The "perfect" protagonist

[RetroFan]

And this is a tired and worthless argument...

"Anyone who disagrees with me just hates female characters."

No, we hate Mary Sue's.
Want to drop Ripley, or Sarah Connor into the discussion? Weird how we can hate strong female characters yet love those two.

You can add Jyn Erso from Rogue One in 2016 into the names of strong female characters that fans really liked. I actually find it a bit disturbing the lengths some people go to defending Rey from criticism like she is a real person. Imagine if everyone did this with fictional characters that either drew a mostly strong negative reaction or proved divisive. For example I am one of the about 5 percent of 1990s Friends viewers who liked Emily, but it would be a waste of everyone's time if I constantly got into internet arguments with other Friends viewers about this. I'm not going to change their minds, they aren't going to change my mind, and after nearly 30 years this would be just weird.

Some people think Rey is a Mary Sue, others don't think she's a Mary Sue, and whichever way they think they are not going to change their minds now.

No matter what you think of Rey, and taking into account that the movie trilogy she appeared in had other major flaws, she is without doubt a cautionary tale - conceived as a perfect, all-powerful character that fans would love, but who instead proved divisive at best.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You can add Jyn Erso from Rogue One in 2016 into the names of strong female characters that fans really liked. I actually find it a bit disturbing the lengths some people go to defending Rey from criticism like she is a real person. Imagine if everyone did this with fictional characters that either drew a mostly strong negative reaction or proved divisive. For example I am one of the about 5 percent of 1990s Friends viewers who liked Emily, but it would be a waste of everyone's time if I constantly got into internet arguments with other Friends viewers about this. I'm not going to change their minds, they aren't going to change my mind, and after nearly 30 years this would be just weird.

Some people think Rey is a Mary Sue, others don't think she's a Mary Sue, and whichever way they think they are not going to change their minds now.

No matter what you think of Rey, and taking into account that the movie trilogy she appeared in had other major flaws, she is without doubt a cautionary tale - conceived as a perfect, all-powerful character that fans would love, but who instead proved divisive at best.

Kylo Ren was a terrible character as well. It wasn't until I saw Logan Lucky that I realized Adam Driver was actually kind of talented.
Nobody flips out about "burning hatred" when you say that though...

 

[Britva415]

There is no insight to be gained on why the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is bad by claiming that Rey is a Mary Sue.

Well, you've certainly failed to gain the insight that many people many times have said that that isn't the reason it's bad. Most of them said it directly to you.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I'm literally not even telling you that you have to like Rey from the Sequel Trilogy. Those are bad movies, and it's fine to dislike the characters in them. I'm telling you that WORDS MEAN THINGS, and Mary Sue is the wrong word to describe that character.

A Mary Sue is an authorial self-insert character through which the author reflects praise on themselves. Bella Swan from Twilight is a perfect example of a Mary Sue. Bella Swan is literally a prettier and better smelling version of Stephenie Meyer.

The Mary Sue character is most of all special within their fictional world, and exists to receive praise and romantic attention, while acting as a wish fulfillment vehicle for the author. That's what it is. To get things vaguely relevant to Literotica, Mary Sue characters can be completely valid in erotic storytelling, since masturbatory fantasies are often the actual purpose of the story. It's legit weird in Twilight to read Stephenie Meyer writing about Edward and Jacob panting to get it on with a woman who is obviously the self insert of the author, but in first person erotic fiction that's a pretty standard genre convention.

Does anyone think that Rey spends any amount of time receiving praise or romantic interest that JJ Abrams is experiencing vicariously through her? Obviously not. I'm sure someone tells her "good job" or something at some point, but I am literally begging you to take a look at Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffery to see what actual Mary Sue character flattery looks like.

Compare an actual Mary Sue character like Eragon, right? He is visually marked with weird eyes that make him edgy and cool so women throw themselves at him and he saves the day through outrageous specialness while giving people lectures about vegetarianism that is suspiciously similar to the author's own dietary restrictions.

