You think Mary Sues is leaving? Lauren Chen reveals why they aren’t

Mary Sues make terrible protagonists and actually destroy any story they find themselves in. But that doesn’t mean they still don’t have a fanbase. And Lauren Chen found a Twitter thread with some interesting replies that reveal why the Mary Sue isn’t going away any time soon.

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In a video posted on his YouTube channel Mediaholic on December 8, Chen pointed out a Twitter feed of user @JoshuaLisec this provided an explanation of why the Mary Sue characters don’t work. The thread also identified characters such as Galadriel from power ringsRey from the Star Wars franchise and Captain Marvel from her eponymous film as Mary Sues.

Lisec’s explanation is rather innocuous. It makes it clear (as others have) why protagonists who don’t have character flaws or challenges to overcome don’t work, and why they fail a story from the start. (Hence why the aforementioned stories with their female protagonists flopped.) Yet despite the sweetness of it all, the thread (unsurprisingly) received harsh responses.

“But what I found just as interesting as his post were the posts that responded to him in a shocking way,” Chen said in his video. “Because honestly, whether you agree with Joshua or not that characters like Rey are poorly written, I feel like it’s quite a stretch to call him sexist for his opinion. And yet, that is exactly what happened on Internet-dot-com.

She then cited the series of replies to Lisec’s tweet where users apparently objected to what he wrote. Indeed, sometimes those who responded resorted to names such as “fragile” and so on. Overall, they were fairly typical of the types of comments regularly seen on Twitter. For his part, Chen explained in detail why there was nothing wrong with Lisec’s yarn.

“It’s not misogynistic or anti-woman to look at a character – a fictional character – and say, ‘Okay, it doesn’t look like you have any flaws or weaknesses. Therefore, I don’t see how you can grow in a story,” she said.

“It’s not hateful bigotry or a rejection of women as people to watch Rey de star wars and say, “Hey, the fact that she was so strong in the beginning, it feels like her main focus was really just wish-fulfillment or self-insertion,” she added. “And it’s funny because even though feminists were upset by Joshua’s thread, some of them were also simultaneously confirming it.”

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Chen later quoted a Tweeter by user @tommy_stella who said, “I don’t really want to jump into the Mary Sue speech. . . but I mean I don’t care if she’s a Mary Sue, I don’t care if a grown man thinks she’s a well written character, I care about that:”

He then attached a montage of photographs of little girls, some dressed as Rey, meeting adults (one or more of whom may be Rey’s original actress, Daisy Ridley) who are also dressed as Rey. Chen found this quite revealing.

“And again, it goes back to the idea that the main purpose of storytelling these days is just self-representation. It’s only a good story if you relate to it. That’s why we have to having all these different diversity quotas. What these people don’t understand is that you don’t have to share characteristics with the character to see yourself as them,” she said.

“I guess it’s cute that little girls like Rey and dress up as her,” Chen added. “But let’s face it, it’s also a lot of other characters that aren’t women who are actually well-written that little girls dress up as well.”

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She continued, “And personally, as someone who has a daughter and was once a little girl, I would rather admire a character like Aragorn who is a man even though I am not, just because he actually displays a lot of virtue. »

She developed the difference between The Lord of the Rings character and the star wars character. “He has trials that he overcomes. He doesn’t want to be king but he has to grow into that role. Instead of just siding with Rey because, ‘Oh, she woman, me woman too.’

Ultimately, Chen’s Mediaholic video shows that even though the characters of Mary Sue are terrible, there are still a lot of people who really love them. More importantly, as Hollywood has demonstrated, Mary Sues has the support of the people who matter most: those charged with making stories that reach the widest audience.

So star wars will continue to feature Mary Sues. The MCU will continue to feature Mary Sues. Reboots of franchises that people originally loved and didn’t have Mary Sues will continue to feature Mary Sues in their new incarnations. And all other stories in all other legacy entertainment system media will continue to feature Mary Sues.

Every now and then, news seems to indicate that Hollywood has had enough of people not liking its woke entertainment and that it will do things differently in the future. But that just won’t happen. The people who run Tinseltown, and the nation as a whole, are committed to their beliefs and will not change. And Lauren Chen’s Mediaholic video is a good reminder of that.

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