How to make Rey a NON-Mary Sue

[APlayerHater]

Motherfucker are you kidding me? By Isis' wings you're being dumb here. Clearly they should have kept the scene of Rey pining to leave the place with a big electric fence between her and the starships.

How silly of me to not remember a scene that WASN'T IN THE MOVIE

If the scene showing the electric fence was not in the film, then the electric fence was not in the film, therefore there's nothing preventing her escape.

We never even see Plutt emotionally manipulating her to stay, being like "oh your parents will be back any time now to pick you up." He's just like "One Portion." I didn't even know he was her owner, he just seems like some guy who trades scrap for cupcakes.

[NecronLord]

You suck at subtext then. She is waiting for her parents to come back because she wants to leave her shitty life with them and holds out hope for somewhere she'll belong.

There's nothing preventing her escape apart from the fact that stealing a ship might ordinarily be hard and she has no money nor anywhere to go, and violence would be used on her if she did.

Yes, all you see is Plutt exploiting her and others by paying a starvation wage (one-quarter-portion!) - they wanted a PG film, you can't be explicit like say, Twelve Years a Slave or Blood Diamond in a PG film, but as an audience member you're supposed to at least get the idea that this is a bad, unpleasant life she's got going on and she's naieve for thinking her parents will come and rescue her from it.

[Kojiro]

There's nothing preventing her escape apart from the fact that stealing a ship might ordinarily be hard and she has no money nor anywhere to go, and violence would be used on her if she did.

If memory serves, there's canon material that says Rey actually built a ship in her spare time and was planning to leave but someone stole it.

[NecronLord]

This thread is about redoing the character for the film, presumably, not about arguing what she can do in the nuEU. She's definately very literate in the nuEU given that she seems to have written a book.

[APlayerHater]

You suck at subtext then. She is waiting for her parents to come back because she wants to leave her shitty life with them and holds out hope for somewhere she'll belong.

There's nothing preventing her escape apart from the fact that stealing a ship might ordinarily be hard and she has no money nor anywhere to go, and violence would be used on her if she did.

Yes, all you see is Plutt exploiting her and others by paying a starvation wage (one-quarter-portion!) - they wanted a PG film, you can't be explicit like say, Twelve Years a Slave or Blood Diamond in a PG film, but as an audience member you're supposed to at least get the idea that this is a bad, unpleasant life she's got going on and she's naieve for thinking her parents will come and rescue her from it.

Jabba had dancer slaves in chains whom he executed by feeding them to monsters. ANH and ESB had people having their arms/hands chopped off. Luke's adopted parents are burned alive and we see their flaming skeletons. Han Solo cuts open a taun taun and we see its boiling guts pour out. None of this prevented a PG rating. And we can't have things just be gritty and depressing? That's what prevents a PG rating? If things aren't squeaky clean and Rey is actually in some form of, say, slavery?

And why would a slaver just trust someone to not escape because she was sad about her parents, he didn't even want a little insurance knowing she could easily escape with his ship? He didn't seem to have any personal relationship with Rey, he just grumpily slapped imperial rations on a counter. How did he even know she was waiting for her parents?

That, and she didn't even seem worried about Plutt's goons coming for her. She just casually beat them up and went about her day, it doesn't seem like they were a credible threat that she was concerned with.

This thread is about redoing the character for the film, presumably, not about arguing what she can do in the nuEU. She's definately very literate in the nuEU given that she seems to have written a book.

The point is, there's no reason she should be literate. As far as we can tell she wasn't raised and everything she knows is self taught. She should be a feral child. But no, people are just born with all the knowledge they need I guess. Never mind that she's more learned and competent than Luke was in every single field, and he actually had caretakers who presumably trained him to read, write, clean droids, work on farm equipment, fly a crop duster, etc. (Han does mention dusting crops, so maybe that's what the T16s are for).

I cannot believe this idea that she's self taught in every discipline, it just enhances her already ridiculous sueness.

[Q99]

Does anyone have any defense of Rey that doesn't involve attacking the people who complain about her? She's a Mary Sue for many demonstrable reasons. She is written like a self-insert fanfic character, which is the very genesis of the term.

What formless said, and no, you're wrong.

Her qualities in TFA are:
She's the best pilot in the movie. (Aside from maybe Poe, we never see them flying ships at the same time.)
She's the best mechanic in the movie.
She's the best shot with a gun in the movie (and makes Finn, a trained soldier, look like a chump. 1-shot 1-kill with a handgun, from half a football field away, on every stormtrooper that enters her field of vision. Literally the first time she uses a gun (we know this))
She's the best melee fighter in the movie (and makes Finn and Kylo look like chumps.)
She knows the most languages out of everyone in the movie (droid and wookiee language. Only Han Solo / C3PO understood Wookiee and only C3PO ever understood droid languages. If you disagree with this, actually watch the older movies.)
She's the most powerful force user in the movie. (And learns to overpower the apprentice of snoke and luke about 1 hour after learning the force exists)

She's a barely adequate pilot who, even going on a known course she's been at before, loses no-one on her tail. Poe, meanwhile, is living death in both his fighters.
Isn't she one of the only mechanics in the movie? She fixes a thing she possibly put in, that's it. Chewie also does some fixes, and Han doesn't do much but he was always kinda a crappy one.
Finn pretty much never misses and the very first time as a TIE gunner repeatedly hits his targets dead on, and Han doesn't miss *even when he's not looking*. Chewie's quite accurate too. Out of all the main characters, she's the worst one or at best tied with Chewie, and very visibly below Finn and Han who have gunfighting as their 'thing'.
She's a better melee fighter than Finn, who lost to an unknown stormie, and she is overall worse than Kylo who had a hole in his side and was wounded by Finn and had to walk after his targets because he couldn't run. Even then, it's only due to her giving her multiple chances that she gathers herself and wins.
And that's... three languages? I mean, yea, that's multilingual but it's not out there.
Kylo is easily the most powerful force user in the movie. He stops blaster bolts, reads her mind (vs her taking three tries to do a mindtrick), paralyzes and KOs her with the force, and only loses to her at anything when he has *a hole in his side* and is in emotional turmoil.

