Breaking down Lily Orchard's favorite "Mary Sues" (Ft  

Damn, this vid doin numbers EDIT: WOW! I had no idea how many people would find this video. Just a reminder: this video isn't monetized. So if you want to support me and see more videos like this, please consider visiting my patreon. Would really help a lot: patreon.com/PeriodicPete

I think you're missing an element of Elle Woods' "like it's hard?" Line that helps bolster your point. She's not just showing off to impress the guy, and it's not just that it genuinely did take a while lot of work on her part, but also a huge part of the conflict Elle runs into is everybody thinks she's stupid because of her personality, style and interests. She falls very nearly into the "popular pretty girl" stereotype because she put a huge amount of time and effort into style and social engagements, and because that's considered vapid and shallow, people don't take her seriously and assume she's dumb. But part of Elle's point by remaining confident in her abilities and demeanor isn't just because she's not afraid to be herself, but to show people "of course I got into Harvard, just like you did, because I am smart, just like you are". Her confidence in that moment carries within it one of the major hurdles that she has to overcome while at Harvard, and Lily uses it as an example of someone without struggles. Also: how dare you call this a B-movie, you will be hearing from my lawyers. The Cease-and-Desist will be scented.

Fundamentally, the issue with a Mary Sue is not the character themselves, it's that the story does not contain or challenge them. Superman becomes a Mary Sue if he's put in the Walking Dead universe and spends his time mowing down zombies from above without any moral dilemmas or people to challenge him. Rick Grimes becomes a Mary Sue if he's dropped next to Joy Newsome from Room and just shoots her captor in the forehead. The issue I find with the term is just that it seems to imply that the problem is a quality innate to the character, when it isn't.

Darth vader the guy who lost every thing he ever cared about became a slave to his abuser and then died is a “Mary Sue”

Feel like it’s worth noting: Lily thinks that “Mary Sue = cool character with lots of powers” because that was the prominent belief in chronically online fandom circles, primarily Bronies. She doesn’t have the video up now because she incriminates herself with writing her incest fic in it, but Lily made a video once about how you shouldn’t limit yourself to only writing slice of life stories about characters just going about their day because if you give your pony OC special powers and stakes in a story with canon characters Bronies will label your character a Sue. That, in its fandom vacuum, is good advice. The problem is that Lily doesn’t consume any media on its own. She’s always half-finishing shit and relying on Tumblr users to fill in the gaps on what she didn’t feel like watching. She’s surrounded herself with the same Tumblr fandom mindsets and RU-vidr critiques for YEARS, hence why her own mindset on what makes a character a Sue is, ironically, very dated with how progressive she likes to claim she is.

Lily is the type of person that (unironically) would turn evil the second they get powers.

To say captain America is a Mary sue misses the character entirely. In the mcu he kind of is a tragic hero who always takes the sacrifice even to his own detriment. That’s his flaw.

Say it with me now: " Those that preach the loudest have the most to hide."

Another thing I’d add is who the Mary Sue is meant to appeal to. In most works of escapism, an overpowered protagonist is usually designed for the enjoyment of the audience. Meanwhile, with Lily’s brand of Mary Sues, especially in her own writing, you can tell she’s the only one having fun. It’s a vehicle for her to give herself power, charisma, and romances she’d never have in real life and to put herself at the center of entire universes where she’s the most important person ever born. That’s what I think separates characters who are simply overpowered from full-blown Mary Sues.

Can i just add that regardless of sueness or anything else, Lily Orchard demonstrated a complete lack of comphrension of people because using force lightning, an explicitly evil power to kill one of your friends is a valid thing to angst about

With the way Lily seems to go after action heroes, I’d probably blame it on the fact that she seems to hate high-stakes action stories, and believes that low-stakes coffee shop comedies are always superior. Never mind the fact that the thing that makes a good story is quality and not genre…

31:14 "She just is a child" that's an insult to children. Literal kids could come up with better stories after playing with action figures for a few minutes than Lily ever has and ever could (other than that great video).

I think Lily's problem is that the concept of the supposed Mary Sue is exactly what she wants in stories. She wants safe, easily digestable content with no real conflicts that won't challenge either the protagonist or the viewer. And because she believes that her opinion is superior to others she thinks that that is what others should want as well.

Heres my take on this situation: sometimes you want to see Batman struggle against the odds, and sometimes you want to see Superman power through everything. Both are enjoyable for different reasons.

