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QuintoBlanco t1_iy5lpux wrote

Reply to comment by GarlVinland4Astrea in Did the “Wednesday” script start as a Harry Potter copy cat? by robbed_blind

>She was almost always in the right on every subplot, got one over on absolutely everyone, always had the upperhand and was portrayed as far too intelligent for anyone else to compete with

That is not what a Mary Sue means.

A key element of a Mary Sue character is that she excels at everything and that she is liked by (almost) everyone.

Wednesday is an outsider and there are very clear limits to the control she has over her surroundings.

The original Mary Sue was a parody for a reason.

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GarlVinland4Astrea t1_iy5q6ij wrote

No a Mary Sue is an writer stand in. She doesn't need to be liked by everyone, she can be disliked by all the wrong people. Wednesday is literally only disliked by obnoxious shitty privilege people in the film that are made out to be people that deserved to be taken down a peg. Even the original parody Mary Sue had the silly green androids capturing her. It's okay for antagonists not to like her. Wednesday pretty much won in every situation of the two films and flipped every situation on it's head and could easily manipulate people into thinking she was doing the right thing. Wednesday in the movies is smarter than everyone she comes against and pretty easily outmaneuvers them all the characters that you would want to like Wednesday generally like her. The only difference between her and a conventional Mary Sue is the typical Addams Family twist that she's very macabre.

The show Wednesday isn't that. She constantly faces obstacles she can't overcome because some of her qualities are presented as flaws that hurt her. Not the case in the films.

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QuintoBlanco t1_iy7o2mm wrote

The key is that a Mary Sue is liked by the establishment.

Technically James Bond is a Mary Sue, he's a part of the establishment, extremely competent in almost every aspect, respected by men, and desired by women.

If we take away the trust MI-6 has in him, he would not be a Mary Sue, but the misunderstood outsider who is always right. Dirty Harry perhaps?

The Bond villains are his green aliens.

As for being a writer stand-in, allegedly Bond was a type of wish-fulfillment for Fleming who was not accepted into MI-6.

A Mary Sue is a special type of writer stand in.

It's a character that exists in a world where the establishment fully embraces the alter ego of the writer because they acknowledge the character's competence.

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