Apparently I put it under the wrong heading. Hopefully, this will get some good discussion going.
Okay, so my recent interest of study is Mary Sue, the perfect, immaculately beautiful girl or:
"Mary Sue is any original or deeply altered character who represents a slice of his/her creator's own ego; s/he is treasured by his/her creator but only rarely by anyone else. More negatively, a Mary Sue is a primadonna (usually but not always badly-written) who saps life and realism out of every other character around, taking over the plot and bending canon to serve his/her selfish purposes."
from http://www.subreality.com/marysue/explain.htm
So my question is this...
Who in Star Wars (books, movies, comics, video games, whatever) do you consider to be a Mary Sue?
(See also the following links for more information)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_sue
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
http://tkfiles.storage.msn.com/x1piYkpqHC_35k8aSZ9LKXGQ1mBTENRbxom-TyBbKrd-hEkUoMsg_D7TB8OgfBkN9YngB9aQFRYaddmq8mvtzOsjL6IQtJCMbWjPpae5cpDt3-2bFgenqwjAQ
My picks:
Lorana from Outbound Flight is somewhat of a Mary Sue. She is nice and sweet despite being "raised" by a rude Jedi Master.
Callista from the Callista Trilogy is a Mary Sue. She is locked in a computer but somehow able to get out. When she does, she somehow changes Cray's body to have her beautiful attributes.
Luke, Leia, and Han in the hands of the "wrong" author have Mary Sue attributes. Luke in the Black Fleet Trilogy is powerful enough to reconstruct Darth Vader's destroyed fortress in a single day. Leia and Han are rarely shown in anything other than top form.
Odie and Erk from Jedi Trial are Mary Sue and Gary/Marty Stu. Both are perfect and Odie is a particularly helpless woman.
I think there are more, but I can't think of them right now.
*Gen C.S. Light*
Jul 14, 2008 7:32 AM | Report Abuse reply
I didn't think Odie was a Sue. She was an accomplished scout, and she did end up in a romantic relationship, but neither of them were perfect nor all that important to the plot. That was a badly written book, but I don't think they count.
I entirely agree with you about Callista.
I'd peg Mara Jade for Suedom at the drop of a hat. She's beautiful and deadly, has distinguishing features (bright red hair, bright green eyes), has a dark past that led her to meet with various very important characters, and ends up in a romantic relationship with the hero. While she isn't poorly written, she isn't especially creatively done either. And while most fans like her instead of hating her, and she's obviously not an extension of her creator (even though she might be his favorite), fans like her because if they're guys they want her and if they're girls they want to be her. Same for Aayla Secura.
I'll also protest giving Luke the title of Stu, but haven't read the Black Fleet Trilogy. Maybe in the wrong hands he is, but he was a good enough character in the original form to make Star Wars a big enough deal that it has forums like this dedicated to it.
Jul 17, 2008 8:39 PM | Report Abuse reply
I can see your point about Odie and Luke. I still think that Luke could be written as a Marty Stu; however, a good author avoids that (like Timothy Zahn and others I can't remember).
I also find it funny how much of a Mary Sue Mara is and yet there are few that hate her. How did Timothy Zahn accomplish this? Mary Sue's are pretty easy to peg and readers (like myself) want to stone them upon sight. Mara isn't like that.
How about Admiral Daala in Death Star? Beautiful, deadly, accomplished, good sense of humor, a peer of Grand Moff Tarkin? I believe she had the typical red hair/green eye combo too.
*Gen C.S. Light*
Jul 18, 2008 12:57 PM | Report Abuse reply
But Daala kept losing and Mara was flawed when we met her and always had something that made her human-- generally it was her willingness to do for herself-- and doesn't that take her out of the Mary Sue category?
Jul 18, 2008 1:45 PM | Report Abuse reply
Well, Daala in Death Star is beautiful, witty, smart, dangerous....basically flawless. I agree in the Jedi Academy Trilogy she was not that way.
I think with Mara, most of her actions were never done for anything less than a pure motive. No killing out of pure hatred. No jealousy. No greed. That sort of thing.
However, Mary Sue's come in shades of grey. I think all characters have the potential to be a Mary Sue (heck, even "Crystal Starr Light" was a Mary Sue at one time!), and it depends on which aspects an author focuses on on whether they are or not (i.e. Luke Skywalker appears omnipotent in some books and rather human in others).
I've heard people say that Corran Horn and Thrawn were Mary Sue's too. I don't think I agree, but they both have the potential.