Lily: “I’m a writer” Also Lily: *Doesn’t understand basic writing and talks confidently*

13:39 also this scene is also a joke that the actor of Indiana Jones had food poisoning and wanted to end the scene quickly as possible

Excellent video as always, Pete. Glad to be on to soak up the clout you took from me >:) But for real tho, Lily is a prime example of who not to be as a critic. If you're correct on a topic, you shouldn't have to blatantly lie or throw away helpful words/definitions because you feel petty and spiteful. That is childish behavior and she needs to get over herself. If she is ever going to make good content instead of having waves of people who dislike her, she needs to cut the bullshit and tell the truth. Mary Sue's suck. Its bad writing. Bad writing bears no genders, has no race and possesses no sexuality. And she knows this, which is why she had to lie about it. Big shame.

Never forget Lilly is the person who wrote a story where the main self insert OC goes around a multiverse Committing genocide and beating the crap out of God, because she is in the right and thinks that Atheism is the one true way

I think the issue is these people miss that sometimes the competence IS the premise. Light is not a mary sue despite all his luck and victories simply because the entire premise of the show is "what happens when the smartest person in the room gets the ability to play god". The competence is not only expected but almost mandatory here.

Say it with me now: " Those that preach the loudest have the most to hide."

Calling Commander Shepard someone who fights for every single victory and wins just barely wins every time a mary sue its so idiotic

Lily is just seething that people don’t like her favorite characters.

Honestly, so many of Lily's videos are just because people in fandom are 'mean' to her. Her most recent video is about writing of sibling relationships because people were criticizing her stories about siblings, saying that they have unhealthy relationships that are emotionally incestuous. It's why she brings up her own works in her videos so often. The video is not coming for a genuine place, it's coming from a place of 'people critiqued my works and I'm going to write a whole video essay to show them not only that I'm right, but that they're part of a systematic problem!'. It's not helped by her holier-than-thou attitude and complete dismissal of anyone bringing up legitimate critiques. Many of her problems are problems she has with fandom, not the works themselves, and boy does it show in her essays.

I will say that villans can be given immense ammounts of plot armor that does detract from the experience. Not nessesaraly a Mary Sue, but plot progression so baffling that you start to wonder if the writers are just trying to pad out the run time. Cant think of any examples off the top of my head, but the kind of encounter where either the vilan breaks the laws of the story and/or their character, or the protagonist makes a braindead decision and the villan ends up getting away because of it.

The good that came out of Lilys is I've found so many good smaller youtube channels that shit on her crapy takes, lmaoo

Does Lily even realize that there are characters in DC that can challenge or even demolish Superman physically? Darkseid is basically his Bane.

17:07 I think it's also worth noting that when Elle does "Swagger" it's fashion related. like her dramatic success was because she re-heard the witness testimony and realized it made no sense because they were Permed and had permed their hair for years

"Hello every hero's journey character ever" did she just insinuate that simon from gurren lagann is a mary sue? This isn't say that they're saying he specifically is, that's just to prove the point that her argument is inherently flawed and is saying those things just to make people she disagrees with sound hypocritical. But if she thinks for over a second that my boy simon is anything but one of the best anime characters of all time she's gonna have some explaining to do

the term "fandom racists" has some serious tomy talarico "gaming racists" vibes. it's so stupid it almost distracted me from her following statement about how theorising about rae's parents was somehow "missing the point" even though rae's parents (at least until the palpatine bullshit) was meant to be a subversion, and a subversion doesn't work if we aren't interested in who her parents are, meaning that theorising about them is the point. forget not knowing what a mary sue is, i don't think she knows what story telling is (like actually, this isn't even just a joke i'm making, i'm genuinely starting to suspect this after everything i've ever seen her say)

I'd say it's a lack of questions posed to the character, or rather, lack of options to answer. If they're super powerful with no weaknesses every conflict they come across will have the exact same answer. But if they have a weakness, and the story focuses on it enough that failure is a possibility chances are the character needs a bit of ingenuity. Whether asking for friends help, planning in advance, or spur of the moment improvisation, it's always more interesting to wonder "how they'll pull it off" If the character can get everything they want with minimal conflict, then thats bad, because almost all stories are is conflict. So theres no real story, often as a result.

Lily Orchard? What a lunatic.

