Mary Sues

[Dazzle1]

Since there seems to be a disagreement on another thread, i thought I would bring up the Mary Sue/Gary Stan question

For those that don't know this was a parody for fan fiction where an ordinary person suddenly becomes perfect at everything.

I put forth the premise that Rey from what I feel was a very bad film The Force Awakens is a Mary Sue, because she is able to do everything and only flaw seem to be a slight lack of confidences.

Other ones:

Damien in the DC movies this kid can beat Nightwing and Wilson Slade?
Zena can hold her own against against a demigod like Heracles and is knowledgible in several sciences
Donna Noble and Rose from DR Who two losers who become able Galatic heroines
Will Robinson from Lost in Space TV, smarter than his dad and more tech savvy and ends up saving the day in many episodes

[shevek]

Kitty Pryde seems like a good example of a character who fairly recently became M*ry S*ed in the comics..right?

I assume you don't know about the website The M*ry S*e, which covers geek culture in a very third-wave feminist/intersectionalist/progressive manner, calling everything and everyone out Sarkeesian-style (but in a bit of a gentler manner) with clickbait article titles like "why are Final Fantasy XV fans anti-woman" or a writer chronicling the entire history of "You Don't Own Me" (because of its use in Suicide Squad). Their review of Suicide Squad literally complained about why the movie didn't pay *two* women to play the Enchantress instead of just one! Then it goes on a several paragraph tear about all the sexist and racist instances in the film, its justification for the US prison system and its uncritical portrayal of the US military. That's the kind of hard-left-anarcho complainey level they're on.
http://www.them*rys*e.com/

While there is a place for it in pop culture, obviously, I'm sure glad the writers from that site don't know about this forum or the SHIP scene.
I think you might even want things to stay that way by *not* typing out the full word M*ry S*e so they don't see it in analytic searches. Just saying

[Heroine Addict]

It seems pretty implausible that this massively indexed site has somehow stayed off the radar of the pop culture activists. Censoring the term Mary Sue won't keep us invisible.

As for Mary Sues in superhero/ine stories, the entire genre is based on characters who are special and unique in some way that makes them, y'know, SUPER.

Almost all the Golden and Silver Age heroes and heroines were pretty much flawless. Even the modern angsty ones generally have superficial flaws that don't hold them back too much.

And isn't a huge part of this fetish getting to see the depowerment of the 'perfect' heroine?

[shevek]

And yet it somehow has stayed off their radar until now, luckily.

I was under the impression that Mary Sue meant that the person's perfection was somehow sudden and highly implausible even given the story context.
Kind of a human deus-ex-machina. Is that definition incorrect?

Is Squirrel Girl the ultimate Mary Sue?

[Heroine Addict]

The discussion on the Star Wars thread concerned Rey being a "Mary Sue". Whether or not she fits the profile, I pointed out that the introductions of both Luke and Anakin would certainly fall into the same category. So it's bizarre to treat The Force Awakens as a betrayal of what went before.

[Dazzle1]

It seems pretty implausible that this massively indexed site has somehow stayed off the radar of the pop culture activists. Censoring the term Mary Sue won't keep us invisible.

As for Mary Sues in superhero/ine stories, the entire genre is based on characters who are special and unique in some way that makes them, y'know, SUPER.

Almost all the Golden and Silver Age heroes and heroines were pretty much flawless. Even the modern angsty ones generally have superficial flaws that don't hold them back too much.

And isn't a huge part of this fetish getting to see the depowerment of the 'perfect' heroine?

Lets look at the most powerful superheroines:

Wonder Woman yes she is powerful , but she is not a super genius and she can not create gadgets and if she lost her power due to belt removal she would lose a fight to Batgirl
Batgirl top of the skilled non powered heroine, but no way she is beating Supergiril
Supergirl Powers but if she went against Superman or Zod she would get her butt kicked due to lack of training

[Heroine Addict]

It seems pretty implausible that this massively indexed site has somehow stayed off the radar of the pop culture activists. Censoring the term Mary Sue won't keep us invisible.

As for Mary Sues in superhero/ine stories, the entire genre is based on characters who are special and unique in some way that makes them, y'know, SUPER.

Almost all the Golden and Silver Age heroes and heroines were pretty much flawless. Even the modern angsty ones generally have superficial flaws that don't hold them back too much.

And isn't a huge part of this fetish getting to see the depowerment of the 'perfect' heroine?

Lets look at the most powerful superheroines:

Wonder Woman yes she is powerful , but she is not a super genius and she can not create gadgets and if she lost her power due to belt removal she would lose a fight to Batgirl
Batgirl top of the skilled non powered heroine, but no way she is beating Supergiril
Supergirl Powers but if she went against Superman or Zod she would get her butt kicked due to lack of training

What are you saying here? You seem to be conflating the concept of the "Mary Sue" with being undefeatable.

Every single one of those heroines had years of adventures where they had the wiles and skills to defy the odds, time and again. Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke is the only one who was defeated on anything even vaguely resembling a permanent basis.

Could you please define what exactly you mean by a "Mary Sue"? Rey discovering she had hidden powers/skills blatantly echoed the narrative journey of Luke. If one is a "Mary Sue", so is the other.

[Dogfish]

The discussion on the Star Wars thread concerned Rey being a "Mary Sue". Whether or not she fits the profile, I pointed out that the introductions of both Luke and Anakin would certainly fall into the same category. So it's bizarre to treat The Force Awakens as a betrayal of what went before.

I think the Rey one was just the necessary indicator that Mary Sue is a term applied by men and boys who don't like women to be portrayed as equal or superior to men (superiority being the key usually, by definition the hero is usually the 'best' at stuff). The fact that her arc is exactly the same as Luke and Anakin's but is seen as unacceptable was just daft and it revealed the root cause of the hurt feelings.

We'll be seeing the term bandied about with regards to Rogue One as well no doubt.

[shevek]

Again, would characters like Squirrel Girl and Forbush Man be considered the ultimate Mary Sues?

[Dazzle1]

No Rey's arc is not similar to Luke and Anakin

Both lost their first fight and a hand in a light saber deul
Anakin to Count Dooku Luke to Vader and this after both had been trained by Jedi Masters

And lets look at Damien who may have been trained by Ras Al Ghoul but was a mid teen, beating generally accepted after Batman the best all around non powered hero in D.C Nightwing and Deathstroke who Nightwing often loses too

[Dogfish]

And yet it somehow has stayed off their radar until now, luckily.

I was under the impression that Mary Sue meant that the person's perfection was somehow sudden and highly implausible even given the story context.
Kind of a human deus-ex-machina. Is that definition incorrect?