The one of those which is unequivocally right is being multilingual, and mechanic is a 'maybe'. Every other is wrong, often with her ranking at the bottom of the main cast.

People need to be taught things to be able to do them, that's not just a rule of storytelling but patently obvious. Having her be a self taught mechanic/greasemonkey would be one thing, fine, but she's also a self taught pilot, marksman, staff fighter, linguist, swimmer, force user. It's insane.

Here's the thing that makes me go to 'she's a girl'- How much of the complaints are blatantly exaggerated or flat-out wrong. Plus the use of gendered terms on the issue. You may say it's not gendered, but it's one, notoriously overapplied to women characters, and two, being misused right here.

It's an interesting question, would people not overreact to everything she does so much if Rey was a guy? Would we not see basic-competence at something presented as an all-out ace? Would we see people not act like beating a crippled warrior is not the same as being a god of sword?

That's the questions this thread raises, because when you have people get so much factually off, well, it raises eyebrows, doesn't it?

[NecronLord]

Jabba had dancer slaves in chains whom he executed by feeding them to monsters. ANH and ESB had people having their arms/hands chopped off. Luke's adopted parents are burned alive and we see their flaming skeletons. Han Solo cuts open a taun taun and we see its boiling guts pour out. None of this prevented a PG rating. And we can't have things just be gritty and depressing? That's what prevents a PG rating? If things aren't squeaky clean and Rey is actually in some form of, say, slavery?

You're aware Disney has a directive against impalement and dismemberment, right? The limits placed on TFA were lower than the original movies. source.

PG is not the right word perhaps. But no, they were not allowed to show the kinds of things that the Fox/Lucas films were. RotS has seven limb losses and three beheadings, some of them of the protagonists!

He said: “When you sign a contract with Disney, the things it says your film cannot have are beheadings, impalement or smoking.

“Those are literally the three things you are not allowed to put into a Disney film.”

This is why TFA has a lightsaber fight where Finn goes up against Kylo Ren, is comprehensively defeated and receives only glancing blows that don't actually inflict lasting injury to him.

This has obviously relented in some way given Snoke's death in TLJ, or perhaps it's acceptable to depict such violence against obviously evil characters, but no, softer and lighter was definitely a directive for TFA. The explicit violence of the original Star Wars movies was not acceptable to Disney.

A director who wanted to show explicit slavery would not be permitted to do so by the management. That's why it's implied.

As for Rey and Plutt's thugs, she reacts in the moment, beats them off and then meets a real live resistance fighter (or so she thinks!) - she is too distracted by her optimism to worry about the next gang of thugs at this point, then its TIEs out of the sunset. No doubt if Finn hadn't been there and the First Order hadn't showed up she would have gotten the shit kicked out of her next time; happily for her destiny had other ideas.

[Q99]

I took it as less outright slavery, more as all-but-slavery, caught in an economic trap of spending long hours for, mostly, food.

[Shroom Man 777]

People are so fucking dense. Who needs strawmen?

[Simon_Jester]

Star Wars is weird like that. Even people living on the fringes of society often seem to be making use of some uncannily advanced technology to do it with. About the only people we see who can credibly be described as "primitive" are the Ewoks (who never left the Stone Age and have no contact with the outside world) and the Tusken raiders (who seem to have reverted to pure barbarism, to the point where the only vaguely advanced technology they have is their rifles).

Almost everyone else has high tech, and uses it, and often maintains it themselves to a much higher degree than most of us maintain our own vehicles and personal equipment in real life. And the thing is, it's basically impossible, at least in society as we know or can imagine it, to be truly illiterate and yet be a competent operator of advanced technology.

So either Star Wars is weird in that people who "ought" to have a terrible education given their low socioeconomic status tend to have a pretty good (if patchy) one... or it's weird in that people with a terrible education can do things like repair robots and maintain starships.

Enslaved battlefield scavengers are not an invention of Star Wars.

Yeah see, I know that. At the same time, "battlefield scavenger" does not automatically mean "illiterate." Rey would be the first major character in all of Star Wars, and one of the few prominent characters in modern fiction of any kind, to be unable to read.

Even people who should have lousy general educations in Star Wars seem to know more than we'd expect. Why? I honestly have no goddamn clue, but it seems to happen. Maybe nanny-droids are cheap and routinely teach children to read. Maybe something else. But it's a pretty well established principle of the setting.

Ingushetia used to be full of kids scavenging battlefields for scrap metal (something far worse has happened to it now, to paraphrase Lor San Tekka) - literacy isn't required to be a scrapper, just knowing what looks valuable and how to disconnect it, and knowing to avoid warning labels (which IRL are designed so you don't need to read anything to get that they mean 'bad!') and how to use a dosimeter etc; these are simple practical skills.

The thing is, Rey isn't just picking up random bits of stuff for scrap metal, she's going down inside the hulks of crashed warships. Giving her some basic level of technical literacy (and plain old literacy literacy) is just not that much of a stretch.

