How to make Rey a NON-Mary Sue

[CaoCao]

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.

No other character in SW developed an overnight full ability on every department before Rey. At first Anakin (da chosen one) had...what? good reflexes? Luke? just made a shot that he deemed doable (and he mentions his friends, with whom he piloted with, could also do do it) and is helped by Han.

The Force has never been instapawaa. Dressing like a Jedi and being told the Force is real, never gave any other character the full set of master level abilities. They made her to be Anakin (chosen one) + Luke (force user with a nice character who makes friends easily) + Leia (best shooter and a-list characters love interest) + Han (best pilot) + R2D2 (mechanic that can fix anything) + C3PO (polyglot).

And on top of that, the point wasn't to say that no one uses the term "Mary Sue" or even "Marty/Gary Stu" to describe male characters, but that it happens far less often because of the term's history, origins, gendered name, and indeed sexist baggage. And to say that TVTropes, a source with its own community of people debating this that and the other thing, has found no universal agreement that Male Sue characters are a thing. Batman sometimes gets called a Mary Sue or Gary Stu, but most people don't bat an eye at his OP characterization because male characters are allowed to be icons of power; whereas Rey, an amateur Space Wizard, gets shit for being able to defend herself with a glowey energy stick from a guy with a bloody hole in his gut. And of course, even if it weren't applied asymmetrically with male and female characters, its still vague enough and open to interpretation enough to justify dropping it from one's critical lexicon.

The problem is with a character in a set universe. If TFA had been the first SW movie, they could have made the Force abilities to be quickly learned, or that anyone could fix and fly anything. As I mentioned above, she seems an amalgam of most previous main characters and had abilities of even previous support characters. She is not the first "Space Wizard" which should limit what she can do on her first steps to what the others could on their first steps. Instead she does everything only mastes could do after years of training (TFA and TLJ happen in a span of days, less than a week).

About Batman, he is the main character in his setting, there are no previous Batmen. When Gotham became part of a bigger universe, he had to share the stage with SuperStu, Wonder Sue, Green Lanstu and several other ridiculously overpowered characters. That's probably why he doesn't get that much bashing. The entire DC (and Marvel) universe has that kind of setting.

Think of Leia, Padme and Jynn, they are not considered Mary Sue type of characters.

[Crazedwraith]

Which is fair enough- at the same time, though, a character who clearly has flaws and makes at least some poor choices due to them is different from a character who has no flaws and makes unfailingly optimal choices.

A character whose flaw is, say, "poor anger management" doesn't have to blow up and lose their temper literally every single time they're provoked. A character whose flaw is "trusts the wrong people" doesn't have to give their trust to literally every single schemer they meet, or give that trust forever no matter how many times they're cheated, to establish the flaw.

Honestly, I kind of like my movie protagonists to be people who clearly struggle with their own flaws and problems, but who prove capable of going beyond those limitations and flaws much of the time, rather than being enslaved by them.

This is true. I'm just trying to think of a sub-optimal decision Rey does make because of the 'parents' flaw. The worst I can think is rejecting Maz and running off at that point but that's more because force visions are freaky. Can you think of more?

[Simon_Jester]

Well, let's ask how far-reaching the consequences of that decision were.

She got captured in large part because of that, as I recall. Her being captured in turn significantly complicated the raid on Starkiller Base, not so? I mean yes, she was able to escape and in effect take the situation she'd screwed up and screw it back down again, but the screwup still happened.

[Crazedwraith]

Well, let's ask how far-reaching the consequences of that decision were.

She got captured in large part because of that, as I recall. Her being captured in turn significantly complicated the raid on Starkiller Base, not so? I mean yes, she was able to escape and in effect take the situation she'd screwed up and screw it back down again, but the screwup still happened.

It could potentially have complicated it if they hadn't run into each other right the very second they started to look for her.

Rey's not perfect, she freaked out when she was confronted by the whole force thing. That's good, it's a flaw! Do people see that as consequence of the 'parents' flaw? I'm not certain I see the connection myself.

[Kojiro]

She got captured in large part because of that, as I recall.

She got captured because she went back. Had she stayed with the others she could have (plot armour aside) been killed in the building collapse or on the battlefield. More over, *everyone* got captured at one point, and presumably so would have she been if she'd remained. Ren wouldn't have gone chasing her, which would put him present on the field. Ren already knows he's looking for Rey- it's why he pursues her into the forest. So all that happens if she doesn't run is she gets captured sooner and Kylo leaves a little earlier. Maybe Han dies there too. She was likely to end up captured either way. Her running into the forest is just a plot device to keep Han and Ren apart for the time being.

Her being captured in turn significantly complicated the raid on Starkiller Base, not so? I mean yes, she was able to escape and in effect take the situation she'd screwed up and screw it back down again, but the screwup still happened.

Not in any meaningful way. Imagine they ran into her at the outside door. What changes? Nothing. She could have come with them for all the effort and complication it added. They literally stumbled across the one person they wanted to find on a *planet* sized installation. That'd be like Han and Luke finding Leia in the guard post they took over.

[Simon_Jester]

Huh. I had a partial recollection of it having imposed some complication on their planning, some opportunity cost, but it was a vague recollection.

If, say, Han and Finn had to make a more complicated and risky plan for gaining entry to the base, to ensure they'd be able to find Rey before blowing it up, then Rey's capture would be costly for Our Heroes even given how easily she escaped and rejoined them.

[Civil War Man]

As I mentioned in the other thread, I wouldn't go so far as to call Rey a Sue. Her character arc definitely, to me, feels rushed, particularly when you take into account how short a time frame is covered by the two movies, but that's not enough to fit my personal definition of a Sue. A lot of Sue-like traits are also shared by regular protagonists, so those traits pretty much have to reach some type of critical mass before I even begin to consider them to be entering Sue territory.

For example, compare Rey to, say, Tauriel from the Hobbit movies. Rey may have some issues with her character arc and how she's written, but Tauriel is damned near an itemized list of Mary Sue stereotypes.

[Khaat]

Huh. I had a partial recollection of it having imposed some complication on their planning, some opportunity cost, but it was a vague recollection.

If, say, Han and Finn had to make a more complicated and risky plan for gaining entry to the base, to ensure they'd be able to find Rey before blowing it up, then Rey's capture would be costly for Our Heroes even given how easily she escaped and rejoined them.

The Resistance higher-ups wrote Rey off in their plan. The only "complication" was that Finn wanted to save Rey, and volunteered to shut down SKB's shields. Once there, Finn let Solo in on his "plan": "we'll follow the Force!" "That's not how the Force works!" (except it does, because plot.)

[Kojiro]

For example, compare Rey to, say, Tauriel from the Hobbit movies. Rey may have some issues with her character arc and how she's written, but Tauriel is damned near an itemized list of Mary Sue stereotypes.

That's true, but it's generally true of elves, especially Tolkien elves, that they're just too good. Tauriel can at least fall back on being a magical being (who knows actual magic), raised in prosperity, undoubtedly educated and, of course, she's 600 years old. Conversely Rey has been living in a box, near starving and is only 19. Being that damn good is much easier to swallow with those credentials.

