Rey (Star Wars) or Michael Burnham (Star Trek)

[Username taken]

Michael Burnham being called a Mary Sue might be the biggest example of the pervasiveness of sexism in Sci-Fi fandoms. Her first actions in the show lead her to getting her Captain killed, starting a war and then convicted of treason. 90% of male characters don't suffer the same consequences for their similar actions. And on top of that, they spend a whole season allowing her to earn her respect back. If you don't like her as a character, that's fine. Not every character is for everyone, but to say she's a Mary Sue might mean you have to look internally about how you view female characters.

Quoted for truth.

The Burnham one is just something else. The creators of the show went out of their way to show she's terribly flawed. Captain Kirk or Jean Luc Picard she is not. The reason people take issue with her is because they aren't comfortable seeing a black woman in a leading role who isn't a slave, housewife or some sexualised object placed solely in the film for male gaze.

Regarding Rey, like I said earlier, shes overpowered and has been written as near perfect. Still doesn't make her a Mary Sue because she's not a creator insert and shes the protagonist. A level of competence and bad assery is required.

If folks cant make reasonable criticism of Rey without dragging their personal politics into it or centering it around her gender, then said folks are sexist and might want to re-evaluate their value system.

[Killerbee911]

Never watched Star Trek, so I can't really comment on that.

Rey... Force Awakens killed my interest in anything after.

"Rey isn't a Mary Sue! That's sexist!"

Look, it has nothing to do with Rey being female. It has everything to do with her supposedly being on a hero's journey, but not actually needing it. Training in the Force? Nope. Lightsaber training? Nope. Learning from a trained Force user (Jedi OR Sith) to at least jumpstart her own abilities? Nope. Fixing the Falcon better than Han or Chewie?

I can keep going, but I won't. Ahsoka from the animated Clone Wars series is a great character, and from another franchise, Rayla is another great character in the "The Dragon Prince". Those are just for example. Rey, is just an awful character.

It has everything to do with her being female, It is not that your assessment of Rey pulling abilities out of thin air is wrong.But it happens across scifi, fantasy and fiction male characters pull abilities out of their ass and nobody cares except when it is a female character she is a Mary Sue. If Male characters where heavily criticized for doing the same thing then it wouldn't be issue, In same movie Finn (who is a janitor) is shown be good gunner and fighting with a lightsaber without training and being fairly proficient. You can call Rey and Michael bad characters, You can say Discovery and Star War is bad that is fine. The Mary Sue stuff is not needed to criticize it is no crazier than Gang car thieves becoming expert spies or New York cop becoming James Bond in terrorist situations.

There is legit complaints to had about pulling abilities for nowhere but it is hard to do in environment where you see fans complain about Cara Dune who legit had the skills to be what she was in the show. It is hard to separate the people who are being who be honest about a bad narrative or set up and the people who hate females character being strong in the same way males heroes are done. Rey isn't a bad character imo, The writers didn't establish strong enough that Rey is extremely skilled at mechanics or self taught in self defense through survival in harsh environment. That is real complaint and yes that is a real flaw of the movie people should pick on. But this is more writers skipping over training montage to focus more on another area of the story. Which bring us back to male characters this type of skipping happens often and people don't care, Like Finn he is a stormtrooper and people will fill in the narrative of why is skilled enough to these things he clearly shouldn't be good at it. It is not enough that Rey survive on this planet by herself and is force user to explain why she is skilled. It has to explicit shown for a female character while male characters they just get benefit of the doubt without having explicit show everything.

For you it might not be about being female you might be one of people who are legit complaining about things but using Mary Sue is big Red flag that a person more than likely isn't trying to do that.

[WebLurker]

The one from Star Trek, Rey is boring as hell, ridiculous and yes, a Mary Sue.

Hmm.

She's perfect, fails at nothing, knows everything. People comparing Luke to her simply should be laughed out of the room.

See my last post for why that's, at best, inaccurate.

Sure Luke is strong...AFTER YEARS OF TRAINING!!

Didn't happen. He gets one lesson from Ben in ANH and way less then even half a year of training from Yoda. Heck, when Luke leaves Degobah, Yoda says he's not finished with his training. He then shows up in ROTJ having not gone back, become pretty good at Jedi stuff on his own, and then goes back to Yoda to be told that his technical training is finished. That's on par with Rey's track of minimal training and figuring stuff out herself, yet it's okay when he does it, somehow.

In a new hope he's a noob who even needs obi-wan to land that torpedo...

Last I checked, Rey needed to be taught how to tap into the Force and was trying to get Luke to teach her.

...in ESB he's bitch slapped by that snow bear...

Like Rey was with Kylo Ren on Takodana and with Snoke in his throne room. Unlike Luke, though, she wasn't able to save herself from them (she only got free of Kylo when a weak-minded stormtrooper was left in charge of her and Kylo had to kill Snoke). Funny, that.

...and lose a hand to Vader...

Neither here nor there.

...and yes, finally, in the last movie he's starting to get good. (but still falls to the rancor pits and needs to be saved by Vader.

See above.

Yeah, sure, such a Gary Stu lol. Get out of here.

I actually don't think either is a "Mary Sue," but, yeah; double standard in action.