43:02 did. Did Lily Orchard ACTUALLY just imply Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is only called a Mary Sue because she has a ridiculous name? Like is that what she's implying or am I just severely misreading this moment? Because if she is, she doesn't know ANYTHING about My Immortal oh my FUCKING god- wether she's a parody or not(which this is even worse if she IS a parody), Ebony Dark'ness is the fucking TEXT BOOK DEFINITION of a Mary Sue in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE- Lily wouldn't be referencing her if she didn't KNOW THIS because that is what Ebony is FAMOUS FOR- does Lily genuinely think she isn't a Mary Sue!?!?!?!?!?! Hello!?!?!?!?!?!?

Lily? Bitter and projecting? Surely you jest!

Holy fuck! This video is actually good! Genuinely though this video came from a higher sub-count channel. May the algorithm look kindly upon you!

Great video as always pete

Yeah, like I've said before in some of Kaiser's videos, Orchard's argument all boils down to "you don't like my character because they're X" when the problems are that "these characters don't work because of Y." It is a double standard which has been used by people all over the political spectrum. Maybe less to do with politics and more to do with "how dare you criticize this character I like." Also, something that both Mary Sue/Gary Stu defenders (e.g. Orchard, Cosmonaut Variety Hour) and many critics (e.g. The Critical Drinker) tend to forget is that Mary Sues are merely one type of bad character writing/storytelling. And like I've mentioned before (and which you partially showed when going over Taken), you can still have a non-Mary Sue character be as bad and favored by the plot as a Mary Sue. This has happened with Bayformer's Optimus Prime (easily killing Megatron--who was offering peace in DotM--after losing an arm, threatening and forcing Grimlock and the Dinobots to join him in AoE, willing to mercilessly kill humans post-DotM), Snyder's Superman (destroying most of Metropolis, killing Zod, the Christ-like imagery in MoS and BvS, people praising him to have saved people in BvS when he looks like its a chore, having people mourn him after his asinine death against Doomsday), and yes, the SW prequels' Anakin Skywalker (able to destroy the Trade Federation ship BY ACCIDENT without shown to have used the Force in TPM, killing women and children TWICE after not doing next-to-nothing about his visions and with no context given in AotC and RotS, being excused of killing women and children in AotC where he didn't even feel the effects of the Dark Side, arguing with and being abrasive/disobedient to Obi-Wan in AotC with no resolution or anything showing how he grew into the hero he was in RotS, having Padme say she loves Anakin AFTER he killed women and children in AotC despite nothing showing what she sees in him--and Padme in RotS even saying "Anakin wouldn't do that!" about killing children even though she knows he had done such in the past, etc.). All of these, especially Anakin (who was said in the OT to have been a good man who was seduced by the Dark Side but the prequels don't reflect that), share the same core problems as Mary Sues/Gary Stus: they do not drive the plot, they do not deal with consequences of their actions, said actions are excused by the plot, they act stupid for the sake of the plot, and much, MUCH more. It's not helped that I have literally seen people excuse all of this (even Anakin killing women and children by adding in "context" they pull out of the ether, as well as those same people saying Anakin faced more hardship than Luke--all of which I've seen being applied to Rey and even Kylo Ren). And that's not going into those same people attacking and belittling others' legitimate criticisms (emphasis on the legitimate part). Anyway, sorry for the long paragraphs, but TL;DR: this stuff is nothing new and the same nonsense Orchard used to defend Rey and Carol Danvers have been used for other poorly-told characters.

41:26 Lily is evil and that still doesn’t mean Mary Sue isn’t mostly used as a buzzword in a culture war. Two of the very characters you mentioned don’t fit that definition but they were labeled as because of nonsense outside of their stories.

43:20 45:28 You guys are actually right on the money, just not on the right fanfiction. It's highly likely it was made in regards to her OC in her Star Wars sequel trilogy rewrite where she gives Ray a black "woke socialist sith lord" girlfriend that's she's gotten much more backlash over in regards to being called a Mary Sue. That's probably also her reasoning for what she put in 31:21 in regards to black women I actually highly recommend Manufatura's video "analyzing Lily Orchards morality compass" in which she analyzes two videos that Lily made for the same reason she made this one on Mary Sue's: to defend her OC from people criticizing it.

In regards to the drama, she's openly had a kink for the stuff she's being accused of, going as far as making her own self ship comic about it, so I think its safe to say its all true

1. 21:59-22:36 Let's add Nico Robin, and Yamato from One Piece, Bijinder from Kikaider 01, Android 18 from Dragonball, any of the female rangers in power rangers/super sentai, Arcee, Windblade, and Elita one from transformers, and Pike, Vex, and Keyleth from legend of Vox Machina to the list of cool female characters that people like. 2. The fact that Lily thinks that Luke is a poorly written character while praising Rey goes to show that Lily was never really a fan of Star Wars. 3. 34:58 Lily really really really hates Eastern animation, did you hear what she said about studio Trigger?

