That's not a Mary Sue. That's pretty standard for heroes.
Seasons 1-2 or 3-4?
- Thread starter BlueStuff
- Start date
No, Did you see everyone praising Kirk or Picard or Cisco after every mission or any of them blatantly ignoring orders every episode and running off doing their own thing... In the end Michael is a poorly written character if she was not in the Star Trek universe she would not have survived past season one...
Yeah I feel like protagonists generally have a lot of 'Mary Sue' traits. Rey and Michael Burnham are both leads in their own sagas with their own cast of characters, so they're naturally going to to drive the action and the story will be on their side a lot of the time.
Burnham's arc has been all about learning to work in a command structure, both as a leader and a follower, as she's been getting better at it over time (with some setbacks along the way). Rey, on the other hand, is more of a Han Solo. She's on the team, and she has a master, but if she wanted to she could just fly off and do her own thing. So she does.
Poorly written does not equal Mary Sue.
And I doubt Michael did those things every episode. I'm not interested in a tit for tat comparison. I can think of other captains doing what Michael did. If she wasn't in Trek I would still watch her.
Mileage as always will vary.
Yup. And that doesn't make them Mary Sue's. That people consider them poorly written doesn't make them Mary Sue's. It's ok to not like a character.
It seems Star Trek has forgotten how to write strong female characters for it seems all strong female leads must be like Beowulf( I see me how great I am)... Star Trek had strong female characters in DS9, Voyager, Enterprise and in Voyager had one as the lead... What happen to the writers...
Janeway was written so inconsistently that I think writer problems started way before this generation of Trek writers.
And Beowulf is a classic so I fail to see the issue...
Gawd, this is like those posts claiming that it's too political now, and - when told that Trek was always political - that it used to be subtle.
Janeway was a very divisive character; labelled a Mary Sue and mentally unstable. People complained vociferously about Seven being far too central to Voyager's stories, and being overpowered (not least being able to bring back the dead!). T'Pol and Seven both suffered from being gratuitously sexualised.
Not exactly the best examples of great writing.
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A 14-minute video from Ketwolski (NuTrek fan) specifically about Michael Burnham and why she is a Mary Sue:
I want to point out something that is not fully addressed in the video:
One aspect of Mary Sue is that people in power are enthralled/enamored by her or fall in love with her.
The former is was happened to Georgiou when Mikey B came onboard the Shenzhou, and Lorca was in love with Michelle Burnham (or rather her mirror version). That the captain of the starship falls in love with the Mary Sue character is a main trope of the old "Mary Sue"-type fan fic stories in the Fanzines.
That Georgiou and Lorca, both captains, are enthralled by Burnham is so typical of a "Mary Sue"-type character.
Lorca is saying something like "Help me Mikey B to create a new way to fly".
And Beowulf is a classic so I fail to see the issue...
Because Beowulf would be considered a Gary Sue( Male version of a Mary Sue)... There are Gary Sue's out there too...
It's a Gary Stu, not Gary Sue, and unless it's an idealized authorial insert for an anonymous 9th or 10th century Saxon, which it's clearly not given its recounting of centuries of Danish royalty from 500 years earlier, it's not a true Gary Stu, just the generic way the term has come to be used or abused since its conception.
I suspect when Beowulf is called a Gary Stu, it's probably largely in mockery or retaliation for every female character of any exceptional skill level or rise in rank and achievement getting called out for that when it's traditionally and commonly ignored among male characters walking the same type of Hero's Journey. For instance, there's very little to differentiate Rey's journey from Luke Skywalker's, but Rey's journey gets all the opprobrium while Luke does not. Please don't launch into a debate about Star Wars now; that was just an example.
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Gary Sue or Gary Stu either is correct... In modern literary terms Beowolf , Gilamesh, or Hawkeye(Mash) are all Sues... Think about it. These ancient text were fan fiction of the Gods. They are characters that warp their universe they inhabit...
The problem of course is that the term Mary Sue and it's male counterparts have been used and miss-used so much that they have lost all meaning.
Not every Sue is an idealized author-self insert, for example.
And there are no universal aspects that make a character a Mary Sue/Stu/whatever except "Bad Writing"
I can still remember when I first ventured into creative writing, there were all those "Mary Sue tests" out there that supposedly told you whether your character was a Sue (male or female)
There were some aspects that highlighted bad writing mistakes that might turn a character into a Sue, but most of it was aspects and traits even many beloved characters have, and you can have a compelling character that ticks almost all the boxes for stereotypical Sue-ness and you can have a character who ticks none of the boxes and still ends up a Sue, it's all just how its used.
Not every Sue is an idealized author-self insert, for example.
