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Jan 18, 2021 17:48
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Well, yeah, if you were writing the tenth member of the Fellowship of the Ring and not having her swoon into Aragorn/Legolas/Boromir's manly manly arms what were you even doing???
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Jan 18, 2021 17:56
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There is a colloquial definition where I think most people are coming from where they simply mean badly written wish fulfillment empowerment fantasy but most of the time I don't ever really see the rigorous legwork done to convincingly argue it. It usually just ends up being a short hand for "character I don't like" (See the hate for Rey/Captain Marvel). I think whether the character/story is fun and/or enjoyable is a little more important than whether the character is "challenged" by some nebulous definition. Like by the definition people on the internet often use, Saitama from One Punch Man is a Mary Sue, he gets his ridiculous power trivially easily (through a tough but not superhuman workout), defeats enemies with just one punch, walks up and chills/hangs out with all these other professional heroes, has a bunch of people devoted and following him, and his emotional "conflict" over being too strong for his own good isn't really taken seriously. But it's entertaining and fun as all hell and that's what matters.
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Jan 18, 2021 17:57
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Rumda posted:its generally used nowadays to refer to a female protagonist who approaches the amount of poo poo a male protagonist gets away with Oh wow I had somehow managed to forget that this is a thing people do. That is a fair objection. E: One Punch Man is a curious example. I see where you're coming from; I wouldn't call him a Mary Sue, but I also wouldn't say someone was wrong for coming to that conclusion. I guess he'd be kind of a send-up of the idea: if you were just straight up better than everyone you meet and also super chill and down-to-earth about it, is that really an enjoyable life? Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 18:01
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Oh wow I had somehow managed to forget that this is a thing people do. That is a fair objection. Wittgen posted:Ender has many Mary Sue characteristics but he suffers greatly. The story denies him things he wants. He does not resolve the conflict in a way that is morally acceptable to him. I think that makes it hard to call him a Sue. At least in book one.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:09
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Yeah sorry for being blaise, my specific objection to the term is that mary sue has lost its original meaning and become a generic insult for any character the person saying it doesnt like. I think ender specifically isnt even a good example of what mary sue used to mean considering his whole time in the book is being manipulated by everyone around him, he doesnt actually have very much agency in his own life to be the type of wish fulfillment character a mary sue was supposed to represent. And obvs the soft misogyny thats developed over the years in connection to the term doesnt help
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Jan 18, 2021 18:20
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As a young gay kid I loved Ender's Game and was upset when I found out that Card was pretty openly homophobic It was also confusing as hell because up to that point I had never read a book with more homoerotic subtext than that Although the absurdity of two children fomenting unrest by posting on the internet has circled back into plausibility
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Jan 18, 2021 18:22
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With Saitama, it's mainly a joke, and while he has all the capabilities of a mary-sue, he's really not supposed to be cool. His eyes don't change color, and he doesn't have fancy cool hair; he's bald and dumb looking. A lot of his associates have big long cool scenes about how awesome and cool they are, which would make them seem like mary sues if it weren't for them being humbled and emasculated by this loser.ultrafilter posted:The author commentary for book 5 is pretty explicit about how a diverse group is up against an old white guy. I don't think Rich is a chud. Tarquin's group seems about as diverse as the order, and Tarquin isn't even the oldest and whitest among them.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:25
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Pope Guilty posted:I don't feel like Card could've written Miko? Han Qing-Jao is basically Miko, though (complete with the breakdown over no longer having the favor of the gods).
