[ SECRET POST #2862 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2862 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #409.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - random textless image ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. http://i.imgur.com/VYKsOW8.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I think many people are way too quick to call "Mary Sue" these days (especially w/r/t female characters). The term has lost a lot of its meaning as a result.

There's an interesting divide where female characters are often labelled as a Mary Sue more than male characters. I think, perhaps, a more accurate term for this type of character is a "power fantasy".

Sometimes it's a power fantasy for the reader or audience. Sometimes it's just a power fantasy for the author, in which cause it quickly gets annoying.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously.

She's not even perfect or flawed in a Mary Sue way.

There needs to be less of this shitty 'female main character has a talent = mary sue' bullshit floating about. Obviously she's the most 'important' character in the setting. She's the main character. If there was somebody else who was more important, they'd be the protag instead.

[(Anonymous)]

There's 'most important' and then there's 'most important for attempting multiple suicide, which apparently fucking nobody in the decades-long history of the games was ever clever enough to come up with, and important in a way that means she spends most of her time getting fitted for pretty, pretty outfits'.

And while having no empathy for any other Games participant (except the one young enough to still be cute and the one she wanted to fuck, of course) despite them being just as much victims as she was and thinking of everyone around her as animals isn't exactly a Mary Sue flaw, the way the other characters excuse her for this (or don't excuse her and turn out to be villains, see: Coin) IS very Mary Sue.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like too many people confuse "Mary Sue" and "Protagonist" tbh. Or they look at a character who has story importance and try to claim they're a Mary Sue for having that importance. I see it happen all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

lol what. How do you fail that hard?

[(Anonymous)]

At this point I detest that term. As soon as someone uses it I just stop reading. SO SICK of female characters being held to ridiculous scrutiny. God fucking forbid we have heroines and go on a journey through a girl's eyes.

Katniss is flawed in a normal way and has normal strengths.

[kallanda_lee]

I tend to agree. And, I do think the characters do have a lot of depth especially considering it's a YA book.

And the thing with Katniss is that's she not perfect - she's just trying to do what she needs to survive and finds strength in herself. I think that's not the same as a Mary Sue at all.

[queerwolf]

+1 She's far from perfect and has some very real flaws, not Mary Sue "flaws."

[(Anonymous)]

People basically think that any (female) character they don't like who has any kind of plot significance and/or any kind of talent is a Mary Sue. It's awful and ridiculous.

[intrigueing]

Ayup.

[feotakahari]

I like to describe Katniss as badass Bella Swan. Her issue is less "I'm stupid and worthless" and more "I'm so ruthless I can't really connect with people," but she has the same pattern of moping followed by action. It's just that for her, action means actually doing something.

(For what it's worth, I think this character type was done way better in Graceling.)

[(Anonymous)]

i don't know she's not so much moping as struggling with extreme ptsd

[jaydestarlight]

Nothing more productive to say except Graceling is so, so under appreciated in my opinion.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I've never heard of Graceling! What's it all about? I'm always on the lookout for new reading material.

[meishuu]

I loved Graceling.

(And still cringe at people calling Katsa a "man with boobs" because she didn't wanted to marry)

[(Anonymous)]

Being the protagonist doesn't automatically mean a character can't be a Mary Sue though.

[(Anonymous)]

No, but many traits people use to label characters a Mary Sues these days ("the narrative focuses on them;" "other character interactions revolve around them;" "the world changes because of them") are traits that a central protagonist is necessarily going to have.

It's like the whole idea of "oh, of COURSE the main character is the 'chosen one!' What bullshit!" Or "why do the characters in this story JUST HAPPEN to be the ones that the major world events center around? What bullshit!" Oh, I dunno, maybe because you wouldn't have much of a story otherwise? How interesting is it to have a story about someone who stays put the entire time things are happening out in the world and who only experiences everything on the periphery? "Oh gosh, I was just out farming, but then MONSTERS showed up for a day, and we held them off, and then nothing happened for a while, but I hear someone out there in the world defeated the Great Evil."

[(Anonymous)]

I think I lost all respect for the term when I heard someone say Katniss was a Mary Sue because "everyone wants to either help her or kill her." Yes, they want to help her or kill her because they are *trapped in a game that is literally about either helping or killing each other*, oh my god.

[meishuu]

I'm so fucking sick of this term (and I don't even like Katniss that much!). It has become such a lazy excuse instead of actual analysis of female characters. And why is always the female characters that get called "Mary Sue"? Yes, male characters sometimes are called that, but they don't get scrutinised at the same level. And then you end with bland, boring female characters because young authors get scared of actually giving their characters personality.

As I always say: I you use the term "Mary Sue" to talk about a female character and can't back it up with actual facts, well... I think you're a god-damn moron and won't talk to you any more.

[(Anonymous)]

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone call a female protagonist a mary sue...

[(Anonymous)]

If anyone is a Mary Sue it's Peeta.

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of people think "Mary Sue"="character I don't like." On the bright side, it gives me an excuse to enjoy places like brps and marysuefacepalm.

[(Anonymous)]

So much agreement, OP.

I want people to remember that the term Mary Sue is derived from fan-fiction where an overly perfect/dramatic character created by the fic author interrupts and distracts from the canon characters. Katniss can't be a Mary Sue for that simple reason. I'm sick of that term being used towards source material. We need to leave it in fan fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

I could see it in the first book with all the times she doesn't get how attractive she is to Gale and Peeta, etc, but she's ultimately well defined as a character. She's affected by the events in the book, she makes mistakes, she is sometimes portrayed as a character in the wrong, like how wrong she realized she was for treating Finnick like a nasty himbo. So I could understand feeling that way about portions of the series but not overall.