Damn, this vid doin numbers EDIT: WOW! I had no idea how many people would find this video. Just a reminder: this video isn't monetized. So if you want to support me and see more videos like this, please consider visiting my patreon. Would really help a lot: patreon.com/PeriodicPete
Fundamentally, the issue with a Mary Sue is not the character themselves, it's that the story does not contain or challenge them. Superman becomes a Mary Sue if he's put in the Walking Dead universe and spends his time mowing down zombies from above without any moral dilemmas or people to challenge him. Rick Grimes becomes a Mary Sue if he's dropped next to Joy Newsome from Room and just shoots her captor in the forehead. The issue I find with the term is just that it seems to imply that the problem is a quality innate to the character, when it isn't.
Like anything else you can absolutely do it right too. Look at say, Loid Forger from Spy X Family. Good at almost everything, liked by everyone that isn’t his enemy. What makes it work is that 1. He is established as this from the start with a known history as the best spy in the world and 2. He still has to figure out how to act as a parent, which is a main point of the show. You aren’t questioning whether or not he will succeed, but how he will do it and what will go wrong.
@@Thebigem its the same concept. the only reason it started as female is because of the character where the term originates, and the general bias to where you would find characters like this in its early eras of fanfiction written by self insert female authors. the archetype applies to both, and these days its the same.
@@Thebigem There is no fundamental difference between "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu/Stew", the terms are interchangeable and Gary Stu exists only as shorthand for "Male Mary Sue".
It is somewhat a character problem in that this problem tends to arise because the character is a self insert. There's a reason its name comes from a fanfic parody, and that's because this happens most commonly when amateur writers put overpowered self inserts into an existing story that wasn't meant for them. Like what many modern Hollywood writers are doing with various reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of popular franchises.
To say captain America is a Mary sue misses the character entirely. In the mcu he kind of is a tragic hero who always takes the sacrifice even to his own detriment. That’s his flaw.
"always takes the sacrifice even to his own detriment" - that's a mary sue trait lmao. It's in the same category of flaws as "likes his friends too much"
@@KissatenYoba A mary sue isn't JUST a character who has flaws though. There is other criteria needed for a character to fit the bill. A character who doesn't have flaws isn't necessarily a bad character or a Sue
@@KissatenYoba It is a common trait of a mary sue but that is not the sole trait of one. Captain America may barely have flaws but he still has challenges that he overcomes in engaging ways, he's not seriously OP, and the plot doesn't completely revolve around him. There are some times when the MCU gives him conveniences, but it is not consistent enough for him to be a sue
Another thing I’d add is who the Mary Sue is meant to appeal to. In most works of escapism, an overpowered protagonist is usually designed for the enjoyment of the audience. Meanwhile, with Lily’s brand of Mary Sues, especially in her own writing, you can tell she’s the only one having fun. It’s a vehicle for her to give herself power, charisma, and romances she’d never have in real life and to put herself at the center of entire universes where she’s the most important person ever born. That’s what I think separates characters who are simply overpowered from full-blown Mary Sues.
OP characters can be Mary sues, but not all OP characters are Mary sues/gary stus. In fact, a lot of them aren’t, and their Gary Mary-ness comes from the world warping itself for the benefit of said character.
In works containing a Mary Sue, literally *everything* in the plot revolved around the Sue or making her look good. Every character has an opinion on Sue: the likeable characters adore her (including villains) and the hateable characters hate her (including supposed heroes that the author dislikes). Mary Sue always knows what to do or finds a convenient solution or just happens to be the right person for every job.
@@fluffywolfo3663 "masturbatory" is actually a great way to sum up the Mary Sue problem - when it feels like the author is just wanking with a character, rather than caring if the reader has fun
Feel like it’s worth noting: Lily thinks that “Mary Sue = cool character with lots of powers” because that was the prominent belief in chronically online fandom circles, primarily Bronies. She doesn’t have the video up now because she incriminates herself with writing her incest fic in it, but Lily made a video once about how you shouldn’t limit yourself to only writing slice of life stories about characters just going about their day because if you give your pony OC special powers and stakes in a story with canon characters Bronies will label your character a Sue. That, in its fandom vacuum, is good advice. The problem is that Lily doesn’t consume any media on its own. She’s always half-finishing shit and relying on Tumblr users to fill in the gaps on what she didn’t feel like watching. She’s surrounded herself with the same Tumblr fandom mindsets and UA-camr critiques for YEARS, hence why her own mindset on what makes a character a Sue is, ironically, very dated with how progressive she likes to claim she is.
Lily is VERY well known for not understanding writing and writing terms Like in her new SU video she straight up gets "metaphor" and "simile" totally wrong
Can i just add that regardless of sueness or anything else, Lily Orchard demonstrated a complete lack of comphrension of people because using force lightning, an explicitly evil power to kill one of your friends is a valid thing to angst about
Yeah, but you have more power, and the more power you have the more good you feel because now you can abuse people better without them being able to stop you. That's great, and exactly what I think of when I think about heroes.
I think you're missing an element of Elle Woods' "like it's hard?" Line that helps bolster your point. She's not just showing off to impress the guy, and it's not just that it genuinely did take a while lot of work on her part, but also a huge part of the conflict Elle runs into is everybody thinks she's stupid because of her personality, style and interests. She falls very nearly into the "popular pretty girl" stereotype because she put a huge amount of time and effort into style and social engagements, and because that's considered vapid and shallow, people don't take her seriously and assume she's dumb. But part of Elle's point by remaining confident in her abilities and demeanor isn't just because she's not afraid to be herself, but to show people "of course I got into Harvard, just like you did, because I am smart, just like you are". Her confidence in that moment carries within it one of the major hurdles that she has to overcome while at Harvard, and Lily uses it as an example of someone without struggles. Also: how dare you call this a B-movie, you will be hearing from my lawyers. The Cease-and-Desist will be scented.
Ya legally blonde is a well crafted movie that is feminist but not in a man hating aspect but in the vein of just because things are considered feminine does not mean they stupid. Elle woods isn’t a Mary sue because she isn’t presented as perfect but her brilliance comes in she puts the effort she puts into understanding fashion, social situations and other things into law studies. It’s such a great law movie.
31:14 "She just is a child" that's an insult to children. Literal kids could come up with better stories after playing with action figures for a few minutes than Lily ever has and ever could (other than that great video).
I was 12 when I started making OC characters in middle school, and I swear to god I never liked having an absolute perfect original character. Everyone has admitted to making a Mary Sue OC that somehow makes the entirety of the reality of the world they live in bend in their favor, I've never liked that idea even as a kid that everything has to go right all the time and nothing ever goes wrong for them is just super unrealistic and that is was more compelling for something to actually going wrong for them and how they handle that. Again I was a kid and that was my mindset when making my OCs imagine being an adult and enjoying and defending the Mary Sue trope to that degree
Never forget Lilly is the person who wrote a story where the main self insert OC goes around a multiverse Committing genocide and beating the crap out of God, because she is in the right and thinks that Atheism is the one true way
Which is fine to do since its fanfiction and not major works. The issue Lily doesn't understand (or refuses to acknowledge) is that people don't pay tens to hundreds of dollars in theatres to go see someones poorly written self indulgent fanfiction. They want a professional movie made by people who know what they are doing
Excellent video as always, Pete. Glad to be on to soak up the clout you took from me >:) But for real tho, Lily is a prime example of who not to be as a critic. If you're correct on a topic, you shouldn't have to blatantly lie or throw away helpful words/definitions because you feel petty and spiteful. That is childish behavior and she needs to get over herself. If she is ever going to make good content instead of having waves of people who dislike her, she needs to cut the bullshit and tell the truth. Mary Sue's suck. Its bad writing. Bad writing bears no genders, has no race and possesses no sexuality. And she knows this, which is why she had to lie about it. Big shame.
41:26 Lily is evil and that still doesn’t mean Mary Sue isn’t mostly used as a buzzword in a culture war. Two of the very characters you mentioned don’t fit that definition but they were labeled as because of nonsense outside of their stories.
Yeah, like I've said before in some of Kaiser's videos, Orchard's argument all boils down to "you don't like my character because they're X" when the problems are that "these characters don't work because of Y." It is a double standard which has been used by people all over the political spectrum. Maybe less to do with politics and more to do with "how dare you criticize this character I like." Also, something that both Mary Sue/Gary Stu defenders (e.g. Orchard, Cosmonaut Variety Hour) and many critics (e.g. The Critical Drinker) tend to forget is that Mary Sues are merely one type of bad character writing/storytelling. And like I've mentioned before (and which you partially showed when going over Taken), you can still have a non-Mary Sue character be as bad and favored by the plot as a Mary Sue. This has happened with Bayformer's Optimus Prime (easily killing Megatron--who was offering peace in DotM--after losing an arm, threatening and forcing Grimlock and the Dinobots to join him in AoE, willing to mercilessly kill humans post-DotM), Snyder's Superman (destroying most of Metropolis, killing Zod, the Christ-like imagery in MoS and BvS, people praising him to have saved people in BvS when he looks like its a chore, having people mourn him after his asinine death against Doomsday), and yes, the SW prequels' Anakin Skywalker (able to destroy the Trade Federation ship BY ACCIDENT without shown to have used the Force in TPM, killing women and children TWICE after not doing next-to-nothing about his visions and with no context given in AotC and RotS, being excused of killing women and children in AotC where he didn't even feel the effects of the Dark Side, arguing with and being abrasive/disobedient to Obi-Wan in AotC with no resolution or anything showing how he grew into the hero he was in RotS, having Padme say she loves Anakin AFTER he killed women and children in AotC despite nothing showing what she sees in him--and Padme in RotS even saying "Anakin wouldn't do that!" about killing children even though she knows he had done such in the past, etc.). All of these, especially Anakin (who was said in the OT to have been a good man who was seduced by the Dark Side but the prequels don't reflect that), share the same core problems as Mary Sues/Gary Stus: they do not drive the plot, they do not deal with consequences of their actions, said actions are excused by the plot, they act stupid for the sake of the plot, and much, MUCH more. It's not helped that I have literally seen people excuse all of this (even Anakin killing women and children by adding in "context" they pull out of the ether, as well as those same people saying Anakin faced more hardship than Luke--all of which I've seen being applied to Rey and even Kylo Ren). And that's not going into those same people attacking and belittling others' legitimate criticisms (emphasis on the legitimate part). Anyway, sorry for the long paragraphs, but TL;DR: this stuff is nothing new and the same nonsense Orchard used to defend Rey and Carol Danvers have been used for other poorly-told characters.
Until the sequel trilogy I found Anakin to be the only reason to even care about Star Wars, and even after it he remains the best part of it. The original trilogy has literally nothing good going for it. If you're going to analyse bad writing, analyse how Luke has no agency in New Hope, just being carried around by the plot, or how his temptation into the dark side of the Force makes no sense with his motivations and history. He is simply not a compelling character in the way Anakin and Ray are. Star Wars also never had tight writing, which doesn't make it worse as what matters is not the writing itself but how interesting it is and how it speaks to human nature. Everything else is just nerds whining about stuff which never mattered, because things like immersion is something subjective to each member of the audience, and is their concern, not the author's. There is a reason Romans looked down on fiction and only put science to paper. If it's gonna be escapism it should say something about the human condition, otherwise it's just a literal waste of time no matter how well written it is. That being said, it's technically impossible to create art which says nothing, as the interpretation of the message is always up to the audience, no matter what the author intended, you could even say that we create art when we observe the raw material in the form of the original text, and authors always put their worldview into their work subconsciously, so all art is in some way deep, even if that wasn't intended, and in some way political. What am I trying to say with all this? Nothing.
Mary Sues can work in a story that is constructed for them, that's literally what the action genre is, it's a sandbox for actors to say and do cool shit and have everything work out for the hero in the end. Mary Sues become a problem when you want to do literally anything else, they will destroy any story that doesn't explicitly make accommodations for them.
Counterpoint, I think a mary-sue could also work as a gag character. The universe twists in on itself to accommodate them? That’s part of the joke, and we can laugh as the other characters who must abide by the narrative try to adjust.
@@juicebox7372 Some of my writing friends did this once. It was a horror story to the other characters (including the overarching villain), but it was all presented as a comedy to the reader XD the “mary-sue” in question was a one-off character.
To me the issue with Mary Sue is that they trivialize everything the story wants you to believe is important. Dark lord, who has slain dozens of would-be heroes over hundreds of years? Mary Sue beats him in moments. Order of badasses who only accept the best of the best? They try to recruit Mary Sue after knowing her for fifteen minutes. A secret technique that takes masters years to learn? Mary Sue masters it in seconds. Death God, who could potentially have nearly any woman who ever lived? He falls die-hard in love with Mary Sue after a few interactions. Everything loses its status in order to make Mary Sue look good.