The Resistance higher-ups wrote Rey off in their plan. The only "complication" was that Finn wanted to save Rey, and volunteered to shut down SKB's shields. Once there, Finn let Solo in on his "plan": "we'll follow the Force!" "That's not how the Force works!" (except it does, because plot.)

Exactly. The universe aligns and Rey walks free from the enemy stronghold. Which, coincidentally, she'll do again in a few days time.

[APlayerHater]

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.

Disregarding the ridiculously heightened abilities of everyone else in the movie, Finn at least used a targeting computer to make those shots when in the MF. He wasn't eyeballing the shots since he was completely unable to see.

During that scene his turret is damaged, and quite literally cannot move from its one fixed position, Rey somehow lines up the MF in a front flip, in a gravity environment, that lets Finn shoot the ship. This is quite stupid.

Fin does pick up a blaster on Maz's planet and kills a couple stormtroopers, but that's at quite close range. Those shots are still bullshit, but at least they're at point blank range when the guys come around corners at him.

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.

So yeah, she pulled out the shitty bipass which prevents the hyperdrive from overloading. I'll give you this one. Still, she's more competent than Luke in the field of mechanics. We're told Anakin is a skilled mechanic, but at least Watto trained him.

I don't get the impression that Plutt had a close relationship with Rey. She knows about the modifications he made to the MF, so maybe he trained her, but it's really not the impression I got. Otherwise, I doubt the guy's a master with the bow staff, so he certainly didn't teach her that.

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 many Mary Sue characters are mechanics it's kind of funny. If you've ever gone to fanfiction.net, I swear every main character in every fan fiction is a skilled mechanic and engineer.

... 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.

She kills storm troopers with ease at ridiculous ranges.

Kylo A: Had his plot armor on. And B: He intercepted the first shot at him which was dead on. She would have shot him directly in the face and killed him if he hadn't blocked it. Her first shot was a head shot.

Once she saw he could block her shots, she focused more on running away and just started firing randomly in his direction hoping to slow him down. She was no longer aiming at this point.

Again, Finn makes a couple BS shots at very close range. I'm not really that impressed.

... 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!

Why does he do complicated lightsaber twirls then? We see how powerful the bowcaster is in this movie, he should be dead if he was hit by it. Instead he seems somewhat sweaty, but he still does these 360 degree spins and his range of motion is not restricted.

As for him walking slowly at the heroes while fighting, he did that anyway in every scene. That's what villains do. He is not shown to need to stop to breathe. He doesn't look hurt in the fight against Rey. His range of motion is not restricted. He fights Finn normally, it cuts to another shot of him punching his chest and looking hurt, then it cuts back to him fighting Finn and looking unharmed again and moving normally.

He walked toward Rey slowly in the scene where he captured her. Him walking slowly at the protagonists is no indication of being hurt.

I get the rationale of how they edited the scene, but the fight choreography didn't convince me that he was in any way inconvenienced by his wound.

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.

Well he already threw Rey aside once after getting shot. What, did he run out of batteries? I mean, I know he can barely move a lightsaber by the end of that fight, so his powers were waning.

Most of the fight is fine, really, where he has her heavily on the defensive. It's just at the very end she hears "the force" and suddenly she makes him look like a complete chump. She deflects his blows with ease and kicks him and makes him look like a rookie, and then defeats him. It's such a sudden complete 180 and took me out of the scene.

She wins through pure deus ex machina.

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.

She beats up two thugs with ease, thugs who likely had the same upbringing as her and so would likely be equally skilled, in addition to being larger than she is. I could buy her being skilled with a staff, but she hasn't had any training with it, and she already has so many other skills. You can't be self-taught in every field.

She's a mechanic, a crack shot, a master with a staff; she can sneak around, pull jedi mind tricks, fly a ship. Half of these skills she picks up within seconds of doing them for the first time.

If she's really some kind of guttersnipe she should be using something like a knife that you can A: Threaten people with without actually having to fight them. B: Conceal on your person for use against an unexpected attacker.

Either that or just use a gun; the ruins should be strewn with them. Even if she's not allowed to have one, I'm sure any number of scrappers on that planet should have access to guns. What opportunity would she have to learn to fight someone and lose? If she's self taught, she must have lost a lot of fights; of course, she looks perfectly healthy and unharmed, and not like what a slave urchin would look like.

You could point to Anakin somehow telling off Sebulba in EP1, and how that made no sense... But no one ever accused Anakin of being a well written character. I absolutely hate EP1, and I especially hated it as a kid. I have a grudging tolerance for it through Memes.

Also, when have star wars protagonists have unexplained melee combat prowess? Anakin was trained with a lightsaber because he was a Jedi. Luke completely sucked in melee and almost got killed multiple times. Every fight he's in he loses instantly. He gets knocked out by a Sandperson and saved by Obi, and he gets thrown over by a guy in a bar and saved by Obi. He holds his own, barely, against Vader in ESB, but Vader isn't even trying to kill him. He loses pathetically and gets his hand chopped off.

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.

I know Luke was able to "sense goodness" in Vader that he was trying to conceal, but Luke was at least an experienced Jedi Knight. This is just another example of Rey instantly outshining people in their own field of expertise the second she appears on screen.

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.

Was wondering when you were going to start accusing me of being a sexist.

I'm not angry that Rey is a Mary Sue based on the movies themselves; it is more that every single person and publication on the internet is accusing people of being misogynistic if they don't like the sequels. If everywhere online was saying the prequels were completely flawless at the time of their release, and that there was something wrong with you if you didn't like them, I'm sure you would be angry too.

If Rey was a man in this movie I would have had the same complaints about him. Everything in this universe revolves around Rey. You could say everything in the prequels revolves around Anakin. Those movies are bad.

Here is how everything revolves around Rey:

Finn? Goes from completely self serving coward to obsessed with rescuing Rey. He left TFO because he was a coward.

Han? Wants Rey to permanently join him on the MF within hours of meeting her.

Leia? First time Leia sees Rey, she goes up to Rey and hugs her, even though Rey's a total stranger. Somehow Leia intuitively sensed that Rey was upset about Han's death. I know it's the force, but still, they're complete strangers. I guess Rey was so sad about the death of... Some guy she knew for less than a day, that Leia could sense it.

Maz? Tries to give Rey Anakin's lightsaber the first time she sees Rey. Because the lightsaber magically "called out" to Rey, even though she has no connection to it at all. She's not a blood relative, and lightsabers have never called out to people in the past. I guess she's just extra special.

Kylo Ren? Just needs Rey for the information. Suddenly Snoke wants him to bring... her... to... him, and has Kylo drop everything to go after her directly. They even stop looking for Luke Skywalker and BB8's Map in the sequel and focus solely on getting Rey. I guess they just stopped caring about Luke. --Sure, Snoke and Kylo do go after the rebellion in the sequel, but it hardly seems like their main objective.

Yoda? Tells us, the audience, that Rey has surpassed him in the ways of the force. He has been training Jedi for 900 years and she has known the force exists for 18 hours.

