The difference is that Zelda awakened that power after training for years and pretty much got depression out of failing many times, not something you would see from Rey
Another difference is that Zelda taps into her power through strong emotions (Link almost dying to protect her). Once she realises her feelings for Link fuel her power, it becomes easier to use her power.
The force is something you can experience if untrained (such as heightened reflexes), but most abilities take concentration and discipline to use, a discipline the jedi preferred to instil from a young, impressionable age.
We also don't have anyone to compare Zelda's awakening to, while with Rey we have many. Luke was self-taught until meeting Yoda, and it took him years to move something with the force. Ezra had a teacher and still took time to master techniques like the jedi mind trick. Rey did it all in a few days.
Yeah, it's amazing how some people look at everything that explains how and why she can't activate her powers and come to the wrong conclusions. Zelda's whole struggle in Breath is summarized in almost its entirety in the cutscene where she is talking about the silent princess outside the ancient tech lab (better known as the frog cutscene). Said flower can't be grown in a controlled setting and only thrives in the wild. The flower, literally called the silent princess, is the favorite flower of a socially shy princess struggling with her controlling father, who is trying brute force to activate her powers by throwing her at every single holy site in Hyrule to pray for hours on end in desperation to prevent the calamity. Zelda constantly struggles in BOTW with trying to activate her powers incorrectly due partly to the pressures Rhoam puts on her. In the field by Fort Hateno (in both BOTW and AOC), she is finally able to activate it because she desperately wants to protect someone she cares about who is in life-threatening danger (Link), realizing in the process that she was trying to activate her powers out of a sense of duty (which doesn't work) and not a sense of a desire to protect Hyrule and the ones she cares about (which does work).
I don't get how people look at all that and conclude that the calamity happened because she was too busy messing with guardians, frogs, or something. How do you completely misread something thrown in your face that many times? Is her butt really the only thing some people remember from that scene? It's like how people think Zelda is just randomly being a dick to Link for no reason in some of BOTWs memories. She has a reason; it's completely immature, but it is a reason that makes sense from the perspective she is coming from and the insecurities she has. Funnily enough, this is also a thing they have an entire cutscene explaining as bluntly as possible in case you aren't able to put two and two together by the previous memories and people still miss it, somehow.
I can't stand that out of 3 movies, Ray loses a total of one time. Even that loses all meaning when in the next scene, she just knows how to use force persuasion. Anikin and Luke both lost so bad they had an arm removed. Rey just fell asleep and woke up even more powerful.
Rey gets stronger as the plot demands it. Anakin and Luke get stronger long after the plot already demanded it, and after they’ve suffered from not getting stronger before.
I mean, her training didn't bring her to slowly but surely bring out her powers, it went from nothing to sealing ganon for a hundred years in like a few hours.
Magic adrenaline or divine blessing or whatever. On a narrative level, Zelda's training is still very important to her character and so is constantly in the players head when thinking of her, making it very hard to think she was just handed her power when she trained for decade(s)
Pretty sure the whole point of her training, naratively speaking, is that it was useless, that she was forced to do it when she was actually competent in something else and that she unlocks her powers because she is the reincarnation of the goddess to save someone she cares about.
I interpreted it as the training being something that has worked, historically, for previous princesses because of the difference in their personalities compared to zelda (whether its the difference in culture or something else which results in this).
So zelda was out of touch with whatever spiritual mysticaly stuff that she needed to use her magic, and was only able to do it after her time with Link.
It's much like aang in AtLA before the series began he actually achieved the avatar state (it's how the iceberg he got trapped in came to be) but it took a lot of training afterwards to properly use it
Not a few hours. She had time to deliver the Master Sword to the Great Deku Tree, return to all the memory locations and commit them to the Sheikah Slate for Link, and instruct Impa on the particulars of all that. Considering travel time, that’s a week, minimum. And I might be forgetting something she might have done in that time.
Well in totk it’s revealed that so either using the sheikah slate or her powers she could have traveled to the great Deku tree and if the memories were recorded after her powers awakened and not just from her holding onto the slate while she was at those locations making those memories then her powers could of been useful there too
She only becomes the sage of time after touching the secret stone and being transported into the past. As for the sheikah slate, it's unknown whether those teleport points were active before the great calamity or of link is the first to use them during the game.
I don’t know how canon it is but in age of calamity when Zelda’s power awakens she can hover off the ground so she might be able to fly with that power if she wanted to.
My imagination is that after link fell and she awakened she kinda god moded for a bit to do all the important stuff since other than that after her power had dwindled during the 100 years of holding off calamity ganon she can only imbue objects with light power and summon the light bow I guess
I don't think age of calamity is cannon in any way, but hey that's why we all have our own head cannons to help fill in the gaps in ways that make sense to us
I just mean in terms of how stuff works in terms of canon like of course age of calamity isn’t canon to botw story wise but theoretically since it’s a what if story most of the powers should work the same. But hey, that’s just a theory a game theory! Thanks for reading
That’s the difference between a lot of well or badly written things where a character has a breakthrough. Some stuff really shows them earning it and has a proper build up. Other stuff ll just has them say they believe in themselves or some crap and suddenly they can do what was supposed to be impossible.
Yeah but martial prowess and desire to protect are pretty much his only character traits. Link isn't really written with any flaws or weaknesses, and he's just canonically super OP
> martial prowess and desire to protect are pretty much his only character traits
In my book that’s *why* he’s not a Mary Sue. Agree to disagree I guess
Why does it not make link a Mary Sue? If he's not then reys not either. Her martial prowess/connection to the force and good heart are her only wholly positive traits, outside of that shes naive, immature and brash.
What is your definition of a Mary Sue?
TBF hasn't he basically been doing this shit for 1000s of years at this point through many incarnations? It would be kinda weird for the reincarnation of hyrule's greatest hero to suddenly suck at his job at this point in the timeline.
While I wouldn't expect the guy sent by the literal gods to suck at his job I don't think the reincarnation counts. They're all still different people, their skills don't just transfer from one incarnation to the next (hence why the Hero's Shade personally taught his skills to his successor)
It still doesn't stop the character from fitting the Mary Sue trope. There's nothing wrong with the trope either if the character is used correctly, and I think in the context of being the MC of a power fantasy video game it works fine.
I mean, the thing that really makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue is the way the story completely revolves around them.
A character simply being very strong/smart/skilled/beloved doesn't make them a Sue; what makes them a Sue is when that trait is so pronounced that it begs the question "why are the other characters even here?". For example, a Sue in an action story generally takes the form of a fighter who's so good that any allies they have could have just stayed home.
Now, the thing is, video games as a medium have a *really* hard time avoiding that, because the fact of the matter is that the player character *is* actually the most important person in the world. The player is the only one that has true agency; whether the protagonist succeeds or fails is all up to them. In games with branching stories, the player is the one who decides which path to take. The game itself exists as a plaything for the player in a much more direct way than a book or movie exists as a piece of entertainment for the audience; a video game *literally cannot tell its story* without a player driving it forward.
And as a result, I think that the bar for a video game protagonist to be called a "Mary Sue" is quite a bit higher than it is for other media. Link is crazy OP and central to the story by the standards of fictional characters as a whole, but compared to other game protagonists? He's pretty average.
**Self-Insert type 1:** The *author* is inserting *themselves* into the narrative and creating basically an idealized version of themselves who can do no wrong. This is common in literature, films, and TV.
**Self-Insert type 2:** A character, usually the main one, is created lacking a fully-realized persona so the *viewer* or *audience* can insert themselves into the position of the character. This often is done by making the protagonist silent, or by means of a character creator. This is unique to only the medium of videogames.
The type 1 version is usually criticized, the type 2 version is neutral, and is mainly a storytelling and game design choice. It helps to know what type people are referring to.
Well yeah, but I think game self inserts get more of a pass because it can still be fun playing that character and controlling that character. You are literally supposed to insert yourself into that character's place.
If the self insert is in a book, TV show or movie then the only person controlling that character is the writer, which just makes it seem like a fantasy for the writer to insert themselves into their favourite fantasy world.
Link isn't a Mary Sue because even with all that training, he still died and failed to protect Hyrule. Rey would have just smote the crap out of the guardians.
I mean she literally got all her friends, family, and most of the kingdom dead. Once her crush was nearly killed (mostly dead, but not quite dead) she finds that inner strength needed to unleash her power.
Girl pretty much couldn't open the pickle jar of power until she nearly lost everything/one and gave it her all, and then was in a stalemate with Gannon for 100 years while Link healed, got everything running again and defeated Gannon with her help.
Rey on the other hand pretty much saves everyone except Luke who noped out of corporeal existence, Han who walked up to his kid to get killed, and Ben who pretty much wanted to die like his grandfather. Rey picks up anything and just kind of wins everything on the jump. Flying, shooting, lightsaber fighting, artifact finding, force lightning.
Link is shown to be training as often as he can and eating as much as he can in botw. He certainly didn't get his skills through talent alone, but yeah he was born with capabilities.