Lily doesn't care what you think or what point you're trying to make. I know this because, after her infamous first Dungeon Meshi video where she made her distasteful take on Laios by offending any autistic people who lack social cues, instead of taking responsibility for it, in her second Dungeon Meshi video, she made more ways to bash Laios with more misinformation about his character and use Bojack Horseman of all shows in comparison that has nothing to do with the premise of Dungeon Meshi and didn’t even apologize to those who have symptoms for the autism spectrum by saying she hasn’t met anyone someone like Laios. (Sai has the first video in her Reacting to Lily Orchard's Dungeon Meshi Videos live streaming if you're curious.) To me, I think Lily is a lost cause because nothing will faze her, she will never change her ways even if we keep calling her out, and she will find more ways to blame people to excuse herself.

Because I saw her briefly, I do see people call Ahsoka Tano a mary sue. I disagree with them, but they do exist.

22:46 of course the video was made out of spite, that's lily's motivation to do anything She made a pokemon "retrospective" where she played through each gen until she beat the elite 4, in which she refused to engage with any optional content and skipped through the plot only to then complain about how dumb the evil team's motivations are And how annoying it is to get stopped by other characters who talk to you (for example she completely ignores and dismisses anything N says to you in pokemon black and then calls him a creep for trying to talk to her gardevoir which she hacked in) Some fan recommended her to watch dungeon meshi after she said she liked spy x family and because of that she made a critique on it talking about how annoying all the characters in dungeon meshi are and complaining that the characters aren't taking their main objective seriously enough while showing footage of them talking about how uneasy they are that they can't go any faster, as well as talking about laios' main character flaw as if it was his only character trait and and generally taking things way out of context to make him look bad and when she got called out for being disingenous she remade the video to include spoilers of the manga

Mary Sues can work in a story that is constructed for them, that's literally what the action genre is, it's a sandbox for actors to say and do cool shit and have everything work out for the hero in the end. Mary Sues become a problem when you want to do literally anything else, they will destroy any story that doesn't explicitly make accommodations for them.

To me the issue with Mary Sue is that they trivialize everything the story wants you to believe is important. Dark lord, who has slain dozens of would-be heroes over hundreds of years? Mary Sue beats him in moments. Order of badasses who only accept the best of the best? They try to recruit Mary Sue after knowing her for fifteen minutes. A secret technique that takes masters years to learn? Mary Sue masters it in seconds. Death God, who could potentially have nearly any woman who ever lived? He falls die-hard in love with Mary Sue after a few interactions. Everything loses its status in order to make Mary Sue look good.

22:39 OSP MENTION

Odd connection, but her opinion on Mary Sues might explain her Pokemon Retrospective a little bit and some of the stances she takes. I think she wants to play the games as a Mary Sue, or, more so, she wants her favorite Pokemon to be a Mary Sue. Throughout the "retrospective," she constantly insists upon how overpowered Gardevoir is and even goes so far as to hack it in as her starter, using it in every battle, but anytime she can't just power through a battle, she complains about it being too hard without ever changing her team or her strategy to accomodate; interestingly, she'll also complain about winning battles too easily since it's boring. She wants the type advantages between Pokemon to be HEAVILY reduced from 2x damage when hitting a weakness to 1.25x (less than just hitting with a move of the same type for a 1.5x bonus), and she also doesn't want critical hits to ignore defense bonuses since that invites risk of ruining your setup, and it's my belief she wants these changes so she can stack stat bonuses without any potential for being punished on her glass cannon. It seems she wants every battle to cut it "close" where it looks like she could lose or get KOd on Gardevoir without it being a real possibility. I think @mightyradish9672 put it really well in saying that Mary Sues tend to be boring because they can give about the same answer to every problem without ever exercising ingenuity or accomodating for some kind of weakness of their own, and that's exactly how I think Lily wants to play Pokemon. The character she hated the most throughout the entire 6.5 hour video of hers was N, the rival she lost to so many times she leveled up 7 times, and it was so confusing why she hated him so much until now. The reason she hates him may be as simple as him giving her a challenge that brute forcing with her current setup didn't let her win in one battle or rematch: N consistently disrupted her power fantasy where she can get through every single battle with the exact same pokemon, the exact same strategy, and little to no difficulty, and that's why she spat so much venom towards him, his character, and his story throughout the video. (Note: I'm probably just yapping and making huge leaps, but it's kinda fun to make passing guesses about what her mindset might've been in the making of a video)

24:59 Nice use of Glados dialogue. Orchard really seems to have no concept of empathy whatsoever.