[NecronLord]

I took it as less outright slavery, more as all-but-slavery, caught in an economic trap of spending long hours for, mostly, food.

The coda to that is that Plutt bought Rey off her parents - you see his hand holding her in her memories.

[NecronLord]

Yeah see, I know that. At the same time, "battlefield scavenger" does not automatically mean "illiterate." Rey would be the first major character in all of Star Wars, and one of the few prominent characters in modern fiction of any kind, to be unable to read.

Even people who should have lousy general educations in Star Wars seem to know more than we'd expect. Why? I honestly have no goddamn clue, but it seems to happen. Maybe nanny-droids are cheap and routinely teach children to read. Maybe something else. But it's a pretty well established principle of the setting.

I find it hard to think of someone with as deprived a background in filmic Star Wars. Anakin was a slave, yes, but he was removed from that life at a young age and installed in the Jedi Temple.

The thing is, Rey isn't just picking up random bits of stuff for scrap metal, she's going down inside the hulks of crashed warships. Giving her some basic level of technical literacy (and plain old literacy literacy) is just not that much of a stretch.

Nor is it required, though, it doesn't take much knowledge to know that the or consistent with the being sold to an uncaring boss thing; that's the bit I find it hard to get over.

[APlayerHater]

He said: “When you sign a contract with Disney, the things it says your film cannot have are beheadings, impalement or smoking.

“Those are literally the three things you are not allowed to put into a Disney film.”

This is why TFA has a lightsaber fight where Finn goes up against Kylo Ren, is comprehensively defeated and receives only glancing blows that don't actually inflict lasting injury to him.

This has obviously relented in some way given Snoke's death in TLJ, or perhaps it's acceptable to depict such violence against obviously evil characters, but no, softer and lighter was definitely a directive for TFA. The explicit violence of the original Star Wars movies was not acceptable to Disney.

A director who wanted to show explicit slavery would not be permitted to do so by the management. That's why it's implied.

As for Rey and Plutt's thugs, she reacts in the moment, beats them off and then meets a real live resistance fighter (or so she thinks!) - she is too distracted by her optimism to worry about the next gang of thugs at this point, then its TIEs out of the sunset. No doubt if Finn hadn't been there and the First Order hadn't showed up she would have gotten the shit kicked out of her next time; happily for her destiny had other ideas.

So disney's meddling is the reason the movie's bad? What's your point?

Are you defending the movie's level of quality and storytelling because a bunch of corporate suits wouldn't let them do anything?

She's a barely adequate pilot who, even going on a known course she's been at before, loses no-one on her tail. Poe, meanwhile, is living death in both his fighters.

You know she's been on this course before how? --Also, she does a backflip and hits someone with a gun emplacement that has been stuck in place. She destroys several Tie Fighters with trivial ease.

Isn't she one of the only mechanics in the movie? She fixes a thing she possibly put in, that's it. Chewie also does some fixes, and Han doesn't do much but he was always kinda a crappy one.

She's more familiar with the MF than Han or Chewie are apparently, or at least intuitively understands the ship as well as Han does for no adequately explained reason. She even calls it garbage earlier in the movie, so she clearly didn't think highly of it.

There's a scene of her yelling at Finn for his incompetence at not recognizing which tool to give her. Also she modifies the MF on the spot several times in the movie. One time she was going to kill herself with poison gas, sure, but it was still a modification we've never seen before.

Han couldn't even tell the hyperdrive on his own ship had been deactivated without R2D2 fixing it.

Finn pretty much never misses and the very first time as a TIE gunner repeatedly hits his targets dead on, and Han doesn't miss *even when he's not looking*. Chewie's quite accurate too. Out of all the main characters, she's the worst one or at best tied with Chewie, and very visibly below Finn and Han who have gunfighting as their 'thing'.

So Han shoots someone as a joke, which I wouldn't give as an honest measure of his abilities. Also do we ever actually see Finn shoot someone? I've seen him holding a gun and firing wildly off screen. It's more her ridiculous accuracy combined with her never having held a blaster before; she shoots stormtroopers dead on as soon as they appear in front of her with a handgun at long range.

Stormtrooper's memetic incompetence really wasn't a thing until RotJ, they used to be a credible threat.

She's a better melee fighter than Finn, who lost to an unknown stormie, and she is overall worse than Kylo who had a hole in his side and was wounded by Finn and had to walk after his targets because he couldn't run. Even then, it's only due to her giving her multiple chances that she gathers herself and wins.

Well Kylo should have been dead from that Bowcaster shot. And in that scene he's not moving as though he's been wounded. I honestly think they filmed that fight scene and just made him wounded in pickup shots, and threw that part about Chewie blasting him in the stomach after the fact. The fight coreography is really bad.

Nevermind that Kylo could have just incapacitated her with the force and stabbed her.

Her being a better melee fighter than Finn doesn't make much senses either. Sure he's a janitor, but he was also trained in the use of that shock baton thing, and so is probably better trained than some random nobody who's never held a gun before. Who did Rey even fight with her staff while learning to become competent with it? Who does she get in a fight with on that planet who she loses to at 5 or 10 years old but doesn't just kill her?

And that's... three languages? I mean, yea, that's multilingual but it's not out there.

That's still better than any other star wars characters. And they're 3 languages that make no sense. We've never seen a human able to understand droid language, and we've never seen anyone other than Han or 3PO who can understand Chewbacca.

Han could kind of understand Chewie and could understand Huttese, and Huttese is a major language in the outer rim. Clearly he only understood Chewie because they're buddies for some reason. Now Rey comes along and also happens to understand this very rare species called Wookiees, which Luke and Leia had never seen or heard of before.

