I'm talking about my personal experiences here, so I'm not sure how that can be wrong. You are now the first person I've ever seen say they liked a Sue. Ever. Now, I have no experience with the character in question, but I will say it seems like your "defined standard" has a lot of subjective judgements in it, based on other characters you've mentioned in this thread. I think that if we're going to have an in depth discussion of the concept, we need to eliminate the subjective whenever possible. Otherwise you end up with two people using the same "defined standard" and coming to completely different conclusions about whether a given character qualifies.
Correct. All of them? I can't imagine that's true. This very thread was created as a defense of enjoying Mary & Gary Sues. Surely there are other people who agree with that sentiment. Just as importantly, I suspect a significant amount of readers and film viewers aren't aware of what a Mary Sue is, which means they're currently agnostic about whether said characters are Sues or not. This thread's creator did that in their original post.
@X Equestris And the critics loved Captain Feminism. And there has recently been revelations that Disney bought huge numbers of tickets just to spur on the news, which is why sales cratered after a certain time. Meanwhile a movie with virtually no real coverage outside of some trailers, Aquaman, made more, made it quicker and did so with a story that was CRITICIZED for being completely apolitical. Same for Battle Angel, a movie which made almost as much as Captain #ImWithHer AND was received with good reviews, AND was openly supported by the public, AND wasn't riding the coat tails of any previously extant series--save for an anime from the 1990's no one beside me and my friends probably ever saw. And guess what, Battle Angel was critiqued for not being political enough too. Gee...I mean, maybe I'm just losing it but it seems almost like the public wanted to see Aquaman and Battle Angel, which relied more heavily on storytelling and characterization and an interesting setting and plot, than on politics...hmmm... @Fallow Oh for Christ's sake don't give me the "yr sexist oreng man is bad curint yeer!" malarkey ok? I get enough of that on twitter. And let me ask you a question, what is wrong with a press junket that has "only White men"? Or better yet if I changed that to say I didn't want as many Black men or Gay men in the press junket what would you say? And don't sidestep the answer, be direct, if you heard someone say that they wanted fewer Blacks or Muslims or Gays at their press junket what would you think? And what is so terrible about "too many" White men? Direct answers, I want to hear the logical contortions here. And just to keep everything on track so the Old Gods don't lock everything and ban me: the fact is a definition for a Mary Sue, an explicit one, has existed for literally decades. It's a main character that the plot revolves around with no actual personality or character traits besides the idea that they ARE the main character so everything they do and say must, by default, be right. This character is usually an author insert, and/or, a political soap box. Most viewers see them as unbearably grating and annoying since they exist to stroke the author's dick not actually to advance the plot. They usually have impregnable plot armor and if criticized both in real life or in-universe it results in accusations of some political/racial/intellectual slight or another. Examples include Wesley Crusher, the essential archetypal author insert Mary Sue, and for a more modern example Ramona Flowers. And to be frankly Ramona is FAR FAR FAR more annoying, idiotic and unlikable than Carol Danvers.
Do you see what's happened, though? You've taken someone else's misrepresentation of what she said, doubled down with "openly said", "quote", plus quotation marks... and made it seem as if she said something clearly absurd. I don't care about the Marvel universe, the movie, the actor, or anything else involved, but I think we should guard against misinformation in the name of hysteria...
He did. And he also posted a thread praising run-ons before largely letting both preposterous threads run themselves. Perhaps we should give Jim credit as an instigator. She didn't say she wanted "less white men", so there is no comparison to "less black men". She said she didn't want ONLY white men, and probably because she wanted people representing something other than white males to publish an opinion of the film so fans other than white males would develop a curiosity about seeing it. What's the downside to "white men"? Nothing in general, but then all of sudden a cadre of white men are trying to screw up the voting for the Hugo awards, or waging a "want to see campaign" against a movie based on one statement they didn't like or trolling a female video game designer. Or referring to a female character in a movie as "that bitch" because you can't remember her name. Tendencies by some white men - like yourself - would make any sensible person want to avoid having that group be the only critical voice for any product. Because white men sometimes act like idiot children, and it makes the rest of us white men dreadfully embarrassed to share their appearance and gender. The makers of Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman and Black Panther clearly want to expand the audience for super hero movies to a larger audience. Not "different audience"; larger. All the white penises will still see the movies, but maybe more women and minorities will want to go as well. And that's good for everyone, because the white men who aren't incels might not have to owe their girlfriends a favor to get them to go see a comic book movie if women actually felt like there was something worth seeing. Your representative rage at an entire move about one comment made by an actress in that movie is reason enough for anyone to question the intelligence of letting white males be the only ones with an opinion - because it is so often such an overblown and ridiculous opinion.