Is Squirrel Girl the ultimate Mary Sue?

The usual definition of Mary Sue-ness is that the author is inserting themselves into the story as a character who is coincidentally the best thing in the story.

Don't think that applies to Squirrel Girl. The best example I can think of is James Bond.

[Heroine Addict]

No Rey's arc is not similar to Luke and Anakin

Both lost their first fight and a hand in a light saber deul
Anakin to Count Dooku Luke to Vader and this after both had been trained by Jedi Masters

And lets look at Damien who may have been trained by Ras Al Ghoul but was a mid teen, beating generally accepted after Batman the best all around non powered hero in D.C Nightwing and Deathstroke who Nightwing often loses too

Are you really trying to narrow this down to duelling with lightsabers? Luke clearly won his first REAL battle with Vader by winning the space dogfight and destroying the Death Star. Han may have helped, but then Chewie also wounded Kylo before the duel with Rey.

If your evidence for Rey being more of a "Mary Sue" is that she defeated the deeply flawed - and already wounded - Kylo Ren in combat, then that's pretty tenuous evidence.

[Mr. X]

No Rey's arc is not similar to Luke and Anakin

Both lost their first fight and a hand in a light saber duel
Anakin to Count Dooku Luke to Vader and this after both had been trained by Jedi Masters

And lets look at Damien who may have been trained by Ras Al Ghoul but was a mid teen, beating generally accepted after Batman the best all around non powered hero in D.C Nightwing and Deathstroke who Nightwing often loses too

I agree. Rey should never have beaten Ren. Ren should have tossed her about like a rag doll. Rey encounters the force for the first time hours earlier, had NEVER seen a light sabre in her life, had NO sabre training, maybe some self taught staff training.

Compare that to Luke. Luke grew up, maybe he was a good shot so what, Luke's first outing all he did was bulls eye a shot. Second outing after training from Yoda he gets his hand cut off and gets beaten by Darth. Anikin also goes through years of training under Obiwan. He and Obiwan BOTH could not beat Lord Doku.

Rey should have been dismembered or mutilated or perhaps Ren just toys with her and lets her go cause she's so pathetic and THAT is why she seeks training.

This is NOT and I repeat NOT about Rey being a woman. ITS NOT ABOUT GENDER for the story. If Rey was a guy this would SUCK as a story line. This is bad writing. In all the Star Wars material training and practice MEAN SOMETHING. Sure some people have a stronger force (Anikin) but Anikin took YEARS to bring it out.

In fact one of the most complained about and cringe worthy scenarios was the first episode where little boy Anikin accidentally launches a fighter and he whimsically shoots down trained combat pilots then blows up the mother ship. Is that story telling or pandering? Its pandering.

And this kind of pandering is insulting sexism. Its the sexism of lowered expectations. Its the message that girls do not have to train, practice, learn, fail, learn again, be humbled. Instead all they have to do is be mad and BAM they beat the bad guy. Mary Sue is 100% applicable to this situation no different than in the 70s and the 80s when the white male always won cause... white male. There is no equivalency in story arc. Rey's arc is total pandering.

Plus Kylo Ren is such a wimpy bad guy its pathetic. He's closer to Matt the radar tech than some dark side knight. So not only is this pandering but the villain she faces is some sniveling man child who has no presence. Would love to see her fight Darth Maul or Lord Dooku. Winning has to mean something. This is like grade school where the teacher just lets the girls win today at a running race.

[Dogfish]

No Rey's arc is not similar to Luke and Anakin

Both lost their first fight and a hand in a light saber deul
Anakin to Count Dooku Luke to Vader and this after both had been trained by Jedi Masters

And lets look at Damien who may have been trained by Ras Al Ghoul but was a mid teen, beating generally accepted after Batman the best all around non powered hero in D.C Nightwing and Deathstroke who Nightwing often loses too

Luke wins his first fight with Vader, insomuch as he avoids his TIE fighter long enough to blow up the Death Star. At his first time flying a space fighter. He does lose a lightsaber duel, but it's worth remembering that Vader is a badass and Luke was raised a softlad who bricks it at the sight of a sand person and gets picked on in bars. He gets taught how to lift an X-Wing by a muppet but he's still a wuss.

Rey by contrast grew up on her own, beating people up with sticks, doing awesome salvage stuff and generally being an all round self-trained force-powered survivor. No part of her skillset is not in keeping with the life she has. By the end of the movie she gets her hands on a lightsaber and of course she fills in that ponce Kylo Ren because he's a posh emo fanny who doesn't even lift.

Trying to pick holes in the competency of a female lead character as if it matters in a movie that has so many other gaping flaws is just daft. If you want to complain about things in Episode 7 that are ridiculously more powerful than in the earlier movies without any reference to common sense or the established lore take a look at the Super Death Star. What's the word for a Mary Sue when it's a planet that shoots interplanetary doom-balls?

[Dogfish]

I agree. Rey should never have beaten Ren. Ren should have tossed her about like a rag doll. Rey encounters the force for the first time hours earlier, had NEVER seen a light sabre in her life, had NO sabre training, maybe some self taught staff training.

Compare that to Luke. Luke grew up, maybe he was a good shot so what, Luke's first outing all he did was bulls eye a shot. Second outing after training from Yoda he gets his hand cut off and gets beaten by Darth. Anikin also goes through years of training under Obiwan. He and Obiwan BOTH could not beat Lord Doku.

Rey should have been dismembered or mutilated or perhaps Ren just toys with her and lets her go cause she's so pathetic and THAT is why she seeks training.

This is NOT and I repeat NOT about Rey being a woman. ITS NOT ABOUT GENDER for the story. If Rey was a guy this would SUCK as a story line. This is bad writing. In all the Star Wars material training and practice MEAN SOMETHING. Sure some people have a stronger force (Anikin) but Anikin took YEARS to bring it out.

In fact one of the most complained about and cringe worthy scenarios was the first episode where little boy Anikin accidentally launches a fighter and he whimsically shoots down trained combat pilots then blows up the mother ship. Is that story telling or pandering? Its pandering.

And this kind of pandering is insulting sexism. Its the sexism of lowered expectations. Its the message that girls do not have to train, practice, learn, fail, learn again, be humbled. Instead all they have to do is be mad and BAM they beat the bad guy. Mary Sue is 100% applicable to this situation no different than in the 70s and the 80s when the white male always won cause... white male. There is no equivalency in story arc. Rey's arc is total pandering.

Plus Kylo Ren is such a wimpy bad guy its pathetic. He's closer to Matt the radar tech than some dark side knight.

See that's my point, Kylo Ren doesn't get battered because Rey is inexplicably powerful, he gets beaten because he's a wimp.

