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

[Bat-Meal]

People still seem to forget that Luke and Anakin did the same stuff or more so than Rey. But nobody calls them Mary Sue for that.

Luke is basically a Gary Stu. The difference is we actually got to see him train with Yoda, whereas they got lazy with Rey and just made her absorb Kylo's abilities.

As for the prequel films with Anakin, I prefer to pretend they don't exist.

Regardless, looks like this thread is going to get into one of those debates I really don't want to stick around for. Bye.

[Anarchist]

I see people are still arbitrarily throwing around the term Mary Sue

[MoneySpider]

The sexism is real. We have tons of male driven fiction with competent bad ass heroes male heroes but when they are female they are called “Mary Sue”. A term that doesn’t even make sense in this context because neither Rey nor Michael are “creator representations” in the stories.

Rey and Michael are the protagonists of their stories and should be depicted competently. Is Rey somewhat overpowered, yes but that doesn’t make her any more of a “Mary Sue” than someone like “John Wick” or a host of action movie male characters that mow down everything and everyone in his path. Michael on the other hand is just shown as being brash (something that straight caused her imprisonment), but competent.

Most of the criticism around Michael centers on the fact that 1) she’s female 2)she’s a person of color headlining a major franchise. Two things the alt-right members of fandom (those middle aged guys on youtube that complain about everything female or,minority driven) have a problem with. She’s an intelligent member of the Star Trek series in line with previous protagonists, should she be depicted different because she’s female?

I prefer to see my heroes, whether male or female be competent, sexists be damned.

Agreed. How Michael Burnham is considered a Mary Sue by some online critics while so many of her other online critics are blaming her for stuff (mutiny, creating a war between the Federation and the Klingons, etc. etc.) is beyond me.

If she sneezes, people will claim she's contagious and could make the entire crew sick. Meanwhile, we've got characters like Batgod running around, who can supposedly and apparently take down ANYONE with prep time...because he's Batman. And it's no longer a joke, some people actually believe that and will argue with me about how true it is that he can take down anyone. It's ridiculous.

[lowfyr]

Luke is basically a Gary Stu. The difference is we actually got to see him train with Yoda, whereas they got lazy with Rey and just made her absorb Kylo's abilities.

As for the prequel films with Anakin, I prefer to pretend they don't exist.

Regardless, looks like this thread is going to get into one of those debates I really don't want to stick around for. Bye.

The Point is Luke and Anakin do not get thread after thread or lots of Videos on Youtube "discussing" this.
And the Explanation how they are able to do what they do is simply "The Force". But Luke and Anakin get a pass on this but not Rey....

[Jeremi]

The sexism is real. We have tons of male driven fiction with competent bad ass heroes male heroes but when they are female they are called “Mary Sue”. A term that doesn’t even make sense in this context because neither Rey nor Michael are “creator representations” in the stories.

Rey and Michael are the protagonists of their stories and should be depicted competently. Is Rey somewhat overpowered, yes but that doesn’t make her any more of a “Mary Sue” than someone like “John Wick” or a host of action movie male characters that mow down everything and everyone in his path. Michael on the other hand is just shown as being brash (something that straight caused her imprisonment), but competent.

Most of the criticism around Michael centers on the fact that 1) she’s female 2)she’s a person of color headlining a major franchise. Two things the alt-right members of fandom (those middle aged guys on youtube that complain about everything female or,minority driven) have a problem with. She’s an intelligent member of the Star Trek series in line with previous protagonists, should she be depicted different because she’s female?

I prefer to see my heroes, whether male or female be competent, sexists be damned.

I was going to come in and say this in shorter terms so thank you for saving me the time.

[Killerbee911]

A thread like this is not surprising we still have when Gina Carano "Cara Dune" showed up on Mandalorian some people on the internet having mental breakdown because a woman was as competent as the main character. Some others had another hissy fit when the only villager who could shoot is a woman. It is not surprising every time the power fantasy fiction moves away from the White Male pov and males in general you see complaints like this thread. What makes it especially damming in this case of these character these characters are basic female gender swaps of Luke and Spock, They literally gender swap characters and shuffle around the story. Spock and Luke doing the same type of stuff as Micheal and rey the fans would eat up.