What does Rey ever say that is JJ Abrams lecturing the audience with her voice? What does anyone else say to Rey that is JJ Abrams giving tongue baths to himself through her? If the answer is nothing, which it is, she's not a Mary Sue. I'm not saying you have to like the character, I'm saying that you have to get a different fucking word. This one already means something.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I'm literally not even telling you that you have to like Rey from the Sequel Trilogy. Those are bad movies, and it's fine to dislike the characters in them. I'm telling you that WORDS MEAN THINGS, and Mary Sue is the wrong word to describe that character.

A Mary Sue is an authorial self-insert character through which the author reflects praise on themselves. Bella Swan from Twilight is a perfect example of a Mary Sue. Bella Swan is literally a prettier and better smelling version of Stephenie Meyer.

The Mary Sue character is most of all special within their fictional world, and exists to receive praise and romantic attention, while acting as a wish fulfillment vehicle for the author. That's what it is. To get things vaguely relevant to Literotica, Mary Sue characters can be completely valid in erotic storytelling, since masturbatory fantasies are often the actual purpose of the story. It's legit weird in Twilight to read Stephenie Meyer writing about Edward and Jacob panting to get it on with a woman who is obviously the self insert of the author, but in first person erotic fiction that's a pretty standard genre convention.

Does anyone think that Rey spends any amount of time receiving praise or romantic interest that JJ Abrams is experiencing vicariously through her? Obviously not. I'm sure someone tells her "good job" or something at some point, but I am literally begging you to take a look at Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffery to see what actual Mary Sue character flattery looks like.

Compare an actual Mary Sue character like Eragon, right? He is visually marked with weird eyes that make him edgy and cool so women throw themselves at him and he saves the day through outrageous specialness while giving people lectures about vegetarianism that is suspiciously similar to the author's own dietary restrictions.

What does Rey ever say that is JJ Abrams lecturing the audience with her voice? What does anyone else say to Rey that is JJ Abrams giving tongue baths to himself through her? If the answer is nothing, which it is, she's not a Mary Sue. I'm not saying you have to like the character, I'm saying that you have to get a different fucking word. This one already means something.

Yes, it means something, but clearly not what you think it means.

 

[Ianus4]

In romantasy, FMCs seem to mostly be either women whose only flaw is that they're too perfect or evil assassin murder bitches (who secretly want to snuggle with kitties and bake cookies <3). What contemporary romances are like, I'm not really sure, admittedly.

I quite like happy endings and characters having their eternal bliss. I appreciate Moirin and Bao retiring to the hills to raise fat little babies. I also appreciate that they have to spend three years of their lives in suffering and hardship to fix a mistake she made because she was too cowardly and besotted to do the right thing.

In one popular type of romantic bestsellers, the FMC does not have a perfect physique, but the man who is longing for her can only be perfectly built, charmingly handsome, and filthy rich.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I'm literally not even telling you that you have to like Rey from the Sequel Trilogy. Those are bad movies, and it's fine to dislike the characters in them. I'm telling you that WORDS MEAN THINGS, and Mary Sue is the wrong word to describe that character.

Last post on the subject from me; if you want the last word after it, fine. A Mary Sue is not merely an authorial self-insert by definition. In its original conception, a Mary Sue:

has one or more of the following elements: 1) a young - or "youngest" - officer in Starfleet, who is 2) adored by everyone on the ship, especially Kirk, Spock and McCoy, 3) has extraordinary abilities, 4) wins extraordinary honors, and sometimes 5) dies a tragic or heroic death, after which she is mourned by everyone on the ship

So-named because of the character Mary Sue in "A Trekkie's Tale," which defined the term. More generally, a Mary Sue is:

a character invented by the author, who is the focal point of the story despite not appearing in the source text, who is possessed of special abilities or physical characteristics, who is practically perfect in every way, and who is therefore beloved by the protagonists as soon as they are lucky enough to encounter her.