Odd connection, but her opinion on Mary Sues might explain her Pokemon Retrospective a little bit and some of the stances she takes. I think she wants to play the games as a Mary Sue, or, more so, she wants her favorite Pokemon to be a Mary Sue. Throughout the "retrospective," she constantly insists upon how overpowered Gardevoir is and even goes so far as to hack it in as her starter, using it in every battle, but anytime she can't just power through a battle, she complains about it being too hard without ever changing her team or her strategy to accomodate; interestingly, she'll also complain about winning battles too easily since it's boring. She wants the type advantages between Pokemon to be HEAVILY reduced from 2x damage when hitting a weakness to 1.25x (less than just hitting with a move of the same type for a 1.5x bonus), and she also doesn't want critical hits to ignore defense bonuses since that invites risk of ruining your setup, and it's my belief she wants these changes so she can stack stat bonuses without any potential for being punished on her glass cannon. It seems she wants every battle to cut it "close" where it looks like she could lose or get KOd on Gardevoir without it being a real possibility. I think @mightyradish9672 put it really well in saying that Mary Sues tend to be boring because they can give about the same answer to every problem without ever exercising ingenuity or accomodating for some kind of weakness of their own, and that's exactly how I think Lily wants to play Pokemon. The character she hated the most throughout the entire 6.5 hour video of hers was N, the rival she lost to so many times she leveled up 7 times, and it was so confusing why she hated him so much until now. The reason she hates him may be as simple as him giving her a challenge that brute forcing with her current setup didn't let her win in one battle or rematch: N consistently disrupted her power fantasy where she can get through every single battle with the exact same pokemon, the exact same strategy, and little to no difficulty, and that's why she spat so much venom towards him, his character, and his story throughout the video. (Note: I'm probably just yapping and making huge leaps, but it's kinda fun to make passing guesses about what her mindset might've been in the making of a video)
Oh my god you are angry in this... ...and for good reason. I mean, how can anyone say the things Lilly says with a straight face? I have a burning passion for storytelling, so much so that i would try to become an author if i had anything resembling a single creative idea in my entire body. I live for the story, i would give my life if that would further the art in a meaningful way. To see somebody misrepresent the fundamentals so brazenly makes my blood boil. So yeah, good video.
31:16 well... she technically is writing some fanfiction about trauma and reconciliation about siblings on the real world... wich it evidentiates this: To her, is either a melodramatic sludge set in the real world, or power fantasy were cool character do cool things.
21:59 - 22:36 the worst part is half the characters you showed during your compilation she hates. like i know she hates most anime even if it fits a lot of her preferences for viewing (ie dungeon meshi), she despises 2b, and her opinion on bell/beauty and the beast is low in general. i think the one character i see in this line up that the would praise is aqua from kingdom hearts because that series is her baby even though she cannot pick up the themes and thinks that the games on the side systems are not relevant to the story.
Well we showed plenty of cartoon characters and movie characters as well. So unless Lily wants to be a massive contrarian (again), she will not questions those parts of her list.
That's news to me. I had no idea that she disliked that many characters and I'm a little skeptical that she's even aware of that many of them. But the ultimate point is that there are tons of competent female characters people like, disproving the notion that fandoms hate female characters because of misogyny.
Ironically I just looked back to her channel and in her description she said she has no consent for her content to be archived in the wayback.......... And also has a terminal illness of "always being right" Yeah I'm not going to go further down that rabbit hole
"Making villains hypercompetent doesn't detract the tension of the story." *Looks at Aizen from Bleach, the Light from Young Justice and Prometheus from Cry for Justice* .... yeaaaaaah I beg to differ.
Aizen the first "Accoding to Keikakau..." times 40k.. I swear just his explaination at the end of soulsociety a full Episode of him retelling it with Context... a great Recap Episode hidden as PURE FLEX.
The simple fact is, no one wants to experience the story of captain plot device who solves literally every problem with no real effort. Those kinda of characters aren't normally fun because they make the story feel contrived. Hell this is why I think reality warping powers would be hard to write, a hero with those powers could easily devolve into a mary sue.
@@KaiserShounen Ok so I watched this video and your video, and I'm still confused about her logic. Her standards for what she likes seem so damn arbitrary. It's like she doesn't like stuff because of a certain set of criteria, but rather she has to apply arbitrary sets of criteria onto things she happens to like for whatever reason. It's backwards justification forced to fit. God damn it I thought my brain was melting listening to Sai's livestreams the other day. I think this just aded to it.
About Shepard in Mass Effect... Shepard isn't a Sue. He/she is a colonist whos home was destroyed/ a street child who want to become famous and rich/ a child whos perents are a high rank military servants. Shepard climebd to the top not becouse of luck, but becouse of determination and hard work. Shepard got to the N7 program becouse had survived in extreme conditions when everyone else died due to skill and determination/ tactical engenuity helped people to win an unwinnable battle against supperior forces/ prioritize mission and ready to get the hands dirty. And right from the start (no matter what past you will chose during a character creation) - your starting mission is fucked up. You lost your teammate. You accidentally destroyed the only proof that galaxy will get fucked up soon. All you have is a fucked up vissions of galactic destruction, dirty politics who playing behind your back and one of the elite special agents who wants to start a Reaper invasion. During the 1st game Shepard struggling to prove to everyone that Saren is a villian, that everyone is in danger and forsed to make heavy moral choices... It doesent matter you play as a renegate or paragon - in both cases Shepard struggles and overcome chalanges 24/7, often failing no matter how hard tries... Anyway... 2nd game is starting with you dying to death! You resurected, but you cant trust to no one, no one trust you and you have to convince a bunch of mistfits to go to the suicidal mission. And if Shepard isn't using engenuity, show compassion to the crew or harden them enough, use every limited resourses to prepare for it - everyone will die. Succesfully survive a suicide mission requieres from shepard meticulusly planning everything and proving to everyone that Shepard trully the best warrior in the galaxy. And making it soetimes is fucking hard and nearley impossible (from a narative perspective, not the game difficulty) And 3d game is an accumulation of every choice Shepard has made. Shepard already an established bad ass warrior who can unite a bunch of mistfits to kill one Reaper. Now he need to unite the galaxy to kill many. But still Shepard suffers the consequences of previous actions. If Shepard wasnt able to save someone in previous games - it can bite in the ass now. In conclussion - Shepard always faces chalanges, that must be owercomed by strength/cunning/engenuity/etc. And that challenges always pushing Shepard to the limit and makes him grow as a person. Player decides only the direction of that growth. (One of the best example - if Shepard is renegade enough, you can force geth and quarian to sease fire by yealing at them and promising to nuke both sides. And they are stoping, becouse everything that renegade Shepard did before proves that this isnt a fucking joke)
Is Jake Sully from avatar a Mary Sue? He's the protagonist, the story bends itself into a pretzel to make his decisions work. Nothing he ever does is wrong, everyone likes him except the antagonists, and everything pretty much works out for him. One could argue that he cannot be a Mary Sue because he is the villain, but I don't think that is correct. Villans can be Mary Sues, it's the antagonists that cannot be Mary Sue.
I like 'In Another World with My Smartphone' and harem anime/manga in general because while the main protagonist 9/10 is just a boring, paint-by-numbers self insert that stray's into Gary Stu territory the side characters and the members of the harem usually are very unique, interesting and personable.
41:57 okay can we just pay attention to this wack part? Like yeah capitalism did delude feminism by making it be "women should be allowed wear the boot that crushes poor people"
38:08 everyone giving a personal interpretation of what the term means putting different characters in and out the box based it. It’s not a term useful for general discussion. Only used in video essays under a single individuals interpretation at the time.
7:31 I mean it's just a shit example either way he had to earn everything. As a slave he was forced to fix up droids and technology he made C3PO with a skill he was forced to learn to survive. This also aloud him to understand how a pod racer works and little Ani has watched the race before he knew the track of course he was good at it. Later in the naboo Starfighter am a burst the bubble most of that flying was R2-D2 and the force he didn't know shit all he knew was "spinning is a good trick". After that it was nothing but training up until he was 19 when the WAR STARTED. He earned his right to be powerful and skilled in the few things he enjoyed. Not to mention he's a flawed character like hello order 66 much Anakin/Darth Vader is the most ANTI MARY SUE character you could say lol.
Villains can absolutely be Mary Sues. If the story spends too much time wanking a villain and can't commit to giving them a solid weakness, their defeat will likely look anticlimactic or forced. Because the author cared about creating their cool badass donut steel OC more than about creating an antagonist for their protagonist. Think Broly or pretty much any DBZ movie villain.
@@KaiserShounen I can name a bunch of villains where the creators got carried away with making them powerful to the point where they were pretty much unbeatable without an asspull or an anticlimax. - the main villain of Danganronpa (you probably know who they are, but not saying it explicitly just in case; if you know anything about Danganronpa you know how ridiculously hypercompetent the main villain is to the point where most main characters have no chance of ever matching their intellect) - Esdeath from Akame Ga Kill (probably has more abilities than every other character in the series, repeatedly wins every fight she's in over and over again until the very last episode, then anticlimactically beaten by a single strike from a character she has barely interacted with) - Neo from RWBY (extremely overpowered despite being a minor villain, defeats every protagonist she fights easily, doesn't actually get defeated, straight up gets what she wants and just chooses to walk away afterward, never held accountable for any of her crimes) - Sensui from YYH (this one is probably controversial since people like his arc, and while he's an interesting character and probably the best-written out of the bunch here, you gotta admit he has way too many gimmicks and abilities to the point where he has to be beaten by the biggest asspull in the series; also never really proven wrong about his beliefs) - The Batman Who Laughs from DC Comics (much like with Danganronpa, if you know anything about this character, it's likely the unholy amounts of wank he got and how hard he was forced down everybody's throat for a while as the biggest threat ever) These are just a few examples, but it definitely can happen. While it's good to make villains, especially main villains, an overpowering formidable force for the heroes to overcome, I think it's preferable if they have at least some small weakness that naturally leads to their defeat instead of effortlessly dominating everyone around them until the last 5 minutes of the story where they just stop doing that because of plot.
@@olserknam Don't care for dangonronpa. I wouldn't be surprised if Esdeath was a Sue, Neo I'm somewhat mixed on, need to rewatch YYH and don't care for comics. The point of that part of the video wasn't that villains CAN'T be Sues, but that given their general positions in the story it is less likely to happen compared to the frequency of protagonist Sues. And either way, the millisecond you say that Darth Vader of all people is a Mary Sue, you have officially lost the plot. He may have Sue moments and bad characterization, but a Sue? Absolutely not.
@@KaiserShounen Another point to bring up in that a villain/antagonist is meant to be an obstacle/foil/parallel to the protagonist. Raoh to Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star), Long John Silver to Jim Hawkins (Treasure Island), etc. Darth Vader is very much that to Luke Skywalker (and specifically talking about the OT because the prequels are just character assassination for Vader). An antagonist can start out as an underdog or be on equal footing as the protagonist (e.g. Red Hood to Batman in "Batman: Under the Red Hood," Dio to Jonathan Joestar in "Jojo"), but they are SUPPOSED to possess something the protagonist may lack or be better in at least one certain aspect, e.g. secret information, general intelligence or physical strength, magical powers, etc.
Good videos I do think that if you changed your definitions of marie sue to hers you would agree with her. Except that last part that last section is stupid af
You know if Lily’s only metric on a Mary Sue is if they’re cool or not then that must mean that she thinks Dante is a Mary Sue and I believe if this was the medieval ages it would warrant immediate execution Also Lily don’t put Bury the Light over Rey not only is it really unfitting for the scene Rey doesn’t deserve Bury the Light only Vergil is deserving of Bury the Light
I think that calling game protagonists (that you control, make decisions for and etc) a Mary Sue is kinda the point? Like ofc they are the protagonist, we play this game to feel important and be a hero so developers want to make it fun for the players. Its the kind of the game you play to be a absolute unit of a human and have fun while still going through hardships, thats the point of the game. Though ofc you can make bad decisions if you want.
46:15 I thought you agreed it was story issue not a character issue definition now you are saying that it’s a character issue harming the story. You never actually gave a proper reason why captain marvel or Rey fit that mold.
You should talk about MauLer next? Always loved his videos and EFAP stream but I’m willing to see criticism since there is a lot to go through with the guy and the people he hangs out with (Always though Rags is nowhere near as bad as said other folks!)
Also, your definition of a Mary Sue is agreeable but pretty vague because people can mean a thousand different things by "affects the story in a negative way" and a bunch of things by "favored". If I'm a fan of Griffith from Berserk I could say "Griffith did nothing wrong and the story is affected negatively by not acknowledging this and instead favoring Guts as the morally superior character, therefore Guts is a Mary Sue". That would be nonsense, but that WOULD technically align with the vague definition you gave. UpD: "they're not a Mary Sue if they achieve things through their personal skill" is a pretty poor criterion since that implies skilled characters can't be Mary Sues.
How is that vague? All you would need to do is prove how the story is negatively affected by the character being a Sue. There's a clear criteria there and all you need to do is give evidence. We never said that Mary Sue's have to be skilled either. All we said was that the characters skill and competence can't mess up the stakes or breaks consistency of the story. Using your example, if you wanna say "Guts is a Mary Sue because Griffith did nothing wrong"... I mean that just goes way beyond talking about media and delving into morals and ethics. But even then all I would do is just show why what he did WAS wrong within the logic of the story.
@@KaiserShounen "Negatively affects" is very vague phrasing. If one wanted to really stretch it, they could technicaly apply this to any character they disliked for any reason and call them a Mary Sue, even if those reasons have nothing to do with what is traditionally thought of as a Mary Sue. Mary Sue is usually a criticism of how the story is constructed in the first place, not just its internal logic. Thus, theoretically, one could dismiss any evidence of Grifftih being wrong in the story as "Miura favoring his Mary Sue protagonist and framing him to be in the right".
@@olserknam Not really. You're ignoring that there is other criteria for a character to be a mary sue. Being hypercompetent to the point of negatively affecting the story is just ONE of those things. People try to put characters into a category all the time.. and there's nothing wrong with that. The point of discussion is figuring out whether or not the characters fit the mold. Sure any jackass can say X character is a Sue, but do they have the right evidence? Does it have any counters? Do they fit the criteria? Thats where we can find actual answers. Which is our whole point, whereas Lily wants to do away with any kind of discussion whatsoever. Also if someone would just say that "Oh miura is just favoring their protagonist", you do realize that would involve... not engaging with the story as it is written right??
