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[Egan_BW]

I honestly kinda reject the idea of the force being light or dark. You just have the force, which is everything, and then there's the people who fear that power and the people who harness it to make Bad Life Decisions. These two groups of idiots come up with the idea they represent some sort of universal "light and dark", but really they just have different methodologies for the same thing. One being "suppress all emotions" and the other being "stick your face in it!"

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The difference between light and dark is the user's approach to the force. Dark siders are consuming the force, as one would consume a glass of water. They are taking by force (pun unavoidable) from the fabric of the universe to ensure their selfish desires are fulfilled. Light siders are altering themselves to follow the currents of the force instead.

This is why the dark is "easier but not stronger". You can only consume as much of the force as you personally are able to tear free (though this can get extreme, see Darth Nihlus), which is lesser than if the currents of the whole force turn against something on their own. This is why I support the "immune system" interpretation of the balance of the force, it lifts up light siders whenever there's an "infection" of dark siders disrupting it.

And this is also why it's basically impossible to be a stable light sider and not end up stagnant like the Old Republic Jedi. Their commitment to purity in the force disallows them from doing anything that wasn't going to happen already. All the functional "light siders" are more like what we'd think of grey jedi anyway. Luke and Rey are both at their most effective when they're flirting with the dark and acting selfishly, Anakin basically never reaches this stage because he has personal beliefs about right and wrong, and the only Jedi who had a realistic chance of stopping Palpatine is the one who delved so heavily into darkness that he had to stop taking padawans because they all kept going crazy just from learning his techniques.

[scriver]

Saw the movie the other day. It wasn't boring, but it suffers from pretty much every flaw modern action block buster movies seem to collect. Not a complete waste of hours as far as escapist fantasy entertainment goes, but from a movie perspective it was pretty bad.

Since the "Rey is a Mary Sue" meme persists on even in this thread, I present to you:

The Grand List of Rey's Failures and Personal Flaws

- Spent most of her life living in utter poverty, only managing to not starve.

- Extreme naivete towards the Jedi and the Republic.

- Delusional belief that her family is coming back for her.

- Almost immediately captured by Han and Chewbacca after stealing the Millennium Falcon.

- Does not convince Finn to continue the fight.

- So vulnerable to the call of the Dark Side even the residual amounts on Anakin's lightsaber enrapture her.

- Captured by Kylo Ren.

- Doesn't really contribute at all to the attack on the Starkiller, barely defeats Kylo Ren in a 2-on-1 fight.

- Delusional belief Luke can turn the war around somehow and wanted to be found.

- Only convinces Luke to help her out of persistent annoyance and him wanting her to see how screwed she is.

- Unhesitatingly draws deep power from the Dark Side such that Luke, who nearly turned once himself, flips out at how recklessly idiotic she is.

- Doesn't question her mental link to the man who tried to kill her not too long ago and is actively trying to kill all her friends, quickly becomes sympathetic to him.

- Despite chastisement by recently-idolized Luke Skywalker, decides to just delve straight into the heart of darkness to fulfill her selfish desires.

- Selfish desires are so delusional in nature that even the heart of darkness is like "idk, man".

- Goes kind of crazy and narrowly avoids murdering, again, recently-idolized Luke Skywalker for lying to her in the sense he didn't tell her every detail about how Kylo went bad.

- Delusional belief Kylo "Murder the Past" Ren has good in him and can be saved, aping the Luke-Anakin legend she believes in.

- Stupidly delivers herself into Kylo's clutches to be given to Snoke, again aping the old legend.

- Success at getting Kylo to rebel tempered by fact he did it for completely different reasons than she thought.

- Doesn't accept obvious truth about her parentage until loverboy Kylo Ren reads her mind and spells it out for her.

- Fails to redeem Kylo "Han-Kebab" Ren, doesn't join him in awesome galaxy murder quest either.

- Accidentally destroys Anakin's lightsaber that they're both obsessed with.

- Doesn't kill Kylo "Space Neo-Nazi Kickflip Into Space Antichrist" Ren even though she regains consciousness long before he does.

- Can't hinder First Order assault on Crait.

- Steals founding Jedi texts, proving she didn't learn anything from recently-idolized Luke Skywalker and is probably still streaking headlong into zealotry and the Dark Side.



Now with all of that suckage and failure, there's no need to continue on such a silly idea, which was taken grognar complaints about everything non-masturbatory in new Star Wars media anyway.

I'm not sure why you're listing all these Mary sue traits as if they weren't examples of Mary-Sueishness.

[NRDL]

What IS everybody's definition of a Mary Sue anyway?