In TLJ again she puts in a better showing than Kylo, both in melee combat and with use of force powers. She has to save his ass when fighting the a̶d̶e̶p̶t̶u̶s̶ ̶c̶u̶s̶t̶o̶d̶e̶s̶ imperial sword guys. For some reason after 18 hours of having owned a lightsaber, and briefly swinging her sword at some rocks, she can take on 5 guys at once and has to rescue Kylo. She is literally better than him at fighting after hearing him say "the force" one time.

[Civil War Man]

For example, compare Rey to, say, Tauriel from the Hobbit movies. Rey may have some issues with her character arc and how she's written, but Tauriel is damned near an itemized list of Mary Sue stereotypes.

That's true, but it's generally true of elves, especially Tolkien elves, that they're just too good. Tauriel can at least fall back on being a magical being (who knows actual magic), raised in prosperity, undoubtedly educated and, of course, she's 600 years old. Conversely Rey has been living in a box, near starving and is only 19. Being that damn good is much easier to swallow with those credentials.

You are being too focused on skills. What skills a character has, and why they have them, is only part of the equation, and not even necessarily a critical one. Tauriel has a whole host of problems that are completely unrelated to what skills she does or does not possess, that either don't apply to Rey or apply to a much lesser degree.

Among these issues:
1. She's basically a clone of a character from the source material. Rey's arc is a bit too similar to Anakin's or Luke's at times, but she does have a personality that is distinct from them. Tauriel is pretty much just a female copypasta of Legolas.
2. Essentially has no character arc (Rey's may be rushed or poorly written, but at least she had one).
3. Shoehorned in romantic subplot with a pre-established character (bonus points for Tauriel's being a love triangle with two pre-established characters). Hell, by this measure, Rose is more of a Sue than Rey.
4. The plot has to twist itself into pretzels just to accommodate the character, to the point where it completely undermines the accomplishments of other characters (one of Bilbo's most impressive feats, the escape from Mirkwood, is rewritten to have been a failure without Tauriel's help).

There's also a question of the process of creating the character. From the moment they started writing TFA, Rey was being set up as one of the main protagonists, alongside Finn and (after agreeing not to kill him off) Poe. There are plenty of legitimate arguments that she's a poorly written protagonist, some of them I agree with, but a poorly written protagonist does not a Sue make. Otherwise Johnny from The Room would be a Mary Sue.

Tauriel, meanwhile, only exists because the Hobbit was a sausage fest. The same was true to a lesser extent for Lord of the Rings, but at least the writers had Eowyn to work with, and were able to add more by consolidating Arwen and Glorfindel into one character and having Galadriel occasionally act as narrator/Greek chorus.

[Formless]

The main reason I've never called Batman a Mary Sue isn't because he's a man, it's because he's clearly insane, just in a socially useful sense of the word. In addition to this, he's not universally loved; insofar as he's respected it's because of things that the writers usually do go out of their way to show him working for. The only 'superpower' he didn't earn is money, and that's the least important of his 'abilities.' He's explicitly described as going through exhaustive physical and mental training regimens.

If you want an example of Mary Suedom in comics, the premier example would almost have to be Superman, because writing Superman without Suedom creeping in is hard.

Again, I'm not saying that there aren't sexist bozos abusing these terms. But sexist bozos will abuse literally anything; if we stop using all the linguistic and critical tools abused by sexist bozos, there won't be any left.

The Batman example only goes to further the point that you are less willing to call Batman a Male Sue than a female character; you go out of your way to excuse his powerful Masculine characterization with elements of his character that have little to do with what he can and cannot do by appealing to things which have nothing to do with it; indeed, as one of those authors pointed out, he's also a Sue insofar as he's insane, but almost everyone in universe excuses his insanity except perhaps the Joker-- a villain who is also insane! Whereas many complaints about Rey that lead people to conclude she is a Mary Sue have everything to do with her powers and what she can do, and many of those same people don't care about her character development or misunderstand it. Moreover, as has been pointed out many times, people likewise give Luke and Anakin a pass because of their status as Force using Jedi-- in other words, analogous to Rey. Hell, they don't even notice with those characters.

The latter statement is just a Slippery Slope and and strawman beneath my contempt. Its not just that sexists use it, but that it is used predominately in a sexist way, and that the only definition that seems to adequately define it leads to the conclusion that it is merely a derogatory term, and useless in serious discussion or critique. IF we stopped using all terms that have demonstrable sexist baggage... well, that wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

[APlayerHater]

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.

Batman is not richer than everyone else on the planet. Every woman batman meets doesn't fall in love with him. Batman rejects the advances of women, sometimes, because he's emotionally stunted and cold, not because he's pure and good.

He's a genius and an Olympic athlete level ability and has good looks, sure, but he was trained and achieved these things on his own through his own merit. None of this was given to him, aside from a natural intelligence and his inherited wealth that gave him the resources to achieve these things.

Batman does hold his own among superhumans, but that's only with a lot of money behind himself. And he still doesn't hold a candle to any of them, he struggles, and he certainly doesn't defeat superhumans with ease. Most of his villains have no superpowers, and he barely defeats them.

Other than Commissioner Gordon, most of his allies part ways with him. The loyalty he inspires in those who do trust him is because they've fought together, and he does go out of his way to protect them. Sure, he puts children in harm's way, which is arguably a flaw.

Batman's enemies are obsessed with him at times, especially the joker, but it would be an extreme stretch to say all his enemies are attracted to him. He can plan ahead for a lot, because that's all he's able to do against most of the threats he faces, and even then his main enemies are usually two steps ahead of him until the very end. And Batman is wrong all the time, he's paranoid and trusts no one and pushes everyone away.

Batman is hardly a character with zero flaws and zero explanation as to where he got his abilities.

If a new character came along who had all the gadgets, detective skills and martial arts skills that Batman had, except they were not only an orphan like he was but also self-raised, self-taught in martial arts and detective work, and built all their own gadgets without any monetary resources, and they were even better than Batman at everything, you'd be pissed off.

[Formless]

Nitpicking the Batman example is missing the point.

• You don't have to be the richest to be unbelievably rich, nor to be wish fulfillment for the poor and middle class.
• You can be a genus, Olympic level athlete, gorgeous, or rich, but to be all four enters the territory of undeniable wish fulfillment.
• Also, Batman's training regimen is objectively impossible for any one person to achieve. The human body just doesn't work that way. Plus, the 200+ Martial Arts mastered is the writers not understanding the meaning of the word "mastery" as it pertains to martial arts.
• Worse, when you realize he has to juggle strength training, mental training, martial arts training, being a businessman, sleeping, and being Batman, he's got to have a Hyperbolic Time Chamber in his Batcave. It is literally impossible for him to do all of that in a normal 24 hour day.
• Batman doesn't just hold his own against true Metahumans, he can take out the entire core Justice League members simply because he has planned for it. All of it. Oh, and animators frequently give him and other "non-supers" the ability to tank injuries that should kill them.
• Most of the time his tendency to put children in harms way not only goes unquestioned, it inspires an entire team of superhuman teenagers, the Teen Titans, lead by... Robin.
• That many of Batman's enemies are obsessed with him would, to use a Troperism, make him a Black Hole Sue in certain stories. Not all, but certainly any that involve Joker or Riddler.
• That Batman has flaws is evident only when the writers want them to be relevant. Its inconsistent as all hell, which may be par for the course for many superheroes... but its still a problem.

