This discussion of Mary Sue definitions has made me think of certain popular characters, all of which I either consider to be Sues, or others do. Batman quickly came to mind. In general I don't consider Bruce a Sue, but I understand that he can be presented as such, depending on who's writing him. Then I thought of Alfred—his faithful butler and father figure—and realized just how important he is for the character Bruce Wayne. Alfred's mentorship, care, and love, along with Bruce's undeniable dependency on him, goes such a long way in keeping the audience from perceiving Batman as a Sue. The accusations will always be there, of course. But in the better quality Batman stories, I imagine Bruce's supporting characters like Alfred play critical roles.
As a Batman fan, I don't think he's a Sue. His super-power, obsessive commitment, leads him to constantly try to make sense of his parents' death by bringing control and order to the world, but the harder he tries, the more chaotic the world becomes, the more dangerous people he attracts to the city, and the more pain and suffering he brings to the people around him--such as Batgirl breaking her back, and the death of Robin, or the estrangement of Nightwing. In futures where he purges Gotham of crime, he's still not happy. You are right though, that there are Mary Sue Batman stories out there. "Batman The Brave and the Bold" comes to mind.
Maybe we could come to an agreement on the most useful definition of a Sue, if not perhaps the only one? What are the prime components of a Mary Sue? When I look at Sues that I despise, the first thing that comes to mind is that they don't really have a reason for being there: they're the center piece, the spotlight is on them, they're doing things, but they have no reason to be. There's no personal motivation, no underlying flame of desire, nothing that they want so bad that they're willing to overcome challenges to obtain it. There's no concrete goal, no burning want. That seems really important for a character to have. Is there a situation where someone doesn't have that and yet isn't a Mary Sue? Maybe we can boil this down to some fundamental Sue-components and bundle them up into a definition?
It seems like the term "Mary Sue" has become a catch-all for any strong/smart/talented character with little to no flaws. By the definition I know, I'd describe Wesley simply as an annoying goody-goody character rather than a Mary Sue because he's part of the original story; he's canon. Superman, too, wouldn't be a Mary Sue, because he's canon--he's supposed to be in the story. I don't remember a whole lot about Rey and I'm not the Star Wars buff my husband is, so I won't comment on her, but Captain Marvel has a story and world built around her, so how can she possibly be a Mary Sue? She's just a different kind of hero story, like One Punch Man. I guess I don't understand the new evolutions of the term and why they seem to be leading to less tolerance of a variety of characters in original works. Little tolerance for Mary Sues in fanfiction I understand because they tend to, as you say, "change the canon rules on a whim," but in original works where the whole world, characters, and story were built to house the "Mary Sue" it just doesn't seem right to use that term for them with the connotations that the term brings. I'm not sure how my definition pertains to classical works; did you mean to say that my definition would impact the reimaginings of those works (which I'm thinking means when someone takes a public domain work and rewrites it to basically become a new story)? If that's the case then, yes, I do consider those fanfiction works because the author took someone else's world and characters and rewrote the story that is that world and characters. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or something I look down on, just that I do consider that a work of fanfiction, and it could have Mary Sues. What my definition would say is that a character that would normally be called a Mary Sue in a fanfiction work would go by another term in an original work. But maybe that's because the term "Mary Sue" is so ingrained into my brain that it's always a new character introduced into a story where that character isn't supposed to exist... Am I making any sense at all? That's my understanding of their characters, and added to what they are is what I said above: that they're an introduced character who wasn't supposed to be a part of the story's world, which is why the term started in fanfiction.
I don't think Sues in general have to feel out of place in the world, but I'll agree it's pretty common with fanfic Sues.
You reminded me of Alice in the second Resident Evil movie. The film makes far more sense (and becomes much funnier) if you think of it as a fanfic where the author's OC crashes into the plot of Resident Evil 3 and makes it all about her, hijacking every scene, makes the former main character look clumsy and amateurish and ending up with all the major plot points being all about her.
