Grrl Power #1489 – Target audience
Ahhhh! Done with the fight scenes for a few pages at least, and back to the characters being goobers. The meat and potatoes of this comic. Feels good. Also not having to draw a bunch of speed lines feels good too. I mean, obviously I have some huge speed line templates that I cut and paste, because there’s usually no point to doing a unique radial burst for each panel, but still. There’s more to good speedlining that just laying lines over or under some action, as I’m realizing, but hey, that’s the job. Still, I wouldn’t say no to 3 or 4 Japanese interns who put in 16 hour days doing mind-numbing background work. Man if I could get that for a single page… well, that page would probably just be an establishing shot of a massive city, because that shit is tedious. That or a lot of rubble.
There was some debate on the previous page about whether Max qualifies as a “Mary Sue,” which in its current common usage, is a term I generally don’t like. Because the original Mary Sue was specifically a female character who is great at everything, but most importantly, also an author self-insert. Unfortunately, the current common usage seems to have become “any competent female character.” Without the author self-insert part, it almost always feels like the person complaining about a female character being good at stuff is really zeroing in on the female part of the equation, and that becomes extremely evident when you ask them, “Is Batman a Mary-Sue?” Because Batman is a billionaire playboy who is better at literally every single physical activity than Olympic equivalents, is also the world’s greatest detective, can outfight like 20 ninjas at a time (dudes who have spent their entire lives training only to be deadly fighters and don’t waste any time on that detective stuff or solving riddles) has all the gadgets, up to and including his own fighter jet armed with a variety of missiles, which is probably illegal for a private citizen in a much bigger way than vigilante justicing some thugs in an alley, has his own space station with orbital strike capabilities, which, again, probably illegal in a way that the entire U.N. might care about, etc, etc. The Mary Sue-accusers usually say, “No, because Batman loses fights all the time.” Right, he loses fights, (usually so he can get thrown in a deathtrap only to quickly escape) but never the war. If a female billionaire playgirl gadgeteer, etc got her back fucking broken rather famously, then recovered and was basically completely fine afterward and proceeded to beat up Bane, I feel like they would get “Mary Sue” lobbed at them. What about James Bond? What about Iron Man? Riddick? John Wick? Mary Sue or just the main character of a franchise who necessarily has to win in the end so the franchise can continue?
But here’s a serious question. If Maxima is a Mary Sue (the non-author insert kind, obviously) because she’s powerful and wins fights… is Saitama? (From One Punch Man if you didn’t know his name.) Saitama is probably exempt because his strength and battle record are almost entirely played for laughs. Also he’s male. I guess the real question is if Maxima was Maximus, would anyone even think of accusing him of being a non-author-insert Mary Sue? Cause I’ve never seen anyone accuse Batman of being a Mary Sue out of the blue, it only ever happens when someone asks the guy who’s accused a female character of being one if Batman is also one, and accuser guy suddenly feels defensive about getting called out for being sexist.
If you think seeing Maxima win a bunch of high-level fights with relative ease is a little boring, that’s fine. That’s a totally valid criticism – even taking into account that she entered specifically because she analyzed previous tournaments and was fairly certain she could probably win with relative ease. That’s still a valid criticism, because it’s on me to relay an entertaining version of those events.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
A Mary Sue/Marty Stu would not get her back broken, and need to heal and recover. That would actually be a character growth arc. (Even if it gets negated by status-quo-is-god.)
There’s a lot of anecdotal opinions made up there for sure, but Dave isn’t wrong, someone WOULD make that claim. But, that’s probably not saying much. We live in a world where someone somewhere will make the most outrageous claim imaginable just for laughs.
The important take away is that if such a female character did have her back broken, recovered, and came back and won, she would not be a Mary Sue (at least not for that reason).
There’s a lot of knee jerk, biased, over correction these days when it comes to defending or prosecuting characters and it’s best if we just agree to disagree about it. Can’t help what other people think when it comes to personal opinions.
“Unfortunately, the current common usage seems to have become ‘any competent female character.'”
It’s unfortunate, but the anyone making such claims are really watering down very legitimate arguments about the rampant Mary Sue-ism going on in media these days. That said, there is absolutely a rash of Mary Sue female characters. Rey, Captain Marvel, etc. Hopefully media gets a clue and corrects itself, but I won’t hold my breath over it.
Isn’t Captain Marvel supposed to be a Mary Sue? Complaining about that is like complaining about Super Man being a Mary Sue.
I don’t think Superman is one, but I’ll agree to disagree!
Neither is Captain Marvel.
A Mary Sue has NO FAULTS. AT ALL. EVER.
She’s got plenty. So does Clark. Rey is literally the ONLY Mary Sue in recent history in media. A Bad Character is a bad character, that does NOT automatically make them a Mary Sue, and anyone who thinks the words are synonyms is a fucking idiot.
Eh, I’d argue even with the Rey one. The idea that she has no faults is patently false. Is she sort of overpowered? Sure, but so is literally every Skywalker, which are canonically all Force Sensitive and naturally talented in the Force and have various feats of exceptional Force use with little if any training. If an entire bloodline can be Force wunderkinds, which is in itself mind-boggling overpowered because Force Sensitivity clearly isn’t that predictable in any species that isn’t entirely Force Sensitive.
Rey starts the first movie with at least one very obvious and crippling flaw. She can’t accept the possibility that her parents aren’t coming back for her, that they either abandoned her or maybe just died somewhere out in the galaxy. Even when she is literally chased off Jakku and has access to a functioning spaceship where she could go anywhere she wanted, all she wants to do is go back to Jakku (a place she literally knows is a backwater hellhole) and wait because she is in denial about being left behind and tells herself her parents are still coming back for her any day now. It takes a literal Force vision tied to a Jedi relic for her to even begin to accept that her parents are never coming back.
The second movie adds yet another one. Now that she has accepted the call to adventure, she desperately wants to know her destiny, to be important, for who she is and what she is meant to do to matter. And she gets hits with the possibility that it really doesn’t. That her parents were just nobodies who sold her for pocket cash and never planned to come back for her, that her ability with the Force is just random chance, that there is no destiny, no grand design for her and that the universe is just chaotic and uncaring. And this upsets her so much that she pretty much plays into Kylo’s hands and he uses her to murder Snoke and seize control.
Yeah, about that Skywalker thing… Rey ain’t a Skywalker, she’s a Palpatine
Palpatine is also a force podigy at 60’s ,he is capable of ovepowering a force user with 900 years of experience who was renowed for is raw power .
I mean yeah, Marvel has flaws, but non that are relevant to the plot or effect her negatively in anyway, so they aren’t of consequence.
yeah, but the fact she has them at all means she’s not a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue has no flaws PERIOD. Major or Minor. It doesn’t matter if they’re relevant to the plot or affect them negatively.
It is actually, and has always been, a very narrow definition for a specific kind of badly written character.