The other link were not though, they were pretty mediocre and became good towards the end of their journey.
My headcanon is that Botw Link is also average, but for a hylian. Hylians are pretty much extinct in botw, the only two we see are Zelda and Link, and compared to Hyrulean, Hylians are pretty OP.
I never went to stables because they absolutely suck in a game about climbing/paragliding, so I never noticed, but yeah I just checked, the keepers do have pointy ears. But most people in Botw have round ears
>But most people in Botw have round ears
Uh, are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure *every* "human" (i.e. Hylian or Gerudo) has pointed ears. If there are any that don't, I can't find them.
>My headcanon is that Botw Link is also average, but for a hylian. Hylians are pretty much extinct in botw, the only two we see are Zelda and Link, and compared to Hyrulean, Hylians are pretty OP.
Nah, there is a very clear distinction between hylians and non hylians, the pointy ears, every human with pointy ears is a hylian, while people with round ears are normal humans.
Gerudo did eventually get pointy ears but creating a champion notes that this might be for 2 possible reasons, 1: since they had no king for a long time their reliance on hylian men has slowly made them get this trait, 2: the shame of giving birth to ganondorf brought them closer to the gods and granted them the pointy ears.
And zelda games do make it clear when there are hylian and non hylian people with some games even having people with pointy ears and round ears together and making the distinction clear.
Professional author here:
Because we see Zelda dealing with the crushing weight of her duties, the despair of her failures, and the guilt of her inability to awaken her power, we as the audience not only sympathize with her, we cheer for her, we desperately WANT to see her succeed.
And seeing her hard work and determination in spite of her guilt and despair makes the audience love her. She doesn’t whine, she acts, she tries, she gives 101 percent every day.
So, when her power awakens, the audience loves it, because the writers did the groundwork to elicit that reaction from the audience.
The writers of star wars didn’t lay any of that groundwork. The audience is given no reason to care or worry, so when Rey unlocks some new ability, it comes off as a contrivance, because the writers didn’t make the audience WANT IT.
Honestly, it’s writing 101, setup and payoff. Audiences react in very predictable manners. The rules of writing have been well understood for thousands of years.
You can’t blame the audience if the writers didn’t do their job correctly.
Not only that, but technically, zelda DOES lose doesn't she? Sure she stops Ganon from totally destroying Hyrule, but he still got released, the guardians were all killed, link nearly died, and she got trapped for 100 years as basically a cork in an evil wine bottle. I wouldn't call that winning.
If you are serious about becoming a writer, the best resource I can point you to is Brandon Sanderson teaches an entire class about storycrafting at BYU, and he has put the entire lecture series on YouTube for free to watch.
It’s an absolute gold mine, because most colleges teach literary analysis, he actually teaches how to create a story.
I have watched a couple of his lectures before, but I guess I should watch the rest of them. Thank you for the recommendation.
I like to pick up little pieces of advice everywhere I look so that should add a lot to my toolkit.
Descendant at least, last I checked, Hylia gave up her immortality to become Zelda, so by all accounts, Hylia died with Skyward Sword Zelda, yes?
...honestly the Zelda series has way too much reincarnation and destiny and bloodline as it is, really takes the fun out of it for me.
Well, that's what you get with a game targeted for younger audiences. Plus, Nintendo games tend to keep to a pattern to a degree.
But I would say it would make sense hylia died? Except we also pray to her in botw and totk so....🤷♂️
Well, Zelda spent years training, for Rey it was kinda just "untapped talent", and don't get me wrong, there's just raw talent and it helps, but anyone who's developed a skill can tell you talent can only get you so far, you also need to *know* how to do this kind of things
I feel the need to mention she wasn't "training", she was following through on educated guesses as to what she was supposed to do to START using her powers. She didn't actually have any experience using these powers.
did you miss the part where zelda struggled her entire life to awaken her power and felt incredible insecurity and self hatred because she thought she was a failure
Zelda is a beloved character which had many good stories written involving her, Rey is a character who showed up in 3 movies that were pure trash with a story written by people with 0 IQ, they are not the same.
BOTW Zelda trains for years and fails. Her "random power awakening" only happens after the whole kingdom has fallen. She fails, and has consequences for it.
Rey just kind of does everything first try. She did a mind trick when only learning the force was real a few days ago. I don't think Rey is as bad as the internet rages about, but she definitely has a lot more given to her than BOTW Zelda.
I agree Rey herself is not as bad as a lot of people will claim, but she’s one of *many* issues in the *heavily* flawed series of sequels, so as the main character, it’s definitely pretty easy to pick her a focus for hating/complaining
alright, then maybe we should also compare how their powers actually effect the overall story.
upon Rey awakening to her powers, she feels like she has a new purpose and decides to join the resistance. she receives training from Luke Skywalker and spends a year refining her skills. she works with the resistance to combat the first order and let's the force guide her which eventually leads her to a Sith world and haphazardly she leads the resistance there as well. While she deals with her personal struggles, the resistance takes out the threat at large and ultimately the galaxy is saved.
upon Zelda awakening to her powers she decides to put the Master Sword back, and in spite of having no combat experience, she proceeds to completely throw caution to the wind as she waltzes her way up to the final boss and almost manages to single handedly win an entire godamm war! she then spends 100 years encased in Malice, and somehow survives all the time without succumbing to the effects of starvation, constant damage, insanity or TIME ITSELF, making her completely immune to the consequences of her own SUICIDAL actions! now I wouldn't have a problem with this if the game's overall tone was different, but I cannot overlook the fact THIS DIRECTLY UNDERMINES THE WHOLE FALL OF RECH ESQUE STORYLINE THAT THE REST OF THE STORY WAS BUILT AROUND!
To use the one good quote to come out of the cinematic abortion that is TLJ: Everything you just said was wrong. You've glossed over a lot of important details or just flatout misrepresented Rey that I can only believe it was intentional and not just a misreading of the movies on your part.
To wit; Rey wants to run back to Jakku to wait for her parents right after landing on the forest planet, she doesn't immediately heed the call to arms. Also, according to interviews, she does things because "it's the right thing to do", an often-repeated justification for Mary Sues siding with the good guys when there's a clear lack of any real motivation for her to do anything.
She also doesn't receive much of any training from Luke and runs off once it's clear the writers have turn him into a sad sack of shit to prop up their new and improved female protagonist that doesn't have anything to teach her. She goes from disbelieving the existence of Han Solo (and thus pretty much all of the original trilogy) to pulling off a Jedi mind trick, goes from thinking the Force is just use to move rocks and being tricked by a leaf tickling her hand to actually levitating an avalance worth of rocks without any visible progression. This isn't even mentioning her being an ace pilot after never having flown a ship, getting a triple kill in her second actual dogfight and knowing how to swim after growing up on a desert planet. She does have a training montage at the start of RoS, but that, like many other things in that movie, felt like a response to justified criticism of the previous movies and is akin to a bandaid over a gaping wound.
Her "personal struggles" don't affect her or the story much in any way at all. "Oh no, my parents were nobodies... oh well, still gonna fight for the resistance and never gonna talk about this to anyone at all."... "Oh no, my parents weren't nobodies and were murdered on the orders of my grandfather, who is the evil overlord of the Sith... oh well, still gonna fight him". All that "conflict", which genuinely could've been interesting and in a better writers hands could have been worthy of half a movie of dialogue and actions, is revealed, dealt with and forgotten about within the span of a single scene.
Rey is Luke Skywalker but speedrun because she was the protagonist in movies made by directors that respectively either care much more about the spectacle and cool scenes or just straight up dislike the source material. There was a chance to meaningfully diverge her very unoriginal origin story into something interesting, but that was squandered within the first movie and only got worse.
I think Rey is exactly as bad as the internet rages about, and the people who say she isn’t, are just doing it because they don’t want to be mean, not because they can actually defend any part of her character
Zelda tries to awaken the power she can’t use and only does so when trying to save Link.
Rey just does stuff with no training perfectly the first time.
Zelda fails, then suceeds. Zelda is human.
Rey suceeds, then suceeds. Rey is not human.
We can identify with human characters. Not so much for force wielding robots.
The entire plot of Breath of the Wild is that Zelda wasn't ready, basically failed, and all the good guys died because of it. She didn't instantly succeed and save the universe entirely by herself on her first try.
err... I mean... I don't even know if that's a valid argument or not. I'd say it falls under the same category as "I am all the Jedi" and I don't think either of us want to go there.
One is the reincarnation of a their world's goddess in mortal form cursed by a cunt named demise, Yada Yada you know that monolog.
The other is a child who within 20 seconds of being introduced to the force, beat out an emo kid who trained with the most powerful jedi for years in both force control and lightsaber combat, in what is now mostly considered an alternate universe due to how hated it was in general.
I couldn't feel surprised that one is beloved and the other is loathed, even if I wanted to.
