Do you agree with del Toro?

Is Tom Bombadil a mary-sue?

No, because he didn't do much

>Implying Mary Sue can't be fun and best girl.

Yeah if Tom had just sneezed and brought all the good people back from the dead and wiped out all traces of evil in the world then he would be a sue.

As is he's just a strange side character.

Absolutely, see Sherlock Holmes

Jesus would be a really fun character

Yes.

The way I see it, a Mary Sue warps the story around themselves to the detriment of the narrative and the characterization of others.

Yes, but also no. As has been mentioned Mary Sue is a pejorative. It only refers to things that are bad for those reasons.

That said, he's not wrong. Hellboy, a character he has worked with relatively extensively, is pretty "Mary Sue" but still works within the narrative.

Not really. Especially if you realize he is a personification of Tolkiens catholic view of nature.

No, because he didn't give a shit, which was his flaw

Disagree, but he has to be working off of a different definition than I am.
I was under the impression that a Mary Sue, as codified by that one woman who wrote the story, was the writer masturbating to their self-insert and how cool they wish they were

>i don't even know what it means today

I don't think you ever did.

Extra credit! Guess the context!

it's a "response" to "misogynists" criticising Rey in TFA

No. It is not a sliding scale, it is a boolean variable. Sues are a quality impediment. Consequently, if something is not a quality impediment, it is not a Sue.

That is just factually incorrect, Tom Bombadil was a character he created for his children, nothing more.

The term "Mary Sue" has lost any meaning but "Character I don't like"

On Veeky Forums maybe, elsewhere it's still a valid term.

Well she is a fucking Mary Sue.

He is right, but understanding that requires that one know what "mary sue" actually means, which of course, most of the posters in this thread do not.

Nope, a Mary sue by default breaks a story by destroying existing rules and characterization to make them look good.

And by stricter definition a sue is also supposed to be fan made. An original creator making a wank fantasy protaginist is just an author self insert.

People got a bit too liberal about throwing it around and now the definition is muddled, but the original mary sue concept is basically unsalvageable.

The please enlighten us.

You never knew the definition, retard.
Jesus christ. What orifice did you pull this shit out of.

Mad Reygay detected.

To be fair Mary Sue was originally a purely fanfiction term. Though I feel it it has not gone to "lost all meaning" territory there are several different definitions for it depending on the medium and genre you are talking about.

I'm sorry I forgot to append "And Force Awakens was a shitty nostalgia pandering movie with boring as fuck characters", you retarded sperg

As were Anakin and especially Luke, but your characters don't have to be good to be fun
Sadly, Rey was neither.

He has a point since a lot of people use the term even if the character doesnt' impede quality. Like when the word is used by people who were just memed into hating characters that are really talented or charismatic or something

>Luke was a mary sue
Are you completely retarded?
He spends 90% of ANH being useless and being saved by everyone. Literally no other character even likes him.

Here's an essay someone wrote on the subject merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.xhtml

here. Actually I change my mind after reading this. His point is shit.

>No, it really isn't, because once you exhibit enough traits akin to a serial killer, you become one. Full stop.

I don't think in that case it's about having "enough" traits.The only one that matters there is actually killing people. It's easy to put a full stop on it because there's one important trait that instantly makes all the difference.

i think that guy, in the few characters twitter allowed him, is trying to use the word "mary sue" as a character that has all the characteristic of a mary sue(no flaws, etc.), minus being fan.created and being narrative-breaking by definition.

it would be quite stupid of him to say "something that makes the story bad by definition does not make the story bad". You should guess he's trying to convey a different, more meaningful, message and argue with that rather than tripping on your vocabulary autism.

Going to be really hard to prove an intpretation of a character whose nature is left vague by the author factually incorrect. I'll go ahead and let you try though.

I will admit, that the initial character was inspired by a toy his son played with iirc, but that isn't the end of the character. Gandalf was inspired by a postcard of Odin, and he is neither a postcard or Odin.

>cross dressing tiefling with multi-colored eyes and hair.
>unique

nigga wut?

