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anyone else bored/frustrated by all the "Mary Sue" debates?

CorporalCaptain said:
How did Rey get off of Starkiller Base? All by herself, right? Oh, no, wait, she didn't! Rey needed Finn to be thinking of her, to get a ship there to get her out. That's not her getting "upstaged," either, by the way.
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She freed her own self after unlocking another few force powers, and then beat the villain in a duel. You think she needed them to bring a ship which they already shown she could probably repair and fly better than them? Somehow this is supposed to be comparable to Luke getting an arm cut off and nearly dropped to his death? He also needed Obi Wan to take on Vader.

I don't even like/dislike either Rey or Luke that much. But there are some very real obvious differences between these characters it's a conversation killer when it inevitably turns into a mary sue debate about the criticisms being sexist
 
Makarov said:
She freed her own self after unlocking another few force powers, and then beat the villain in a duel.
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A) The duel wasn't finished, because the ground separated them.
B) Kylo fought Rey after being hit with Chewie's crossbow.
C) Kylo wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to turn her. That's not made up, it's straight from the dialog: "You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!"

You think she needed them to bring a ship which they already shown she could probably repair and fly better than them?
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D) We'll never know whether she could have actually gotten off the planet on her own, because Finn got the Falcon to go there regardless, which came in really handy when the planet was blowing up around her.
E) Given what Han did to actually get the Falcon there and how god-awful Rey's take-off had been when she first boarded her, I really doubt that she was a better pilot than Han, but it's nice that you think she was better.
 
Makarov said:
She freed her own self after unlocking another few force powers, and then beat the villain in a duel. You think she needed them to bring a ship which they already shown she could probably repair and fly better than them?
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Yes, I do think that. I think Rey also has more skills than Luke due to her survival training and being around ships for 15ish years. Her skills make sense. Luke being able to jump from brush piloting to flying in a military formation against seasoned military pilots and being one of 4 to survive? That strains credulity.

Also, the whole "beat the villain in a duel" thing-Kylo just had his guts cauterized. I have no doubt that at the height of their power Kylo will be more than a match for Rey.
 
I don't think Rey is a Mary Sue in TFA; although she certainly comes closer than Luke does in ANH. She seems to acquire her force powers instinctively, rather than through training - as shown to be necessary in the OT and PT.
 
I mean you're giving me a list of explanations & set up to explain why Rey ends up succeeding and awesome in every scene, but I didn't need that with Luke because it wasn't completely ridiculous. He made a lucky shot on the death star and it looked hard. And it was set up with him starting to learn about force which looked hard. I didn't see Luke kick Vader's ass, beat Han Solo at smuggling and have people explain it was because he grew up on a rugged farm with an uncle who gambled and vader got shot by chewbacca before the fight, lmao.
 
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It was explained in ANH that Luke was a natural pilot (or was that EU?) and that Obi Wans force ghost helped him make the killing shot.
 
Makarov said:
I mean you're giving me a list of explanations & set up to explain why Rey ends up succeeding and awesome in every scene, but I didn't need that with Luke because it wasn't completely ridiculous. He made a lucky shot on the death star and it looked hard. And it was set up with him starting to learn about force which looked hard. I didn't see Luke kick Vader's ass, beat Han Solo at smuggling and have people explain it was because he grew up on a rugged farm with an uncle who gambled and vader got shot by chewbacca before the fight, lmao.
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I thought it was explained well enough for both characters...:shrug:
 
Yo, I thought this was the General Trek forum.

I think the term "Mary Sue" gets thrown around too much and casually applied to characters that don't actually fit this type. The only true Mary Sue in all of Trek is Wesley Crusher, IMO. Definitely a surrogate for the producer.

Kor
 
Kor said:
Yo, I thought this was the General Trek forum.

I think the term "Mary Sue" gets thrown around too much and casually applied to characters that don't actually fit this type. The only true Mary Sue in all of Trek is Wesley Crusher, IMO. Definitely a surrogate for the producer.

Kor
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I agree.
 
5sNmYR7.jpg
 
Disco!Disco! said:
"I haven't seen it, therefore everyone is lying." LOL, K. I've seen it plenty.



Where do you get these notions?