I think a more accurate definition of the trope (more of an archetype at this point) is a character who is not subject to the laws of cause and effect established either by the text of the real world. That is to say, there is a dissonance between the effort the character must use, and the effectiveness of the desired result. A couple days training gives them more power than the masters of the art. Actions which are supposedly character flaws do not actually impede their progress towards their goal, but often further it. Being a jerk, an idiot, or a fraud, do not deter other characters from adoring and praising them. Some Mary Sues may possess one of these traits and not others, multiple, or even all - the one thing unifying them is that dissonance between cause and effect. Rey, for instance, is a Mary Sue. Within a couple minutes/hours she accomplishes a Jedi mind trick, a technique even masters of the art struggled with. In the span of a few days, she was able to pull a lightsaber to her hand, in contest with a trained force-user - something Luke struggled with after 3 years of training and no other force-user fighting him for it. Perhaps a few weeks later, she is able to lift a number of rocks which are likely greater in weight than the X-Wing Luke would fail to lift. And then, after finally getting substancial time to train, she literally achieves an ability so rare and difficult to accomplish that the seeking of it literally drove the plot of Episode 3. But I disagree with defining the trope as inherently bad or detracting from the text. While dissonance can detract from a text, it is dissonance which drives them. The reveal that Darth Vader was Luke's father, for instance, would not be a twist at all, if there were not such a distance between the described heroism of Anakin and the evident villany of Vader. The archetype of the Mary Sue has been used to great effect. Take American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is a Mary Sue. He openly discusses his lust for violence and murder; he is openly seen carrying blood-soaked sheets and bodies in bags; he is a terrible liar, who by all means should have been caught by the detective; and he literally got into a shootout with the cops during a killing spree. And yet, the film ends, and Patrick Bateman remains free. This works, however, where Rey does not. Because American Psycho is ABOUT this dissonance. It is about the power of the wealthy, how untouchable they are, how tyrannical they may be and suffer no consequence. It is also about the instablity of the psyche, and we frequently question whether or not certain events even happened. Rey does not pull off the trope, because the films have literally nothing to say about it. The dissonance between her actions and their consequences is a result of Disney's strict 'guidelines' of how a "strong female protagonist" must look. They are scared of having her grow stronger over the text, because she must therefore begin weak. They are scared of having her decisions inadvertantly harm people, because then she is made to look like a fool. They must at all costs avoid alienating the female audience member - but in doing so, they infantilize her. However, It is evident in real life that plenty of women have outstanding potential and are continuously held down by patriarchy. It is therefore no wonder why even facile attempts at 'strong female protagonists' resonate with women who have had their potential squashed out of them. The narrative of a woman's discovery of her own existing potential is a powerful one - I only hope that it is told through better means in the future.

what is a mary sue for me: no one acknoeldges their power as an enemy people either praise them for the sake they exist or hate them for the sake they exist without realizing they could be obliterated master every skill for example: someone who barely even touched a sword is able to only wildly swing it, but cant do complex parries. if its a mary sue they can do remises, riposte, parries and precise swings

33:20 POWER RANGERS TIME FORCE/MIRAI SENTAI TIMERANGER SPOTTED

I'd add Pyra and Mythra to the list too considering both of their cases of PTSD and DID.

That point about Lily wanting nothing but cool moments from her Action Figur- I mean, characters. Lily would unironically be the type to say the Bayverse was peak Transformers, if she even Touched it. “No no no no, the robots aren’t allowed to be characters with complex emotions or stories to tell, Optimus should just rip Megatron’s head off in every show, like he did in Dark of the Moon”

The reason lily is not talking about the anime is because she's only seen 3 and all other are bad because BOY.

27:40 so this was kinda your entire point, but this does emphasize that I guess Lilly’s idea of character might just come down to if the character is a badass that destroys everything, because I don’t see how Rey not killing Ren means that the series took away her character. If anything, Rey never had much character, they didn’t take away from it in this movie. Hell in this movie they tried to actually give her a semi backstory that was honestly forgettable, not take away character, it’s just that she never had much of one and abandoned her conflict.