It's not an interpretation, he literally put tom in there just for his kids and he even stated so in one of his letters. Now setting aside that you're a moron, the hobbits are the society closest to what JRR tolkien's ideal world was, they were the purest expression of his beliefs, this is also in his letters, and other associated material his son has released to the public, next time you make a fucking claim make sure you know what the fuck you're talking about.

On the topic of Mary sues, if not directly related: Can you have a well written character that is a bit "flat"?

Most people argue that characters need to learn something and grow and change significantly over the course of the story. But what if the character changes very little? And learns almost nothing from his ordeal? What if the characters personality causes him to have very obvious flaws that are not rectified at the end of the story, so they become a Mary sue or bad character?

Remember, when someone asks you what Jesus would do, ransacking a temple is perfectly fine course of action.

Provide the letter that's proof of your claim.

Go google it yourself you lazy fuck.

Paul from Dune is probably the closest thing I can think of

that just makes your characte rmore realistic

Their isn't anything inherently wrong with a character being static rather than dynamic. Some people really are so set in their ways that no amount of life lessons will break them or their habits.

This is Good to know, thank you anons. Perhaps my character might finally make his way out of the backpages of my notebook

I feel we summed this up quite nicely.

But I would argue that a mary/gary sue, someone with no true challenge and all the cards, can sometimes make a story fun in itself.

or does this type of character have a different name? Because in that case they wouldn't impeding the narrative.

But only when driving out capitalists.

Tolkien also left Tom vague as an almost clairvoyant "screw you" to those fans who would come to obsess over the details of his worldbuilding, and insist on trying to have everything make perfect sense.

>Sue
>trains entire movie
>loses a hand and goes into a coma
k.

No

There's more to a serial killer than just killing. There are characters who kill many people, but always do so in the context of battle. That is not serial killing.

Others have spoken for Luke, but I'll come out and say that Anakin isn't a Sue either. He's just really badly written in general. There's at least a vague outline of a proper story arc to all the shit he does, charting his corruption by the Dark Side, his estrangement from his mentor and master, and his eventual fall from grace. Putting aside the quality of the writing, does the idea of a character giving in to their worst nature strike you as particularly "flawless"? The guy murders children, for fuck's sake, and swears loyalty to an Evil Overlord. He's not perfect in the slightest.

Yes, kinda, sorta. I understand that the term these days is commonly used to mean any character that's powerful, successful, good-looking, and healthy, and you can certainly write stories about such characters that are engaging. In fact, some of the worst stories I've ever experienced didn't have these types of characters but were rather written by people who were just good enough that they realized that they couldn't write about such characters, resulting in still bad stories that simply didn't feature them.

However, I still use the term only for fanfic self-inserts. Conan the Cimmerian isn't a Sue to me even if he's the strongest man in the world, and the best fighter, and incredible in bed, and instantly great at whatever he decides to do, because he's the main character of sword and sorcery stories. He's supposed to be all of those things. When little Timmy decides to write his own Conan comic and inserts a character which very clearly is Timmy but even better and stronger than Conan, and who instantly gains Conan's friendship for no reason what so ever, then that is a Sue.

Then wouldn't a more accurate term be 'serial murderer?'

Mind you, going just by first move vs first movie...Anakin does a fair bit more.

I man, the pre-teen is the entire reason the planetary invasion fails and can take part in a sport that literally no other human can do because he's That Good with the force + beat out many veteran pilots despite having his stuff sabotaged so he's got a multi-minute slowed start.. Rey...gets saved and manages to beat a guy who was busy bleeding to death in a fight.

I don't think TFA was a great movie (Decent but nothing spectacular) but Anakin was a right little shit of a mary sue in his first movie.

>anakin
>mary sue
the fuck. You do realize that Mary Sue =/= character is incredibly powerful? Anakin fucks up everything for himself. The prequels are supposed to be a tragedy.

Guillermo del Toro is a raging faggot who can't write or direct and the only reason people even associate with him is because they feel sorry for him.