I've seen "Mary Sue is a sexist meaningless term" for well over fifteen years--and that's just my experience. Who knows how long it's been debated. Your internet experience =/= reality.
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If you are projecting, you've already ended the discussion. age
Like I stated before, I've never seen the character Michael Burnham being accused of being a "Mary Sue" character; though I have seen plenty of criticism of the character being treated as if they are a form of sexism. I also don't believe that anyone accusing MB of being being know what the term "Mary Sue" is, hence my original statement is still valid.

And btw? Not to age myself, but I "surfed" the Internet back in the BBS days, which is ultimately irrelevant to this discussion, and the "Mary Sue" trope has been around longer than that. Ergo, try again.
 
CorporalCaptain said:
That's not at all the general nature of objections to calling Rey a Mary Sue.

It's the other way around actually, viz.: "The criticisms of Rey are sexist, therefore it's insulting."
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Thing is, calling the criticism of Rey "sexist" was used to not address the criticism of the character. There have been plenty of female-led characters in the past; the problem with Rey is that she, unlike past characters, lacked the ability to grow as a character, which makes a rather boring character.
 
dswynne1 said:
If you are projecting, you've already ended the discussion. age
Like I stated before, I've never seen the character Michael Burnham being accused of being a "Mary Sue" character; though I have seen plenty of criticism of the character being treated as if they are a form of sexism. I also don't believe that anyone accusing MB of being being know what the term "Mary Sue" is, hence my original statement is still valid.
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You're not making sense. You said people don't call Michael a Mary Sue because you haven't seen it, but then you say that people who call her a Sue don't know what the term means. Which is it?

dswynne1 said:
And btw? Not to age myself, but I "surfed" the Internet back in the BBS days, which is ultimately irrelevant to this discussion, and the "Mary Sue" trope has been around longer than that. Ergo, try again.
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The Mary Sue epithet has been around or a while, but people challenging it as sexist rubbish has also been around for a while. It didn't start with Rey. Where did you get that idea anyway?
 
Disco!Disco! said:
You're not making sense. You said people don't call Michael a Mary Sue because you haven't seen it, but then you say that people who call her a Sue don't know what the term means. Which is it?



The Mary Sue epithet has been around or a while, but people challenging it as sexist rubbish has also been around for a while. It didn't start with Rey. Where did you get that idea anyway?
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I think the idea is the term has been around forever and people have called it sexist before but the term was never used as part of some bigger political issue about society as a whole. The Mary Sue argument isn't just some artistic argument anymore where some sexism comes out. It's now just another metaphor of society or the patrioarchy as as whole being sexist. Not to mention yet another example of just how divided society has become in this day and age.

Basically people on the left feel the term has been politicized in order to sort of make sexist arguments via code. People on the right think these strong female characters are just excuse to go after men or to attack trump and Hollywood basically uses movies and tv not just to make entertainment but to make political statements or to go after Trump or men.

The Mary Sue argument at some point stops being about the actual characters and whether or not a character is or isn't such a thing. It like many things on the internet just becomes another battle front in the culture war that is more heated these days than maybe since the 60's.

Jason
 
TV Tropes popularized the "Mary Sue" term before it was used for Rey. It's kind of a perfect storm going on right now. We've simultaneously become more aware of the principles and components of entertainment and the writing has become much more overt. And the last piece is the social networking aspect, that many are more interested in the meta-arguments of what we're watching the work itself. The work is merely a springboard for the dumpster-fires. Ghostbusters 2016 and Last Jedi were good examples of that, but Discovery is as well. I can pretty much guarantee you that some of the biggest defenders of things like Ghostbusters 2016 don't REALLY like that movie. They only want to claim they like it as a symbolic gesture...to wave the flag for their ideology. That's why the dominant defense of these sorts of things isn't to sing the inherent praises of the work (since there aren't any) but to hang slanderous labels on the haters.
 
mos6507 said:
I can pretty much guarantee you that some of the biggest defenders of things like Ghostbusters 2016 don't REALLY like that movie. They only want to claim they like it as a symbolic gesture...to wave the flag for their ideology.
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ok help me out here what is the SINISTER IDEOLOGY?
 
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