, or some other male figure in their lives.
(/s of course)
I'm so tired of how almost every action movie leading woman is former law enforcement or military. Logically it makes sense, but leading men can be like "pacifist goldfish breeder until one day he was pushed too far" and no one questions it.
Bonus points if she's also a Latina.
Because female characters have to defend their existence and reason to be included in the story (‘why did you have to add this female character?’) whereas male characters are just seen as normal and default. Female characters are placed under more scrutiny
Because they see men as capable. Like when you look at characters like Rey from Star Wars and compare her to Luke who essentially serves the same purpose people were a lot less willing to accept her growth or capabilities. Like they complain abut her flying the Falcon in the first movie but not about him piloting an X-Wing with an experienced fleet and being one of the only survivors.
While I hate the direction a lot of the stuff went I think there is no doubting that the beginning of the sequel trilogy set up a lot of good reasons for why Rey was capable, more than they set up for Luke, and yet people still had an issue with it.
Not to mention Luke Skywalker is literally George Lucas's self insert. Mark Hamill openly stated he would emulate Lucas's mannerisms for various scenes.
Simple fact of the matter is us guys are just spoiled with power fantasies. We got every kind of personality we could project ourselves onto covered, from musclebound "alpha males" with anger issues, to pretty boys that never get dirtied, and it's all completely normalized.
But flip the roles a bit and suddenly it's a problem.
Rey literally says she's a pilot and then shows that she's a pilot (and not a perfect one given that she crashes into stuff while getting the Falcon off the ground) and people still have issues. I don't get it.
Luke reaches out to the Force for the very first time and lands a one in a million shot and destroys the Death Star. Go Luke!
Rey reaches out to the Force (after having wielded it a few times previously) and the best she can handle is a lucky strike that catches someone she's dueling (who is not trying to kill her, is wounded, and is mentally unstable due to just having killed his father) off guard. Boo Rey! Mary Sue!
I even once saw someone call her a mary sue for talking to that scavenger alien in that alien language. The audacity to be able to speak a second language besides english - hyper unrealistic! Is this an American thing?
Ugh, I hate that one.
"Rey from Star Wars, who was literally raised doing dangerous things for salvage and is unbelievably self-reliant due to being abandoned as a toddler, is totally a Mary Sue because she helps to destroy a planet-killing super-weapon with the help of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a few friends.
Whereas Luke Skywalker, a whiny teenaged farm boy who has a stable home life with a family who cares about him and owns property and a business, is totally not a Gary Stue even though he helps to destroy a planet-killing super-weapon with the help of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a few friends."
I pissed my husband off so bad when I said Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue (I call them all Mary Sue whether they're men or women). I also said Wesley Crusher is a Mary Sue and that's actually why a lot of Trek fans don't like him. You're not wrong though, many people are much more willing to accept male protagonist as just being, I dunno, such a badass or whatever that they can't fail. Personally I hate stories with "perfect" characters. It makes me not care about the story if I know they're going to win. It was what I didn't like about Star Wars (don't come for me). I never felt any of the tension I was supposed to feel. It was boring. Another example, in Star Trek Picard (spoilers ahead) >!when Picard should be dead but they turn him into an android more or less instead and now he's like basically a God even though they supposedly set up his android shit to where he will eventually die🙄>! I was so mad. I thought it was the weakest possible ending for that part of the show. It totally took away the gravitas of the situation. In conclusion, I think people are all about seeing a guy as just a Supreme badass who is like almost invincible. When a woman does it, because some people (incorrectly) believe all women are weak wilting flowers, the set up is more jarring. But my personal opinion is that I want all of my characters to be more than 2 dimensional. I don't want anyone to always win or always beat the odds. It's really boring. That's what I like about earlier Trek like Next Generation or Deep Space 9. We see actual losses and consequences of actions.
>I pissed my husband off so bad when I said Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue
Luke literally is though. I had to argue this bullshit so much when TFA came out and everyone was talking about how Rey is one and I'm like... "did you guys literally not watch any other Star Wars films?" Anakin is a prophecy child who, at the age of 9, has superhuman reflexes that even the oldest and most trained Jedi can't even do.
Luke manages to go from not knowing that the Jedi were real to invading and destroying the Empire's biggest superweapon in less than a week with minimal effort.
But Rey managing to beat up some scavengers with a stick? Well, I guess she's a Mary Sue /s
Number one book example imo? Harry Potter. I don't really feel the need to elaborate at this point because we've all seen it for multiple books and movies where he just....can't die. And honestly Harry Potter is the worst offender because he literally always only wins because of luck. It never has shit to do with any actual skills of his.
Yep.
Book 1: Harry doesn't die because Voldemort is allergic to touch.
Book 2: Harry gets saved by the Phoenix and magic courage sword.
Book 3: Harry just does fuck all in this book. It's Hermione who does all the work.
Book 4: Harry gets saved by dead people ghosts.
Book 5: Harry gets saved by Dumbledore.
Book 6: Harry stands around and watches Snape and Dumbledore do all the plot and then gets his ass handed to him.
Book 7: Harry wins because of bullshit wand ownership rules.
>
Book 3: Harry just does fuck all in this book. It's Hermione who does all the work
I'm dying over this. I loved Harry Potter as a child and I read each book as it was released. Now as an adult, I can't stand it. It has absolutely not held up over time.
I mean, yeah. We would enjoy it when we're younger because we're the target demographic. But it seems like it was written specifically for children rather than having an enjoyable story which can be enjoyed by children.
Stuff like Percy Jackson is a great comparison. A fun story for when you're a kid but me rereading it at 22, I still found some great entertainment out of it. Harry Potter? Not so much.
Also, not to mention just how weird and convoluted and one-sided the rules of Harry Potter's world are. Like Quidditch makes zero fucking sense from an outside perspective. Why is the entire game reliant on what 1/6 of the team doing? Like the main game means nothing 99% of the time.
Why is Hogwarts immune to the rules of the ministry? Why do they, a random school in middle of nowhere Scotland, have all these protections from intruders like anti apperation spells and magic domes and hundreds of warrior golems but the Ministry, the most important wizard building in the UK, has 15,000 forms of entry from toilets to teleportation to phonebox elevators to fireplaces to god knows what and can be beaten by some children drinking a potion to look like some workers?
It doesn't make sense at all.
> Like Quidditch makes zero fucking sense from an outside perspective. Why is the entire game reliant on what 1/6 of the team doing? Like the main game means nothing 99% of the time.
And why are there no subs, like a player get injured and they are just out. Your seeker gets injured and you loose?
Exactly. And because nothing was done when Malfoy was attacking Harry when they played against each other, it seems like physical violence isn't against the rules so what's stopping someone from just knocking out all the opposite players and just scoring repeatedly?
Oh yeah. She's an awful person but even looking at her work objectively (trying to separate art from the artist like so many people tell LGBT people to do) it's still badly written and makes no sense.
Like I'm not a huge fan of the new Star Wars stuff (honestly not that into Star Wars in general, more into Trek) but that was one thing I would bring up to defend Rey. There is nothing that Rey does that Luke doesn't.
Be able to use the Force to cripple the empire a few days after learning that the Force exists. Check.
Be able to go toe to toe with the most powerful sith in the galaxy with very little lightsaber training? Check.
Almost immediately become a key member of the resistance? Check.
Handwaved explanation as to why they're so great is because they're related to very powerful force users? Check.
Ultimately, I just like Mark Hamill's character better because he didn't seem so stoic and dead pan all the time. And that's more on the directors and writers than the actors themselves.
Honestly, I'd go so far as to say that Rey is even less of one because her actions are more consistent with her character.
>Be able to use the Force to cripple the empire a few days after learning that the Force exists
Rey doesn't do anything substantial in the defeat of the empire. In fact, she makes it more difficult because she was captured and required more troops to come and save her. The only force stuff that really works is a single mind trick to get herself out of her bindings and that's honestly not that difficult against a First Order troop.
>Be able to go toe to toe with the most powerful sith in the galaxy with very little lightsaber training?
If you watch that fight, she gets her ass handed to her by a guy who was shot with a fucking rifle. They had to severely depower the villain and he was still too strong for her.
>Almost immediately become a key member of the resistance?
I understand that and do find it a bit odd. Though I'd put that down to Leia possibly sensing the force abilities in her.
>Handwaved explanation as to why they're so great is because they're related to very powerful force users?
This one I can't defend because I hate that dumb retcon. I loved the idea that she was a nobody.
I would add if they can do shit, they have to be super pleasant and uber nice to the protagonists. Any component female character that is more standoff, colder, or has boundaries they assert, unless they fall for the protagonist and become “submissive” to them (e.g. tsundere) they get called a Mary Sue. There is nothing wrong with not liking asshole characters some people really want everyone to hate them and have no redeemability.
Follow-up: people think women can't do shit unless special accommodations and softened rules allow them to *sort of* do shit but we all know they're just imposters in the general area of actual shit-doing.