@@KaiserShounen Yes, that would involve not engaging with the context of the story. That's my point. The broad definition given in the video can naturally lead to rejecting the story as it is written. It comes from a meta standpoint of suspecting the creators have favored characters, which compromises the story, therefore the story doesn't deserve to be considered on its own terms. Periodic does this in the very video when talking about Captain Marvel and criticizing the scene of her killing hordes of Kree soldiers despite not all of them potentially being evil. The story as it is written doesn't imply any of these nameless mooks might be good and isn't concerned with the potential moral dillema at all. So the criticism is essentially that the story only has the morality it does to favor the Mary Sue main character and that it should stop being about what it is and focus on this moral dillema instead, because that's what the critic would personally prefer to see. Going by similar logic, one could argue that Berserk only has the morality it does to favor the Mary Sue main character and that it would be better if it focused on a completely different morality favoring the villain instead, because that's what the critic would personally prefer to see. A take like this doesn't contradict the definition given in the video and in some way naturally stems from it.
@@olserknam I won't argue the Captain Marvel point since Pete is more familiar with that than I am. However, our definition doesn't give credence to such a mindset. It would be like saying the definition of a "Poorly written character" is too broad because anyone can say that a character is poorly made just because they feel like it. But we still use it because the problem isn't the definition but the way that it is used. By that same token, the Berserk example, sure they are able to have that take but would they have proper evidence for it? Likely not. There are multiple ways that Mary Sue's negatively effect stories, same with most other bad tropes. When people say things like "it harms the story" or "affects the story in negative ways", most people are talking about breaking the stakes the story established, disregarding established continuity, neglecting/devaluing character motivations, and the numerous other ways that a story can be bad because of certain elements that are literally too many to count. The definition isn't simply broad, its contextual. Which is the point. If you can prove that a character is a mary sue because the story consistently overly favors a character to the point of making the story worse, its your job to prove it. You mentioned in a different post that Sensui for example is a villain Mary Sue. I would like for you to explain that to me.
25:25 a characters personality is a part of their character. You wanted Lily to call her a robot earlier. Now when that is refuted you just say those scenes don’t count. You are doing Lily tier media analysis.
The term Mary sue just can’t be taken seriously. Both captain marvel and Ray struggle to accomplish their goals but they call Mary sues because they are strong. It’s too late for the term to gain any useful meaning.
token struggle is not struggle. Character has to struggle through something actually important to them, instead they just get pointless character development done to them for the sole purpose of that later struggle. Ray had one moment of actual character development and struggle - that one time she blew up the ship she thought a wookie is on - and then authors just undid it immediately
@@KissatenYoba what is “token struggle”? You are just calling character development point less. So you are denying a moment of struggle because you believe the writers undid it. You aren’t giving me anything to work here. You are going to have to actually explain specifically what issues you believe there may be.
@@onesmart229 token struggle is a token struggle. There's a plot, and it needs character development in it, and that means checkmarking a struggle session
I agree, it's a useless term to save. But, I think most "critique" doesn't really matter as much as people try to make it out to be. Mostly, it comes down to subjectivity that is well hidden with objective metrics. Like how a game is critiqued for being buggy and how that's the worst thing in the world until you release Baldurs Gate 3 and suddenly nobody cares that your game has unique and weird ass stability issues.
Come to think of it, if Darth Vader truly was a Mary Sue, then Darth Vader wouldn’t exist, not even as a character. If everything went perfectly for Anakin, if he never had real flaws, moral conflit, and never lost fights like how Rey does, if his life wasn’t always bad, I don’t think he COULD become Darth Vader, because Vader is the result of all those existing conflicts for Ankain that became his downfall. Anakin wouldn’t even be in a cyborgs suit if he was a mary sue.
Born a slave, gets kidnapped by a cult of monks to become a slave again, has intense anger issues, same monks go against his ideals of love and passion and essentially gets betrayed in his eyes, joins the Dark Side, commits William Afton, gets all his limbs cut off, be in constant torment and pain, sacrifices himself. Apparently "Mary Sue" enough.
@@anotherrandomguy8871 I don't really watch star wars but isn't Anakin's anger and hatred a lot of the reason he becomes Vader? (Or at least what makes Anakin and Obi-Wan fight?)
With the way Lily seems to go after action heroes, I’d probably blame it on the fact that she seems to hate high-stakes action stories, and believes that low-stakes coffee shop comedies are always superior. Never mind the fact that the thing that makes a good story is quality and not genre…
I think Lily's problem is that the concept of the supposed Mary Sue is exactly what she wants in stories. She wants safe, easily digestable content with no real conflicts that won't challenge either the protagonist or the viewer. And because she believes that her opinion is superior to others she thinks that that is what others should want as well.
I honestly can't tell how many of her examples of good "Mary Sues" are from films she actually bothered to watch, let alone likes. So the fact that she points to characters who do have real conflicts in their journey just makes it all the more confusing.
@@periodicpete Somehow I think her saying Hamtaro as her only No. 1 anime of all time (No disrespect to Hamtaro by the by) as well as her "writing tips" also says more about her media tastes and media literacy understanding. And quick question, if a story has no conflict or challenges and the character CAN'T be flawed and do cool things or be challenged by said story, then why stick around?
I think the issue is these people miss that sometimes the competence IS the premise. Light is not a mary sue despite all his luck and victories simply because the entire premise of the show is "what happens when the smartest person in the room gets the ability to play god". The competence is not only expected but almost mandatory here.
Also note. Light doesn't have it easy. He does have challenges and he does have his flaws. The most obvious being his arrogance. Believe it or not, his rivalry with L kept him steady because he knew that one slip up would mean execution. This was especially shown when L baited him into revealing his general location. Once L was gone, Light's own ego grew. Now, I have my issues with Near, but honestly it's safe to say his God complex finally collapsed on him
The competence is definitely warranted, but he also faces a number of challenges as well. Most notably Misa, who becomes a big liability that allows L to close in on him. He admits she's a liability too, but can't kill her because Ren will kill him if he does. But you're not wrong that there are a number of stories, such as One Punch Man, where the character's victories aren't the focus of the story (or they're not the victories you're rooting for them to accomplish)
It’s made clear in episode 2 that Light isn’t nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is. Light only beat L because he was the only one who knew the rules of the “game” and rigged it in his own favor. Hence why Light loses in the end against Near, Bear figures out the “Rules” of the Death Note and Light soundly loses because of that. Light isn’t a Mary Sue, he just had a LOT of plot armor.
Heres my take on this situation: sometimes you want to see Batman struggle against the odds, and sometimes you want to see Superman power through everything. Both are enjoyable for different reasons.
Also, if she (should I even refer to them with their preferred pronouns when they’re also transphobic? Seems a bit unfair) doesn’t like something, it’s a good mark that whatever they dislike is actually good.
@@ma.2089I would say to refer to Lily correctly considering you wouldn’t misgender a cis person if you didn’t like them, like I hate Lily but misgendering anyone harms the trans community as a whole imo
Honestly, so many of Lily's videos are just because people in fandom are 'mean' to her. Her most recent video is about writing of sibling relationships because people were criticizing her stories about siblings, saying that they have unhealthy relationships that are emotionally incestuous. It's why she brings up her own works in her videos so often. The video is not coming for a genuine place, it's coming from a place of 'people critiqued my works and I'm going to write a whole video essay to show them not only that I'm right, but that they're part of a systematic problem!'. It's not helped by her holier-than-thou attitude and complete dismissal of anyone bringing up legitimate critiques. Many of her problems are problems she has with fandom, not the works themselves, and boy does it show in her essays.
That's something I've heard before, that all of the examples used are from her own writing, because she thinks her work is the perfect example for everything. I won't act like I don't like bringing my own writing up, I'm doing it right now, but I also try to make comparisons to things that people actually know. I don't know what her sibling video is really about, but as someone with 11 of them, it's something I play with in my writing. And I try to be critical of my own work, maybe even to my detriment, and I pay attention to every comment, even if they don't sound like they come from a stable mind. When someone has a bad reaction, even if they can't explain why, you can look back at your work and try to understand what was wrong. Sometimes, nothing is wrong at all, they just didn't like it, but sometimes there is a flaw you missed.
Plus, she does a LOT of projecting in these videos. She blames everything on everyone else except her, when no one except her has done anything wrong. Not to mention, her twisted views of the world and inherent narcissism make it hard for her to see the actual bigger picture.
It's not even if you're mean to her, it's even, if you do something to pass her off, which is a Russian roulette of solving it! She literally likes Spy x Family, and calls Buddy Daddies a cash grab knock off and then some people recommended her Dungeon Meshi because it's some of the things she likes in shows, but since they dared recommend her a show that has her favorite things because she asked, she spoils the Manga and does a whole video on why Dungeon Meshi sucks without even talking some of the characters. She doesn't watch the media she critiques and just searches up spoilers and stuff.
Especially since, whether playing Paragon or Renegade, Shepard's actions have consequences that are always thrown in their face in one way or another and the only point where they consistently take a lot of wins diplomatically, is when there is an active invasion of ancient, eldritch organic-based-machines currently forcing every species to contend with extinction.
the term "fandom racists" has some serious tomy talarico "gaming racists" vibes. it's so stupid it almost distracted me from her following statement about how theorising about rae's parents was somehow "missing the point" even though rae's parents (at least until the palpatine bullshit) was meant to be a subversion, and a subversion doesn't work if we aren't interested in who her parents are, meaning that theorising about them is the point. forget not knowing what a mary sue is, i don't think she knows what story telling is (like actually, this isn't even just a joke i'm making, i'm genuinely starting to suspect this after everything i've ever seen her say)
Yeah… Lily lacks in higher critical thinking and habitually tries to put things into “black or white.” It’s why she hates Steven Universe and repeatedly called Rebecca Sugar a Nazi (not kidding), why she hates Redemption Arcs, and is unable to take _Hazben Hotel_ at face value. (She legitimately things Charlie Morningstar, the _daughter of Lucifer Morningstar,_ is the “self proclaimed” Princess of Hell.)
"Hello every hero's journey character ever" did she just insinuate that simon from gurren lagann is a mary sue? This isn't say that they're saying he specifically is, that's just to prove the point that her argument is inherently flawed and is saying those things just to make people she disagrees with sound hypocritical. But if she thinks for over a second that my boy simon is anything but one of the best anime characters of all time she's gonna have some explaining to do
I will say that villans can be given immense ammounts of plot armor that does detract from the experience. Not nessesaraly a Mary Sue, but plot progression so baffling that you start to wonder if the writers are just trying to pad out the run time. Cant think of any examples off the top of my head, but the kind of encounter where either the vilan breaks the laws of the story and/or their character, or the protagonist makes a braindead decision and the villan ends up getting away because of it.
“or the protagonist makes a braindead decision and the villan ends up getting away because of it.” Blake and the Faunus militia letting Adam escape at the end of RWBY vol 5 comes to mind.
I can definitely agree. You can see this with Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy, who says about "feeling the pull to the light" in TFA despite himself ordering innocent people to be killed, killing his own father, and goes on to kidnap and interrogate Rey. Not helped where Rey (for some reason) listens to Kylo Ren in TLJ, including the dumb and hypocritical "let the past die, kill it if you have to."
I do agree that this is possible. Madara Uchiha (Naruto), Aizen (Bleach), All For One (My hero academia) are examples that come to mind of villains that are pumped full of so much Plot Armor that it harms the stakes of the story. Because some conveniences have to happen in order to beat them instead of the characters finding a way to stop them themselves or seeking some other means actively.
43:02 did. Did Lily Orchard ACTUALLY just imply Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is only called a Mary Sue because she has a ridiculous name? Like is that what she's implying or am I just severely misreading this moment? Because if she is, she doesn't know ANYTHING about My Immortal oh my FUCKING god- wether she's a parody or not(which this is even worse if she IS a parody), Ebony Dark'ness is the fucking TEXT BOOK DEFINITION of a Mary Sue in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE- Lily wouldn't be referencing her if she didn't KNOW THIS because that is what Ebony is FAMOUS FOR- does Lily genuinely think she isn't a Mary Sue!?!?!?!?!?! Hello!?!?!?!?!?!?
Lily doesn't care what you think or what point you're trying to make. I know this because, after her infamous first Dungeon Meshi video where she made her distasteful take on Laios by offending any autistic people who lack social cues, instead of taking responsibility for it, in her second Dungeon Meshi video, she made more ways to bash Laios with more misinformation about his character and use Bojack Horseman of all shows in comparison that has nothing to do with the premise of Dungeon Meshi and didn’t even apologize to those who have symptoms for the autism spectrum by saying she hasn’t met anyone someone like Laios. (Sai has the first video in her Reacting to Lily Orchard's Dungeon Meshi Videos live streaming if you're curious.) To me, I think Lily is a lost cause because nothing will faze her, she will never change her ways even if we keep calling her out, and she will find more ways to blame people to excuse herself.
I, personally have trouble believing that she knows autistic people that aren't either women, or children. And women tend to have the more off putting autism traits more discouraged than men do. And Children aren't adults so their autism wouldn't look like Laios's autism. Combined with her "Never Wrong Attitude" and I think she would assume any autistic person she met that WAS like Laios was just a maladjusted shut in or a creep. Doesn't matter how they actually act/say. She praises Fallon when Fallon is just Laios with magical aptitude and female autism. They are so similar and show how autism affects men and women differently. Also, Lily just has a bias against any male character that isn't an asshole played for comedy. Which Laios isn't an asshole, so she hates him.
@@twistedmyth5860 I refuse to watch her video mostly cuz I heard (like most dunmeshi fans) spoils the story and ending. In a way they’re saying “I don’t like the series, so now YOU cant be allowed to enjoy it blind either!”. But I find it horrible Falin is the “good” autism. The girl has just a bit more social awareness, simply cuz girls like her are forced from a younger age to conform cus of their gender. Falin is only “good” cuz she’s not allowed to do much. Ppl overlook her suffering and difficulties so much. Heck, The girl who was made to suffer so deeply, so of COURSE it would probably be “good” cuz just like Lily things Laios should be treated badly for their autism, Falin is already experiencing “recompense”.
