Mary Sue, Marty Stu

[StealthySkeptic]

I think that all of you definitely have a good point when you say that x hero or y anime character is a Mary or Marty. But what makes someone a Mary or Marty Stu and how do you control this?

In a realistic universe you can more easily identify Stuisms like always getting the girl, always solving the mystery, always being called on in class, etc. You can then compare this to real life or have people compare this for you and see why it's not realistic. In my opinion, some people restrict the definition to when a character is flawless in everything but even being flawless in one aspect is enough for me. Again that can be quickly corrected in something like a romance or historical fiction or really anything set in our world.

But when you have alien planets, faster than light travel, magic, true love's kiss, devourers of worlds, rings of power, British gentlemen in time traveling phone booths, etc. then obviously more suspension of disbelief is required due to the fantastical nature of the world. So people are more accepting of superheroes or other people with extraordinary abilities in a fantasy or sci-fi world. But with great power must come great checks and balances to keep the suspension of disbelief needed to a minimum.

A lot of people for instance criticize Luke Skywalker for being too good with the Force with very little training, piloting an X-Wing, being the person who saves the universe, etc. While I don't think his characterization is the strongest and he certainly tends towards the Stu Side, and the centrality of one person to the original trilogy and the destiny mumbo jumbo are problems with the movies (and with the Hero's Journey metamyth), Luke doesn't do even one thing without somebody helping him.

Besides the obvious teaching from Obi-Wan and Yoda, the Empire would have toasted the Rebellion if C3PO and R2D2 hadn't escaped to Tatooine, Darth Vader would have turned his ass to grass in the trench run if Han Solo hadn't gone back in and saved him, and he just narrowly made it across the gap while holding Leia while stormtroopers fired at him. Sure, you can probably make the case that all of these coincidences were deus ex machinas for Luke, but The Empire Strikes Back is literally nothing but Luke and the Rebellion getting this for Christmas from the Empire.



Compare this to the prequel Jedi, who despite being complete idiots when the plot called for it also basically had God Mode on, making the Separatists laughably bad enemies in the three battles we saw of the legendary "Clone Wars." This makes it painfully obvious that the Jedi were only killed off by clone troopers they could normally have defeated in three seconds because the plot needed that to happen. (Speaking of which, why did no one ever come up with a blaster that could get past a lightsaber?! Those things are freaking unbeatable in the films.)

If Luke had the powers of the prequel Jedi, he would have blown up the Death Star with his mind, defeated Darth Vader in their first and only duel while twirling unnecessarily, and made one of those ridiculous thousand yard leaps to the Emperor's throne and tossed him into Death Star II's reactor himself.

And don't get me started on everything that George Lucas did to Anakin Skywalker in the prequels or I'll be here all day. But I'll just thank him for ruining the best villain of all time.



OK, nearly ruining him.