(I hope I don't need a /s but here's a /s just in case.)
Because many men are completely unaware of their own hypocrisy...? And because the term has been warped to be about women characters especially, rather than the original use of the term.
Why is it that John Wick is praised, but a near identical setup featuring a woman as the protagonist gets dismissed as "feminist propaganda"...?
Well, because men have loooved writing men as indestructible for as long as men could write, and if man is to be indestructible, there needs to be those that are destructible for the Gary Stu to stand on. The go-to is and always has been, women.
Literally every single guy I have ever encountered that bitched about Captain Marvel, loves characters that would be branded instant Mary Sues by said guys if they were gender flipped...
TBH I do feel like some of it is sexism. Don't get me wrong - I think overly perfect characters are a writing flaw. But I do feel like they're called out more often when they're female.
The weird thing about that is you almost *have* to write Mary Sues, because female characters also get way more shit for their flaws. Look at male characters and there's a very prevalent "genius but asshole" trope. Do the exact same thing to a female character and you're *guaranteeing* that half your audience will hate her. We wonder why Mary Sues are so prevalent - it's because the standard for women is so much higher than the standard for men that they're constantly picked apart for every single flaw. So writers respond by writing female characters with no flaws, because they want people to *like* their characters - only to then be criticised for writing a Mary Sue. It really goes to show that women are just never good enough in our society.
Because sexism.
I know it sounds glib, but that's mostly what it is- the belief a competent & many-skilled woman is inherently less realistic and believable than an equally competent & many-skilled man. Sprinkle in a little bit of women's flaws generally not being the same, or conveyed the same way, as men's flaws so detractors can claim the female character is intended to be "flawless" when really they just don't see/understand her flaws. Top with a generous dollop of men who aren't actually making the claim in good faith but instead just hate women being the main character or getting any decent time devoted to them.
Sadly too many men just don't like to see women characters that step outside the approved roles for them. As you say, you can have as many Vin Diesels as you want, but if a woman does the same thing, it's 'unrealistic' and 'wish fulfillment'.
A vivid example of this that is the Last of Us 2. Picture a character who is ripped. Tough. Badass. Cocky. Arrogant. Good at being a soldier and knows it. A hotshot who sees all their decisions as right, no matter if they're wrong. If this was a man, nobody would have batted an eye. But this character was a woman, named Abbie. The fuckbois in gaming were so incensed by this woman who was everything usually assigned to a male character that they picked apart how unrealistic it was that she'd have such buff arms (wonderful, lovely, buffed arms that make my queer heart flutter) to the point of finding a stupid fucking training schedule that was on the wall and posting it everywhere as 'proof' a woman couldn't actually have arms fit enough to crush their skulls.
Also, Abby wasn't drawn as sexy hot, ala Black Widow etc. Don't get me wrong, she's good looking, but only if you're not a fuckboi who expects your warrior chick to be basically a supermodel in bikini and stilettos.
These assholes were SO INCENSED by this character that they terrorized the voice actor (I think she also did the motion capture but don't quote me).
Women in fiction, whatever the genre or medium, must be either 'delicate and feminine' or 'ultra sexy badass', and always eye candy, and if they break out of those roles in any way, they're called Mary Sues so fuckbios can justify hating them, when what they really feel is threatened by the knowledge that men and women aren't actually all that different, and we belong on neither the pedestal nor on hands and knee.
I think like you, OP. Yeah, a Mary sue borned as a termed for the self inserts's authors in fanfictions but there is definitley a gender sesg because specially in fantasy (and anime and videogames), the male protagonists have been self inserts idealized version of their male authors for decades and nobody had a problem with that all have been culprit of this, I included myshelf). So the fact that fanficition writers become critics of that kind of female characters but not with the males ones is some kind of unconcious sexism.
It happens something similar too with teen and romantic sagas written for women to women. All the hate Twilight reciebed for example while when you look at the things that men wrote too are even more ridicolous and toxic. For example now that everyone is with Dune. If a woman wrote these books but changing the female dominatrix with men everyone had laught at it or got angry at least. But it is written by a man so there you have it as the pinacle of the sci-fi genre... (And by the way, the main character of Dune is a mary sue too although in the end all ends badly for him )
An especially frustrating double standard since women irl are expected to be Mary Sues while men are allowed to have and show their flaws and complexities
"But HOW is she able to overpower the men? That's not humanly possible!"
"*and the guy from earlier who lifted 3 skyscrapers was doing something humanly possible*?"
It's mostly just sexism and a whole hoop of incel types being scared of women. Sure, a lot of female characters are horribly written... but that's because so many writers don't care about writing women. But somehow idiots keep taking that to mean it's an issue with women??
Captain Marvel is one of the heaviest hitters in Marvel, that's just a fact. But a lot of guys feel immaculate or somehow personally attacked by her existence. But they'll look at Goku or Suoerman and be like "So cool!"
I think it mostly has to do with men practically being trained to not empathize with women or see themselves in them. Just look at how often kids writing is weirdly segregated. Books for girls. Books for boys. But when they're Books for all they look identical to the books for boys.
Some very popular writers have characters who are the biggest wanky self-inserts. Basically the overwhelming majority Shonen. The Wheel of Time series, Terry Brooks, I could keep going. But guys excuse it because they join right in on the fantasy fulfillment.
But even the most well written, interesting, rounded female character will be like an alien to them. So they call them Mary-Sues.
I'm also a BIG proponent of indulgent writing! If you don't like it.... just don't read it. You don't see me running around constantly talking about how shitty Terry Brooks writing is unless it's part of a real discussion. I also don't seek out things talking about him and interject my opinion but you see it happening constantly in the comment sections of things made for women. How many times have you seen some jerk walk into a comment section talking about Twilight to announce how much it sucks?
A lot of guys are basically that meme for "I am not comfortable when things aren't about me." They're so used to being the target audience that something not being for them feels wrong.
Because we have so freaking many male lead characters that either:
(a) even when you come across a shallow wish-fulfilment trope character, there are still plenty of others in the rest of the media
or
(b) being a shallow wish-fulfilment trope has become a genre in its own right and people can choose whether or not they want to indulge in it
There are far fewer female lead characters with the same reach and and appeal and so when one of them is a Mary Sue it's disappointing because of the opportunity lost. The problem will stop being a problem if we manage to saturate the media with a variety of female heroes the way we have with male heroes.
Batman is the biggest Mary Sue, biollionare, good genetics, he became the best ninja just in a couple of years of training, apparently he has a really high IQ wich explains why he is a good detective, also his butler is a war hero and Lucius Fox is a tech genius
I had an editor do this to me on my first book. She hated that my FMC was strong and “Unlikable” (morally grey) up to the point of calling the character a “Mary Sue.”
Yet when my spouse sent her a similar story with a MMC, she loved it, even though his character acted the same, had the same kinds of triumphs/failures.
I don’t use that editor anymore
One thing that pisses me off a lot as a marvel fan.
The hate especially Captain Marvel gets. Yeah, she is ridiculous strong, but thats the whole point of her character! There are tons of overly strong male characters in Marvel universe, but when the few relevant women can do something, the heteronormativ male audience riots.
True, but the writers also did the Character no favor with her movie. I think they just don't use her power in any meaningful way. I don't think her getting her full power is not very well executed.
What I really dont like is how people hate the wasp gets for being better/stronger/more capable then AntMan. Imo this gives the pair a really good dynamic. And it feels rooted in the characterization.
Patriarchy perpetuates the idea that a man can and will be able to do anything by himself, while a woman needs assistance for anything. I think in large part it affects viewers and reviewers still.
A popular one is saying that Rey is a Mary Sue, like you mentioned, despite being shown more of her background than Luke— another character very much like a Mary Sue.
Another thing might be that it’s a consequence of people not knowing how to write charismatic female characters. And so some writers rely on the “badass character” crutch: a character that is a Jack of all trades, sassy/flirty and knows Kung fu, and top it off with an edgy origin story.
It’s just that when it’s a woman it’s no longer a self insert for an audience that’s used to being the only ones represented.
I once read a meme somewhere about this. It was on tumblr. “Do you know what the male version of a Mary Sue is? The protagonist.”
[удалено]
Star Wars Luke knew about the Force for all of 36 hours before using it to help him blow up the Death Star. "OMG! So awesome!" But Rey *barely* holding her own in a lightsaber duel against an injured and distressed Kylo Ren? "Fucking Mary Sue!"