@@ma.2089 I know, it was such shit of Lily to spoil shit. Just because she is fine with spoilers (I am too) doesn't mean that she should spoil others. (Seriously I avoid telling people who want to watch a thing spoilers for a reason.) Also, YEAH. I hate when people take away that Fallin has the "Good Autism" when she just has "Raised woman while Autistic". Lily truly has some incredibly shit takes and her praising Sheldon Cooper, while demonizing Laios is fucking disgusting imo.
Honestly as a person on the Autism spectrum the way Lily sees Laios makes me feel really angry, and the fact that she apparently considers SHELDON COOPER FROM THE BIG BANG THEORY better autism rep than Laios really says a lot about Lily’s, less than friendly view of us autistic folks. Sometimes I remember the fact that she lives in Canada, AKA the same country I live in, and that genuinely scares me I do not wanna meet that woman IRL she seems like a morally-bankrupt lunatic I feel like she’d do something really bad to me and my loved ones FSR.
43:20 45:28 You guys are actually right on the money, just not on the right fanfiction. It's highly likely it was made in regards to her OC in her Star Wars sequel trilogy rewrite where she gives Ray a black "woke socialist sith lord" girlfriend that's she's gotten much more backlash over in regards to being called a Mary Sue. That's probably also her reasoning for what she put in 31:21 in regards to black women I actually highly recommend Manufatura's video "analyzing Lily Orchards morality compass" in which she analyzes two videos that Lily made for the same reason she made this one on Mary Sue's: to defend her OC from people criticizing it.
17:07 I think it's also worth noting that when Elle does "Swagger" it's fashion related. like her dramatic success was because she re-heard the witness testimony and realized it made no sense because they were Permed and had permed their hair for years
1. 21:59-22:36 Let's add Nico Robin, and Yamato from One Piece, Bijinder from Kikaider 01, Android 18 from Dragonball, any of the female rangers in power rangers/super sentai, Arcee, Windblade, and Elita one from transformers, and Pike, Vex, and Keyleth from legend of Vox Machina to the list of cool female characters that people like. 2. The fact that Lily thinks that Luke is a poorly written character while praising Rey goes to show that Lily was never really a fan of Star Wars. 3. 34:58 Lily really really really hates Eastern animation, did you hear what she said about studio Trigger?
I'd say it's a lack of questions posed to the character, or rather, lack of options to answer. If they're super powerful with no weaknesses every conflict they come across will have the exact same answer. But if they have a weakness, and the story focuses on it enough that failure is a possibility chances are the character needs a bit of ingenuity. Whether asking for friends help, planning in advance, or spur of the moment improvisation, it's always more interesting to wonder "how they'll pull it off" If the character can get everything they want with minimal conflict, then thats bad, because almost all stories are is conflict. So theres no real story, often as a result.
I think this is the first new perspective on the topic that really fascinates me in the past few years. I'll definitely consider this if I ever make another video on the trope in the future.
In regards to the drama, she's openly had a kink for the stuff she's being accused of, going as far as making her own self ship comic about it, so I think its safe to say its all true
22:46 of course the video was made out of spite, that's lily's motivation to do anything She made a pokemon "retrospective" where she played through each gen until she beat the elite 4, in which she refused to engage with any optional content and skipped through the plot only to then complain about how dumb the evil team's motivations are And how annoying it is to get stopped by other characters who talk to you (for example she completely ignores and dismisses anything N says to you in pokemon black and then calls him a creep for trying to talk to her gardevoir which she hacked in) Some fan recommended her to watch dungeon meshi after she said she liked spy x family and because of that she made a critique on it talking about how annoying all the characters in dungeon meshi are and complaining that the characters aren't taking their main objective seriously enough while showing footage of them talking about how uneasy they are that they can't go any faster, as well as talking about laios' main character flaw as if it was his only character trait and and generally taking things way out of context to make him look bad and when she got called out for being disingenous she remade the video to include spoilers of the manga
That's such a shitty way to behave, especially when talking about content that's been recommended by your own fanbase. And yet, I'm not surprised in the least XD
Iirc she only talked about Laios and Marcille as characters and only made a reference to Chilchuck and Senshi(and Izutsumi but she shows up later so I could see why she was ommitted) with a passing comment acknowledging their existence, but not mentioning them further(I think her "dunking on" Studio Trigger was more of the runtime). Which is kind of sad because I was half expecting her to have some kind of segment about how Shuro is basically Kylo Ren or even whilst watching the video that Shuro was right for being the only one actually calling out Laios' bad behavior, but no most of the video is just Laios and it's bland as a critique of the series
I swear there's more videos on youtube bashing Lilly's takes than there are videos she's actually made either she's doing something really wrong or she's a just an easy target for people. I'm not quite sure yet.
I think a more accurate definition of the trope (more of an archetype at this point) is a character who is not subject to the laws of cause and effect established either by the text of the real world. That is to say, there is a dissonance between the effort the character must use, and the effectiveness of the desired result. A couple days training gives them more power than the masters of the art. Actions which are supposedly character flaws do not actually impede their progress towards their goal, but often further it. Being a jerk, an idiot, or a fraud, do not deter other characters from adoring and praising them. Some Mary Sues may possess one of these traits and not others, multiple, or even all - the one thing unifying them is that dissonance between cause and effect. Rey, for instance, is a Mary Sue. Within a couple minutes/hours she accomplishes a Jedi mind trick, a technique even masters of the art struggled with. In the span of a few days, she was able to pull a lightsaber to her hand, in contest with a trained force-user - something Luke struggled with after 3 years of training and no other force-user fighting him for it. Perhaps a few weeks later, she is able to lift a number of rocks which are likely greater in weight than the X-Wing Luke would fail to lift. And then, after finally getting substancial time to train, she literally achieves an ability so rare and difficult to accomplish that the seeking of it literally drove the plot of Episode 3. But I disagree with defining the trope as inherently bad or detracting from the text. While dissonance can detract from a text, it is dissonance which drives them. The reveal that Darth Vader was Luke's father, for instance, would not be a twist at all, if there were not such a distance between the described heroism of Anakin and the evident villany of Vader. The archetype of the Mary Sue has been used to great effect. Take American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is a Mary Sue. He openly discusses his lust for violence and murder; he is openly seen carrying blood-soaked sheets and bodies in bags; he is a terrible liar, who by all means should have been caught by the detective; and he literally got into a shootout with the cops during a killing spree. And yet, the film ends, and Patrick Bateman remains free. This works, however, where Rey does not. Because American Psycho is ABOUT this dissonance. It is about the power of the wealthy, how untouchable they are, how tyrannical they may be and suffer no consequence. It is also about the instablity of the psyche, and we frequently question whether or not certain events even happened. Rey does not pull off the trope, because the films have literally nothing to say about it. The dissonance between her actions and their consequences is a result of Disney's strict 'guidelines' of how a "strong female protagonist" must look. They are scared of having her grow stronger over the text, because she must therefore begin weak. They are scared of having her decisions inadvertantly harm people, because then she is made to look like a fool. They must at all costs avoid alienating the female audience member - but in doing so, they infantilize her. However, It is evident in real life that plenty of women have outstanding potential and are continuously held down by patriarchy. It is therefore no wonder why even facile attempts at 'strong female protagonists' resonate with women who have had their potential squashed out of them. The narrative of a woman's discovery of her own existing potential is a powerful one - I only hope that it is told through better means in the future.
There are also 2 other Points in Batemans favour. First is that American Psycho is a horror comedy. Its meant to be darkly humorous how he is able to get away with the things he does. Second is that alot of things happening in the Movie/Book may be just be Batemans Imagination, therefor he is only getting unpunished since he never did anything at all and is just a sad angry man.
27:40 so this was kinda your entire point, but this does emphasize that I guess Lilly’s idea of character might just come down to if the character is a badass that destroys everything, because I don’t see how Rey not killing Ren means that the series took away her character. If anything, Rey never had much character, they didn’t take away from it in this movie. Hell in this movie they tried to actually give her a semi backstory that was honestly forgettable, not take away character, it’s just that she never had much of one and abandoned her conflict.
Half the time things like the stakes not rising or something isn't even a good criticism because it isn't necessarily Doesn't matter if we know ___ will be saved, the point is to see the process and characters
To be honest, Lara Croft IS kind of a Mary Sue, at least in the original games. She's an aspirational figure - wealthy, educated, athletic, confident, sarcastic, with an impossibly great figure and a cut-glass accent - capable of taking down a T-Rex, whose only weakness is falling from high places or into spikes. A Mary Sue I never see discussed, though, is Sam LaRusso from Cobra Kai. The show frames her as this manic pixie dream girl-next-door, carefully framing every scene she's in so she is shown to be righteous and sensible, when most of the time, she is the instigator, and her main quality is her ability to manipulate men into doing what she wants by shedding crocodile tears and acting the victim. Samantha's only failure in what are now five seasons is losing the Girls' bracket of the All-Valley Karate Championships (and Robby before that, even though she immediately rebounds by getting back together with Miguel) to Tori. Other than that, she is framed as being perfect in every way, even though it is glaringly obvious that she is anything but.
Character traits don't factor much into Sueness if the setting or universe doesn't bend over or excessively focus on the character in relation to those traits. While Lara is athletic, that athleticism is required for regular gameplay and the player being good enough to match the athletic challenges if anything prevents her from being a Mary Sue. Her wealth and education exist only to facilitate her adventures, not to magically decide how the plot goes without resistance. Her physical attractiveness is more of an audience thing than it is an element the plotlines overbearingly build themselves around. She's not kind of a Mary Sue, she's simply not one at all.
I’ve seen more complaints about Barbie herself being a Mary Sue (which I disagree with personally ) but not a lot about Ken. Wasn’t he like technically an antagonist (not that he’s evil, but that he opposed Barbie as the protagonist)?
Damn, this vid doin numbers
EDIT:
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Ngl Lilly dose that to everything except her own videos lol😂
Can you please make that Strong Female Character Mo Tage a separate video.
@@feralwarden4873 Done!
ua-cam.com/users/shortscsJhPwnggyQ
On everybody.... On everybody.... like, mentally.....
@@periodicpete Thank You! I'm gonna go put it on. Repeat until I hate it now.
Fundamentally, the issue with a Mary Sue is not the character themselves, it's that the story does not contain or challenge them. Superman becomes a Mary Sue if he's put in the Walking Dead universe and spends his time mowing down zombies from above without any moral dilemmas or people to challenge him. Rick Grimes becomes a Mary Sue if he's dropped next to Joy Newsome from Room and just shoots her captor in the forehead. The issue I find with the term is just that it seems to imply that the problem is a quality innate to the character, when it isn't.
Like anything else you can absolutely do it right too. Look at say, Loid Forger from Spy X Family. Good at almost everything, liked by everyone that isn’t his enemy. What makes it work is that 1. He is established as this from the start with a known history as the best spy in the world and 2. He still has to figure out how to act as a parent, which is a main point of the show. You aren’t questioning whether or not he will succeed, but how he will do it and what will go wrong.
You mentioned 2 Garry Stews, Not Mary Sues
@@Thebigem its the same concept. the only reason it started as female is because of the character where the term originates, and the general bias to where you would find characters like this in its early eras of fanfiction written by self insert female authors. the archetype applies to both, and these days its the same.
@@Thebigem There is no fundamental difference between "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu/Stew", the terms are interchangeable and Gary Stu exists only as shorthand for "Male Mary Sue".
It is somewhat a character problem in that this problem tends to arise because the character is a self insert. There's a reason its name comes from a fanfic parody, and that's because this happens most commonly when amateur writers put overpowered self inserts into an existing story that wasn't meant for them. Like what many modern Hollywood writers are doing with various reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of popular franchises.
To say captain America is a Mary sue misses the character entirely. In the mcu he kind of is a tragic hero who always takes the sacrifice even to his own detriment. That’s his flaw.
Not to meantion, he takes so many losses and so many risks
"always takes the sacrifice even to his own detriment" - that's a mary sue trait lmao. It's in the same category of flaws as "likes his friends too much"
@@KissatenYoba A mary sue isn't JUST a character who has flaws though. There is other criteria needed for a character to fit the bill. A character who doesn't have flaws isn't necessarily a bad character or a Sue
@@KaiserShounen flaws not actually being flaws is mary sue.
@@KissatenYoba It is a common trait of a mary sue but that is not the sole trait of one. Captain America may barely have flaws but he still has challenges that he overcomes in engaging ways, he's not seriously OP, and the plot doesn't completely revolve around him. There are some times when the MCU gives him conveniences, but it is not consistent enough for him to be a sue
Another thing I’d add is who the Mary Sue is meant to appeal to. In most works of escapism, an overpowered protagonist is usually designed for the enjoyment of the audience. Meanwhile, with Lily’s brand of Mary Sues, especially in her own writing, you can tell she’s the only one having fun. It’s a vehicle for her to give herself power, charisma, and romances she’d never have in real life and to put herself at the center of entire universes where she’s the most important person ever born. That’s what I think separates characters who are simply overpowered from full-blown Mary Sues.
OP characters can be Mary sues, but not all OP characters are Mary sues/gary stus. In fact, a lot of them aren’t, and their Gary Mary-ness comes from the world warping itself for the benefit of said character.
In works containing a Mary Sue, literally *everything* in the plot revolved around the Sue or making her look good. Every character has an opinion on Sue: the likeable characters adore her (including villains) and the hateable characters hate her (including supposed heroes that the author dislikes). Mary Sue always knows what to do or finds a convenient solution or just happens to be the right person for every job.
Essentially, a good overpowered protag is someone that makes you feel like you’re along for the ride, while lily’s are kinda masturbatory.
