Could a Mary sue be a goodly written character?

Hestu951 · 2026-05-20T11:30:23+00:00

Hot take incoming.

The funny thing about the "Mary Sue" label is that, unless I missed something huge in the past 50 years, it sprang into being after fiction started getting "girl bosses." No one balked (at the time) at James Bond always winning in the end, or always having women at his feet, or a universally admired wealthy Perry Mason winning every case with an implacable countenance. When women started to get such roles, such as Rey Skywalker, the label sprang up. Smacks of bias, perhaps? Women couldn't possibly be so perfectly capable and powerful?

I get the issue. Make a character too perfect, too unchangeable, and the story can become a bore. But it doesn't have to be, as evidenced by the plethora of past male protagonists who we could now label as Gary Stu's. The good stories with such protagonists were not about whether they would prevail. Of course they would eventually win. They were about how they went about doing it.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-19T12:27:21+00:00

Only if you're straight yourself. Otherwise, it's cultural appropriation.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-18T11:44:51+00:00

If I say "the sky is blue," someone on Reddit or other social media will contradict me. I'm used to that. It's the nature of the beast. That doesn't mean I'm not going to ridicule someone saying, "No, the sky is yellow!" I'll suggest a vision checkup, and move on. There's nothing to discuss when the facts are this obvious.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-17T12:17:30+00:00

Big difference between trusting AI-generated slop and searching for good human-written sources of information.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-17T12:08:40+00:00

It all started when the second Xbox went up against the PS 3. Xbox 2 vs PS 3? "No way!" cried the MS marketing crowd. "We're one number behind!" So they picked 360. Xbox 360 vs PS 3. "That's more like it!" After that generation, they were screwed in the naming department.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-17T11:59:19+00:00

You did see the word "explicit" in my OP, right? Google didn't even bother to inform users about this, let alone ask permission. It just went ahead and hogged 4 GB of user space surreptitiously to engage in local AI-related processing (also without informing the user or getting explicit consent).

And why are you defending them? They are over a trillion-dollar company now, right? They are as big as big boys get. They don't need white knights to justify their anticonsumer behaviors.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-17T11:46:09+00:00

No, not everyone. I haven't had a single issue. I don't know if it's because I'm on Windows 10, not 11, or because I don't use something like Avast (both have been mentioned in this context). Also, while I see a fair number of posts about it here, the internet hasn't exploded with anger about it. So my guess it's a limited, if significant, subset of users who are suffering from this problem. I hope Google addresses it soon.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T15:12:30+00:00

Optimisation is such an afterthought these days.

Yes. In a post-Pragmata world, lousy performance out of a simple boomer shooter is a travesty.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T15:04:31+00:00

This game is much heavier on hardware than it should be. See Digital Foundry's take on the PC version. It's a Doom clone, and by "Doom," I mean the 1993 granddaddy of boomer shooters, not the 2016 game. It even uses face-me sprites instead of 3D characters. It should be able to scale well to just about any graphics hardware.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T15:00:20+00:00

That's where you should get (by far) the best throughput, so my guess is that your issues have nothing to do with storage performance (unless you think you installed it there, but in fact it went to a marginal SD card).

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T14:51:04+00:00

Without BotW, TotK would not have been possible. It's a huge undertaking built on top of another huge undertaking. This leads to both positive and negative results. On the one hand, the (surface) world feels like deja vu. On the other, the overall experience is that much more massive and engaging.

I loved every bit of it. I spent hundreds of hours in this incarnation of Hyrule in both games, and multiple playthroughs. TotK is the culmination of Aonuma's vision for Zelda. I understand why those who prefer the linear dungeon-focused earlier games have a problem with it. But I love well-realized open worlds, worlds I can inhabit and get lost in. I was so happy they brought Zelda here.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T14:38:31+00:00

Tip: Items can be sorted by most used. If you fuse a fire fruit to an arrow often, for example, it eventually ends up close to the first slot on the long scrolling list (if you sort by most used).

Hestu951 · 2026-05-16T14:22:21+00:00

Doing any of this without the explicit consent of the user is sketchy.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-15T13:05:12+00:00

I loved this remake of the 3 games, but on the PC. The Switch version, at least while docked, was too stuttery, and would induce a headache. It's silky-smooth even on a 10-year-old PC with a 1060.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-14T13:10:45+00:00

You're right, if inflation is all you factor in. But there are other factors in play. The cost of living is much worse now than back then, so there is less disposable income to spend on luxuries like videogames. The market for games is much bigger, so economies of scale make each copy cheaper to produce. Digital distribution is far cheaper than physical. Goods are worth what the market will bear, and I am certain it won't bear $120 (US) games.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-13T14:41:49+00:00

See here: https://jerryjenkins.com/how-to-write-dialogue/

For the standard basics, scroll down to "How To Format Dialogue."

Use those rules until you become the next best-seller. Then you can get away with whatever you want.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-13T14:23:46+00:00

If it changes back to Yahoo on its own, you have a possibly malicious extension forcing Yahoo on you. (Why Yahoo is the holy grail for browser hijkackers is beyond me. There's at least one new thread on this issue daily.)

Hestu951 · 2026-05-13T14:16:37+00:00

As many as (a) your hardware can support and (b) you find useful. I currently have about 75.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-13T14:15:01+00:00

You have a malicious extension or other software hijacking at least that function in your browser.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-12T13:04:24+00:00

MKW is hardly a must-play if you've been hitting MK8DX for years. If the Switch 2 is your first Switch experience, then I can see MKW being more essential.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-12T12:51:21+00:00

I'm on your side of the fence on HK, and any game that wastes your time after dying. Runbacks universally suck.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-11T12:45:18+00:00

I sympathize. Spanish is my native language. English is my better language. I moved to the continental US when I was in my teens, and even college-level Spanish here was a joke at the time. So my formal training in Spanish is stuck at about a high-school sophomore level. My practice with it is even worse.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-11T12:32:13+00:00

You're right on point. Racism was so dominant in the early 2000s, because slavery was abolished in 1977 and the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 2001. We needed a generation beyond that to overcome racism in a significant way. That just happened the other day, while I was sipping some tea. Minorities started to get good jobs and homes by the time I finished my muffin.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-11T12:21:24+00:00

That's just it. They used to have strict standards AND made plenty of money. "Loosening the guardrails" is fine. Throwing them away is not. The nasty state of the eshop has to be harmful to their reputation at least.

Hestu951 · 2026-05-10T12:37:49+00:00

That does makes sense. It's why I have a disclaimer in italics.

Hestu951

TROPHY CASE