Look, Batman being a Mary Sue is a matter of perception. But that's part of the problem: its always a matter of perception. To be a better critic, you should learn how to identify whether something is an opinion and whether something is a structural issue with a story. Any one Batman story may be fine; but when you aggregate the sum total of Batman stories, it becomes clear that he gets away with a lot that writers don't do even with other superheroes. And moreover, many of his characteristics are things that female characters almost never get away with without being labeled Mary Sues. Because wish fulfillment characters are expected to me Male.

[tezunegari]

Batman is not the only example of a "wishfullfilment powerfantasy" character in the DC Universe.

There is also Green Arrow, the Robins and pretty much every single hero character in DC and Marvel.

But the DC / Marvel and Batman franchise was created arround this power fantasy.

Rey is a character created for a universe were the Superpowers and their apparent limits are shown differently.

No character so far has been shown to go from "The force is Real?" to "Master Jedi" in less than or about a week. (maybe the TLJ novelization will tell how much time has past more precisely.)
Anakin, the proverbial Star Wars Jesus took about 15 years to go from "extreme reflexes and possibly intuitive piloting and engineering" to "Jedi Knight" and who knows how many years it took him to relearn his force powers with the Sith approach.

Also in EP2 when Yoda had to save Obiwan and Anakin from the debris he looked strained, as well as when he pulled Lukes X-Wing from the swamp.

Rey on the other hand looked only surprised. (there might have been a short moment of her face being locked in concentration but it's been a while since I saw that scene)

[APlayerHater]

Nitpicking the Batman example is missing the point.

• You don't have to be the richest to be unbelievably rich, nor to be wish fulfillment for the poor and middle class.
• You can be a genus, Olympic level athlete, gorgeous, or rich, but to be all four enters the territory of undeniable wish fulfillment.
• Also, Batman's training regimen is objectively impossible for any one person to achieve. The human body just doesn't work that way. Plus, the 200+ Martial Arts mastered is the writers not understanding the meaning of the word "mastery" as it pertains to martial arts.
• Worse, when you realize he has to juggle strength training, mental training, martial arts training, being a businessman, sleeping, and being Batman, he's got to have a Hyperbolic Time Chamber in his Batcave. It is literally impossible for him to do all of that in a normal 24 hour day.
• Batman doesn't just hold his own against true Metahumans, he can take out the entire core Justice League members simply because he has planned for it. All of it. Oh, and animators frequently give him and other "non-supers" the ability to tank injuries that should kill them.
• Most of the time his tendency to put children in harms way not only goes unquestioned, it inspires an entire team of superhuman teenagers, the Teen Titans, lead by... Robin.
• That many of Batman's enemies are obsessed with him would, to use a Troperism, make him a Black Hole Sue in certain stories. Not all, but certainly any that involve Joker or Riddler.
• That Batman has flaws is evident only when the writers want them to be relevant. Its inconsistent as all hell, which may be par for the course for many superheroes... but its still a problem.

Look, Batman being a Mary Sue is a matter of perception. But that's part of the problem: its always a matter of perception. To be a better critic, you should learn how to identify whether something is an opinion and whether something is a structural issue with a story. Any one Batman story may be fine; but when you aggregate the sum total of Batman stories, it becomes clear that he gets away with a lot that writers don't do even with other superheroes. And moreover, many of his characteristics are things that female characters almost never get away with without being labeled Mary Sues. Because wish fulfillment characters are expected to me Male.

Thank you for criticizing me directly. And yes, batman is unrealistic; superheroes are unrealistic beings. I am just pointing out where the quote you cited was incorrect and exaggerated. Besides, as you said, Batman has been written in innumerable stories by innumerable authors; some of it is terrible and some of it is great.

As Tezunegari said, Batman should be compared to other people in his own universe, as well as other comic book characters.

It's extremely fair to compare Rey to Luke and Anakin and show that she's a much more competent character than both of them, and more powerful in the force, despite being younger, having zero training and having basically raised herself as a feral child. Anakin was supposedly the most powerful life form Obi and Quigon had ever seen and Rey casually surpasses him in zero amount of time.

[Formless]

Batman is not the only example of a "wishfullfilment powerfantasy" character in the DC Universe.

There is also Green Arrow, the Robins and pretty much every single hero character in DC and Marvel.

But the DC / Marvel and Batman franchise was created arround this power fantasy.

Rey is a character created for a universe were the Superpowers and their apparent limits are shown differently.

No character so far has been shown to go from "The force is Real?" to "Master Jedi" in less than or about a week. (maybe the TLJ novelization will tell how much time has past more precisely.)
Anakin, the proverbial Star Wars Jesus took about 15 years to go from "extreme reflexes and possibly intuitive piloting and engineering" to "Jedi Knight" and who knows how many years it took him to relearn his force powers with the Sith approach.

Also in EP2 when Yoda had to save Obiwan and Anakin from the debris he looked strained, as well as when he pulled Lukes X-Wing from the swamp.

Rey on the other hand looked only surprised. (there might have been a short moment of her face being locked in concentration but it's been a while since I saw that scene)

I beg to differ. Star Wars is an adventure story, and therefore also has an element of Wish Fulfillment and Power Fantasy to it just like Superheroes do. Indeed, any story that follows the Heroes Journey almost by necessity has these aspects to them, as the hero almost always comes from some sort of mundane background only to surpass everyone else with time or raw talent. The main difference between it and Superheroes is that the Superhero is also a Vigilante, and the structure of a Superhero story comes primarily from detective stories and in Batman's case, Noir. Sometimes they will do a Crisis type event and the plot structure will resemble a Thriller. True, a superhero almost always starts the story already super-powered, just like Rey. But then, as others have pointed out, Anikan started out his story as an absurdly good pilot. Luke started his story at a level of skill good enough to blow a fucking Death Star to pieces, even if he wasn't using mind tricks and the like. And Luke learned some basic Force talents with just a little prompting from Obi Wan. Indeed, what he learned from Obi Wan was the most fundamental things, the single most powerful thing the Force provides. Power over his own destiny.

Sure, I know what you are going to say. Neither Luke or Anakin were dueling with a lightsaber just a short time after they became Jedi. But I counter that with the following: between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back Luke had no one to teach him how to use a lightsaber and yet he managed to impress Vader with one. No, don't tell me Yoda taught him all that Kendo shit in a matter of a few weeks (in fact, if you really stop to think about Empire the timeline of events never did add up), or that Obi Wan was teaching him as a Force Ghost since Luke seemed surprised during the movie every time Obi Wan spoke to him. Luke was self taught, in an art that you really need a sparring partner to get halfway decent at. He was self-taught at the beginning of Return of the Jedi too, because when he goes to Yoda he implies this is the first time since the last movie that he has done so. The Star Wars films have never given us a Jedi training montage that was comprehensive enough to be plausible, unless we assume the most important thing really is to let the Force itself guide you... which is exactly what the characters keep telling us! In Rouge One we see a non-Force sensitive monk who is fucking blind kick the shit out of a squad of Stormies AND manage marksmanship feats that many people who can see would never be able to do. Because the first lesson Obi-Wan had Luke learn was to trust the Force and not his eyes, and that's the most important lesson Luke and the audience ever got on the power of the Force. It is the reason that everyone in the Rebellion says "May the Force Be With You." They literally mean, if you trust the Force over your own instincts, it will make you badass even if you aren't a Jedi.