@@fluffywolfo3663 "masturbatory" is actually a great way to sum up the Mary Sue problem - when it feels like the author is just wanking with a character, rather than caring if the reader has fun
Feel like it’s worth noting: Lily thinks that “Mary Sue = cool character with lots of powers” because that was the prominent belief in chronically online fandom circles, primarily Bronies.
She doesn’t have the video up now because she incriminates herself with writing her incest fic in it, but Lily made a video once about how you shouldn’t limit yourself to only writing slice of life stories about characters just going about their day because if you give your pony OC special powers and stakes in a story with canon characters Bronies will label your character a Sue. That, in its fandom vacuum, is good advice.
The problem is that Lily doesn’t consume any media on its own. She’s always half-finishing shit and relying on Tumblr users to fill in the gaps on what she didn’t feel like watching. She’s surrounded herself with the same Tumblr fandom mindsets and UA-camr critiques for YEARS, hence why her own mindset on what makes a character a Sue is, ironically, very dated with how progressive she likes to claim she is.
*Pretends to be totally surprised by this*
Lily is VERY well known for not understanding writing and writing terms
Like in her new SU video she straight up gets "metaphor" and "simile" totally wrong
Can i just add that regardless of sueness or anything else, Lily Orchard demonstrated a complete lack of comphrension of people because using force lightning, an explicitly evil power to kill one of your friends is a valid thing to angst about
Yeah, but you have more power, and the more power you have the more good you feel because now you can abuse people better without them being able to stop you. That's great, and exactly what I think of when I think about heroes.
I think you're missing an element of Elle Woods' "like it's hard?" Line that helps bolster your point. She's not just showing off to impress the guy, and it's not just that it genuinely did take a while lot of work on her part, but also a huge part of the conflict Elle runs into is everybody thinks she's stupid because of her personality, style and interests. She falls very nearly into the "popular pretty girl" stereotype because she put a huge amount of time and effort into style and social engagements, and because that's considered vapid and shallow, people don't take her seriously and assume she's dumb. But part of Elle's point by remaining confident in her abilities and demeanor isn't just because she's not afraid to be herself, but to show people "of course I got into Harvard, just like you did, because I am smart, just like you are".
Her confidence in that moment carries within it one of the major hurdles that she has to overcome while at Harvard, and Lily uses it as an example of someone without struggles.
Also: how dare you call this a B-movie, you will be hearing from my lawyers. The Cease-and-Desist will be scented.
Ya legally blonde is a well crafted movie that is feminist but not in a man hating aspect but in the vein of just because things are considered feminine does not mean they stupid. Elle woods isn’t a Mary sue because she isn’t presented as perfect but her brilliance comes in she puts the effort she puts into understanding fashion, social situations and other things into law studies. It’s such a great law movie.
31:14 "She just is a child" that's an insult to children. Literal kids could come up with better stories after playing with action figures for a few minutes than Lily ever has and ever could (other than that great video).
Appreciate it
Seconded!
I was 12 when I started making OC characters in middle school, and I swear to god I never liked having an absolute perfect original character. Everyone has admitted to making a Mary Sue OC that somehow makes the entirety of the reality of the world they live in bend in their favor, I've never liked that idea even as a kid that everything has to go right all the time and nothing ever goes wrong for them is just super unrealistic and that is was more compelling for something to actually going wrong for them and how they handle that. Again I was a kid and that was my mindset when making my OCs imagine being an adult and enjoying and defending the Mary Sue trope to that degree
Never forget Lilly is the person who wrote a story where the main self insert OC goes around a multiverse Committing genocide and beating the crap out of God, because she is in the right and thinks that Atheism is the one true way
Dont forget the Star Wars fic where the MC's mom is an intergalactic slaver and they romanticize that fact
FUCKING WHAT?!!!
@@CapriciousWriter going to take a lot to track it down these days but it was called something like Tales of the Valkyr or something like that
Bro thinks she Thor fr
Which is fine to do since its fanfiction and not major works. The issue Lily doesn't understand (or refuses to acknowledge) is that people don't pay tens to hundreds of dollars in theatres to go see someones poorly written self indulgent fanfiction. They want a professional movie made by people who know what they are doing
Lily: “I’m a writer”
Also Lily: *Doesn’t understand basic writing and talks confidently*
Excellent video as always, Pete. Glad to be on to soak up the clout you took from me >:)
But for real tho, Lily is a prime example of who not to be as a critic. If you're correct on a topic, you shouldn't have to blatantly lie or throw away helpful words/definitions because you feel petty and spiteful. That is childish behavior and she needs to get over herself. If she is ever going to make good content instead of having waves of people who dislike her, she needs to cut the bullshit and tell the truth.
Mary Sue's suck. Its bad writing. Bad writing bears no genders, has no race and possesses no sexuality. And she knows this, which is why she had to lie about it. Big shame.
There’s a reason you don’t hear Aliana Beniko (Lily’s OC) talked about when it comes to compelling characters.
@@d.j.mulcahy1657 Probably the same reason I don't hear her OC talked about at all lol
@@periodicpete She even does that thing in Isekai where the characters contribute to slavery (though perhaps I’ve said too much).
13:39 also this scene is also a joke that the actor of Indiana Jones had food poisoning and wanted to end the scene quickly as possible
Yeah, It's a scene that isn't plot important and is obviously played for comedy.
Does Lily even realize that there are characters in DC that can challenge or even demolish Superman physically? Darkseid is basically his Bane.
41:26 Lily is evil and that still doesn’t mean Mary Sue isn’t mostly used as a buzzword in a culture war. Two of the very characters you mentioned don’t fit that definition but they were labeled as because of nonsense outside of their stories.
Yeah, like I've said before in some of Kaiser's videos, Orchard's argument all boils down to "you don't like my character because they're X" when the problems are that "these characters don't work because of Y." It is a double standard which has been used by people all over the political spectrum. Maybe less to do with politics and more to do with "how dare you criticize this character I like."
Also, something that both Mary Sue/Gary Stu defenders (e.g. Orchard, Cosmonaut Variety Hour) and many critics (e.g. The Critical Drinker) tend to forget is that Mary Sues are merely one type of bad character writing/storytelling. And like I've mentioned before (and which you partially showed when going over Taken), you can still have a non-Mary Sue character be as bad and favored by the plot as a Mary Sue. This has happened with Bayformer's Optimus Prime (easily killing Megatron--who was offering peace in DotM--after losing an arm, threatening and forcing Grimlock and the Dinobots to join him in AoE, willing to mercilessly kill humans post-DotM), Snyder's Superman (destroying most of Metropolis, killing Zod, the Christ-like imagery in MoS and BvS, people praising him to have saved people in BvS when he looks like its a chore, having people mourn him after his asinine death against Doomsday), and yes, the SW prequels' Anakin Skywalker (able to destroy the Trade Federation ship BY ACCIDENT without shown to have used the Force in TPM, killing women and children TWICE after not doing next-to-nothing about his visions and with no context given in AotC and RotS, being excused of killing women and children in AotC where he didn't even feel the effects of the Dark Side, arguing with and being abrasive/disobedient to Obi-Wan in AotC with no resolution or anything showing how he grew into the hero he was in RotS, having Padme say she loves Anakin AFTER he killed women and children in AotC despite nothing showing what she sees in him--and Padme in RotS even saying "Anakin wouldn't do that!" about killing children even though she knows he had done such in the past, etc.).
All of these, especially Anakin (who was said in the OT to have been a good man who was seduced by the Dark Side but the prequels don't reflect that), share the same core problems as Mary Sues/Gary Stus: they do not drive the plot, they do not deal with consequences of their actions, said actions are excused by the plot, they act stupid for the sake of the plot, and much, MUCH more. It's not helped that I have literally seen people excuse all of this (even Anakin killing women and children by adding in "context" they pull out of the ether, as well as those same people saying Anakin faced more hardship than Luke--all of which I've seen being applied to Rey and even Kylo Ren). And that's not going into those same people attacking and belittling others' legitimate criticisms (emphasis on the legitimate part).
Anyway, sorry for the long paragraphs, but TL;DR: this stuff is nothing new and the same nonsense Orchard used to defend Rey and Carol Danvers have been used for other poorly-told characters.
Couldn't agree more
Until the sequel trilogy I found Anakin to be the only reason to even care about Star Wars, and even after it he remains the best part of it. The original trilogy has literally nothing good going for it. If you're going to analyse bad writing, analyse how Luke has no agency in New Hope, just being carried around by the plot, or how his temptation into the dark side of the Force makes no sense with his motivations and history. He is simply not a compelling character in the way Anakin and Ray are.
Star Wars also never had tight writing, which doesn't make it worse as what matters is not the writing itself but how interesting it is and how it speaks to human nature. Everything else is just nerds whining about stuff which never mattered, because things like immersion is something subjective to each member of the audience, and is their concern, not the author's. There is a reason Romans looked down on fiction and only put science to paper. If it's gonna be escapism it should say something about the human condition, otherwise it's just a literal waste of time no matter how well written it is. That being said, it's technically impossible to create art which says nothing, as the interpretation of the message is always up to the audience, no matter what the author intended, you could even say that we create art when we observe the raw material in the form of the original text, and authors always put their worldview into their work subconsciously, so all art is in some way deep, even if that wasn't intended, and in some way political.
What am I trying to say with all this? Nothing.
Great video as always pete
Mary Sues can work in a story that is constructed for them, that's literally what the action genre is, it's a sandbox for actors to say and do cool shit and have everything work out for the hero in the end. Mary Sues become a problem when you want to do literally anything else, they will destroy any story that doesn't explicitly make accommodations for them.
Counterpoint, I think a mary-sue could also work as a gag character. The universe twists in on itself to accommodate them? That’s part of the joke, and we can laugh as the other characters who must abide by the narrative try to adjust.
@@a.n.9800Sounds like a good concept for a horror monster
@@juicebox7372 Some of my writing friends did this once. It was a horror story to the other characters (including the overarching villain), but it was all presented as a comedy to the reader XD the “mary-sue” in question was a one-off character.
24:59 Nice use of Glados dialogue. Orchard really seems to have no concept of empathy whatsoever.
33:20 POWER RANGERS TIME FORCE/MIRAI SENTAI TIMERANGER SPOTTED
I'd add Pyra and Mythra to the list too considering both of their cases of PTSD and DID.
To me the issue with Mary Sue is that they trivialize everything the story wants you to believe is important. Dark lord, who has slain dozens of would-be heroes over hundreds of years? Mary Sue beats him in moments. Order of badasses who only accept the best of the best? They try to recruit Mary Sue after knowing her for fifteen minutes. A secret technique that takes masters years to learn? Mary Sue masters it in seconds. Death God, who could potentially have nearly any woman who ever lived? He falls die-hard in love with Mary Sue after a few interactions. Everything loses its status in order to make Mary Sue look good.
Correct
You just basically summed up every isekei anime that's come out in the past decade. Except replace she with he.
The reason lily is not talking about the anime is because she's only seen 3 and all other are bad because BOY.
Odd connection, but her opinion on Mary Sues might explain her Pokemon Retrospective a little bit and some of the stances she takes.
I think she wants to play the games as a Mary Sue, or, more so, she wants her favorite Pokemon to be a Mary Sue. Throughout the "retrospective," she constantly insists upon how overpowered Gardevoir is and even goes so far as to hack it in as her starter, using it in every battle, but anytime she can't just power through a battle, she complains about it being too hard without ever changing her team or her strategy to accomodate; interestingly, she'll also complain about winning battles too easily since it's boring.
She wants the type advantages between Pokemon to be HEAVILY reduced from 2x damage when hitting a weakness to 1.25x (less than just hitting with a move of the same type for a 1.5x bonus), and she also doesn't want critical hits to ignore defense bonuses since that invites risk of ruining your setup, and it's my belief she wants these changes so she can stack stat bonuses without any potential for being punished on her glass cannon. It seems she wants every battle to cut it "close" where it looks like she could lose or get KOd on Gardevoir without it being a real possibility.
I think @mightyradish9672 put it really well in saying that Mary Sues tend to be boring because they can give about the same answer to every problem without ever exercising ingenuity or accomodating for some kind of weakness of their own, and that's exactly how I think Lily wants to play Pokemon.
The character she hated the most throughout the entire 6.5 hour video of hers was N, the rival she lost to so many times she leveled up 7 times, and it was so confusing why she hated him so much until now. The reason she hates him may be as simple as him giving her a challenge that brute forcing with her current setup didn't let her win in one battle or rematch: N consistently disrupted her power fantasy where she can get through every single battle with the exact same pokemon, the exact same strategy, and little to no difficulty, and that's why she spat so much venom towards him, his character, and his story throughout the video.
(Note: I'm probably just yapping and making huge leaps, but it's kinda fun to make passing guesses about what her mindset might've been in the making of a video)
She wants a total power fantasy. A Redo of healer personally tailored to her.. She is Unironically the Princesss in of Redo of healer.
My own concept of what makes a Mary Sue had become much more diluted than I'd realized. Thank you for refocusing my understanding.
Oh my god you are angry in this...
...and for good reason. I mean, how can anyone say the things Lilly says with a straight face? I have a burning passion for storytelling, so much so that i would try to become an author if i had anything resembling a single creative idea in my entire body. I live for the story, i would give my life if that would further the art in a meaningful way. To see somebody misrepresent the fundamentals so brazenly makes my blood boil. So yeah, good video.
You got that right
Her very existence an insult to the Ancient Greek Muses.
31:16 well... she technically is writing some fanfiction about trauma and reconciliation about siblings on the real world... wich it evidentiates this:
To her, is either a melodramatic sludge set in the real world, or power fantasy were cool character do cool things.
