The Glade 4.0

Yeah, tons of male Mary Sue's exist. Tons and tons and tons.

Some are so bad that it makes them unreadable/watchable. Elminster was that way for me.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Mary Sue really is more about a character that enters a pre-existing world. Its really only applicable to fan-fiction.

In that sense, Honor Harrington can't be a Mary Sue. She can be an obnoxiously overpowered character and the product of bad writing, but not a Mary Sue.

Mary Sue's tend to break the universe they're in. More powerful, talented, beautiful, smart, funny etc than what the universe has already established as the standouts in the particular universe.

I suppose this is why Tad Williams's novels always appeal to me. The protagonists might have one or two stand-out qualities but for the most part they're just ordinary people caught up in events vastly more powerful than they. There is no unique power that !Xabbu and Renie Sulaweyo have that defeats the Grail Brotherhood. Simon Snowlock has no great power --sure he's at best he's slightly dreamtouched. Tailchaser isn't a better fighter, or stronger, or faster than the other Cats--he's just a Cat who's faithful to their way of life.

Even Harry Potter isn't necessarily more powerful or smarter or quicker than the others. He's just willing to die to save those around him.

But the characters who are good at everything are annoying. The Greeks tended to mitigate this by having each of their characters have a tragic flaw. The one thing that was their undoing. (more often than not, Pride was it) Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus --in the end they're all undone by their flaws. Later on, characters like Dr. Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap) are great examples of characters who are good at 'too many' things (6 PhDs, musical protege, etc)-- but are undone in the end by that tragic flaw. (inability to accept that he's the master of his destiny)

Harry Potter actually comes close. I don't know all the characters you mention that well (specifically, my entire exposure to Conan is one movie, where he's anything but a Marty Stu, and I never watched Rambo), but none of the others fit into the Marty Stu mold. Want some Marty Stu examples? Drizzt comes close. Elminster. Cadderly Bonaduce...see a pattern? There's a reason for this: RPG characters are INTENTIONAL Mary Sue/Marty Stu characters: they represent their creator, who tries to make them as effective as possible, and tends to see them through overly idealized goggles. Give them a bit of system mastery, and they'll have the game mechanics to back up their Mary Sue. Now, gods forbid, they write a story about them...complete with clichéed angsty elements, and...*shudder*

The Mary Sue feels like a fan-fic wishlist of everything the author wants to be (or, in some cases, their idealized person.) It has nothing to do with gender. However, it is most common in fan-fiction, and most fan fiction has female lead characters, because most fanfic writers are female.

Edit: Never read Dune, but Atreides is listed particularly eggregiously on TVTropes - as a God Mode Sue

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

STOP.


LINKING.


ME.



TO.


TVTROPES.






mustescapethelinkclickingchainthatalwaysensues.

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So true.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Since you guys are treading on my turf, I'm going to say this once more. Honor Harrington is not Mary Sue. Honor Harrington is Ariadne. Mary Sue is a female projection of the feminist ideal. Ariadne is a male projection of the feminine ideal. Honor Harrington is absolutely the latter. In case that doesn't make sense to you, remember that Aphrodite spurned and cursed Ariadne because men were fighting over Ariadne instead of her.

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Ariadne the daughter of King Minos? Because she ran off with Theseus while married to Dionysus, and that doesn't really seem like the male projection of the feminine ideal.

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What she did doesn't seem that way, but she was. Her beauty and femininity challenged Aphrodite's which is the bigger part of that tale (and often overlooked).

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Honor may be beautiful, but is she feminine? She seems to be too much yang for that.

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Hence male projection ...

She's not for little girls.

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While Honor is undoubtedly awesome... there's no point in the books where I thought..."Yeah! I want me a piece of THAT!"

I may be a randy bastard... but I'm not suicidal

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Holy shitsnacks!

But if Ariadne is the comparison (and by proxy Aphrodite), there's no yang in either of those. Athena, sure, Artemis, sure, but not Aphrodite.

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David Weber's ideal feminine has yang; his Ariadne has yang because he's a guy. That's basic feminist theory. Removing all masculinity from Honor Harrington would be impossible and detrimental. She's the Lady on a pedestal: forever perfect and never obtainable. If you do have her, you die (death is not necessarily death ... all sorts of deaths that are not death ... just blame the crazy French). That's just kind of how it works.

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I'm still in the "So what?" camp. Trope or no Trope, I still like the setting, story, and all the characters.

In my opinion the books become more than just about Honor (hence the addition of -verse to her name in Buffy fashion). Again, I'm not a lit major; I just know what I like.

However if it put you off, more power to you. /shrug

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I don't know, Khross. The corny clichéed angsty elements, combined with ad-hoc perfection thrown in any time needed ("Hey! Let's make her perfect in a hitherto unmentioned and unrelated field! Complete with token endearing flaw...")

You're treating the Mary Sue as a literary element. She's not. The Mary Sue is, at its core, simply really bad character writing. And HH has that in spades.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, no, no, no, no ... just no. If you have to use feminist theory to support something you're saying, I'm pretty sure that means you don't have a leg to stand on. Further, are we talking about "the" male projection of the feminine ideal, or "a" male projection of the feminine ideal? Because Ariadne, "the" male projection of the feminine ideal, only possesses yang by injection, and Weber can't create his own Ariadne, else Ariadne ceases to have identity. Now, there is an available figure to which we can compare Honor Harrington, and that is Athena. Especially until her first schtupping. Of course, I don't know how anyone can figure Athena was a virgin goddess, she sho' nuff got nekkid for Paris, so I figure Honor is still staying in line with Athena.

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The Parthenon was named after Athena's explicitly virgin aspect.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That is true. Athena Parthenos. AND YET, I don't know many gals that'll just get naked in front of a guy when they haven't taken a dick. Or, you know, aren't right about to. So I'm thinking that's some phenomenal propaganda.

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Generally, with regard to FR at least, the characters actual stats int he game books are almost hilariously bad. They're mostly written without regard to the system.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't know that she's a projection of a feminist ideal, at least not intentionally, because Weber has stated that it was sort of an accident that she ended up female.

She also doesn't endlessly talk down to men,but I guess that depends what kind of feminist you mean.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

True, up to the point that she marries White Haven AND his wife, which sort of breaks the traditional form of that.

Taly, you'd love that part...

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think part of the problem here is that you seem to be looking at it through the lens of TV Tropes. Her angsty elements might be regularly used by Mary Sue/Cliche writers, but they aren't done in a cliche way. For example That, sadly, has been a real-world problem and it's sort of unfair to condemn that particular event happening to a character to permenent Mary Sue indicator status just because it's on TV tropes.

The only things that really fit the trope with her are the sword and gun proficiency and even those are well-explained, just not entirely necessary. Most everything else technically fits the trope individually, but taken as a whole package she's not "angsty" or a Mary Sue.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Honor isn't a virgin past Field of Dishonor.

Prior to that, it's unclear.



That's true usually, but there ARE families that bring their kids up nudist. Also, in Honor's case she lives in a future where such mattes are explicitly not as much of a hangup as in real life. For example in Honor Among Enemies



There's also the fact that Honor's mother is from Beowulf, which is almost comically sexually open. Honor is supposed to be fairly prudish relative to her mom, but that still leaves a hell of a lot of room.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Wait... what. I must have skimmed over/forgotten that.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"