Is Corran Horn a Mary Sue?

[PainRack]

I love it when the defence of Corran Horn was to bring up Mara Jade, another typical Mary Sue of Timothy Zahn. The sole difference between the two of them in terms of Mary Sueness is that Timothy Zahn can make his Sues interesting, witness the love for Thrawn, Jade and to a certain extent, Karrde.

[Tiriol]

I love it when the defence of Corran Horn was to bring up Mara Jade, another typical Mary Sue of Timothy Zahn. The sole difference between the two of them in terms of Mary Sueness is that Timothy Zahn can make his Sues interesting, witness the love for Thrawn, Jade and to a certain extent, Karrde.

True. And in Zahn's case it's even more distasteful when the Mary Sue-ish characters of his start to idolize each other (Mara Jade in Hand of Thrawn duology placed Thrawn above even Palpatine in political manipulation and foresight). Mara Jade's appearance in Allegiance is also jarring, especially how she dares to treat Vader and even humiliates the Dark Lord (and Vader's portrayal makes him seem more like an animalistic brute than anything else).

[Illuminatus Primus]

Which is ridiculous, considering that Mara Jade is the butt of every joke in the highest circles of the Empire. One of the only Hands to delude she's the only one and that Palpatine thinks her special. Mara Jade as the Emperor's Hand is a co-dependent, immature girl,

[Darth Fanboy]

Whenever I read a book where Corran HOrn is in it, it always reads like whatever flaws Corran Horn has are blatantly put there by Stackpole so that his Gary Stu won't appear to be overly wanked out. That way there's the appearance of drama in a story, when in actuality you know that whatever the situation the Rebels will win the day so long as they have at least one partially intact X-Wing.

[PainRack]

Which is ridiculous, considering that Mara Jade is the butt of every joke in the highest circles of the Empire. One of the only Hands to delude she's the only one and that Palpatine thinks her special. Mara Jade as the Emperor's Hand is a co-dependent, immature girl,

Right. And who's the one to point this out to her? THRAWN.

And what did Jade do? Get her revenge back by taking out wayland. And then becoming a real important part of the Republic she didn't want to join.

[000]

Corran's certainly a Stu in the original sense-- he's pretty blatantly an author self-insert.

In the usual sense, though... I've always thought Corran was too much of an obvious doofus to be one in the usual sense. It's not just that he has the usual collection of arbitrary flaws (like no TK), it's that he's also really really dumb-- and I'm fairly sure Stackpole was aware of this.

Like, there's this hilarious part in I, Jedi where Exar Kun's torturing Corran, and Corran's all "hah, you torture me all you want, I'll never break!"

So Kun goes "oh yeah, well what if I break every bone in your body!" and Corran's all "hah I eat pain like that for breakfast!" so Kun's like "then I'll make you feel like I lit you on fire!" and Corran's all "do your best, Kun, I've had worse!" so Kun ponders for a minute and then makes himself look like Corran's dad and goes "Well then, I'm your daddy and I don't love you! You're a miserable rotten failure of a son and you let me die!" and Corran's immediately reduced to a quivering puddle, all "Daddy nooooo I miss you so much!"

So yeah. If he's a Stu (again, not in the original sense) then he's the lamest one ever.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Which is ridiculous, considering that Mara Jade is the butt of every joke in the highest circles of the Empire. One of the only Hands to delude she's the only one and that Palpatine thinks her special. Mara Jade as the Emperor's Hand is a co-dependent, immature girl,

Right. And who's the one to point this out to her? THRAWN.

And what did Jade do? Get her revenge back by taking out wayland. And then becoming a real important part of the Republic she didn't want to join.

Zahn then goes and runs this over, having Parck claim that Jade, Vader, and Thrawn were collective replacements for Kinman Doriana. What a joke.

[Edi]

Corran Horn turned into a completely insufferable Gary Stu in I, Jedi. He was somewhat tolerable before that, though there was still enough annoyance factor. After I, Jedi, Horn is nothing but a Gary Stu.

As far as lecturing Luke on the Dark Side of the force and the section in the new Jedi Academy on Yavin, it is hard not to feel like Luke was a total fucking incompetent and moron about the Exar Kun issue because that is precisely the way Anderson wrote him in the books that set the scene for that.

[Timotheus]

I'll admit the "energy channelling" was somewhat ridiculous at the point. But at the same time, I wouldn't call his "mind trick" powers ridiculous; most of his illusions lasted, what, a few seconds to minutes at most, like the "imaginarily" lifting the boulder on Yavin 4?

A trick he did without even knowing he could do. On top of which he did to a class of Jedi and Luke Skywalker.

Is not special abilities that surprise and baffle even my teachers a trademark of Mary Sue's?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Luke knew it was fake; he dispelled it from the other students' sight.

[Ender]

Luke knew it was fake; he dispelled it from the other students' sight.

No, I remember that scene. Luke is mesmerized as well, blinks, then dispells it from everyone else.