Kylo is easily the most powerful force user in the movie. He stops blaster bolts, reads her mind (vs her taking three tries to do a mindtrick), paralyzes and KOs her with the force, and only loses to her at anything when he has *a hole in his side* and is in emotional turmoil.

Except she forces his mind trick back on him when untrained and reads his mind. She bests him in lightsaber combat. She overpowers him with the force when they're trying to move the same object.

[Crazedwraith]

Jabba had dancer slaves in chains whom he executed by feeding them to monsters. ANH and ESB had people having their arms/hands chopped off. Luke's adopted parents are burned alive and we see their flaming skeletons. Han Solo cuts open a taun taun and we see its boiling guts pour out. None of this prevented a PG rating. And we can't have things just be gritty and depressing? That's what prevents a PG rating? If things aren't squeaky clean and Rey is actually in some form of, say, slavery?

You're aware Disney has a directive against impalement and dismemberment, right? The limits placed on TFA were lower than the original movies. source.

PG is not the right word perhaps. But no, they were not allowed to show the kinds of things that the Fox/Lucas films were. RotS has seven limb losses and three beheadings, some of them of the protagonists!

He said: “When you sign a contract with Disney, the things it says your film cannot have are beheadings, impalement or smoking.

“Those are literally the three things you are not allowed to put into a Disney film.”

This is why TFA has a lightsaber fight where Finn goes up against Kylo Ren, is comprehensively defeated and receives only glancing blows that don't actually inflict lasting injury to him.

This has obviously relented in some way given Snoke's death in TLJ, or perhaps it's acceptable to depict such violence against obviously evil characters, but no, softer and lighter was definitely a directive for TFA. The explicit violence of the original Star Wars movies was not acceptable to Disney.

A director who wanted to show explicit slavery would not be permitted to do so by the management. That's why it's implied.

As for Rey and Plutt's thugs, she reacts in the moment, beats them off and then meets a real live resistance fighter (or so she thinks!) - she is too distracted by her optimism to worry about the next gang of thugs at this point, then its TIEs out of the sunset. No doubt if Finn hadn't been there and the First Order hadn't showed up she would have gotten the shit kicked out of her next time; happily for her destiny had other ideas.

This non-impalement thing ... even in TFA there's Han's fate. Ren even shoves it in some more after the initial ignition.

Snoke's probably fine because he's an alien. You can get away with all sorts of violence so long as the blood's not rea.

[Q99]

You know she's been on this course before how? --Also, she does a backflip and hits someone with a gun emplacement that has been stuck in place. She destroys several Tie Fighters with trivial ease.

We saw her there at the start of the movie, that's where she works! On the wrecks of ships, that is the economy of Jakku. And note, it was an easy enough course that all pursuers made it, so unlike the Asteroid Field or DS2 interior or the salt caves in TLJ (which was Chewie flying), average-TIE-pilot can clear that one with no damage.

Finn shot down those fighters- remember that bit about Finn being a great shot?- with only the last one being a duo effort and pretty lucky.

She's more familiar with the MF than Han or Chewie are apparently, or at least intuitively understands the ship as well as Han does for no adequately explained reason. She even calls it garbage earlier in the movie, so she clearly didn't think highly of it.

Did you not get that she worked on ships for the junkyard guy and what she fixed was a crappy bypass that hadn't been there when Han last had it? Rey fixed a problem that Han didn't know had been installed in his ship and did so simply by restoring it to base.

There's a scene of her yelling at Finn for his incompetence at not recognizing which tool to give her. Also she modifies the MF on the spot several times in the movie. One time she was going to kill herself with poison gas, sure, but it was still a modification we've never seen before.

Finn... isn't a mechanic, so, yea, she's better than him. Chewie, flipside, is one, and directed most of the later repairs. And like you say, one of her modifications was a really bad idea! And her working on ships is prior established and part of her being a junker....

She's still pretty middling as SW mechanics go. She removed a stupid addition and came up with a suicidal modification.

So Han shoots someone as a joke, which I wouldn't give as an honest measure of his abilities. Also do we ever actually see Finn shoot someone? I've seen him holding a gun and firing wildly off screen. It's more her ridiculous accuracy combined with her never having held a blaster before; she shoots stormtroopers dead on as soon as they appear in front of her with a handgun at long range.

... Han pulled off frankly impossible shots, plus a bunch of more people (both with his own pistol, the back shot was 'only' his third killshot in as many seconds, and the bowcaster), and it doesn't count? And Finn shot down all those TIEs you credited, plus in the bar-planet scene, after retrieving the lightsaber, he pulls off two snap shots, one at a stormie coming at him from behind.

Also, when Kylo comes, Rey shoots off like, 8 shots that miss. Not dodge, not blocked, miss. Of the ton of shots she fires, he only has to block three or four.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jipvuyDBXy8

I'd estimate that Finn's accuracy with weapons of any kind is probably in the 90%+ range, and Rey's in the 20~30% range. Han's practically aimbot, and Chewie hits consistently too.

Best shot. Heh. You really do misrepresent things heavily, she's the worst shot by a wide margin.

Well Kylo should have been dead from that Bowcaster shot. And in that scene he's not moving as though he's been wounded. I honestly think they filmed that fight scene and just made him wounded in pickup shots, and threw that part about Chewie blasting him in the stomach after the fact. The fight coreography is really bad.

... yes he is! He stops to hit his side and get it moving several times. Whenever he knocks someone back, he has to stop and regroup himself because *he's not capable of advancing quickly*. A lot of his attacks are done with just his arms because *fighting properly hurts*.

