Comments | hated_character: Main Characters who are confident, capable, and female are all Mary Sues doncha know?

tari_silmarwen in hated_character

Main Characters who are confident, capable, and female are all Mary Sues doncha know?

Mar 09, 2012 15:30

Over on Tumblr this kerfluffle went down, wherein someone calls Avatar Korra (among other leading ladies) a Mary Sue.

( Some highlights (or rather lowlights) and my rebuttals. )

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Comments 21

gabzillaz March 9 2012, 22:05:04 UTC

retardedly

I see.

cypsiman2 March 9 2012, 22:21:54 UTC

Wow, this guys's a piece of work; may he be forgotten forever and nothing of value be lost.

beata_malfoy March 9 2012, 23:03:26 UTC

Fan dumb / hate dumb seems to think the definition of Mary Sue is "female character you personally hate".

lunelight March 10 2012, 00:31:12 UTC

Or half the time just "female character". I've lost count of how many times I've seen the label being used before a character's even officially shown up in canon. :|

kankurette March 10 2012, 08:45:49 UTC

What's really weird is when someone will bash a character and go on about their flaws one minute, then call them a Sue the next. Sues don't HAVE flaws!

tari_silmarwen March 10 2012, 17:12:43 UTC

Exactly. Sues are supposed to be flawless characters. Or if they have "flaws" said flaws are really just character quirks that are supposed to make them endearing. With Katniss and Lisbeth, their self-centeredness, emotional stuntedness, and general inability to relate to people are hardly endearing. And Merida's rebellious streak, while awesome, is also the very thing that gets her into trouble, so I don't think we're supposed to be rooting for her to be a fiesty hot-head the whole story, but to gain some wisdom and maturity and mellow out a little bit.

Flawed characters cannot be Sues because Sues, by definition, are flawless.

rosehiptea March 9 2012, 23:36:44 UTC

Wow. Maybe it's a good thing that I sit in my little corner of Tumblr and post pretty pictures and don't get into arguments.

Because bashing characters based on canons that have not come out is just... pathetic.

(Also I thought it was obvious in the clip of Korra that she was kind of a little snot (in a cute fun way, mind you) who couldn't control her bending. And unless that person has access to some material I haven't seen, we know virtually nothing about Merida.)

And as for Katniss, yes she was excellent at archery and good at survival. If the story was about someone who couldn't do any kind of fighting it would have been over a few chapters in because she would be dead. But part of the premise, which I think some people miss, is that Katniss became a symbol during and after the games. They made her up to be a perfect "Mary Sue" to some degree, and it thought it was kind of obvious in the books that she wasn't that and that she struggled with it.

Wow, I have too many feelings...

tari_silmarwen March 10 2012, 17:25:06 UTC

From what little I know of Merida from plot summaries and the trailers is that she starts out as your typical Rebellious Princess who doesn't want to marry and wants the freedom to do something traditionally masculine yadda yadda yadda but then those things are in fact what causes all the problems for the rest of the story. Merida doesn't have to go and "prove herself" on some epic quest and show that she's just as good as the boys, she has to fix a massive mistake that she caused and atone for it. Her character arc actually sounds a lot like Thor's to me: Starts out brash and hot-headed, breaks the rules, causes a big screw-up that could doom everything, spends the rest of the film humbled by his fall from grace and maturing into a better person. What's so bad about a female character having that arc?

They made her up to be a perfect "Mary Sue" to some degree, and it thought it was kind of obvious in the books that she wasn't that and that she struggled with it.This. The characters who talked up Katniss's virtues were trying to ( ... )

rosehiptea March 10 2012, 19:48:23 UTC

What's so bad about a female character having that arc?

Sounds great to me!

I don't even think stories about Rebellious Princesses are intrinsically bad but that sounds like an even better movie.

(The comment has been removed)

tari_silmarwen March 10 2012, 17:27:13 UTC

I actually love it when the girls in my fandoms are grossly overpowered in comparison to the boys. If the guys are mature individuals they won't feel intimidated that their female counterparts are more powerful than them.

lunalotte88 March 11 2012, 22:05:08 UTC

Nice double standard there- it's considered the norm for a male character to be an awesome and badass Chosen One type, but if a female character is the same, she's a Sue. I remember a discussion a couple years back about how all the girls on ATLA are ~too powerful~ and Sue-ish and they make the guys ~look inferior~ (I believe the person complaining was a guy, btw).

*rolls eyes* "How dare a woman make a man feel less manly, or less important?"