Zontar said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Also with the thing about women in "traditionally male roles", look at the wording there, it's women taking on men's roles by that wording, meaning it's not the norm. There are lots of lead women in hero roles and such, but they're not as ubiquitous as straight white cisgender male characters in those same roles. Just the same there are ethnic minorities in lots of hero roles, but the white guy hero is still the norm. As in the majority of these characters tend to be straight white cis men.
That's what's called "art imitating life". 96% of the human race is cis, half of that are men, in both the United States and most of the nations typically used for assisting in production (usually Canada, the UK or some mainland European nations when it comes to blockbusters) the vast majority are white, and many (re: virtually all) of the roles in question are ones that men gravitate towards much more then women. I honestly cannot for the life of me understand how someone seeing a person who is the single most likely to fill a role in real life is such an offensive notion to some people. When it comes to blue collar work, military field roles or the type of jobs that are used for the typical occupations of the people in these films, having more then 10% of the workforce involved be women is noteworthy onto itself.
What always gives me a good laugh is that these demands for more racial, sex and orientation diversity is being aimed at the nation with the most of all three when it comes to entertainment, but that's just something that always makes me laugh and isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand.
Unless we're gonna ignore the boycotts and protests thrown against The Force Awakens by white-supremest, MRA, and PUA groups like Stormfront, A Voice for Men, and Return of Kings. To say that they're not making a big stink over all female, gay, and ethnic minority characters is ignoring what they've been doing since before Fury Road came out last year.
Last time I checked Return of Kings was the only one that anyone cared enough about to even bother reporting that they took issue with the movies in question (often times lying about them being MRAs when they openly hate MRAs themselves, and MRAs hate them right back), Stormfront isn't taken seriously by anyone (hell the 'radical racist' niche is dominated by the Nation of Islam, a single black supremacist group larger then all white supremacist groups in the US put together).
The tabloid rags like The Mary Sue that complained about these people complaining are much larger then them and are still irrelevant sites themselves. Complaining about these sites and these people is drawing attention to groups which collectively make up less the 1% of the people relevant to this discussion. I honestly have no idea why you even brought them up at all given how they are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
You said this yourself:
The reason the term "Mary Sue" is cropping up a lot lately is that there have been a lot of strong characters like Jessica Johnes, Furiosa, Rey, and so on.
This is demonstrably not the case at all in any way, as Jones and Furiosa where not widely called Mary Sues by general audiences, while Rey, a very noticeable "one of these things is not like the others" within this group of three, very much is by wider audiences.
My point is you're complaining about a few small groups who have no relevance in the discussion at all, have no noteworthy presence and overall distract from the topic at hand by being mentioned.
Except it is relevant because these small groups are the ones very vocally shouting about how characters, even Jones and Furiosa, are "Mary Sues".
These small groups who have "no relevance" are the ones spewing the phrase "Mary Sue" the most, that's the entire point of me bringing them up. Yeah they don't get much mainstream attention, but they're still guilty of most of the misuse of the term in recent memory. For the sake of fairness the other side throwing down the "Mary Sue" card with nary a bit of self awareness, are feminist groups who count all of these female leads as pandering. Which honestly isn't any help in this case.
Still I suppose I have to clarify so read carefully:
1) I'm not opposed to straight white cisgender male lead characters, they're a fact of life. I'm not for removing them wholesale either. I would like more diversity in characters portrayed in media, but that's not going to change current trends. At the same time I find nothing specifically wrong with the typical cisgender straight white male protagonist, except maybe it's become a bit boring to me.
2) I think we can both agree that: So long as a character is well written, most people won't have issues with that character being a woman, an ethnic minority, some sexuality other than straight, and/or trans, because the character is well written. Heck most people don't even have problems with lead characters that are fictional space aliens, dragons, or what have you, provided the character is well written.
3) Despite the above most lead characters are straight white cisgender men, especially in action movies, specifically movies produced in western world. Important here is the fact that
there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it's the traditional default, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. On the same note, movies produced in India are dominated by Male Indian leads, in Japan they're dominated by Male Japanese leads, that's all well and fine. Lets not gussy it up with excuses based on marketing, or demographics, because people outside the west watch movies made here, people outside Japan watch Japanese movies, and etc... This is more because most writers happen to be men of the dominate race of where they tend to be employed, minority writers on the other hand help cater to niche markets. For example in the Hollywood, black writers tend to be involved in the making of movies targeted specifically at black audiences, which many folk from other races enjoy. Again that's perfectly fine, the best writers are the ones who write what they know and understand. So all and all in Hollywood movies straight white cis men being the most common lead is perfectly fine, because that's what most movie writers know best.
4) The groups dropping the term "Mary Sue" left and right are generally not doing it because a character is objectively badly written, they're doing it as part of their socio-political narrative. With MRA/anti-feminists they do it because they're objecting to how they perceive women taking over their spaces in order to oppress men. Racists do it because they hate minorities and generally have super traditional views on gender roles. Hard line feminists do it because no female character, no matter how well done, will check all the boxes for them to approve of the character.
5) The above groups aren't mainstream groups, they basically amount to small groups of people blithering about not getting their exact way all the time. While these groups aren't particularly big, nor are they mainstream, they make a lot of noise that people notice from time to time. As in they're a vocal minority.
6) Finally it's these groups that keep bring up the "Mary Sue" trope where it doesn't belong, they do this loudly. Now as far as I've seen the only groups I've been seeing that have been making a big deal out of the "Mary Sue" trope. These small groups are the ones I see that keep bring up Mary Sue tropes in regards to characters like Rey, Jessica Jones, Furiosa and Etc... These small groups ***** loudly in this manner and derail discussions constantly, which is why "Mary Sue" has become a big buzzword lately. That's all I was trying to say this entire time. Not any thing about "we need more diversity" or "[insert character] is a Mary Sue", it's all about some loud idiots constantly misusing the word for their own political agendas. Something many of these sorts of people do anytime there is a lead character that isn't the typical straight white cis dude. That's all I was saying
Final clarification: There are plenty of people who view the characters I mentioned as Mary Sue characters, not because of politics, but because they find the characters to be poorly done and overpowered. That's perfectly alright, I don't take issue with that, everyone is entitled to their opinions on any character. It's when people start using female leads, or black leads, or trans leads, or whatever leads to support their claim that there is a massive sinister conspiracy to destroy white men, that's when I take issue.
Now are we all cleared up here? Would you kindly refrain from putting words in my mouth and making assumptions about what I'm saying now?