@Elven Candy Well, to describe Rey, and what I mean by "changes canon on a whim", you kinda have to dive into how the Force works. Essentially, the strongest two Force users in Star Wars we ever see are Snoke and Emperor Palpatine. The former is an alien (some fan circles say a Celestial, a kind of precursor race, liken Cthulhu) who possesses a level of telepathic power that--as the plot describes it and he describes it--makes him virtually omniscient. He can hear thoughts of others across the galaxy, can link thoughts from different people together, and has a kind of precognition. The latter, Palpatine, was the most powerful HUMAN Force user we ever really meet in canon, and was able to easily overpower virtually every other Force user he met save for maybe one (kinda...it's up for debate) and in the novels and comics it's shown Palpatine no longer exists as a physical being but as a psychic essence who can inhabit new bodies, and can trigger "storms" of psychic energy to blow up suns across the galaxy at will. In both cases, their respective military forces basically were built AROUND their powers, such that the Empire basically collapsed when Palpatine died because their armies used him as a crutch. In both cases, these people put decades or even CENTURIES to reach this level, and Snoke may have had this power because he wasn't even a human being but (again, some fanon suggests) a member of a race of near-godlike "Old One"-like beings who could move stars with their minds. Then REY comes along, and basically outdoes both of them, with zero training, and with maybe like a week of prep time. That's what I meant. She was just some idiot girl on a desert planet who literally didn't even know the Force existed, let alone what it could do, and in less than a week or two she's going toe to toe with Snoke and some of his best trained minions...INCLUDING a guy who was, basically, a descendant of Jesus. No seriously, Kylo Ren is the son of Princess Leia, who is the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, a superhuman being conceived by the Force to act as a self-defense mechanism for Creation (aka "balance the universe"). As for Superman...no he's not a Gary Stu. He's just INCREDIBLY bland, and has no real character traits other than "justice", whatever that is--a lot of heroes from that era were like that, so bland and nondescript they basically were just plot devices or forces of nature with no real character arc. Almost everything you know about Clark was created by other people decades later and has nothing to do with his original "personality", assuming you call "really nice stock hero guy" a personality at all lol Captain Feminism, as she exists in the MCU, isn't the actual Captain Marvel from the comics. To oversimplify, and I say this as a comic fan going back almost thirty years now, but Carol Danvers was never...anything really. She was kind of a stock heroine in the background who basically could do shooty laser stuff and fly, and basically existed as such for decades until they added in stuff later. And even then she's never been important to the actual Marvel universe, just the MCU, and almost everything in the MCU about her and how vital she is was completely concocted out of nowhere. None of that, the Tesseract and all of that, as far as I know was ever in the actual comics in the way it was in the MCU. She certainly was never that powerful, at the very least. She was never like Hulk or Iron Man, she certainly was never on the level of Scarlet Witch who can warp time and space, she was if memory serves less powerful than most of the X-men characters. The real reason she existed was they wanted a female hero, to check off a box, however most of the interesting and important female heroes are X-men characters: Emma Frost, Polaris, Blink, Storm, Jean Grey, Rogue, etc. And the MCU doesn't have the rights to them, so they appear to have taken the story of the Supergirl CW show and wrapped it around an MCU brand name and a WAY, WAY, WAY less interesting actress. To the point they altered the timeline of how the Tesseract came to Earth, from what fans say, just to placate this. Which is again a Mary Sue thing--canon exists to serve the Sue, not the other way around. But yeah, Wesley crusher is the ARCHETYPE Mary Sue, such that basically the original concept of a Mary Sue was created, from what I read, to mock him. In fact on the old Tv Tropes wiki I'm fairly certain they used to call this "The Wesley" before the term Mary Sue became more well-known. And as such when people think of a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu or whatever, they think of Wesley Crusher. Whatever you think of him, that's a Mary Sue, it's a boring, stock character with no discernible flaws who exists to be an author insert or a political set piece and anyone who disagrees or challenges them is either evil, wrong or both.
@Elven Candy Actually another great example, is Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim. She just comes in, instantly Scott loves her, and we are given ZERO reason as to why other than "he's supposed to love her". He already has a girl in love with him, two in fact, both of whom are better looking and, here lies the real kicker, see Ramona then tells Scott that he has to MURDER all of her exes or she won't fuck him. So he does this, and completely ignores the, frankly, WAY better looking girl who already wants to fuck him, but also has not requested he reenact the Holocaust for her. Having not read the comic I honestly assumed that Ramona was going to turn out to be a villain by the end, because she is SO shrewish and SO unlikable and SO impeccable and NO ONE questions her or even attempts to ask "why!?" whenever she asks them to KILL PEOPLE. And really the fact her other exes want to kill Scott gives the impression that she's done this before. No one questions her, no one stops her, no one even suggests she may be wrong to ask him to kill people and her sole defining trait is that everyone constantly talks about how irresistibly sexy she is...despite the fact her only "sexy" characteristic is she dresses like a THOT. And not even a hot THOT just a kind of stock, standard "bad girl". And yet literally a dozen men (and women) fight over her and kill each other in some kind of bizarre Mortal Kombat-like fighting tournament for the reward of sleeping with her. That is a Mary Sue.