Imagine having so many trash takes you still get analyzed and made fun of even after falling off
Lily Orchard moment
Oh boy this is gonna be fun
21:59 - 22:36 the worst part is half the characters you showed during your compilation she hates. like i know she hates most anime even if it fits a lot of her preferences for viewing (ie dungeon meshi), she despises 2b, and her opinion on bell/beauty and the beast is low in general. i think the one character i see in this line up that the would praise is aqua from kingdom hearts because that series is her baby even though she cannot pick up the themes and thinks that the games on the side systems are not relevant to the story.
Well we showed plenty of cartoon characters and movie characters as well. So unless Lily wants to be a massive contrarian (again), she will not questions those parts of her list.
Also what did she say about 2B?
That's news to me. I had no idea that she disliked that many characters and I'm a little skeptical that she's even aware of that many of them. But the ultimate point is that there are tons of competent female characters people like, disproving the notion that fandoms hate female characters because of misogyny.
@@KaiserShounen she called 2b a "yor forger as a french maid fetish robot" this is in her dungeon meshi video
@@StarlightUmbra why am I not surprised
Ironically I just looked back to her channel and in her description she said she has no consent for her content to be archived in the wayback..........
And also has a terminal illness of "always being right"
Yeah I'm not going to go further down that rabbit hole
"Making villains hypercompetent doesn't detract the tension of the story."
*Looks at Aizen from Bleach, the Light from Young Justice and Prometheus from Cry for Justice* .... yeaaaaaah I beg to differ.
Aizen the first "Accoding to Keikakau..." times 40k.. I swear just his explaination at the end of soulsociety a full Episode of him retelling it with Context... a great Recap Episode hidden as PURE FLEX.
Korsica got mentioned, based
Hell yeah
W video
The simple fact is, no one wants to experience the story of captain plot device who solves literally every problem with no real effort. Those kinda of characters aren't normally fun because they make the story feel contrived. Hell this is why I think reality warping powers would be hard to write, a hero with those powers could easily devolve into a mary sue.
Oh interesting. I did wonder what criteria she actually uses to chose which characters she likes and which she doesn’t.
And now you know, and knowing is half the battle ;)
@@KaiserShounen Ok so I watched this video and your video, and I'm still confused about her logic. Her standards for what she likes seem so damn arbitrary. It's like she doesn't like stuff because of a certain set of criteria, but rather she has to apply arbitrary sets of criteria onto things she happens to like for whatever reason. It's backwards justification forced to fit.
God damn it I thought my brain was melting listening to Sai's livestreams the other day. I think this just aded to it.
@@MissCaraMint And it only gets worse with each passing video. Here's the evidence. You decide
@@MissCaraMint *like a man with only a half hour’s worth of sleep and fifty cups of coffee* Thaaaat’s Lily!
Lorax quote
About Shepard in Mass Effect...
Shepard isn't a Sue.
He/she is a colonist whos home was destroyed/ a street child who want to become famous and rich/ a child whos perents are a high rank military servants. Shepard climebd to the top not becouse of luck, but becouse of determination and hard work. Shepard got to the N7 program becouse had survived in extreme conditions when everyone else died due to skill and determination/ tactical engenuity helped people to win an unwinnable battle against supperior forces/ prioritize mission and ready to get the hands dirty.
And right from the start (no matter what past you will chose during a character creation) - your starting mission is fucked up. You lost your teammate. You accidentally destroyed the only proof that galaxy will get fucked up soon. All you have is a fucked up vissions of galactic destruction, dirty politics who playing behind your back and one of the elite special agents who wants to start a Reaper invasion. During the 1st game Shepard struggling to prove to everyone that Saren is a villian, that everyone is in danger and forsed to make heavy moral choices... It doesent matter you play as a renegate or paragon - in both cases Shepard struggles and overcome chalanges 24/7, often failing no matter how hard tries...
Anyway... 2nd game is starting with you dying to death! You resurected, but you cant trust to no one, no one trust you and you have to convince a bunch of mistfits to go to the suicidal mission. And if Shepard isn't using engenuity, show compassion to the crew or harden them enough, use every limited resourses to prepare for it - everyone will die. Succesfully survive a suicide mission requieres from shepard meticulusly planning everything and proving to everyone that Shepard trully the best warrior in the galaxy. And making it soetimes is fucking hard and nearley impossible (from a narative perspective, not the game difficulty)
And 3d game is an accumulation of every choice Shepard has made. Shepard already an established bad ass warrior who can unite a bunch of mistfits to kill one Reaper. Now he need to unite the galaxy to kill many. But still Shepard suffers the consequences of previous actions. If Shepard wasnt able to save someone in previous games - it can bite in the ass now.
In conclussion - Shepard always faces chalanges, that must be owercomed by strength/cunning/engenuity/etc. And that challenges always pushing Shepard to the limit and makes him grow as a person. Player decides only the direction of that growth. (One of the best example - if Shepard is renegade enough, you can force geth and quarian to sease fire by yealing at them and promising to nuke both sides. And they are stoping, becouse everything that renegade Shepard did before proves that this isnt a fucking joke)
Is Jake Sully from avatar a Mary Sue?
He's the protagonist, the story bends itself into a pretzel to make his decisions work. Nothing he ever does is wrong, everyone likes him except the antagonists, and everything pretty much works out for him.
One could argue that he cannot be a Mary Sue because he is the villain, but I don't think that is correct. Villans can be Mary Sues, it's the antagonists that cannot be Mary Sue.
...huh...i think he is, now that you say it...
About your whole villain point… There’s a term known as Villain Sue, so you’re right. Villains CAN be Mary Sues/Marty Stus.
@@TheDisquietingNight yea he is he betrayed his planet killing thousounds all for blue giant cat cheeks
I like 'In Another World with My Smartphone' and harem anime/manga in general because while the main protagonist 9/10 is just a boring, paint-by-numbers self insert that stray's into Gary Stu territory the side characters and the members of the harem usually are very unique, interesting and personable.
Lily is a Mery Sue, that's why she defends it so much.
41:57 okay can we just pay attention to this wack part? Like yeah capitalism did delude feminism by making it be "women should be allowed wear the boot that crushes poor people"
38:08 everyone giving a personal interpretation of what the term means putting different characters in and out the box based it. It’s not a term useful for general discussion. Only used in video essays under a single individuals interpretation at the time.
yeah, if a term is so badly used that many can't agree on a definition, then that term should be thrown out
7:31 I mean it's just a shit example either way he had to earn everything.
As a slave he was forced to fix up droids and technology he made C3PO with a skill he was forced to learn to survive.
This also aloud him to understand how a pod racer works and little Ani has watched the race before he knew the track of course he was good at it.
Later in the naboo Starfighter am a burst the bubble most of that flying was R2-D2 and the force he didn't know shit all he knew was "spinning is a good trick".
After that it was nothing but training up until he was 19 when the WAR STARTED. He earned his right to be powerful and skilled in the few things he enjoyed.
Not to mention he's a flawed character like hello order 66 much Anakin/Darth Vader is the most ANTI MARY SUE character you could say lol.
40:43 that doesn’t mean it’s not a buzzword.
Villains can absolutely be Mary Sues. If the story spends too much time wanking a villain and can't commit to giving them a solid weakness, their defeat will likely look anticlimactic or forced. Because the author cared about creating their cool badass donut steel OC more than about creating an antagonist for their protagonist. Think Broly or pretty much any DBZ movie villain.
They can be but they are absurdly rare. I can only name 4 that fit this mold at all
@@KaiserShounen I can name a bunch of villains where the creators got carried away with making them powerful to the point where they were pretty much unbeatable without an asspull or an anticlimax.
- the main villain of Danganronpa (you probably know who they are, but not saying it explicitly just in case; if you know anything about Danganronpa you know how ridiculously hypercompetent the main villain is to the point where most main characters have no chance of ever matching their intellect)
- Esdeath from Akame Ga Kill (probably has more abilities than every other character in the series, repeatedly wins every fight she's in over and over again until the very last episode, then anticlimactically beaten by a single strike from a character she has barely interacted with)
- Neo from RWBY (extremely overpowered despite being a minor villain, defeats every protagonist she fights easily, doesn't actually get defeated, straight up gets what she wants and just chooses to walk away afterward, never held accountable for any of her crimes)
- Sensui from YYH (this one is probably controversial since people like his arc, and while he's an interesting character and probably the best-written out of the bunch here, you gotta admit he has way too many gimmicks and abilities to the point where he has to be beaten by the biggest asspull in the series; also never really proven wrong about his beliefs)
- The Batman Who Laughs from DC Comics (much like with Danganronpa, if you know anything about this character, it's likely the unholy amounts of wank he got and how hard he was forced down everybody's throat for a while as the biggest threat ever)
These are just a few examples, but it definitely can happen. While it's good to make villains, especially main villains, an overpowering formidable force for the heroes to overcome, I think it's preferable if they have at least some small weakness that naturally leads to their defeat instead of effortlessly dominating everyone around them until the last 5 minutes of the story where they just stop doing that because of plot.
@@olserknam Don't care for dangonronpa. I wouldn't be surprised if Esdeath was a Sue, Neo I'm somewhat mixed on, need to rewatch YYH and don't care for comics.
The point of that part of the video wasn't that villains CAN'T be Sues, but that given their general positions in the story it is less likely to happen compared to the frequency of protagonist Sues. And either way, the millisecond you say that Darth Vader of all people is a Mary Sue, you have officially lost the plot. He may have Sue moments and bad characterization, but a Sue? Absolutely not.
@@KaiserShounen Another point to bring up in that a villain/antagonist is meant to be an obstacle/foil/parallel to the protagonist. Raoh to Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star), Long John Silver to Jim Hawkins (Treasure Island), etc. Darth Vader is very much that to Luke Skywalker (and specifically talking about the OT because the prequels are just character assassination for Vader).
An antagonist can start out as an underdog or be on equal footing as the protagonist (e.g. Red Hood to Batman in "Batman: Under the Red Hood," Dio to Jonathan Joestar in "Jojo"), but they are SUPPOSED to possess something the protagonist may lack or be better in at least one certain aspect, e.g. secret information, general intelligence or physical strength, magical powers, etc.
Good videos I do think that if you changed your definitions of marie sue to hers you would agree with her.
Except that last part that last section is stupid af
You know if Lily’s only metric on a Mary Sue is if they’re cool or not then that must mean that she thinks Dante is a Mary Sue and I believe if this was the medieval ages it would warrant immediate execution
Also Lily don’t put Bury the Light over Rey not only is it really unfitting for the scene Rey doesn’t deserve Bury the Light only Vergil is deserving of Bury the Light
Yeah, well
Mary Sue's aren't akshualy bad, and theyr guud so there's nothing wrong with Dante
Checkmate
Xp
I think that calling game protagonists (that you control, make decisions for and etc) a Mary Sue is kinda the point? Like ofc they are the protagonist, we play this game to feel important and be a hero so developers want to make it fun for the players. Its the kind of the game you play to be a absolute unit of a human and have fun while still going through hardships, thats the point of the game. Though ofc you can make bad decisions if you want.
21:04 Is this interaction bait?
Its just a jump to the left
Addressing the drama:
If she committed a crime, send her to court
Otherwise, who cares?
46:15 I thought you agreed it was story issue not a character issue definition now you are saying that it’s a character issue harming the story. You never actually gave a proper reason why captain marvel or Rey fit that mold.
My fucking comment went to another's channel
I think the problem is that the term "mary sue" is so overused with so many different meanings that the term is practically useless
You should talk about MauLer next? Always loved his videos and EFAP stream but I’m willing to see criticism since there is a lot to go through with the guy and the people he hangs out with (Always though Rags is nowhere near as bad as said other folks!)
Bro you were so good until you started talking about capt marvel. please dont talk about her again until youve actually seen the movies.
>she
What about her ?
@@Leftistmushroom >her
Also, your definition of a Mary Sue is agreeable but pretty vague because people can mean a thousand different things by "affects the story in a negative way" and a bunch of things by "favored". If I'm a fan of Griffith from Berserk I could say "Griffith did nothing wrong and the story is affected negatively by not acknowledging this and instead favoring Guts as the morally superior character, therefore Guts is a Mary Sue". That would be nonsense, but that WOULD technically align with the vague definition you gave.
UpD: "they're not a Mary Sue if they achieve things through their personal skill" is a pretty poor criterion since that implies skilled characters can't be Mary Sues.
How is that vague? All you would need to do is prove how the story is negatively affected by the character being a Sue. There's a clear criteria there and all you need to do is give evidence.
We never said that Mary Sue's have to be skilled either. All we said was that the characters skill and competence can't mess up the stakes or breaks consistency of the story.
Using your example, if you wanna say "Guts is a Mary Sue because Griffith did nothing wrong"... I mean that just goes way beyond talking about media and delving into morals and ethics. But even then all I would do is just show why what he did WAS wrong within the logic of the story.
@@KaiserShounen "Negatively affects" is very vague phrasing. If one wanted to really stretch it, they could technicaly apply this to any character they disliked for any reason and call them a Mary Sue, even if those reasons have nothing to do with what is traditionally thought of as a Mary Sue.
Mary Sue is usually a criticism of how the story is constructed in the first place, not just its internal logic. Thus, theoretically, one could dismiss any evidence of Grifftih being wrong in the story as "Miura favoring his Mary Sue protagonist and framing him to be in the right".
@@olserknam Not really. You're ignoring that there is other criteria for a character to be a mary sue. Being hypercompetent to the point of negatively affecting the story is just ONE of those things.
People try to put characters into a category all the time.. and there's nothing wrong with that. The point of discussion is figuring out whether or not the characters fit the mold. Sure any jackass can say X character is a Sue, but do they have the right evidence? Does it have any counters? Do they fit the criteria? Thats where we can find actual answers. Which is our whole point, whereas Lily wants to do away with any kind of discussion whatsoever.