Finally, I would make a point that the name of Episode VII was "The Force Awakens." One theme I think the writers have snuck into the films that I suspect a lot of people have missed is that the Force is supposed to be more powerful in Rey and Ren's time. Something has happened, perhaps as a result of Luke and Vader's actions in fulfilling that ancient Jedi prophesy, that is letting new Force users like Rey and the kid from the end of TLJ to do things easier and more intuitively. Maybe its even just the legend of Luke Skywalker that has instilled a new faith in people like Rey that gives them a confidence Luke and Anakin never had. It may be that the Jedi and Sith were actually holding something back unwittingly; Luke has to tell Rey that the Force does not belong to the Jedi, and maybe that's got something to do with it-- the old Jedi weren't very good at spreading knowledge of the Force outside their own clique. Either way, we never saw someone stop a blaster bolt in midair until Kylo did it. We never saw someone project a Force illusion across lightyears of space until Luke did it. We never saw a Force ghost drop natural lightning from the sky until Yoda did it. Many of these things were beyond the powers of even the old Jedi, yet no one seems to have a problem with any of it... except when the person accessing these new, unleashed powers is Rey. And she isn't doing anything we haven't seen before! Mind tricks, fighting wit ha lightsaber, telekinesis? Nothing new. Everyone else get a pass but not her?

Thank you for criticizing me directly. And yes, batman is unrealistic; superheroes are unrealistic beings. I am just pointing out where the quote you cited was incorrect and exaggerated. Besides, as you said, Batman has been written in innumerable stories by innumerable authors; some of it is terrible and some of it is great.

As Tezunegari said, Batman should be compared to other people in his own universe, as well as other comic book characters.

It's extremely fair to compare Rey to Luke and Anakin and show that she's a much more competent character than both of them, and more powerful in the force, despite being younger, having zero training and having basically raised herself as a feral child. Anakin was supposedly the most powerful life form Obi and Quigon had ever seen and Rey casually surpasses him in zero amount of time.

Saying that characters from one genre get a pass while characters from another do not is admitting that the criticism is groundless. First because you are saying that certain Genres are completely exempt from the Mary Sue label, when all stories by definition follow the same narrative basics. Second, because Genres are only real insofar as people agree to a common classification system. But many works of fiction cross genre boundaries despite that useful lie. Star Wars straddles the line between Science Fiction and Fantasy, which means that Rey can be compared to Fantasy characters as well. Frankly, a lot of fantasy characters start off their stories absurdly talented. Tolkien's Hobbits are not the norm. And funny thing, but... superheroes cross all genre boundaries as well. Its a genre defined solely by the presence of a particular character archetype, the Superhero itself. However, those characters cross over from all sorts of other genres. Batman comes from the Noir genre, Dr. Strange is a Fantasy Character, Iron Man is Science Fiction, the Green Lanterns are Space Opera, Wonder Woman is Mythological Fantasy and quite fair to compare to Rey IMO, etc. Rey is a Superhero sans the cape. Because all that separates the Superhero from other character archetypes like the Jedi and the Shonen protagonist of anime/manga is an aesthetic and a particular storytelling tradition.

Also, I believe Q99 has a point that you are still exaggerating Rey's capabilities compared to Luke and, well, everyone else in her own films. She isn't as good a pilot as Poe (who is fucking ridiculous unless the Force favors him as well), she is the worst shot, she isn't actually as good a swordsman as Kylo-- everything that makes her special is her faith in the Force even when she isn't certain what it is. And with that faith comes certain abilities... which is exactly what the original trilogy told us. "Do or do not; there is no 'try'."

[Simon_Jester]

I am skeptical of Rey having surpassed untrained-Anakin. I think that has more to do with the fact that we saw Anakin do very few things with the Force prior to the end of Episode I. Rey's been forced into more situations, so she's had to display more power. That doesn't mean Anakin couldn't have done the same things as a boy, or as an adult with negligible training.

Rey looks good in Episode VII in part because Ren is frankly a weak opponent in some ways, and an opponent who's been softened up for her in other ways.

For example, compare Rey to, say, Tauriel from the Hobbit movies. Rey may have some issues with her character arc and how she's written, but Tauriel is damned near an itemized list of Mary Sue stereotypes.

That's true, but it's generally true of elves, especially Tolkien elves, that they're just too good. Tauriel can at least fall back on being a magical being (who knows actual magic), raised in prosperity, undoubtedly educated and, of course, she's 600 years old. Conversely Rey has been living in a box, near starving and is only 19. Being that damn good is much easier to swallow with those credentials.

You are being too focused on skills. What skills a character has, and why they have them, is only part of the equation, and not even necessarily a critical one. Tauriel has a whole host of problems that are completely unrelated to what skills she does or does not possess, that either don't apply to Rey or apply to a much lesser degree.

Among these issues:
1. She's basically a clone of a character from the source material. Rey's arc is a bit too similar to Anakin's or Luke's at times, but she does have a personality that is distinct from them. Tauriel is pretty much just a female copypasta of Legolas.
2. Essentially has no character arc (Rey's may be rushed or poorly written, but at least she had one).
3. Shoehorned in romantic subplot with a pre-established character (bonus points for Tauriel's being a love triangle with two pre-established characters). Hell, by this measure, Rose is more of a Sue than Rey.
4. The plot has to twist itself into pretzels just to accommodate the character, to the point where it completely undermines the accomplishments of other characters (one of Bilbo's most impressive feats, the escape from Mirkwood, is rewritten to have been a failure without Tauriel's help).

Hm. You know, given the core definition features of the Primordial Sue, the original "Lieutenant Mary Sue" of Star Trek fanfiction infamy (minimal character development, shoehorned into a canon plotline, distorting canon plotlines to allow her to excel at the expense of canon characters)... Tauriel is definitely a Mary Sue. If someone had written a fanfic of The Hobbit with Tauriel in it, people would be groaning about the bad fanfic characterization.

Rey, by contrast, is NOT a Mary Sue, she is "just another Star Wars protagonist." Maybe a little better or worse written than Luke or Anakin, but the same general order of thing.

Tauriel, meanwhile, only exists because the Hobbit was a sausage fest. The same was true to a lesser extent for Lord of the Rings, but at least the writers had Eowyn to work with, and were able to add more by consolidating Arwen and Glorfindel into one character and having Galadriel occasionally act as narrator/Greek chorus.

Hm. Would have been interesting if they'd gender-flipped a few of the thirteen dwarves. We have canon support, I think, for the idea that when traveling abroad dwarf women tend to pull a Sweet Polly Oliver.

