LJ Comment: Tear and Canon Sues
Yes, I know this isn't the third part of my Heroes of Might and Magic retrospective, but I found this comment on Das Sporking, and after reading it, it pissed me off enough (probably more than it should have) to do an on-the-spot sporking of it. (I can't be the only one who noticed that of the two "on-the-spot" sporks i've done so far, both of them involved Tales of the Abyss...) I didn't make this a response to the comment because a) it would have been too big, b) I'd rather not risk starting a war in the comments section, and c) if any readers from here came to to find that comment, I'd risk breaking one of the comm's rules: leading the original poster to the sporking of their work, even if the work is just a comment or if the person did end up completely civil in their responses.
Mary Sues are differently defined for me. Though I distinct between Mary Sues that fans write, because they just do. I used to and try my damndest to not write another one.
So these days you don’t try to not make Mary Sues? The way that sentence is written confuses me.
What bugs me are Canon Sues. A canon character, who is supposed to be rounded off and decent on their own, but feels like a Mary Sue.
So Bella Swan? Or the majority of the Twilight cast?
Look at Tear from Tales of the Abyss, for me. To me, she's a Mary Sue. She's supposedly this super strong woman, won't take shit from people and can supposedly do things that most people couldn't be able to do, emotionally.
By that token, you could describe Jade Curtiss as a canon sue as well. Invented fomicry at the improbable age of nine? Check. Shilled by everyone, villains included? Check (though he at least has the ability to back up those claims). Best friends with the emperor of Malkuth? Check. Overcomes a fon slot seal, something that no one in the history of ever has done before? Check. If it weren’t for the death of his professor, one of the people who got him to change for the better and Peony as a morality pet and learning that his experiences were a bad thing (including one of those instances where he was nearly killed), he’d be a complete canon stu.
Or how about her brother, Van? Accomplished swordsman? Check. Descendant of Yulia Jue and can use her hymns? Check. High ranking position in the Order of Lorelei at a young age? Check. Excellent in all his possible skills and talents, such as singing and cooking? Check. People will blindly follow him? Check.
In other words, you might want to look at the rest of the cast before you tar one with the canon sue brush, because there are others who are just as guilty of such a label if you know where to look.
Also, she has big boobs, which yes, I find is a mary sue sign.
Did you not see that she didn’t like it when some of the other characters made unsavory comments about her breasts? Mostly Luke’s foot-in-mouth moments about melons or how she took a rental swimsuit when the one Peony provided was too risqué for her tastes? (The swimsuit itself is never shown to the audience, so we can only imagine what it would have looked like. It’s like the Noodle Incident that way.)
Oh, and she actually has a super cute side to her, cause she loves cute things, and she coos when she sees them.
She doesn’t actually “coo” when she sees things like cheagles. She only blushes and thinks to herself how cute it is because she has an image to maintain.
Yeah, that last bit pisses me off and it feels like it was shoved in to make her appealing to a male audience.
No, it’s to help show that she’s not completely cold and heartless.
The other problem with Tear is, she claims she's neutral between the Grand Master Mohs and Fonmaster Ion factions, which is a huge deal in the Order of the world's religion.
Actually she was originally on the side of Grand Maestro Mohs, then she saw him work towards making a war happen that she didn’t want and got disillusioned, causing her to change sides.
She states that she can, and has, killed people before.
That’s because, as a soldier, she’s been trained to kill people, just like Jade. Luke never had that training, hence why killing someone for the first time was such a shock to him-it didn’t matter whether the guy was just a faceless mook.
And her job is to kill her own brother.
No, she tasked herself with that because her brother was a villain with good publicity who was going to kill thousands of innocent people, so she took it upon herself to do it because she felt responsible and that no one would believe her if she tried telling them.
This makes her the only character, next to protagonist Luke, who has an actual, emotional and almost dependent link to the game's antagonist. (Yes, Guy is best friends with Van, but nobody gives a shit about that, it's all about LUKE AND TEAR.
Luke’s the main character. The story is mostly about him and his personal growth. This is not Guy’s story.