And there are no universal aspects that make a character a Mary Sue/Stu/whatever except "Bad Writing"
I can still remember when I first ventured into creative writing, there were all those "Mary Sue tests" out there that supposedly told you whether your character was a Sue (male or female)
There were some aspects that highlighted bad writing mistakes that might turn a character into a Sue, but most of it was aspects and traits even many beloved characters have, and you can have a compelling character that ticks almost all the boxes for stereotypical Sue-ness and you can have a character who ticks none of the boxes and still ends up a Sue, it's all just how its used.
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Yeah, they've reached near "woke" levels of red flags that warn me to ignore any one using them unironically.
Mary Sues make no mistakes and can do anything.
- In "Battle at the Binary Stars", Burnham royally fucks up by killing T'Kuvma by accident after Captain Georgiou is killed.
- In a Season 2 episode, "Project Daedalus", Burnham can't bring herself to kill Airiam after it's proven she's been compromised and a threat to the mission. Nhan has to do what Burnham couldn't.
- In a Season 4 episode, "Rubicon", Rillak had some doubts about whether or not Burnham would what it takes to bring in Book, which is why Nhan was brought back for an episode, to make sure Burnham could track down Book. And Book still managed to get away.
Her entire character arc in the first season, after "Battle at the Binary Stars", is about redeeming herself. Why would she have to redeem herself if everyone thinks she's great? She wouldn't.
In the second season, Spock and Burnham don't get along easily. If she's so great, she would've. And she said horrible things to Spock in their youth. If she was so perfect and great, she wouldn't have and then she wouldn't have later had regrets.
You've likely just been reciting the same thing for five years, and have been taking the thought for granted, without actually looking at things that don't favor your position. You think the other characters and the series itself think Burnham doesn't have flaws and they praise her universally, I say that's not the case.
In TNG -- which I think is your go-to -- everyone at the beginning was talking up Shelby as the greatest thing since sliced bread in "The Best of Both Worlds"; except Riker, who felt threatened. I don't remember her being thought of as a Mary Sue. But, much as I hate typing this, I guess 1990 was a different time...
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The one big that is usually associated with Sues that Burnan has is that she's the before unmentioned (adopted) sister of a canon character.
But as I wrote above there are no traits that are exclusive to Sues, it's just how you use the traits and tropes.
If, for example, Burnan's status as Spocks' adopted sister had been used to shove her into TOS and had given her instant status onboard the Enterprise while pushing other, more established characters into the background...that would have made her a Sue.
As it was, from what I remember, her being Spock's adopted sister hardly mattered outside that arc with Spock in Season 2 and was almost completely pointless except for the sake of name dropping, and got increasingly more pointless after the switch to the far future.
Really the only thing it resulted in was the appearance of Peck's Spock. And even that could have been done without the sibling connection.
But as I wrote above there are no traits that are exclusive to Sues, it's just how you use the traits and tropes.
If, for example, Burnan's status as Spocks' adopted sister had been used to shove her into TOS and had given her instant status onboard the Enterprise while pushing other, more established characters into the background...that would have made her a Sue.
As it was, from what I remember, her being Spock's adopted sister hardly mattered outside that arc with Spock in Season 2 and was almost completely pointless except for the sake of name dropping, and got increasingly more pointless after the switch to the far future.
Really the only thing it resulted in was the appearance of Peck's Spock. And even that could have been done without the sibling connection.
Michael B. never really screws up but like a Mary Sue, she never gets punished for all her insubordination, like disobeying orders or talking out of turn or down to superior officers. She is never put in her place. You know in Star Trek Lower Decks has a Mary Sue over the top character Beckett Mariner but she get punished for her insubordination from being demoted to being thrown in the brig... B. Mariner is not a Mary Sue while Michael B. is a Mary Sue... I have tired of everyone praising Michael B. over and over another sign of a Mary Sue... She reminds me of Indian god Krishna with all this praising of her feats...
I suppose she didn't spend six months in prison and didn't lose her XO position either.
Next.
You can correct me but she was sentence for life but six months later she is on the Discovery can we say Mary Sue... Her losing her XO was a effort to give her cover as a Mary Sue but she still was hanging out with the Captain, the head of Star Fleet and so on... not acting as a specialist...
This feels like such a throwback to the 2018 days of the forum.
Sorry, but back to 2022. I like the S3-S4 version of the show better because I think they can get more mileage out of it now than in the first two seasons when they were constantly butting up against TOS.
Sorry, but back to 2022. I like the S3-S4 version of the show better because I think they can get more mileage out of it now than in the first two seasons when they were constantly butting up against TOS.
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