Not at all, in fact in her original Ms. Marvel appearances she was anything but.
I remember some wonderful Marvel Team Up comics where she outshone Spider-man but not to a point it felt wrong. Great comic stories, in fact. The two of them managed to defeat Super Skrull, who in those years basically far outclassed them both! Back when the old OHATMU continuity for the characters still meant something.
She was also sadly a cosmic victim to Korvac (a trash written Avengers plot line if any existed) and the less you now about that, the better.
It’s only some of the more recent writing since she’s become Captain Marvel (and changed her characterization somewhat, enough to be jarring to us older fans) that has leaned Carol Danvers into more ‘Mary Sue’ territory.
I noticed it start to get really bad in “Civil War 2”, where someone (her) had to be the ‘bad guy’ among the heroes to be on the side of the idiots, just like Tony, Mr. Fantastic and many others characterizations were sacrificed for Civil War 1.
I think I speak for 99% of the free world when I say that we’re referring to the movies, not the comics, when we say Captain Marvel is a Mary Sue. Almost nobody read the comics. >.>
Except in the movies she clearly has flaws. She is impulsive and hotheaded. This gets mistaken as not being a flaw because as it turns out, working for the Kree means that she is a bad guy. So her messing up their plans and going off like a rogue cop gets seen as actually being good despite the fact she’s literally messing up for the side she is on at the time.
This continues on into the sequel, The Marvels, because she is literally the reason the Kree are stealing resources. Because she broke their world and left them to die. Again, because she was impulsive and hotheaded and didn’t think through the effect of her actions. She just knew she was angry at the Kree and they were a threat to others, so she smashed their Supreme Intelligence and figured that would be the end of it. Turns out, no, the surviving Kree that are trying to still live on the planet start taking desperate measures to stabilize it. And the Kree exclusively refer to her as The Destroyer and almost always attack her on-sight despite her being able to easily dust them by the dozens on a good day because she has probably already indirectly murdered thousands if not millions of Kree by destabilizing their world, so they have no expectation that she will be merciful to them. Her journey in that movie is her finally owning up to the fact that she screwed up, that breaking the Kree’s planet solved one problem but created several others, and she finally starts addressing that by fixing what she can, beginning with stabilizing the Kree’s dying sun.
Being a Mary Sue is not just having flaws. Its having flaws that actually work against her. In the movies her ‘impulsivity’ never works against her. It only helps her. She never once actually struggles because of her ‘flaw.’ Its like the Mary Sue who is ‘clumsy’ but in a cute snd endearing way where the clumsiness helps her every time. Movie Captain Marvel definitely IS a Mary Sue.
No, Captain Marvel (if you mean the DC character) is not a Marty Stu, he was a copy of Soupcan published by a different company (who actually outsold Soupcan himself, so DC bought out the other company as the only way to stop the competition)
They mean Carol Danvers from Marvel, but only the movie adaptation of her (played by Brie Larson), not the comic book version (Ms Marvel, then Warbird, then finally Captain Marvel). Comic book version – not a Mary Sue at all. Movie version – very much a Mary Sue in pretty much every category.
Yeah, got confuzzled when they mentioned Soupcan at the same time…
And hadn’t read any of the other posts ranting about Larson
No one has called Doctor Manhattan a Mary Sue , he is not, he could be outsmarted , suffer from a growing dicsonection between him a ascended human and humans.
Even though his powers are superior to those of Superman and he has no physical vulnerabilities, he is less like a Mary Sue, he is not a patriotic boy scout, he is a tired god.
The extraterestrial son of Krypton is closer to human than the ascended human.
Superman the overgrow boy scout is powerfull but have a lot of vulnerabilities .
The YouTube channel Literature Devil has probably the best definition of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu I’ve seen.
That the world revolves around the character, and canon and logic bend to their benefit.
The result is usually that they’re perfect at everything that matters, everyone’s focused on them, and they have no meaningful flaws (superficial ones are sometimes added to avoid the label or for comedy or to make the character “quirky” but don’t negatively impact the character or cause major struggle), etc.
This is often caused by the character being a self-insert, but it’s the dissonance and disconnect of canon warping around the character for their benefit that really bothers people for the most part, but that’s harder to articulate for most people.
You can have an overly powerful, morally pure etc. character and have them not be a Mary Sue if it makes sense in the world, the world responds logically to them. Aang from Avatar, Superman and Batman, Deku from My Hero Academia, Saitama from One Punch Man, etc. all (at times, depending on the arc and writer) have the superficial traits of a Mary Sue, but the canon of the story and setting don’t warp to their benefit. They struggle in ways you’d expect them to struggle. The flaws they have make a meaningful difference to how things go for them rather than just being window dressing.
Max has some of the superficial Mary Sue characteristics, but she fits in the setting, and doesn’t warp the canon for her sole benefit. She’s also not the main character: it’s easier to get away with an OP character in a mentor or major supporting character than as THE main character.
That’s my 2 cents on the topic anyway.
I remember that video. LD’s definition is profound, to be sure. It cuts right to what’s important about Mary Sue as a definition. Another comment pointed out that while Maxima is undefeated she would have lost several times now if it weren’t for support she received from her teammates in Arcswat. That’s an important detail.
On that note, yeah, I no longer think Max is a Mary Sue, she doesn’t really fit the definition enough to qualify. I would still like to see her in a more dire situation or fight, but it’s not really necessary, as she isn’t the focus of the comic.
It is worth noting Vehemence WOULD have killed her. Or at the very least made her have to resort to shit that would’ve likely harmed her teammates and caused a couple kilometers worth of property damage.
Also that Golem Sciona made very likely could have cut her skin (using magic) and absorbed her powers. Hiro yanking out its power source and it exploding is the only reason that didn’t happen. Maxima’s nearly lost several times. Darude’s another example. Sydney’s the only reason Sandboy didn’t take her down, due to glassing the DESERT they were fighting in, which normally makes it functionally impossible for a guy who’s living sand to be stopped, since he can just reform and add to himself.
These most recent fight scenes have made her (maxima) to SEEM to be a ‘mary-sue’ in the respect of being an extremely qualified fighter, but that is because she was groomed by some of the most powerful adventurer/fighters in the galaxy (Dabbler and Cora and their ‘crew’ + friends). Even so she got injured enough to need a quick time-out.
Also flaws do not have to be COMBAT related.
She literally can not share her favorite drink with anyone since mercury is toxic. You might not think that is important, but she almost poisoned a co-worker/friend because of it.
She THINKS she know the extent but not the origin or reason for her powers, but at least some time after she gained them she discovered a new one that almost killed a friend/family member, and did massive damage to someone’s home. It is likely that if she has another it can backfire too. What if SHE is the dinner buzzer for the alien planet eater, not Halo? She probably has nightmares about that possibility on bad nights.
She is probably very, very insecure about he skin and hair color and how she can literally break any bed partner she ends up with if she had a moments inattention. Can she even have a bed partner or full on orgasm, safely? A child?