The Batman example only goes to further the point that you are less willing to call Batman a Male Sue than a female character; you go out of your way to excuse his powerful Masculine characterization with elements of his character that have little to do with what he can and cannot do by appealing to things which have nothing to do with it; indeed, as one of those authors pointed out, he's also a Sue insofar as he's insane, but almost everyone in universe excuses his insanity except perhaps the Joker-- a villain who is also insane!

People excuse his insanity insofar as it's useful, not for random or arbitrary reasons.

I honestly don't think that if you just gender-flipped Batman you'd have a character I'd be calling a Mary Sue. Because you'd still have a character who was explicitly written as having trained long and hard to obtain the skills she has, who works consistently to earn the degree of respect they get from their peers, and who seldom if ever saves the day without effort.

I don't consider, for example, Black Widow from Marvel Comics to be a Mary Sue- she's the most obvious female counterpart to Batman, being a female character with (nominally) no powers who manages to keep up with an entire team whose abilities range from "super soldier" to "flying arsenal" to "god."

In fairness to your point, Batman's insanity is not the best reason to call him "not a Sue." But there are plenty of other good reasons, that would be equally valid for a female character with the same abilities. By contrast, there are other male characters (e.g. Superman) who come much closer to meeting the conditions for Sue-ness.

Whereas many complaints about Rey that lead people to conclude she is a Mary Sue have everything to do with her powers and what she can do, and many of those same people don't care about her character development or misunderstand it. Moreover, as has been pointed out many times, people likewise give Luke and Anakin a pass because of their status as Force using Jedi-- in other words, analogous to Rey. Hell, they don't even notice with those characters.

I can't comment as to those complaints, and deny any responsibility for them.

The latter statement is just a Slippery Slope and and strawman beneath my contempt. Its not just that sexists use it, but that it is used predominately in a sexist way, and that the only definition that seems to adequately define it leads to the conclusion that it is merely a derogatory term, and useless in serious discussion or critique. IF we stopped using all terms that have demonstrable sexist baggage... well, that wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

"Mary Sue" is useful insofar as it is a convenient term for "this character has passed a certain critical threshold of unearned skill/power, unearned respect, and ability to warp plotlines like a Wheel of Time ta'veren, to the point where they are simply unbelievable and uninteresting."

I am not at all convinced that the term has sexist baggage except insofar as it is used by sexists. But sexists also use gender-neutral terms like "stupid," and that doesn't make those terms inherently sexist-baggage-ey.

[Formless]

Actually, on second thought, I apologize for putting so many words to paper when I have a simpler way of expressing my objection to the claim that Batman can't be a Mary Sue but Rey can. If we start giving exemptions of Superheros as a genre but don't also give an exemption to Star Wars and other Adventure type genres, it appears one of three things is going on, and none of them are flattering:

1) You are being hypocritical. The principle seems to be that Superheroes get a pass because by definition their genre is a Power Fantasy, but Star Wars is also a Power Fantasy just of a different kind. Indiana Jones is the same kind of Power Fantasy as Star Wars, just without the spaceships and a male lead. No one asks how a professional archeologist learned pugilism and marksmanship even though it is irrelevant to his official job.

2) You are being sexist. Superheroes are a notoriously male dominated genre, both in the sense that most superhero characters are male and in that most readers are male AND tend to have a Gatekeeper complex that keeps women out of the genre as readers and writers. Superheroes are given a pass because we arbitrarily walled off that Genre for the convenience of men, then don't extend similar benefits to other Power Fantasy genres because they don't cater exclusively to men.

3) You are being both sexist AND dishonest. You not only give Superheroes a pass for the reasons stated above, but your complaints about Rey come from her not being male in a genre you also know to be exempt from this criticism, for the same reasons above. Science Fiction and Fantasy are also famous for being "geek" genres, and all geek genres have the same gatekeeper complex as the Superhero genre, to one degree or another. Your discomfort over Rey is because she refuses to conform to the expectation that she should be male, and the fact people don't complain about Luke and Anakin's abilities is a sign of it.

I am not at all convinced that the term has sexist baggage except insofar as it is used by sexists. But sexists also use gender-neutral terms like "stupid," and that doesn't make those terms inherently sexist-baggage-ey.


I am not at all convinced that the term has sexist baggage except insofar as it is used by sexists. But sexists also use gender-neutral terms like "stupid," and that doesn't make those terms inherently sexist-baggage-ey.

Then you should go back and read the TVTropes page on Mary Sue. Your interpretation of Mary Sue is not the One True Definition of Mary Sue. There are so many fucking definitions of Mary Sue that cherrypicking the one definition you think isn't sexist is dishonest.

Its hard to believe people are so defensive over this. I am literally trying to help you guys avoid accusations of sexism, but first you must let go your attachment to the phrase. Literally nothing changes if you stop using the term, except fewer people will dismiss your arguments as being sexist claptrap.

[APlayerHater]

Saying that characters from one genre get a pass while characters from another do not is admitting that the criticism is groundless.

Um, no.

If I compare Batman to any real life person, he's obviously a Mary Sue in that context.

If you compare Rey to any real life person, she's obviously a Mary Sue in that context. She has supernatural abilities, space ship piloting skills, gun fighting skills, staff fighting skills, speaks multiple languages including binary to the point she can understand casual conversation, and all of this she learned with zero training. Oh also she raised herself. The fact that she is literate surprises me, let alone all this other stuff.

Sure, I know what you are going to say. Neither Luke or Anakin were dueling with a lightsaber just a short time after they became Jedi. But I counter that with the following: between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back Luke had no one to teach him how to use a lightsaber and yet he managed to impress Vader with one. No, don't tell me Yoda taught him all that Kendo shit in a matter of a few weeks (in fact, if you really stop to think about Empire the timeline of events never did add up), or that Obi Wan was teaching him as a Force Ghost since Luke seemed surprised during the movie every time Obi Wan spoke to him. Luke was self taught, in an art that you really need a sparring partner to get halfway decent at. He was self-taught at the beginning of Return of the Jedi too, because when he goes to Yoda he implies this is the first time since the last movie that he has done so. The Star Wars films have never given us a Jedi training montage that was comprehensive enough to be plausible, unless we assume the most important thing really is to let the Force itself guide you... which is exactly what the characters keep telling us!

I can buy Luke mastering his abilities on his own OVER TIME. As in, OVER YEARS.

Going from blocking a few quick blaster bolts to slightly moving his lightsaber took YEARS.

Going from that to the point of being able to Mind Trick and Force Choke people took ADDITIONAL YEARS. Where it's assumed that he was going on more adventures with his rebel friends, mastering his powers, and practicing with his light saber. If not against other opponents who had them, obviously, against people who had guns at the very least.

In Rouge One we see a non-Force sensitive monk who is fucking blind kick the shit out of a squad of Stormies AND manage marksmanship feats that many people who can see would never be able to do. Because the first lesson Obi-Wan had Luke learn was to trust the Force and not his eyes, and that's the most important lesson Luke and the audience ever got on the power of the Force. It is the reason that everyone in the Rebellion says "May the Force Be With You." They literally mean, if you trust the Force over your own instincts, it will make you badass even if you aren't a Jedi.