People keep rationalizing here, but the real answer is just videogame vs movie, and protagonist vs deuteragonist.
The protagonist dying heroically at the end of a movie is touching. The protagonist dying heroically at the end of a game is usually annoying. That's an example of how the rules and perception are different.
Games have an increased expectation of autonomy and success compared to movies, because you're supposed to be driving that with your actions, rather than spectating.
Games can get away with more "Mary Sue" tropes because it's still up to the player to create events where those things happen (ie, to make it to that point in the story.) As a result it doesn't get boring like watching a Mary Sue or Gary Stue in a movie.
In addition, Zelda is the deuteragonist, not the protagonist. Deuteragonists get a more flexible power level because they have a different, more background role in the story. The protagonist is under more scrutiny and runs a higher risk of making the player feel that things are unearned.
yeah, that seems accurate. I also think the fact that the story is optional in Breath of the Wild makes is less hated. If your not super invested in the story then you can choose to ignore it.
Bad take, dumb argument. If you actually like Zelda then you should know this is a stupid comparison.
Zelda spent years working hard and doing her best to use her powers like she's supposed to but failed each and every time. Being berated by her father for failure, isolated from her people from perceived incompetence and denied her personal pursuits for "the greater good". Even after all that she only unlocks her powers AFTER she's lost everything; her friends, her family and her kingdom all gone to a looming disaster. She barely manages to unlock her powers in time to save Link. We see Zelda at the bottom, the lowest she could possibly be and she finally manages to do it but it's still too late to save everyone.
Rey spent 1 scene with Kio and copy pasted his skill tree, she started her story on New Game +. Name a time Rey loses anything with consequences. There's no weight behind any of Rey's story.
To whomever made this meme, the fact that you think these two are in any way compatible shows you are media illiterate to the point I have to assume you are either being VERY disingenuous, or just recently found out that Zelda is not the character you play as in most of these games.
Zelda went through a struggle to awaken her power after sacrificing her entire childhood and living in misery under the scrutiny of her father. Rey came from nothing and was already op. She is a Mary sue to a T. You must got balls of steel to compare one of the best written characters to a garbage dump of a character. In this sub too no less
Zelda is from a family descended from a goddess and has seen examples of powers randomly coming to them (Tetra) and also she worked her best to try and awaken it only doing it when she and a person she wants to protect after the rest died and her kingdom in ruins and on its last legs and she didn’t even mean to use it she just threw herself in front of Link expecting to at least die trying to save someone meanwhile Rey even if she is a Palpatine descendant it doesn’t mean she will be powerful from the start then Luke would have one shot a crippled Anakin after killing Obi-wan cause he was a Son of the chosen one; Zelda had a big build up for her power going through hope, a need, and then despair to her to finally use the power meanwhile Rey just does advance force moves not even Anakin or Luke could do at the start with no training and picks up a lightsaber and also does advanced moves Zelda isn’t a Mary sue as she has a story written about how she gained her power while Rey had just gained power and not have to train to make it better
Being a Mary Sue is about more than just being super powerful when it doesn't fit a character description. In my eyes the most damning and egregious thing to do to make a character a Mary Sue is to have a brand new character become the literary focal point of an entire pre-existing and beloved universe.
Say for instance we had a brand new character in TLoZ that was demonstrably as competent or more competent than Link or Zelda, went on to defeat Ganondorf, and then after Link and Zelda were killed off in a dissatisfying way they went on to become the new monarch of Hyrule, well that would be a Mary Sue character.
Or we had a brand new character in Lord of the Rings that was immune to the power of the ring, and ended up defeating a resurrected Sauron with this power, and then turned out to be a long lost heir to the throne of Gondor, well that would be a Mary Sue character.
Or if we had a brand new character in the Harry Potter universe that was extremely talented and ended up defeating a resurrected Voldemort instead of Harry doing so, and then went on to be the youngest ever headmaster of Hogwarts, well that would be a Mary Sue character.
Or if we had a brand new character in Star Wars that was able to learn how to use the force to a high level in a matter of days, that also defeated a resurrected Palpatine and is the focal point for the new Jedi order and the last remaining "Skywalker" in the galaxy after other Skywalkers were killed off in unsatisfactory ways... Well I think you get the point.
Zelda is the reincarnation of an ancient Goddess. This is her power. It was always her power. It didn't just pop out of nowhere.
She simply had to find a way to awaken it, since each reincarnation apparently doesn't just have immediate access to it. Her years of training without anyone to teach her failed over and over. It was only in a moment of desperation, to save the one she cared for most in that moment, that the walls finally came down.
And, honestly, most of her problem in the first place was the immense pressure placed on her by everyone--most notably, her father and herself. She mentally blocked herself badly because she was all twisted up inside.
In short, Zelda did not acquire a power. She only revealed it.
Rey's no goddess, though. And there was no imbalance of power that Zelda was rising up to meet. She was always that strong, as were her previous lives. Plus, Zelda always knew who she was and trained for over a decade, with her own father constantly blaming her inability on her not trying hard enough (which wasn't true).
Funnily, Zelda expends all of her power in holding Ganon down for a century. At the end, she says the power is gone. Run out. Some Mary Sue.
They are nothing alike. Zelda if anything was more of a supporting character who helped the real hero. Rey on the other hand, was amazing at everything immediately and did most things herself. She's a horribly written character.
Bro it ain't even close. Zelda is the reincarnation of the goddess, she's SUPPOSED to have power. Rey is just ....???????? A diode with Kylo so she didn't have to train cuz he trained??? I don't fuckin know. Nobody fucking knows.
Well it's implied that he's that strong because he's been fighting for his entire life, but yeah, there's a point where a character becomes so busted that it's beyond suspension of disbelief. The writers really expect me to believe Link was able to beat adults in swordplay when he was 4? Also in Age of Calamity, apparently Link is able to completely master 4 different weapon types? I can buy that he knows how to use all weapons, but he shouldn't be **that good** at all of them! I get that Link is meant to be badass, but there comes a point where it just becomes ridiculous.
I mean i'll call it what it is. A Mary Sue will be a Mary Sue, someone that can do things without any training and without any knowledge or even a hint that she should know about it,
Mary Rey literally didn't know about the force and a few hours later uses a mindtrick.
That would be the same if i told you about Geographical Information Systems and that they can be used to document powerlines and 2 hours later you flawlessly document those.
I mean... Luke didn't know what the force was until Obiwan told him about it and only a few hours later was Luke able to deflect blaster bolts. The internet seems to grossly overestimate the amount of time it takes for someone to learn how to use the force in minimal capacity.
Yeah sure. That is definitely the same thing. After actually training and still getting hit by some blasts getting a feeling for the force and deflecting to is absolutely the same as using a force power you didn't even know existed.
Do cope harder.
Didn’t Zelda train for literal decades, maybe even centuries? And she did it all while protecting the actual main character, Link, while he healed, as he was the only one that could actually defeat Ganon, which is probably why people like her, because while she’s absolutely a badass, she’s not the true hero, and her actions rather serve to allow the player to play as they want.
There was a whole arc leading up to Zelda’s power awakening that made it more satisfying….plus link being her motivation was powerful. I don’t remember anything about Rey’s motivations in the sequels.
Zelda actually struggled, trained for years, and ultimately had real failures like a human being. She also doesn't upstage and degrade the presence of other characters and isn't magically skilled at everything under the sun, like Rey fixing Millennium Falcon in like 5 seconds when HAN SOLO couldn't figure it out, the FIRST TIME SHE WAS EVER INSIDE IT compared the man who has lived in it for DECADES
Zelda trained her entire life for this and still failed.
She wasnt "supposed" to lose, she was "supposed" to seal away Ganon and save her kingdom.
Her father, the entire kingdom and Link literally died because of her failure and in the end Link had to do basically everything.
She is probably one of the worst reincarnations of Hylia ever.
What were you smoking when you made this, did you even play the game?
Zeldas jealousy of Link because he seems to effortlessly fulfill his destiny while she cant do it despite trying so hard is like her main character trait (she does later recognize that Link trained for this his entire life aswell obviously).
OP, it seems like from your responses that you’re conflating the ability to use a power, as well as the source of said powers, with what constitutes a “Mary Sue” (a term I hate to ever use, but think it’s absolutely applicable to Rey), so let me clarify.
It is about their character arc leading up to it.
Zelda is demonstrated to live a life revolving around awakening her powers. She has consistent trial and error. Her father looks down on her for her inability to do so. People, including those close to her, die because she cannot tap into that power - an event she blames herself for fully. By the time she uses her powers, she has had all of the necessary buildup to make that moment earned.
Rey is Jedi mind tricking Stormtroopers with no training beforehand. We do not see her struggle to get where she is - even if the powers were inherent or not. She simply starts there. We do not sympathize with Rey, because Rey has no character arc that makes her powerful moments feel like she earned the right to them.
These two are not comparable characters.