Scrappy survivor raised in a desert slum vs poshboy gone off the rails is a no contest. So she's never seen a lightsaber before, so what? She's probably kicked more butts in more fights than he's had hot dinners. He's not a warrior, he's an aristocrat, a buffoon who does his killing in cold blood. There is absolutely no precedent established in that film that Kylo Ren can fight worth a damn. He's okay with the force when he's not having some kind of emotional breakdown (which is apparently quite rare) but we don't seem him fight anybody except Finn, and Finn nearly takes him to school. I mean just look at the number of times he completely loses his shit and chops things up with his lightsaber in impotent rage. He's not Vader. Not even close. He's playing at being a hard case.

It's pretty clear that for all the talk of 'training' Kylo Ren is a crap fighter. And I think it's strange that people's first assumption is that everybody he fights against is ludicrously highly skilled when the Occam's Razor in the situation is that Kylo is actually just rubbish in a fight.

And yeah, the stuff in the prequels is all absolute garbage, especially Anakin's babby's first killing spree in a space fighter. Godawful stuff.

[Mr. X]

Luke wins his first fight with Vader, insomuch as he avoids his TIE fighter long enough to blow up the Death Star.

No, sorry. That's NOT fighting someone in hand to hand combat. That's not even related. And Darth was being shot at by Han remember?

At his first time flying a space fighter.

Actually not. He flew other craft, maybe not star fighters but other craft. So when little child anikin flies a star fighter and shoots down expert fighter pilots that's a on OK scenario... or pandering to kids?

He does lose a lightsaber duel, but it's worth remembering that Vader is a badass and Luke was raised a softlad who bricks it at the sight of a sand person and gets picked on in bars. He gets taught how to lift an X-Wing by a muppet but he's still a wuss.

Err nope. Luke gets training by an expert and a heck of a lot more training than Rey ever got and he was totally toyed with then dismembered by Darth. And Luke had time to learn and use his Jedi ability. Rey got NO TRAINING. Luke wasn't mind controlling people 2 hours after learning about the force.

Rey by contrast grew up on her own, beating people up with sticks, doing awesome salvage stuff and generally being an all round self-trained force-powered survivor. No part of her skillset is not in keeping with the life she has. By the end of the movie she gets her hands on a lightsaber and of course she fills in that ponce Kylo Ren because he's a posh emo fanny who doesn't even lift.

So what. She had NO Jedi training. NO training with the force. No idea what the force was. She had picked up a light saber hours before hand. Had NEVER been taught the force. If this was a male character would you give them the same pass.

Now lets look at Ren. GROWS UP as a child training under Luke. YEARS AND YEARS of training. Becomes Luke's top student. Is powerful enough to kill ALL OF LUKE'S OTHER STUDENTS. Scares Luke away. Trains partially under Snokes who's a sith lord. Does training mean anything? Even Anikin who trained under Obwan for YEARS could not defeate Dooku with the help of Obiwan in his first fight. Rey should not have been able to TOUCH Ren let alone beat him.

Trying to pick holes in the competency of a female lead character as if it matters in a movie that has so many other gaping flaws is just daft.

This has nothing to do with her being female. NOTHING. This has to do with bad writing. Finn should NEVER have gotten a hit on Ren. That was bad writing. I complain JUST as much about Finn getting a hit on Ren as I do about Rey doing it. Finn has NO light Saber or force training. In fact there is no implication he even has the force. NO WAY he should have scored the hit.

You've got to leave the sex out of this. Rey is just a bad, two dimension, card board character. You can replace her with ANYONE. She brings nothing distinctive to the role.

[Mr. X]

See that's my point, Kylo Ren doesn't get battered because Rey is inexplicably powerful, he gets beaten because he's a wimp.

There is no way he could be Luke's best student, kill all of Luke's students then scare Luke off then be trained by Snokes and be in charge of the entire Imperial fleet if he was a wimp. That makes no sense.

In fact if there is any conspiracy its putting this guy in as the bad guy so Rey looks 1000% better.

She's probably kicked more butts in more fights than he's had hot dinners.

So if she was a he would you say the same thing? I think its YOU being sexist. Its your kind of person that is promoting something for some other kind of agenda, not men complaining a woman is in a role. If Rey was a guy I would slam the story just as hard for being poor writing.

[tallyho]

Rey is just a bad, two dimension, card board character. You can replace her with ANYONE. She brings nothing distinctive to the role.

Thats pretty much true of ALL Lucas' characters


Lads they are just films...

[Heroine Addict]

See that's my point, Kylo Ren doesn't get battered because Rey is inexplicably powerful, he gets beaten because he's a wimp.

There is no way he could be Luke's best student, kill all of Luke's students then scare Luke off then be trained by Snokes and be in charge of the entire Imperial fleet if he was a wimp. That makes no sense.

In fact if there is any conspiracy its putting this guy in as the bad guy so Rey looks 1000% better.

She's probably kicked more butts in more fights than he's had hot dinners.

So if she was a he would you say the same thing? I think its YOU being sexist. Its your kind of person that is promoting something for some other kind of agenda, not men complaining a woman is in a role. If Rey was a guy I would slam the story just as hard for being poor writing.

Almost as poor as the writing which allowed a total novice fighter pilot win a dogfight against a Sith Lord with decades of experience. And if we're going to say that Han helped with that, well Chewie certainly helped Rey by shooting Kylo shortly before the duel.

Rey is just a bad, two dimension, card board character. You can replace her with ANYONE. She brings nothing distinctive to the role.

Thats pretty much true of ALL Lucas' characters


Lads they are just films...

Indeed. We're talking about the comparative vaguely-defined magical powers of made-up characters.

[Starts seething at the pandering and lowered expectations which allow Zatanna to be far more magical than Mandrake the Magician. It's political correctness gone mad!]

[Dogfish]

See that's my point, Kylo Ren doesn't get battered because Rey is inexplicably powerful, he gets beaten because he's a wimp.

There is no way he could be Luke's best student, kill all of Luke's students then scare Luke off then be trained by Snokes and be in charge of the entire Imperial fleet if he was a wimp. That makes no sense.

In fact if there is any conspiracy its putting this guy in as the bad guy so Rey looks 1000% better.

She's probably kicked more butts in more fights than he's had hot dinners.

So if she was a he would you say the same thing? I think its YOU being sexist. Its your kind of person that is promoting something for some other kind of agenda, not men complaining a woman is in a role. If Rey was a guy I would slam the story just as hard for being poor writing.

