On “Perfect” Characters: A response to DigiBrony and Brony Curious

Hello everyone, this is The Oneiromancer, thought I might try out writing articles for when I don’t feel like making videos, hope you enjoy. On an embarrassing side note, the links appear to be somewhat difficult, you may have to right click them to open them, sorry about that.

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As I am sure most of you have probably forgotten about what with all the Season 4 hype and the wonderful return of the show, Digibrony and Brony Curious made some videos a about a month ago about “perfect” characters and Mary Sue. Though this is my (devil’s advocate) take on this discussion as a whole, most of the main points of this topic came from these two, though I may reference other replies later.

The videos can be found here.

DigiBrony

BronyCurious

Assuming you have seen the videos, let’s begin.

On “Perfect”-non Mary Sues in fiction



In Digi’s video he gives a list of characters in the beginning that he believes to be perfect but not Mary Sues (such as Vash or Captain Picard), and believes that Twilight is also among the characters listed in his video, he even goes so far as to say that “unquestionably good” people exist in real life, citing Mr. Rogers as an example. BC gives his own example in the form of Superman.

The problem with some of these characters is that, as The Ninja DC points out, they are far from perfect upon further examination. I am not going to really add anything to what he said about them, the only thing I want to add is that, being a fan of the Star Wars EU, Luke Skywalker most certainly had more short-comings and made some costly mistakes since Return Of The Jedi, including falling to the dark side for a short time, among other things.

In regards to Superman, I will admit that I am not a huge fan of Superman, nothing personal but I never really got into it. However I was already aware that some people actually do, in fact argue for Superman being a total Mary Sue, and although I am an outsider the arguments from them seem to have some weight to them, such as this thread from TV Tropes, or this article from Cracked.

In regards to Digi’s example of Mr Rogers as a real life example of a “perfect” person, I found that on a quick refresher on his life that he was, yes, a great guy (not that I ever doubted this). However I also noticed that he never really did anything controversial. Now you may be reading that thinking that I am grasping at straws, well let me explain myself. When I say “controversial” I refer to something as mundane as religion or politics, everyone has an opinion or stance on those topics and you will get haters and criticism no matter which position you choose. My point is that if Mr. Rogers had been, say, a politician or similar, he may have been remembered a lot differently.

Another thing I noticed was that it seems that these videos (specifically BC’s video) imply that Mary Sue has a set definition and there is a way to objectively argue for whether or not a character is one. True there is a willing suspension of disbelief here in that there is at least a general idea of what a Mary Sue is but the word is actually somewhat fluid, within reason. There are many ways a Sue may manifest, even TV Tropes does not give a set definition, but they give a more rough outline of what one may be, this includes a list of different types of Sues and general traits, and even then this is just the tip of the iceberg, considering they needed an index to catalog all the tropes about Mary Sues.

The last part is about the idea that a character is a “paragon of goodness”. The problem I have hear is the same as the one above and it is the idea that good and evil are well defined things. This can lead the an interesting look at the videos because even within Moral Realism (where objective morals exist) you may get a different view depending on how they define the terms, and thus produce different answers as to which character personifies “good/evil”, and this does not get into all the ways a Moral Anti-Realist (where morality is subjective or even non-existent) could interpret these videos or that question.

Anyway, in regards to MLP, I do not think Twilight is a perfect character post season 3, which has thankfully been confirmed after having viewed the two-part season 4 opener. Though I would have to disagree with (what I believe) Digi was saying when he seemed to imply that Twilight having conquered all of her flaws having been a good thing. Simply because (referring to the above points on the Cracked article on Superman) I tend to find “perfect” main characters to be boring at best, to broken or even Mary Sues at worst, at least from my memory at this time.

Anyway, moving on…

On Flaws and Character Development

Both Digi and BC brought this up in one way or another. BC claims in his video that a character cannot develop into a Mary Sue, and that one eliminating their flaws is not becoming a Mary Sue, but rather it is character development. Digi brought up Twilight’s development and how some may have believed her relatability was compromised because (to paraphrase) “they have not undertaken/succeeded at a difficult thing” and “are scared to make changes for the better”.

There are essentially two main things I will be talking about here.

1-It is impossible to be or become perfect or flawless

I would almost label this as a fundamental fact to me, I have yet to hear of anyone in real life who was perfect or flawless nor anyone who managed to “develop” into that. The same is true (again from memory) of good main characters in fiction. Some reasons for that are that what counts as “development” or “a flaw/strength” is entirely dependent on things like time, setting, and subjectivity.

In real life whatever people consider “development” most likely being considered in comparison to the beliefs and preferences of the person who is judging you. For example, when speaking of something very broad like Romanticism Vs Enlightenment it can have an impact on this, especially considering that neither side is really better than the other and both sides can be corrupted, despite the fact that they are opposites. Obviously adherents on either side will argue that the other side is wrong and they are right, and that you should “improve” by becoming more like them.

A good fictional example would be MLPFIM vs BlazBlue. In MLP having a loner gaining relationships with friends and trusting others in a universe possibly containing objective morality would be considered development. These same things would get you taken advantage of and possibly killed in BlazBlue (the latter being if you were lucky), here you need to know how to stand on your own two feet and not depend on others, and objective morality is also something worth abandoning (not that it exists there). Obviously that would not be considered “development” in Equestria, as what counts as a flaw in these places is reversed.