The better superman stories/movies all touch on his similar flaws, without dwelling overly long on them too.
(wo)Man of Steel, World of Tissue…
Strongly agree, Max had time to review the previous round and consider the interaction between the two weapons so coming up with that counter was probably the result of a small team (Cora and her crew plus Sydney) considering how she could respond. If that wasn’t the case then ether the setting would need such quick thinking to be a genre convention or an established part of her character (honestly it’s more Sydney’s thing but we see ADHD brain being shown to explain that).
Max is probably at the limit of how powerful someone can be in the setting but until we get an explanation for her powers there’s no reason to assume it wasn’t a case of only 2% of the population had the right genetic sequence to receive those powers and she just happened to be the one who was first available.
There are lots of idiots out there trying to get a rise out of people and anything they say or write is to be automatically dismised. Because Mary Sue and Gary Stu exist out there.
Saitama isn’t a Gary Stu, he loses consistently and humiliatingly towards King. He forgets lots of things, he acts lazy when he isn’t heroing around and other multiple flaws.
He still can be accused of being a Gary Stu and you can ignore any claim of it.
Max isn’t a Mary Sue. She wouldn’t have all of archon on a game of “Make Maxima say…” or would have avoided “fear vomit” flawlesly and lots of more instances. I can see where the claim might come from given that she is dominating in a heavy weight tournament.
Dave needs to be aware of this kind of criticism, but he also needs to know when to ignore it. And multiple paragraphs seems to indicate otherwise.
By my understanding, Mary Sue/Gary Stu is any character which is distinctly “overpowered”: Good at everything, always succeeds, always has the solution, and *never* fails. Batman isn’t a Gary Stu because he fails from time to time, even if he recovers admirably.
Mary Sue/Gary Stu destroy the plot by completely removing the mystery, the suspense. The reader stops asking “what will happen next” and starts asking “when will this pointless drivel end”.
When writing an “overpowered” character like Maxima, keeping them from being a Mary Sue is as simple as ensuring the troubles they face fall outside their strengths- which Dave has been doing admirably. Yes, she’s awesome at fighting (but not, I think, strong enough to actually Mary Sue, given the few characters we’ve had capable of injuring her…). But at handling Sydney? Nope! Not a Mary Sue, since she *still struggles*!
Not to mention her love life. She’d basically resigned herself to being alone due to, you know, being blatantly obvious and worldwide famous. Then the team worked together for her birthday to make that disguise choker for her, and she ended up with the equally date-inept Firefighter, who’s a genuinely decent guy. And it’s probably weighing on her that she has to lie to him, because she can’t tell him who she really is. And he’s probably eventually gonna find out. After all, all he has to do is feel her pointed ears and start putting two and two together.
About Batman owning a jet fighter aircraft:
When the US’s 2nd amendment was written, the ‘keep and bear arms’ thing, private citizens both before and after that was written were able to purchase and use artillery and keep it on their private craft and/or homes.
That’s something to think about.
Not an argument that we should let random people do that today. But it is something to think about. :D
This. I recall at one point living somewhere in the US that at the time had a statute that made it illegal to drive a vehicle with visible weapon mounts on public streets unless you were an active member of the US armed forces, with a definition that included the police and the FDA, as well as a bunch of other federal agencies that didn’t feel to me like they needed to be driving Batmobiles around town. Having said that,
– I do not know if it was considered constitutional. We have a lot of statutes that have been declared unconstitutional and nevertheless stay on the official list of statutes because in this country we apparently love making paralegal’s jobs relatively secure from AI takeover.
– It only made visible mounts illegal, it did not make the guns, rockets, or whatever that would be placed on those mounts illegal.
– It did not make them illegal to own, just illegal to drive around town.
– Concealed weapon mounts, like most versions of the Batmobile? Totally cool.
United States citizens are not random people.
Irresponsible citizens, i.e. mostly criminals, are the excuse used to attempt to disarm the common citizen by gutting the “keep and bear arms” clause.
And the 2nd Amendment is not the only one that has been under attack.
And do NOT forget the 10th Amendment! The rights of United States citizens have NEVER been fully enumerated in the Constitution, because the rights of free people are nearly limitless.
You would be wise to think of it this way:
The Constitution is the rulebook by which the U.S. federal government must operate.
It defines the United States of America’s second form of national government. The first, The Articles of Confederation, was not working out as hoped, so there was some time pressure to improve it. During the ratification debates many people thought individuals’ rights were insufficiently protected, so a Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) was promised to secure ratification by 100% of the states. People have been struggling to reinterpret the Constitution in their own favor ever since.
But the Founders who wrote it recognized this important fact:
No law of men is valid unless it is within God’s law.
It was dead necessary at the time the 2nd amendment was passed. The US was a new nation and too poor to have a significant standing army. We literally couldn’t afford one. We had just gotten through the American Revolution on the strength of the Minute Men.
The Minute Men were a literal and explicit Militia in the technical sense – citizens with military experience, who voluntarily showed up bringing their own equipment and weapons, placed themselves under military command when there was an emergency, and were free to choose at any time to end their service and go back home to their families and farms or whatever.
The logistical and strategic effect on Colonial (and then early US) military capabilities was tremendous: American forces in whatever location came under threat could suddenly triple or quadruple in strength, without the government needing to move troops into the area, train new troops, pay to equip them, etc. They just got paid ordinary soldiers’ wages as long as they stayed on. This was absolutely vital to the national defense in an era when the government simply couldn’t afford to maintain a standing army with anything like that strength.
And then a couple of states that were considered highly vulnerable to attack (New York and Rhode Island if I remember my history lessons correctly) started work on gun control legislation, even though they were on the seaboard where they could easily be attacked by a foreign navy and a prize target for any enemy who wanted to shut down a major port or establish a base of operations for a blockade of the US coast.
And the entirety of the rest of the Congress, not wanting their new nation killed in its infancy, stood up and said THOU SHALT NOT PASS ANY LEGISLATION THAT WOULD DISARM THE MINUTEMEN. And we got the Second Amendment.
So, yes, it meant military arms, including cannon and artillery. Whatever the volunteers showed up with, was what the US had to resist invasion or attack. Congress at that time wanted them able to show up packing the best they could get.
I read the star trek fanfics in which the original Mary Sue Smith appeared. Or at least a dozen pages of two of them. After the first page I was reading more or less in disbelief at the writer, and wondering when the “hook” would come.
A good “hook,” or attempt to make a story on this premise, would have revealed something like this was all some in-canon character’s fevered nightmare, and maybe gone on with the in-canon character, plus the medical and psychiatric services of the federation, trying to deal with their feelings of professional incompetence and possibly pedophilia. Possibly drumming them out of starfleet due to a risk of psychological instability, but with a possible coda as a more-or-less dealing-with-it civilian. Or anyway some kind of hook to possibly rescue it as a meaningful story written by, well, anyone else.