He is Hollywood's special needs student.

I wanna call you out on that but Paul was established in the beginning as someone who was learning to survive and thrive so really everything he did was an extension of that.

Did we even watch the same movie? Because he spent a good portion of it wiping out stormtroopers in a daring raid on the Imperial superweapon then outflying the entire Rebellion and making a shot nobody else could.

See - all the fucking up comes in the later movies. In the first he's a ridiculous Sue, up to and including being Jedi Jesus.

Well, there's the characters that exist as such in order to support the story. One-Punch Man and Drizzt are actually good examples of this. They spend the better part of the story being observers for the most part, and only step in when the plot requires them to. The real quality and substance of the story comes from the other characters and their conflicts.

>Because he spent a good portion of it wiping out stormtroopers in a daring raid

He shot, like, three dudes and ran away crying.

>outflying the entire Rebellion and making a shot nobody else could.

With the help of a space ghost and a smuggler who saved him from certain death.

You should really watch it again. Great film, a nice refresher from the cookie-cutter horseshit you clearly favor.

In Dune everybody is a Mary Sue. And when everybody is a Mary Sue then nobody is.

No. Mary sue is specifically termed for characters in fanfiction. In original works a character who has all the same traits isn't a 'mary sue' they're just poorly written.

He's technically correct in that those sorts of traits that are commonly associated with a Mary Sue can be used as a sort of gauge, but his conclusion is flawed.

It's similar to a character's height. A character can theoretically be any size, but you want to pick a size that fits well for your genre. A character who is 6 inches tall only fits if they're a mouse in a world of talking animals, and the story centers around that. Someone who is 8 feet tall is going to be really tall and stand out in a crowd...unless it's the future and gene-modding makes 8 a pretty typical height. Someone 50 feet tall would be fine in a superhero story, but just gets silly if you're trying to do a down-to-earth detective drama.

It's the same thing with Mary Sues. A girl with green hair and cat ears might not be a mary sue in a cyberpunk world where that's a very low-level gene mod, but she absolutely will be a mary sue in a historical noire or whatever.

The traits that are common to Mary Sues are the sliding scale that defines your tone. It's when those traits don't match it that the character becomes a Sue and therefore an impediment to quality.

In the context of battle it would be a parallel killer.

I thought Mary/Gary Stus were simply self-inserts

is that not what they are

I think it has to be a super-cool self-insert. Like, Peter Jackson showing up in Bree is a self-insert but you don't see him rescuing frodo Frodo, with Gandalf going "Oh kind stranger who I just learned is Isildur's true heir. Forgot the whole send-a-midget-to-Mordor plan, I want you to take the ring and rule the world"

No, it's a little more than that

My friend ran an online DH campaign where the interrogator that gave the team the missions was a self insert, or at least heavily based on himself. Only I knew because I knew him IRL. however the interrogator in question was kind of a gloryhound promotion seeker, and he wasn't portrayed as a likeable person, it even particularly competent. The party quickly, and rightly became quite wary around him.

When push came to shove he fucked up by arrogantly underestimating the chaotic cult's numbers, got a separate acolyte cell massacred, and died in an explosive martyrdom - only after getting shot in the sound and being unable to escape, though.

If he had been a mary sue, he would've instead been scouted by the Knights Indicator, or something.

Yay phoneposting

>or even particularly competent
>shot in the spine

The only thing that defines a serial killer is the speed at which he kills. I don't remember the exact numbers, but basically if you bring a shotgun to the mall and kill 12 people you're a spree killer. If you kill 12 people separately, over the course of a year, planning out each death meticulously, you're a serial killer.

So the only relevant characteristics of a serial killer are number of people killed, and amount of time between each killing. Technically a hitman who kills people on contract is a serial killer.

>A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people,[1] usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a "cooling off period") between them.[1][2]

Yeah, I figured. Just didn't feel like adding "serial killer" to the list of stuff I googled this week.