You might slam the story just as much if Rey was a guy and good for you if you did. But I've seen and talked with a metric shit-ton of guys for whom their obvious problem was they didn't want a woman protagonist for a Star Wars trilogy. So when I see somebody saying exactly the same things as they do, I tend to presume that it's for the same reason.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but even so, I don't see why you'd think the main character a bigger issue than the MacGuffin that the plot is based around, which is made of purest crapola.

As for Kylo Ren, course he could have done all those things and still been a big dingus. Maybe the other students were unarmed when he killed them. Maybe they were loads younger than him. Maybe he had his Sith ninja boys do it. He certainly doesn't need to be skilled to be commander of the Remnant Fleet given who his granddaddy is.

I think also there's way too much of a fixation in Star Wars nerd circles on training. Who trained who for how long under what circumstances. Luke blows up the Death Star not because he's trained but because he's been flying speeders for years and there is (apparently) some carry over into flying an X-Wing on a combat mission. Han Solo gets all up in Darth Vader's shit in the Falcon (not to mention pulling several fast ones on him and the entire Imperial fleet) because he's an experienced ace pilot in his own right not because we see him being trained. Han later commands two vital commando missions for the rebellion in eps 6 and 7 without training but he's established to be an experienced and capable operator, but again, nobody says, "Oh he was trained by whoever" we just accept he's badass.

Nobody ever questions why Han Solo can do all the things he does, and he's not even a Jedi, because he's experienced. He's a cool smuggler guy who is introduced with a backstory of adventure and upsetting the mollusc mafia, so we buy that he's skilled.

How is that different from Rey? She's established as being just as experienced in fighting and techy stuff as Han was (Han shoots a guy, Rey batters a few guys). Plus she works with tech all the time, every day, just to get a pittance to eat. Hell that's basically the background of Riddick, or one of the Fremen from Dune. No surprise at all she's a multi-skilled fighting machine.

[Dazzle1]

O'K how I am defining Rey as a Mary Sue

Rey not only is able to use various force discplines with no training, is able to fly the Millenium Falcon with never being on it. Is able to fit a ship that Han Solo has done alot of tinkering on.

No Accomplished Jedi has done this not Luke, Anakin Obi Wan, Mara Jade, kyp Durrion, Corran Horn etc.

It seems pretty implausible that this massively indexed site has somehow stayed off the radar of the pop culture activists. Censoring the term Mary Sue won't keep us invisible.

As for Mary Sues in superhero/ine stories, the entire genre is based on characters who are special and unique in some way that makes them, y'know, SUPER.

Almost all the Golden and Silver Age heroes and heroines were pretty much flawless. Even the modern angsty ones generally have superficial flaws that don't hold them back too much.

And isn't a huge part of this fetish getting to see the depowerment of the 'perfect' heroine?

Lets look at the most powerful superheroines:

Wonder Woman yes she is powerful , but she is not a super genius and she can not create gadgets and if she lost her power due to belt removal she would lose a fight to Batgirl
Batgirl top of the skilled non powered heroine, but no way she is beating Supergiril
Supergirl Powers but if she went against Superman or Zod she would get her butt kicked due to lack of training

What are you saying here? You seem to be conflating the concept of the "Mary Sue" with being undefeatable.

Every single one of those heroines had years of adventures where they had the wiles and skills to defy the odds, time and again. Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke is the only one who was defeated on anything even vaguely resembling a permanent basis.

Could you please define what exactly you mean by a "Mary Sue"? Rey discovering she had hidden powers/skills blatantly echoed the narrative journey of Luke. If one is a "Mary Sue", so is the other.

[Heroine Addict]

O'K how I am defining Rey as a Mary Sue

Rey not only is able to use various force discplines with no training, is able to fly the Millenium Falcon with never being on it. Is able to fit a ship that Han Solo has done alot of tinkering on.

No Accomplished Jedi has done this not Luke, Anakin Obi Wan, Mara Jade, kyp Durrion, Corran Horn etc.

Luke was able to telekinetically reach his lighsaber on Hoth. He was also able to operate the guns on the Falcon without combat training and pilot an X-Wing Fighter in battle, destroying the Death Star. Also without training.

But that's okay because he used to use the speeder to go to the shops to get some blue milk for his aunt. So he was clearly fully prepared for battle.

Bear in mind that a lot of recent sequels/revivals are trying to outdo their predecessors. (With mixed results.)
Jurassic World has a bigger park - this time open to the public - with new hybrid creatures.
Terminator: Genysis has so much timey-wimey nonsense that it disappears up its own asshole.
Captain America: Civil War has the biggest superhero fight sequence ever.
The Force Awakens has a bigger Death Star and a force-sensitive character with stronger powers than most Jedi.

The fact that we've never seen such a strong character in just over twelve hours across six previous films is a spectacularly bad argument against a powerful new character. Are you seriously saying that the made-up magical powers in the first six films are the be all and end all of Jedi and Sith power?

Using that reasoning, Doctor Strange can fuck off because we've never seen that much magical flapdoodle in a Marvel movie before.

[Dazzle1]

Why are people so desperate to defend a lousy movie and a character which does not follow the rules of the Star Wars universe.

[Heroine Addict]

Why are people so desperate to defend a lousy movie and a character which does not follow the rules of the Star Wars universe.

You do realize that the Star Wars universe has a very small canon, even if you include the books, comics and cartoons? Why limit what can happen in the future to what has already happened in the past?

As for whether The Force Awakens is lousy, your opinion on that is very much the minority view. But then you can always convince yourself you're in the selective elite, while the rest of us slack-jawed plebs enjoy any old crap.

[Femina]

The term 'Mary Sue' is a fairly lazy criticism in a fairly lazy society to be blunt. It's often straight sexism (NOT always, before I get lampooned by the anti-feminists or something, but often) usually notable by the fact that 'Gary Stu' is almost NEVER called out for being what he is. Insert any typical action hero in any typical action film and it's often they have like, only one notable flaw and are flawless at everything else. If the movie is bad, it gets called out as bad, but there's never an outcry of 'Typical Action Hero is a Gary Stu' no, that usually only happens with a typical action heroine.