Mine is a character who is so ridiculously perfect that they suck the enjoyment and conflict out a story by being the correct answer to every problem in said story. I don't believe Rey is one, hell I can't think of any Mary Sue of the top of my head in general.

[scriver]

A Mary Sue is never perfect, but all her flaws are actually positives.

[NRDL]

A bunch of them are still mistakes, and none of them still make her inherently unlikeable.

[ChairmanPoo]

Would like to point out that the lack of a credible villain is as bad or worse than Rey's sueness, not least because somehow Rey manages to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe she's not a Sue but a poorly explained character.  Little of what she does is meaningful, for all her unearned skill.. she just moves arounddoing pointless shit. Maybe it's a metaphor for the human condition, what do I know, lol.

[Reelya]

Since the "Rey is a Mary Sue" meme persists on even in this thread, I present to you:

The Grand List of Rey's Failures and Personal Flaws

- Spent most of her life living in utter poverty, only managing to not starve.

Maybe you haven't really looked into what typical "Mary Sue" traits are considered to be. Having an exceptionally tear-jerky backstory is one of the biggest ones. An impoverished childhood and nearly starving is core "Mary Sue" type stuff.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits

She speaks several languages fluently.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey

Rey also had a computer display from an old BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighter/bomber that she used to learn alien languages

Most Sues have an unusually Dark and Troubled Past. It's often used to create a Sympathetic Sue, but any type of Sue can have one. Such backstories never actually factor into the story; they're just casually dropped into the narrative to draw attention to the character and let her Wangst (usually out of proportion to how bad it really is). Most authors tend not to research such tragedies and their effects, which breaks the reader's Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Relatedly, she will often have a tragic family life. This could involve Parental Abandonment or orphanhood, and whichever parental figures she has are often abusive, putting her squarely into Cinderella Circumstances. Darker fics will often have Rape as Backstory. She might be the Black Sheep who's so smart and talented that the rest of her family fears and abuses her — or she might be the White Sheep who's the only redeemable member of her otherwise evil family. Regardless, this backstory will never actually hold Mary Sue back from anything she wants to accomplish.

She will always be better than the canon characters, regardless of what canon has established they can do or whether it makes any sense. ... Her skills will often be unrealistic within the story's setting. She can be a master of a martial art that she should have no way of learning

This doesn't need elaboration

Typical Mary Sue storytelling is about how everything was against you, yet you won because you had the "special stuff" that nobody else had. Them hammering how terribly poor "nothings" her parents in the current movie increases her Mary Sue level. What would be less Mary Sue is if her parents turned out to be completely average suburban types who didn't live a horrid life and abandon her as an orphan. This is actually what makes Luke less of a Mary Sue, and more relatably human. He had a fairly uneventful normal farm-boy existence, with they typical teenage gripes and complaints - but then tragedy strikes, throwing him out of his normal life. It's relatable, because losing your parents is a relatable thing. Rey's upbringing - abandoned as a tiny kid (she had to have been about 6 years old, going off everything she learnt before she was 10 years old according to the Wookiepedia entry) in a galacitic rubbish dump and surviving by scavenging while somehow miraculously bootstrapping yourself into learning every skill better than anyone else does - is not believable, it's farcical.

Another key Mary Sue trait is hob-knobbing with all the "canon" characters, no matter how implausible that is. Her ending up meeting Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia is the type of thing bad fanfic writers doing self-insert fiction (which was the original Mary Sue critique) would do.

The rest of the original Mary Sue traits mainly involve breaking previous canon with the types of abilities the character has. She flies the falcon better than Han Solo, masters the "jedi mind trick" instantly, and can hold her own as a rookie against trained Jedi masters, while also basically doing the force levitation trick when needed, at a level Luke wasn't even able to get to until his third movie.

Also, Mary Sue characters often develop some sort of deep emotional bond with more "canon" characters despite they themselves being self-inserts shoe-horned in. Rey, being a character completely unrelated to the-canon, but having a deep connection with Han and Leia's son who's the "troubled dark emo type", while basically inheriting the Millennium Falcon from Han Solo, and being the sole heir to the Jedi legacy via training with Luke - that's all by the book Mary Sueism.

What makes her a Mary Sue is the fact that other that her basically none of the other characters have really developed much of any sort of relationship with any of the canon characters, while she has with all of them. The only one is Poe, and Poe's connection with Leia is more or less her telling him off for failing (e.g. the opposite of being a 'Sue).