Luke I can get, but not Tear.
Van is her brother, how is that not important?!
Pisses me off.)
Much like how this thing is pissing me off.
Also, her romance with Luke is absolutely atrocious.
Really? I think it’s one of the better romances in a Tales game. Certainly better than Milla and Jude, that’s for certain.
I never believed it when I first played the game, subsequent playing of the game, whether in English or Japanese, still does not make me honestly believe they are in love.
Did you ever see the scene where Tear, despite telling Luke that she wouldn’t stop Luke from trying to sacrifice himself atop the Tower of Rem, ran out to try and do so, requiring Guy to work against his own personal phobia to stop her? Or how it was Tear’s encouragement and training in hyperresonance that allowed Luke to help lower the outer lands? Or that Tear not abandoning him when she had every reason to do so helped with Luke’s character development? Or the sidequest where Luke gets Tear’s pendant back that she had to give up so they could get on the carriage at the beginning of the game? Or how about the two of them admitting their insecurities to each other when both of them are thinking that they’ll die (Tear’s miasma condition and Luke post-Tower of Rem)?
Did we play the same game?
She feels maternal towards him, cause he was an unknowing "kid" of the outside world, due to his strict and limited upbringing.
Never mind that the whole “Luke is actually seven” thing is kind of bull since post-haircut he makes several decisions that even grown men wouldn’t have been able to make, she also felt guilt about getting him teleported halfway across the world and landing them both in enemy territory, Luke’s bratty attitude about the whole thing or not.
(And I believe Luke doesn't love her romantically, he just feels familiarity around her, cause she was the only one around that he sort of knew when he was stuck in the enemy kingdom)
In his diary before the final dungeon, he wrote that he intended to confess to Tear his feelings for her but didn’t because he knew he’d die anyway and he didn’t want to break her heart, or even before then when there was this line after she discovers his dying condition: “Tear told me not to keep anything from her anymore. Yeah, I guess. Now that she’s learned my biggest secret, I don’t have anything…well, only one thing to hide from her. Thanks, Tear.” How is that not love?
By the way, I forgot to mention that Tear's ancestor is Yulia Yue,
That should be Yulia Jue. It really hurts your argument when you can’t even get the canon’s spelling right.
THE woman who read the Score, which is like the prophecy of what happens to the world and basically created the Order Of Lorelei.
Guy’s ancestors had been a part of Yulia’s followers when they saved the world, but you don’t see him getting applauded for it. What’s your point?
Also, a minor grammar nitpick, but that “of” should be lower cased. You never see those being capitalized in a title unless it’s the first word.
She's also the only one who can use hymns, which are supposedly essential to fighting and winning against the antagonist.
Her brother was capable of using the hymns too, even if we never actually see him using them on screen. That’s how he was able to absorb Lorelei into himself and survive falling into the planet’s core.
Oh, and there's a stupid, pointless, goes-nowhere plot point where she gets an illness that causes her to be weak in cutscenes.
It was an illness that would have killed her in due time! It’s called Gameplay and Story Segregation, because if that did transfer to gameplay, that’d make it hard to use her when she’s the healer who specializes in area of effect. And guess what? That came about because the Sephiroth trees had Yulia’s fonon frequency and thus the contaminated seventh fonons came into Tear because of her blood connection with Yulia.
It goes nowhere
I’m sorry, what? It parallels Luke’s later events of sacrificing himself with all the other replicas at the Tower of Rem, since at the time Tear was doing it, she was doing it regardless of the harm it was doing to her body and did it anyway since it had to be done or a good part of the world would be destroyed, just like with Luke’s sacrifice since otherwise the miasma would have destroyed the world.
and they wrote themselves into a corner, so they smashed and hurried a different plot point into it (making the latter plot point come across as clumsy) and killed off a character to "heal" her.
That point, I’ll admit to agreeing with for a bit, since it largely felt like they killed Ion for the sake of killing a character, but even then how the sacrifice worked actually makes sense in context.
THAT is a Canon Sue. A person to whom a shit ton of things happen and they are made out to be awesome, but still mention they are just normal people.