Added to this is the fact that Mary Stu/Gary Stu is a mislabeled criticism most of the time. In film it is defined as any man or woman (though again only women are ever called out or this) who is unreasonably skilled or talented. The ACTUAL term was originally a literary one, indicating an author's insert of their own idealized version of themselves into a fiction they themselves wrote. Commonly when a 'Mary Stu' is invented in a film, it is done by writers of different sex who are simply out of their depth or unlearned depicting the psychology and mannerisms of the opposite sex or who are frightened of political blow back. The popular 'film' definition of 'Mary/Gary Sue/Stu' really ought to have been given its own term since it is still overwhelmingly possible for the original definition of the term to be applicable (if the character were, for instance, the idealized stand in of the script writer)

As the subject turns to Rey I'll reiterate once more the definition of a Mary Sue: A female protagonist of unreasonable skill and ability. It's the 'unreasonable' that is important here. Because most of Rey's skills and abilities are reasonable given the plot we are presented. Her technological prowess is explained quite simply as her existing her entire life in a scrap/parts scavenging outpost. She knows mechanics because she LIVES mechanics. It would be unrealistic to assume that somebody who lived, breathed, scraped and sold parts since she was a little girl wouldn't have a good understanding of how the ships she scavenged her entire life are put together. The Millennium Falcon, while perhaps unique, likely still requires similar if not identical mechanical construction to be space worthy, it's the same way a car mechanic knows how to fix the radiator in both a Toyota and a Chevrolet.

As to Rey's FORCE abilities this is where it becomes very difficult to either praise or detract. We're talking about literal 'space magic' we don't actually know many 'laws' concerning the force. We don't really know what it 'is' we don't really know WHY it works. All we know, thanks to a terrible film, is that the reason people in the star wars galaxy can interact with the force, is thanks to some bluhaha in our blood. Maybe Rey was born with a SIXTY THOUSAND Midichlorian blood count! Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe the fact that there are so few Jedi in the Galaxy and that the force has so recently been 'balanced' makes it easier to use and more powerful. We simply don't know enough about the state of the force as it is now vs what it was THEN to make any reasonable determinations as to how it is 'supposed' to work, because we never really knew how it worked in the first place. All I know is that Vader never appeared strong enough (in the films) to stop a laser bolt and leave it hanging in midair indefinitely as he went about his business. If Rey seems overpowered... well so does Kylo, and it may well be that as the hero of the tale, we'll find Rey is simply naturally a more powerful force adept than Kylo is, (and the knowledge near the end that Kylo hasn't finished his training at all either) allowed her to fairly easily best him once allowing the force to guide her movements.

What I'm saying is, Space Magic is an unreasonable skill or ability, but its one that has always existed in Star Wars, so to discount it as unreasonable is to accept that Space Magic is silly. Yet Star Wars is still awesome for most of us, so it's usually a good idea to ignore that the Force is silly.

[Mr. X]

Luke was able to telekinetically reach his lighsaber on Hoth. He was also able to operate the guns on the Falcon without combat training and pilot an X-Wing Fighter in battle, destroying the Death Star. Also without training.

Not true. He had some training with Obiwan in the first movie. A few hours but enough for him to unlock his ability. He also was learning his ability over a much longer time period and was finally able to move a light saber on Hoth. Guns on the falcon is not beating Ren in a saber fight. In fact anyone could probably shoot some guns. As for piloting its clearly established that Luke did at least pilot atmospheric craft when he "bagged swamp rats". Yes its a stretch Luke would be piloting a star fighter. I would give Rey a pass on flying the Falcon even though its clear she only flew atmospheric craft.

There is a huge difference between Luke taking time to learn some simple abilities vs Rey who in the span of a few hours was able to beat Ren.

Mary Stu/Gary Stu is a mislabeled criticism

And when some label people who didn't like Rey's character as angry manbeard sexist insecure man children is reasonable criticism.

[Heroine Addict]

Luke was able to telekinetically reach his lighsaber on Hoth. He was also able to operate the guns on the Falcon without combat training and pilot an X-Wing Fighter in battle, destroying the Death Star. Also without training.

Not true. He had some training with Obiwan in the first movie. A few hours but enough for him to unlock his ability. He also was learning his ability over a much longer time period and was finally able to move a light saber on Hoth. Guns on the falcon is not beating Ren in a saber fight. In fact anyone could probably shoot some guns. As for piloting its clearly established that Luke did at least pilot atmospheric craft when he "bagged swamp rats". Yes its a stretch Luke would be piloting a star fighter. I would give Rey a pass on flying the Falcon even though its clear she only flew atmospheric craft.

There is a huge difference between Luke taking time to learn some simple abilities vs Rey who in the span of a few hours was able to beat Ren.

Mary Stu/Gary Stu is a mislabeled criticism

And when some label people who didn't like Rey's character as angry manbeard sexist insecure man children is reasonable criticism.

Will you be just as critical when Doctor Strange masters magical stuff in a five-minute montage?

It seems the very brief glimpses we've had of Jedi powers are written in stone when it comes to Rey being too powerful, but Kylo suddenly stopping a laser blast in mid air is fine.

[Femina]

Mary Stu/Gary Stu is a mislabeled criticism

And when some label people who didn't like Rey's character as angry manbeard sexist insecure man children is reasonable criticism.

Nonsense, that's not what I said at all. Please don't take one sentence from my arguments and spiel them to mean whatever you like. It's incredibly annoying and misleading. That paragraph details exactly what I meant with that sentence and in no way targets any single person or group of persons. It is simply the definition or 'mechanics' of the term itself and that the term is irreparably jumbled in current usage.

If you'd like to take up some kind of outcry from anything I wrote, the first paragraph most likely calls out for it the most, though even there I admit beforehand that the cry of 'Mary Sue' isn't ALWAYS sexist, just often based not on the actions of any single mentioned or mentioned persons (For instance if you wanted to call that twat from Twilight a Mary Sue, I wouldn't bother arguing for her,) but the mean average of the total declarations of the criticism. It can't be denied that Mary Sue has been labeled fairly commonly against female lead films of late. I can't even remember the last time I read the term 'Gary Stu' as a criticism to a male lead, but what I CAN assure you, is that between then and now, just as many male lead roles were deserving of the criticism as females, they just weren't criticized. Take that to mean whatever you like, I consider it a fairly obvious example of a double standard.

[Ninja J.]

I dont think Rey should have defeated Kylo Ren, but I don't consider Rey a Mary Sue. You have to remember Kylo Ren was not 100%. He was shot with a friggin rifle before battling two individuals. And lets also remember he just might not be that good of a Sith. He is also a young inexperienced fighter as is Rey. And this may be a cop out, but The Force and also Luke's lightsaber may also play a part as to why Rey was able to go toe to toe with him. Luke should have never blocked any shots from the training droid in A New Hope, but he did because he "felt something." In a similar way Luke fought off the laser blasts, Rey was able to battle and defeat an injured Kylo Ren. I have a feeling Rey will get humbled in the next movie in the same way Luke did in The Empire Strikes Back.