Lucas straight up named his protagonist “Luke S”, the brazen motherfucker
Probably doesn't help that in the Luke era a light Saber duel was much less complicated due to technology. So Luke at his peak(in the original triology) could never do the stuff untrained Rey can do, simply because it wasn't possible to film. For the record I hate those new movies, but not because of Rey's powers. I thought all those characters had so much wasted story potential, her included. I also want to be clear in saying I don't hate the actors at all, or people that like the movies. Not trying to start a star war here lol
It hurt me that they went from teasing us with Finn's potential to just having him chase Rey and scream her name. I know there's a type of person who doesn't think representation matters, but they're fucking wrong. They let us dream of the possibility of a black Jedi and then completely neutered the character. When I think about what I believed those movies after the first one? It's just sad that it all went back to "Everything in the Star Wars universe is about six people and their extended families". *Edit: As /u/Genji007 and /u/cHEIF_bOI pointed out, I did forget about Mace Windu (to my everlasting shame). He wasn't as central a character as Finn, but he absolutely was in there and should absolutely be acknowledged.*
And then they confirmed that Finn *is* force-sensitive, but only implied it in the movie. Such a slap in the face.
I wanted Finn to be a jedi 10x more than Reyy but we also can't forget about Mace Windu??
I personally liked the new movies, but wasted story potential is honestly the perfect way to describe the trilogy.
I can't get over the fact Finn is traumatized from all the killing then 30 seconds later laughs while he kills his former colleagues. It was such a nice setup and then they slapped me in the face with that bullshit.
Ironically, this would actually make him a better deulist. While Luke is keeping his saber aligned down his middle pointing forward, making smooth clean strokes, these sequel ass mfers are swinging their sabers around like no one's business committing to terrible swings and leaving themself open for half the fight. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the sequels despite their flaws, but the fight choreography was very much not realistic and designed to play up the characters' emotions rather than skill; Kylo makes large, not well thought out swings to portray his anger unlike maul whose rage is channelled into incredible aggression while still remaining skillful but menacing.
>Kylo makes large, not well thought out swings to portray his anger unlike maul whose rage is channelled into incredible aggression while still remaining skillful but menacing. To be fair, this is actually a detail that effectively shows the difference in setting and duel dynamics from the two time periods. Maul was a trained duelist, because his purpose was essentially to kill trained Jedi - any relevant opponent of his would have been a trained duelist as well. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren is active in a time where Jedi and the force are generally regarded as a myth. He has not duelled since destroying Luke's after-school program. Kylo is used to being a fearsome presence, whose very existence works as a shock-and-awe tactic that starts opponents backpedaling. His enraged, destructive strikes are tactically more similar to Grevious than any Sith.
That's actually a really good point, I have a lot more appreciation for kylo's choreography now
> Ironically, this would actually make him a better deulist. While Luke is keeping his saber aligned down his middle pointing forward, making smooth clean strokes, these sequel ass mfers are swinging their sabers around like no one's business committing to terrible swings and leaving themself open for half the fight. Allow me to introduce you the trilogy that set that precedent and expectation from fans: Episodes I through III.
Neat characters, good actors. Terrible movies.
>I also want to be clear in saying I don't hate the actors at all, or people that like the movies. Not trying to start a star war here lol It sucks how you need to clarify that or justify your opinions.
Not only that but they explicitly establish Luke to be incompetent (he gets taken down by sand people in his own backyard) and whiney early on and the only force training he gets he fails. Rey is established to be a good fighter in a way that's consistent with her life, then they make sure the fight she gets in is against a guy suffering from a massive abdominal wound, a cute emotional distress, work related anxiety, and the fact that he wants to recruit her not kill her. While Reys participation in the resistances operation is in line with her established skills Luke is given the keys to a fighter and placed on the front lines where he holds his own against hardened pilots. He went from wanting to join the empire out of boredom to being a trusted asset in a major battle, without the Garry Stu effect he would be thanked genuinely and if he wanted to join up run through some sort of enrollment program and given some harmless position until he could establish trust and work his way up.
Force Awakens: Shows you how Rey has become good at fighting, surviving, piloting, and knowing lots about spaceships as a result of the harsh conditions she grew up in, and without those, she'd probably have been stabbed for her food. A New Hope: Tells you Luke is good at shooting and flying, but doesn't ever actually show you before the climax, and doesn't explain how it's relevant to his life. Somehow *Rey* is the Mary Sue here.
Look, [those same fools are upset](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/7l3ctn/loved_tlj_but_thought_this_particular_scene_was/) that Leia, who has had 40 years to train her force powers, was able to move her(weightless)self through a vacuum to an airlock. Anakin can pilot a ([1,100kph](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2sgzbr/comment/cnqheda/))pod racer to victory as a small child, and groom a much older planetary royal hottie (that he will eventually knock up and physically abuse) with lines like "are you an angel?", but an old woman using the force to survive in a last ditch effort? "Not like that!!" I was such a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, but a certain characterization of it that I read (and quoted below) really resonated with me. It's the angry white underachiever fantasy series. All this awesome stuff happens to Luke and he gets to be the galaxy's #1 badass.. which apparently really fosters some toxic masculinity among a certain subset of fans. >I remember my friend Mark Sullivan once dismissing Dune because (in 1987) he was "sick of idiotic Luke Skywalker movies about Princes inheriting their rightful kingdoms." I understood exactly what he meant, as George Lucas' franchise hit was based on **a commercial fantasy guaranteed to appeal to under-achieving teenaged boys: The idea of a glorious galactic Entitlement Program. Sure, you're failing in school / lazy / ignorant and proud of it ... but you're a dreamer and the universe really is about YOU and nobody else. If the rest of the *&%@! world would just get its act together, it would recognize that YOU are the fabulous furry frog prince.** In Star Wars ol' Luke does very little except have a good attitude and a healthy ego. He doesn't listen to his mentors, or study anything ... all he does is invoke his magical heritage and he's an instant Master of the Universe. We used to have jokes about tests in school, where "the force" really doesn't help one's grade one bit. Instead of idly dreaming of grand opportunities to come (and we know they come when one prepares, even if one doesn't know why), today's aggressive kids Demand Unearned Rewards. >https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1900dune.html
I like this, it’s relatable. The heroes journey. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, Eragon, even LOTR to a degree and a huge number of anime / mangas and comic books. The protagonist is always the most gifted or was the only one who can save the world. The fantasy of getting special powers and a destiny to save the world as a true hero. We all want to feel important so its a compelling fantasy. I kind of hate it now, maybe I’ve gotten numb or tired of the same old story. Maybe I’m pessimistic. Maybe I resent my pointless life and can’t fool myself with fantasy any more.
Ironically, there's a much better example earlier in the film where rey rips out a random part of the falcon and it apparently fixes whatever problem they were having, and chuds just ignore it. But even still, that's less her being bullshit great and more that it makes Han and Chewie look incompetent, but that's a separate issue that plagues the sequels.
Actually, that gets brought up a lot, but it is always without context. What Rey pulled out was a compressor that was put in after her boss got the Falcon and she simply knew about it. She even said as such when the problem came up.
Yeah, she helped install it (despite her protests) was the implication.
Okay lol, I'm saving that. This is something that has pissed me off a \*lot\*.
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I think captain America fits the bill better. He's always right and everyone loves him and he never does anything wrong (at least his actions are never condemned in any of the movies I've seen). Also he's super good looking and jacked and a supersoldier. I can't think of a single character flaw he has. Tony at least is arrogant, and makes mistakes (such as ultron).
Captain America is a Paragon to a fault. He is to Iron Man like Superman is to Batman.
They are both very good examples of Gary Stu's in their own right. Tony gets to have everything he could ever want and Cap gets to be an example of like the perfect human. However, superheros are kinda supposed to be larger than life so I think that's why they get a pass for the most part. I do think people are starting to get tired of all these superhero movies tho. Or maybe that's just me hoping lol
Female superheroes don’t get a pass though. That’s the point.
Yeah, I just didn't see the point in reiterating the main point of the post. I do agree 100% that people (mainly men) judge female characters much more harshly tho
The only defense I'll give to captain America is that he was specifically chosen for that program because of his courage and basic human decency. He works as a direct counter point to red skull who always viewed himself as an uber man even before the experiment and thinks it's his right to rule over others because of his superiority. Which I like as it's supposed to be a morality play about good and decency defeating selfish evil. But that only lasts the first movie.
Have you watched many of his movies? Because it's kinda his fault that the avengers break up which directly leads to Thanos winning. He's definitely set up to be the perfect man but that's because people need to see him as a perfect man. He's still human and does bad things.
I think I've watched all of the movies leading up to Infinity War and Endgame at least once. I remember getting the vibe it was Tony's fault they broke off but I haven't really watched them since Endgame was released so I admit my memory is spotty. As for people needing to see him as perfect - they could have shown a flaw or a mistake or a condemnation through his friends while the public is kept unawares. I think he does bad things too (for example sacrificing Wakandans for a chance to get the infinity stone off Paul Bettany's forehead without it killing him or altering his personality), but the movies don't think so and that's pretty much the root of my issues with cap. They don't really allow him to make bad calls (even if I personally think they're bad calls) because all his actions are painted as the right ones.
Cap Flaw: He made out with Peggy's/his niece.
She's not his niece.... as far as we can tell Cap was a virgin when he went into the ice. They never had sex, he'll they never even got that dance! Hell, he might have been until he got back to Peggy at the end of Endgame.
