Talk:Mary Sue/Archive 2

message: Just something that SHOULD be added, if I could source the darned thing. A Mary Sue is "Smart as Spock, Something as Kirk, Something as Bones, and sleeps with all three." But I can't remember the darn form, or the source. Page had red-on-black text...Checking the links.
Sexy as Kirk? 139.153.13.32 16:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can add it, provided you give its source in a reference or footnote. Breed Zona 23:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: An old Staying

message: But in a "Sprite" comic just an example let's say the infamous author sprite would be known as a Mary Sue? And I mean a character that makes fun of the characters breaks the fourth wall too many times to count, and ultimatly has "teh uber POWAS!!!" should be called a Mary Sue? A guy!
:I would sincerely advise against using "real" examples from anywhere except parodies, because otherwise, you're going to open a whole can of worms that we'd already slammed shut a few months back - right before we cut the list of so-called Mary Sues, many of whom were only superheros or magical girls, and some of whom were VERY debatable, and almost all of which somebody took offense to them being on the list. Best to stick with the original Paula Smith character (who was a parody to begin with), and descriptions of common perceived "Sue"/"Stu" subtypes. Believe me, you could rip the descriptions from any two of a thousand different "New girl comes into town and wows the rest of the cast" stories on fanfiction.net alone and change the names and mix them together and chances are, no one would notice. But naming names is VERY POVish, especially if there's no notable sources describing them as a Mary Sue. Beware of name-dropping in a case like this, believe me. - Runa27, not signed in because she's not at home. 67.8.207.23 02:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Just a Thought

message: I just removed the following statement from the bottom of the "Etymology" section:
:A well known alleged case of this context of Mary Sue is in the 2004-2005 sequel to Gundam Seed, Gundam Seed Destiny. This placed Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne to director Mitsuo Fukuda and his wife, the show's series supervisor, Chiaki Morosawa. Supporting this threom is the fact that both chracters begain showing signs of being overpowered and, especialy in the case of Kira, untouchable in battle.
I removed it for the following reasons:
1.) It is quite badly worded, to the point where I can't even be entirely sure how it's trying to make whatever points it has. I mean "This placed [characters] to director..."? That makes no grammatical sense. Placed where? There's also a number of misspellings here - "especialy" instead of "especially"; "threom" instead of "theorem" (and it is NOT a theorem, it's a theory; please do not confuse the two); and "chracters" instead of "characters." This leads me to believe that this edit was made quickly and without much thought or work put into its writing, which isn't a standard we should really hold to, especially not in unsourced, highly POV statements - it makes Wikipedia look really bad.
2.) It has VERY little to do with the actual etymology of the term; while I understand the desire to use an example to make sure the reader "gets the jist of it", to use a SPECIFIC character or set of characters as an "example" (even if you use weasel words like "alleged") when this view has yet to be advanced or referenced by a notable source that you can and have cited for it, and which has referred to the character as an actual "Mary Sue" or Gary/Marty/Larry Stu(e)/Sam/whatever, is NOT a good idea. It is bound to create a POV-riddled edit war; I have seen it happen time and time again. You KNOW it will. Please don't do it.
3.) This kind of thing would probably be better kept to another section, say, "Characters in original fiction who have been called a Mary Sue in the mainstream media"... but, other than Rose Tyler from Doctor Who, I do not know of any remotely notable case of a character being called an actual "Mary Sue" in the mainstream media (and I really stress "mainstream media" here, because Joe Fanboy or Jane Fangirl is NOT a notable enough source to quote or advance the POV of here on Wikipedia and you know that. See: WP:Notability and WP:Fancruft). 
4.) It is completely uncited and unsourced... and a POV view (albeit more weasel-ly worded this time around) should never go uncited or unsourced, especially if it's supposedly so "well known" (which would, presumably, provide easy access to sources; another thing that makes me think this edit was made on a whim and not out of a genuine desire to improve the article). 
I would appreciate it if people would make an attempt to keep this article free of POV or rush-job entries such as the above, and focus on sourcing everything and finding more notable references to the term/concept in mainstream/notable media. I would like to bring this article to GA status some day, and letting either spam or POV to slip in continously and go unchecked while more important bits go not properly cited or sourced, will prevent this article from being, well, good. Or useful.  Runa27 05:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement removed from "Etymology" on Sept.1, 2006 - my reasoning