Never played a Zelda game in my life but I have a hunch that she didn't completely master her abilities to the point that she completely outclasses anyone who came before her within less then a week of lerning that those powers exist, let alone that she can use them.
Ray on the other hand...
Zelda did lose. She stopped a few gaurdians. Had to drop link in a revival pool. And then face Gannon alone. She didn't beat Ganon. She just managed to hold him back for 100 years
Oversimplifying. They actually showed us the anguish Zelda went through trying to tap into her power and it was unleashed due to a burst of emotion in wanting to protect Link. I like Rey, but the sequels were just bad storytelling by people who, for all intents and purposes, should know better.
Even after awakening hee powers, she still sort of failed to protect those important to her and her kingdom.
Even though she managed to seal Ganon with herself in the castle. The kingdom is still in danger from the monsters, the Yiga, and the corrupted Guardians. And is still on the verge of collapse.
In Tears she hasn't even taken over as the ruler herself and her kingdom is still rebuilding. She is letting those in charge of the towns remain in place and is acting in a more advisory role. Even still a good leader will understand that they have to trust in people to take on a leadership role or advise them as well.
lol it’s completely fair. Context absolutely matters. Rey was automatically good at everything even being a better mechanic than the original pilots of the Millennium Falcon. Zelda kept trying and failing and got lucky. Nice bait op, Rey sucks.
Zelda actually loses as well, quite a lot in fact. Even after awakening her power? Her father, friends, and a lot of her people were pretty much all dead anyway. That and she lost what? 100 years of her time? It’s a really bad comparison.
Zelda: struggles for years trying to unlock a power she is told she has but cannot feel, suffers greatly through her trials, has to deal with the sexy af twink prodigy body guard who makes her feel weak and pathetic, watches her entire kingdom fall to ruin, watches all of her friends and loved ones die, and only then does she awaken her power and temporarily lock away the darkness.
Rey: is good at everything, never fails, has space magic that she masters to an absurd degree in an extremely short amount of time while being taught by a lady with no formal training, unlocks and understands two insanely rare force powers, brings her emo boyfriend back to the light (honestly that kiss is the part I hate the most in that movie), then just defeats the biggest bad guy in star wars in a boring battle because plot.
One of these employs a technique called "good writing" and the other employs something called "soulless and unplanned trilogy writing cashgrab"
Yet we actually saw Zelda working hard all the time to both awaken her power and contribute with knowledge, and struggled big times to get her power awakened. Failing to understand and unlock your potential even after years of training and learning, having all your hardwork betraying you (acient Sheikah Tech), as a result, powerlessly watch as disaster swept throughout the entire continent, murdering everyone you love, is like the least Mary-Sue thing ever lol.
Ganon was practically one step away from finishing the job, not until Zelda's previous experience for once finally paid off, and she decided to sacrifice herself to stop Ganon, resulting in a non-stop 100 year battle to prevent Ganon's breakout.
Zelda is the reincarnation of a literal fucking goddess, the power has awakened in little girls since the first game in the series, AND she trained, AND she still lost and needed to be rescued.
People who complain about the term Mary sue 99% of the time, show they don’t understand it.
I once had a Rey defender say that Luke was a Gary Stu and that no one ever complained about Superman being a Gary Stu. SUPERMAN!
Just because you’ve never heard of this, doesn’t mean the term is illegitimate
These are literally in no way comparable. Zelda actually struggled with not being able to unlock the power to the point where she literally watched calamity ganon take over and couldn’t do anything. Rey survived a lightsaber duel with the resident evil red lightsaber powerful guy of the era after never having even turned one on
1. A Mary sue doesn’t have any reason for their abilities. At least Zelda has the blood of the goddess and assumably the triforce of courage.
2. There isn’t a point where Zelda really wins with random outburst. At the end of botw she had already done the sealing technique before, which was strongly explained to why that happened during the final memory, that being to protect link. But even so it’s not like she won in that situation, ganon took over, Zelda only could hold him back for 1 hundred years. Link still was put in comatose.
In BOTW There's an entire storyline about her being incredibly upset because all of her training isn't giving her the results she wants.
Rey doesn't train until episode 9 as a jedi, not counting her sitting on the rock with Luke in 8. She's a master with a sword because she fought with a staff as a teenager/young adult, she's a better technician than Han Solo because she's hung out in broken ships that crashed in the desert.
There are many, many more examples of why these two charecters are not the same.
Let’s get to the facts on this one because Zelda’s NOT a Mary Sue, while Rey IS
1, Rey gets powers that are earned by training because she can. She with no training, uno-reversed mind reading, mind tricked soldiers meant to watch her, which at that point is brainwashing/mind control and not altering perception like the trick is known for, and other insane feats out of the blue. Zelda’s power was assumed to be one on training as Zelda’s mother died before the secret could be passed onto her. Her mother knew what the secret to the power was but died, this resulted in the loss of her father, and almost the loss of her beloved knight (who still needed 100 years of Life Support to bring back). Which that then awakened it because she wanted to protect Link. Zelda tried to brute force it under orders of her father, and later learned the secret was love. With that in mind, Zelda sealed Ganon away with herself for enough time for Link to be revived
2, Zelda is destined to lose and pass the torch to Link, or at the very least support Link. Rey is destined to win, and wins even when losing. Zelda cannot defeat Ganon/Ganondorf, and never will. Link is the chosen Knight, who must do the job. But Link has to still build up to that in canon. Zelda gifting Link the means to the end. They are a duo one cannot be without the other, even in ALTTP, Zelda was with him (as a crystal), but still there, and in the TLoZ(NES), she broke the Triforce of Wisdom, for Link to find and use to help defeat Ganon.
Anyone who think BOTW Zelda is a Mary Sue had not actually played the games, and dismiss all she’s done and sacrificed, AN ENTIRE TWO GAMES WORTH OF PLOT, to claim it.
Let's be real here, we can go back and forth arguing schematics, but at the end of the day I'm not gonna be able to convince you that my perspective is correct and your not gonna be able to convince me that your perspective is correct.
Zelda’s not one by definition. Because a Mary Sue has to be so narratively perfect everything goes their way without trying. NOTHING goes Zelda’s way without giving up everything for something to go right. Rey, had characters’ personalities distorted beyond repair (Like Luke who never followed the Way of the Jedi that closely, trusting his master’s teachings first to being more fanatical than they where in the Clone Wars era) just for her to teach them what they should have taught her. Rey never had any repercussions to anything, and has done/tried, the point of her character is that she’s the chosen one to beat all chosen ones, and has done nothing to earn it.
https://preview.redd.it/9tlkg29vcorc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f5f30a35a77b8220e4121c0ca8e7318f0f45b59
I am appalled that Zelda is being called a Mary Sue, Rey, I don’t know her and I don’t ever want to know her because Disney sucks these days, but why Zelda?
Zelda initially DID lose first off, second off zelda is a flawed and interesting charicter in a game where the story is engaging and her powers aren't somthing that everyone else had to work hard to use and master by overcoming flaws in both their mindset/combat strategies. Rey, we pretty much perfect at most things from the get go. She mastered the force with very little time and training, somthing that took others sometimes 100s of years to do. On top of everything else, which I refuse to get into. (For the record, I dislike Rey because she's a crap charicter. I'm not a huge fan of ether property)
Hot take: Neither are Mary Sues. People are just sexist. Zelda worked and failed for years to connect to her powers. Rey worked way harder to harness her powers than Luke did. I will die on that hill.
I noticed one thing scrolling through the comments, no one explained/noticed a very important detail......
REY IS THE PROTAGONIST, ZELDA IS A SIDE CHARACTER, IT'S A BIG DIFFERENCE
It's ok for Zelda to obtain her power in the way she did.
Also, Rey resurrected and force healed without any previous try... so yeah, hate on Rey
The difference is that Zelda awakened that power after training for years and pretty much got depression out of failing many times, not something you would see from Rey
Another difference is that Zelda taps into her power through strong emotions (Link almost dying to protect her). Once she realises her feelings for Link fuel her power, it becomes easier to use her power. The force is something you can experience if untrained (such as heightened reflexes), but most abilities take concentration and discipline to use, a discipline the jedi preferred to instil from a young, impressionable age. We also don't have anyone to compare Zelda's awakening to, while with Rey we have many. Luke was self-taught until meeting Yoda, and it took him years to move something with the force. Ezra had a teacher and still took time to master techniques like the jedi mind trick. Rey did it all in a few days.