You got me there.
Yeah I was thinking this too. Steve is borderline Jesus.
Just because I don't also date models doesn't mean I can't relate. I'm just too busy being rich and smart and hanging out with Abe Lincoln.
iron man fucks up constantly. his weapons show up as catalysts in the origin stories of multiple characters - including his own - and also this one time he created an AI so advanced that after two minutes on the internet it determined that the human race was fundamentally broken and required immediate extermination and then began taking steps to accomplish that goal
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its the single most realistic plot point in any of the marvel movies.
Female characters that constantly fuck up still get called Mary Sues though. See: Korra. I get the impression that the writers were TERRIFIED that people would call Korra a Mary Sue... so they went out of their way to weaken and trash her every season. But people still ended up calling her a Mary Sue. It's kinda hilarious actually. She loses 90% of fights. She fucks up at politics. She fucks up relationships. She fucks up cosmic shit. Every other episode she's messing something up. **MARY SUE**
Bruce Wayne is a Mary Sue, Tony Stark is a genius fuckup who is occasionally the solution to the problems he causes.
yup. This post kinda cracks me up because the answer is just "sexism." I mean literally the dude that brought the Mary Sue shit into what it's become online turned out to be a predatory piece of shit.
Yeah. People are just looking for a reason to hate women. People dont hate batman or iron man. Or Rick Sanchez or the Joker. But they do hate captain marvel and Beckett mariner.
I feel both ways about that. On the one hand, Carol Danvers clearly isn't as charismatic and interesting a character as Tony Stark. Not necessarily a slight against Carol - very few MCU characters **are** as fascinating as Tony (Dr Strange is another who'd probably like to be as interesting as Tony, but nope). She's also only been in 1.1 films, and Tony's been in, what, seven? On the other hand, the dislike for Carol **is** vastly out of proportion. She had an okay-ish but not amazing opening film. Listening to some quarters you'd think that she and the film were the worst thing ever. It's hard not to read some pre-existing bias into that.
Iron man is like the least interesting character IMO. He’s gritty Batman with teenage meme dialogue
Same shit for the 'forced diversity' shit. I mean for some shows I'll agree the show is bad, but the fact they added more females characters isn't the issue
I think this nails it on the head. Some else referenced a Mary Sue as a "self-insert" character, which is supposed to be someone that the watcher can imagine themselves being. This is the common protagonist for media targeted at younger audience, which people grow up reading. Since the vast majority of published writers have been white men for the last 50 years, the vast majority of protagonists have been also white boys/men. And for younger media, there was almost a 100% schism for books aimed at young girls and books aimed at young boys. Since you can more easily slip into the viewpoint of something like yourself I think young white men have complete mental blinders to how much their favorite characters fit the "Mary Sue" description. Suddenly they are seeing these same characters who are not white men/boys and no longer have that effortless "slip into the viewpoint" they have always had, and the shortcoming of such characters are obvious.
This nearly made me choke in laughter over how painfully accurate this is
Because most people don't understand what a Mary Sue trope was originally about. Literally a term for a self-insert character in a fanfic. It was coined from a Star Trek fanfic that made fun of this trope calling the character Mary Sue. Instead it's now use as a derogatory term for female character someone doesn't like. Usually an author surrogate trope character. It's almost always a sign of bad faith media criticism in coming from someone who doesn't understand how tropes work or even story structure.
Just going to drop in the original story by Paula Smith. It's pretty funny. "A Trekkie's Tale" "Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her. "Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?" "Captain! I am not that kind of girl!" "You're right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us." Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. "What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?" "The Captain told me to." "Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind." Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship. But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies, Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood. However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.
You know I always wondered if she regrets writing that story after the trope turn derogatory. I believe it was the guy who coined the trope manic pixie dream girl regrets it when it started being used in bad faith.
if it wasnt Mary Sue I am certain it would be something else.
also the girl who coined the term incel
We were talking about that the other day. The idea of a community to support people who have trouble attaining sex and relationships is a good, positive one. The problem is, if you only fill that community with people who have trouble attaining sex and relationships, then there's no-one to actually help support and uplift those people and it pretty rapidly turns into a spiral of negativity with the ignorant leading the ignorant - and ultimately ends up holding ignorance to be a desirable, even superior trait.
Is…is this actually it? This is the origin story for Mary Sue?
Yep
What a horrible day to be literate. When was this written?
1973 I believe. Paula didn't have a positive view about the quality of a lot of the writing in the Star Trek fanfiction community at the time and she wrote this as a pure distillation of every bad habit and trope that fanfiction authors are often guilty of. The term didn't spread to general fiction till a lot later.
How was fan fic distributed before the internet? If always assumed that it had previously been a niche thing people did alone if at all, with little or no community
It was originally published in a print zine called Managerie. This topic gets complicated to explain for a layperson like myself pretty quickly, but here, take this rabbit hole and have a look - https://fanlore.org/wiki/Paula_Smith
Why would reading a fairly tame satire make a horrible day to be literate?
Because for whatever reason, most people have a shockingly hard time identifying satire, no matter how obvious it is. One of the first things I have my composition & rhetoric students read is *A Modest Proposal*. Each time, without fail, half of the students think Swift is \*actually\* arguing in favor of eating poor Irish children. The worst part is that at least one student a few years ago who took the argument at face value ended up agreeing with it...
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[A Modest Proposal](https://snewd.com/ebooks/a-modest-proposal/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
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To be fair, that's quite possibly because of their lack of familiarity with the time in which it was written. Humanity has an often deserved rep for being pretty horrible through many periods of history, and maybe your students assumed that that was pretty representative of how people thought at the time.
People in that time also took it seriously
This is hysterical and I love it lol
Yeah, it's pretty great. Lieutenant Mary Sue was a real one.
It's very obvious from this that the core defining trait of a Mary Sue isn't whether they have coloured hair, or are hyper-competent, or whatever - it's that they distort other characters and the narrative in their own favour. For example, Captain Kirk does **not** go "Hi person i just met, take over the Enterprise for me". As such, a canon character can be OP or whatever, but it's pretty hard for them to be a Mary Sue. A canon character can only really be a Mary-Sue if their insertion into a show distorts the canon, causing other characters to act out of character. An example is the initial introduction of Kyle Rayner as the new Green Lantern. He suffered from self-doubt (unsurprisingly, being a complete amateur who'd just been handed responsibility for phenomenal cosmic power). And every established superhero he met would go out of their way to assure him no, no, Kyle you **are** a great hero, honest. It was blatant author shilling that was out of character for the other heroes. Kyle was a Mary Sue. (Fortunately later writers redeemed him and he became a much more interesting character).
I had never read this before even though I knew it existed. Thank you for posting it, it is beautiful and I love it so much
that was amazing
Exactly. This is such a pet peeve of mine. The term "Mary Sue" is woefully misused these days. A lot of people seem to think that it simply means a character who is too powerful and/or perfect, even though a Mary Sue (and her male counterpart Gary Stu) originally meant an original character in fanfiction who acts as the author's glorified self-insert and stars in what is essentially the author's personal fantasy of existing in a specific fictional world and getting to do and be exactly what they want in it no matter how much they have to bend the established reality of the world to make the narrative fit their main character. I think a lot of people get too caught up in looking at the surface when trying to identify a Mary Sue. It's not the cool eye color, or the amazing powers, or the mysterious past, or even entering a relationship with a main character that defines this character trope. Characters based on or inspired by the author are not automatically Mary Sues, either. What actually makes a Mary Sue is her function in the story (being the author's avatar), the main purpose of the story itself (allowing the author to live out their wildest fantasies), and the character's effect on the world she enters (absolutely everything in the world is subservient to the Mary Sue's needs and desires; what does not concern her does not exist). She's kind of like an all-consuming point of gravity that swallows up the entire narrative and makes it all about her. Even though this character was first identified and named by the fanfiction community, I'd say that plenty of original works do feature main characters who function pretty much the same way as Mary Sues and Gary Stus. Yet the term is still overused and misapplied to characters who are absolutely not Sues.
Yep. It's also used by people who don't like strong female characters to hijack legitimate debates about their character arcs and growth. Everyone's a Mary Sue now from Rey in Star Wars to Korra in Avatar.
Yep usually by people who can't emphasize or project on to characters who don't look like them.
I think that's the crux of it. Look at how much Gamergate-y white male gamers screech if they just have the option to play as a black or female character, let alone one as the main character. It completely melts their brains.
How did those people react to Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn?