message: I have have archived discussions from before this past August (see top of this Talk page), because almost ALL of the discussions had been completely dead for weeks or months on end, and it was getting really unweildly, wading through all of them (that, and you have to realize, people with certain browsers or browser plug-ins will have trouble with longer pages being cut off unexpectedly when they go to try and edit them, as well). :) They can still be read on this page, however. - Runa27 05:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: September 1 Talk page archival

message: This is in response to Ken Arromdee's most recent edit to the Mary Sue page, the edit summary for which is the following:
Tweaks. And contrary to popular belief, you're not supposed to link to random terms; it's very unlikely that enough people reading this would want to know more about eyes, that we need an eye link
Bolding mine, because I plan to refute the idea that "we [don't] need an eye link" or that "it's very unlikely that enough people... would want to know more about eyes" (by the way, it is NOT an "eye link", and it's NOT about the general topic of "eyes", it's an EYE COLOR link, about ONLY eye colors, which were referenced in the criticism section as part of a typical and common anti-Mary Sue concept argument, and which I'll get to in a minute. Please be accurate if you're going to criticize one of my edits, OK?). The following is largely the same as what I posted to his Talk page, but for full clarity and full disclosure, I chose to post it here as well (he seems largely adverse thus far to discussing his changes on the Talk page, ranging from removing the "photo request" tag without replacing it with the appropriate-if-existing "illustration request" or "picture request" tag, to his more common edits to the main article itself; thus, my reasoning behind posting it in both places).
The link to the eye color article was done as a citation for the fact that there are odd eye colors that though rare, do exist in humans; in other words, pointing out that violet and especially amber eyes (the latter of which I know of no famous celebrities that have that trait, unlike Elizabeth Taylor having violet ones) exist, as well as explanations for the colors (which are on that page, but not here on Mary Sue because it's a side-issue, not a main issue, to do with the "unrealistic" aspect of the concept of "Mary Sue"). It was NOT a "random link", it was more information that was related to the topic in that section/sentence of "unusual physical traits that are often treated as the mark of a Mary Sue, but which do occur in real life sometimes." (to paraphrase). I'm reinserting the link, because darnit, do you know how long it took to figure out where it was that I could prove there were "honey-colored" (amber) eyes (over an hour, thanks to "yellow eyes" not having a redirect or even a disambig. Come to think of it, I should fix that...)? That page is the only one on Wikipedia that had that information, that PROVED that the trait of amber eyes - which was being cited as an example of a "rare but real trait that sometimes is used for so-called Mary Sue characters" exists! And I do believe it is worth linking, and more to the point, see NO reason whatsoever why it HAS to be removed. If people don't care about amber or violet eyes, they won't click on the link; if they DO, however (for instance, if, like me, they didn't originally know those traits did exist in humans, or are curious as to how common they really are), they won't have to search for it... which is the whole point of internal links (before you argue, consider this: do we "need" links on Dixie Chicks to the articles on its individual members? Not technically, but it's a convienience for the reader tha wants to know more about the individual band members, so they don't have to search for it and possibly come up with unrelated pages as well. Also, again, "yellow eyes" and similar terms do NOT redirect to the appropriate page!).
And if you don't think the fact that "yellow" or violet eyes of a kind exist in real human beings is relevant to the concept of "Mary Sue", you've not read enough fan fiction; practically every werewolf character that gets labeled a "Sue" has a yellow eyes, and due probably to the influence of anime and manga on American teenagers (who are apparently the producers of the majority of fan fiction today, if you go by the largest archive, FanFiction.net), "weird" hair and eye colors - including violet! - are also common. The fact that these eye colors do exist provides a minor counterargument to the "unrealistic" aspect, and that's exactly why it was mentioned under "Criticism" (along of course with the appropriate countercounterargument pointing out that they're still fairly rare traits).
If you don't think that people will be "interested"... I gotta ask why you CARE. Plenty of people are "interested" in things that many of us could not care less about, such as string theory or spatulas, yet THOSE have pages. I'm not particularly interested at the moment in reading about Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks and whose article is linked from the main page for the band, but I appreciate that some people WILL want more than an "overview" of one area or another of a subject. Just as I don't feel the need to remove links to individual famous people's pages in references to them on other Wikipedia pages (since arguably, there is only going to be one page for JK Rowling and it's NOT going to be hard to find through the Search/Go box), I fail to see the need to remove the link to eye color here, especially since eye color covers the subject referenced in the sentence it was linked from here in more detail. The point isn't whether "a lot of people will likely be interested" or not, it's whether we should think ahead to the undetermined (and thus, just as potentially large as it is small) number of people who will in FACT be "likely interested" in it, and take the really simple step of linking to the appropriate page, so that both camps will be covered.
And if you don't think the fact that "yellow" eyes exist is worth citing... well, I have no answer to that, because that thought process makes no sense at all to me, since I didn't realize at all that they were a real trait in HUMANS until a couple of years ago, after I pointed out that the main character of Big Wolf On Campus had yellow eyes that "didn't look like contacts" to my mother and she said "oh yeah, I actually dated a guy who really had that eyecolor." It's not a common enough trait that everyone realizes it exists, and if they try to verify it, at current, they'd have to go through a minor rigamorale in order to discover it's correct. I'm of the mind that it's better to give them the link and make it easier for them to personally verify for themselves that it's true, than it is to make them go through that much work to find it, because I'm of the opinion that Wikipedia should be as easy to use as possible, and that that would help. Again, if they don't care about the eye colors they won't click the link; but some people will be curious, and I wanted to make it convenient for any readers who were curious enough to want to look it up. Additionally, it becomes an issue of citation, as I pointed out above; the fact that violet eyes exist may be easy to verify due to Elizabeth Taylor having them, but "yellow"/"honey-colored" (amber) eyes are NOT as easy to verify WITHOUT looking at that page. 
Therefore, I actually take offense to the suggestion that the link is worth removing. It provides easy verifiability for a claim mentioned in the article, and let alone being, yes, Ken, of potential interest to some besides that. Again: I am reverting that portion of your edit and reinserting the link, because reader convenience and verifiability are to me very important in making Wikipedia as good as it can be, and I think both apply here. Runa27 05:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: It was NOT a "random link": Response to Ken Arromdee's Sept. 8, 2006 edit