>High Concept: Son of God, Destined Savior of humanity.
>Trouble: Can't get along with merchants

One Punch Man also has the defense that it's a parody of action anime and Saitama being impossibly overpowered is the punchline to a lot of jokes.

This. If we start going down this "sliding scale of autism" crap, we dilute the meaning.

Sues can also have flaws. The thing about them is that they are endearing.

Fuck no.

Yet I would still argue pre-teen Anakin isn't a Sue, on the grounds that The Phantom Menace doesn't really pay him any special attention, outside of his contributions to the overall plot. Other characters acknowledge his deeds and potential, but it's never in the slavish, pandering way that a Sue usually recieves. If memory serves, most of the Jedi Council are skeptical of Anakin's status as the Chosen One - he has to earn their respect.

But again, that's more because of poor writing - TPM doesn't pay *any* of its characters any special attention. There's a serious lack of clear protagonists in that film, or a clear central conflict. It's tough to say how Anakin might have fared if TPM had actually been written well, but I'd say he actually comes off relatively well, despite the film's overall flaws.

Well they're job interview flaws.
>I just work too hard
>I care too much
>I always think I'm right

>wins podrace no human has ever won before
>first time in a fighter plane blows up entire space station of bad guys

Yeah nah, get your personal biases out of the way. I've never seen the new star wars movies but I'm sure she receives the same treatment

>wins podrace no human has ever won before
Because humans have shit reflexes, but Anakin had the Force to shore up that weakspot.
>>irst time in a fighter plane blows up entire space station of bad guys
By accident, not because he was good at it.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon duel with a Sith warrior, Amidala and her bodyguards retake Naboo's royal palace, and Jar-Jar leads the Gungans in a giant battle as a diversion.

Every character contributes in the climax. TPM has a mountain of flaws, but placing undue emphasis on Anakin is not one of them. It might have been better if it had, come to think of it, but that's a whole other argument.

>most midclorins ever
Destiny outside of his own actions, chosen one just because.
>by accident
So his flaws don't actually hinder him. They help. He's so incompetent he wins because he's the one who wins.

Sounds sue.

>Destiny outside of his own actions, chosen one just because.
Welcome to Fantasy fiction, don't eat the fairy food
>So his flaws don't actually hinder him. They help. He's so incompetent he wins because he's the one who wins.
His flaws are that he's an overeager child who nearly got himself killed. Because of destiny, he wins, because this is a fantasy story, and destiny wins. You cannot fight Fate.

Yet people say that Rey is a mary sue when Finn honestly does a LOT more in the Climax than she does. She engages with her personal story but affects the actual main plot very little other than 'Being there too'.

Yes

>Reygay

Wasnt he Jarlaxle's pet psion?

Having high midichlorians is the ONLY thing Anakin has going for him, though. Everyone else is either a space-knight, space-royalty, a droid, or a lucky idiot. Take away his Force gift, and Anakin is just a child mechanic in way over his head.

I would also argue that Rey isn't a Sue either. She's just really badly written in general. Her motives are incoherent and confusing, and her Force powers are a total ass-pull, but like Anakin, no-one in TFA is falling over themselves in adoration of her, and there's the vaguest outline of a story arc in her journey. It's just muddled by sloppy plotting and Abrams' obsession with style over substance, making "cool scenes" instead of a coherent, meaningful narrative.

I think most of the people who accuse Rey of being a Sue can feel that there's shit that's wrong with TFA, but they don't know how to articulate that feeling. So they latch onto what they do know (Mary Sues) and trumpet it to the heavens. Their instincts are right. It's just their conclusion that's awry.

>her Force powers are a total ass-pull

I think we just call that 'Force powers'.

t. someone who has never seen Star Wars

>cocaine addict that often mistreats people and acts like a jackass, even to the only person that spends a good deal of time with him

Sherlock Holmes has enough flaws to justify not being a Sue. He's not a perfect, idealized person. He's just REALLY good at his job, which is fitting for the story. Herakles isn't a Mary Sue, even though he's the strongest man that ever lived.