[Femina]

Where does this insane assumption by viewers that Kylo Ren is really comparable to Darth Vader come from? 'Luke/Anakin lost their first fight to...' and then we're comparing Kylo Ren to friggin Darth Vader and even then to... what? Count Duku? Darth Vader is Darth Vader no further mention required. Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader, he just really WANTS to be. As for Count Duku... little as I want to get into him, he was a guy who was apparently the greatest single combat duelist of the Jedi Order, and Anakin was no scrub when he fought and lost to him. So comparing Kylo Ren to the guy who was owning Jedi Academy trained Jedi's as an old man is also entirely ridiculous. Kylo Ren is not Count Duku. Kylo Ren never went to the Jedi Academy, and we have no idea how much Luke taught him, and we certainly don't know that he killed all of Luke's students and if he did, how many he did personally or through the Sith way of poisoning them in their sleep. We don't KNOW these things.

Kylo Ren, is Kylo Ren. The ONLY thing we know about the state of Kylo Ren's training, and I'm saying the only thing we KNOW not CONJECTURE, what we KNOW is that at the end while he's laying in a pile of Rey's handywork Snoke sends his version of Grand Moff Tarkin to collect the lad to 'COMPLETE HIS TRAINING' which reveals quite simply this. Kylo Ren's training is not complete. He seems invincibly powerful up to that point because he's a dude throwing the force around in front of a bunch of people who can't use the force, because not many people are using the force in this day and age none of them can compare to him.

As Rey fights in that final sequence with her lightsaber, watch it closely, she holds it and stabs with it like she would the front half of her staff. She uses what she knows to fight him. She doesn't have unreasonable lightsaber skills, she has established stave fighting skills and as any person forced to fight one on one with a sword weilder would do, she fell back on what she knows.

[Dazzle1]

Where does this insane assumption by viewers that Kylo Ren is really comparable to Darth Vader come from? 'Luke/Anakin lost their first fight to...' and then we're comparing Kylo Ren to friggin Darth Vader and even then to... what? Count Duku? Darth Vader is Darth Vader no further mention required. Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader, he just really WANTS to be. As for Count Duku... little as I want to get into him, he was a guy who was apparently the greatest single combat duelist of the Jedi Order, and Anakin was no scrub when he fought and lost to him. So comparing Kylo Ren to the guy who was owning Jedi Academy trained Jedi's as an old man is also entirely ridiculous. Kylo Ren is not Count Duku. Kylo Ren never went to the Jedi Academy, and we have no idea how much Luke taught him, and we certainly don't know that he killed all of Luke's students and if he did, how many he did personally or through the Sith way of poisoning them in their sleep. We don't KNOW these things.

Kylo Ren, is Kylo Ren. The ONLY thing we know about the state of Kylo Ren's training, and I'm saying the only thing we KNOW not CONJECTURE, what we KNOW is that at the end while he's laying in a pile of Rey's handywork Snoke sends his version of Grand Moff Tarkin to collect the lad to 'COMPLETE HIS TRAINING' which reveals quite simply this. Kylo Ren's training is not complete. He seems invincibly powerful up to that point because he's a dude throwing the force around in front of a bunch of people who can't use the force, because not many people are using the force in this day and age none of them can compare to him.

As Rey fights in that final sequence with her lightsaber, watch it closely, she holds it and stabs with it like she would the front half of her staff. She uses what she knows to fight him. She doesn't have unreasonable lightsaber skills, she has established stave fighting skills and as any person forced to fight one on one with a sword weilder would do, she fell back on what she knows.

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

[Dogfish]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

So because a woman is the lead in the movie it's an SJW version of Star Wars?

[Femina]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

It's a sword, it isn't rocket science. Look the lightsaber is difficult to use in Star Wars for two reasons. One: because in order to use it properly you have to know how to sword fight in a world where firearms are the most common weapon, and Two: there may be a pushback magnetic force to the activated blade (and I guess 3: because if you don't have preternatural awareness of the blade when you go all 'Jedi Fu' with it you might cut your own arm off but that isn't a concern with force sensitive wielders,) but it isn't really like you have to have training with it to hold it, nor is there any reason to assume that knowledge of other weapon forms can't be translated to the weapons usage with passable success.

[Heroine Addict]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

Seeing as lightsabers don't really exist, whether or not someone can be "a natural" at using one is entirely at the whim of the scriptwriters. Of course, Finn demonstrated that he couldn't just pick up a lightsaber and use it. We don't know why Rey was so skilled. It has deliberately been set up as a mystery.

I really can't fathom the logic of people who come on a superheroine forum and bitch about heroines who are super. Are you really so oblivious to all the impossibly skilled and resilient males in movies and TV that it blows your mind to see a woman in the same situations?

As Femina said above, the label "Mary Sue" is applied almost exclusively to women. Even though amazingly perceptive and miraculously explosion-proof men are a staple of the Action genre.

[Dazzle1]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

Seeing as lightsabers don't really exist, whether or not someone can be "a natural" at using one is entirely at the whim of the scriptwriters. Of course, Finn demonstrated that he couldn't just pick up a lightsaber and use it. We don't know why Rey was so skilled. It has deliberately been set up as a mystery.

I really can't fathom the logic of people who come on a superheroine forum and bitch about heroines who are super. Are you really so oblivious to all the impossibly skilled and resilient males in movies and TV that it blows your mind to see a woman in the same situations?

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

[Dogfish]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

Seeing as lightsabers don't really exist, whether or not someone can be "a natural" at using one is entirely at the whim of the scriptwriters. Of course, Finn demonstrated that he couldn't just pick up a lightsaber and use it. We don't know why Rey was so skilled. It has deliberately been set up as a mystery.

I really can't fathom the logic of people who come on a superheroine forum and bitch about heroines who are super. Are you really so oblivious to all the impossibly skilled and resilient males in movies and TV that it blows your mind to see a woman in the same situations?

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

You might think it sucked, other people might think it sucked, but it's also pretty much by every objective measure one of the most commercially successful movies in history and it succeeded in wiping decades of prequel stink off the Star Wars series. So I think everybody involved in making it is probably okay with the fact that it rubbed you the wrong way.

[Heroine Addict]

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

You seem to have a real problem accepting that other people genuinely disagree with your opinion. I'm not sure why you need to assert your subjective appraisal of The Force Awakens as some sort of absolute truth that other people are simply denying because they're "snowflakes" or some other pejorative?

[Dogfish]

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

You seem to have a real problem accepting that other people genuinely disagree with your opinion. I'm not sure why you need to assert your subjective appraisal of The Force Awakens as some sort of absolute truth that other people are simply denying because they're "snowflakes" or some other pejorative?

Particularly, as I said, given that it was one of the biggest movies in history. If that makes everybody who likes it snowflakes then I guess we're in the arctic.