I don't think Mary Sue is a character found in a normal story. She is an addendum to an existing fictional world that already has its own lead characters. "Avatar" is a good word because Mary Sue drops into that world like a character playing a game and assumes an enormous, but temporary role in the lives of the real stars. Then she vanishes without leaving a real impact. As a fan fiction device - great (if you like that sort of thing). But she is breaking the fourth wall because the only new exposition is about her relation to the established world. That is totally different than a central character in an original work where all the characters need exposition to exist. Mary Sue isn't a character as much as an act of vandalism or appropriation with an expiration date.
Except she...doesn't. The one time Rey confronts Snoke, he throws her around like a rag doll. It's made very clear he's way, way beyond her abilities. Sues don't get trounced like this; they don't need other characters to save them. And this isn't the only time she loses. I don't want to spark a Star Wars tangent, I want to respect the OP's wishes, but I think Elven Candy deserves to know if you're outright making things up.
First off, I want to thank everyone for letting this thread get into the fourth page before we talk about Rey. Rey is a master martial artist. She can fight three larger men before she knew about the force. Picture me, whatever you think I must look like. Now think about Michelle Waters, a woman who is going to have a hard time beating three larger men in a fight: Now, picturing us, imagine that I have been training in the force for 10 years, and Waters has been training for a month, but after she got like she is in the above picture. Who has the stronger force? If Waters threw me through the wall, literally no one would be surprised. I bring this up because given Rey's MASTERY of martial arts, the gulf between her and Snoke is much, much less than the gulf between this guy: and these people: Who he just completely smashes. I do not accept any argument that says Rey's power was out of bounds for what has been shown in the movies where inborn talent is everything, and she has mastered martial arts and fitness before training the force.
I would argue that Goku is a comically Mary Sue-ish character ("Gary Stu") but then again I would argue Goku is a comically stupid series which forever ruined anime...just sayin'. Super sayin'.
Wow, what an amazing video! Someone expressing a well thought out view! There is hope for the internet yet. Great post! Also, I love the way they framed their view as a case of good vs bad writing. It seems too many debates get away from the writing aspect.
If you genuinely asked me to sum up a Mary Sue or Gary Stu in one sentence it would be this: imagine a Chuck Norris meme...now imagine someone took it seriously, and genuinely tried to write a series focusing on said meme...that's a Mary Sue. And yes, Rey falls into this category, so does Goku, Captain Marvel, Wesley Crusher, and frankly I'd say the last one on that list all but defines it as the archetypal example. Luke isn't a Mary Sue because he can lose, he has flaws, and more so HE doesn't actually defeat Palpatine, or the Sith, his father does...his father who was destined to do so anyway so in essence it was bound to happen, Luke could never have left his homeworld and it would have happened eventually anyway, the Force was just making sure everything was "balanced". It's not a coincidence when Yoda, the last Jedi Master, dies then just a few days later Palpatine, the last Sith Lord, also dies at the hand of Anakin and thus erases both the Jedi Order and Sith Empire from existence. The fact this was foreshadowed in the prequels makes it all the more obvious how little actual importance Luke has in the end--it was always going to be this way, it was always going to be Anakin, he just was this nebulous motivating factor which more than anything shows how emotionless and uncaring the Force is, in that Luke was basically just a sacrificial lamb to get Anakin up and going. Replace him with Leia, Padme (had she lived) or whatever and the story doesn't change. That can't genuinely be said for, say, Wesley Crusher who directly changes the story by his mere presence, or Goku who changes laws of PHYSICS by his mere presence, or Carol Danvers who basically rearranged the MCU timeline to suite Brie Larson's power fantasy. I'd also argue Superman isn't a Mary Sue. He's poorly written and bland and frankly stupid but that's an entirely different situation. You have to also remember that Superman emerged from a period of comic books where the very idea of a hero having defined flaws was seemingly nonsensical, a generation of "Midas Touch" heroes that survived fully into the 1980s and largely only ended because of the success of flawed heroes like Spider-Man, the X-Men and works like the Dark Knight Returns. It was around the mid-80s and early 90s that entire concepts like "antiheroes" and "what if he kinda had a defined personality?" became more common. Prior to that, and dating back to characters like Supes, Batman, Wonder Woman, Shazam, etc, they were all these flawless, unstoppable forces who fought nebulous evils with nebulous powers for nebulous concepts like JUSTICE and TRUTH with no actual driving force, save for Batman, or reason to exist. Batman was kind of the first real "he has a logical reason" hero in many respects, kind of ahead of his time. And to be fair, at the time comics were largely aimed at YOUNG children, like coloring books almost, and so the idea of heavier concepts like genuine death, pain, fear, sex, and yes genuine flaws were alien to them for the same reason they're alien to the Disney Princesses--the audience meant to watch this stuff was too young and too uneducated about the world to get it. If you had a Disney Princess dealing, say, genuine drug issues like Iron Man had or genuine racism like the X-men faced then you'd be screamed down by parents for exposing five year old girls to a world they're too young to understand and to easily frightened to watch more than once. So Superman wasn't meant as a Mary Sue, he was basically meant as a DC Princess.