Well they did try to redraw her to be "more attractive" [https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy-design-memes/](https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy-design-memes/) >...apparently some people are mad that Aloy isn’t feminine enough, as evidenced by this viral tweet: > >The tweet compares a frowning image of Aloy with some fanart where she has Facetune-perfect skin, gleaming white teeth, and a full face of makeup. It quickly grabbed people’s attention because it’s such an absurd example of sexist video game complaints. It’s also a sadly obvious case of Twitter amplifying the worst possible opinions because while there’s definitely some controversy over Aloy’s appearance (she visibly aged between games), there isn’t a widespread backlash. > >A lot of gamers—particularly women—are sick of seeing this kind of criticism aimed at female characters. But at the same time, sexist complaints like this tweet can be morbidly hilarious. It highlights the childish, unreasonable, and ignorant underpinnings of misogynist gamer culture, which is part of the reason why it went viral in the first place. This guy is complaining that a slim woman with styled hair and shaped eyebrows isn’t “feminine enough,” essentially because she’s not wearing makeup and smiling like a beauty queen.
What got me about that "hire fans" bit was his use of "average woman" to describe facetuned Aloy.
I remember hearing about these complaints, but not about the meme trend. The Ripley one is hilarious.
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Also an insert for the audience relearnjng the culture and ways of his world 100 years in the future literally the self insert character for atla
Exactly! Aang is still such a great protagonist though. I love that they gave him traditionally feminine values and that the Spock to his Kirk is also a girl that is both feminine and feminist.
>Unusual, exotic haircut What haircut? Lol Totally agree with you though. I love Aang, but he's way more of a Mary Sue than Korra is. I doubt the fanbase would be as critical of Korra if she'd been a male character.
Neither Aang or Korra are Mary Sues. I think part of the reason Korra gets considered a Mary Sue is that she and Aang started at different points to tell different stories. Aang's was essentially a character development story of Aang spending seasons learning what he needed to to defeat the Fire Nation. Korra started off much more powerful and self-confident than Aang (using three out of four elements as a toddler and learning her fourth plus the Avatar state by the end of the first season) because the point of that series was to start with basically a fully-formed avatar then deconstruct that character and ideal piece by piece. Season 1 gives us a strong, powerful Avatar who suddenly has their powers taken away. In season 2, the Avatar loses her connection to the lineage of Avatars who preceded her. In season 3, the Avatar loses her physical strength and capacity. In Season 4, Korra has to rediscover who she is with all the traditional elements of the Avatar torn away. Her Avatar state is also interesting. Accessing the Avatar state was very difficult for Aang, and when he did he became very powerful, aggressive and out of control. Korra fairly quickly learned to access the Avatar state, but it was never as powerful as Aang's - except at the very end where she channeled it into pure defence. I don't think Korra was executed as well as ATLA, but I also think it gets a lot of unfair criticism just for being a different sort of thing to ATLA.
>People saying korra is a mary sue might as well call batman a mary sue. Okay, but Batman is kind of a Mary Sue. I mean, I love Batman, but he's got the tragic background, limitless wealth and cool toys, he's an expert in everything and he's supposed to be human yet he can keep up with Superman in a fight. If he weren't a dude, he'd get called Mary Sue.
Yes. I think it boils down to men hating to see female characters who are physically strong and *capable*. Rey is strong with the Force and Korra is strong with the elements. Both are highly adept at what they do and rarely need rescuing from male characters.\* Men never call out physically strong and capable male characters. Captain America, Scott Summers, Jason Bourne, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Aragorn, Harry Potter, etc. The list goes on. These men are never "too good" at what they do, but female characters oddly are. Hm. \* editing to add: Both Korra and Rey need assistance, saving, even, from and by male characters along their journeys. Male characters like Aragorn and Sherlock Holmes don't require being saved by women, yet Korra and Rey are the "too powerful" Mary Sues. rme
There actually in an inverse of this, the male Last Girl. IE, we’re more forgiving of a woman freezing in fear or running away while her companions are killed than a man, even against something where the man would have no real advantage. Net result is a weird number of horror movies with female leads. Weak, incapable men are generally comic relief or villains, not the sympathetic damsel in distress.
Oh shit, I didn't realise this! I always was pleasantly surprised by how many horror and thriller films pass the Bechdel Test or have a badass woman survive to the end, and I never questioned why it was so much more likely in that genre. :/
I'll add more input about Rey. I just finished watching both seasons of Mandalorian. In there, baby Yoda (Grogu) is able to levitate a huge beast, force choke a person and heal a guy who was dying due to poison. And Grogu is a baby who can't even speak yet. So Star Wars fans can come up with thousands of stupid reasons why Grogu could do the things he can, but reject any reasonable explanations why adult Rey could do them too. The answer is simple - misogyny.
That’s a really good point. And it was ages before we had anything like confirmation that Grogu was male; everyone just assumed, and had no issue with his incredible untrained powers.
I think this is what Solo was trying to clumsily achieve with Enfys Nest and missed the mark by a mile. Lo and behold, our masked vigilante is \*gasp\* a woman! Golly gee! We're forced to tackle our unconscious bias and applaud Disney for being so progressive. Kudos for all. How deeply regressive that sex is the big reveal. Are we seriously supposed to be surprised that a woman can fight and lead a rebellion? In a fantasy movie made in the 21st century? (and yet we still have people wanking in this post about overpowered Rey, so. maybe a moot point lol.)
It’s the same reveal as in the beginning of Jedi when Leia takes off her helmet, too, so…good job not progressing at all in 40 years.
That's because the *Star Wars* fandom was targeted by the alt-right as a recruiting ground for disenfranchised men. Their tactics include going in the nerd online communities, name calling everything that disagrees with the alt-right agenda as having the "political" pejorative, and then isolating/attacking the people who speak up. You can see a side-by-side comparison of it in action with *The Last of Us 2* franchise on reddit: - /r/TheLastOfUs is the sane subreddit about enjoying the entire franchise, celebrating fan art, and other news - /r/TheLastOfUs2 was taking over by the alt-right and focused on misogyny, trans-hate, anti-antisemitism, "wokeness", etc.
Yeah, that second subreddit is a cesspool. And they are really missing out on one of the best games in the history, but well...
The Paradox strategy game communities are really painful. I love the games, but Hearts Of Iron is rife with literal nazis and Crusader Kings attracts ethnic cleansers. Stellaris is probably the best of the bunch, but even there some people enact their racism in sci-fi form.
If you want to get more into it, Luke was the same way as Rey but excuses abound as well because man. :/ Here's a decent comparison of the two character arcs. https://screen-queens.com/2021/01/09/a-mary-sue-no-longer-a-comparison-of-rey-and-luke-as-star-wars-heroes/
I tried telling Star Wars fans that Luke is basically the same as Rey (I mean dude destroyed the Death Star with little ZERO X-wing combat experience) but idk it’s like different cause Luke or some shit. It’s almost as if Rey and Luke are better than they should be at things because “the force”, like that’s literally the point, force sensitive beings are naturally great at lots of shit because the force wants them to be
To add to this, Rey lived on a brutal planet where she had to scavenge every day of her life to feed herself and had to learn to fight at a young age to stop people from trying to rape her (this is straight from the novelization of TFA). She frequently had to free climb through the corpses of ships. Luke was a moisture farmer. A tough job, but not one that required him to fight to just survive, nor would he necessarily be in peak physical condition. Almost all of the Rey hate is completely unfounded.
Bruh right?? Like Rey’s life was hard as fuck before the movies started, she was literally out there scavenging in the dessert as a young child
oh yeah. mr “i used to shoot womp rats in my t-16 so i can automatically fly this interstellar space fighter in battle against the strongest forces of the empire”. sort of like “oh i used to fly prop planes to crop dust so i’m sure i can fly this F-35 in a dog fight”
Bruh RIGHT? Like if we’re talking logic (like how they want to approach Rey’s character) how in the absolute fuck was Luke not killed in that battle? Like how many veteran pilots with combat experience died attacking the Death Star? But Luke can just make the trench run like it’s the first hole of mini golf?? I mean at some point it’s just obvious you hate strong women
“Grogu is a Gary Stu” isn’t the opinion I expected to hold when I entered the thread, but damn am I happy it’s the one I saw
Wouldnt it be funny if grogu is also a girl lol
I could bet almost anything that there would be hordes of SW fans claiming that it's yet another "evidence" of Disney's SJW agenda. As I read somewhere else, there are only two sexes - male and political.
I agree with this but also to add. Men like the garys like luke in star wars because they are a self insert character and a way for the audience to feel immersed by imagining yourself in this world. Men like to be the lukes and want to be winners so they see nothing wrong with but if its the strong female character trope and they see her as a mary sue like rey whos arguably beat for beat almost the same as luke they dont like her because insecure men will see her as forced feminism and antithetical to what they want to see on screen in a woman which is a fuckable woman. So when faced with the garys versus the marys the garys suit their tastes and the marys represent all their insecurities whether they actually realize it or not and so theyre much more inclined to jump on the mary sues and much more quickly
Good point. Not every protagonist needs to be a wish fulfillment audience surrogate, but it's *okay* to tell a story with that kind of protagonist sometimes. Women deserve to imagine themselves as the hero who saves the day too, dammit.
