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I never watched GoT in the first place. I had enough of R.R. Martin with the “Wild Cards” series. That kind of gloomy, wangsty overly done “grim and gritty = realistic” stuff is… not for me.

Oh yeah. Every time I hear anything about GoT, I ask, “why have none of the regular people risen up and said, “fuck you. Fuck ALL of you. We’re taking you all out, throwing that iron throne out to rust in the rain, and having a talk with that Jon Snow guy who says the White Walkers are coming?”

Yes, but one of the main features of a Mary Sue is that they get everything right the first time. Naturally skilled martial artists, that sort of thing. Rey was depicted as being about as gifted a student as… Luke himself, under Obi Wan and Yoda. Both of them had natural strength, both kept screwing up during the training, and both underestimated their teachers (Luke was casually deflecting Rey’s attacks when she assaulted him… until she grabbed the lightsaber. Then he was reduced to submitting because the alternative would have been to Force TK her into orbit.

“Mary Sue/Gary Stu” is a malleable term, there’s no official definition. To me, a Mary Sue is a projection of the author’s own fantasies, putting themselves into situations where the character is lavished upon by others for inexplicable reasons, and/or is amazing at things the author wants to be amazing at without much justification.

Considering Naruto starts his story with literally everyone in the village hating him and has to earn everyone’s respect over the course of his young adult life, I wouldn’t consider him a Gary Stu. Nor do I get the impression in the franchise’s writing that Naruto is a surrogate for the author, he feels like his own character. I do think he’s an overly one note character, but that’s mostly because his story consists of basically the exact same story arc repeated ad nauseum. “I don’t like/respect you, Naruto!” “I’ll make you like/respect me by working hard and exceeding your low expectations and punching you in the face!” “Wow, now I really like/respect you, Naruto!!”. Rinse, repeat. Not really a Mary Sue to me, just repetitive.

I don’t really disagree with your opinions about these characters (I would’ve much preferred Naruto to literally be a nobody who works hard, like Rock Lee). The only thing I’m disagreeing with is your use of the term Mary Sue, which you’re now saying is scalable. instead of adding a scale to Mary Sue-ness, let’s just ditch the term altogether, since it’s nebulous and has no consensus meaning, and is often used to dismiss female characters. I have no problem evaluating characters using most any other terminology or means of measurement.

Okay, let me rephrase that. If you want to call Rey a bland character, go ahead, that’s a valid criticism. Just don’t call her a Mary Sue, because I’m sick of that term, which can mean literally anything anyone wants it to mean, and is often used as a negative term to describe female characters specifically. To me, it is a term that stinks of sexism and misogyny. I don’t care if you agree with me, and if you want to argue this point, please do so somewhere other than here.

I can think of a better term, it’s called “bland character”, and it can be supported with reasonable arguments. Mary Sue can mean literally anything you want it to, and it was developed specifically to talk about female characters, otherwise it wouldn’t clearly be a woman’s name. Just because guy characters get called Mary Sue does not make it any less misogynistic or sexist, much like the term B*tch. Now I have made my feelings on this as clear as I can. If you continue to try to argue the validity of using the term Mary Sue, I will ban you.

I would like to note that “Mary Sue” is really the feminine pronoun of a concept that’s really universal. There are plenty of male characters who are Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) as hell. Wolverine (especially when written by raging fanboys who get to make their ideas canon. That’s how Wolverine went from the noble and conflicted hero of the 1980s who tamed his bestial berserker rage with the iron will of a samurai… to Stabbity McGee the fratboy douchebag, who makes homophobic comments and sneers at She-Hulk being Juggernaut’s “sloppy seconds.”). Ayn Rand’s character Galt (The one who gets strapped into a torture device which breaks down, is the only one who can repair it… then instantly and with 100% accuracy psychoanalyzes the guy in charge as being completely and utterly without morality or redeeming characteristics).

Hell, even more positive examples can be found, such as Heinlein’s Lazarus Long – and I say “positive” because Heinlein realized after “Time Enough For Love” what he’d created, and pretty much every book he wrote after that would only feature Lazarus to have him beaten up, shackled and court martialed, or subjected to a roaring and scathing criticism from… everyone, after one particular screwup.

That being said, I do agree with you regarding the reference of Rey as a Mary Sue – it’s not a valid criticism (not when she’s no different from Kylo, or Luke, or Yoda or Anakin or any number of other powerful Force Sensitives in the setting), it’s merely a complaint because the main heroes are not primarily white males. (And that’s coming from someone who is just SICK of racial politics) I’ve also heard similar charges levied against Leia for Force TKing herself to safety – even though she’s had literally decades to grow stronger in the Force, to hone her skills, to learn how to… do what Luke could have done way back in “Return of the Jedi” when he still barely qualified as anything other than “hardly trained assassin sent to kill Vader by two mentors who lied to him about his parentage.” Rey… she spent way too much time getting mocked, screwing up, and needing to be saved after getting in way over her head. Calling her a Mary Sue is like complaining about Finn being a main character because “where are all the white males?” (Especially when Poe kicked so much ass… and I know the actor is hispanic, but after decades of caucasian actors playing hispanic roles and hispanic actors playing caucasian roles… it’s not as if they called him “Commander Mendez the Taco Lord…”)

No, that’s like claiming any argument that disagrees with your own is a Strawman, or rushing to throw the labels of “racist,” “sexist,” “apartheid,” and “nazi” around in political discussions. What makes a Mary Sue/Gary Stu into an MS/GS is when their awesomeness comes at the expense of everyone else in the story.