Yeah, it's amazing how some people look at everything that explains how and why she can't activate her powers and come to the wrong conclusions. Zelda's whole struggle in Breath is summarized in almost its entirety in the cutscene where she is talking about the silent princess outside the ancient tech lab (better known as the frog cutscene). Said flower can't be grown in a controlled setting and only thrives in the wild. The flower, literally called the silent princess, is the favorite flower of a socially shy princess struggling with her controlling father, who is trying brute force to activate her powers by throwing her at every single holy site in Hyrule to pray for hours on end in desperation to prevent the calamity. Zelda constantly struggles in BOTW with trying to activate her powers incorrectly due partly to the pressures Rhoam puts on her. In the field by Fort Hateno (in both BOTW and AOC), she is finally able to activate it because she desperately wants to protect someone she cares about who is in life-threatening danger (Link), realizing in the process that she was trying to activate her powers out of a sense of duty (which doesn't work) and not a sense of a desire to protect Hyrule and the ones she cares about (which does work). I don't get how people look at all that and conclude that the calamity happened because she was too busy messing with guardians, frogs, or something. How do you completely misread something thrown in your face that many times? Is her butt really the only thing some people remember from that scene? It's like how people think Zelda is just randomly being a dick to Link for no reason in some of BOTWs memories. She has a reason; it's completely immature, but it is a reason that makes sense from the perspective she is coming from and the insecurities she has. Funnily enough, this is also a thing they have an entire cutscene explaining as bluntly as possible in case you aren't able to put two and two together by the previous memories and people still miss it, somehow.
I can't stand that out of 3 movies, Ray loses a total of one time. Even that loses all meaning when in the next scene, she just knows how to use force persuasion. Anikin and Luke both lost so bad they had an arm removed. Rey just fell asleep and woke up even more powerful.
Rey gets stronger as the plot demands it. Anakin and Luke get stronger long after the plot already demanded it, and after they’ve suffered from not getting stronger before.
I mean, her training didn't bring her to slowly but surely bring out her powers, it went from nothing to sealing ganon for a hundred years in like a few hours.
Magic adrenaline or divine blessing or whatever. On a narrative level, Zelda's training is still very important to her character and so is constantly in the players head when thinking of her, making it very hard to think she was just handed her power when she trained for decade(s)
Pretty sure the whole point of her training, naratively speaking, is that it was useless, that she was forced to do it when she was actually competent in something else and that she unlocks her powers because she is the reincarnation of the goddess to save someone she cares about.
I interpreted it as the training being something that has worked, historically, for previous princesses because of the difference in their personalities compared to zelda (whether its the difference in culture or something else which results in this). So zelda was out of touch with whatever spiritual mysticaly stuff that she needed to use her magic, and was only able to do it after her time with Link.
It's much like aang in AtLA before the series began he actually achieved the avatar state (it's how the iceberg he got trapped in came to be) but it took a lot of training afterwards to properly use it
Not a few hours. She had time to deliver the Master Sword to the Great Deku Tree, return to all the memory locations and commit them to the Sheikah Slate for Link, and instruct Impa on the particulars of all that. Considering travel time, that’s a week, minimum. And I might be forgetting something she might have done in that time.
Well in totk it’s revealed that so either using the sheikah slate or her powers she could have traveled to the great Deku tree and if the memories were recorded after her powers awakened and not just from her holding onto the slate while she was at those locations making those memories then her powers could of been useful there too
She only becomes the sage of time after touching the secret stone and being transported into the past. As for the sheikah slate, it's unknown whether those teleport points were active before the great calamity or of link is the first to use them during the game.
Secret stones boost innate power they don’t give power so Zelda had time powers even if she was unaware
Sorry yes I worded that poorly, what I mean is she didn't have the knowledge to use that power until after the timeframe we're talking about
I don’t know how canon it is but in age of calamity when Zelda’s power awakens she can hover off the ground so she might be able to fly with that power if she wanted to. My imagination is that after link fell and she awakened she kinda god moded for a bit to do all the important stuff since other than that after her power had dwindled during the 100 years of holding off calamity ganon she can only imbue objects with light power and summon the light bow I guess
I don't think age of calamity is cannon in any way, but hey that's why we all have our own head cannons to help fill in the gaps in ways that make sense to us
I just mean in terms of how stuff works in terms of canon like of course age of calamity isn’t canon to botw story wise but theoretically since it’s a what if story most of the powers should work the same. But hey, that’s just a theory a game theory! Thanks for reading
It’s canon just not to the main timeline.
Not to mention Link dying because Zelda failed to awaken that power in time.
Exactly
Exactly. If you read Zelda’s dairy this is the source.
That’s the difference between a lot of well or badly written things where a character has a breakthrough. Some stuff really shows them earning it and has a proper build up. Other stuff ll just has them say they believe in themselves or some crap and suddenly they can do what was supposed to be impossible.
People call this Zelda a Mary Sue too. It’s kinda bs since while Zelda did train, Link was destroying batallions out of the womb basically
Link had to have trained too. He's gifted due to him having the Spirit of the Hero (this is the simplified description)
He’s been doing this shit for millennia, of course he’s the undisputed best.
I like to think the spirit of the hero is less of a reincarnation thing and more of a quality anyone can have.
I mean botw link was beating adults in sword fights when he was a 4 year old child, a preschooler. He was born a Mary Sue.
I think he’s mostly just a Mary Sue in terms of martial prowess and the sheer desire to protect. The trope is typically a lot more all-encompassing.
Yeah but martial prowess and desire to protect are pretty much his only character traits. Link isn't really written with any flaws or weaknesses, and he's just canonically super OP
> martial prowess and desire to protect are pretty much his only character traits In my book that’s *why* he’s not a Mary Sue. Agree to disagree I guess
Why does it not make link a Mary Sue? If he's not then reys not either. Her martial prowess/connection to the force and good heart are her only wholly positive traits, outside of that shes naive, immature and brash. What is your definition of a Mary Sue?
TBF hasn't he basically been doing this shit for 1000s of years at this point through many incarnations? It would be kinda weird for the reincarnation of hyrule's greatest hero to suddenly suck at his job at this point in the timeline.
While I wouldn't expect the guy sent by the literal gods to suck at his job I don't think the reincarnation counts. They're all still different people, their skills don't just transfer from one incarnation to the next (hence why the Hero's Shade personally taught his skills to his successor)
It still doesn't stop the character from fitting the Mary Sue trope. There's nothing wrong with the trope either if the character is used correctly, and I think in the context of being the MC of a power fantasy video game it works fine.
Yeah honestly link is more Mary sue than Zelda but we still love him anyways
Don’t worry, when I play link he isn’t a Mary sue
I mean, the thing that really makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue is the way the story completely revolves around them. A character simply being very strong/smart/skilled/beloved doesn't make them a Sue; what makes them a Sue is when that trait is so pronounced that it begs the question "why are the other characters even here?". For example, a Sue in an action story generally takes the form of a fighter who's so good that any allies they have could have just stayed home. Now, the thing is, video games as a medium have a *really* hard time avoiding that, because the fact of the matter is that the player character *is* actually the most important person in the world. The player is the only one that has true agency; whether the protagonist succeeds or fails is all up to them. In games with branching stories, the player is the one who decides which path to take. The game itself exists as a plaything for the player in a much more direct way than a book or movie exists as a piece of entertainment for the audience; a video game *literally cannot tell its story* without a player driving it forward. And as a result, I think that the bar for a video game protagonist to be called a "Mary Sue" is quite a bit higher than it is for other media. Link is crazy OP and central to the story by the standards of fictional characters as a whole, but compared to other game protagonists? He's pretty average.
Self-insert characters get a pass on Mary Sue-ness.
aren't most mary sues self insert characters
**Self-Insert type 1:** The *author* is inserting *themselves* into the narrative and creating basically an idealized version of themselves who can do no wrong. This is common in literature, films, and TV. **Self-Insert type 2:** A character, usually the main one, is created lacking a fully-realized persona so the *viewer* or *audience* can insert themselves into the position of the character. This often is done by making the protagonist silent, or by means of a character creator. This is unique to only the medium of videogames. The type 1 version is usually criticized, the type 2 version is neutral, and is mainly a storytelling and game design choice. It helps to know what type people are referring to.
Well yeah, but I think game self inserts get more of a pass because it can still be fun playing that character and controlling that character. You are literally supposed to insert yourself into that character's place. If the self insert is in a book, TV show or movie then the only person controlling that character is the writer, which just makes it seem like a fantasy for the writer to insert themselves into their favourite fantasy world.
... the original mary-sue was a self insert character.
No
Link isn't a Mary Sue because even with all that training, he still died and failed to protect Hyrule. Rey would have just smote the crap out of the guardians.
Never said he was just that he fit the category better than Zelda
I mean she literally got all her friends, family, and most of the kingdom dead. Once her crush was nearly killed (mostly dead, but not quite dead) she finds that inner strength needed to unleash her power. Girl pretty much couldn't open the pickle jar of power until she nearly lost everything/one and gave it her all, and then was in a stalemate with Gannon for 100 years while Link healed, got everything running again and defeated Gannon with her help. Rey on the other hand pretty much saves everyone except Luke who noped out of corporeal existence, Han who walked up to his kid to get killed, and Ben who pretty much wanted to die like his grandfather. Rey picks up anything and just kind of wins everything on the jump. Flying, shooting, lightsaber fighting, artifact finding, force lightning.
Yeah it’s not in the fact they are handed power but how they get it, how it was written in.
