In Favor of the Mary Sue

In regards to Dumbledore's sexuality, if the story put out is true (that she brought it up when the film producers proposed giving him a girlfriend) then I'm not opposed to it. Dumbledore's sexuality, especially since he didn't have a significant other in the Harry Potter series, was irrelevant to the plot but it is part of the character and is something that she could have had in the background. The UK wasn't as openly welcoming of homosexuality when Rowling started writing the series and this could have been a factor she considered then which has since become dated.

But for the rest, I do agree. Rowling is an intelligent woman (has to be to write half as well as she does) but this feels uncharacteristically foolish.

I think you're half right, the protagonist drives the plot, certainly, but there is a difference between protagonist being pivotal to the plot in that their actions drive it and the world of the book seeming to exist solely to put the protagonist on a pedestal.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke exilesex the idea that every character has a story beyond the central prose. It is the events that tie them them together.

 

I'm not gonna check if this is here or not, but...

Overly Sarcastic view to Mary Sue.

 

Yes the the entire core concept, such as it is, of a "strong female character" is essentially to take a male character archetype and then supplant it somehow with a female character instead. Which in and of itself is frankly dismissive to people who are traditionally feminine.

To hear Liberals tell it, its supposed to be representative of women but all of them seem to represent a small niche of frankly bitter feminist cat ladies and lesbians. It doesn't actually represent what actually is the wider swathe og the female population who have no interest in such things.

No one ever suggests a "strong" woman can be a mother, be traditionally feminine, be sensitive or scared or weak but still succeed. Or not any more, characters like Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor would be written off as "submissive" and decried as a symptom of toxic masculinity. They threw a fit because Captain Tumblr Post had MAKEUP on un the recent Endgame trailer for Christ's sake, so I gather she's broken the Commandments according to Lena Dunham.

Which in and of itself is ironic seeing as she was the Princess of Airhead Millennials a few months ago.

 

It's so nice to have a man tell us little ladies what we should be offended by. It saves us all that pesky pesky thinking, and gives us more time to tie bows in our hair.

Have you, I wonder, ever actually met a female person?

 

Dude, you gotta dial down the political mudslinging. (1) It makes a productive conversation with those who disagree with you nearly impossible. And (2), you should always try to address the actual arguments, and avoid generalizations about the people who put forward said arguments.

 

As cathartic as ranting may be, note that people tend to walk away rather than listen to it.

 

To clarify, the idea of Strong Female Character is as inane and trite as the basic concepts behind any niche character, it's at best tokenism and at worst thinly veiled bigotry.

But unlike, say, the treatment of Black characters in "diverse" movies or books which alternate between Noble Negroes who are constantly in turmoil and can do no wrong (see: The Hate U Give) and some kind of bizarre parody written by White people with no actual interaction with Blacks or idea of how Black culture functions the Strong Female Character doesn't treat woman as sideshow attractions or zoo animals to gawk at.

Instead it assumes that traditionally feminine concepts and ideologies which are all but omnipresent in most circles, outside of California that is, are somehow undesirable and submissive. No actual criteria for what submissiveness is, other than I guess being interested in a male character and willing to change or give up something to be with them, or even talk about them, which is why idiocy like the Bachtdel Test even exists.

For those not aware the Bachtdel Test, which I'm sure I spelled incorrectly but I don't care, is some pablum coughed up by Third Rage Feminists which proposes that for a story to be "good" in their newspeak-like definition it must have at minimum two or more named female characters who talk about things other than men or traditionally feminine concepts and if that sounds stupid congratulations, you're not insane.

On the point of what is and isn't a Mary Sue, which actually ties back to this, I put forth the character of Elsa from the recent hit Frozen. Now, not only is she NOT by definition a "Strong Female Character" but she's also a decidedly feminine and beautiful character (in a movie that fails the Bachtdel Test no less) and she's so OP she's giving Goku penis envy...and yet NO ONE realistically calls her a Mary Sue.

Why?