There was no hook.
People who accuse characters of being a Mary Sue ought to be forced to read them. First because this would force them to realize the enormity and offensiveness of what they are claiming. If they do it again, they should be forced to read the stories a second time as a punishment.
The funniest thing to me is, the original fic, which coined the term(or I suppose, the term was coined about, but either way), and people point to as the Ur-example, is actually a satire of that exact tendency in the fandom at the time.
Much like one of the EU stories that people point to in Star Wars for being extremely stupid, Skippy the Jedi Droid, is actually a satire of the (largely fan-written) EU always giving every random background extra and object these massive, detailed, and extremely important backstories, where they are secretly a lynchpin to the entire original trilogy as we know it.
My first Mary Sue encounter was a paperback set in the Star Trek universe titled “Dreadnaught”. It could be argued that both the captain and her ship were Mary Sues.
This takes me back. Literally, my first exposure to the concept of fanfiction, back in ’95, was when I accidentally stumbled across a rant about how the term Mary Sue had become meaningless due to over-broad usage.
Overboard INCORRECT Usage, due to morons assuming it just means “Character they think is written badly.” All Mary Sues are badly written characters, but FAR from every badly written character is a Mary Sue.
Case in point, Michael Burnham on Star Trek Discovery. If anything she has TOO MANY FAULTS. Making her the opposite of a Mary Sue. Not to mention 95% of the problems on that show could’ve been solved just by having a Ship’s Counselor.
To be fair, ST shows cast before ST:TNG could easily intentionally lack badly needed Ship’s Counselors specifically to answer all of the critics questioning why that role existed in the first place. Never mind that the ST:TNG Enterprise is a war ship that’s designed to be able to sometimes travel for years away from any other Federation ships or infrastructure. To be clear, it does not matter whether the ship *does*, it’s *designed* to handle it and it’s *staffed* to handle it (at least per military spec). In ST:V, a ship of a smaller class of Federation starship actually does this. Galaxy class ships have a standard crew size of over 1000 people, which is pretty clearly enough to warrant at least one dedicated mental health professional even without the traumas of military service. In many cases, they also have entire families onboard, which ups that requirement significantly.
Nonetheless, one of the people I watched ST:TNG with questioned them having a ship’s counselor seemingly every episode which featured Deanna Troi. I think they were answered at least as frequently, as there were several people in the group who generally responded to their questions and the shows that featured her frequently also demonstrate the need for her to be there (except when the story reason for having her was to show her own troubles, which maybe sometimes justified her position but if so only as a nod to her job, rather than something that the episode really covered.) I’ve heard that same question asked at basically every Star Trek convention I’ve ever been to, by multiple people I don’t think I encountered before or since. I’ve also encountered that question online, and most of the time I encounter such questions, somebody has addressed it before me. As such, although it feels like it shouldn’t be a question, it clearly is one. A lot of show writers for any series will take such viewer feedback as inspiration for story lines and possibly even spinoff series, and many do so with less significant feedback.
As such, maybe it’s ridiculous for any star ship to boldly go without a Starship’s Counselor (like ST:TOS did), but it feels reasonable that there are ST series that basically drive this point home.
I will say, at the time that ST:TOS was produced, seeking mental health assistance was fairly heavily stigmatized, so the most emotionally stable, psychologically grounded people at the time were very reluctant to admit they had regular mental health assistance visits. Even today, there are a lot of people who don’t seem to understand the value of them, regardless of the number of people around those people who feel very strongly that those people need more mental health help.
Consider the fact that there is disagreement about the name of the male version of this trope while the female version is universally and instantly known.
That does in fact indicate that applying it to males is at best an afterthought. Sure the Marty/Harry/Gary/Etc argument has been made, but it’s a back construction from a trope that is most often used as a sexist trope. In fact, I’ve hardly ever even heard it mentioned, as Dave said, except when someone points out that Mary Sue is in fact a sexist trope and someone else wants to argue that it’s not.
Oooh, nice callback to Syd’s glasses being designed and created by Cora.
Cora has reserved for herself the power to make Syd see/hear things that do not exist.
That power could be used, by her or anyone else who discovers the backdoor she inserted into the glasses’ security, to do evil things.
I think you might have come up with best use ever for Gen AI. Real-time adding a personalised clip into something would be just as funny in real life. Especially if everyone but the target pretends not to notice.
Once upon a time I took a Mary Sue comment too seriously and ended up benching one of my main characters for a long time. But since then have decided she wasn’t really a Mary Sue, and the way people use the term invalidates it as a real criticism..as I saw more people use to describe any power fantasy or any character that wasn’t constantly struggling or suffering. Like their view of fiction has been based on “edgy” or more pessimistic story telling. Everyone has their own tastes of course but that doesn’t mean other forms of story telling and character types are bad. Also yeah the amount this gets targeted at female characters but so many isekai protagonists who start out OP, know more than the people of those worlds,, and get all the women get a pass as a current escapism fantasy , and the irregular use of the term just makes it a buzz word these days for thing person doesn’t like l.
Someone else here said it the best. All Gary Stue / Mary Sue characters are badly written characters, but not all badly written characters are a Gary Stue / Mary Sue.
The reason I bring this up for you is that perhaps there was legitimate and valid criticism of the character you were writing, but due to the critic’s ignorance, they could only default to the one term, rather than clearly qualify *why* they thought the character was bad. This would mean you wouldn’t even know what to accurately look for and is wholly unhelpful.
Whenever I get criticism I try and make sure the person criticism understands what they are saying, before dismissing the criticism. Sometimes they have a good point, but just suck at relaying the information. Also sometimes they’re a big doodoo head and can be ignored :D
Rhulan the Sorceress, honestly I’ve gone through many “eras” with this character, its been so long I’d have to check, likely while i was writing the prequel stories, to find when I would be on a forum. Now if it was the fanfiction era I could see the criticism, as an insert beating up established characters, but in her own series the closest maybe the era where as a meta joke I was trying to write stories where she’d pop in as a side character or be a surprise final scene (Who the frick was that?), like if you watched a werewolf movie and final scene some random superhuman showed up and beat the shit out of the werewolf, kind of joke. Otherwise she was fairly overpowered and the result of this criticism I wrote a whole bunch of (Rhulan is missing) stories where the events were influenced by her presence or past actions but not there at full strength solving the problem…imagine if someone tried to write a story about Frieren but based it on a town she visited or she had to for some reason astral project as a doll with a tenth of her power.
I did go and make a chronological order of the stories as they weren’t written in that order, and honestly you can sort of tell in (The Saga of Rhulan) that a lot of the prequels were written way later than some of the later stories with massive differences in tone. I am trying to world build some right now and go back to these characters, but last thing I wrote I didn’t like and wish I hadn’t posted on deviant art as I tried to make it feel like that era of writing but…I’m just not that person anymore. Although I wander if they called her that during that era, if so maybe because she was beating the local adventurers, seducing the monsters and heroes, and nothing was able to harm her…sort of just writing like I was roleplaying and was over leveled for the area at the time.