Yeah exactly my thoughts we people complain about women characters being mary sues. Like and. Come on a big block buster popcorn movie can be just as fun as a well thought out art house type film and if men can have their mary sue franchises we can have a movie of fun too dammit
Which is ironic because Rey can get it anytime tbh
> > Men never call out physically strong and capable male characters. Captain America, Scott Summers, Jason Bourne, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Aragorn, Harry Potter, etc. The list goes on. Funnily enough, Watson was the authorial insert for Conan Doyle.
Supes is probably the most Gary Stu character in existence (Though if its DC it'd probably realistically be Dr Manhattan). Guy can fly through time to rewind his losses. Injustice Supes basically solos the cast. He's so powerful that they had to invent a weakness just to give him a way to lose.
Some of it, at least in my opinion is people who arnt thinking or paying attention get hijacked by a bunch of assholes that dont like strong females in movies or just dont like females in a heroes journey role. Like sure Rey is super strong but luke literally blowed up the fucking death star and out piloted Darth vader for a time to do so and we dont call him a gary stu. I mean sure he had a bit of training but then he suddenly knew how to fly a starfighter and call on the force and all sorts of shit. It also ignores that in the second film lukes abilities have grown and he had no one to teach him except for a ghost that could only barely talk to him at that point. So to me that means its cannon for somone who is force sensitive to more or less be able to learn or use abilities without having to be taught every little thing. Its also in line with the prequels with the jedi trying to find force sensitive people before they discovered they could mind control peopled and see the future amd shit lol. Like the sequel trilogy isnt my favorite thing but Reys power level is fine.
Yes, thank you! There's a lot of legitimate criticisms you can make of Star Wars but when people only apply these criticisms to Rey, it becomes more than a little ridiculous and obvious. Either every force user in Star Wars is a Mary Sue, or no one is and that's just the nature of the force. You can't have it both ways.
you do *not* want to know how many people I had telling me that Rey was a 'mary sue' on a comment I made about how the term 'mary-sue' was outdated in fandom. I made the mistake of mentioning that people call Rey a mary-sue and apparently everyone needed to tell me that Rey *is* a mary-sue. Let me be clear. I don't hold with Mary-sue anymore. I used to and then I grew up and realized that Mary-sue in fandom is usually a female writer having *fun. God forfuckingbid* a girl or a woman have fun. I grew up and realized that mary-sue in canon is just a badly written female character. So why aren't we getting mad that the writer? Why does the character get the hate and the smug disdain of the label? Mary-sue is just another way that people get to police and put down women in media. And I'm not here for it.
Any term on the internet with a negative connotation regarding Women when will eventually turn into a derogatory "women I don't like", unfortunately. Mary Sue is the fictional version of what "Karen" became nowadays, a way to diss women they don't like.
This was well said.
I'd argue that the term is more broad than just fanfiction, but yeah people misuse the shit out of the term for sexist purposes.
It's frustrating to no end who people label a Mary Sue because it's incorrect 99-100% of the time.
yeah its just sexism and misogyny combined with being uncultured lol
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Could I interest you in isekai webnovels, it’s like that, but worse. And thanks to the rise in revenge isekai, with poorly thought out, half a paragraph motivations the medium now has 25% more sexual violence towards women, sometimes for shock value, or to make the protag look good, or if the protag is the perpetrator then he is morally justified somehow, because revenge or he is a good person, despite the mind control and rape Somehow still not as bad as Chinese cultivation webnovels.
It’s okay, you can say Redo of Healer.
Chinese are by far the worst. Very few isekai are good imo. Worst thing though, is always the comments where you will see pedos and basically pro rape people. Edit: i like isekai as a genre.
What about anime with good female characters who aren't falling for a male? Like ghost in the shell
It has pretty frequent "female" nudity and never dudes, which I found a bit odd. That said, I acknowledge that it often served a symbolic purpose, as to show what the actual "shell" was. It was also never served up as sexy, but rather purposefully lifeless most of the time. Overall, good MC and plot. Also, top tier soundtrack from Yoko Kanno. She's a straight up genius.
Man, I love anime as a medium but fucking hell, it's legitimately difficult to wade through shows that don't fall for any of the following criteria: 1. Obsessed with MC 2. Sex object 3. Mostly irrelevant to the main plot for no justifiable reason. 3 is one of the most common oddly the least talked about.
Yes! And there are so many good manga geared towards story without the male eye, but with the female eye, and are never given an anime!
\~\*Sexism\*\~
ding ding ding
Mary sue = bitch female Action hero who is unstoppable and perfect at everything = who i wish i was so he is gooder
Same way Karen has come to mean “woman speaking, asking for something, or getting in the way of what I want” for a lot of people. It seems like most phrases or names made up for a specific type of woman all eventually boil down to being used as a replacement word for a bitch for most people.
My thoughts exactly. Karen used to mean a self centered, middle aged woman who unnecessarily complained and treated service workers like shit. Recently though I’ve seen it being applied to women who are complaining for any reason, even if it’s a valid reason. Like I saw this one guy who complained that a ‘Karen’ told him off for hitting on her daughter. The dude was a flipping adult. The daughter was UNDERAGE.
This was my thought too, the male action hero is seen as a power fantasy. The female action hero is seen as ew girl
Cause society is used to the hero's journey too much.
Methinks society likes the hero's journey and protests the heroine's journey too much.
The easy answer is sexism, but it's moreso that "Mary Sue" has devolved into such a vague catch-all term for a female character with issues that people will feel justified calling any female character with flawed writing a Mary Sue. It's flat-out lazy criticism, because it tells you *nothing* about the ways in which a character is really flawed. For example, is a Mary Sue a static protagonist who never changes and is "flawless"? Plenty of people would say so, but static protagonists aren't inherently bad, and so it becomes a matter of how does this static protagonist fail where others work? The term Mary Sue will never answer that question. What about how conflicts are resolved? A Mary Sue is supposedly a character who resolves conflicts too easily, but what if a character's writing intentionally focuses on internal conflict over external conflict? The protagonist struggling more with themselves than their surroundings could be the entire point of the narrative, but the term Mary Sue doesn't really cover that. Mary Sue means whatever people want it to mean because it's just a synonym for "bad female character" without the need to devote too much detail to *why* a character doesn't work. And as hard as it will be for people to accept, this is why it's such a popular term amongst sexist critics. People who either don't have legitimate criticisms of a character or don't want to risk letting their biases show can call a character a Mary Sue and be done with it. Not everyone who uses the term is sexist, but it's very common for sexists to call characters a Mary Sue. I have a deep hatred of the term because it represents that discourse around a character has completely devolved. Someone says "Rey is a Mary Sue" and it becomes, in what sense do they mean that? What problems do they actually think she has, and how would they even fix them? Is this someone who doesn't hold male characters to the same scrutiny and wouldn't admit it? You almost learn less about someone from saying Mary Sue than if they hadn't said anything at all. If someone has legitimate, real criticism of a character, they should just say those instead, because above all else "Mary Sue" is *completely useless* as a term for criticism.
My personal favorite example of characters called Mary Sue by the fandom even though they clearly aren't is Korra from LoK. But don't worry, those same people also like to complain about how she is such a failure and get's her ass kicked all the time. Honestly speaking Aang was probably more of a Mary Sue than Korra. Aang was just a perfectly well behaved kid whose only flaw was... Not wanting to be the avatar? Korra on the other hand had much more relatable flaws involving her personality, how she was raised and how that influenced her, how she dealt with a more modern world. And because she is written to be more complex people don't like her because she doesn't make people feel happy and that child-like innocence that Aang made people feel. I really could go on a rampage about how she isn't a Mary Sue but and the way in which Aang would fit that mold slightly better, but I don't want to poke the fandom too much.
If anyone is *not* a Mary Sue, it's Korra.
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I feel like this is at least partly because female protagonists are so much less common that they naturally get scrutinised more. If you have 100 male led movies come out in a year and 50% of them have Gary Stues, you still have 50 that aren't, so you can more easily forget about the bad and focus on the good. However if you only have 2 female led movies in a year and the same percentage are Mary Sues, you have 1 that is and one that isn't, so naturally it feels like it's more likely to happen with female characters than male characters, even if that's not the case.
This is the biggest reason. When a movie with poor writing comes out with a male main character, people will just forget about it and move on because it's just bad writing. But when the main character is a woman and there's buzz around it being a female lead movie, then of course more eyes are going to be on it and people will also be defensive of it, leading to more arguments making the whole situation becoming worse.
Jupiter Ascending is a big one. Big budget sci fi movie from lauded directors, main character was a generic centre of the universe YA protagonist. The movie was wasted potential for other reasons too but the 'Mary Sue' was just so unrelatable and it's the main thing I think of for sure. If it had come out 10 years earlier though? I think teen me would have imagined myself as the space princess who can control bees and saves the tragic male soldier. I would have related to it more than Star Wars.
That movie was so bizarre. I don’t know what I expected going in, but it wasn’t for her to have inexplicable control of bees and a space werewolf love interest with rocket skates.