@BayView No, I didn't. Her words were she doesn't want White men reviewing her movie, or sorry, "exclusively" White men. Now this in and of itself is a racist statement since it assumes that somehow White men would have an opinion drastically different or even somehow less intellectually stable than, say, Black men or whatever but then this also begs the question of why White MEN expressly? Why not say she doesn't want as many White women? Or as many Black men? Or Asian women? What makes White MEN specifically so undesirable that their number has to be, what, kept in check? Or how about this, and just give me a direct yes or no answer please: if I said I didn't want Jewish men reviewing my book, would you consider it a racist statement? Just a yes or a no.
Those two statements are not remotely equivalent. Nope. It means that there aren't any white men writing movie reviews in Jet or Cosmo. No one is fooled by your word games. You know perfectly well that the point wasn't that anyone hates white men, but that no one but white men were showing up to do interviews.
@Fallow Why does it matter if ONLY White men review it? What difference does it make? How is the opinion of a White man any different than the opinion of an Asian woman? And my "rage" at the movie notwithstanding, I decided not to see it in theaters BEFORE she opened her empty skull and spouted racist comments at a press meet up, because the trailer was just scenes of her standing up slowly while reading lines with no inflection and gave zero indication as to any kind of plot beyond that...stunningly, there was none. Huge twist. So even if she'd never said that at all I would still have disliked it, and having read the synopsis I can now see a FAR MORE important reason not to like it: it ruins continuity, and basically retcons the entire Tesseract plot arc. Which frankly right then and there would have made me swear off it had I known, and frankly that's why I swore off Solo due to the way it shit all over canon. Solo, thankfully, had few actual political elements besides one idiotic character that became little more than a joke to the fanbase and was rapidly forgotten...the fact it shit down the fanbase's throat with the canon contortions was what made me pull out and go home on the whole Star Wars franchise.
I already explained that to you: Not every movie-goer reads the output of white male reviewers, because white male reviewers are not the primary source of movie criticism in every publication. Do you understand? Yes/no
@Fallow As an aside, I noticed you seem to assume women and minorities don't go to see comic book movies as much ("all the white men who aren't incels won't have to owe their girlfriends a favor, etc) when I'm a Black guy and me and Bae Bae go to see EVERY comic book movie ever. In fact I've been a fan of comics since I was seven years old and so were many of my friends, almost EXCLUSIVELY Black by the by since I live in Motown. So why are we assuming only White incels go to see comic book movies, I mean seeing as Iron Man and Auqaman which have ZERO political aspects at all and starred mostly White people were MASSIVE successes then it seems to me people go to see movies based more on interest than race. Or do you presume that Blacks will only see a movie if Blacks are in it?
I guess what is really funny about this is that CM is clearly (among other things) a film designed to appeal to women, and you want to know why only having men review it might not be a great idea. This is like getting your barbecue restaurant only reviewed by vegetarians and having people say "Well what's wrong with that?" Duh.
I'm not and I didn't. Why do you keep reading things in the news and on this forum and not understand what they actually say? You're reading through a filter of your angry worldview, not reading the text and replying to its actual content.
I must've missed that. But I'll point out that every example of an enjoyable "Sue" brought up at the start had strong counter-arguments made against them being a Sue in the first place. So again, I think we need to nail down exactly what a Sue even is before we're going to get anywhere.