But you said at the beginning of this that you defined a canon sue as someone who was “rounded off and decent on their own, but feels like a Mary Sue.” Which one is it?
And that’s the comment right there. It’s like I said earlier, did this person play the same game I did? The complete lack of understanding to canon events makes me believe that’s the case.
Mary Sues are differently defined for me. Though I distinct between Mary Sues that fans write, because they just do. I used to and try my damndest to not write another one.
So these days you don’t try to not make Mary Sues? The way that sentence is written confuses me.
What bugs me are Canon Sues. A canon character, who is supposed to be rounded off and decent on their own, but feels like a Mary Sue.
So Bella Swan? Or the majority of the Twilight cast?
Look at Tear from Tales of the Abyss, for me. To me, she's a Mary Sue. She's supposedly this super strong woman, won't take shit from people and can supposedly do things that most people couldn't be able to do, emotionally.
By that token, you could describe Jade Curtiss as a canon sue as well. Invented fomicry at the improbable age of nine? Check. Shilled by everyone, villains included? Check (though he at least has the ability to back up those claims). Best friends with the emperor of Malkuth? Check. Overcomes a fon slot seal, something that no one in the history of ever has done before? Check. If it weren’t for the death of his professor, one of the people who got him to change for the better and Peony as a morality pet and learning that his experiences were a bad thing (including one of those instances where he was nearly killed), he’d be a complete canon stu.
Or how about her brother, Van? Accomplished swordsman? Check. Descendant of Yulia Jue and can use her hymns? Check. High ranking position in the Order of Lorelei at a young age? Check. Excellent in all his possible skills and talents, such as singing and cooking? Check. People will blindly follow him? Check.
In other words, you might want to look at the rest of the cast before you tar one with the canon sue brush, because there are others who are just as guilty of such a label if you know where to look.
Also, she has big boobs, which yes, I find is a mary sue sign.
Did you not see that she didn’t like it when some of the other characters made unsavory comments about her breasts? Mostly Luke’s foot-in-mouth moments about melons or how she took a rental swimsuit when the one Peony provided was too risqué for her tastes? (The swimsuit itself is never shown to the audience, so we can only imagine what it would have looked like. It’s like the Noodle Incident that way.)
Oh, and she actually has a super cute side to her, cause she loves cute things, and she coos when she sees them.
She doesn’t actually “coo” when she sees things like cheagles. She only blushes and thinks to herself how cute it is because she has an image to maintain.
Yeah, that last bit pisses me off and it feels like it was shoved in to make her appealing to a male audience.
No, it’s to help show that she’s not completely cold and heartless.
The other problem with Tear is, she claims she's neutral between the Grand Master Mohs and Fonmaster Ion factions, which is a huge deal in the Order of the world's religion.
Actually she was originally on the side of Grand Maestro Mohs, then she saw him work towards making a war happen that she didn’t want and got disillusioned, causing her to change sides.
She states that she can, and has, killed people before.
That’s because, as a soldier, she’s been trained to kill people, just like Jade. Luke never had that training, hence why killing someone for the first time was such a shock to him-it didn’t matter whether the guy was just a faceless mook.
And her job is to kill her own brother.
No, she tasked herself with that because her brother was a villain with good publicity who was going to kill thousands of innocent people, so she took it upon herself to do it because she felt responsible and that no one would believe her if she tried telling them.
This makes her the only character, next to protagonist Luke, who has an actual, emotional and almost dependent link to the game's antagonist. (Yes, Guy is best friends with Van, but nobody gives a shit about that, it's all about LUKE AND TEAR.
Luke’s the main character. The story is mostly about him and his personal growth. This is not Guy’s story.
Luke I can get, but not Tear.
Van is her brother, how is that not important?!
Pisses me off.)
Much like how this thing is pissing me off.
Also, her romance with Luke is absolutely atrocious.
Really? I think it’s one of the better romances in a Tales game. Certainly better than Milla and Jude, that’s for certain.