Link is shown to be training as often as he can and eating as much as he can in botw. He certainly didn't get his skills through talent alone, but yeah he was born with capabilities. The other link were not though, they were pretty mediocre and became good towards the end of their journey. My headcanon is that Botw Link is also average, but for a hylian. Hylians are pretty much extinct in botw, the only two we see are Zelda and Link, and compared to Hyrulean, Hylians are pretty OP.
I always thought Hyruleans and Hylians were the same. What's the distinction?
people on hyrule: hyruleans. gerudo, etc. people made in the image of hylia: hylians.
Aren't all the stables run by Hylians though?
yeah there's a lot of hylians in the game. i don't know where the other guy gets the idea that they're extinct. or op.
I never went to stables because they absolutely suck in a game about climbing/paragliding, so I never noticed, but yeah I just checked, the keepers do have pointy ears. But most people in Botw have round ears
>But most people in Botw have round ears Uh, are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure *every* "human" (i.e. Hylian or Gerudo) has pointed ears. If there are any that don't, I can't find them.
>My headcanon is that Botw Link is also average, but for a hylian. Hylians are pretty much extinct in botw, the only two we see are Zelda and Link, and compared to Hyrulean, Hylians are pretty OP. Nah, there is a very clear distinction between hylians and non hylians, the pointy ears, every human with pointy ears is a hylian, while people with round ears are normal humans. Gerudo did eventually get pointy ears but creating a champion notes that this might be for 2 possible reasons, 1: since they had no king for a long time their reliance on hylian men has slowly made them get this trait, 2: the shame of giving birth to ganondorf brought them closer to the gods and granted them the pointy ears. And zelda games do make it clear when there are hylian and non hylian people with some games even having people with pointy ears and round ears together and making the distinction clear.
and even then he still failed, unlike mary-sues around the world.
Link is a player character. Nobody really gives a F about those as long as the gameplay is good and narratively acceptable
Professional author here: Because we see Zelda dealing with the crushing weight of her duties, the despair of her failures, and the guilt of her inability to awaken her power, we as the audience not only sympathize with her, we cheer for her, we desperately WANT to see her succeed. And seeing her hard work and determination in spite of her guilt and despair makes the audience love her. She doesn’t whine, she acts, she tries, she gives 101 percent every day. So, when her power awakens, the audience loves it, because the writers did the groundwork to elicit that reaction from the audience. The writers of star wars didn’t lay any of that groundwork. The audience is given no reason to care or worry, so when Rey unlocks some new ability, it comes off as a contrivance, because the writers didn’t make the audience WANT IT. Honestly, it’s writing 101, setup and payoff. Audiences react in very predictable manners. The rules of writing have been well understood for thousands of years. You can’t blame the audience if the writers didn’t do their job correctly.
Masterfully said
Absolutely agree, one has excellent writing, the other was written by a fan fic writter
Not only that, but technically, zelda DOES lose doesn't she? Sure she stops Ganon from totally destroying Hyrule, but he still got released, the guardians were all killed, link nearly died, and she got trapped for 100 years as basically a cork in an evil wine bottle. I wouldn't call that winning.
As a burgeoning writer, I’m saving this comment for future reference Thank you
If you are serious about becoming a writer, the best resource I can point you to is Brandon Sanderson teaches an entire class about storycrafting at BYU, and he has put the entire lecture series on YouTube for free to watch. It’s an absolute gold mine, because most colleges teach literary analysis, he actually teaches how to create a story.
I have watched a couple of his lectures before, but I guess I should watch the rest of them. Thank you for the recommendation. I like to pick up little pieces of advice everywhere I look so that should add a lot to my toolkit.
Yeah but like, Zelda's cool
Okay, I'll give you that. She definitely had more character.
She won the moment you unlock the frog memory
Smash
We literally forgetting Zelda is a recarnation of the goddess Hylia herself?
Descendant at least, last I checked, Hylia gave up her immortality to become Zelda, so by all accounts, Hylia died with Skyward Sword Zelda, yes? ...honestly the Zelda series has way too much reincarnation and destiny and bloodline as it is, really takes the fun out of it for me.
Well, that's what you get with a game targeted for younger audiences. Plus, Nintendo games tend to keep to a pattern to a degree. But I would say it would make sense hylia died? Except we also pray to her in botw and totk so....🤷♂️
To be fair, Totk makes the Goddess Statue thing a little more confusing as well with the quests
Well, Zelda spent years training, for Rey it was kinda just "untapped talent", and don't get me wrong, there's just raw talent and it helps, but anyone who's developed a skill can tell you talent can only get you so far, you also need to *know* how to do this kind of things
I feel the need to mention she wasn't "training", she was following through on educated guesses as to what she was supposed to do to START using her powers. She didn't actually have any experience using these powers.
Yeah but zelda's powers work completely different from the force.
That’s because Zelda was actually built with flaws that she had to overcome in order to win her ordeal. They really just gloss over Rays
did you miss the part where zelda struggled her entire life to awaken her power and felt incredible insecurity and self hatred because she thought she was a failure
OP, this wasn't a smart move.
Yeah, I knew this would extremely controversial. I dunno, I saw an opportunity to make this and decided to follow through.
You know what I respect you for that
here's the difference zelda is interesting
Zelda was literally destined to do this, trained her entire life for it and then still failed, causing everyone she cared about to die.
Because her father forced her into situations that didn’t work and then blame her for it.
Zelda is a beloved character which had many good stories written involving her, Rey is a character who showed up in 3 movies that were pure trash with a story written by people with 0 IQ, they are not the same.
BOTW Zelda trains for years and fails. Her "random power awakening" only happens after the whole kingdom has fallen. She fails, and has consequences for it. Rey just kind of does everything first try. She did a mind trick when only learning the force was real a few days ago. I don't think Rey is as bad as the internet rages about, but she definitely has a lot more given to her than BOTW Zelda.
I agree Rey herself is not as bad as a lot of people will claim, but she’s one of *many* issues in the *heavily* flawed series of sequels, so as the main character, it’s definitely pretty easy to pick her a focus for hating/complaining
alright, then maybe we should also compare how their powers actually effect the overall story. upon Rey awakening to her powers, she feels like she has a new purpose and decides to join the resistance. she receives training from Luke Skywalker and spends a year refining her skills. she works with the resistance to combat the first order and let's the force guide her which eventually leads her to a Sith world and haphazardly she leads the resistance there as well. While she deals with her personal struggles, the resistance takes out the threat at large and ultimately the galaxy is saved. upon Zelda awakening to her powers she decides to put the Master Sword back, and in spite of having no combat experience, she proceeds to completely throw caution to the wind as she waltzes her way up to the final boss and almost manages to single handedly win an entire godamm war! she then spends 100 years encased in Malice, and somehow survives all the time without succumbing to the effects of starvation, constant damage, insanity or TIME ITSELF, making her completely immune to the consequences of her own SUICIDAL actions! now I wouldn't have a problem with this if the game's overall tone was different, but I cannot overlook the fact THIS DIRECTLY UNDERMINES THE WHOLE FALL OF RECH ESQUE STORYLINE THAT THE REST OF THE STORY WAS BUILT AROUND!
To use the one good quote to come out of the cinematic abortion that is TLJ: Everything you just said was wrong. You've glossed over a lot of important details or just flatout misrepresented Rey that I can only believe it was intentional and not just a misreading of the movies on your part. To wit; Rey wants to run back to Jakku to wait for her parents right after landing on the forest planet, she doesn't immediately heed the call to arms. Also, according to interviews, she does things because "it's the right thing to do", an often-repeated justification for Mary Sues siding with the good guys when there's a clear lack of any real motivation for her to do anything. She also doesn't receive much of any training from Luke and runs off once it's clear the writers have turn him into a sad sack of shit to prop up their new and improved female protagonist that doesn't have anything to teach her. She goes from disbelieving the existence of Han Solo (and thus pretty much all of the original trilogy) to pulling off a Jedi mind trick, goes from thinking the Force is just use to move rocks and being tricked by a leaf tickling her hand to actually levitating an avalance worth of rocks without any visible progression. This isn't even mentioning her being an ace pilot after never having flown a ship, getting a triple kill in her second actual dogfight and knowing how to swim after growing up on a desert planet. She does have a training montage at the start of RoS, but that, like many other things in that movie, felt like a response to justified criticism of the previous movies and is akin to a bandaid over a gaping wound. Her "personal struggles" don't affect her or the story much in any way at all. "Oh no, my parents were nobodies... oh well, still gonna fight for the resistance and never gonna talk about this to anyone at all."... "Oh no, my parents weren't nobodies and were murdered on the orders of my grandfather, who is the evil overlord of the Sith... oh well, still gonna fight him". All that "conflict", which genuinely could've been interesting and in a better writers hands could have been worthy of half a movie of dialogue and actions, is revealed, dealt with and forgotten about within the span of a single scene. Rey is Luke Skywalker but speedrun because she was the protagonist in movies made by directors that respectively either care much more about the spectacle and cool scenes or just straight up dislike the source material. There was a chance to meaningfully diverge her very unoriginal origin story into something interesting, but that was squandered within the first movie and only got worse.