@Fallow No I genuinely don't understand, which is where you call me an idiot or whatever I guess. Also I notice how you just leapt to the conclusion I'm a White guy because I don't hate White men, looking back on this quip: "Tendencies by some white men - like yourself - would make any sensible person want to avoid having that group be the only critical voice for any product. Because white men sometimes act like idiot children, and it makes the rest of us white men dreadfully embarrassed to share their appearance and gender." I'm a Black man actually. To be more specific, Black and Asian, my father was Asian see. But thanks for the racism. Now to get back on track: The root issue with Mary Sues is best expressed in this video, which also touches on why political stance Mary Sues are so omnipresent today-- A more satirical take can be found here-- Both express the same problem: a character with no flaws, no one to ever question them, shielded by impregnable plot armor and with the entire story revolving around them is far more grating than just a poorly written one. A poorly written character, like say Superman, can still be interesting even though you'll roll your eyes nonstop when they're on screen. But they're not the SOLE main character, and the story can exist with or without them and every other character isn't chained to them like the serfs of some god-king. So while Superman is a shitty character he's not grating or annoying, he's just farcical. Meanwhile, Wesley Crusher, who I would maintain to my dying day is the archetypal Mary Sue, IS grating and IS annoying because he's just as impeccable and untouchable as Superman but also has the added bonus of being an unquestionable author insert who can do no wrong.
That's not very compelling considering only a minuscule amount of commonly Sue accused characters have been discussed. And "strong counter-arguments" is a subjective conclusion, of course. That would prove difficult, as there are "strong" arguments for various Sue definitions. Personally speaking, any definition of Mary Sue that removes it (or virtually removes it) from popular fiction doesn't work for me.
Why can't men review movies made for women? I like Hallmark romance movies, like I genuinely watch When Calls The Heart, and it's explicitly made as a female-oriented romance. Also by that logic a movie made "for men", e.g oriented towards a male audience, should never be reviewed by women yes? (ninja edit: there is of course NOTHING in Captain Marvel which is remotely "female oriented" since the entire movie is just a stock superhero movie, which are all action movies with a sci-fi twang, and the only "female oriented" aspect that could be drawn from it is the main hero being female--and to a degree even that's not entirely true since she's a Kree, an alien, so our concepts of gender and sexual biology probably don't apply to an alien race made out of energy)
I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that your behavior seemed align you so closely with a segment of white men to make it appear you are one of them. That was a poor assumption on my part, but not a racist assumption. But the clear problem is that I write something that mentions incels, and you reply that I said that "only white incels see super hero movies". How are you getting from the things that people actually say to your totally inaccurate conclusions? Please quote me where I said "only white incels see super hero movies". Please quote Larson where she said she doesn't want any white men reviewing her movie. You made those statements, and they are 100% wrong. They can and they are, and no one said they should not (except for you). What logic? Who said that aside from you? What really fascinates me in the modern world are the number of people that are either pretending they can't read things accurately so they have something to prop up an argument, or actually could not a pass a high school reading comprehension test.
Question for anyone: was there a post in thread with a strong argument as to why James Bond clearly isn't a Gary Sue? If so, would you point me in its direction - I'd like to look it over. I haven't watched every Bond film, and I can't remember many of the ones I have, but 007 strikes me as a Sue. At least in one or two of his films.
Bond screws up, gets people killed, gets beat up, is accused of being a misogynist, is frequently mistrusted and has a painful personal history.
I watched the first video, 18-Till-I-Die, some good points made. I especially liked the point that for a Mary Sue the Universe bends to accommodate them. Unlike most characters who have to bend to the laws of the Universe or world. I think he probably is. He was a wish fulfillment character as I seem to recall Ian Fleming had massive mother issues and longed to live a life saving people, bedding woman and having cool gadgets - I was reading a book called The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker and he was discussing how when your childhood/viewpoint gets f'ed up (and you're a writer) it can send the hero's journey off the rails.
Aside from a wide collection of flawed behavior and treatment by other characters, what would a strong argument look like? Bond doesn't seem to have any of the characteristics of Stu. He's neither perfect nor well liked.
Well, for a start, it would include specifics. Furthermore, I don't even know what some of your "arguments" even mean. "Accused of being a mysoginist." By who, other characters in the film? Modern critics? Not to mention, if a character's "painful personal history" doesn't significantly hurt them in their story, then it doesn't prevent them from being a Sue. Edit: In short, what you posted was the opposite of what I judge to be a strong argument.