He constantly acts like the wound is a major hindrance!

Nevermind that Kylo could have just incapacitated her with the force and stabbed her.

Yea, as long as there's nothing that'd affect his use of the force like, oh, a giant hole in his side messing with his concentration. Do you remember if there was something like that in the film?

C'mon, the fact that you mention the hole in one comment and then conveniently forget about it the very next says a lot.

Her being a better melee fighter than Finn doesn't make much senses either. Sure he's a janitor, but he was also trained in the use of that shock baton thing, and so is probably better trained than some random nobody who's never held a gun before. Who did Rey even fight with her staff while learning to become competent with it? Who does she get in a fight with on that planet who she loses to at 5 or 10 years old but doesn't just kill her?

Scavengers? Thugs? Thieves who take her rations? I mean, we literally see her fight with her staff earlier in the movie. It's a rough town and fighting is not exactly an odd thing to happen there.

Finn knows how to fight with a baton but as we see, he's not the top even compared to other Stormies. TR-8R beats him straight up. (And yet he still managed a minor hit on Kylo, establishing how wounded Ren is).


Look, you keep on saying "it doesn't make sense," when what you really mean is "I wasn't paying attention," or "I want Rey to be less skilled." This kind of stuff is pretty darn normal for a SW protagonist, and, notably, it was clearly established in the film.

Except she forces his mind trick back on him when untrained and reads his mind. She bests him in lightsaber combat. She overpowers him with the force when they're trying to move the same object.

She picks up what his mind was leaking after he went in frankly way too much- he actually got as much as she knew and kept going, that's more on him than her.

Lightsaber combat, despite your complaining, that's clearly due to him being hindered. I mean, not only the hole from earlier, but Finn added to the damage with a minor strike, and additionally he's still bleeding so he's gonna get weaker the longer things last... and then, oh yea, he got her on the ropes and stopped to give her a recruitment speech when Kylo could've killed her on the spot just by pushing forward.

And when moving the same object? They're pulling in the same direction. It's not a tug of way, it's a 'I'm grabbing and- yikes it's suddenly headed at me!' for Kylo.


Like, these are not very good complaints of yours. You get a lot factually wrong or leave out stuff. You rated Rey as one of the best in one of the areas where every major character is better.


If it's not gender, then there's certainly some reason you're either A, actively choosing to misrepresent things, or B, have mental blinders enough or your memory picked and choose enough that you got a seriously off impression in your head.


People wanna do a re-write? Fine! No problem there. Because Rey's a 'mary sue'? Hah. Because of your specific complaints here? HAH! Not even close, most of your complaints are flat-wrong.

[Formless]

Okay, I think some here may have missed my point. You should note that I didn't say Rey is well written. I didn't say you can't improve her character, as per the topic of the thread. I gave no opinion at all on these things. I merely answered a question about why so many people dismiss accusations of her being a Mary Sue as being sexist with the entirely reasonable point that the term carries sexist overtones. And I am hardly the first person to point this out, it has been controversial for years:

Mary Sue

Says Seanan McGuire, author of the October Daye and InCryptid novels:

I genuinely wish that everyone would delete the word "Mary Sue" from their vocabulary. In its original, fanfic usage, it described a character who was, yes, usually female, but whose greatest crime was not perfection: it was twisting the story. A Mary Sue in that sense literally walks into someone else's world and makes everything about her. Flash forward to the modern day and it's a rare female protagonist who doesn't get accused of being a Mary Sue, and hence worthless. Here's the thing: she can't distort the story if the story already belongs to her. The protagonist, regardless of gender, is awesome and interesting and has a milkshake that brings all the boys, girls, or genderfluid space pirates to the yard, because that's why they're the star of the story. So calling female protagonists "Mary Sue" is sexist, belittling, and reduces them in a way that is very rarely applied to their male counterparts—even when those male counterparts are just as guilty of being a little too perfect to be real.

Elizabeth Bear (The Steles of the Sky) adds that Mary Sue seems like "a term which had some useful specificity when it was coined, but has since become a broad-brush catchall used to dismiss any competent female character who acts like a protagonist."

(Editors note: I snipped much of this for brevity and relevance for the case of Rey)

Looks like this essay was needed, so I went ahead and did it. Not sure I said everything I wanted to say, but I tried.

So, there’s this girl. She’s tragically orphaned and richer than anyone on the planet. Every guy she meets falls in love with her, but in between torrid romances she rejects them all because she dedicated to what is Pure and Good. She has genius level intellect, Olympic-athelete level athletic ability and incredible good looks. She is consumed by terrible angst, but this only makes guys want her more. She has no superhuman abilities, yet she is more competent than her superhuman friends and defeats superhumans with ease. She has unshakably loyal friends and allies, despite the fact she treats them pretty badly. They fear and respect her, and defer to her orders. Everyone is obsessed with her, even her enemies are attracted to her. She can plan ahead for anything and she’s generally right with any conclusion she makes. People who defy her are inevitably wrong.

God, what a Mary Sue.

I just described Batman.

Wish fulfillment characters have been around since the beginning of time. The good guys tend to win, get the girl and have everything fall into place for them. It’s only when women started doing it that it became a problem.

TV Tropes on the origin of Mary Sue:

The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. (*)

Notice the strange emphasis on female here. TV Tropes goes on to say that is took a long time for the male counterpart “Marty Stu” to be used. “Most fanfic writers are girls” is given as the reason. So when women dominate a genre, that means people are on close watch, ready to scorn any wish fulfillment they may engage in. This term could only originate if the default was female.