[Femina]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

Seeing as lightsabers don't really exist, whether or not someone can be "a natural" at using one is entirely at the whim of the scriptwriters. Of course, Finn demonstrated that he couldn't just pick up a lightsaber and use it. We don't know why Rey was so skilled. It has deliberately been set up as a mystery.

I really can't fathom the logic of people who come on a superheroine forum and bitch about heroines who are super. Are you really so oblivious to all the impossibly skilled and resilient males in movies and TV that it blows your mind to see a woman in the same situations?

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

It wasn't the best Star Wars movie ever. I admit that freely. It was FAR from the worst Star Wars movie however, and farther from the worst than it is from the best.

Personally what I can't fathom is why people can't accept that a female protagonist in a movie isn't inherently an attack on their person and can't enjoy a film beyond that. I can't fathom the certainty that using a three letter acronym (SJW) allows them to blanket an entire portion of the world into whatever subhuman class citizen they want for their opposition to be by elevating themselves in their own mind into the brave noble and dearly dearly misunderstood SJW detractor. I can't fathom how anyone could look down their noses so wholesale and say 'that person is lower than scum for thinking differently than me' Because let's not mince meat, when somebody bandies the term SJW in such a way as has become popular, what they really mean is 'Subhuman filth whose opinion I refuse to even consider as valid even in their own minds' I can't understand how somebody could do these things and still consider themselves a dearly misunderstood and benevolent force of society.

I can't fathom it. I can't fathom these things. But they are true regardless of my ability to fathom them.

So it might be true also, that Star Wars the Force Awakens isn't as bad as you think it is in the minds of everyone else in the world who can't fathom that people are all just insignificant subhuman snowflake SJW's that can't accept that an obvious Mary Sue female protagonist and a lame movie sucked. But these things are true regardless of your ability to fathom them.


Now let's get back on track

Lets look at the most powerful superheroines:

Wonder Woman yes she is powerful , but she is not a super genius and she can not create gadgets and if she lost her power due to belt removal she would lose a fight to Batgirl

This doesn't happen anymore. WW's powers work completely outside the control of a power belt. She's also probably now considered the most skilled straight 'fighter' in the DC universe... so... yeah...

Batgirl top of the skilled non powered heroine, but no way she is beating Supergiril

Except the Bat Family are pretty skilled at the whole 'bring a shard of kryptonite to a superfight' deus ex machina.

Supergirl Powers but if she went against Superman or Zod she would get her butt kicked due to lack of training

Superman she would never win against unless the plot demanded she do so... though I dare say she would defeat Zod more often than she would not as villains in comics generally exist for the sole purpose of being defeated by the hero.

[Mr. X]

Kylo Ren, is Kylo Ren. The ONLY thing we know about the state of Kylo Ren's training, and I'm saying the only thing we KNOW not CONJECTURE, what we KNOW is that at the end while he's laying in a pile of Rey's handywork Snoke sends his version of Grand Moff Tarkin to collect the lad to 'COMPLETE HIS TRAINING' which reveals quite simply this.

Clearly then you missed the part in the movie where its explained who Ren is and how he got training from Luke and how he had killed all of Luke's students and was Luke's top student. In fact one of the reasons Luke went into hiding was due to Ren.

Would you support your same position of Rey was a guy? Is this good story telling?

[RedMountain]

Have to LMAO at all the people saying Luke had no pilot/combat training...they all must have missed that part where he used to bullseye womprats in his T61, which already way overqualifies him for being a rebel/Imperial pilot considering how good their accuracy is in the films, lol. He used to fly the canyons on Tatooine with Biggs, so he was a rather decent pilot. Also all he did in that last fight was fly in a straight line while everyone else got blown up...

My biggest issue with Rey in Force Awakens was the no prior Force experience and then she just magically learns Jedi mind tricks and how to use a lightsaber basically just from touching Anakin's saber for the first time. All through SW lore we've seen and heard how hard it is to be a Jedi, how long it takes to learn how to use the abilities and master them, etc. and then she just magically can do all that when she has about 10 minutes experience with the Force. It just doesn't make any sense and its a horrible plot device. Honestly I liked Rey as a character up until she magically developed Force powers in 5 minutes.

For what it's worth I also had issues with Finn being able to pick up the lightsaber and use it in a fight. Anyone w/o any experience using it or lack of force abilities would chop off their own hands in about five seconds. Again they are taking the lore of Star Wars and basically just tossing it out the window, which is in general why I had such a problem with Force Awakens. I mean Kylo Ren can stop a laser bolt cold from point blank from a sniper he didn't know was there, yet lets himself get shot by Chewie who has a weapon trained on him and he can see...yeah...makes sense.

Overall I just felt like Force Awakens was a cheap imitation of New Hope and basically just designed to sell overpriced toys to a new generation of kids. Despite this, I think Rogue One looks promising and I am highly anticipating it.

[Mr. X]

Honestly I liked Rey as a character up until she magically developed Force powers in 5 minutes.

I agree with your post I would just add that I didn't think HE was a good character. I'm using HE here because my complaints about Rey are not really gender driven. Rey is a 2D cardboard character HE could be replaced with a dozen other people and in fact doesn't really add much to the story. HIS personality is pretty bland and in fact doesn't really interact socially with any of the other characters other than to exchange information. Note HE doesn't react to Finn flirting with HIM and instead merely carries on as though nothing happened.


And yes both Anikin and Luke had to go through YEARS of training to use a light saber, battle an opponent with a light saber, use mind powers etc. Both Anikin and Luke were defeated badly their first big boss encounters and Anikin had years of training. Now one version I could understand is Ren wipes the floor with Rey and humiliates her then just leaves her cause she's pathetic and not worth killing and the humiliation would be more of a sting. In fact one could argue that's kind of what happens in the fight given Ren takes the time to try and coax Rey to join him which was probably a tactical mistake. But this whole get mad and use a light saber expertly stuff is just bad writing.

Hey we're on a fetish board. I get it. Some people like empowered women. Women have empowerment fantasies. Romance novels are full of such things, same with a lot of female fan fic. If its power tripping then fine but I think it drags down the Star Wars legacy.

People here complain about the prequel stinkers especially episode 1. But episode 1 is full of little boy empowerment. Young anikin flying a star fighter, shooting down attack drones, blowing up the base ship was nearly universally criticized as child pandering. It was bad writing and bad movie making.

[Disciple]

Overall I just felt like Force Awakens was a cheap imitation of New Hope and basically just designed to sell overpriced toys to a new generation of kids.

Got it in one. Even the kindest reviews of TFA at least mentioned this in passing.