While grognard fans use this to assume that any capable or attractive female character is a Mary Sue, that's not correct. The Mary Sue is a failure of restraint that warps the existing characters and world around them.

Any fan fiction story represents the imposition of the writer's desires on the fictional world; the Mary Sue personifies those desires in a particular character.

One way of understanding the fan critique of the Mary Sue, then, is to see that critique as an objection to what we might call metaleptic excess: if the story itself enacts the author's desires, then a proxy for the author within the text is unecessary; the Mary Sue is redundant in stories that are always already expressions of fan agencies. ... many fan readers differentiate acceptable fan-created characters from Mary Sues. This differentiation can be understood in terms of illusionist and anti-illusionist metalepsis (see Fludernik 2003): some fan created characters enhance the realist illusion of the story, giving the fictional world depth and plausibility, but a character who "overshadows the canonical cast" (alara_r 2003) or who appears to be an authorial self-insertion destroys that illusion. For a reader who wishes to immerse herself in a particular fictional world through fan fiction, a metaleptic reminder of the extratextual world or the story's constructedness "produces an effect of strangeness" (Genette 1972/1980: 235) that is distracting or frustrating rather than pleasurable.

Those quotes from Tisha Turk, "Metalepsis in Fan Vids and Fan Fiction."

Because Mary Sue is the projection of the fan who writes her, she often has incredible insights into the characters of the show. Like many pieces of fan fiction, Mary Sue stories allow the author to express what she’s thought about the characters and the show, with the character herself often expressing to the reader everything fans of the show say to each other. ... This preternatural insight is often at the crux of the relationship between the Mary Sue and the media character; she understands everything. The insights stand Mary Sue in good stead, for both nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions spend much of their time fixing things: broken hearts, broken spaceships, broken lives, broken episodes, broken series. Often she acts as a force for the redemption of another, be it an original character or the hero of the show. ...

In media fan fiction, Mary Sue often “ties up loose ends,” working especially on the characters’ relationships, which is what interests most fan fiction writers. Her incredible insight into the psyches of the characters aids her as she fiddles with their lives...

In fact, if any single element defines the Mary Sue, it is her relationship with the other characters in the story. Writing 23 years after her defining essay, Paula Smith points out that “the truest mark of a Mary Sue is not how she’s described or what she does, but the effect the sheer fact of her existence in the story has on the other characters in the story. If program characters start worrying endlessly about her, or go all gooey because she’s just so darn cute or smart … the girl’s a Mary Sue.” In these stories, Mary Sue is the center of the known universe. ... Mary Sue’s impact on established characters can lead to what fan fiction writers and readers call “character rape,” a portrait of that character so off-kilter as to be unrecognizable.

From Pat Pflieger's presentation at the American Culture Association in 1999.

Rey is young and inexperienced. She has intimate relationships with Han, Luke and Leia. She does certainly have extraordinary abilities. She does win extraordinary honors. That's the 1973 definition. The later character-based definition: Rey is an invented character by the screenwriters (films take villages, they are not novels) and is the chosen one despite there already being two Chosen Ones, one of whom is still kickin' around. She has special abilities and parentage. She does not make mistakes of significance: while she does make mistakes the consequences of them aren't particularly important or impactful -- contrast her mistakes to those of, say, Anakin Skywalker or even Obi-Wan in the prequels (or to Poe's in the same trilogy). And again, she is beloved by the various protagonists; contrast her reception with Luke, who is treated with open contempt by both Han and Leia until he proves himself in the Death Star escape.

But more important is the way Rey warps the story and other characters around her. The characters of the Big Three change dramatically between Jedi and Force/Last Jedi in order to center the new protagonist. What happens to Luke is a textbook example of character rape, and it occurs to remove him from the center of the Star Wars mythology to allow Rey to be centered.

In one popular type of romantic bestsellers, the FMC does not have a perfect physique, but the man who longs for her can only be perfectly built, charmingly handsome, and filthy rich.