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Jan 18, 2021 18:38
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Just because it has been misused doesn't mean the term doesn't hold value anymore imo. It started as an observation of wish-fulfillment characters in fanworks that serve the author more than they serve the readers, and that is still a common enough sight to be "real" nowadays in original works or otherwise. The term never had a strict definition, which doesn't help, but the general concepts you associate with the term (lack of challenge, casual egotism, universal adoration, etc.) coincide with concepts you would associate with "badly written" characters enough that it is still a useful shorthand. Also not that the term "Mary Sue" is important to exist or anything, but as a principle I just don't like the idea of backing away from words/images/whatever that have been misused by assholes, because if people keep doing that then there'll be nothing left for the non-assholes in the world.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:39
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blizzardvizard posted:Just because it has been misused doesn't mean the term doesn't hold value anymore imo. It started as an observation of wish-fulfillment characters in fanworks that serve the author more than they serve the readers, and that is still a common enough sight to be "real" nowadays in original works or otherwise. The term never had a strict definition, which doesn't help, but the general concepts you associate with the term (lack of challenge, casual egotism, universal adoration, etc.) coincide with concepts you would associate with "badly written" characters enough that it is still a useful shorthand. to be honest it was always a misogynistic trope designed to poor scorn on women writing fanfiction in male dominated fandoms
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Jan 18, 2021 18:44
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Just fire back by calling bland male heroes Gary Stus.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:44
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SlothfulCobra posted:Tarquin's group seems about as diverse as the order, and Tarquin isn't even the oldest and whitest among them. Yeah but Tarquin and Elan are the main characters of the story he's playing out in his head. He has his buddies and he treats them like equals, but he also knows that he himself is the driving force of the story, and they're just along for the ride. He is perfectly fine with Elan rebuking him and swearing to cast him down, but he completely snaps when he realizes that Elan is willing to yield the stage to someone else, who incidentally include a person of color, a woman and a queer person. The point not being that Tarquin is a closet bigot, but that he represents a worldview which Rich considers outdated, and his inability to grow and adapt were what caused his fall.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:44
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:He is perfectly fine with Elan rebuking him and swearing to cast him down, but he completely snaps when he realizes that Elan is willing to yield the stage to someone else, who incidentally include a person of color, a woman and a queer person. I don't think Tarquin's reaction would have been different if Elan was following an Aryan superman. He was mad because his son was acting as a sidekick instead of being the protagonist of the Order.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:56
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I never read any sort of racism out of Tarquin. I figure the only reason that he's white is because he's supposed to look exactly like Elan, just older.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:58
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Yes, that is the point. Tarquin, the individual, would hate the story just as much if Elan played a supporting role in a band of all white dudes, and would presumably be perfectly happy if he had a non-white queer daughter who grew up to be the definitive protagonist of her own story. The story we're told is that of an old white man railing against main characters who are not white men, regardless. Stories can have morals beyond the expressed views of the characters therein.
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Jan 18, 2021 19:09
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Male mary sues are marty stus. It's a clear term for a particular kind of bad writing that can get easily misused.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:19
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sebmojo posted:Male mary sues are marty stus. It's a clear term for a particular kind of bad writing that can get easily misused. Yeah that doesn't hold much water with just how little marty stu or another male version is ever used even in the few times its used when talking about male characters.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:34
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Rumda posted:its generally used nowadays to refer to a female protagonist who approaches the amount of poo poo a male protagonist gets away with Then why does "Marty Stu" exist e: like, people are literally referring to a male protagonist here so why is anyone up in arms about it
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Jan 18, 2021 20:43
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Then why does "Marty Stu" exist it barely does Cup Runneth Over posted:e: like, people are literally referring to a male protagonist here so why is anyone up in arms about it Rumda fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 20:44
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Pretty much the only time I recall hearing the term was regarding Wesley Crusher. I think it's a fair criticism that a term which is only negative is going to get used to mean "thing I don't like" and go down a hole of toxicity. But it did nicely describe the trope where a character pops up without having been shown to have earned respect and suddenly he's the center of attention and everyone's talking about him and the ship's crew is suddenly incompetent so that he's able to outshine them.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:There is a colloquial definition where I think most people are coming from where they simply mean badly written wish fulfillment empowerment fantasy but most of the time I don't ever really see the rigorous legwork done to convincingly argue it. I don't get how Saitama can be considered a Marty Stu character since he's dumb as hell and that aspect of his personality is played up for laughs whereas a Mary Sue character should be unnaturally perfect.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:51
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Mniot posted:Pretty much the only time I recall hearing the term was regarding Wesley Crusher. It's Psteve!
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Jan 18, 2021 20:55
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I think there can be a certain kind of emergent writing trap whereby an author's depiction of female characters can/will be considered A Commentary on their opinion on All Women Everywhere by some people, and that this can have a chilling effect on their willingness to write severely flawed or otherwise interesting female characters (either with authors being hesitant to write it, or it being flagged by publishers and proofreaders), and this kind of "representative pressure" does not exist for male characters because people are less given to hyper-scrutinising male characters in an attempt to divine the intent and/or opinions of the author. I think some combination of that and people being better at "writing what they know" and projecting themselves onto their same-gendered protagonists (while being convinced that they don't know women as well because they're SO DIFFERENT to men) contributes to the "safe, boring, perfect" female character being more common than the male equivalent. In my experience shonen stuff is kind of full of male bland, boring, perfect characters, though, to the point that "generic shonen protagonist" is a meme in and of itself.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:55
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mandatory lesbian posted:Yeah sorry for being blaise, my specific objection to the term is that mary sue has lost its original meaning and become a generic insult for any character the person saying it doesnt like. I think ender specifically isnt even a good example of what mary sue used to mean considering his whole time in the book is being manipulated by everyone around him, he doesnt actually have very much agency in his own life to be the type of wish fulfillment character a mary sue was supposed to represent. IMHO a mary sue character can still experience hardship and be shunned by people, it's just that those people are obviously in the wrong and failing to recognize the character's immense genius, and those wrongs are eventually righted and even the character's detractors come to praise them. I agree though that the way the term was originally coined, wish fulfillment self-insert is definitely part and parcel (hence why the term originated in fanfic), so Ender probably wouldn't meet the standards and is more of an obnoxious Chosen One type with an eye-rolling amount of superiority to everyone around him Rumda posted:it barely does Part of why Marty Stu is rarely used is that a lot of people see Mary Sue as a gender-neutral trope and apply it to male characters without feeling a need to gender it.