In fact, one of the CONTROVERSIES listed on the TV Tropes page is if a male sue is even possible. That’s right, it’s impossible to have an idealized male character. Men are already the ideal.

[...]

If you look at the TV Tropes page for Mary Sue, it’s ridiculous. You can be a sue for having too many flaws, or not enough, for fixing things or messing things up, for being a hero or a villain. And of course, this is specifically pointed out as a trope related to the Princess and Magical Girl genres- genres aimed towards women are naturally full of Mary Sues. Magical girls are powerful and heroic and actually flaunt femininity as a good thing. They are a power fantasy designed for girls. So of course, a girl using traditionally feminine traits to dominate and triumph means she’s a sickeningly pure Mary Sue who makes everything go their way. Feminine traits are disdained and look down on, so when the positive feminine traits are prominent, the reader has an aversive reaction. How can a character be so feminine and triumph? She must be unrealistic, she must be badly written, because everyone knows it is impossible to be feminine and powerful.

[...]

If a character is badly written, there’s generally something much more problematic than idealization going on. The plot will be dull and the character will perpetuate harmful stereotypes while other characters act oddly. For instance, Bella Swan is one of the only characters I’d even begin to classify as a Mary Sue, yet it’s not really her supposed Mary Sue traits that bother me. I don’t mind that she gets what she wants and everyone loves her, that she’s Meyer’s power fantasy. What I actually mind is that Stephenie Meyer has her perpetuate harmful anti-woman stereotypes- women need to be protected, women are shallow, women’s worth rests in desirability. That’s what’s actually harmful about her and worth discussing. I would criticize that rather than even get to the fact Bella got to be “too perfect and powerful”- that’s just a tiny, insignificant thing not worth mentioning in a huge pile of problems.

And that’s why I don’t call characters Mary Sue anymore. There’s really nothing bad about a power fantasy or wish fulfillment. It’s what’s fiction’s about. If one of my characters is called a Sue, I’ll proudly say “yep”, because that must mean that she broke out of that box a female character is supposed to be in. So I’ll go and say it: I love me some Mary Sues.

Note: because this article was written in late 2011, it does not reflect what TVTropes currently says on the page for Mary Sue. In fact, it should be noted that they now take the same side as the author above:

There are subjectives, and then there are these. While you may believe a work fits here, and you might be right, people tend to have rather vocal, differing opinions about this subject.
Please keep these off of the work's page.

"There's nothing more boring than a perfect heroine!"
— Drosselmeyer, Princess Tutu

Mary Sue is a derogatory term primarily used in Fan Fic circles to describe a particular type of character. This much everyone can agree on. What that character type is, exactly, differs wildly from circle to circle, and often from person to person.

TV Tropes doesn't get to set what the term means; the best we can do is capture the way it is used. Since there's no consensus on a precise definition, the best way to describe the phenomenon is by example of the kind of character pretty much everyone could agree to be a Mary Sue. These traits usually reference the character's perceived importance in the story, their physical design and an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.

The name "Mary Sue" comes from the 1974 Star Trek fanfic A Trekkie's Tale. Originally written as a parody of the standard Self-Insert Fic of the time (as opposed to any particular traits), the name was quickly adopted by the Star Trek fanfiction community. Its original meaning mostly held that it was an Always Female Author Avatar, regardless of character role or perceived quality. Often, the characters would get in a relationship with either Kirk or Spock, turn out to have a familial bond with a crew member, be a Half-Human Hybrid masquerading as a human, and die in a graceful, beautiful way to reinforce that the character was Too Good for This Sinful Earth. (Or space, as the case may be.)

Even back then, there wasn't a total consensus on what was or wasn't Mary Sue, since it's not always immediately obvious which character is an Author Avatar. As this essay reveals, suspiciously Mary Sue-like characters were noted in subscriber-submitted articles for 19th-century childrens' magazines, making this trope Older Than You Think.

The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.

[...]

Over time, a male variant started to see use. Marty Stu (also known as Gary Stu, for those who prefer rhyme to alliteration) wasn't really that much different from Mary. Also an Author Avatar, it usually had implications of being a male crew member that tended to completely outshine established canon members in their roles and often become the best starship captain, ever. See The Ace. Since the female characters of Star Trek were all in secondary roles at best, the relationship angle was generally disregarded as being any sort of qualifier. Because of the not-entirely-unjustified perception that Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls, Marty Stu didn't really catch on for a long time.

[...]

Some of the controversies:

• Do Sues appear only in fanfic, or are Canon Sues allowed?
• Can you have a male Sue?
• Are all Author Avatars Sues, even if they're well-written, realistic, and don't take over the story — and, are all Sues necessarily stand-ins for the author?
• Is the most important part how the author de-protagonist-izes every other character in the name of making the Sue seem even more awesome?
• If you have an impossibly competent character with a cool back story and an idealized personality, and they manage to be likable to most of the audience, are they still a Mary Sue, or does Suedom depend on the character being disliked because of their obnoxious perfection?

See these articles for takes on Mary Sue that focus on certain groupings of Common Mary Sue Traits:

• Anti-Sue — I'm genuinely useless, but everybody still loves me!
• Black Hole Sue — Everything is about me!
• Copy Cat Sue — I'm just like my favorite character, but even kewler!
• Fixer Sue — No, that's not how it's supposed to go!
• God-Mode Sue — Power overwhelming!
• Jerk Sue — I'm a complete and utter bitch and I have constant PMS...love me!
• Mary Tzu —I knew you would do that. In fact, I knew you would do that before I even met you, cuz I'm JUST THAT GOOD!
• Parody Sue — Why don't they fall for my buxom charms?
• Possession Sue — My favourite character is an even better version of me!
• Purity Sue — Love me!
• Relationship Sue — You're my boyfriend now!
• Sympathetic Sue — Feel sorry for me!
• 30-Sue Pileup — We are Legion.
• Villain Sue — I have you now, my beautiful slaves! Ahahahahahahaha!