I am thinking it was probably around that time, as looking at the my stories it was around that time, yep, when I benched her and she was barely in the stories, and they started to focus on horror themes and agencies and summoners, with her just showing up every so often because, honestly i like writing her even if she disrupts the narrative, not like I’m making money off this, just a hobby.
In reference to the Mary Sue tangent; “being the main character” is not what makes a character a mary sue. But Batman IS a good example to understand the trope. The ACTUAL canon Batman is not a mary sue; he always “wins the war” but that’s just being the main character. Most of any story with Batman will follow him actually doing the work to earn his eventual victory.
The internet’s meme version of Batman where he can beat everyone and anyone with “prep time”, to the point where characters like Perfect Cell who have no exploitable weakness would still lose against him because he would simply invent a weakness for them would be a Mary Sue.
Mary sue is also a context sensitive trope. Some roles are immune to being a mary sue. For example, antagonists are 80% immune and villain antagonists are 100% immune. An antagonist is “allowed” to have un-earned power/popularity/luck because it causes problems for the main character and makes the main character eventually overcoming them more impressive.
And I think Maxima falls into a role with some immunity to the trope. She is A protagonist in the story, but she is also a foil for Sydney because she is Sydney’s commanding officer. It is entirely narratively appropriate for a character in her role to be vastly more powerful and capable than the main character.
Another thing that pushes Maxima out of Mary Sue territory is what makes Saitama not a Mary sue. The story is willing to sideline them to allow other characters to have the spotlight. We know that Saitama can and will obliterate any villain he crosses paths with. But he is one guy, who can only be in one place at a time. His ABSENCE allows other heroes to have satisfying fights of their own, while the POTENTIAL for him to show up at any time creates uncertainty. The audience does not know if any particular fight will be one where the hero manages to come out victorious or if they will lose and need Saitama to save them.
Similarly, Maxima’s role as commanding officer means she can’t just solo everything for everyone. Her attention is a scarce resource that needs to be managed, so even if she is present she is not in the way of other characters getting to play out their fights. She CAN step in if its absolutely necessary, but her doing so basically means the character lost their fight. “Maxima bailed you out” is a lose condition, basically.
More than anything, the trope is a vibes thing. the biggest question to answer is really “Does the narrative warp around the character to their benefit, or does the character play their role within the narrative?”
“Saitama is probably exempt because his strength and battle record are almost entirely played for laughs.”
Saitama is the deconstruction of absolute power. Because, in his own words:
“Having absolute power is pretty boring.”
Though mostly I would ignore anyone that invokes “Mary Sue”, “Woke” or any of those talking points.
If they use those, they probably have nothing of value to say anyway.
“Having absolute power is pretty boring.” Dr Manhatan reached the same conclusion
“Cause I’ve never seen anyone accuse Batman of being a Mary Sue out of the blue”
Really? In my experience, everyone who hates the character does so SPECIFICALLY for that reason (or something extremely close to that.)
*giggling* Imagining Batman as being some normal everyday girl named Mary Sue, trapped in Gotham Asylum, just so insane that she’s making up all the stories of her being batman, the Joker is one of the orderlies, etc.
What makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue isn’t just the insane competence combined with being female, or the self-insertion part. It’s that she (or he) is a *usurper* of the hero role in someone else’s setting, made both possible and necessary by the author who is inserting that Mary Sue stripping the normal heroes of the setting of their normal competency on which their lead character roles are built, or by creating a no-time-to-work disaster scenario for which the Mary Sue somehow has the only key to miraculously winning, usually with zero losses.
#writingprompt
And I said that because now I’m thinking of Mary Sue as an evil mastermind, and I would love to read the story written that way.
It looks like we’ve finally struck a nerve, and now most of the commentary is about “Mary Sue”. Oy vey.
I am pretty much Mary Sue-d out. I’ve learned so much Mary Sue that I could have learned from a trope website, IF I cared to. I came here for a good webcomic, not to study tropeology. That’s not usually a problem in these comments though.
My main motivations for commenting here are to take chances guessing what is coming next, and responding to other comments. But probably nobody else cares about that. I don’t think my track record is better than,average at best, which really makes me appreciate Dave B.’s creativity. Thanks Dave!
I had enough curiousity to read today (up to Guesticules at 9:13am) and this struck me:
A parallel can be drawn between Bruce Wayne / Batman and ??? / Deus X. Superion.
Batman originated in response to his childhood trauma, making him a troubled, brooding hero. Does that count as an anti-hero?
Bruce Wayne inherited a fortune. Has there ever been a story written about his life if he had not? Would he have even become a hero of any kind?
Compare Wayne to Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is on the side of law, but hung his own shingle to operate freely. Definately a vigilante of sorts, but I don’t know that England had laws regulating P.I.’s in that time. Wayne is also a secret vigilante, to preserve his public image, but works out his trauma on criminals, something the law officially frowns upon. So: Intelligent anti-heroes?
Now, take Deus X. Superion. That’s got to be a pseudonym. So intelligent that he is cocky about it. Rich, but we don’t yet have his origin story. I’m assuming he didn’t have to inherit wealth to enrich himself. He doesn’t seem to have childhood trauma or any special respect for the law. He takes down villains like a vigilante, as long as he can avoid legal accountability. In the short term his goals seem to be to make the world a better place and cultivate mass gratitude. In the long term we don’t know, but he went out of his way to force Halo into making a public medal-acceptance speech.
So what is Deus? An anti-hero? An anti-villain? A webcomic fan-agitator? In ☢️GrrlPower he only needs to be funny, which he is imo.
Opinions?
Deus feels more like a parody of supervillains in general, especially Lex Luthor, and corporatism to me. Not a very complicated character but that’s all he have to be in the context of this superhero comedy.
Deus is like 1 part Lex Luthor, 1 part David Xanatos, 1 part Dr. Evil, and a dash of… I dunno somebody with omniscience. The Beyonder? Doctor Manhattan? I don’t know if he actually has omniscience but it sure seems like it.
The closest character to Deus IS probably David Xanatos. Who is not actually a villain either, at least not after the birth of his son. Yup – Deus is closest to post-father David Xanatos.
Yeah you are right, Deus is more like Xanathos than Luthor.
On a side note, I think it’s high time that Gail and Bluce were included in the “Who’s Who?” Sidebar.
What do you say, Dave B.? It will be fun!
Thanks for calling out the sexist BS in a polite and reasoned manner Dave!