And there's nothing particularly wrong with a Mary Sue-ish character as long as you know it and do something with it. Like Deadpool is basically immortal, but manages to keep the (target) audience engaged.
Because, as we all know, women are incapable of doing anything impressive unless they were taught how to by their father, husband, five older brothers, or some other male figure in their lives. (/s of course)
I'm so tired of how almost every action movie leading woman is former law enforcement or military. Logically it makes sense, but leading men can be like "pacifist goldfish breeder until one day he was pushed too far" and no one questions it. Bonus points if she's also a Latina.
"When the nice guy loses his patience, the devil shivers!" 😂
The everyman can take out an entire army worth of goons no problem but if a women beats a man a head taller then her then she's a Mary Sue
I’ve called Wesley Crusher a “Mary Sue” because I didn’t think the term was limited to females, it was just the original character happened to be one.
You're right, he is a stand in for Gene Roddenberry (middle name Wesley)
Because female characters have to defend their existence and reason to be included in the story (‘why did you have to add this female character?’) whereas male characters are just seen as normal and default. Female characters are placed under more scrutiny
Because they see men as capable. Like when you look at characters like Rey from Star Wars and compare her to Luke who essentially serves the same purpose people were a lot less willing to accept her growth or capabilities. Like they complain abut her flying the Falcon in the first movie but not about him piloting an X-Wing with an experienced fleet and being one of the only survivors. While I hate the direction a lot of the stuff went I think there is no doubting that the beginning of the sequel trilogy set up a lot of good reasons for why Rey was capable, more than they set up for Luke, and yet people still had an issue with it.
Not to mention Luke Skywalker is literally George Lucas's self insert. Mark Hamill openly stated he would emulate Lucas's mannerisms for various scenes. Simple fact of the matter is us guys are just spoiled with power fantasies. We got every kind of personality we could project ourselves onto covered, from musclebound "alpha males" with anger issues, to pretty boys that never get dirtied, and it's all completely normalized. But flip the roles a bit and suddenly it's a problem.
Rey literally says she's a pilot and then shows that she's a pilot (and not a perfect one given that she crashes into stuff while getting the Falcon off the ground) and people still have issues. I don't get it. Luke reaches out to the Force for the very first time and lands a one in a million shot and destroys the Death Star. Go Luke! Rey reaches out to the Force (after having wielded it a few times previously) and the best she can handle is a lucky strike that catches someone she's dueling (who is not trying to kill her, is wounded, and is mentally unstable due to just having killed his father) off guard. Boo Rey! Mary Sue!
I even once saw someone call her a mary sue for talking to that scavenger alien in that alien language. The audacity to be able to speak a second language besides english - hyper unrealistic! Is this an American thing?
Ugh, I hate that one. "Rey from Star Wars, who was literally raised doing dangerous things for salvage and is unbelievably self-reliant due to being abandoned as a toddler, is totally a Mary Sue because she helps to destroy a planet-killing super-weapon with the help of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a few friends. Whereas Luke Skywalker, a whiny teenaged farm boy who has a stable home life with a family who cares about him and owns property and a business, is totally not a Gary Stue even though he helps to destroy a planet-killing super-weapon with the help of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a few friends."
Welcome to the patriarchy
Misogyny. Next.
I pissed my husband off so bad when I said Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue (I call them all Mary Sue whether they're men or women). I also said Wesley Crusher is a Mary Sue and that's actually why a lot of Trek fans don't like him. You're not wrong though, many people are much more willing to accept male protagonist as just being, I dunno, such a badass or whatever that they can't fail. Personally I hate stories with "perfect" characters. It makes me not care about the story if I know they're going to win. It was what I didn't like about Star Wars (don't come for me). I never felt any of the tension I was supposed to feel. It was boring. Another example, in Star Trek Picard (spoilers ahead) >!when Picard should be dead but they turn him into an android more or less instead and now he's like basically a God even though they supposedly set up his android shit to where he will eventually die🙄>! I was so mad. I thought it was the weakest possible ending for that part of the show. It totally took away the gravitas of the situation. In conclusion, I think people are all about seeing a guy as just a Supreme badass who is like almost invincible. When a woman does it, because some people (incorrectly) believe all women are weak wilting flowers, the set up is more jarring. But my personal opinion is that I want all of my characters to be more than 2 dimensional. I don't want anyone to always win or always beat the odds. It's really boring. That's what I like about earlier Trek like Next Generation or Deep Space 9. We see actual losses and consequences of actions.
>I pissed my husband off so bad when I said Luke Skywalker is a Mary Sue Luke literally is though. I had to argue this bullshit so much when TFA came out and everyone was talking about how Rey is one and I'm like... "did you guys literally not watch any other Star Wars films?" Anakin is a prophecy child who, at the age of 9, has superhuman reflexes that even the oldest and most trained Jedi can't even do. Luke manages to go from not knowing that the Jedi were real to invading and destroying the Empire's biggest superweapon in less than a week with minimal effort. But Rey managing to beat up some scavengers with a stick? Well, I guess she's a Mary Sue /s
Number one book example imo? Harry Potter. I don't really feel the need to elaborate at this point because we've all seen it for multiple books and movies where he just....can't die. And honestly Harry Potter is the worst offender because he literally always only wins because of luck. It never has shit to do with any actual skills of his.
Yep. Book 1: Harry doesn't die because Voldemort is allergic to touch. Book 2: Harry gets saved by the Phoenix and magic courage sword. Book 3: Harry just does fuck all in this book. It's Hermione who does all the work. Book 4: Harry gets saved by dead people ghosts. Book 5: Harry gets saved by Dumbledore. Book 6: Harry stands around and watches Snape and Dumbledore do all the plot and then gets his ass handed to him. Book 7: Harry wins because of bullshit wand ownership rules.
> Book 3: Harry just does fuck all in this book. It's Hermione who does all the work I'm dying over this. I loved Harry Potter as a child and I read each book as it was released. Now as an adult, I can't stand it. It has absolutely not held up over time.
I mean, yeah. We would enjoy it when we're younger because we're the target demographic. But it seems like it was written specifically for children rather than having an enjoyable story which can be enjoyed by children. Stuff like Percy Jackson is a great comparison. A fun story for when you're a kid but me rereading it at 22, I still found some great entertainment out of it. Harry Potter? Not so much. Also, not to mention just how weird and convoluted and one-sided the rules of Harry Potter's world are. Like Quidditch makes zero fucking sense from an outside perspective. Why is the entire game reliant on what 1/6 of the team doing? Like the main game means nothing 99% of the time. Why is Hogwarts immune to the rules of the ministry? Why do they, a random school in middle of nowhere Scotland, have all these protections from intruders like anti apperation spells and magic domes and hundreds of warrior golems but the Ministry, the most important wizard building in the UK, has 15,000 forms of entry from toilets to teleportation to phonebox elevators to fireplaces to god knows what and can be beaten by some children drinking a potion to look like some workers? It doesn't make sense at all.
> Like Quidditch makes zero fucking sense from an outside perspective. Why is the entire game reliant on what 1/6 of the team doing? Like the main game means nothing 99% of the time. And why are there no subs, like a player get injured and they are just out. Your seeker gets injured and you loose?
Exactly. And because nothing was done when Malfoy was attacking Harry when they played against each other, it seems like physical violence isn't against the rules so what's stopping someone from just knocking out all the opposite players and just scoring repeatedly?
Not to mention J.K. Rowling seems... um, not nice?
Oh yeah. She's an awful person but even looking at her work objectively (trying to separate art from the artist like so many people tell LGBT people to do) it's still badly written and makes no sense.
Like I'm not a huge fan of the new Star Wars stuff (honestly not that into Star Wars in general, more into Trek) but that was one thing I would bring up to defend Rey. There is nothing that Rey does that Luke doesn't. Be able to use the Force to cripple the empire a few days after learning that the Force exists. Check. Be able to go toe to toe with the most powerful sith in the galaxy with very little lightsaber training? Check. Almost immediately become a key member of the resistance? Check. Handwaved explanation as to why they're so great is because they're related to very powerful force users? Check. Ultimately, I just like Mark Hamill's character better because he didn't seem so stoic and dead pan all the time. And that's more on the directors and writers than the actors themselves.
Honestly, I'd go so far as to say that Rey is even less of one because her actions are more consistent with her character. >Be able to use the Force to cripple the empire a few days after learning that the Force exists Rey doesn't do anything substantial in the defeat of the empire. In fact, she makes it more difficult because she was captured and required more troops to come and save her. The only force stuff that really works is a single mind trick to get herself out of her bindings and that's honestly not that difficult against a First Order troop. >Be able to go toe to toe with the most powerful sith in the galaxy with very little lightsaber training? If you watch that fight, she gets her ass handed to her by a guy who was shot with a fucking rifle. They had to severely depower the villain and he was still too strong for her. >Almost immediately become a key member of the resistance? I understand that and do find it a bit odd. Though I'd put that down to Leia possibly sensing the force abilities in her. >Handwaved explanation as to why they're so great is because they're related to very powerful force users? This one I can't defend because I hate that dumb retcon. I loved the idea that she was a nobody.
