Nope, I haven't. It's 2 pages long. Are you responding to the idea that Rey from Star Wars was well-liked enough and/or that she's a Mary Sue, or that there are people out there who like Mary Sue characters?
Haha I see! Oopsie. Guess I'll go and read the thread in that case. Not like I'm getting my writing done anyway as I'm currently stuck. Thanks for the clarification!
Yeah. Also, I tend to like Mary Sues when it’s time to sit back and eat my popcorn. A lot of “flaws” seem just as corny to me. The idea that talent is much more important than training and that some people are just better / special makes fun cinema. It’s easy to root for them cause having them on your side is desirable.
And if I recall, they straightened that out and became friends within the next five minutes. That's not a flaw, that's a mistake. Learn the difference.
You saw plenty of plot, huh? Then you have psychosis. And no, she didn't put in any real effort. She suddenly could do things that no Jedi could do. That's stupid.
Which I'm pretty sure only happened because she was the first girl Finn had seen in his entire life that wasn't covered in head to toe armour. Also, Mary Sues don't make mistakes, so check and mate. ETA: Also, there's a Star Wars thread in the Debate Room.
Sorry, but you actually have to follow the rules of chess to checkmate. Yes, they make mistakes. But it's either easily resolved, or bares no real consequence to the rest of the story. They can actually have flaws! Did you know that? But they're always "cool" flaws. What really defines them is whether they actually develop anywhere. And whether there's an actual struggle to their development. Rey didn't struggle. You can argue she did, but she didn't. With no effort she learned to use the force. She somehow knows how to fly... which where did that come from? She rescued herself. Here's the question you should ask yourself. Did you ever feel, strongly in your bones, that there was point she could have lost? So yeah, that funny sound you're hearing? They're called crickets. You know why you're hearing crickets? Because she never struggled. Everything just came naturally to her. Sure, they kind of went that direction in second movie... but it was so fleeting that who ever noticed?
Delightful and admirable as personal remarks like this are, maybe they could be moved to the Debate Room. Or--I know this would be a dismal loss--eliminated entirely.
In any movie you've seen when have you ever truly believed that someone in the main three could have lost? Those crickets? Those are for you, because you're entire post was a bad joke.
Okay let's break the plot down. Where does it start? We get the exposition and Flynn crash lands... on that planet. (I'm sorry. Not a Star Wars fan. Don't know what anything is called.) Robot with vital information is separated from Flynn. But oh look, Rey is there. She happens to run into the robot. Guy wants to buy robot. Well, lucky it's Rey, because a normal person in her circumstances would have sold that robot... then maybe realize the mistake they made afterwards, which would have been pretty good plot... but you know, but since it would have been a mistake that would have taken longer then two seconds to resolve, she's not going to make that mistake. Now they're under attack. Only hope is to get to a ship! (Which happens to be the Millennium Falcon... that's another stupid thing about this so called plot.) But oh no. Ships have to be flown. Good thing Rey happens to know how to fly, although given what we're told about her, I see no reason why she would even learn. Get away from the bad guys... Well that close... oh no! Now we have a leak of some kind. Well, here's Rey again, who knows how to fix it. This is just the first act. And I'm not even done yet. Do you know what that's called? It's called "Being good at everything." Do you want me to continue? Because I can go on. From getting kidnapped, (Good thing she knows how to do a Jedi mind trick despite having only learned about the Jedi... that day...) To first light saber fight with Darth Vader cos play guy... (Good thing she knows how to fight against the force.)
Debate Room. This is a thread about Mary Sues, not about your dislike of a movie, however valid you think your reasons may be. If you can't show a modicum of reasonability by moving this there, then why should anyone assume you have enough of a grasp on reason for them to actually listen to what you're trying to say.
Oh come off it. You were arguing just as much. And if you can't show a modicum of sense of reasoning ability to spell resonability (is that even a word?) right, even though there's a spell checker built into most web browsers... you know what? Never mind.
You're....snarking about another poster's failure to mis-spell a word the way you think it should be mis-spelled? Eh?
If you have to throw insults and make things up (Rey only uses pull, mind probe, mind trick, and subconscious precognition in TFA, all powers we've seen before) to support your argument, it's probably a bad argument. I've nothing more to say on that. Continue making a scene if you wish, but I won't be a part of it.