Well, see, cause she has this thing called "characterization". It's kinda a new concept, I admit I'm not really well versed in this sorcery myself, but from what I understand it involves a character having defined flaws to go with their powers and achievements and even moments of weakness or defeat, and then shows them overcoming this not by pulling new powers out of their ass or donning Plot Armor as the Chosen One but by instead developing and growing as a character over time. This in turn endears them to the viewer, and combined with the fact she's also very beautiful and has what in most series would be considered a very tragic story arc, makes the viewer root for her and like her, and thus feel deep and genuine emotions towards her which, yes, includes attraction.

It's complicated I know but Disney has been working out the kinks in this idea for a while, it's kinda new, but I think it'll take off someday.

 

Oh, ye of endless snark, lacking any and all chill, and constantly derailing every post into your glassy-eyed, spittle-beflecked political ravings, I warned you that the best way to make your time short with our venue is to keep this shit up. You asked, and I answered in a most pedantic fashion, in a thread you started specifically about the topic of how not to get banned in our forum. Perhaps there was a linguistic impasse, perhaps not. Either way, I am more than sure that I fulfilled my end of the explanation bargain.

Your damage does not equal my emergency, my concern, my... anything.

You knew this was coming, and so it has arrived. Better luck wherever else you land.

 

To the rest:

If you don't understand or willfully refuse to acknowledge that an opinion is an utterly different creature from a mode of engagement, our time together may be less than pleasant. And it's not my job to teach you the difference between those two things. You were to have learned that in the real, 3D world.

Play nice or play elsewhere folks.

 

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Also, on Rowling:

The first HP book was in 1997. That might as well be a different century. Does JKR even remember everything she was thinking?

I barely remember the backstory of the background characters of the stuff I wrote 3-4 years ago, and every time I remember it, it probably changes a little bit. What does JKR know about what JKR meant 20 years ago?

And even if she does remember it, how many people do you know who were woke in 1997?

 

Since he was replying to me, I feel I should clarify what I was trying to express (since he appeared to be agreeing to some part of it.

I was trying to say that I felt that the concept of a strong woman is being funneled down of late. There are also incidents like the uproar about Black Widow having a moment of vulnerability (which in turn made her feel more human and get ability to do what she does despite it all the more powerful) because she was the main woman of the Avengers at the time.

Strengths and weaknesses in humanity are incredibly diverse. It's not so much that I'm offended by the idea of women trying out in an area that is male dominated, even in superhero fantasy, but if they are just copy pasting what's been done before and not really giving the character their own depth of personality I will think like I did with Rey. I'm not annoyed about the idea of Rey being a Star Wars protagonist. I just found myself disinterested because her story feels formulaic rather than organic.

 

The reason imo why this line of critique looks sexist is because we never see anyone put it on a male character.

These “masculine archetype” characters pretty much never express any characteristics rare in women. They are bread and butter neutral characters used as audience standins.

Audiences sometimes come with the expectation that women standing up physically for themselves or engaging in risk-seeking behavior is stuff only men can do, and even if it’s more likely among average men, the world is filled with millions of examples of female police, soldiers, mma and street fighters so much so that any single example of a non-nurturing risk-seeking female character in adventure media isn’t even special.

It’s even more sexist when the label gets slapped on actually feminine characters like Captain Marvel, someone who IS nurturing and who actively DOES care about asthetics, both more than any other MCU character, when completely stereotypical characters like the Steve sidekicks from Wonder Woman and Captain America, or even Captain America himself, get a total pass on the requirement to bring something new. They don’t.

 

Captain Marvel be comforting a little girl and asking for consensus on the color of her superhero outfit, and dudes be like, “she ain’t feminine enough for a superhero movie.”

 

But there are plenty of male characters that reflect characteristics found in other male characters. It’s not possible for every character to be totally different from every other character. It feels like there’s a demand that female characters follow a higher standard of originality.

 

I think this is a big part of the issue. When we have a movie franchise with however many significant male characters and one "main woman", there's a hell of a lot of pressure on that one female character to be all things to all people.