[...]

Interpretations of Mary Sue

As mentioned above, there are many interpretations of what does or doesn't constitute a Mary Sue. In this sense, Mary Sue isn't so much a trope as it is a brand name, with the usage being determined by both writer and reader. It is not limited in usage, getting applied to all characters regardless of gender, role, or species. Sometimes, even whole groups, organizations, and even societies are labeled as being Mary Sue. This is a list of some of the interpretations. They are here to offer insight into why people might call a character a Mary Sue. [editors note: I'm only going to list the headers because most are self-explanatory]

Mary Sue as Protagonist You Don't Like

Mary Sue as Poorly Written Character

Mary Sue as Clichéd character

Mary Sue as Author Avatar

Mary Sue as Idealized Character

Mary Sue as Power Fantasy

Mary Sue as Infallible Character

Mary Sue as Center of Attention

Mary Sue as Alien Element
(Ed: This one takes explaining, however) A largely fanfiction interpretation, but it still rarely gets used in terms of actual shows. This viewpoint posits that Mary Sue is a character that involves changing the dynamic of a work and shifting the focus away from the established characters and styles. This may include characters that break the established rules of the setting (particularly if the explanation for it is poor or nonexistant). Often involves rewriting of canon elements and derailing of characters in the process.

Mary Sue as Original Character Protagonist

Mary Sue as a Sturgeon's Law Character

Mary Sue as Character Type

Marty Stu as Character Type

Not A Mary Sue

Just as there have been many attempts to classify what Mary Sue means, a whole set of definitions to nullify the term have also come up. These are just as subjective as the above. (ed: also snipped for brevity)

Likability/Real World Popularity

Flaws

Genre Exemption

Plausibility

Lampshade Hanging

Mediocre Past

So as you can see, the Gary Stu label is STILL listed as controversial, the first interpretation they put forward is "character you just don't like," they cite data of historical interest suggesting a gender bias right from the beginning, and they even prohibit their own members from listing the trope on any page on the basis that it is guaranteed to cause flamewars. The sheer number of competing interpretations and list of arguments people use to defend a character from the accusation by itself suggest that the term is utterly useless in the lexicon of a competent critic; while any one interpretation might be a valid criticism (with some being opinionated garbage like "I just don't like this character"), a competent critic would avoid the term "Mary Sue" because it is at best redundant and at worst only serves to muddle communication and cause arguments. Meanwhile, in argument it is useless because it only serves a derogatory function rather than actually making a coherent point.

So. I suggest to everyone reading that if you don't want to cause intractable arguments or get accused of being sexist, you just don't use the term "Mary Sue." Whether you have seen it or not, whether you consider it sexist or not, it absolutely has sexist connotations and baggage attached.

I hope this time my point is clear.

[Sidewinder]

One explanation for Rey's many skills- skills she did NOT receive the training necessary to acquire them, e.g., piloting, marksmanship, lightsaber dueling- is to say she's psychometric, i.e., when she touched the Falcon, the Force allowed her to absorb Han Solo and Chewie's memories (which were psychically imprinted upon the airframe), giving her their skills as well; when she touched Anakin's lightsaber, the same thing happens.

This Force skill must be established from her very first scene, however. It will also change the dynamics between her and the other characters. Plutt WILL notice if young Rey has psychometric powers, as she'll constantly speak truths she should have no way of knowing (children of the age Rey was when she was abandoned on Jakku, usually do not know when to keep their mouths shut); he WILL keep her well-fed and guarded, as he can exploit the intelligence she has to increase his own power over Jakku's residents, meaning she's worth many times her weight in gold; Kylo Ren WILL drop everything he has to go after her the moment he recognizes this power, as Kylo is also smart enough to know what it can do for himself.

Psychometry may very well turn Rey into a schizophrenic mess, as she's constantly filled with memories that aren't her own, which will confuse her to no end. Leia may view her as someone to pity, as these foreign memories will make it more difficult for Rey to form a sense of identify; Finn may view her the way Jayne Cobb (from 'Firefly' and 'Serenity') views River Tam, as an unpredictable "crazy" to be feared.

[Shroom Man 777]

Fuck TVTropes. And now they're making a movie out of TVTropes: Ready Player One. Ugh.

[Formless]

Fuck TVTropes. And now they're making a movie out of TVTropes: Ready Player One. Ugh.

I know. But here, at least it shows just how useless the idea is if even they want to distance themselves from it!

[NecronLord]

This non-impalement thing ... even in TFA there's Han's fate. Ren even shoves it in some more after the initial ignition.

Snoke's probably fine because he's an alien. You can get away with all sorts of violence so long as the blood's not rea.

You'll notice even that's cut in a way that a sufficiently sheltered kid might not understand how Han is being hurt. The blade is not shown *entering* Han's body, only behind it.

Beyond that, no, they're okay with stabbing, not dismemberment. If it was Dooku and Anakin going at Snoke's guards, there'd be legs and arms and heads everywhere. They get neat, cauterised stab wounds, not dismembered all over the shop.

It may be that disney interprets impalement as impalement on a physical object, a-la the death of Saruman in the LotR EE, and does not include stabbing in that.