[EnigmaticHat]

Okay, just putting this out there: why is Rey a Mary Sue but Luke isn't?  There are certain tropes that every single writer uses when they invent a main character for their first long form story, and Luke fits every one of them:

*Good at a wide variety of skills, including ones they shouldn't logically have.  Cold environment survival anyone?
*Effortlessly better at things than people who have spent a long time practicing them: fighter pilot, gunfighter, leader, arguably out-wisdoms Obiwan and Yoda.
*Has too many epic destinies and special snowflake traits (last jedi, guy who's about to get his Space Driver's License, sure.  Darth Vader's son tho?)
*Literally a self insert by George Lucas (Mark Hamill gave a glorious interview on this topic)
*Notices things seemingly for the first time that other characters should have been able to see pretty easily.  Weakness of AT ATs, seemingly the only one in the universe to "socialize with the help" in regards to droids, that the clearly maneuverable torpedos can be used for precision targeting, that wizards powered by positive emotion should probably have friends and loved ones.
*Does shit that will obviously result in his own immediate death and it somehow works out every time (this is more of a Japanese media Mary Sue trope, but SW was inspired by Japanese media so it counts).
*Lacks any obvious weakness, except for good or endearing qualities.  Kind of an uninformed dope, but that gives him optimism and creativity more experienced characters lack.  Cares too much about his friends.  That's his two weaknesses.

That's not even getting into the ridiculousness that prequels Anakin is (and how he makes Darth Vader's characterization worse by association).

Now, I don't have a problem with OT Luke, I like the guy.  But then, I don't consider Rey a Mary Sue.  If Rey is our bar for Mary Sue, then clearly Luke is one too.

[smjjames]

Okay, just putting this out there: why is Rey a Mary Sue but Luke isn't?  There are certain tropes that every single writer uses when they invent a main character for their first long form story, and Luke fits every one of them:

*Good at a wide variety of skills, including ones they shouldn't logically have.  Cold environment survival anyone?

Where did you get that one from, DarthsandDroids? I'm sure he had some basic lessions when he got to Hoth, but staying in the wampa cave would have been better than going out in that storm (he can kill the wampa if he had to). Going out into that blizzard doesn't exactly scream cold survival skills to me.

Even Han Solo displayed better cold survival skills than Luke, or at least better judgement.

[EnigmaticHat]

I doubt cutting up your wampa was taught in rebel boot camp, especially since they don't seem to carry any cutting tools out on missions.  Also what I was getting at is that he grew up on a desert planet.  When I went to college I could see people from cold climates struggling in summer and people from warm climates struggling in winter.  One person in particular for Texas didn't understand basic facts of winter, like proper footwear and what a good winter coat is.  So its kinda odd to me that Luke would show uncommon wisdom.  Most people who know about that survival tactic learned it first from SW.

Anyway, it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the movie and I don't think Luke is a Mary Sue.  His whole thing is noticing things that other people don't and failing to notice the obvious.  Which isn't a bad schtick, but its also a pretty common Mary Sue/first time writer schtick.

[smjjames]

He cut off the wampas arm in defense with the only weapon available to him. Unless you mean the tauntauns.

I get your point about uncommon widsom and general acclimation though.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I just want to point out that a lot of the examples being cited to determine whether or not Rey and/or Luke are Mary Sues are ridiculously subjective or extrapolated. Just saying that given the context of the discussion it might help the arguments if you guys stuck to what actually appeared on screen.

[EnigmaticHat]

Okay then, how about this.  Obviously for an untrained farmboy Luke did well at everything he tried to do.  Mostly justified in universe by the force or luck, since the odds were always heavily stacked against the good guys.  So what weakness did Luke have that weren't a good or endearing quality?  And what would you entire list of OT Luke's weakness be?  My list as I gave on the last page is only two long.  Caring about his friends too much isn't really a weakness and aside from his hand its never done anything bad for him.  Its mostly a thing that Yoda and Palpatine call a weakness.  Being inexperienced is arguably also not a weakness so much as a thing anyone in his situation would have.  His practice to be a pilot makes him a lot less inexperienced than the average farmboy could be, and he picks up new information quickly.  So I wouldn't say that his weakness is inexperience so much as his strength is quick learning.

[smjjames]

Canonically (or maybe thats EU), he often went womp rat hunting in some sort of flying craft with his friends in the canyons. Basically the sort of thing a teenager would do.

Anyways, weaknesses..... naivete? Though that'd be expected of a farm boy.

Leia didn't really have any sort of weaknesses (besides being portrayed with the usual female weaknesses that are typical of films of the 60's and 70's, even though it was a bit progressive for the era) either.

Han Solo? I guess you could call being brash and somewhat cocky a weakness.

Okay, you've got me, aside from what Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Palpatine would regard as weaknesses, I can't think of any that would be physical or skill related.