I'm happy to see female characters who embody traditional/stereotypical femininity, but I also want to see female characters who play active roles in the theme of the movie/book. If the movie is about superheroes waging war against the bad guys, I want to see female characters waging war against the bad guys. I'm happy to ALSO see female characters being nurturing or whatever, but if I only get one "main woman" at a time in an action movie? I want her to take part in the action..

 

Originality and uniqueness are not mutually inclusive. I'm sorry if my wording had left the impression that this is what I'm after.

What I want more than strict uniqueness is the feeling that the character is organic. Characters that seem to exist as a gender swap and Mary Sues in general don't satisfy this for me.

 

There is a lot of confusion between gender identity and role identity. Certain roles have traits that have become associated with gender because that role, often exaggerated in the media, is associated with one gender.
For example, go watch a woman's basketball game. You will see the team captains showing traits normally associated in the media with males when they are actually traits that goes with the leadership role.
Too often the Mary Sue label is slapped onto a female character because that character has assume a role, and the traits associated with that role, that is normally filled with a male character.

 

But I’m not seeing why they’re a gender swap. You say Rey seems to be modeled on Luke(?). (sorry if I misworded the quote; I think I have the gist). To me, that’s about originality. The fact that the character you feel she’s modeled on happens to be male doesn’t, to me, make it a gender swap. There’s really nothing uniquely male about Luke.

 

Ambling back: Also, as I recall the film, Rey has ample stereotypical female characteristics. To Luke, the droids are slaves or property. Rey adopted BB8. When she thought he was threatened by Finn, she went into a headlong mama-bear attack. We’re seeing Rey as a mother, immediately.

Now, that’s only stereotypically female, not inherently female. Luke could have gone all fatherly with R2D2. But he didn’t. He remained master/owner—maybe a kindly one, but still, always master/owner.

That’s just one of the countless ways that they’re very different.

 

Good stuff. Makes me want to go back and watch it again.

 

Hm. I've noticed that too, but perceived it differently. I think that this is mostly due to the difference of how robot-human relationships were perceived in the late seventies. After Pixar's Wall-E became a thing (and it most definitely deserved it), and since Disney's marketing tactic is to include a larger age range of viewers to make a box-office hit, things kind of went south for the SW movies (that's my personal opinion). Not that I ever was a big SW fan, but the difference in quality, story wise, has fallen. They included way too much childish gimmicks, one of which is treating the robots as pets. That's what a child would like to see. It's not bad. Children are viewers too and might like these gimmicks, but it somehow ruins it for the more mature, sci fi fans. BB8 was also thanked by the royalty! I mean... come on.

 

I don’t agree, because the droids seemed to have a level of AI that suggests they’re sentient.

 

This is a very long conversation. I wouldn't take them to be sentient. Luke didn't (from my POV). He was kind because he was generally kind. And yes, people tend to bond with things as well, especially if a thing saves their life or even their sanity (For Tom Hanks, it was merely a ball. For me it's cigarettes. I smoke my friends. I'm a cannibal. Don't be like me. ). But can AI be really considered sentient, since it was constructed? Does an AI droid really have a choice? Does it chooses whom it supports? Or is it all programed to simulate? How is this perceived in the old and newer SW movies? There is a difference in the old and the new movies, not in the characters of the androids, but in the way their human masters treated them. I just didn't take it to be the feminine vs. the masculine way. I'm not saying that you are wrong. This is a point indeed. It's just that I've never thought about it in this way before.

 

One of the things I liked about the reboot of Battlestar Galactica was the sensible distribution of the female/male ratio. That's how it should be done, in my opinion. Starbuck was changed to a female character from the original series, but throughout the series, females played every kind of role—including many of the most effective soldiers and combat veterans and other Admirals of the fleet—and nobody ever made any mention that this was in any way unusual. "Sir" denoted rank, not gender.

I think BSG was an accurate representation of the way things are going in the real world. AND there were NO Mary Sues in that series at all. Nobody had an easy ride, and it was certainly impossible to predict who would survive (win) and who would not.