Another point on this was addressed by MLP itself with the episode Putting Your Hoof Down, the episode with Fluttershy and Iron Will, for those who don’t remember. Where Fluttershy seems to have eliminated her shyness, which both in episode and to some fans is a character flaw, and she becomes more assertive. Now one could argue how the episode handled or portrayed it, but there is a part that I find correct about it. Specifically that attempting to eliminate a flaw will not make you flawless, it will simply give you a different flaw.

In real life (and yes this will be a much weirder example) consider this, this is a 1970 Oldsmobile 442, and American Muscle Car enthusiasts (such as myself) think of this as a classic. It had a powerful V8 engine, was fast, fun and most of all had character. But much later down the road GM thought it would be a good idea to correct some of what they believed were flaws. They made it cheaper to build and afford, more practical in the winter and easier to drive. Unfortunately this was the result, as you can see it is not a powerful, RWD V8 muscle car, it was not that fast either, it became a slow, FWD 4 cylinder grocery-getter. This is because in the pursuit of what GM thought were good ideas, it lost everything that made people like the old Cutlass 442, including the wonderful character it had. This is not to say that you should never try to better yourself, but we are talking about character traits here, and I would argue that in that regard you are more likely just making yourself different rather than better (though there are probably some exceptions, but I will not be exploring that here), though I will agree that some traits are more practical than others, but that may depend on where you live and it is debatable if following them is always worth it (as there always seems to be something wrong with people in society which varies depending on who you ask). Now onto my last point of this section…finally…which is that people not improving themselves may have different reasons then just “fear of change”. Subjectivity of improvement aside, One reason may have to deal with practicality, specifically that one may not need to better themselves because they are already good enough. For example we may consider intelligence and the acquiring of it to be bettering oneself. However if one is a college student looking to become a programmer then what use do they have taking a biology class? Sure in the context of this example it would be bettering yourself, but here the avoidance of it is not out of fear, but of practicality. The other side of it is that one may not be unsympathetic to Twilight from “feeling left behind” by her supposedly conquering her flaws, rather it could be with the portrayal of how they were conquered. There are problems in real life, where the act of conquering or managing the problem(s) is extremely difficult (perhaps there may even be some problems where it is impossible). Consider Twilight’s anxiety, while there is no indication that it has been conquered, there is a lot that tells me that either way is shouldn’t be because of how it would have been dealt with. The reason is because they do not show her managing it with therapy and medication and only showing some success after a plausible amount of time (which is how you do it in real life). But the problem is that anxiety is not an arbitrary flaw that can be very simply willed away in a flash with a simple breathing exercise (though those can help for some). If her anxiety would have really been removed this way (which to BC’s credit he does point out that said exercise fails in the same episode, suggesting it didn’t totally) then it would not be challenging me to conquer my flaws, but rather I would be prompted to start reaching for my “Mary Sue” flag for the unrealistic speed and ease she would have taken care of it with. But again this would be directed to people who believe that Twilight conquered her anxiety with only a breathing exercise in Games Ponies Play during the duration of the episode (as an established flaw should not disappear that easily). Now, only my last point… 2-You *can* ruin a well-written, established character with enough bad writing.

I know that neither one of them said this verbatim, but obviously a Mary Sue is considered by a large majority to be bad writing. However both Digi and BC seem to believe that a character cannot become a Mary Sue if they were a previously well written character (though to be fair this only seems to be implied on Digi’s part). I disagree and say that all you need for a character to become a Sue is some bad writing, in fact this can ruin any character whether they become a Sue at the end or not.

Although BC directly states that

The important thing to take away from this is that you cannot become a Mary Sue. If you have character weaknesses and eventually learn to overcome them, that isn’t becoming a Mary Sue, that’s character development.

But there is something wrong with this statement (aside from all the stuff I talk about earlier), earlier in the video he defines “Mary Sue” like so

A character so perfect that they are never challenged by the events of the narrative.

My problem here is that there is nothing that says a character can’t develop into that even if they were a previously well written character and I did not find (if I recall correctly) any given reason why one could not develop into a Mary Sue. Or conversely, why developing into the kind of character defined above after having previously been a well written character would excuse them from the Mary Sue label.

Perhaps I should argue that development is not inherently good. Sure it can help some annoying, unlikable ect. characters become likable (such as Waver in Fate Zero, and while he was not at all annoying or unlikable Alexander The Great of the same anime certainly gain a lot from his character development). However the opposite is true too, and it is most certainly possible to completely ruin other characters, such as Kratos of God Of War as argued by Extra Credits, or (character centered Wall Bangers and Dethroning Moment Of Suck moments aside) this trope. I know that not all examples may be about how a character becomes a Mary Sue, but as a Mary Sue is considered bad writing, there is no reason why it would be impossible to end up with one with enough bad writing and/or bad development.

Anyway, that is all I really wanted to say. I hope you all enjoyed the article, feel free to leave me some feedback, and have a nice day.