Here's a more satirical take, explaining why the very idea of a Mary Sue is so grating an irritating. He's imitating what it would require, and the logical contortions necessary, to make such a character in jest but the insane thing is people HAVE done this unrionically.
@Oscar Leigh that was quite interesting and, I dare say, you're right about the summation making sense and being quite accurate. Thanks for that! Eh, I like Star Wars, but I'm not a Star Wars buff. My husband has explained to me why she isn't a Mary Sue, and he's a lover of the series and researches stuff, so that's enough for me. Since I cannot argue my side and am terrible at remembering specifics I'll just leave this as I enjoy Rey in the Star Wars universe, whether she's a MS or not. But why isn't he considered a MS? He's ridiculously powerful and all the good guys just adore him and my understanding of the comics is that over the years he's acquired quite the number of crazy super powers. I mean, he outshines Flash, is stronger than Wonder Woman, he can fly, has x-ray vision, laser vision, super hearing, a sympathetic past, indestructibility, and if you reach into the comics universe he's even more powerful. How is that not a Mary Sue? When watching any Justice League show I get bored the instant he shows up because, "Oh great, now the bad guys are going to be beaten by him and it's all going to be so boring." That seems pretty MS to me...EXCEPT that he's canon to the storyline and world, so I really don't have a right to call him a MS (because connotations); he's more like a boring overpowered character who comes in a saves the day when I wanted to see the more interesting characters do it. Um...does MCU refer to the Marvel movies? Sorry, I'm not all that familiar with the terms. I'm going to assume that's correct. I actually looked up how the tesseract came to Earth in the movies (there are SO many of them I lost track of details) and you're absolutely right: they did change the canon of that to suit the Captain Marvel movie. That by itself doesn't make her a MS because details like that are often forgotten and rewritten in movie/TV series and other than being a power source, I don't feel like it really harms the storyline. Her background in comics I also don't feel makes her a MS, because every new storyline/series needs to be treated by itself, and let's face it this stuff tends to change often when going from comic to movie and some of us (like me) don't know her comic background, so it has absolutely nothing to do with the movies in our minds. It sounds like she's considered a Mary Sue simply because in the comics she was never as powerful as she is in the movie and there's just some background grudge against her. I admit to also having a little concern about her...she's like a female Superman--and I hate when Superman comes into a fight I'm already interested in with other characters. Because he's boring. But if he's not a Mary Sue, I don't see how Captain Marvel is. As a side note: I really enjoyed her movie and saw no feminism in it. Okay, I'm going to be level with you. I never understood why people call Wesley a Mary Sue. I mean, yeah he's a kid genius, but there are other genius characters in the show and Wesley does screw up and annoy people. He didn't even get into the Academy the first time he tried and his ambitions often get him into trouble. Is he a MS simply because of that alien that ends up taking him away to learn the whole mind over matter thing? That's only one part of who he is, and it's only in a few episodes. Also, and don't hate me for this, but I actually like Wesley...except in those episodes with the alien, because those do feel very Mary Sue-ish. That sounds like a horribly written movie. Yikes!