Also props to Cora for having the restraint not to hit the “mess with Sydney” button until the end of the match :D
While I do think there is a potential discussion for the Mary Sue trope still being relevant in some cases, or Gary stew or however you want to call it, I think it’s definitely misplaced with maxima. I’ve heard this kind of conversation a lot and it doesn’t really ever get better from either side sadly because the trope is not that someone is good at everything, it’s that someone is so good at everything that no one else matters and everyone loves them and they can do no wrong. As a Superman fan, Mary Sue gets used a lot, and it really fails to understand the point of superman. Similarly I think arguments from yesterday failed to understand the explicit story that we’ve been given for maxima. But not just maxima, for the entire concept of superheroes. Maxima is at the top but she’s not alone there and she didn’t get there through just the McGuffin meteor.
She is explicitly a very experienced and very powerful superhero. To use a common comparison point for people currently, she’s basically gojo. She’s stands at the top and is the most powerful and earned that mostly off panel. Which is fine because it creates world building and when someone does threaten her we get some interesting stuff out of it. Thus I think she’s rather explicitly not a Mary sue.
The way some writers write Batman however absolutely puts him in that place. When Batman is grounded and capable of not only losing but being outclassed, because Batman should never be the best at anything but being a detective and even then one of his own kids is explicitly better than him at that, then he feels like a person. When his intelligence is his greatest asset and he is able to use it as a lever for his physical abilities, that is when he is written well. When he is martial arts Tibetan monking Superman out of the air without any assistance from kryptonite or a mechanical suit or some kind of extra super power option that he temporarily has, he is just being a vehicle for the writer to write Batman being better and that’s absolutely falling into the territory of Mary Sue.
There are plenty of Mary Sue characters and Gary stew characters in modern television and movies and comics. They tend to be written by people that askew nuance and don’t think about past events or future events, just focusing on what’s cool. You’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of comics literally setting up past and future events, causality, and lore for the story to explain how someone like Maxima can exist and still be challenged.
Frix is the real Mary Sue. We all know Dave wants to be a seven foot tall, humanoid, wolf man that’s built like brick house and is hung like a horse.
In practice, “Mary Sue” means “this character breaks suspension of disbelief by being too good at things.” That’s how it’s generally used, so that’s what it means, never mind that there’s a variety of more specific requirements that are variously prescribed by some people. And that definition is intrinsically subjective. Any powerful or skilled character might fit that definition for some people. Almost no characters are going to fit that definition for everyone.
I would have to disagree with the idea that Maxima is a Mary Sue. lets start with the first important point: while no ‘superhero’ asks for their powers, she was squirted with cosmo-geode juice, and had her life turned upside down. who knows what she went through to even get through the transformation process (with the one call-back to her liking mercury every now and then). Second Point: Maxima has *trained* extensively while in the military. she has likely experimented with her limits, and pushes through those as regularly as Goku/Kal-El does. (I remember there being a deathbattle between Goku and Superman, and King Kai constantly telling Goku he cant beat Kal-El as even Goku has limits, while Kal-El does not, something that DBSuper has explored). I make this point as while its established that Maxima is probably Earths strongest Super, she didnt start off that way.
Third Point: usually Mary Sues are strongly disliked. Maxima is shown as the type that can STILL make the hard calls when needed (the portal incident) her first thought was how to recover Sydney after she was left behind. she HAS made mistakes (the BBQ party fight, when she smashed part of the highway), and usually only goes Full ham when the scene calls for it (like when she goes toe-to-toe with Vehemence – Who needs to make another appearance soon, as we miss the big lug!!)
Finally, while powerful, skilled, and is absolutely TOP of her game, she is still showen as human. maybe not in the physical sense, but that she is Curious, perhaps a little lonely (Fraternization rules), and while she may want to strangle him, is routinely challenged by Deus. she can be caught off-guard, she was surprised when her nose got broke, and that she had to take a step back when Vehemence hit her the first time.
While I understand the definition has changed quite a bit over time, to me the biggest sign of a Mary sue is: they enter the story and everything instantly starts to revolve around them… You could sort of apply that to Sydney, especially how she manages to get Max to like her despite being… Sydney… but the OTHER biggest sign of a Mary Sue is they aren’t Interesting or flawed and… well.. Sydney is certainly no Mary Sue.
The Definition’s literally never changed. It’s just idiots assume it applies to any character they think is badly written or don’t like.
When the accused is male, they’re accused of “only winning because of ‘plot armor.'” That’s where you’ll find the bulk of anti-Batman commentary.
Max may qualify as a Mary Sue in a few senses, and would likely fail the Mary Sue test (or… pass it…) and be qualified one there, too. HOWEVER! That doesn’t always have to mean they’re a bad character. For one, she isn’t the main character, which is a point in her favor. Plus, she has an actual entertaining personality. Superman could be classified as a Gary Stu (the male version) for many of the same reasons. And we know that Max CAN fail, and she has personality flaws and hangups that are real and genuine.
To me, I’ve never thought of her as a Mary Sue, primarily because she isn’t the main character of the series. She’s the overpowered hero mentor character, which is a trope all unto itself. And the fact that she has to work to win in these fights is a good thing. And at the end of the last round, she was kind of banged up. Her gold skin doesn’t bruise (that we know of) but her internal organs probably still can. She also felt it during the fight with powered-up Vehemence. We haven’t seen her go all out against them, but I think she’d struggle with the… whatever they were that were hunting Sydney when she was trapped in space. Those things could make Sydney’s OP shield strain.
She literally doesn’t qualify as one at all, it’s an EXTREMELY narrow and precise definition. Unless she literally checks all the boxes, she isn’t one. Period. Simple as that.
I am only posting the defense of my previous comic’s comment to make it clear that I never said Maxima WAS a ‘Mary Sue’.
Only that she would be much closer to being one, were she herself the protagonist of the comic, and that her name and general competence level are a pre-existing DC character (although almost certainly independently created by someone unfamiliar with the existing example).
She is not the protagonist, nor a “rip-off” of the pre-existing Maxima. As such, she is frankly excellent.
I will also own up to and admit that I did forget an important extra necessary bit about Mary Sues; that they bend the universe around to their existence, and are almost universally inserts into other existing fiction (as the trope namer in Star Trek), and by that metric Maxima can never actually be a Mary Sue at all.
Generally speaking, Mary Sues also have to be in fan fiction. This is not fan fiction.
Also there has been MORE than enough credential establishment and foreshadowing and Chekhov’s guns that the previous page was not just “Maxima wins, because she is so great, everybody likes her.”
In fact, not everybody likes her. A Mary Sue wins over villains. Maxima has a rogues gallery that wants to spill her blood, whatever color it is, they don’t know, they want to find out, badly.
Really what’s happening here with the Mary Sue nonsense is that this is a superhero comic, and in superhero comics, the female characters get murdered and violently stuffed in the refrigerator for the male protagonist to find and be stirred into action. Female characters are expendable, male characters are not. It’s become expected. The comic industry teaches readers that competent female characters die eventually unless they have their own comic, and if they do, that comic is always a limited run, never an ongoing series.
Look at what happened when a woman replaced Thor… fans lost their minds, and not in a good way. If he had been replaced by a man it wouldn’t have been a problem.