[ray245]

So as you can see, the Gary Stu label is STILL listed as controversial, the first interpretation they put forward is "character you just don't like," they cite data of historical interest suggesting a gender bias right from the beginning, and they even prohibit their own members from listing the trope on any page on the basis that it is guaranteed to cause flamewars. The sheer number of competing interpretations and list of arguments people use to defend a character from the accusation by itself suggest that the term is utterly useless in the lexicon of a competent critic; while any one interpretation might be a valid criticism (with some being opinionated garbage like "I just don't like this character"), a competent critic would avoid the term "Mary Sue" because it is at best redundant and at worst only serves to muddle communication and cause arguments. Meanwhile, in argument it is useless because it only serves a derogatory function rather than actually making a coherent point.

So. I suggest to everyone reading that if you don't want to cause intractable arguments or get accused of being sexist, you just don't use the term "Mary Sue." Whether you have seen it or not, whether you consider it sexist or not, it absolutely has sexist connotations and baggage attached.

I hope this time my point is clear.

So how are you going to define a character that fits into the mold of the classic Trek-fanfic "Mary Sue"? A newly introduced character that can practically do everything the old cast did, but better in almost every regard?


Also:

And that’s why I don’t call characters Mary Sue anymore. There’s really nothing bad about a power fantasy or wish fulfillment. It’s what’s fiction’s about. If one of my characters is called a Sue, I’ll proudly say “yep”, because that must mean that she broke out of that box a female character is supposed to be in. So I’ll go and say it: I love me some Mary Sues.

This is just a horrible argument. No, power fantasy and wish fulfillment is bad writing because they undermine the overall tension of the story. It might give writers joy for living through their characters, but it leaves very little room for character development. Female characters can break out of the box without being a "sue". Take Jynn for example. There were very little accusations of her being a "sue" in comparison to Rey.

I'll avoid power fantasy and wish fulfillment stories as much as possible because they are just horrible to read.

[Vendetta]

One explanation for Rey's many skills- skills she did NOT receive the training necessary to acquire them, e.g., piloting, marksmanship, lightsaber dueling- is to say she's psychometric,

Because "guided by the Force" is too fucking technical I suppose?

I mean for fuck's sake this is Star Wars, there is an explicit magical field in the universe which is already established to do exactly the thing you're making up bullshit to "explain".

Have any of you people ever watched a Star Wars movie? This is what they're fucking about.

[Q99]

One explanation for Rey's many skills- skills she did NOT receive the training necessary to acquire them, e.g., piloting, marksmanship, lightsaber dueling- is to say she's psychometric, i.e., when she touched the Falcon, the Force allowed her to absorb Han Solo and Chewie's memories (which were psychically imprinted upon the airframe), giving her their skills as well; when she touched Anakin's lightsaber, the same thing happens.

Except... she owns a speeder and one of her jobs is working on spaceships. Luke learned from a speeder. So there's that. Lightsaber, it was just applying her existing self-defense skills, which 'living in a place like Jakku' is plenty of reason to have, to a new weapon, and her saber style showed she was mostly using staff moves, and that is something I am personally capable of doing (give me any melee weapon I have never wielded and I can wield it first time I pick it up, if not nearly as well as I could with a bit of practice), so it's not even hard.

And her marksmanship was crap, like I pointed out. Her accuracy was by-far the worst of all main characters and even when firing at Kylo walking towards her often with no cover, she missed a lot.


Like... this is what gets me. So much of "she got this stuff easily/without explanation," is flat-out wrong, it's constructing the idea of Rey as a mary sue and then putting stuff into the movie, not looking what's in the movie and drawing from it. So the 'fixes' are often fixes that aren't needed/are 100% redundant.

And like Vendetta said, the force is a thing, force users learn super-fast, as seen with Luke, and Anakin. Anakin was a top racer and superior mechanic when he was half Rey's age. Phantom Menace Anakin would smoke her in piloting and probably technical knowledge as well.

[Shroom Man 777]

Like... this is what gets me. So much of "she got this stuff easily/without explanation," is flat-out wrong, it's constructing the idea of Rey as a mary sue and then putting stuff into the movie, not looking what's in the movie and drawing from it. So the 'fixes' are often fixes that aren't needed/are 100% redundant.

And like Vendetta said, the force is a thing, force users learn super-fast, as seen with Luke, and Anakin. Anakin was a top racer and superior mechanic when he was half Rey's age. Phantom Menace Anakin would smoke her in piloting and probably technical knowledge as well.

Oh no you're calling them sexist pigs STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN hhhnnggg

[ray245]

And like Vendetta said, the force is a thing, force users learn super-fast, as seen with Luke, and Anakin. Anakin was a top racer and superior mechanic when he was half Rey's age. Phantom Menace Anakin would smoke her in piloting and probably technical knowledge as well.

And Anakin and Luke both fail and make massive mistakes during their time of learning. Anakin was said to have never completed a pod-race. Luke almost got shot countless times. Both Luke and Anakin underestimate the enemy and got their hands cut off. Did the force make it easy for them to pick up stuff? Possibly, but they still fail during their learning process.

Because "guided by the Force" is too fucking technical I suppose?

I mean for fuck's sake this is Star Wars, there is an explicit magical field in the universe which is already established to do exactly the thing you're making up bullshit to "explain".

Have any of you people ever watched a Star Wars movie? This is what they're fucking about.

Because "guided by the force" doesn't remove the fact that it's just an easy cop-out for character growth and learning? It's watching characters fall and learning to pick themselves up from the floor again that makes drama interesting for many viewers. We saw the learning pains of Luke in trying to unlearn what he learned. It's a nice character development to follow.

What're Rey's struggles?