Dude was trained in the force at the Jedi Temple. He just couldn't cut it as a Jedi and he was relegated to just being a monk with the ability to sense things without seeing them. Basically he mastered the "Let go of your conscious self and act on instict" step... So, lesson 1 of being a Jedi. He's likely at Luke's level at the end of ANH, or slightly surpassing him.

Finally, I would make a point that the name of Episode VII was "The Force Awakens." One theme I think the writers have snuck into the films that I suspect a lot of people have missed is that the Force is supposed to be more powerful in Rey and Ren's time.

The force getting more ridiculous is not a subtle theme they snuck in. It's a bullshit excuse for their lazy film making. These sequels are just rehashes of the prequels but everything is bigger. Bigger death star, bigger star destroyers, bigger force powers.

I have pointed out everything else I hated in another thread. This thread is just about Rey. But yes, I didn't like Yoda summoning a lightning bolt, or Luke astral projecting across the Galaxy, or Snoke Force Choking someone from a hyperspace jump away. It's just ridiculous power creep because the people who make these movies are just remaking the original trilogy, but everyone's more powerful.

Poe Dameron is goddamn ridiculous, he shoots all the guns off a battleship, he kills TIE fighters with ridiculous ease.

Finn is a nightmare when it comes First Order Secrets. Apparently even though he's just a janitor, he knows the layout of every single first order ship and battlestation. He knows not only the layout of Starkiller base is, and exactly where to go to deactivate the shields and where you shoot to blow the thing up. Finn apparently knows exactly how Starkiller base is powered (he tells them it absorbs stars), and where the "thermal oscillator" is. He also knows where the control rooms for the shields are and how to sneak in there and deactivate them.

Finn also knows the layout of Snoke's ship and what to disable to sneak on board. With some help from rose he also knows what you would need to do to deactivate a theoretical hyperspace tracker they're not even certain exists.

I guess don't send your janitor on important missions. God knows that if the janitor defects, your superweapon is as good as dead. At least in ANH they needed the plans to the Death Star to try to figure out a weakness. In reality, they could have just paid off the janitor to tell them how to destroy it.

Snoke is stupidly powerful and knows Sith lightning as well as his special force stasis ability that can just OP Hax any opponent. So, of course, he's killed off in the same scene he displays these abilities because they would make him impossible to beat. He's just the emperor again, except like Rey he just comes from nowhere with no explanation and is more powerful than any established character.. He just exists and he's more powerful than the emperor, screw it why not. Yeah, thousands of years of secrecy and training in the sith arts? Nah, just some guy can come along and copy all their abilities without any explanation.

Yoda's ghost summons a lightning bolt to burn down a tree. Why? Did he know it was empty? Why was Luke burning it down? I thought he wanted to burn it down to destroy the books, but then he tries to go after the books to save them when Yoda burns the tree down. What? And after all that, Yoda's just like "Yeah, the Jedi didn't know anything anyway. It was a stupid tradition."

These movies are basically just "Yeah, remember star wars? Remember everything you thought was cool about star wars? Fuck you. Luke skywalker? He tries to kill his nephew in his sleep. Remember the Emperor? He doesn't have shit on this new guy who came from nowhere. Remember the Jedi? They're nothing special. Any random person can surpass the entire Jedi Order's 1000 generations of teaching after hearing "The Force" once."

If you can learn every single force power we've seen in the films within 1 day after hearing "the force" then what was the point of having a jedi order? What exactly did they teach? Why was there an academy to teach jedi if apparently all you need is to know that the force exists and you instantly learn every power?

[Crazedwraith]

Is the argument 'If Rey is a Mary Sue and Batman is not you must be sexist'? Because that's not what I get from that example. Being a Mary Sue or not is ultimately subjective, it's not about ticking off a list of attributes and if they get too many they're a Sue.

You can write good characters and stories with those attributes and you can write bad ones. Two films can have the same plot and characters and one will be heralded as a masterpiece and the other will bomb. It's all about presentation in the end.

[ray245]

Q99 is being sarcastic there.

Except judging by his argument, it's not the case. He is basically making the argument that "Mary-Sue" is a term used against female characters for acting like other male characters. Except it's not. Male characters who do fall into this model should be accused of being a "mary-sue". The solution is not to remove the term, but actually apply it more often to male characters.

Then you should go back and read the TVTropes page on Mary Sue. Your interpretation of Mary Sue is not the One True Definition of Mary Sue. There are so many fucking definitions of Mary Sue that cherrypicking the one definition you think isn't sexist is dishonest.

Its hard to believe people are so defensive over this. I am literally trying to help you guys avoid accusations of sexism, but first you must let go your attachment to the phrase. Literally nothing changes if you stop using the term, except fewer people will dismiss your arguments as being sexist claptrap.

Is "Mary Sue" a terminology associated with the female gender? Yes. Is it a negative definition? Yes. But at the same time, it's also a term originally created by a woman describing a particular kind of character. That characterization has nothing to do with the gender of the character.

Sexist may be using it for their own ends, but I don't think it's ideal to let such people hijack terminology. If anything, you're giving sexists far more power than they deserve. They are the one with the power to taint word association and limiting the vocabulary we as a whole can use.

The thing is, "Mary-Sue" has yet to fully acquire a fully defined meaning within the current writing community. There is no consensus about the term. It is far more damaging to allow the terminology to acquire a sexist definition.

Do you agree that it's useful to have a term that describes a character that is "effectively flawless in the story, take the spotlight away from the established hero, and have everyone awe over this new character"? Because characters do fall into certain tropes. Terms like an idealistic hero, lovable scourge are all terminology that people used to describe literary characters. It's expressing how certain characters do act in a similar way despite being from different stories.

"Mary Sue" is a term that allows people to make an argument that a certain character falls into certain conventions of story-telling. Things do change if we do away with the term because we'll end up describing the problems of Rey in isolation. It becomes more difficult to communicate the idea that Rey is modeled in a way sharing many similarities with other kinds of protagonists. Should we come up with a better terminology to describe this type of character without being viewed as a sexist? Sure, but that's if this is a term that is actually shared by a wide community.

The idea that the term must be sexist is not a good argument in my opinion. Unlike terms like "slut", it's not a term that is used to describe female behavior. It's describing a gender-neutral character in a particular way that is typically seen as bad writing.

1) You are being hypocritical. The principle seems to be that Superheroes get a pass because by definition their genre is a Power Fantasy, but Star Wars is also a Power Fantasy just of a different kind. Indiana Jones is the same kind of Power Fantasy as Star Wars, just without the spaceships and a male lead. No one asks how a professional archeologist learned pugilism and marksmanship even though it is irrelevant to his official job.

No Formless, you are removing the entire context of characterisation. What makes a character "overpowered" has nothing to do with our actual reality. All fiction live in a constructed universe with its own set of special rule. We accept fictional characters as being able to do stuff an real-life human probably can't do because the physics and rules of those universes are different from ours.

Is a wizard in Harry Potter overpowered because they can do stuff non-wizards can't? No, because they exist in a universe where the basis of comparison is to other fellow wizards. Indiana Jones exist in a world where aracheology don't do normal mundane work but goes around the world saving magical artifacts from Nazis. It exist within its own set of definied rules, not ours.