Yeah, there's a lot of average librarian x 7' god-king-model romantic pairings. But there are also a lot of FMCs who exist in a state of quantum attractiveness, where they're average in every way but also are thin and also have curves in all the right places.

 

[CharlotteKurai]

A perfect protagonist for me is:

1. A woman can have human emotions and be the most realistic even on fiction.
2. Having a reason why the guys are in love or lusting for her. Having sexual intention.
3. On my own story of girl, Aaliyah, have a few guys are interested on her, sexually or deeply emotional with her.
4. Please not do her superior as a cartoony character, seven rue all female main characters are the same shit. Tasteless and bland. Or because she is a virgin can be more misogynistic with other female characters. Lana and bliss are the example I am trying to say. I hate pick me girls. Azula was digestible, but so bad written. Sinclair, oh my God please, no! You can make them have that hate or despise in a realistic way.
5. Make her having strong issues on her life but without drama.
6. If you can make a stupid female main character can make me pissed with out not having carefully do with situations like sex groups, you make DON'T read you again. Specially if you want to do gang rape with a virgin female characters.
7. Do a really amazing love triangle, with two male main characters can give her a better or worst of her grown.
8. You can make her body shape and type of her personality or race, much diverse.
9. If your protagonist didn't get her first time of kiss, don't make it it would be a big deal. Because of a painful deception.
10. Please, her mother and father figures DON'T DO IT AS A DAMN CARTOON cliches, please no!

I wish can see on the spicy books and make the characters much better.

 

[RocketGrunt]

But more important is the way Rey warps the story and other characters around her. The characters of the Big Three change dramatically between Jedi and Force/Last Jedi in order to center the new protagonist. What happens to Luke is a textbook example of character rape, and it occurs to remove him from the center of the Star Wars mythology to allow Rey to be centered.

The problem with this analysis is that Rey's screentime in The Last Jedi is 20%, which is literally the lowest screentime percentage for a main character across all nine movies. For comparison, the next lowest is Quaigon at 26% in Phantom Menace. Rey is quite literally NOT centered in her own movie. We can prove this, with math.

Luke's character assassination is a thing that happens. The New Jedi Order was killed off (off camera even!). He stopped being a hero and wandered off to be a sad Yoda character despite the fact that the galaxy had not become a place where Jedi had to hide. It was bad and didn't make sense.

But it obviously wasn't done to center Rey as a character. Because despite being the protagonist, she isn't centered in The Last Jedi. She's literally on screen in The Last Jedi less than Amidala is on screen in Attack of the Clones or Finn is on screen in The Force Awakens.

And while I think you can argue that she is centered in Rise of Skywalker in the sense that basically nothing happens and there are so many characters that Rey has more than double the screentime of any other character, that's not true for The Force Awakens at all. In The Force Awakens, she isn't even the character who stops the Starkiller Base. That's done by Chewy or Poe depending on whether you want to credit the bombs or the blasters. Luke gets to destroy the Deathstar, but Rey's equivalent challenge is handled as a group effort that she barely participates in.

The sequel trilogy is about the two directors pontificating about what Star Wars fandom means. And it's tonally discordant because the two directors don't agree on this point at all. And it's a fucking stupid thing to make the central point of your Star Wars movie. It's self indulgent to the point that even if it had been done well it would have been angering.

But importantly for the Mary Sue question, neither director's viewpoint is Rey's. The Last Jedi is about Rian Johnson pissing in Rey's Cheerios to teach the audience the tough lesson that hero worship is bad or something. The Rise of Skywalker, to the extent that it's about anything, is about Rey learning to acknowledge the warts of her past so that she can move on and be a better Star Wars fan. Rey is a surrogate for the audience, not the author.

 

[YmaOHyd]

You can add Jyn Erso from Rogue One in 2016 into the names of strong female characters that fans really liked.

I'd also add Mara Jade, though she hasn't made the transition from old to new canon, despite her Mary Sue adjacencies. She's not one, but she's... she's close. Still a beloved character, though, as is Grand Admiral Thrawn, who is absolutely a Gary Stu.