17:21 the musical is better by virtue of having There Right There in the sound track (AKA The Gay or European song)

When I started writing, I was worried about my MC actually being a gary stu. He is abnormally competent. He just so happens to be related to powerful people. He is a perfect little experiment by chance, and some times events just fall in his lap. But, is that normal? It feels like it's too perfect, like he's being set up. And the other side of hyper competence is that each time he fails it hits him hard, and no matter how many times he tries to feign humility, deep down he's got an ego that hurts him and others. And then imagine the shock when he finds out that yes, his life was the result of manipulation from before he was even born, and not all, but a lot of the horrible traumatic events that made him stronger both physically and magically, but crippled him mentally and emotionally, were because he was a pawn in someone's game. If I played it completely straight, if it really was just a big coincidence, he'd be boring, another bland gary stu that wins everything because he was just born better. I didn't have everything planned out, but the basis for the story at the start was about how someone born into power and forced into a larger role he never wanted. For every hero that saves the day, you also risk breaking a young person who couldn't handle the pressure that comes from having that much weight up on his shoulders. More specifically, I was thinking about someone like Harry Potter. Let's say he actually had a great home life, and while he thought magic was cool, he was content with staying because of the disconnect between magic and muggle society. But Hagrid puts him in a burlap sack and takes him to Hogwarts anyway because they knew he was special and destined to killed Voldemort.

To be honest, Lara Croft IS kind of a Mary Sue, at least in the original games. She's an aspirational figure - wealthy, educated, athletic, confident, sarcastic, with an impossibly great figure and a cut-glass accent - capable of taking down a T-Rex, whose only weakness is falling from high places or into spikes. A Mary Sue I never see discussed, though, is Sam LaRusso from Cobra Kai. The show frames her as this manic pixie dream girl-next-door, carefully framing every scene she's in so she is shown to be righteous and sensible, when most of the time, she is the instigator, and her main quality is her ability to manipulate men into doing what she wants by shedding crocodile tears and acting the victim. Samantha's only failure in what are now five seasons is losing the Girls' bracket of the All-Valley Karate Championships (and Robby before that, even though she immediately rebounds by getting back together with Miguel) to Tori. Other than that, she is framed as being perfect in every way, even though it is glaringly obvious that she is anything but.

My own concept of what makes a Mary Sue had become much more diluted than I'd realized. Thank you for refocusing my understanding.

Oh boy this is gonna be fun

Half the time things like the stakes not rising or something isn't even a good criticism because it isn't necessarily Doesn't matter if we know ___ will be saved, the point is to see the process and characters

The music choices are great, and kinda distracted me trying to remember the titles/sources! XD

I don't pay much mind to the mary sues trope, but I will say my favourite Mary Sue is the character Mary Sue from Youjo Senki. Good light novel will recommend also an anime if your interested in that more then the Light novel. Anyway have a good day everyone

Lily doesn't understand a lot of things. She only thinks she does.

I kno you want the term Mary Sue to mean what it used to or the version of the definition you first learned. But As a species, we have an innate need to express ourselves and on this level, the pace of linguistic change is not only a good thing but a faster pace of linguistic change is essential to evolution.

38:06 I wasn't expecting Mauler to be referenced, but I'm far from disappointed. I don't think I've seen any other critic thoroughly go over nearly each line of dialogue and explain its problems.

Oh my god you are angry in this... ...and for good reason. I mean, how can anyone say the things Lilly says with a straight face? I have a burning passion for storytelling, so much so that i would try to become an author if i had anything resembling a single creative idea in my entire body. I live for the story, i would give my life if that would further the art in a meaningful way. To see somebody misrepresent the fundamentals so brazenly makes my blood boil. So yeah, good video.

31:16 well... she technically is writing some fanfiction about trauma and reconciliation about siblings on the real world... wich it evidentiates this: To her, is either a melodramatic sludge set in the real world, or power fantasy were cool character do cool things.

As someone who genuinely enjoyed both Captain Marvel AND the Star Wars Sequels (yes, all three of them!), it's amazing to see just how wrong Lily is about them, almost to the point of absurdity. The idea she's doing this on purpose holds more weight to me than the idea that she actually thinks this way. I can't understand why someone would come to this conclusion unless they were genuinely hunting for hate clicks. Just a non stop barrage of contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism.

Imagine having so many trash takes you still get analyzed and made fun of even after falling off Lily Orchard moment

It's all been about her fanfcs the whole time, hasn't it?

I'm pretty sure the reason Rose from Last jedi only had a cameo in Rise of Skywlaker was cause of the backlash towards the character which involved so many death and rape threats to the actress she closed her twitter because of it. I’m not saying that the sequel trilogy was good writing etc. I am saying that the level of racist and vitriol hate many of the characters got, especially the non white actors and etc was to a level so bad that is documented as such and it definitely affected how and which characters were used and treated in the following movie.

