Is Rey a Mary Sue?

[Worffan101]

I don't think she is. She's a poorly written character but that's mostly JJ's fault. JJ is a horrible storyteller. She's super powerful but again, JJ has no sense of scale and everybody else has to adapt based on that.

She isn't really a wish-fulfillment Mary Sue in any way that Luke Skywalker wasn't, though. She's still basically a fairly blank slate who the audience is supposed to identify with as they become powerful and cool.

[Mecha82]

Only person that can be called Mary Sue is Mary Sue herself. She would be ashamed at all that goes on in her name.

Funny enough there is character who's name is spelled Mary Sue in Youko Senki or as it's also known Saga of Tanya the Evil.

[MyUserName]

Ashoka Got accused of being a Mary Sue by many after The Clone Wars movie. Then Ventress and Grievous beat her down and it was clear she had a way to go.

Rey hasn't had any such humbling so yeah. Utter Mary Sue character.

I was talking about the Halo Legends Anthology DVD and compared Rey to Spartan 1337. He was a total underdog character and for all his silliness, it was clear he had skills underneath the Goofy exterior and Goku quotes. If they had done something similar with Rey, played her as an goofy underdog or apathetic due to being abandoned and had to grow, she would have been FAR more likeable. There are many female characters out there just as OP as Rey, in some ways even more so. But they have actual character arcs and journeys to earn their powers and hero status. Rey has been static and unchanging thus far and has been spectacularly boring as a result.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Only person that can be called Mary Sue is Mary Sue herself. She would be ashamed at all that goes on in her name.

Amazing the amount of unintentional fame the author's self-masturbation has attained when you think about it. No one knows anything about the author herself or has read the story the phrase comes from; but by damn we all know what she did.

It would be interesting to know what became of her and what she thinks of all this. Given how long ago it was she might be a very old woman by now. Never in the world could she have imagined that we would still be talking about her fanfic decades later.

You know, that post of mine was a bit whimsical. I will tend to do that sometimes if you may have noticed. But yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly here. Doing a bit of speculation on the author itself is also a thing. Hopefully one day they will make a movie.

I personally feel like the time spent calling characters a Mary Sue is overrepresented compared to the amount of comprehension that considers different parameters of the caricature, like efficacy for instance, or appropriate bounds for established writers if any.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Only person that can be called Mary Sue is Mary Sue herself. She would be ashamed at all that goes on in her name.

Funny enough there is character who's name is spelled Mary Sue in Youko Senki or as it's also known Saga of Tanya the Evil.

That's who I thought we were talking about this whole time.

[Antiboyscout]

Really that's the best way to put it. A character written in such a way that it's obvious that the author is shaping the fictional reality around them to them give whatever validation they crave.

This

Characters exist to serve the plot. In the case of a sue, the character demands the plot serve them. Add in some female wish fulfillment of unconditional love, adoration, and acceptance, it becomes a problem.

Rey has more of this than she doesn't.

[AlucardNoir]

I just love when things align. YT just recommended this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8Qm5o0oSY

I haven't used the word Rey and Mary Sue on YT over the past week and yet, the gods of YouTube... hei, is this forum selling data to... no wait, there's a Google bot down in the "Who is online" section. Never mind, no alignment, no coincidence, just google seeing me post here... sigh.

[clearspira]

Mary Sue or not, given just how often this subject comes up, I think its fair to say that we all can agree that she is a terribly written character. If it was just the ''INCELS'' or the ''misogynists'' or the ''Star Wars Haters'' noticing these things, then frankly this subject would have died long ago. But when ordinary fans and casual viewers notice the same things on mass then there is a clear problem.

And that is the greatest pity of all for the same cry has echoed countless times across countless audiences: ''I'm not against female leads, i'm against THIS female lead.''

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

You can't really just have a bunch of people who just kind of agree that it's a self-insert of the author. That's a very vague substantiation even if you choose to qualify as a sizeable contingent.

[pilight]

Learning the force has never taken long. Luke Skywalker had never heard of it, the day after he learned of its existence he used it to blow up the Death Star.