message: Some of the categories this article has been put in are a little... odd, to me. I'm going to go over them and discuss what bothers me:
*"Alter egos" - the page for alter ego begins thusly: "An alter ego (Latin, "other I") is another self, a second personality or persona within a person. The term is commonly used in literature analysis and comparison to describe characters who are psychologically identical.". This does not quite seem to fit. I mean, I get that they're talking about self-insertion, but it STILL doesn't sound right. It sounds, frankly, like the person may have been thinking of the concept of the avatar, but then... not every Mary Sue is a reincarnated god, in fact, most probably aren't.
*Stock characters - read stock character and tell me please how this concept fits that description. I don't think it does, except as parody. 
Runa27 00:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Categorization

message: ===Criticism section===
Criticism still needs work, both for tone (This book says X, but term paper by so-and-so says Y) and fixing the sourcing (Is "Smith" supposed to be Paula Smith, or Camille Bacon-Smith?).
A few changes so far:
* Camille Bacon-Smith is published in an academic press, so her work seems worthwhile.
* Chander & Sunder are a bit obscure, and writing about the subversive potential in re-purposing intellectual property—in other works, fanfic, not Mary Sue in particular. I removed their paragraph.
* Johanna Cantor appears to be a zine writer or editor. Probably only useful when quoted through Bacon-Smith (or some similarly credible critic).
* Repeated references to "Smith" look like they are referring to Paula Smith, who may not be notable outside fanfic circles. Hopefully they really refer to Camille Bacon-Smith.
I'll visit a copy of Enterprising Women at Philly's public library so I can straighten out the sourcing. I'm now seeing the term Mary Sue used frequently outside the subject of fanfic, so there should be more scholarly mention, but "mary+sue"+fiction Google Scholar lists only a few mentions that look minor, with some heavily paywalled. / edg ☺ ☭ 18:31, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem has only grown. The criticism section is a mixture of tangentials and non-notable academic criticisms. It's longer than the body of the article now. "Mary Sue" is commonly used to describe major characters, male and female, that are "over the top". This relatively small article in counterpose to a laundry list of post-modern and feminist critiques is in flagrant violation of WP:NPOV.
===Lede section===
Also noticed: the primary definition in the lede section is from a book on career building for young adults. Better than nothing, could use a more literary source, especially for such an important part of the article.
Lede is not up to WP:LEDE standard either. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:26, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: Also noticed: the primary definition in the lede section is from a book on career building for young adults. Better than nothing, could use a more literary source, especially for such an important part of the article.
Lede is not up to WP:LEDE standard either. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:26, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Lede section

message: The opening line gives the impression that the term only applies to fan fiction, however the article itself mentions several critics who have used the term to describe non-fan fiction characters. I would argue that the opening line should be changed to better reflect what the article actually says.67.234.54.93 (talk) 06:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "In Fan Fiction"? 