We never see a real discussion of Mary Sue for males, Vin Diesel and Rock can go from dumb jock cop and robbers to super spies in FF and nobody bats an eye. You can point out Luke Skywalker,Kirk, John Wick, John Mclane,Egsy, Superman, James Bond,etc and someone always shows up to say how they aren't Mary Sues because of "blank blank" flimsy reason. The real reason is you don't find those characters to be Mary Sue is because the power fantasy is from your perspective and them be being awesome outweighs any care for logic because that is what power fantasy do. Fiction has power fantasy which has the hero do stupid amazing things that is fun in it, It suddenly does not become not believable when female is one doing it.

[j9ac9k]

I've only seen the first season of "Discovery" (I don't have Access) and I thought it was a bold new tone for "Star Trek." While I enjoy "The Orville," it's an shameless hommage to "TNG" in every single way - like an expensive fan film (hiring a lot of the same people obviously also make it come off as similar) I'd ultimately rather see something that does something new if it can do it well. I was hoping that "Enterprise" was going to chart new territory in that way, but it fell into very familiar storytelling and felt like just another ST show. The continuity stuff is a little hinkey, but I can let that go - there's no reason to be handcuffed by continuity.

But with the Michael hate, I wonder how many people would have reacted differently if she were a captain? Maybe that would have been the seal of approval to say, "Yes, she's kick-ass and better than everyone around her."

[Beaddle]

The sexism is real. We have tons of male driven fiction with competent bad ass heroes male heroes but when they are female they are called “Mary Sue”. A term that doesn’t even make sense in this context because neither Rey nor Michael are “creator representations” in the stories.

Rey and Michael are the protagonists of their stories and should be depicted competently. Is Rey somewhat overpowered, yes but that doesn’t make her any more of a “Mary Sue” than someone like “John Wick” or a host of action movie male characters that mow down everything and everyone in his path. Michael on the other hand is just shown as being brash (something that straight caused her imprisonment), but competent.

Most of the criticism around Michael centers on the fact that 1) she’s female 2)she’s a person of color headlining a major franchise. Two things the alt-right members of fandom (those middle aged guys on youtube that complain about everything female or,minority driven) have a problem with. She’s an intelligent member of the Star Trek series in line with previous protagonists, should she be depicted different because she’s female?

I prefer to see my heroes, whether male or female be competent, sexists be damned.

woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. wait with the sexist stuff. I came with my receipts on why I am not the biggest fan of these two characters. it has nothing to do with alt right. I am not alt right. I am an independent thinker, but I am also a big sci-fi nerd who actually cares about story telling and character development. star trek has had a Mary sue male characters, who is always on every top hated trek list. his name was Wesley Crusher and he is male. infact star trek itself was the series that created the term Mary Sue to highlight the problems of bad story telling and badly done characters. Padme gets as much criticism as Rey in the prequels, and noone says were calling star wars fans sexist.

Additionally I could be female myself and a person of color too. it just happens some of these characters are poorly written and make no sense as I have said in my other posts.
Some of the best central female characters in sci-if come from star trek and star wars. Princess Leia, Ashoka, Beverley Crusher, Sabe, 7 of 9 and Guinan. Guinan may even be the most acclaimed female character in star trek next generation and she was black. She was a fantastic character, she even plays the most important role for arguably the best trek episode of all time. Yesterday's Enterprise.

guinan-star-trek-third-place.jpg

Burnham is no where as interesting, wise or as complex as Guinan because star trek discovery is intellectually inferior to star trek next generation and the characters in discovery are not well written or well developed. Please don't every imply I am alt right or sexist again. I have valid logical reason for not been the the biggest fans of Rey or Michael. star trek and star wars have had better female and POC characters as I have listed.

[Beaddle]

Agreed. How Michael Burnham is considered a Mary Sue by some online critics while so many of her other online critics are blaming her for stuff (mutiny, creating a war between the Federation and the Klingons, etc. etc.) is beyond me.

If she sneezes, people will claim she's contagious and could make the entire crew sick. Meanwhile, we've got characters like Batgod running around, who can supposedly and apparently take down ANYONE with prep time...because he's Batman. And it's no longer a joke, some people actually believe that and will argue with me about how true it is that he can take down anyone. It's ridiculous.