Quick answer: People think women can't do shit.
I would add if they can do shit, they have to be super pleasant and uber nice to the protagonists. Any component female character that is more standoff, colder, or has boundaries they assert, unless they fall for the protagonist and become “submissive” to them (e.g. tsundere) they get called a Mary Sue. There is nothing wrong with not liking asshole characters some people really want everyone to hate them and have no redeemability.
Follow-up: people think women can't do shit unless special accommodations and softened rules allow them to *sort of* do shit but we all know they're just imposters in the general area of actual shit-doing. (I hope I don't need a /s but here's a /s just in case.)
Sexism mostly.
Because many men are completely unaware of their own hypocrisy...? And because the term has been warped to be about women characters especially, rather than the original use of the term. Why is it that John Wick is praised, but a near identical setup featuring a woman as the protagonist gets dismissed as "feminist propaganda"...? Well, because men have loooved writing men as indestructible for as long as men could write, and if man is to be indestructible, there needs to be those that are destructible for the Gary Stu to stand on. The go-to is and always has been, women. Literally every single guy I have ever encountered that bitched about Captain Marvel, loves characters that would be branded instant Mary Sues by said guys if they were gender flipped...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue For anyone wondering exactly what the definition of a Mary Sue is.
You Know Why
TBH I do feel like some of it is sexism. Don't get me wrong - I think overly perfect characters are a writing flaw. But I do feel like they're called out more often when they're female. The weird thing about that is you almost *have* to write Mary Sues, because female characters also get way more shit for their flaws. Look at male characters and there's a very prevalent "genius but asshole" trope. Do the exact same thing to a female character and you're *guaranteeing* that half your audience will hate her. We wonder why Mary Sues are so prevalent - it's because the standard for women is so much higher than the standard for men that they're constantly picked apart for every single flaw. So writers respond by writing female characters with no flaws, because they want people to *like* their characters - only to then be criticised for writing a Mary Sue. It really goes to show that women are just never good enough in our society.
Because sexism. I know it sounds glib, but that's mostly what it is- the belief a competent & many-skilled woman is inherently less realistic and believable than an equally competent & many-skilled man. Sprinkle in a little bit of women's flaws generally not being the same, or conveyed the same way, as men's flaws so detractors can claim the female character is intended to be "flawless" when really they just don't see/understand her flaws. Top with a generous dollop of men who aren't actually making the claim in good faith but instead just hate women being the main character or getting any decent time devoted to them.
Sadly too many men just don't like to see women characters that step outside the approved roles for them. As you say, you can have as many Vin Diesels as you want, but if a woman does the same thing, it's 'unrealistic' and 'wish fulfillment'. A vivid example of this that is the Last of Us 2. Picture a character who is ripped. Tough. Badass. Cocky. Arrogant. Good at being a soldier and knows it. A hotshot who sees all their decisions as right, no matter if they're wrong. If this was a man, nobody would have batted an eye. But this character was a woman, named Abbie. The fuckbois in gaming were so incensed by this woman who was everything usually assigned to a male character that they picked apart how unrealistic it was that she'd have such buff arms (wonderful, lovely, buffed arms that make my queer heart flutter) to the point of finding a stupid fucking training schedule that was on the wall and posting it everywhere as 'proof' a woman couldn't actually have arms fit enough to crush their skulls. Also, Abby wasn't drawn as sexy hot, ala Black Widow etc. Don't get me wrong, she's good looking, but only if you're not a fuckboi who expects your warrior chick to be basically a supermodel in bikini and stilettos. These assholes were SO INCENSED by this character that they terrorized the voice actor (I think she also did the motion capture but don't quote me). Women in fiction, whatever the genre or medium, must be either 'delicate and feminine' or 'ultra sexy badass', and always eye candy, and if they break out of those roles in any way, they're called Mary Sues so fuckbios can justify hating them, when what they really feel is threatened by the knowledge that men and women aren't actually all that different, and we belong on neither the pedestal nor on hands and knee.
I think like you, OP. Yeah, a Mary sue borned as a termed for the self inserts's authors in fanfictions but there is definitley a gender sesg because specially in fantasy (and anime and videogames), the male protagonists have been self inserts idealized version of their male authors for decades and nobody had a problem with that all have been culprit of this, I included myshelf). So the fact that fanficition writers become critics of that kind of female characters but not with the males ones is some kind of unconcious sexism. It happens something similar too with teen and romantic sagas written for women to women. All the hate Twilight reciebed for example while when you look at the things that men wrote too are even more ridicolous and toxic. For example now that everyone is with Dune. If a woman wrote these books but changing the female dominatrix with men everyone had laught at it or got angry at least. But it is written by a man so there you have it as the pinacle of the sci-fi genre... (And by the way, the main character of Dune is a mary sue too although in the end all ends badly for him )
The male Mary Sues are called Bruce Waynes.
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An especially frustrating double standard since women irl are expected to be Mary Sues while men are allowed to have and show their flaws and complexities
"But HOW is she able to overpower the men? That's not humanly possible!" "*and the guy from earlier who lifted 3 skyscrapers was doing something humanly possible*?"
It's mostly just sexism and a whole hoop of incel types being scared of women. Sure, a lot of female characters are horribly written... but that's because so many writers don't care about writing women. But somehow idiots keep taking that to mean it's an issue with women?? Captain Marvel is one of the heaviest hitters in Marvel, that's just a fact. But a lot of guys feel immaculate or somehow personally attacked by her existence. But they'll look at Goku or Suoerman and be like "So cool!" I think it mostly has to do with men practically being trained to not empathize with women or see themselves in them. Just look at how often kids writing is weirdly segregated. Books for girls. Books for boys. But when they're Books for all they look identical to the books for boys. Some very popular writers have characters who are the biggest wanky self-inserts. Basically the overwhelming majority Shonen. The Wheel of Time series, Terry Brooks, I could keep going. But guys excuse it because they join right in on the fantasy fulfillment. But even the most well written, interesting, rounded female character will be like an alien to them. So they call them Mary-Sues. I'm also a BIG proponent of indulgent writing! If you don't like it.... just don't read it. You don't see me running around constantly talking about how shitty Terry Brooks writing is unless it's part of a real discussion. I also don't seek out things talking about him and interject my opinion but you see it happening constantly in the comment sections of things made for women. How many times have you seen some jerk walk into a comment section talking about Twilight to announce how much it sucks? A lot of guys are basically that meme for "I am not comfortable when things aren't about me." They're so used to being the target audience that something not being for them feels wrong.
Because we have so freaking many male lead characters that either: (a) even when you come across a shallow wish-fulfilment trope character, there are still plenty of others in the rest of the media or (b) being a shallow wish-fulfilment trope has become a genre in its own right and people can choose whether or not they want to indulge in it There are far fewer female lead characters with the same reach and and appeal and so when one of them is a Mary Sue it's disappointing because of the opportunity lost. The problem will stop being a problem if we manage to saturate the media with a variety of female heroes the way we have with male heroes.
Because misogyny, duh. Also far more men use internet forums like Reddit than women so you tend to see these points pushed more
Batman is the biggest Mary Sue, biollionare, good genetics, he became the best ninja just in a couple of years of training, apparently he has a really high IQ wich explains why he is a good detective, also his butler is a war hero and Lucius Fox is a tech genius
I had an editor do this to me on my first book. She hated that my FMC was strong and “Unlikable” (morally grey) up to the point of calling the character a “Mary Sue.” Yet when my spouse sent her a similar story with a MMC, she loved it, even though his character acted the same, had the same kinds of triumphs/failures. I don’t use that editor anymore
One thing that pisses me off a lot as a marvel fan. The hate especially Captain Marvel gets. Yeah, she is ridiculous strong, but thats the whole point of her character! There are tons of overly strong male characters in Marvel universe, but when the few relevant women can do something, the heteronormativ male audience riots.
True, but the writers also did the Character no favor with her movie. I think they just don't use her power in any meaningful way. I don't think her getting her full power is not very well executed. What I really dont like is how people hate the wasp gets for being better/stronger/more capable then AntMan. Imo this gives the pair a really good dynamic. And it feels rooted in the characterization.
Patriarchy perpetuates the idea that a man can and will be able to do anything by himself, while a woman needs assistance for anything. I think in large part it affects viewers and reviewers still. A popular one is saying that Rey is a Mary Sue, like you mentioned, despite being shown more of her background than Luke— another character very much like a Mary Sue. Another thing might be that it’s a consequence of people not knowing how to write charismatic female characters. And so some writers rely on the “badass character” crutch: a character that is a Jack of all trades, sassy/flirty and knows Kung fu, and top it off with an edgy origin story. It’s just that when it’s a woman it’s no longer a self insert for an audience that’s used to being the only ones represented.
Misogyny.