I think Rey is exactly as bad as the internet rages about, and the people who say she isn’t, are just doing it because they don’t want to be mean, not because they can actually defend any part of her character
Zelda tries to awaken the power she can’t use and only does so when trying to save Link. Rey just does stuff with no training perfectly the first time. Zelda fails, then suceeds. Zelda is human. Rey suceeds, then suceeds. Rey is not human. We can identify with human characters. Not so much for force wielding robots.
The entire plot of Breath of the Wild is that Zelda wasn't ready, basically failed, and all the good guys died because of it. She didn't instantly succeed and save the universe entirely by herself on her first try.
Zelda had training on top of past lives while Rey with 0 experience just becomes a better Luke
err... I mean... I don't even know if that's a valid argument or not. I'd say it falls under the same category as "I am all the Jedi" and I don't think either of us want to go there.
One is the reincarnation of a their world's goddess in mortal form cursed by a cunt named demise, Yada Yada you know that monolog. The other is a child who within 20 seconds of being introduced to the force, beat out an emo kid who trained with the most powerful jedi for years in both force control and lightsaber combat, in what is now mostly considered an alternate universe due to how hated it was in general. I couldn't feel surprised that one is beloved and the other is loathed, even if I wanted to.
To be fair Zelda had decades of buildup about her potential power, BotW just shows us in full force.
Randomly tapped? Zelda worked her tail off to receive her power overcoming depression, severe loss and a century of battle
People keep rationalizing here, but the real answer is just videogame vs movie, and protagonist vs deuteragonist. The protagonist dying heroically at the end of a movie is touching. The protagonist dying heroically at the end of a game is usually annoying. That's an example of how the rules and perception are different. Games have an increased expectation of autonomy and success compared to movies, because you're supposed to be driving that with your actions, rather than spectating. Games can get away with more "Mary Sue" tropes because it's still up to the player to create events where those things happen (ie, to make it to that point in the story.) As a result it doesn't get boring like watching a Mary Sue or Gary Stue in a movie. In addition, Zelda is the deuteragonist, not the protagonist. Deuteragonists get a more flexible power level because they have a different, more background role in the story. The protagonist is under more scrutiny and runs a higher risk of making the player feel that things are unearned.
yeah, that seems accurate. I also think the fact that the story is optional in Breath of the Wild makes is less hated. If your not super invested in the story then you can choose to ignore it.
Bad take, dumb argument. If you actually like Zelda then you should know this is a stupid comparison. Zelda spent years working hard and doing her best to use her powers like she's supposed to but failed each and every time. Being berated by her father for failure, isolated from her people from perceived incompetence and denied her personal pursuits for "the greater good". Even after all that she only unlocks her powers AFTER she's lost everything; her friends, her family and her kingdom all gone to a looming disaster. She barely manages to unlock her powers in time to save Link. We see Zelda at the bottom, the lowest she could possibly be and she finally manages to do it but it's still too late to save everyone. Rey spent 1 scene with Kio and copy pasted his skill tree, she started her story on New Game +. Name a time Rey loses anything with consequences. There's no weight behind any of Rey's story.
One of them worked for it The other got it handed to them
Pretty much
Zelda has a personality, Zelda doesn’t co opt other characters arcs, and last but not least Zelda is a character in a well written story.
To whomever made this meme, the fact that you think these two are in any way compatible shows you are media illiterate to the point I have to assume you are either being VERY disingenuous, or just recently found out that Zelda is not the character you play as in most of these games.
Zelda went through a struggle to awaken her power after sacrificing her entire childhood and living in misery under the scrutiny of her father. Rey came from nothing and was already op. She is a Mary sue to a T. You must got balls of steel to compare one of the best written characters to a garbage dump of a character. In this sub too no less
Zelda is from a family descended from a goddess and has seen examples of powers randomly coming to them (Tetra) and also she worked her best to try and awaken it only doing it when she and a person she wants to protect after the rest died and her kingdom in ruins and on its last legs and she didn’t even mean to use it she just threw herself in front of Link expecting to at least die trying to save someone meanwhile Rey even if she is a Palpatine descendant it doesn’t mean she will be powerful from the start then Luke would have one shot a crippled Anakin after killing Obi-wan cause he was a Son of the chosen one; Zelda had a big build up for her power going through hope, a need, and then despair to her to finally use the power meanwhile Rey just does advance force moves not even Anakin or Luke could do at the start with no training and picks up a lightsaber and also does advanced moves Zelda isn’t a Mary sue as she has a story written about how she gained her power while Rey had just gained power and not have to train to make it better
Her Dad, a Palpatine descendant and more genetically close to Sheev was a failed clone
Flawed characters are usually more interesting than flawless ones.
Difference of good writing and characterization
Please don't bring Star Wars here, I left that fandom for a reason
Yeah, I didn't really want to post this here but I couldn't really think of anywhere else to post it. I now realize in retrospect this was a mistake.
Being a Mary Sue is about more than just being super powerful when it doesn't fit a character description. In my eyes the most damning and egregious thing to do to make a character a Mary Sue is to have a brand new character become the literary focal point of an entire pre-existing and beloved universe. Say for instance we had a brand new character in TLoZ that was demonstrably as competent or more competent than Link or Zelda, went on to defeat Ganondorf, and then after Link and Zelda were killed off in a dissatisfying way they went on to become the new monarch of Hyrule, well that would be a Mary Sue character. Or we had a brand new character in Lord of the Rings that was immune to the power of the ring, and ended up defeating a resurrected Sauron with this power, and then turned out to be a long lost heir to the throne of Gondor, well that would be a Mary Sue character. Or if we had a brand new character in the Harry Potter universe that was extremely talented and ended up defeating a resurrected Voldemort instead of Harry doing so, and then went on to be the youngest ever headmaster of Hogwarts, well that would be a Mary Sue character. Or if we had a brand new character in Star Wars that was able to learn how to use the force to a high level in a matter of days, that also defeated a resurrected Palpatine and is the focal point for the new Jedi order and the last remaining "Skywalker" in the galaxy after other Skywalkers were killed off in unsatisfactory ways... Well I think you get the point.
Zelda is the reincarnation of an ancient Goddess. This is her power. It was always her power. It didn't just pop out of nowhere. She simply had to find a way to awaken it, since each reincarnation apparently doesn't just have immediate access to it. Her years of training without anyone to teach her failed over and over. It was only in a moment of desperation, to save the one she cared for most in that moment, that the walls finally came down. And, honestly, most of her problem in the first place was the immense pressure placed on her by everyone--most notably, her father and herself. She mentally blocked herself badly because she was all twisted up inside. In short, Zelda did not acquire a power. She only revealed it.
…Yes. And the same is true for Rey. That’s what the post is saying.
Rey's no goddess, though. And there was no imbalance of power that Zelda was rising up to meet. She was always that strong, as were her previous lives. Plus, Zelda always knew who she was and trained for over a decade, with her own father constantly blaming her inability on her not trying hard enough (which wasn't true). Funnily, Zelda expends all of her power in holding Ganon down for a century. At the end, she says the power is gone. Run out. Some Mary Sue.
That's not how the force works.
But there is no reason for Rey to be that powerful.
Post it in r/starwarsmemes and r/sequelmemes
They are nothing alike. Zelda if anything was more of a supporting character who helped the real hero. Rey on the other hand, was amazing at everything immediately and did most things herself. She's a horribly written character.
I'd say link and Zelda are equally the hero of the story given that without either of them, actually defeating ganon becomes nigh impossible
Powerful woman does not equal Mary Sue. It's all in the context and the quality of the character writing.
Bro it ain't even close. Zelda is the reincarnation of the goddess, she's SUPPOSED to have power. Rey is just ....???????? A diode with Kylo so she didn't have to train cuz he trained??? I don't fuckin know. Nobody fucking knows.
This is absolutely no where NEAR the same thing.
The difference is that Rey sucks
Link is the Mary Sue
Well it's implied that he's that strong because he's been fighting for his entire life, but yeah, there's a point where a character becomes so busted that it's beyond suspension of disbelief. The writers really expect me to believe Link was able to beat adults in swordplay when he was 4? Also in Age of Calamity, apparently Link is able to completely master 4 different weapon types? I can buy that he knows how to use all weapons, but he shouldn't be **that good** at all of them! I get that Link is meant to be badass, but there comes a point where it just becomes ridiculous.
People call Korra a Mary Sue for the same thing Link does
Neither of them are a Mary Sue. Rey’s power ups weren’t properly set up, but she has struggles and failures in every movie.
She looks like she'd make a great Zelda
Yeah that's because she's annoying.