It’s only really tolerated when it’s a girl character like Squirrel Girl, and even then “oh that’s not really canon, Squirrel Girl didn’t CANONICALLY beat up the ENTIRE Marvel universe”
Males are by far the largest consumers of comic books, most the comic books are misogynist in tone, and so they attract that type of reader, as readers who don’t like that generally move along to other media.
A character is a Mary Sue if they always:
A. Win their battles (not their wars, that’s a common protagonist thing)
B. Are morally beyond reproach.
And usually, C. Are treated with the utmost respect by the universe.
You might check how much political discourse you’re consuming, because these days a character being a Mary Sue isn’t really about them being a woman – it’s about them being perfect at everything, never defeated, infallible. There are plenty of male examples, but none of them that you mentioned. Saitama’s strength is meant to be a parody, so his personality doesn’t match. If it were played completely straight, where he always acts honorable, noble, beyond capable at everything, instead of being a bit of a loser in his personality, he’d be almost the textbook definition of a Mary Sue.
Superman – the male he’s parodying – is darn close to a Mary Sue, and that’s why a lot of people think he’s boring, and why he’s a good subject for parody.
AS A PROFESSIONAL WRITER, no, I don’t believe that Maxima is a Mary Sue.
Like, for example, Superman, she is overpowered compared to everyone she routinely meets; mere physical capabilities does not a Mary Sue make.
The Mary Sue/Gary Stu is a type of fictional character, usually but not always a young woman, who is perceived as unrealistically free of weaknesses or character flaws, or as serving a wish-fulfillment role for the author. They are usually not just hyper-competent (and usually universally recognized and adored for it) but also exhibit a kind of “plot gravity.” When they’re not the Main Character, they must be pivotal to the MC’s success. Nobody outshines them in any arena and they have no serious faults or relatable struggles.
The commentary from the viewers and hosts IS the entertaining part, though.
A mary sue is not “any competent female character”. More or less by definition, a MS is *not* competent; she’s never learned any skill, never trained, never struggled through any sort of hardship; she just magically wins because she’s perfect and wonderful, and everyone likes her in spite of an annoying personality. To quote the Lorerunner, she “cheated”. A character needs to be established, developed, and generally overcome setbacks in order to earn likeability; a MS just walks up and does the Jedi mind trick, “You like me”, and that works on characters but not on readers.
Mary Sues have another condition beyond being great at everything, and it isn’t losing occasionally. It’s being unchallenged by the things the story throws at them. Maxima isn’t a Mary Sue in the context of the comic as a whole because she *is* challenged by her role as the Herder of Cats that you’ve put her in, but for this arc in particular, she absolutely is. There’s no narrative tension to this arc at all, and that has nothing to do with her gender.
She has plot armor. We know this. We’re still in the flash back because Sydney isn’t a corporal yet.
And there is narrative tension… she might have been disqualified when she had to go to Earth. She might have been disqualified when she almost didn’t make it out of the fae lord’s realm.
If she’d been just a smidge slower that “final blade” dagger would have gotten her.
We’d know she survives because plot armor, what we wouldn’t know is if she wins.
There’s also narrative tension if the suit is damaged and reveals she’s secretly been the golden human who took down that ship with literally one hand, and if that’s discovered who knows what happens next. Clearly some people ALREADY know given that Cora isn’t the only one betting on her. And if the authorities find out the other two who ARE are a human from Earth and a demon lord who has had an allegiance with the human as well as a fight on Earth with the golden human AND happens to be the owner of one of the golden human’s TEAM MATES…
Well… you can see how that can go south VERY quickly…
I would be disappointed if that didn’t happen because it would make for a VERY interesting story to follow.
A Mary Sue has no problems, no struggles and never gets headaches. Maxima has Sydney and Dabbler.
And her social life and love life issues too. Remember how touched she was at her Birthday, because she literally is unable to date looking how she is, and everyone chipped in to help make that disguise choker work properly. And even then she still has to lie to her boyfriend, who she clearly likes, and potentially loves. Him finding out she’s been lying their whole relationship is going to break him AND her. Even if he understands why she had to do it. Romantic Relationships are about TRUST, after all.
We got to see: a living Mountain get almost lobotomized, a chicken monster that ate everything turned into blasting cord, a hot potato/cold potato elemental, a gravity well/black hole adjacent get used as a spell, a psychic Warp said black hole, A kaiju get tossed, a Fatal Strike mana eaten, how they get around stuff happening on Earth while this is going on. And This is only the second round! Hope you are not selling yourself short, any One of these could be a full anime arc. But you have someone how successfully packed it into a webcomic. Be Proud!
I think I’m losing the thread here. Max enters this tournament because it’s a shady way to make the money needed. To build a dungeon. Where monsters will be farmed to harvest exotic ingredients. Which will be used to…
This has nothing to do with the dungeon. It’s a way to repay Cora for a variety of things, like rescuing Sydney from deep space. It’s also a way for the US government to acquire some galactic currency so that they can engage in trade with galactic civilization, giving them an edge over other Earth governments (or at least trying to keep pace with Galytn).
The dungeon is indeed for exotic ingredients, so that Archon can have access to powerful magic potions and other items. It also improves their relationship with the Twilight Council, which wants dungeons to increase the ambient mana on Earth, which is beneficial to supernatural creatures and mages.
I mentioned it in a previous day’s discussion, but for anyone who wants a good example of a Mary Sue, look up the anime ‘The Irregular at Magic High School’.
Main character checks so many boxes
>Childhood prodigy in multiple fields
>Powerful in a way that makes people underestimate and discriminate against him until proven wrong
>Everyone who likes him does so for the right reasons
>Those who dislike him are either mistaken or immoral for doing so
>Never shows strain or setbacks, even his failures are part of the plan
>Doing it all to protect his sister selflessly
>All of his downsides turn out to be hidden strengths later
>The ‘downside’ he has turns out to be absorbing the pain of others which never happens in a way that incapacitates or costs him anything.
Is nobody going to talk about the fact that Cora designed and built Syd’s HUD glasses, and now has the ability to make Sydney see and hear things that aren’t there?
‘Cos, ten out of ten for purposes of messing with Syd, but if any adversary ever figures out how to tap into the glasses and their security backdoor, BAD THINGS will happen. And we happen to have an adversary (or at least ‘Frenemy’) force whose main deal is a preternatural ability to figure things out.
That “Insert Clip” function must work by speeding up the playback after the clip insertion to something like 1.1 times normal speed until it catches up to the live broadcast.
It feels like some people don’t actually realize what a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu or Marty Stu for men) is.
It requires the following:
1) Narrative distortions and gravitational pull – instead of the character serving the story, the story bends over backwards to serve the character. Established rules of hte universe or plot logic bend or break to accomodate them. Other characters instantly like and/or respect her. Even skeptics or anti-social characters may break their established personalities just to admire them. And most people who dislikes or opposes the Mary Sue is automatically framed by the story as evil, jealous, or stupid – never validly critical.