Also if someone would just say that "Oh miura is just favoring their protagonist", you do realize that would involve... not engaging with the story as it is written right??
@@KaiserShounen Yes, that would involve not engaging with the context of the story. That's my point. The broad definition given in the video can naturally lead to rejecting the story as it is written. It comes from a meta standpoint of suspecting the creators have favored characters, which compromises the story, therefore the story doesn't deserve to be considered on its own terms.
Periodic does this in the very video when talking about Captain Marvel and criticizing the scene of her killing hordes of Kree soldiers despite not all of them potentially being evil. The story as it is written doesn't imply any of these nameless mooks might be good and isn't concerned with the potential moral dillema at all. So the criticism is essentially that the story only has the morality it does to favor the Mary Sue main character and that it should stop being about what it is and focus on this moral dillema instead, because that's what the critic would personally prefer to see.
Going by similar logic, one could argue that Berserk only has the morality it does to favor the Mary Sue main character and that it would be better if it focused on a completely different morality favoring the villain instead, because that's what the critic would personally prefer to see. A take like this doesn't contradict the definition given in the video and in some way naturally stems from it.
@@olserknam I won't argue the Captain Marvel point since Pete is more familiar with that than I am.
However, our definition doesn't give credence to such a mindset. It would be like saying the definition of a "Poorly written character" is too broad because anyone can say that a character is poorly made just because they feel like it. But we still use it because the problem isn't the definition but the way that it is used.
By that same token, the Berserk example, sure they are able to have that take but would they have proper evidence for it? Likely not. There are multiple ways that Mary Sue's negatively effect stories, same with most other bad tropes. When people say things like "it harms the story" or "affects the story in negative ways", most people are talking about breaking the stakes the story established, disregarding established continuity, neglecting/devaluing character motivations, and the numerous other ways that a story can be bad because of certain elements that are literally too many to count. The definition isn't simply broad, its contextual. Which is the point. If you can prove that a character is a mary sue because the story consistently overly favors a character to the point of making the story worse, its your job to prove it.
You mentioned in a different post that Sensui for example is a villain Mary Sue. I would like for you to explain that to me.
Lily Orchard told me when I asked to use a frame in Pronoun video as my steam profile picture NO.
25:25 a characters personality is a part of their character. You wanted Lily to call her a robot earlier. Now when that is refuted you just say those scenes don’t count. You are doing Lily tier media analysis.
The term Mary sue just can’t be taken seriously. Both captain marvel and Ray struggle to accomplish their goals but they call Mary sues because they are strong. It’s too late for the term to gain any useful meaning.
token struggle is not struggle. Character has to struggle through something actually important to them, instead they just get pointless character development done to them for the sole purpose of that later struggle. Ray had one moment of actual character development and struggle - that one time she blew up the ship she thought a wookie is on - and then authors just undid it immediately
@@KissatenYoba what is “token struggle”? You are just calling character development point less. So you are denying a moment of struggle because you believe the writers undid it. You aren’t giving me anything to work here. You are going to have to actually explain specifically what issues you believe there may be.
@@onesmart229 token struggle is a token struggle. There's a plot, and it needs character development in it, and that means checkmarking a struggle session
@@KissatenYoba what is a “token struggle”? Come on explain what you mean.
I agree, it's a useless term to save.
But, I think most "critique" doesn't really matter as much as people try to make it out to be. Mostly, it comes down to subjectivity that is well hidden with objective metrics. Like how a game is critiqued for being buggy and how that's the worst thing in the world until you release Baldurs Gate 3 and suddenly nobody cares that your game has unique and weird ass stability issues.
IM GOING TO ALICE (Like if you get this)
I've been watching alot of people critique Lily's videos, and it never gets old.
The gift that keeps on giving
Darth vader the guy who lost every thing he ever cared about became a slave to his abuser and then died is a “Mary Sue”
Come to think of it, if Darth Vader truly was a Mary Sue, then Darth Vader wouldn’t exist, not even as a character.
If everything went perfectly for Anakin, if he never had real flaws, moral conflit, and never lost fights like how Rey does, if his life wasn’t always bad, I don’t think he COULD become Darth Vader, because Vader is the result of all those existing conflicts for Ankain that became his downfall.
Anakin wouldn’t even be in a cyborgs suit if he was a mary sue.
yeah I can't see how someone could ever delude themselves into thinking Vader is a mary sue. He's one of the most flawed characters ever conceived
Born a slave, gets kidnapped by a cult of monks to become a slave again, has intense anger issues, same monks go against his ideals of love and passion and essentially gets betrayed in his eyes, joins the Dark Side, commits William Afton, gets all his limbs cut off, be in constant torment and pain, sacrifices himself.
Apparently "Mary Sue" enough.
@@anotherrandomguy8871 I don't really watch star wars but isn't Anakin's anger and hatred a lot of the reason he becomes Vader? (Or at least what makes Anakin and Obi-Wan fight?)
@@snakewithacomputer849 Yup. Anakin has a lot of anger and tramua and is misguided and that’s what leads to the Obi-wan fight everything.
Lily is the type of person that (unironically) would turn evil the second they get powers.
Lesbian Homelander
@@chaoticgoodcreations947the worst kind of homelander
@@bungiecrimes7247 found the nazi
@@bungiecrimes7247 yup. A pure and unadulteraded agent of chaos
now i have this cringe image of lily in a homelander outfit
Say it with me now:
" Those that preach the loudest have the most to hide."
With the way Lily seems to go after action heroes, I’d probably blame it on the fact that she seems to hate high-stakes action stories, and believes that low-stakes coffee shop comedies are always superior. Never mind the fact that the thing that makes a good story is quality and not genre…
I think Lily's problem is that the concept of the supposed Mary Sue is exactly what she wants in stories. She wants safe, easily digestable content with no real conflicts that won't challenge either the protagonist or the viewer. And because she believes that her opinion is superior to others she thinks that that is what others should want as well.
I honestly can't tell how many of her examples of good "Mary Sues" are from films she actually bothered to watch, let alone likes.
So the fact that she points to characters who do have real conflicts in their journey just makes it all the more confusing.
@@periodicpete Somehow I think her saying Hamtaro as her only No. 1 anime of all time (No disrespect to Hamtaro by the by) as well as her "writing tips" also says more about her media tastes and media literacy understanding.
And quick question, if a story has no conflict or challenges and the character CAN'T be flawed and do cool things or be challenged by said story, then why stick around?
I think the issue is these people miss that sometimes the competence IS the premise. Light is not a mary sue despite all his luck and victories simply because the entire premise of the show is "what happens when the smartest person in the room gets the ability to play god". The competence is not only expected but almost mandatory here.
Exactly. And that is absolutely fine. As long as there are still stakes in the story. But Lily just says "Fuck the stakes, they don't matter". Cringe.
it also all comes crashing down on him by the end lmao
Also note. Light doesn't have it easy. He does have challenges and he does have his flaws. The most obvious being his arrogance. Believe it or not, his rivalry with L kept him steady because he knew that one slip up would mean execution. This was especially shown when L baited him into revealing his general location. Once L was gone, Light's own ego grew. Now, I have my issues with Near, but honestly it's safe to say his God complex finally collapsed on him
The competence is definitely warranted, but he also faces a number of challenges as well. Most notably Misa, who becomes a big liability that allows L to close in on him. He admits she's a liability too, but can't kill her because Ren will kill him if he does. But you're not wrong that there are a number of stories, such as One Punch Man, where the character's victories aren't the focus of the story (or they're not the victories you're rooting for them to accomplish)
It’s made clear in episode 2 that Light isn’t nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is. Light only beat L because he was the only one who knew the rules of the “game” and rigged it in his own favor. Hence why Light loses in the end against Near, Bear figures out the “Rules” of the Death Note and Light soundly loses because of that. Light isn’t a Mary Sue, he just had a LOT of plot armor.
Heres my take on this situation: sometimes you want to see Batman struggle against the odds, and sometimes you want to see Superman power through everything. Both are enjoyable for different reasons.
The good that came out of Lilys is I've found so many good smaller youtube channels that shit on her crapy takes, lmaoo
Also, if she (should I even refer to them with their preferred pronouns when they’re also transphobic? Seems a bit unfair) doesn’t like something, it’s a good mark that whatever they dislike is actually good.
@@ma.2089I just call Lily an IT
Lily victimizes herself. So, if you misgender her, you just reinforce her victim complex. I just don't even bother with it. It's not worth it
@@ma.2089I would say to refer to Lily correctly considering you wouldn’t misgender a cis person if you didn’t like them, like I hate Lily but misgendering anyone harms the trans community as a whole imo
@@CertifiedCoolDude I lowkey thought she was trans from the moment I heard her voice
Honestly, so many of Lily's videos are just because people in fandom are 'mean' to her. Her most recent video is about writing of sibling relationships because people were criticizing her stories about siblings, saying that they have unhealthy relationships that are emotionally incestuous. It's why she brings up her own works in her videos so often. The video is not coming for a genuine place, it's coming from a place of 'people critiqued my works and I'm going to write a whole video essay to show them not only that I'm right, but that they're part of a systematic problem!'. It's not helped by her holier-than-thou attitude and complete dismissal of anyone bringing up legitimate critiques. Many of her problems are problems she has with fandom, not the works themselves, and boy does it show in her essays.
That's something I've heard before, that all of the examples used are from her own writing, because she thinks her work is the perfect example for everything. I won't act like I don't like bringing my own writing up, I'm doing it right now, but I also try to make comparisons to things that people actually know.
I don't know what her sibling video is really about, but as someone with 11 of them, it's something I play with in my writing.
And I try to be critical of my own work, maybe even to my detriment, and I pay attention to every comment, even if they don't sound like they come from a stable mind. When someone has a bad reaction, even if they can't explain why, you can look back at your work and try to understand what was wrong. Sometimes, nothing is wrong at all, they just didn't like it, but sometimes there is a flaw you missed.
Plus, she does a LOT of projecting in these videos. She blames everything on everyone else except her, when no one except her has done anything wrong. Not to mention, her twisted views of the world and inherent narcissism make it hard for her to see the actual bigger picture.
It's not even if you're mean to her, it's even, if you do something to pass her off, which is a Russian roulette of solving it! She literally likes Spy x Family, and calls Buddy Daddies a cash grab knock off and then some people recommended her Dungeon Meshi because it's some of the things she likes in shows, but since they dared recommend her a show that has her favorite things because she asked, she spoils the Manga and does a whole video on why Dungeon Meshi sucks without even talking some of the characters. She doesn't watch the media she critiques and just searches up spoilers and stuff.
Calling Commander Shepard someone who fights for every single victory and wins just barely wins every time a mary sue its so idiotic
Especially since, whether playing Paragon or Renegade, Shepard's actions have consequences that are always thrown in their face in one way or another and the only point where they consistently take a lot of wins diplomatically, is when there is an active invasion of ancient, eldritch organic-based-machines currently forcing every species to contend with extinction.
the term "fandom racists" has some serious tomy talarico "gaming racists" vibes.
it's so stupid it almost distracted me from her following statement about how theorising about rae's parents was somehow "missing the point" even though rae's parents (at least until the palpatine bullshit) was meant to be a subversion, and a subversion doesn't work if we aren't interested in who her parents are, meaning that theorising about them is the point.
forget not knowing what a mary sue is, i don't think she knows what story telling is (like actually, this isn't even just a joke i'm making, i'm genuinely starting to suspect this after everything i've ever seen her say)
Unlike Tommy, I don't like Lilly's Mother is very proud of her.
Yeah… Lily lacks in higher critical thinking and habitually tries to put things into “black or white.”
It’s why she hates Steven Universe and repeatedly called Rebecca Sugar a Nazi (not kidding), why she hates Redemption Arcs, and is unable to take _Hazben Hotel_ at face value.
(She legitimately things Charlie Morningstar, the _daughter of Lucifer Morningstar,_ is the “self proclaimed” Princess of Hell.)
@@vidmanandrew09I don't even like at show and even I think, that's disingenuous.
"Hello every hero's journey character ever" did she just insinuate that simon from gurren lagann is a mary sue?
This isn't say that they're saying he specifically is, that's just to prove the point that her argument is inherently flawed and is saying those things just to make people she disagrees with sound hypocritical. But if she thinks for over a second that my boy simon is anything but one of the best anime characters of all time she's gonna have some explaining to do
Lily is just seething that people don’t like her favorite characters.
Exactly! No one likes Mary Sues!
I will say that villans can be given immense ammounts of plot armor that does detract from the experience. Not nessesaraly a Mary Sue, but plot progression so baffling that you start to wonder if the writers are just trying to pad out the run time. Cant think of any examples off the top of my head, but the kind of encounter where either the vilan breaks the laws of the story and/or their character, or the protagonist makes a braindead decision and the villan ends up getting away because of it.
“or the protagonist makes a braindead decision and the villan ends up getting away because of it.”
Blake and the Faunus militia letting Adam escape at the end of RWBY vol 5 comes to mind.
@@michaeldorsey9231 THIS! Holysh*t that was annoying!
I can definitely agree. You can see this with Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy, who says about "feeling the pull to the light" in TFA despite himself ordering innocent people to be killed, killing his own father, and goes on to kidnap and interrogate Rey. Not helped where Rey (for some reason) listens to Kylo Ren in TLJ, including the dumb and hypocritical "let the past die, kill it if you have to."
I do agree that this is possible. Madara Uchiha (Naruto), Aizen (Bleach), All For One (My hero academia) are examples that come to mind of villains that are pumped full of so much Plot Armor that it harms the stakes of the story. Because some conveniences have to happen in order to beat them instead of the characters finding a way to stop them themselves or seeking some other means actively.
I think an example of a villian with too much plot armor would be Colonel Autum from Fallout 3.