Bro, she must’ve been salty as hell when Captain Marvel lost both of her Death Battle episodes

Even in the comics Carol Danvers doesn't have a character. The best thing she ever did was get put in a coma when Rogue took her powers.

The simple fact is, no one wants to experience the story of captain plot device who solves literally every problem with no real effort. Those kinda of characters aren't normally fun because they make the story feel contrived. Hell this is why I think reality warping powers would be hard to write, a hero with those powers could easily devolve into a mary sue.

Bryan Mills is not a mary sue, also because he is literally explained to be ex-military and special forces so he will know firearms, combat, interrogation, and he has spent years in these fields honing his skills The issue is that yes, the movie loses tension when here is no real big challenge, it’s just shoot as many NPCS as you can, to get to the finish line with him. This is why Extraction and Extraction 2 is just Taken done right, where the main character is quite capable but challenges and or increasing threats force him to adapt or change his plans Jon Wicke could be a gary sue, except each movie has him progress with more challenging opponents, and he faces outward and inward dilemmas that affect his judgement, or impact others.

Ironically I just looked back to her channel and in her description she said she has no consent for her content to be archived in the wayback.......... And also has a terminal illness of "always being right" Yeah I'm not going to go further down that rabbit hole

Commander Shepherd ain't a Mary sue by definition due to the fact that the games wouldn't happen in the first place if the plot favored him, he spends pretty much the first two games being treated as the crazy dooms day sayer by anyone who isn't on his crew, if he'd been listened to perhaps the third game wouldn't have even happened

My biggest issue with Lily (besides, you know) is that she talks as if she’s 100% correct in whatever she’s talking about and that the average viewer would both agree with her argument and already believes it. She doesn’t explain why a Mary Sue is a good thing because she decided it is and to her, you already know that

W video

I was geeking out at the list of cool female characters, Oh I know her! Oh I know her! NUMBER 5 MENTION! CYBERPUNK MENTION! ARCANE MENT-

Loved when you dropped the beloved female character list, truly banger after banger there

In my opinion, Ken from the barbie movie isn't a marry sue... but can someone explain to me why people think he is?

"Making villains hypercompetent doesn't detract the tension of the story." *Looks at Aizen from Bleach, the Light from Young Justice and Prometheus from Cry for Justice* .... yeaaaaaah I beg to differ.

Steven Stegall movies are a good example of male Mary Sues.

i'm actually a bit surprised korra wasn't one of lily's examples of "good" mary sues, because despite her being a clear example of a mary sue, even one used in kaiser's video, she's probably the easiest to defend. now that's not saying much, and when korra unlocks life bending because of a story breaking deus ex machina, then really there's nothing that's gonna save her from the label, and having metal bending without seismic sense doesn't help either. but her starting the story already having mastered all 4 bending styles, while still mary sue behaviour, actually does make a meta amount of sense, since it allows the story to start where the last one left off, without fear of retreading stuff we've already watched. like a video game sequel that starts you off with all the abilities from the last game so you aren't waiting to unlock them again, or where the first level is just as hard as the last games final level so you aren't waiting for the tension to rise back up. now, this isn't a perfect defence, but it's not a hard one to make, especially since i could've just left out how the life and metal bending is still bad writing, cherry picking out a stronger argument on why mary sues can be good sometimes, and i'm surprised lily didn't make it herself. except i know why she didn't, because if the fact she titled a video "korra is garbage" means anything, i assume it's that she doesn't like that show, and her video wasn't actually about arguing for the sake of the trope, but an excuse on why she's allowed to like the poorly written characters she likes, which is honestly pathetic. you don't need an excuse to like something, even if that thing isn't good.

Is Jake Sully from avatar a Mary Sue? He's the protagonist, the story bends itself into a pretzel to make his decisions work. Nothing he ever does is wrong, everyone likes him except the antagonists, and everything pretty much works out for him. One could argue that he cannot be a Mary Sue because he is the villain, but I don't think that is correct. Villans can be Mary Sues, it's the antagonists that cannot be Mary Sue.