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Jan 18, 2021 20:59
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Also Rich please post an update so the thread can stop gazing into the
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Jan 18, 2021 21:04
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As I've said before mary sue is a misogynistic trope and was originally used as one and still is.
Rumda fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 21:12
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Rumda posted:As I've said before mary sue is a misogynistic trope and was originally used as one and still is. It's a misogynistic trope that also accurately describes some awful writing we've all been subjected to before. "Karen" is simultaneously a real phenomenon of entitled assholes in retail and an excuse to be misogynistic as hell as long as the target woman is over thirty and has some amount of self confidence We have to live in the same culture and use the same language as misogynistic psychos and they will appropriate terms with sincere good intentions behind them.
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Jan 18, 2021 22:18
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I was figured it was the point that Tarquin wasn't particularly racist or anything like that to lull you into a false sense of security that maybe Elan's dad isn't that much of a bad person, just someone who needs to do bad things for the greater good! Riatsala posted:As a young gay kid I loved Ender's Game and was upset when I found out that Card was pretty openly homophobic Also the idea of the West constructing their own Great Firewall and de-anonymizing the Net to require government or corporate sponsored registration as a direct result of Russia/China doing their thing. SlothfulCobra posted:With Saitama, it's mainly a joke, and while he has all the capabilities of a mary-sue, he's really not supposed to be cool. His eyes don't change color, and he doesn't have fancy cool hair; he's bald and dumb looking. A lot of his associates have big long cool scenes about how awesome and cool they are, which would make them seem like mary sues if it weren't for them being humbled and emasculated by this loser. WarpedLichen posted:I don't get how Saitama can be considered a Marty Stu character since he's dumb as hell and that aspect of his personality is played up for laughs whereas a Mary Sue character should be unnaturally perfect. That's the point. If you're not inclined to think a character is a Mary Sue, you'll easily find reasons to say they're not, which is not convincing to the people making the claim ("Oh you're just biased defending something you like!") and in the reverse is also true, that for someone who doesn't like a character no matter the logic or reason provided will continue to find ways to stubbornly continue to claim the character they don't like is a Mary Sue. For example: "The story is just a joke" -> "Do you really actually BELIEVE that though!? The author is just pretending to be joking!" I am not claiming Saitama is a Mary Sue, only that much like Saitama, there exists innumerable characters out there where if you strip away all context and nuance of the text and just describe the elements of the Plot to its barest elements you can probably easily disingenuously claim characters XYZ are Mary Sues! Which is what repeatedly happens. blizzardvizard posted:Just because it has been misused doesn't mean the term doesn't hold value anymore imo. It started as an observation of wish-fulfillment characters in fanworks that serve the author more than they serve the readers, and that is still a common enough sight to be "real" nowadays in original works or otherwise. The term never had a strict definition, which doesn't help, but the general concepts you associate with the term (lack of challenge, casual egotism, universal adoration, etc.) coincide with concepts you would associate with "badly written" characters enough that it is still a useful shorthand. I mean a writer shouldn't be writing if they aren't writing something for themselves (or their children re: Tolkien) first and foremost. So I don't think that's a good definition because it's pretty easy to find examples of fiction that clearly aren't bad/trite/etc but is clearly the author partaking in an obsession/interest or having fun for themselves first, and the audience second. I think its a pretty bad definition. Like is Kingdom Hearts for the benefit of the Audience or Nomura? Does it matter? You're still buying Kingdom Hearts IV no matter how stupid the plot gets because you'll be smiling the whole time and crying whenever Roxas's theme plays.