I never believed it when I first played the game, subsequent playing of the game, whether in English or Japanese, still does not make me honestly believe they are in love.
Did you ever see the scene where Tear, despite telling Luke that she wouldn’t stop Luke from trying to sacrifice himself atop the Tower of Rem, ran out to try and do so, requiring Guy to work against his own personal phobia to stop her? Or how it was Tear’s encouragement and training in hyperresonance that allowed Luke to help lower the outer lands? Or that Tear not abandoning him when she had every reason to do so helped with Luke’s character development? Or the sidequest where Luke gets Tear’s pendant back that she had to give up so they could get on the carriage at the beginning of the game? Or how about the two of them admitting their insecurities to each other when both of them are thinking that they’ll die (Tear’s miasma condition and Luke post-Tower of Rem)?
Did we play the same game?
She feels maternal towards him, cause he was an unknowing "kid" of the outside world, due to his strict and limited upbringing.
Never mind that the whole “Luke is actually seven” thing is kind of bull since post-haircut he makes several decisions that even grown men wouldn’t have been able to make, she also felt guilt about getting him teleported halfway across the world and landing them both in enemy territory, Luke’s bratty attitude about the whole thing or not.
(And I believe Luke doesn't love her romantically, he just feels familiarity around her, cause she was the only one around that he sort of knew when he was stuck in the enemy kingdom)
In his diary before the final dungeon, he wrote that he intended to confess to Tear his feelings for her but didn’t because he knew he’d die anyway and he didn’t want to break her heart, or even before then when there was this line after she discovers his dying condition: “Tear told me not to keep anything from her anymore. Yeah, I guess. Now that she’s learned my biggest secret, I don’t have anything…well, only one thing to hide from her. Thanks, Tear.” How is that not love?
By the way, I forgot to mention that Tear's ancestor is Yulia Yue,
That should be Yulia Jue. It really hurts your argument when you can’t even get the canon’s spelling right.
THE woman who read the Score, which is like the prophecy of what happens to the world and basically created the Order Of Lorelei.
Guy’s ancestors had been a part of Yulia’s followers when they saved the world, but you don’t see him getting applauded for it. What’s your point?
Also, a minor grammar nitpick, but that “of” should be lower cased. You never see those being capitalized in a title unless it’s the first word.
She's also the only one who can use hymns, which are supposedly essential to fighting and winning against the antagonist.
Her brother was capable of using the hymns too, even if we never actually see him using them on screen. That’s how he was able to absorb Lorelei into himself and survive falling into the planet’s core.
Oh, and there's a stupid, pointless, goes-nowhere plot point where she gets an illness that causes her to be weak in cutscenes.
It was an illness that would have killed her in due time! It’s called Gameplay and Story Segregation, because if that did transfer to gameplay, that’d make it hard to use her when she’s the healer who specializes in area of effect. And guess what? That came about because the Sephiroth trees had Yulia’s fonon frequency and thus the contaminated seventh fonons came into Tear because of her blood connection with Yulia.
It goes nowhere
I’m sorry, what? It parallels Luke’s later events of sacrificing himself with all the other replicas at the Tower of Rem, since at the time Tear was doing it, she was doing it regardless of the harm it was doing to her body and did it anyway since it had to be done or a good part of the world would be destroyed, just like with Luke’s sacrifice since otherwise the miasma would have destroyed the world.
and they wrote themselves into a corner, so they smashed and hurried a different plot point into it (making the latter plot point come across as clumsy) and killed off a character to "heal" her.
That point, I’ll admit to agreeing with for a bit, since it largely felt like they killed Ion for the sake of killing a character, but even then how the sacrifice worked actually makes sense in context.
THAT is a Canon Sue. A person to whom a shit ton of things happen and they are made out to be awesome, but still mention they are just normal people.
But you said at the beginning of this that you defined a canon sue as someone who was “rounded off and decent on their own, but feels like a Mary Sue.” Which one is it?
And that’s the comment right there. It’s like I said earlier, did this person play the same game I did? The complete lack of understanding to canon events makes me believe that’s the case.