Jul 18, 2008 1:58 PM | Report Abuse reply
Thrawn had few errors. He could determine how people fought through their art (I mean, how many people do you know who can do that?), but he was not power-hungry as most of the Imperials had been shown (of course, I didn't mind that as I got tired of the power-hungry Imperials, but that is just me).
Some people say, though, that he is flawed because he didn't see the Noghri attack coming.
Thanks for posting your comments.
*Gen C.S. Light*
Jul 19, 2008 12:35 PM | Report Abuse reply
I don't think he could see the Noghri attack coming... Vader was loyal to the empire, the Noghri loyal to Vader... No way Thrawn could have anticipated that...
Jul 19, 2008 4:46 PM | Report Abuse reply
Mara bloody Jade, it doesn't seem to matter who writes her, when she has appeared, she's always appeared as a bit of a sue to me. Perhaps that's just the way I read her, but as someone else pointed out, she's beautiful, unusually striking and deadly, she doesn't seem to have a bad attribute about her.
The traumatic past also adds to her sue-dom, we are lead down the proverbial garden path to believe that she had a very traumatic and unfortunate childhood, taken by Palpatine etc and she has overcome all of this and found love with a bit of a Gary Stu - Luke Skywalker.
I also agree with the mention of Callista, though those few books were particularly strangely written, I couldn't get into them at all. Aayla Secura? A complete sue.
Jul 23, 2008 4:32 AM | Report Abuse reply
I think I would like to also include a few other candidates to this:
Githany from Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, felt like a Mary Sue. Very beautiful, uses her sexuality, supposedly a good fighter, but we only see her fight like two, maybe three, times.
Corran Horn from I, Jedi, felt like Marty Stu/Gary Stu. He upstaged Luke Skywalker, was ruggedly handsome, and was described as such a bad a$$.
Discuss other potential Sues or why these are not Sues.
May 9, 2009 9:43 AM | Report Abuse reply
So far, every character I;ve seen described here as either a Mary Sue/Marty Stu is a HUMAN.
What about alein species (other than Thrawn, of course) who might be considered forto be Mary Sue's/Marty Stu's?
I'll use a character in my Sherlock Holmes X STAR WARS crossover fanfic. Vana, the Falleen Queen, might come off as a Mary Sue among the Falleen simply because (as I reveal later) she was able to use her femininity to influnce Xizor to make some changed n Black Sun and to drop a blood grudge against the Skywalker bloodline... .
May 9, 2009 11:43 AM | Report Abuse reply
Good point, Elizabeth!!! You don't have to be human to be a Mary Sue; in fact, many Mary Sues are such because of strange heritages (you know, being the daughter of Anakin and someone else).
Once upon a time, Crystal used to be a Mary Sue. Now, if you promise NOT TO TEASE (I was an early teen when I started her character), I will explain. I used to have her join up with Han, Luke, and Leia as they went through the movies, become a Jedi Knight, get married to Luke and have a bunch of kids. Thank GOD for Zahn's Hand of Thrawn Duology! He married Luke and Mara and forced me to make Crystal my own character. I have no doubt that she could be considered a Mary Sue still, but I try my hardest not to...and if you think she is, tell me and I'll try to A) explain or B) change it!!
Another character I had that was/is a Mary Sue was the niece of Zam Wesell. I said Zam had a sister who married, I think, a human and had a daughter. Then the sister became a prositute or something, and the daughter dumped on Zam. She was half-Clawdite, half-Human, but really, she was a human able to shapeshift. Also, she learned to be a bounty hunter just as good as Zam and befriended Fett (though, there really wasn't much of a romantic subplot there; he just thought of her like a kid sister).
So there you have it!! See why I keep those things a secret now? :P
May 9, 2009 1:41 PM | Report Abuse reply
I think Crystal's raised an interesting point here and I would hate to see this topic buried due to inactivinty. *S*
May 15, 2009 9:14 AM | Report Abuse reply
I know! It got buried a long time ago (looks back at the tags) and I was kinda sad. Hopefully, we can get some of the Book Club members to chime in on their "favorite" Mary Sues.
Also, a cool link to new Mary Sue Info!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuetifulAllAlong
May 15, 2009 10:40 AM | Report Abuse reply
I think I read it already, but I will not gove away any information on it to those who have NOT yet read the article, Crystal.
May 15, 2009 12:20 PM | Report Abuse reply
Sweet!
I liked how it said someone could have the characteristics of a Mary Sue, but may not be one...UNLESS! The plot revolves around them.
But that is so boring...read the article. It's funny :D
May 15, 2009 12:35 PM | Report Abuse reply
Interesting article, Crystal. I did wonder just where that Mary Sue line was.
May 15, 2009 3:50 PM | Report Abuse reply
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