What's the difference between a strong female protagonist and a mary sue...

What's the difference between a strong female protagonist and a mary sue? What's the difference between a strong female protagonist and pandering to the feminist demographic? It seems like any time I see a strong female protagonist she will be accused of being those other two things.

strong female protagonists are easy to pick out because the feminists will call them "women hating"

>It seems like any time I see a strong female protagonist she will be accused of being those other two things.

Further proof that the Patriarchy still rules in 2016.

You know strong women, like real life strong-willed women?

Like that.

A Mary Sue is traditionally a self-insert of the author. Either one can be poorly written though.

Strong female characters have to seem like real people, so to make them unrealistic or idealized or infallible or whatever is just as sexist as making them sex objects.
They need strengths and weaknesses, shortcomings and virtues, and not ones that play out some male fantasy.

Because mostly asshole males write those comments. Literature and genre fiction has been overflowing with male Mary Sues forever, but nobody bothered to complain about it until women did it.

>you know women
Of course not.

A mary sue just means a character is there authors pet. WC from next gen is a MS. Roland from dark tower is a MS.
MS does not instantly mean terrible, but it places the character autistically above all other considerations.

Pandering is similar in that it places the audience's considerations above the artistic works.

A good character who happens to be strong (it is important to express in that order) is a character who displays strong will or mental/physical prowess within the themes, prose, narrative, and internal logic of the work.

The one will act like a real person and the other will heavily rely on traditional gender-stereotypes, both female-positive and male-positive.
Also usually one will have normal relationships with people, while the other will have forced sexual tension with men and sometimes women, to further please SJWs.

One is a strong human being and the other is only strong as a woman.

I don't know that I can articulate it, but I do believe GoT has switched from strong characters to pandering, this season.

A Mary Sue is somebody like Katniss Everdeen, who is pretty much perfect and super smart and good at a lot of things despite being a hick, is the 'chosen one', and whose obvious flaw is insecurity.

GoT is has several strong women that are somewhat realistic.
Cersei
Margaery and her mother.
The wildling slut.

Daenarys is a shit. She's more Mary Sue because she's utterly incompetent and annoying yet everything works out for her.
Basically a self-insert for the average woman.

>MS does not instantly mean terrible
Yes it does.

read maupassant

mary sue it's self-insert of the author, i'm not sure how reader insert is properly named

daenarys is not really a reader insert too, albeit she can be seen by some as a role model, she is very strong willed and daring, most of men and almost all women wouldn't dare to sack astapor in a way how she did it, i frankly was amazed

>i'm not sure how reader insert is properly named
"POV pornography"

>i'm not sure how reader insert is properly named

audience surrogate

>and not ones that play out some male fantasy

See I agreed with you up until that point. I guess you don't understand how what you just said is also part of the problem. It's vague and makes the assumption that all males have the same fantasy as opposed to fantasies a female would have.

Such as?

myra :^)

Yeah. Did you see that shit last episode between Daenerys and Yara? The fuck was that?

GRRM hasn't written this far, has he?

On that note, are the books worth picking up?

Americans have trouble writing female characters because they're so obssed with making them "strong" and "representing" women, or they announce they write "people" instead of genders because they're too scared to write women.

There's no such thing as a strong female character. Girls are dyel.

This is like saying there's no such thing as a jedi or elf character.

>she is very strong willed and daring, most of men and almost all women wouldn't dare to sack astapor in a way how she did it, i frankly was amazed

this is a reoccuring trait of good "strong" female characters: audaciousness. which is only possible when there is a risk that their strength can reflect negatively, and has to be supported by the story to win the reader's admiration. Daenerys is strong at the expense of valid criticism - she's a warmonger, a destabiliser, a tyrant - and combating these criticisms actually develops the story, revealing moral certitudes that are important to the final predicament (the white walkers), like the untenable results of subjugation and the existence of righteous causes. while the invalid criticisms reveal the histrionics of bad readers: she's a mad queen, she's a terrible ruler, etc.

bad "strong" characters meanwhile, Strong Female Protagonists, and male for that matter, are not at risk of criticism, they're presented as unequivocally right with nominal flaws, or any rightness is irrelevant. they're doubly manipulative: we're supposed to like them, the figures, the action figures, not the story; and we're supposed to feel challenged by them, shocked. hence all the braindead hyperviolent action movies, covering up the quaintness of merchandising.

not coincidentally, the past two seasons of GOT have become grotesque and senseless, Daenerys incoherent and unjustifiable

>On that note, are the books worth picking up?
No

What's wrong with them, senpai?

I knew one and I let her go.
Pretty sure she's still thinking of me same as I am thinking of her though.

No she isn't

good post

Yes she is.
I know her too well.

She's a woman; she doesn't give a shit about you.

Brienne of Tarth (at least seasons 1-3) is a good example of a strong female character that isn't feminist pandering.

They're mediocre. He's a pretty bad writer in my opinion. If you want to know why his series sucks you can find plenty of long reviews for it everywhere.