2) Improbable and unearned competence – They excel at almost everything they attempt (combat, science, art, tactics, etc) instantly, often outclassing seasoned experts without undergoing or undergoing MINIMAL training, no failure or minimal failure, and no learning curve or a minimal learning curve. They are capable of resolving major conflicts single-handedly, often rendering the rest of hte cast unnecessary or incompetent by comparison.
3) Surface-Level or Consequence-Free flaws – Their only flaws are ‘inconvenience’ flaws. Any traits labeled as flaws are purely aesthetic, endearing, or wind up being a benefit (being trusting, cute clumsiness, being ‘secretly insecure’, being impulsive (as long as it doesnt actually result in anything bad happening to them), etc. If they DO have a flaw or flaws, there is always a lack of repercussions – the Mary Sue’s bad choices, missteps, or reckless and/or impulsive behavior are either instantly forgiven, retroactively proven right, or brushed aside.
4) Agency without growth – Mary Sues tend to have a very ‘flat arc’ rather than a hero’s journey. A well-written protagonist is tested by obstacles, learned from failure, and changes. A Mary Sue changes the world around them while remaining static themselves. They rarely face genuine moral dilemmas or internal struggles – their path is almost always clear and unquestioned.
It does NOT need to be in a Fanfic. It does NOT need to be a woman. It does NOT mean ‘extremely powerful.’ It does not even mean ‘has no exploitable weaknesses’ although that is ONE of the categories of Mary Sue-dom.
Based on these categories:
Batman is most definitely NOT a Mary Sue/Marty Stu/Gary Stu.
Superman is most definitely NOT a Mary Sue/Marty Stu/Gary Stu.
Maxima is most definitely NOT a Mary Sue.
Neo is not remotely a Mary Sue – his entire movie is about him learning, and even once he achieves basically godlike powers, he still winds up learning more and more because Smith and the AIs are STILL capable of outdoing him. The only thing that he’s categorized about ‘Mary Sue-ness’ is that the world shapes itself around him, but that’s because that’s what the Matrix IS SUPPOSED TO BE FOR THE ONE. That’s the specific powerset. And even so, that powerset is housed in a human being who still will make CONSEQUENTIAL MISTAKES.
Luke Skywalker is absolutely, definitely NOT a Mary Sue/Marty Stu/Gary Stu.
Saitama is sort of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu (he fits most of the categories) with a twist – he’s a deconstruction of a Mary Sue, for comic effect.
Rey PALPATINE definitely IS a Mary Sue, to a ridiculous degree. Possibly the most Mary Sue Mary Sue that ever Mary Sued since the original Mary Sue in the 1973 Star Trek fanfic that started the Mary Sue trope.
Captain Marvel, by which I mean the Brie Larson Marvel movie version of Captain Marvel only, is most definitely a Mary Sue as well.
In any Steven Seagal movie, he almost always plays a Marty Stu/Gary Stu, except for in the movie Executive Decision. Too many movies to list where he is a Marty Stu/Gary Stu so I’m just saying Steven Seagal roles in general.
Bella Swan from Twilight – So very much so a Mary Sue to a ridiculous degree, intentionally so, while at the same time being a complete blank slate to young girls can just interpose their own personalities onto her.
Corran Horn – Star Wars Legends comics – very much a Gary Stu/Marty Stu. Ace master pilot, master detective, core member of Rogue Squadron, jedi so naturally gifted that Luke Skywalker praises him constantly. His flaw is not being able to use telekinesis, but instead has a never-before-seen Force Power of Energy absorption which is even more powerful and almost no one else can use it, so it never becomes a consequential flaw.
Alice from Resident Evil movies = Mary Sue in every movie, but each movie ups her Mary Sue-ness even more. Effortlesly masters every weapon, gains godlike telekinetic powers, fights hordes of monsters without breaking a sweat or sustaining any damage, makes one wonder why anyone else is in the movie at all, including established heroes from the games like Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy, who are sidelined or made to look incompetent so that Alice can look better.
Characters like Batman, Superman, Maxima, Luke Skywalker, Neo from the Matrix, etc are NOT Mary Sues. They are highly competent heroes but do not remotely fit the categorizations of a Mary Sue. And Saitama, while he meets 3 of the 4 categories definitely, is a Mary Sue intentionally for comic effect and as a deconstruction of the trope itself. Being a Mary Sue with him is the POINT OF THE CHARACTER. It’s supposed to be funny.
I think this is the best post on the topic here, and have only one thing to add: despite the trope being focused on a character, it’s really a property of the narrative, not the character themselves. The same character, in a different context, or written by a different author, wouldn’t necessarily be a Mary Sue, because all the other traits descend from the first: that the purpose of the story is to elevate and promote a single character, rather than tell an interesting story with some sort of dramatic tension. That is why it’s so common with fanfics that star a self-insert character. That’s why the character so effortlessly solves problems that in a better story would take time and effort. That’s why the universe and characters treat them as flawless, why they suffer no consequences, why they are praised by all but the designated villains. Because it’s just a form of masturbation, rather than an intellectual or emotional exercise, something exploring a profound conflict, an idea, the nature of existence. And that’s why those stories are boring to most people. But they wrongfully blame the character, when it’s the author who has simultaneously made them insufferable and undeserving, while building a world and narrative that rewards and praises them for it.
Captain Marvel in the MCU is completely not a Mary Sue. Because she has faults, and screws up. Repeatedly.
An actual Mary Sue would have none, and NEVER screw up.
1) Captain Marvel does not screw up from any substantive flaws. I think I’d need you to point out examples of her screwing up. Her entire ‘arc’ is more of a flat line of ‘She is impulsive but it’s fine that she’s impulsive because she’s right and there are no negative consequences for her because of it.’
2) What faults? Impulsiveness? It’s a throwaway line that doesn’t actually cost her ANYTHING, much like Mary Sue (the trope-namer) in the Star Trek fanfic being ‘clumsy’ but in an endearing way or a way that actually helps her in the end. Tripping on a banana peel and doing a perfect backflip.
3) Mary Sues CAN have faults. Their faults are inconsequential flaws though. Which I actually went out of my way to explain in point #3 – Surface-Level and/or Consequence-Free Flaws.
Honestly, someone else mentioned Literature Devil in a post here, and how he did a VERY good youtube video on the subject. It’s quite good (and accurate) and you should definitely watch it. I highly recommend it.
“Mary Sue” character is an author self insert. Period. Any other use is a corruption, or misunderstanding, of the original concept. I read once that it goes back to a Star Trek OS fanfic and the author self insert was built to become Kirk’s lover.
Incorrect. Mary Sues CAN be author inserts or wish fulfillment for the author (such as the original Mary Sue in yhe Star Trek fanfic), but dont HAVE to be.