message: In the "Variations" section, it says "Indeed, there is speculation amongst fans and academics, mainly pejorative, that Wesley was a self-insertion character for Gene Roddenberry." Roddenberry himself stated that he based Wesley on himself, qualifying that with he is not as smart as Wesley. I don't remember which interview that was from, but in his son's documentary, Trek Nation, Rod Roddenberry interviewed Wil Wheaton. Wil said that at a convention, Gene defended him, telling the crowd that "I based Wesley on myself, so if you say you don't like Wesley, you're saying you don't like me". That's as close as I can remember off the top of my head. So it's not quite a case of self/author-insertion since Wesley isn't an idealized version of Roddenberry, but rather a little better or smarter version of Roddenberry.
So if this the quote can be verified by someone who has Trek Nation, would that be appropriate for updating that sentence? –RRabbit42 (talk) 03:36, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roddenberry as Wesley 

message: Substituted at 21:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: :::I think that the whole reference to Rey being a Mary Sue should be taken out.  She is an orphaned, late teen or twenty-something scavenger who is barely scraping by.  And is living on some backwater, undeveloped planet that nobody cares about and has no one to ever care whether she exists.  Definitely not the overachiever-type usually portrayed by a Mary Sue.  I saw the movie and I did not feel that she really seemed that adept at using the force by the end of the movie.  Rather clumsy and limited uses.  Certainly not like stopping blaster bolts in mid-flight, throwing lighting bolts, or levitating ships.   Part of the problem here is that we want our heroes to be better than us, but not to the point of being absurd.  Hard balance to strike. Nyth63 03:36, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a great observation -- "we want our heroes to be better than us, but not to the point of being absurd." I would like your permission to quote this in the Mary Sue article at Fanlore. But the point of including the mentions of Rey is not whether she really is a Mary Sue or not. As you point out, it's a hard balance to strike, and Mary Sue is an extremely subjective value judgment. Some people react to Rey as one, some like you do not. The point is that the term "Mary Sue" and its meaning were discussed in notable (albeit online) publications -- not blogs or fansites. That is what people working on this article have been looking for for years (as you've seen reading this talk page). As you can see, a second author disputes that Rey is a Mary Sue, and this has renewed debate over the concept in places where everyone can see it. --Bluejay Young (talk) 09:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to use the quote, no need to attribute it, just please don't claim or imply to be the source. Anony mouse would be fine.  I read the article  you linked and followed to Mary Sue Litmus Test.  All the more reason that Rey should not be listed here as she would score very low on the grading scale. Nyth63 04:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! No problem, if you read a little more on fanlore you will see that there is a great respect for quotes from anonymous fans. As far as Rey being included here, the point of citing articles about her is to provide notable sources for the use of the term Mary Sue. We are not saying here that Rey is one, but that film reviewers, in the types of publications that can be cited on Wikipedia, are using the term "Mary Sue", with definition, and discussing whether she is one or not. There have not been very many uses of this term by appropriate sources. One way to make sure that an article will not come up for a deletion review is to make sure it's backed up with notable/reliable sources. --Bluejay Young (talk) 15:14, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

text: Because the term, Mary Sue, which is what we're talking about here, was used (with definition) in notable, mainstream publications. That it referred to Rey or Star Wars is inconsequential. The point is not who is/isn't a Mary Sue. It's that with the discussions about Rey as Mary Sue we now have citations to notable sources. --Bluejay Young (talk) 04:21, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Rey

message: Do we think whatever Mary Sues are roleplayed in the fictional media? 124.106.141.70 (talk) 22:35, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mary Sues in the fictional city/country/world/universe/whatever? 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Got a last name for the original Mary Sue? 
PS I’d go with "Mary Sue"s; not "Mary Sues". 
MBG02 (talk) 17:44, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surname