Star Wars was never groundbreaking storytelling (at best I'd call it the Harry Potter of film, which is much less of a compliment than it sounds), but by now it's pretty much been swallowed by its own brand. Most kids care only about all the cool spaceships and lightsabers and Force-choking and wacky aliens & robots; as long as you have those in sufficient quantities, you can pretty much get a teenage intern to take care of all that tedious "story" business.

[Mr. X]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ

Or leave it in the box!!!!

[Dazzle1]

Where does the insane assumption that you can pick up a lightsaber and just use it.

Why do we have to accept a SJW version of Star Wars?

Seeing as lightsabers don't really exist, whether or not someone can be "a natural" at using one is entirely at the whim of the scriptwriters. Of course, Finn demonstrated that he couldn't just pick up a lightsaber and use it. We don't know why Rey was so skilled. It has deliberately been set up as a mystery.

I really can't fathom the logic of people who come on a superheroine forum and bitch about heroines who are super. Are you really so oblivious to all the impossibly skilled and resilient males in movies and TV that it blows your mind to see a woman in the same situations?

I can't fathom why people are snowflakes SJWs and can accept that a female protagonist and a movie sucked.

You might think it sucked, other people might think it sucked, but it's also pretty much by every objective measure one of the most commercially successful movies in history and it succeeded in wiping decades of prequel stink off the Star Wars series. So I think everybody involved in making it is probably okay with the fact that it rubbed you the wrong way.

Yes I think it was terrible and I can see from the backlash there is a SJW contigent on this thread. As far as it's gross earning that does not make it a good or bad film. I thought Titanic was an overated movie as well

[Heroine Addict]

You can see there's an "SJW contigent" on this thread? So people don't need to be Sarkeesianesque activists to be "SJWs" if the pejorative is so broad and nebulous that it covers anyone who likes Rey in The Force Awakens?

It's really not a mature and coherent argument to resort to paranoid conspiracy theories and name-calling when people disagree with you. But then I suppose that's exactly how a presidential candidate is behaving right now. So maybe it's the new normal way to engage in debate and discussion?

[Mr. X]

Really? Really? How did this turn into some political debate?

[Heroine Addict]

Even if I retract the one obvious reference to Trump, a large part of the discussion is still overtly political with the suggestion that several forum members are part of the nebulous "SJW" movement. It's really not a good way to debate.

[Heroine Addict]

It's interesting that the references to male Mary Sues on this thread (Damien Wayne, Anakin Skywalker in TPM, Will Robinson) are all boys, rather than men. Yet the whole cliche of men becoming action heroes in a very short space of time is somehow overlooked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFrMLRQIT_k

So Neo in The Matrix isn't a Mary Sue? What about the new Kirk's mega-fast promotion to Captain of the Enterprise? Or the 2002 Spider-Man suddenly becoming inexplicably muscular and mastering his superpowers extremely quickly?

It seems the made-up space magic of Star Wars suddenly becomes hard science when there's annoyance at a woman getting too magical too quickly.

Will Marvel's Doctor Strange receive similar criticism? Or will it all be leveled at the "SJWs" casting a female Ancient One?

[Femina]

Kylo Ren, is Kylo Ren. The ONLY thing we know about the state of Kylo Ren's training, and I'm saying the only thing we KNOW not CONJECTURE, what we KNOW is that at the end while he's laying in a pile of Rey's handywork Snoke sends his version of Grand Moff Tarkin to collect the lad to 'COMPLETE HIS TRAINING' which reveals quite simply this.

Clearly then you missed the part in the movie where its explained who Ren is and how he got training from Luke and how he had killed all of Luke's students and was Luke's top student. In fact one of the reasons Luke went into hiding was due to Ren.

Would you support your same position of Rey was a guy? Is this good story telling?

This was NOT explained, it was hinted, and it wasn't hinted at clearly enough for anyone to make conclusions. We were given some vague hearsay as to who Kylo was via a few lines and a vague VAGUE force vision in the same way we learned that Vader killed Luke's father in episode 1 (I.E. Heresay, legends, and potential lies.) That he was Lukes student is clear enough, but all the crap about him slaughtering Luke's students and 'forcing' him into hiding are murky MURKY waters. IF Kylo murdered all of Luke's students it is unlikely that he did it man to man, down the line. It's more possible he killed several through treachery over outright combat, and his 'Knights of Ren' would have assisted in the death of the rest so the assumption that he's some Vader level threat killing jedi by the dozen is guess work especially since we don't even know that Luke had many students. This is stuff that was hinted at but never 'explained' in any clear conformable way. Luke being driven into hiding is also far more likely to be fueled by his guilt over the still hazy incident with the addition that he has no desire to kill his nephew, and certainly has nothing to do with a fear of Kylo Ren's unstoppable teen angst fueled force powers. If we're all so stock certain that Rey can't possibly defeat Kylo Ren, the assumption that Kylo Ren could somehow terrify Luke F*$kin' Skywalker into cowering on an Island for the rest of his life is beyond laughable. His self exile is of a personal nature almost certainly.

As for if I would support my position if Rey was a guy? Yes. Rey has no unreasonable skills in this film. She's tech conscious and multilingual because she was a lifelong scavenger/parts dealer living out of a trading port where an enormous variety of aliens passed to and fro. It'd be STUPID if she hadn't learned a thing or two about tech and languages in her lifetime particularly as she is also force sensitive which in the old 'Legends' tales assists people in learning these sort of mechanical 'repetition' details. Now her Piloting skills are her most out there trait, but also not outside the realm of conceiveability considering the volume of ships and pilots coming in and out of the trading port, maybe one or two took a liking to her? Maybe as a mischievous child she liked to sneak onto their ships and 'borrow' them for awhile? Who the hell are we to say what she should and should not have done with her twentyish years of life before it started getting chronicled in a movie.

As for the striking displays of power Rey and Kylo Ren seem capable of I.E. frozen laser beams/rookie force suggestion etc. probably has to do with the force being recently balanced (You know the whole prophecy thing? When Vader chucked the emperor down the hole that prophecy got finished, its easy to forget cause the prophecy wasn't introduced until AFTER we saw Palpantine's plummet but there it is regardless) and in an 'awakening.' The Force Awakens = because it was asleep or something, we don't know, but the title hints there's shit going on that wasn't before. And lastly she doesn't use her lightsaber like a sword, she uses it like a STAFF. A weapon she has clear aptitude with, the rest of the trouble a human being has with a lightsaber (magnetic push back for example) is auto-corrected by the force and ALWAYS has been.

I don't know what people want instead? I guess it would make a better move for everyone if, even though Rey is supposed to be a scavenger on the outer rim who somehow survived all those years mostly on her own acted like a moron and tripped over her own shoes at every corner and we could still believe she reasonably survived all this time but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to me.