@Elven Candy The Superman thing...I hesitate to call him a Mary Sue, the way I would Goku, since he comes from an era of comics where the very notion of giving a hero defined flaws and character traits was nonexistent. People have tried to sculpt him into a modern hero, an actual hero with actual traits that we would find heroic besides POWAH but this, in my opinion, has failed and will continue to. That entire era of comics, the so-called "Golden Age", was made up of "heroes" all so inhuman and overpowered and above all so incredibly bland it's impossible to give them personalities. Though, Superman isn't faster than the Flash...however Shazam is if I believe AS FAST as the Flash, but not faster, I think if I recall it was established in universe that whoever wields the Speed Force is basically velocity incarnate and will always be faster than whoever or whatever is the fastest thing ever at a given time. And the fact he's stronger than Wonder Woman is...debatable, as she also comes from that era of "hero can do whatever I want, fuck physics!" and more over has never displayed a defined upper limit either. I believe, but I may be mistaking her for Shazam they all kind of overlap for me, but I believe Wonder Woman was supposed to be blessed by Zeus to have literally limitless strength. It may be both all he heroes from the "Golden Age" have some variation of limitless (insert power). Goku is a Mary Sue because he literally just pulls random power from his asshole whenever the story requires it. NO ONE can ever be more powerful than Goku, NO ONE can ever genuinely defeat or kill him, NO ONE can just outmaneuver him. The story revolves around his "journey" to get stronger and stronger and stronger with no real or even discernible upper limit. As far as we know it's plausible that Goku can literally overpower God, since all he needs to do is train hard. That's why he's a Mary Sue, if he trains hard enough he can do it...no matter what IT is. This is endemic in anime today but to be fair, unlike Mary Sueism which is just a construct thrown together by shitty writers, Goku's bullshit comes from Eastern mysticism and spiritualism, and the idea that by meditation and effort you can do whatever you want and achieve some kind of nirvana. But by any logical definition Goku has gone past that into the real of Mary Sues as he's genuinely never suffered a single real flaw or defeat, not of the kind that say Ned Stark or even Superman has. I mean, Superman was genuinely KILLED at one point, and it's established Doomsday is VASTLY more powerful than him and someone Superman actually fears. Goku has never been in such a situation, an enemy he can't defeat with powers he can never eclipse who he is genuinely afraid of and has to figure out a way to outmaneuver. And yes, Scott Pilgrim is a sin against God. The comic and the movie, though arguably the movie is better because it's not drawn in this kind of bizarre Rainbow Brite meets Anime art style like the comic.
Some folks do consider Superman to be a Mary Sue. And depending on who's writing him, the accusation is justifiable. (1) Lots of characters in the DC Universe are extremely powerful, specifically Superman's villains. (2) Most (not all) of the other heroes adore him, but they also adore Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Batgirl, Supergirl, and arguably a few others. He's not as fast as Barry or Wally, so I don't know what you mean by outshine. Considering his comics have been in publication since 1938, it's safe to say plenty of other people judge Superman to be the opposite of boring.
@18-Till-I-Die I can see I'm not going to change your mind about Superman and what makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue, and I know you aren't impacting mine, so would you be okay with agreeing to disagree?
I suppose that makes sense. I'm seeing through this thread that there's pretty much always someone who disagrees on whether a strong character is a Mary Sue or not. Yes, but in the Justice League movies/TV series I've seen when there's a big bad villain everyone starts saying "Where's Superman? He'd kill this thing in no time." They don't really do that for the other heroes. Eh, I said that wrong--sorry! What I meant is that he's nearly as or as fast as Flash in the shows I've seen with the two of them, plus he has all those other powers added to it. Again, I think I said it wrong (I'm really quite terrible at debating). I didn't mean to say he's unpopular or boring in his own shows/comics, just that he's boring when he's with other heroes because he tends to "come in and save the day."
Not in the comics though. In the comics he’ll show up, and some random wizard will say, “behold the red rays of Krypton” and Superman faints a panel later. He constantly gets owned, just to show you how tough other people are. Wonder Woman beat him in a recent series where he was trying his best to kill her. He flew her into space and threw her st the ground, and she still won.
Yeah Superman is kind of a "jobber". It's kinda like Kalibak (may have misspelled that) who is promoted as the son of Darkseid and he's supposed to be so powerful and this great warrior and...every time he steps into battle he gets bent over a table. Yeah against an army of normal men Kalibak is a war machine, but against literally ANY superhero he gets deflowered in mere seconds.