Lily Orchard? What a lunatic.
Troons typically are, and he’s no exception.
@@HerrscherPuppet Troons?
43:02 did. Did Lily Orchard ACTUALLY just imply Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is only called a Mary Sue because she has a ridiculous name? Like is that what she's implying or am I just severely misreading this moment? Because if she is, she doesn't know ANYTHING about My Immortal oh my FUCKING god- wether she's a parody or not(which this is even worse if she IS a parody), Ebony Dark'ness is the fucking TEXT BOOK DEFINITION of a Mary Sue in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE- Lily wouldn't be referencing her if she didn't KNOW THIS because that is what Ebony is FAMOUS FOR- does Lily genuinely think she isn't a Mary Sue!?!?!?!?!?! Hello!?!?!?!?!?!?
The mary sue is a pathway to many things some consider to be... unnatural
Say it with me now:
" Those that preach the loudest have the most to hide."
Facts
It's not so binary. Those who say nothing have the most to hide as well, no?
Yep!
Lily doesn't care what you think or what point you're trying to make. I know this because, after her infamous first Dungeon Meshi video where she made her distasteful take on Laios by offending any autistic people who lack social cues, instead of taking responsibility for it, in her second Dungeon Meshi video, she made more ways to bash Laios with more misinformation about his character and use Bojack Horseman of all shows in comparison that has nothing to do with the premise of Dungeon Meshi and didn’t even apologize to those who have symptoms for the autism spectrum by saying she hasn’t met anyone someone like Laios.
(Sai has the first video in her Reacting to Lily Orchard's Dungeon Meshi Videos live streaming if you're curious.)
To me, I think Lily is a lost cause because nothing will faze her, she will never change her ways even if we keep calling her out, and she will find more ways to blame people to excuse herself.
I, personally have trouble believing that she knows autistic people that aren't either women, or children. And women tend to have the more off putting autism traits more discouraged than men do. And Children aren't adults so their autism wouldn't look like Laios's autism. Combined with her "Never Wrong Attitude" and I think she would assume any autistic person she met that WAS like Laios was just a maladjusted shut in or a creep. Doesn't matter how they actually act/say. She praises Fallon when Fallon is just Laios with magical aptitude and female autism. They are so similar and show how autism affects men and women differently. Also, Lily just has a bias against any male character that isn't an asshole played for comedy. Which Laios isn't an asshole, so she hates him.
@@twistedmyth5860 I refuse to watch her video mostly cuz I heard (like most dunmeshi fans) spoils the story and ending. In a way they’re saying “I don’t like the series, so now YOU cant be allowed to enjoy it blind either!”.
But I find it horrible Falin is the “good” autism. The girl has just a bit more social awareness, simply cuz girls like her are forced from a younger age to conform cus of their gender. Falin is only “good” cuz she’s not allowed to do much. Ppl overlook her suffering and difficulties so much.
Heck, The girl who was made to suffer so deeply, so of COURSE it would probably be “good” cuz just like Lily things Laios should be treated badly for their autism, Falin is already experiencing “recompense”.
@@ma.2089 I know, it was such shit of Lily to spoil shit. Just because she is fine with spoilers (I am too) doesn't mean that she should spoil others. (Seriously I avoid telling people who want to watch a thing spoilers for a reason.) Also, YEAH. I hate when people take away that Fallin has the "Good Autism" when she just has "Raised woman while Autistic". Lily truly has some incredibly shit takes and her praising Sheldon Cooper, while demonizing Laios is fucking disgusting imo.
Honestly as a person on the Autism spectrum the way Lily sees Laios makes me feel really angry, and the fact that she apparently considers SHELDON COOPER FROM THE BIG BANG THEORY better autism rep than Laios really says a lot about Lily’s, less than friendly view of us autistic folks. Sometimes I remember the fact that she lives in Canada, AKA the same country I live in, and that genuinely scares me I do not wanna meet that woman IRL she seems like a morally-bankrupt lunatic I feel like she’d do something really bad to me and my loved ones FSR.
At this point, I am certain that Lily is actually a conservative who makes us leftists look bad in those psy ops she calls content.
43:20
45:28
You guys are actually right on the money, just not on the right fanfiction.
It's highly likely it was made in regards to her OC in her Star Wars sequel trilogy rewrite where she gives Ray a black "woke socialist sith lord" girlfriend that's she's gotten much more backlash over in regards to being called a Mary Sue.
That's probably also her reasoning for what she put in 31:21 in regards to black women
I actually highly recommend Manufatura's video "analyzing Lily Orchards morality compass" in which she analyzes two videos that Lily made for the same reason she made this one on Mary Sue's: to defend her OC from people criticizing it.
Holy fuck! This video is actually good! Genuinely though this video came from a higher sub-count channel. May the algorithm look kindly upon you!
Thanks a lot, dude. Make sure to share around!
Lily? Bitter and projecting? Surely you jest!
17:07 I think it's also worth noting that when Elle does "Swagger" it's fashion related. like her dramatic success was because she re-heard the witness testimony and realized it made no sense because they were Permed and had permed their hair for years
1. 21:59-22:36 Let's add Nico Robin, and Yamato from One Piece, Bijinder from Kikaider 01, Android 18 from Dragonball, any of the female rangers in power rangers/super sentai, Arcee, Windblade, and Elita one from transformers, and Pike, Vex, and Keyleth from legend of Vox Machina to the list of cool female characters that people like.
2. The fact that Lily thinks that Luke is a poorly written character while praising Rey goes to show that Lily was never really a fan of Star Wars.
3. 34:58 Lily really really really hates Eastern animation, did you hear what she said about studio Trigger?
That I did
Funny how she hates anime yet writes the shit she goes at the entire medium for doing. Rules for ye and not for me
I'd say it's a lack of questions posed to the character, or rather, lack of options to answer. If they're super powerful with no weaknesses every conflict they come across will have the exact same answer. But if they have a weakness, and the story focuses on it enough that failure is a possibility chances are the character needs a bit of ingenuity. Whether asking for friends help, planning in advance, or spur of the moment improvisation, it's always more interesting to wonder "how they'll pull it off"
If the character can get everything they want with minimal conflict, then thats bad, because almost all stories are is conflict. So theres no real story, often as a result.
I think this is the first new perspective on the topic that really fascinates me in the past few years. I'll definitely consider this if I ever make another video on the trope in the future.
In regards to the drama, she's openly had a kink for the stuff she's being accused of, going as far as making her own self ship comic about it, so I think its safe to say its all true
Because I saw her briefly, I do see people call Ahsoka Tano a mary sue. I disagree with them, but they do exist.
22:46 of course the video was made out of spite, that's lily's motivation to do anything
She made a pokemon "retrospective" where she played through each gen until she beat the elite 4, in which she refused to engage with any optional content and skipped through the plot only to then complain about how dumb the evil team's motivations are And how annoying it is to get stopped by other characters who talk to you (for example she completely ignores and dismisses anything N says to you in pokemon black and then calls him a creep for trying to talk to her gardevoir which she hacked in)
Some fan recommended her to watch dungeon meshi after she said she liked spy x family and because of that she made a critique on it talking about how annoying all the characters in dungeon meshi are and complaining that the characters aren't taking their main objective seriously enough while showing footage of them talking about how uneasy they are that they can't go any faster, as well as talking about laios' main character flaw as if it was his only character trait and and generally taking things way out of context to make him look bad and when she got called out for being disingenous she remade the video to include spoilers of the manga
That's such a shitty way to behave, especially when talking about content that's been recommended by your own fanbase.
And yet, I'm not surprised in the least XD
Iirc she only talked about Laios and Marcille as characters and only made a reference to Chilchuck and Senshi(and Izutsumi but she shows up later so I could see why she was ommitted) with a passing comment acknowledging their existence, but not mentioning them further(I think her "dunking on" Studio Trigger was more of the runtime).
Which is kind of sad because I was half expecting her to have some kind of segment about how Shuro is basically Kylo Ren or even whilst watching the video that Shuro was right for being the only one actually calling out Laios' bad behavior, but no most of the video is just Laios and it's bland as a critique of the series
17:21 the musical is better by virtue of having There Right There in the sound track
(AKA The Gay or European song)
Isnt Lily just a dude ?
yes and a groomer
I swear there's more videos on youtube bashing Lilly's takes than there are videos she's actually made either she's doing something really wrong or she's a just an easy target for people.
I'm not quite sure yet.
I think a more accurate definition of the trope (more of an archetype at this point) is a character who is not subject to the laws of cause and effect established either by the text of the real world. That is to say, there is a dissonance between the effort the character must use, and the effectiveness of the desired result.
A couple days training gives them more power than the masters of the art. Actions which are supposedly character flaws do not actually impede their progress towards their goal, but often further it. Being a jerk, an idiot, or a fraud, do not deter other characters from adoring and praising them. Some Mary Sues may possess one of these traits and not others, multiple, or even all - the one thing unifying them is that dissonance between cause and effect.
Rey, for instance, is a Mary Sue. Within a couple minutes/hours she accomplishes a Jedi mind trick, a technique even masters of the art struggled with. In the span of a few days, she was able to pull a lightsaber to her hand, in contest with a trained force-user - something Luke struggled with after 3 years of training and no other force-user fighting him for it. Perhaps a few weeks later, she is able to lift a number of rocks which are likely greater in weight than the X-Wing Luke would fail to lift. And then, after finally getting substancial time to train, she literally achieves an ability so rare and difficult to accomplish that the seeking of it literally drove the plot of Episode 3.
But I disagree with defining the trope as inherently bad or detracting from the text. While dissonance can detract from a text, it is dissonance which drives them. The reveal that Darth Vader was Luke's father, for instance, would not be a twist at all, if there were not such a distance between the described heroism of Anakin and the evident villany of Vader.
The archetype of the Mary Sue has been used to great effect.
Take American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is a Mary Sue. He openly discusses his lust for violence and murder; he is openly seen carrying blood-soaked sheets and bodies in bags; he is a terrible liar, who by all means should have been caught by the detective; and he literally got into a shootout with the cops during a killing spree. And yet, the film ends, and Patrick Bateman remains free.
This works, however, where Rey does not. Because American Psycho is ABOUT this dissonance. It is about the power of the wealthy, how untouchable they are, how tyrannical they may be and suffer no consequence. It is also about the instablity of the psyche, and we frequently question whether or not certain events even happened.
Rey does not pull off the trope, because the films have literally nothing to say about it. The dissonance between her actions and their consequences is a result of Disney's strict 'guidelines' of how a "strong female protagonist" must look. They are scared of having her grow stronger over the text, because she must therefore begin weak. They are scared of having her decisions inadvertantly harm people, because then she is made to look like a fool. They must at all costs avoid alienating the female audience member - but in doing so, they infantilize her.
However,
It is evident in real life that plenty of women have outstanding potential and are continuously held down by patriarchy. It is therefore no wonder why even facile attempts at 'strong female protagonists' resonate with women who have had their potential squashed out of them. The narrative of a woman's discovery of her own existing potential is a powerful one - I only hope that it is told through better means in the future.
There are also 2 other Points in Batemans favour.
First is that American Psycho is a horror comedy. Its meant to be darkly humorous how he is able to get away with the things he does.
Second is that alot of things happening in the Movie/Book may be just be Batemans Imagination, therefor he is only getting unpunished since he never did anything at all and is just a sad angry man.
22:39 OSP MENTION
27:40 so this was kinda your entire point, but this does emphasize that I guess Lilly’s idea of character might just come down to if the character is a badass that destroys everything, because I don’t see how Rey not killing Ren means that the series took away her character.
If anything, Rey never had much character, they didn’t take away from it in this movie. Hell in this movie they tried to actually give her a semi backstory that was honestly forgettable, not take away character, it’s just that she never had much of one and abandoned her conflict.
Half the time things like the stakes not rising or something isn't even a good criticism because it isn't necessarily
Doesn't matter if we know ___ will be saved, the point is to see the process and characters
To be honest, Lara Croft IS kind of a Mary Sue, at least in the original games. She's an aspirational figure - wealthy, educated, athletic, confident, sarcastic, with an impossibly great figure and a cut-glass accent - capable of taking down a T-Rex, whose only weakness is falling from high places or into spikes.
A Mary Sue I never see discussed, though, is Sam LaRusso from Cobra Kai. The show frames her as this manic pixie dream girl-next-door, carefully framing every scene she's in so she is shown to be righteous and sensible, when most of the time, she is the instigator, and her main quality is her ability to manipulate men into doing what she wants by shedding crocodile tears and acting the victim. Samantha's only failure in what are now five seasons is losing the Girls' bracket of the All-Valley Karate Championships (and Robby before that, even though she immediately rebounds by getting back together with Miguel) to Tori. Other than that, she is framed as being perfect in every way, even though it is glaringly obvious that she is anything but.
Character traits don't factor much into Sueness if the setting or universe doesn't bend over or excessively focus on the character in relation to those traits. While Lara is athletic, that athleticism is required for regular gameplay and the player being good enough to match the athletic challenges if anything prevents her from being a Mary Sue. Her wealth and education exist only to facilitate her adventures, not to magically decide how the plot goes without resistance. Her physical attractiveness is more of an audience thing than it is an element the plotlines overbearingly build themselves around. She's not kind of a Mary Sue, she's simply not one at all.
All those same points could be applied to Batman.
In my opinion, Ken from the barbie movie isn't a marry sue... but can someone explain to me why people think he is?
People think he's a Mary Sue?
I’ve seen more complaints about Barbie herself being a Mary Sue (which I disagree with personally ) but not a lot about Ken. Wasn’t he like technically an antagonist (not that he’s evil, but that he opposed Barbie as the protagonist)?
It's all been about her fanfcs the whole time, hasn't it?