For instance, Doctor Who is not usually a Gary Stu because he’s not always right, he tends to favor companions that can put him on a leash (Donna was especially good at that – she’s the only one known to have slapped the crap out of him. Not to mention telling the Devil to go to hell, before sending him there), and a lot of the comedy comes at his expense as self-deprecating jokes. Whereas Captain Jack was a GLARING example of a Gary Stu in the few episodes of the Doctor Who spinoff series “Torchwood” that I saw, because his awesomeness came at the expense of his team being portrayed as idiots (the cannibal village episode in particular. Two team members with guns drawn still manage to get captured by one guy, then Captain Jack shows up and shoots all the enemies singlehandedly).

Samantha Carter… not overly familiar with the series, but I do know that she was ONE character in an ensemble cast of intelligent and capable soldiers serving together. She didn’t outshine, she wasn’t outshown. Their victories were as a team. Much like in… No Need For Bushido, where the “lead” male’s capacity for dual wielding at lightning speed doesn’t overshadow his friend’s ability to wield massive blades with ease, or his other friend’s devastating unarmed combat skill. Or the lead female’s ability for organization and leadership, developed over the course of the storyline.

I don’t think that the criticism is directed more at female characters so much as it is that the female characters tend to be more glaring examples. For instance, “Twilight” features a female protagonist who is desired by all (especially two superhuman males who preen in the sunlight), but has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Then you look at the “Anita Blake” series, whose protagonist STARTED as a female “paranormal film noire” gumshoe type, but after the author’s first husband divorced her the author went… insane, and Blake essentially became “Twilight’s” protagonist, except older, heavily armed, viciously violent, with all the powers of every creature she encountered and none of their weaknesses, and surrounded by a male harem who agreed that everything she did was justified.

Not to say that there haven’t been some pretty glaring examples on the Gary Stu side. But those examples tend to suffer increased scrutiny and in-universe backlash, especially when other writers take over (like how Batman or Wolverine’s capacity for outshining their teammates tends to vary depending on the writer). With Mary Sues, the lingering tendency to avoid violence aimed at female characters results in even fewer blemishes or defeats to mar their perfect record.

There’s an interesting link to check out, the Mary Sue Litmus Test:

http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm

Try putting a given character through it and see what kind of score they hit. (I first found this test while trying to deal with a good friend with a bad habit of making minmaxed Mary Sues for tabletop RPG gaming – every character had to be female, nonhuman, and as extra special as possible. First they ran their latest character –
a Fomori Drake Mystic Adept for 4th edition Shadowrun – through it, and got something like 15. Then I made them redo the test more HONESTLY… and the final score was, like, 88)

Don’t forget the part of the formula that is his personal super power — Naruto motivational speaker mode! Someone should count how many lives changed course due to the influence of his words. (This power is enhanced by the manga property of nearly unbounded dialogue / monologue time during conflicts.)

Technically, Luke didn’t HAVE a light saber duel until the end of the second film, when he picks a fight with a Sith Lord who proceeds to play with him until Luke finally gets in a few good hits (at which point Vader roars, stops playing around, and lops off Luke’s hand before calming down). Whereas Rey… Snokes points out in this one that Kylo lost to Rey BECAUSE Kylo wasn’t fighting at his best (also, Kylo was badly injured and it was a two-on-one fight with Rey AND Finn).

Rey does get the hang of wielding a light saber – but she’s already experienced in wielding a staff, and there’s a tremendous amount of carryover (same basic principles – leverage, positioning, etc… it’s why classical European martial arts – as the surviving fighting manuals written from the medieval period show – based everything around wrestling and the longsword, with the longsword wielded like a grappled opponent and vice versa, and all other weapons being shown as being wielded like the longsword). Hence that scene where she swings the staff, then attempts to wield the light saber in the same fashion… and promptly slices through the boulder and realizes, “holy crap this thing is DANGEROUS, I’m lucky I didn’t lop off my own arm.” After that, she fights Snoke’s bodyguards… with Kylo’s help, and the two of them together are able to win against bodyguards who… may not have been trained as well as they could have been (Snokes might not have allowed his bodyguards to become powerful enough to be a threat to him). Beyond that… Rey doesn’t really get the opportunity to do much of anything, and what she does is mostly screw up a bit – she doesn’t find her parents, she can’t stop the link with Kylo, when she confronts Snokes she’s literally a toy in his grasp and has to be saved by Kylo, and she fails to turn Kylo back to the light (even though his motivation to join her is obvious and intense – seriously, he’s gotta have a LOOOT of stuff in his private diary about things he’d like to do with her… all of it written with a proper emo tone).

But… Naruto? You’re referencing a character who starts out as the lonely outsider, who can’t even master the basic substitution jutsu at first, and whose first mission involves him getting mocked by Sasuke for cowering under an assault. Now Sasuke is another matter – I LOVE the concept of Sasuke. Not Sasuke himself, but I love his concept. Everything about him is an archetypical anime protagonist. Gorgeous features that the opposite sex adores? Check. Lack of interest in the opposite sex? Check. Long flowing hair? Check. Awesome Mary Sue lineage that makes him naturally better than everyone else? Check. Tragic backstory that also eliminates the competition from others of the Mary Sue lineage? Check. You can see how he suspects he’s in a story and he knows he SHOULD be the main character… but the real main character is a lovable twit who suffered even more pain, but deals with it by dangling upside down from the nose of a giant statue and calling out, “LOOK AT ME! I’M A BOOGER!”