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Jan 18, 2021 22:23
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YggiDee posted:Mary Sue was mostly used for female characters at the time, but to be honest I could have probably counted male fanfiction self-inserts on one hand. Oh, there were a fair number of them. Back in my Mystery Usenet Theater days, I ran into several, including a guy who's been working on stories in the same weird crossover universe, starring himself, for almost 30 years now. I just went to look, and his most recent update was on Christmas Day of 2020. I remember there was a lot of it around Neon Genesis Evangelion in particular, for whatever reason. The one that I always remember is one where some new American kid joins up with NERV while on the run from an unspecified government conspiracy. The detail that's stuck with me for decades now is that the author seemed to be under the impression that "flashbang" grenades are, in fact, micro-nukes; whenever his character threw one, it would take out walls and clear out rooms.
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Jan 18, 2021 22:28
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Rumda posted:As I've said before mary sue is a misogynistic trope and was originally used as one and still is. The original May Sue story was written (a parody of ridiculous self-inserts) by a woman and published in a fanzine she ran with another women. It was originally women commenting on what they were seeing in their (largely woman dominated) corner of fandom. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 22:45
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I hope Rich is
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Jan 18, 2021 22:49
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I hope Rich publishes a new strip before this thread is dumped.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:17
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Raenir Salazar posted:
A story that reflects on the nature of overpowered characters in teenage power fantasy can't be hand waved at "well of course it's subjunctive and people forgive their favs" as an example of wish fulfillment power fantasy hack writing. It's like describing A Modest Proposal as just yet another example of casual colonial cruelty to the Irish.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:32
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Sometimes writers introduce a character who is disproportionately special, to the detriment of the story.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:49
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The entire point of the phrase Mary Sue is that it was supposed to refer to a character in fanfiction who is added to a fanfiction. Like someone writing their own original Super Saiyan 48 who is just as strong as Goku. It was never even meant as a real criticism just a joke about that kind of fanfiction trope. It getting applied to any stand-alone story is dumb because by and large any character in fiction is going to be implausible exceptional. A character being powerful isn't the same as a character being bad and good stories can make use of absurdly overtalented characters and make them fun and interesting.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:53
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ikanreed posted:A story that reflects on the nature of overpowered characters in teenage power fantasy can't be hand waved at "well of course it's subjunctive and people forgive their favs" as an example of wish fulfillment power fantasy hack writing. Again, it can be, quite easily because most people using the term aren't doing so in good faith, people routinely will call a character they don't like a Mary Sue, evidence be damned.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:54
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Bongo Bill posted:Sometimes writers introduce a character who is disproportionately special, to the detriment of the story. DMPCs can be a really good and topical example of this. Where it feels like they're soloing the plot and you're just there to watch them and mop up after them.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:59
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Raenir Salazar posted:Again, it can be, quite easily because most people using the term aren't doing so in good faith, people routinely will call a character they don't like a Mary Sue, evidence be damned. But terminology exists because it is useful and to be used? I think any negative terminology can used and co-opted to describe something people dislike, so I'm not sure why Mary Sue is unique in that regard besides unfortunately being introduced as a female gendered name. Like if the term was rear end in a top hat, people will still call characters they dislike an rear end in a top hat even though they didn't do anything crazy. And sure, Mary Stu itself is a concept that is murky, but I don't think it's worth that much debate to have everybody in this thread explain what their personal definition of Mary Sue is (even though it is sorta fun).
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Jan 19, 2021 00:00
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WarpedLichen posted:But terminology exists because it is useful and to be used? I think any negative terminology can used and co-opted to describe something people dislike, so I'm not sure why Mary Sue is unique in that regard besides unfortunately being introduced as a female gendered name. I think my issue with it is that I don't think that it is is a useful term, nor do I feel it should be used. I think the term is loaded in its language and is scientifically designed to rile people up and if the goal is reasoned passionate discussion between people with an interest of discussing their favourite media as an artform than the term which for many is used to be interchangeable with "irredeemably bad" is not going to be fruitful for enabling that discussion. In contrast, actually using the terms that are approximately just as accurate basically don't have the same loaded language. "wish fulfillment", "empowerment fantasy", "self-insert", these terms taken together are merely tropes that are neutral, neither good or bad by themselves and thus allow for a more in depth discussion to critique the work in question, making it clear the issue is the implementation, or the setting and world building, maybe the characters are unremarkable, bland and not at all memorable and so on. Because even a "wish fulfillment empowerment fantasy" is not automatically bad, it allows for a discussion about what aspects of its use in the work in question did not result in a fun or enjoyable experience.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:25
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