You'd better tell the dictionaries about your ruling. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/reasonability https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reasonability
But the problem goes a little deeper than "Mary Sue has no flaws". Plenty of the most blatant examples of Mary Sues have flaws, it's just that the problem is either: A.) Those flaws are superficial, or they're fake flaws presented as being real ones. Bella Swan being too beautiful and too perfect aren't real flaws, and despite the fact that "Perfectionism is a flaw in itself" is a very popular saying- it's wrong. If something is perfect, it's not flawed, though you could perceive its lack of flaw to be, well, a flaw. B.) The flaws are shallow and tacked on as an excuse to make the character flawed. An especially clever 14 year old might think their self-insert fanfiction Naruto character escapes being a Mary Sue just because they have some sort of generic flaw. A Mary Sue is still a Mary Sue even if they're so "cold and emo" that they don't realize how much all the other characters love them. C.) The flaws are there to make the character seem cooler. Refer to example B, a character is still a Mary Sue even if their 'flaw' is that they're a cold-blooded pyschopath Sephiroth Ramsay Bolton Jeff the Killer badass who LOVES TO DRINK PEOPLE'S PAIN. Just because your Mary Sue bites the head off of a little girl who tried to share her balloon with him doesn't mean they're not a Mary Sue. D.) However, the most common example you'll find in more professional-tier writing is usually going to be: The Mary Sue is established as having flaws, but then those flaws never really get brought up at all in the story. A flaw might effect a character in a very skin-deep way for one brief period of the book and then never get resolved or brought up again, it's just something that happened to make the character look like a dick for a few moments. The entire concept of Mary Sues is a little tricky. For instance, would you call someone like, say, Superman (Golden Era Superman, not all of the tryhard emo-fied Superman of the newer generations) or Dragon Ball Z's Goku as being Mary Sue? Both are characters that entirely fit the criteria of a Mary Sue and neither have any real flaws (Superman's only weakness is a magic rock and Goku's weakness is literally nothing.) Yet you'll never see anyone make a credible argument that "Goku is such a Mary Sue!". I think what it comes down to is how the character is presented. No one gets mad at Goku or Superman for being Mary Sues because they're openly shallow characters who aren't trying to be deep, where as the likes of Bella Swan from Twilight are trying to convince us that they're deep and complex when in reality they're not. A Mary Sue isn't a character devoid of flaws, it's a character who is devoid of real flaws and yet pretentiously wants us to believe they're super deep. If you want to avoid creating a Mary Sue, your character either needs real flaws or they need to never be put into a position where their lack of real flaws is becoming sorely evident. An 'everyman' type of character in a story isn't going to need a ton of flaw, but if he's suddenly the object of everyone's attention and the most important person on earth- people are going to start questioning why he's so shallow. tl;dr: If you want an emotionally complex character, they need serious human flaws that cause some sort of actual conflict in the story. Giving your character some 'token flaws' and then expecting them to be deep is going to set off red flags to readers.
I think pretty much everything posted here covers it, but I'll add my two cents. I think that any character that is too competent is often boring and doesn't really make sense. One of my favorite characters is Dr. House and he is an incredibly competent character when it comes to his work. And his backstory and sort of hyper focused, self-destructive (for his work, usually) personality meshes well with a character that is that competent. The great thing about anyone who is that skilled at something is that they often have a host of personal issues to explore. Nothing comes without a cost. Ever. The four broad categories that people care about are wealth, fame, competency/intelligence, and social fulfillment. If someone has literally all of these, what could they possibly want? Even if you write in a motivation, it's like... why do they have that motivation? It's inhuman. Makes 0 sense. Just remember that in your character development and it'll come out just fine.
I'd add E.) The narrative refuses to recognize the Sue's very obvious flaws, treating them as perfect. I don't encounter it much in original fiction, probably due to somewhat higher standards, but bad fanfic is full of it. Absolute worst case I ever found had the Sue in question aiming to set themselves up as a totalitarian monarch and commit genocide. This isn't treated as bad in anyway, and the character has no other acknowledged flaws. The reader is expected to find these goals acceptable and keep rooting for the character. I can't speak for anyone else, but this is the most aggravating to me.
This is also a really good one that I forgot about. You see it a lot with revenge-driven self-inserts, too.
I agree with the general gist of what you said here ...that a character who is too competent is in major Mary Sue danger. However, the 'four broad categories people care about' might need heavy modification, depending on the character. Maybe Dr House cares about these things, but I don't. In fact, fame is something I pretty much shun. I don't want fame. Yikes. And wealth only to the extent that it brings security—which IS important to me. Great wealth bothers me, and I wouldn't want it for myself. In fact, I don't actually understand the impulse that makes people want more than they need or can possibly enjoy.