Rey exist in a pre-existing world where we see the strengths and limitations of other characters. She exists in comparison to other pre-established characters. She existed in a universe where we saw things being defined. What's the world Rey is living in? How good is Rey in comparison to other characters? The problem for Rey is she's practically so good with the force that she don't need a teacher in any way. She's the super-genius that can match MIT professors without any formal education. But unlike goodwill hunting, she doesn't have issues that hold her back in any way. There's nothing she needs to learn from anyone. She has no mentor figure, or have any need of one.

Her issues with a family? Did this hold her back from her potential as a Jedi? Clearly not since she basically jumps on an adventure the moment she is given the chance. Did her issue with her parents being nobody hold her back from wanting to become a Jedi? Not really. Everything is resolved for her by the plot. She's entirely passive in overcoming any personal shortcomings she may have.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, on second thought, I apologize for putting so many words to paper when I have a simpler way of expressing my objection to the claim that Batman can't be a Mary Sue but Rey can. If we start giving exemptions of Superheros as a genre but don't also give an exemption to Star Wars and other Adventure type genres, it appears one of three things is going on, and none of them are flattering:

1) You are being hypocritical. The principle seems to be that Superheroes get a pass because by definition their genre is a Power Fantasy, but Star Wars is also a Power Fantasy just of a different kind. Indiana Jones is the same kind of Power Fantasy as Star Wars, just without the spaceships and a male lead. No one asks how a professional archeologist learned pugilism and marksmanship even though it is irrelevant to his official job.

2) You are being sexist. Superheroes are a notoriously male dominated genre, both in the sense that most superhero characters are male and in that most readers are male AND tend to have a Gatekeeper complex that keeps women out of the genre as readers and writers. Superheroes are given a pass because we arbitrarily walled off that Genre for the convenience of men, then don't extend similar benefits to other Power Fantasy genres because they don't cater exclusively to men.

3) You are being both sexist AND dishonest. You not only give Superheroes a pass for the reasons stated above, but your complaints about Rey come from her not being male in a genre you also know to be exempt from this criticism, for the same reasons above. Science Fiction and Fantasy are also famous for being "geek" genres, and all geek genres have the same gatekeeper complex as the Superhero genre, to one degree or another. Your discomfort over Rey is because she refuses to conform to the expectation that she should be male, and the fact people don't complain about Luke and Anakin's abilities is a sign of it.

Well, personally, I don't think Rey or Batman is a Mary Sue.

If a steak served medium is a well-written character, and a charred mass of smoldering carbon is a Mary Sue, I think Rey might reasonably be considered to be "medium well," maaaybe even "well done," but either way she is far, far over on the side of 'fit for consumption' as opposed to 'unfit, makes the story worse just by being in it,' which is the definitive feature of the Mary Sue.

So where does that take all this nastiness you're throwing at me? Or was it even pointed at me?

I am not at all convinced that the term has sexist baggage except insofar as it is used by sexists. But sexists also use gender-neutral terms like "stupid," and that doesn't make those terms inherently sexist-baggage-ey.

I am not at all convinced that the term has sexist baggage except insofar as it is used by sexists. But sexists also use gender-neutral terms like "stupid," and that doesn't make those terms inherently sexist-baggage-ey.

Then you should go back and read the TVTropes page on Mary Sue. Your interpretation of Mary Sue is not the One True Definition of Mary Sue. There are so many fucking definitions of Mary Sue that cherrypicking the one definition you think isn't sexist is dishonest.

The TVTropes page presents a variety of definitions that are all non-sexist or can reasonably be applied in a non-sexist way.

Me, of the menu of examples they list, I identify "Sueness" as characteristic of a poorly written character, a clichéd character, an over-idealized character, an infallible character, a center of attention (this one works best in fanfic, and doesn't really apply to any protagonist in their own story), as an alien element that distorts the normal rules and conventions of a setting (i.e. dropping a shonen character into a noir setting), or as a character who possesses levels of unearned skill/power/respect out of proportion with their achievements in the context of the genre.

That's about seven different metrics. Rey barely even triggers my Sue-dar. Batman pings it a little harder but not hard enough to register. Superman pings it considerably harder than Batman, because his powers are unearned and because he is much more often presented as a moral paragon, despite having to sacrifice and risk far less to adhere to his moral code than many other heroes. Tauriel pings it pretty hard because she is, in effect, an OC warping a canon storyline around herself; a male character doing many of the same things would ping the Sue-dar about as hard, I think.

Its hard to believe people are so defensive over this. I am literally trying to help you guys avoid accusations of sexism, but first you must let go your attachment to the phrase. Literally nothing changes if you stop using the term, except fewer people will dismiss your arguments as being sexist claptrap.

I'm going to be honest, I've started actively rebelling against this kind of thing, because I don't see where it ends. How much vocabulary am I going to have to sacrifice because someone else decided that someone else was abusing it? At what point am I entitled to say "show the harm and the inherent injustice of the term's use, or let it rest?"

[Formless]

Is the argument 'If Rey is a Mary Sue and Batman is not you must be sexist'? Because that's not what I get from that example. Being a Mary Sue or not is ultimately subjective, it's not about ticking off a list of attributes and if they get too many they're a Sue.

You can write good characters and stories with those attributes and you can write bad ones. Two films can have the same plot and characters and one will be heralded as a masterpiece and the other will bomb. It's all about presentation in the end.

I'm saying that the argument for giving the Superhero genre an exemption but not other Speculative Fiction Adventure titles belays either hypocrisy, sexism, or dishonesty and sexism combined. And it has to do with the well known sexism surrounding the Superhero genre, and geek culture as a whole.

On the other hand, if you believe that the term is entirely subjective, then we come back to the point that its only purpose is to be a derogatory label rather than a profound insight into what is wrong with a character. Derogatory labels can't be taken seriously.

If you believe you have valid criticisms of a story's presentation, that's fine, but that's a more specific and frankly useful criticism than calling a character a Mary Sue and leaving it at that. Like one of the authors I cited previously said, most of the time when a character is called a Mary Sue, if the complaint isn't a result of sexism there is usually more important things wrong with the story than just the one character being badly written.

[ray245]

I'm saying that the argument for giving the Superhero genre an exemption but not other Speculative Fiction Adventure titles belays either hypocrisy, sexism, or dishonesty and sexism combined. And it has to do with the well known sexism surrounding the Superhero genre, and geek culture as a whole.

Then the argument should be about NOT giving superhero genre the exemption. You're completely using the wrong argument for your goals. You say there is a double-standard being applied here. Your solution is to completely remove "Mary-Sue" as a term.

How does that remove the problem of a double-standard?

If you believe you have valid criticisms of a story's presentation, that's fine, but that's a more specific and frankly useful criticism than calling a character a Mary Sue and leaving it at that. Like one of the authors I cited previously said, most of the time when a character is called a Mary Sue, if the complaint isn't a result of sexism there is usually more important things wrong with the story than just the one character being badly written.

An author that thinks power-fantasy and self-insert are part of good story writing is not someone I can take seriously.