Have you seen season 2? Michael at this point is a supernatural angelic being. she is a Mary sue.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwI7TGKL15s

CBS made a fundamental mistake to make a trek show about a solo character. trek should always be an ensemble. its funny, some of you say I am shitting on Micheal but O'Brien wife from TNG who was a secondary character and is Chinese was still more interesting and got more development than Michael. In Trek's history who did well best against the Borg? two female characters. Janeway from Voayeger and Lt. Commander Shelby from TNG.

Also, some have called batman a Mary sue and have shown anger when he defeats Superman, the difference is batman has had years of good story telling and development. we have seen his flaws and his mistakes. Discovery isn't doing that. I don't think Rise of skywalker would do that either after two week films to set up Rey.

[sunofdarkchild]

Both are very flawed characters.

Michael would be fine if there was simply less focus on her. She is written to have flaws which helped cause a war and get her mentor killed, and her arc is about overcoming that. The focus on her to the detriment of the rest of the cast really hurts the show, however.

Rey as a character needed to be fundamentally rethought from the start. Since she's so good at everything to begin with there's no tension or story. In theory her arc is supposed to be about letting go of the past, but in practice it's nonexistent. It's not a matter of cutting back or telling the story in a different way. There's simply no story to tell in the first place.

And Rey is not like Luke and Anakin. They failed again and again. Both lost their first-ever light-saber duels on screen and lost a limb doing so. Luke spends the entirety of Empire Strikes back failing at what he's doing and getting his butt handed to him. They both grew from failure. Anakin beating Dooku mattered because he had lost to him once before. Luke rescuing Han in Return of the Jedi was a redemption for his failure to do so in Empire.

[MyriVerse]

Michael by 12 parsecs. I still find Rey extremely boring.

[Godzilla2099]

Ugh. There is no sexist stuff. Heroines aren't new. I could make a list, but for the sake of Star Trek and Star Wars:

Kathryn Janeway: Graduated Starfleet Academy. Worked as a Science Officer on a previous ship before being promoted to Captain and assigned to Voyager

Ahsoka Tano: Received Jedi Training at the temple. Yoda assigns Ahsoka to be Anakin's Padawan (apprentice) where she received further training

Janeway's Leadership got her team home. Ahsoka saved the day over and over and even fought Vader to a standstill! Fans had little to no problems with these heroines. Its a very simple formula here. There are reasons for their skills. These ladies made mistakes on their journeys. Nothing forced. It was organic.

I wrote why I don't like Rey. ZERO Reason due to gender. Today, I rarely see people admit to their mistakes and take responsibility. Instead of listen to feedback, its excuses.

[Exciter]

It’s true that the term Mary Sue is thrown around far too much and far too loosely. However, if you look back at the etymology of the term, it originated in Star Trek fan fiction.

Lt. Mary Sue was a hyper-capable young woman, holding an advanced rank for her age. She was inserted into the existing Star Trek canon, where existing characters are shown to be impressed with and respect her. She reveals to Spock that she’s also part Vulcan. She rescues the crew, takes command when needed, and gets medals is the end.

Now mind you I’ve only watched the first season of Discovery, but the parallels there are hard to ignore.


As to the original question, if I have to choose I prefer Rey.

[CliffHanger2]

When ppl bring up poc characters they aren't threatened by to prove they're better than poc chars they are threatened by. "I'm not racist"

[Beaddle]

When ppl bring up poc characters they aren't threatened by to prove they're better than poc chars they are threatened by. "I'm not racist"

This would actually make sense if I did this but I didn't. I already said Guinan, from Star Trek TNG was the best character in the show and she is a black woman.

I also called captain Janeway, a female character and first female to serve as captain on star trek the greatest captain to ever fight the Borg.Ashoka and Leia are the some of the best characters in star wars overall, not just females.

The race or sexist argument only works if there is real evidence to support it. here, there is none.
I really can't believe people are still saying racist or sexist when Lucas himself has said star trek ST is not that good and some star trek actors form the 90s have also criticised discovery for been more about actions and explosions than high fantasy science fiction with deep human themes.