On Kreia in KotOR2, people who dislike her do not dislike her because she's a Sue. Firstly, she's just not a Mary Sue as she fails both definitions you use and even more broad definitions and/due to (Spoiler for a nearly 20 year old game) being she's the main ANTAGONIST of the story. The people who dislike Kreia dislike her because she's author mouth-piece character for one of the writers of KotOR2 and disagree with her explicit deconstructing Star Wars, the Force, and the Jedi. Many also dislike how many people took her deconstruction as truth, ignoring the fact that she's explicitly a villain and (again spoiler for 20 year old game) a Sith Lord who pretty consistently LIED.

Lily reminds me one russian youtuber what never truly understand topics she talks about, she critisized Encanto for "lost plot of critizing of dumb society" even encanto dont have that plot at any point of movie, she also have major sin of tracing and dont giving credits

I swear there's more videos on youtube bashing Lilly's takes than there are videos she's actually made either she's doing something really wrong or she's a just an easy target for people. I'm not quite sure yet.

Korsica got mentioned, based

I’ve been seen this idea a lot if there hot their a sue, even if they constantly get beaten up and shoved in the trashcan

glad im here (:

21:59 - 22:36 the worst part is half the characters you showed during your compilation she hates. like i know she hates most anime even if it fits a lot of her preferences for viewing (ie dungeon meshi), she despises 2b, and her opinion on bell/beauty and the beast is low in general. i think the one character i see in this line up that the would praise is aqua from kingdom hearts because that series is her baby even though she cannot pick up the themes and thinks that the games on the side systems are not relevant to the story.

Lorax quote

41:57 okay can we just pay attention to this wack part? Like yeah capitalism did delude feminism by making it be "women should be allowed wear the boot that crushes poor people"

Lily is a Mery Sue, that's why she defends it so much.

About Shepard in Mass Effect... Shepard isn't a Sue. He/she is a colonist whos home was destroyed/ a street child who want to become famous and rich/ a child whos perents are a high rank military servants. Shepard climebd to the top not becouse of luck, but becouse of determination and hard work. Shepard got to the N7 program becouse had survived in extreme conditions when everyone else died due to skill and determination/ tactical engenuity helped people to win an unwinnable battle against supperior forces/ prioritize mission and ready to get the hands dirty. And right from the start (no matter what past you will chose during a character creation) - your starting mission is fucked up. You lost your teammate. You accidentally destroyed the only proof that galaxy will get fucked up soon. All you have is a fucked up vissions of galactic destruction, dirty politics who playing behind your back and one of the elite special agents who wants to start a Reaper invasion. During the 1st game Shepard struggling to prove to everyone that Saren is a villian, that everyone is in danger and forsed to make heavy moral choices... It doesent matter you play as a renegate or paragon - in both cases Shepard struggles and overcome chalanges 24/7, often failing no matter how hard tries... Anyway... 2nd game is starting with you dying to death! You resurected, but you cant trust to no one, no one trust you and you have to convince a bunch of mistfits to go to the suicidal mission. And if Shepard isn't using engenuity, show compassion to the crew or harden them enough, use every limited resourses to prepare for it - everyone will die. Succesfully survive a suicide mission requieres from shepard meticulusly planning everything and proving to everyone that Shepard trully the best warrior in the galaxy. And making it soetimes is fucking hard and nearley impossible (from a narative perspective, not the game difficulty) And 3d game is an accumulation of every choice Shepard has made. Shepard already an established bad ass warrior who can unite a bunch of mistfits to kill one Reaper. Now he need to unite the galaxy to kill many. But still Shepard suffers the consequences of previous actions. If Shepard wasnt able to save someone in previous games - it can bite in the ass now. In conclussion - Shepard always faces chalanges, that must be owercomed by strength/cunning/engenuity/etc. And that challenges always pushing Shepard to the limit and makes him grow as a person. Player decides only the direction of that growth. (One of the best example - if Shepard is renegade enough, you can force geth and quarian to sease fire by yealing at them and promising to nuke both sides. And they are stoping, becouse everything that renegade Shepard did before proves that this isnt a fucking joke)

You know if Lily’s only metric on a Mary Sue is if they’re cool or not then that must mean that she thinks Dante is a Mary Sue and I believe if this was the medieval ages it would warrant immediate execution Also Lily don’t put Bury the Light over Rey not only is it really unfitting for the scene Rey doesn’t deserve Bury the Light only Vergil is deserving of Bury the Light

Villains can absolutely be Mary Sues. If the story spends too much time wanking a villain and can't commit to giving them a solid weakness, their defeat will likely look anticlimactic or forced. Because the author cared about creating their cool badass donut steel OC more than about creating an antagonist for their protagonist. Think Broly or pretty much any DBZ movie villain.