Sure it is mentioned multiple times that "she's a woman" therefore she wouldn't be able to fight but that's just the world she lives in. I don't really count it as pandering when the world she lives in thinks that a woman no matter the size could be a warrior. Since a female warrior is extremely uncommon. She also isn't a mary sue since she has lots of faults like her extreme loyalty.

patriarchy has never "ruled" anything, retard

Ah, so he has the Tolkein problem.

...

brienne is the definition of feminist pandering. im honestly confused as to how you could come to the conclusion that she isnt

You obviously skipped over my other post then. Dany is feminst and sjw pandering to the fucking max. She is the definition not brienne.

Did you read a different hunger games story than I did?
Because in my version Katniss was little more than a political pawn used by others and rarely knew what was going on. She recklessly did stupid shit all the time and would be dead without the help of other people several times.
Also in the end she fails to protect her sister, looses Gale because she can't even look at him anymore and is a PTSD suffering wreck for years to come.

Goddammit, her fucking eyebrows are grotesque with that hair.

She's much more attractive as a brunette.

Strong female protagonist = protagonist, who is female, who is strong.

Strong female protagonists can be Sues. They can be not-Sues. But the point is that they're not mutually exclusive.

It doesn't matter, anyway. Caring about characters as "real people" is like reading for the plot.

>It doesn't matter, anyway. Caring about characters as "real people" is like reading for the plot.
My life has been a lie.

Don't get me wrong, it makes sense to care that a character is just made to pander. But in that case, the whole problem is that they're meant to be read as real people, and anything which has characters made to pander is almost certainly shit-tier anyway.

Characters shouldn't represent an idea?

I was more about the "reading for the plot" thing. Do you read to be absorbed by gorgeous prose, independent of plot? Do you read poetry? You're a poetry person, aren't you?

Generally I don't, for no real reason.

Prose is a pretty good reason to read, but it's never been enough for me. Themes/conflict/ideas/whatever you want to call it are just more interesting.

There's a reason you don't just read wikipedia synopses of books, and it's not just the prose.

Amy from Gone Girl (the film at least, haven't read the book) is one of the most brilliant female characters I've come across in a long time. It was a very clever idea to stage her as the inspiration for her mother's book: She navigates between a constructed narrative of the ideal suburban housewife, a domestic violence victim and a total sociopath so frequently that its impossible to discern her real motives other than a desire for the pure narcissism. When she first encounters Nick, their conversation is so hyper-stylised it becomes clear that the whole cinematic narrative is nothing more than the self-indulgence of her diary writing. Its a brilliant psychological portrait

Yeah, writes very enjoyable books, just too popular

>are the books worth picking up
I'd say they're better than the show, but I don't know if it's worth it to read them already knowing what happens from the show.

That chick isn't overly pretty but why do I feel like she should be sought after or placed above others. Is it the hair? It's something psychological isn't it?

"Strong" is always misunderstood as "effective." A strong protagonist is one that is robust in its construction, who has realistic emotions, thoughts and traits, who makes realistic decisions based on and in those, to realistic results.

A mary sue is a character whose thoughts, emotions, and traits are unrealistically composed, usually bearing the trace of wishful thinking, and whose decisions are unrealistically effective.

-------> joke

o

daenerys is definitely closer to a mary sue in the show than in the books. in the books she basically ruins mereen because she's indecisive and naive. the whole liberating the slaves thing is also not as big a deal as in the show.

A strong female character is a normal male character but with she/her pronouns. A Mary Sue is just a shitty character.

There's a few strong willed women I've met in my life
One is my mother
One is my mother's friend
And the other is a lesbian police cadet

Basically they're opinionated, willing to make decisions to help themselves, have a take-no-shit attitude, and still manage to have a soft side to them.
They're still capable of making mistakes and they don't know everything, but they're not dainty little flowers either.

I've never finished His Dark Materials, but the main character was one of I remember correctly

I'm about halfway through John Steinbeck's East of Eden and so far Cathy/Kate is one of my favorite female characters I've come across.

Ma Joad is probably a good example of a "strong" woman

>does she represent an idea?
Mind elaborating wtf is this?

maybe male fantasy wasn't the right phrasing. I meant more that you should try to have the character's strengths or weaknesses be compatible with the character and not with patriarchal stereotypes. like a female character's strength probably shouldn't ONLY be cleaning unless that somehow makes sense with her character, or emotionality shouldn't be her ONLY weakness unless it seems realistic. these are dumb examples but you get my point.
the traits of a character may match some stereotypical characterizations, but as long as the character seems like a flesh and blood person with reasonable motivations and not an archetype, it should come off smoothly.

This is some seriously retarded shit user.

SUNSET SAW HER...

A strong female protagonist is a bad term that many people take too literally

Strong characters, male or female, do not necessarily win, nor are they necessarily physically capable etc- a strong character is a character with strong characterization and whom the plot would not move forwards without

A strong female character is someone whose actions are relevant to the progress of the story

and this is coming from a grill btw, not some neckbeard etc

Wow someone had a lot of time on their hands to watch a bunch of average movies and cartoons an then make this helpful infographic.

>overthinkingit.com

Yeah, they did have a lot of time.

This, pretty much. Additionally, it is telling how the word strong is almost never used to described good male characters, just female ones.