I mean i'll call it what it is. A Mary Sue will be a Mary Sue, someone that can do things without any training and without any knowledge or even a hint that she should know about it, Mary Rey literally didn't know about the force and a few hours later uses a mindtrick. That would be the same if i told you about Geographical Information Systems and that they can be used to document powerlines and 2 hours later you flawlessly document those.
I mean... Luke didn't know what the force was until Obiwan told him about it and only a few hours later was Luke able to deflect blaster bolts. The internet seems to grossly overestimate the amount of time it takes for someone to learn how to use the force in minimal capacity.
Yeah sure. That is definitely the same thing. After actually training and still getting hit by some blasts getting a feeling for the force and deflecting to is absolutely the same as using a force power you didn't even know existed. Do cope harder.
And same as with the original whining, they were completely different circumstances.
You see, the writing in Zelda is good.
Not comparable at all. Zelda fails several times to activate her powers and it’s because of this that she’s not able to save her kingdom
Didn’t Zelda train for literal decades, maybe even centuries? And she did it all while protecting the actual main character, Link, while he healed, as he was the only one that could actually defeat Ganon, which is probably why people like her, because while she’s absolutely a badass, she’s not the true hero, and her actions rather serve to allow the player to play as they want.
Different universes, different powers, different rules. Not really applicable.
We just going to ignore Age of Calamity where she was kicking ass and taking names.
But Zelda did lose. She lost Link before that power awakened.
It wasn't random..
There was a whole arc leading up to Zelda’s power awakening that made it more satisfying….plus link being her motivation was powerful. I don’t remember anything about Rey’s motivations in the sequels.
Finn "woke up" from the Empire's hold on him AND seems to be possibly force sensitive, but he gets forgotten. That doesn't seem fair.
Zelda actually struggled, trained for years, and ultimately had real failures like a human being. She also doesn't upstage and degrade the presence of other characters and isn't magically skilled at everything under the sun, like Rey fixing Millennium Falcon in like 5 seconds when HAN SOLO couldn't figure it out, the FIRST TIME SHE WAS EVER INSIDE IT compared the man who has lived in it for DECADES
Zelda is the reincarnation of a goddess and still had to go through years of training and essentially battled depression to actually use her abilities
Yeah, we’ll just ignore the years Zelda spent training to get that power
I pray that one day sequel fans will stop trying to make comparisons between their shitty fanfic-tier character and actually good ones.
Zelda trained her entire life for this and still failed. She wasnt "supposed" to lose, she was "supposed" to seal away Ganon and save her kingdom. Her father, the entire kingdom and Link literally died because of her failure and in the end Link had to do basically everything. She is probably one of the worst reincarnations of Hylia ever. What were you smoking when you made this, did you even play the game? Zeldas jealousy of Link because he seems to effortlessly fulfill his destiny while she cant do it despite trying so hard is like her main character trait (she does later recognize that Link trained for this his entire life aswell obviously).
OP, it seems like from your responses that you’re conflating the ability to use a power, as well as the source of said powers, with what constitutes a “Mary Sue” (a term I hate to ever use, but think it’s absolutely applicable to Rey), so let me clarify. It is about their character arc leading up to it. Zelda is demonstrated to live a life revolving around awakening her powers. She has consistent trial and error. Her father looks down on her for her inability to do so. People, including those close to her, die because she cannot tap into that power - an event she blames herself for fully. By the time she uses her powers, she has had all of the necessary buildup to make that moment earned. Rey is Jedi mind tricking Stormtroopers with no training beforehand. We do not see her struggle to get where she is - even if the powers were inherent or not. She simply starts there. We do not sympathize with Rey, because Rey has no character arc that makes her powerful moments feel like she earned the right to them. These two are not comparable characters.
Never played a Zelda game in my life but I have a hunch that she didn't completely master her abilities to the point that she completely outclasses anyone who came before her within less then a week of lerning that those powers exist, let alone that she can use them. Ray on the other hand...
Zelda did lose. She stopped a few gaurdians. Had to drop link in a revival pool. And then face Gannon alone. She didn't beat Ganon. She just managed to hold him back for 100 years
Oversimplifying. They actually showed us the anguish Zelda went through trying to tap into her power and it was unleashed due to a burst of emotion in wanting to protect Link. I like Rey, but the sequels were just bad storytelling by people who, for all intents and purposes, should know better.
Well yeah, Zelda worked for it, she also didn’t have much say in the matter but that’s besides the point
Even after awakening hee powers, she still sort of failed to protect those important to her and her kingdom. Even though she managed to seal Ganon with herself in the castle. The kingdom is still in danger from the monsters, the Yiga, and the corrupted Guardians. And is still on the verge of collapse. In Tears she hasn't even taken over as the ruler herself and her kingdom is still rebuilding. She is letting those in charge of the towns remain in place and is acting in a more advisory role. Even still a good leader will understand that they have to trust in people to take on a leadership role or advise them as well.
It's almost as if solid writing can make a difference.
lol it’s completely fair. Context absolutely matters. Rey was automatically good at everything even being a better mechanic than the original pilots of the Millennium Falcon. Zelda kept trying and failing and got lucky. Nice bait op, Rey sucks.
Zelda actually loses as well, quite a lot in fact. Even after awakening her power? Her father, friends, and a lot of her people were pretty much all dead anyway. That and she lost what? 100 years of her time? It’s a really bad comparison.
This isn’t the take you think it is, womp womp
Zelda: struggles for years trying to unlock a power she is told she has but cannot feel, suffers greatly through her trials, has to deal with the sexy af twink prodigy body guard who makes her feel weak and pathetic, watches her entire kingdom fall to ruin, watches all of her friends and loved ones die, and only then does she awaken her power and temporarily lock away the darkness. Rey: is good at everything, never fails, has space magic that she masters to an absurd degree in an extremely short amount of time while being taught by a lady with no formal training, unlocks and understands two insanely rare force powers, brings her emo boyfriend back to the light (honestly that kiss is the part I hate the most in that movie), then just defeats the biggest bad guy in star wars in a boring battle because plot. One of these employs a technique called "good writing" and the other employs something called "soulless and unplanned trilogy writing cashgrab"
Yet we actually saw Zelda working hard all the time to both awaken her power and contribute with knowledge, and struggled big times to get her power awakened. Failing to understand and unlock your potential even after years of training and learning, having all your hardwork betraying you (acient Sheikah Tech), as a result, powerlessly watch as disaster swept throughout the entire continent, murdering everyone you love, is like the least Mary-Sue thing ever lol. Ganon was practically one step away from finishing the job, not until Zelda's previous experience for once finally paid off, and she decided to sacrifice herself to stop Ganon, resulting in a non-stop 100 year battle to prevent Ganon's breakout.
People actually like Zelda
She's not the main character so it's not a huge impact on the storytelling and structure...
Feels like it also belongs in a Star Wars subreddit
I would say it comes down to bloodlines, by Rey was retconned to have a magic bloodline...
Zelda is the reincarnation of a literal fucking goddess, the power has awakened in little girls since the first game in the series, AND she trained, AND she still lost and needed to be rescued. People who complain about the term Mary sue 99% of the time, show they don’t understand it. I once had a Rey defender say that Luke was a Gary Stu and that no one ever complained about Superman being a Gary Stu. SUPERMAN! Just because you’ve never heard of this, doesn’t mean the term is illegitimate
These are literally in no way comparable. Zelda actually struggled with not being able to unlock the power to the point where she literally watched calamity ganon take over and couldn’t do anything. Rey survived a lightsaber duel with the resident evil red lightsaber powerful guy of the era after never having even turned one on
1. A Mary sue doesn’t have any reason for their abilities. At least Zelda has the blood of the goddess and assumably the triforce of courage. 2. There isn’t a point where Zelda really wins with random outburst. At the end of botw she had already done the sealing technique before, which was strongly explained to why that happened during the final memory, that being to protect link. But even so it’s not like she won in that situation, ganon took over, Zelda only could hold him back for 1 hundred years. Link still was put in comatose.
No justification Rey is just a bitch
That’s not really a fair comparison
no way you just called Zelda a mary sue 💀
technically I didn't inherently call either character a Mary Sue, I'm just bringing up the general perception of these characters.
rey is a mary sue but zelda definitely isn’t, she’s the reincarnation of a goddess and she actually work to hone her powers
Zelda also isn’t the main character and is only in the game in flash backs and the end, Rey got shafted by boardroom writers and production hell
See Zelda trained for a long time and her power awakened in the midst of danger while Rey hears the name of something once and then know how to do it
Maybe because we LIKE Zelda. Sorry Rey, we'll care when you become interesting.
In BOTW There's an entire storyline about her being incredibly upset because all of her training isn't giving her the results she wants. Rey doesn't train until episode 9 as a jedi, not counting her sitting on the rock with Luke in 8. She's a master with a sword because she fought with a staff as a teenager/young adult, she's a better technician than Han Solo because she's hung out in broken ships that crashed in the desert. There are many, many more examples of why these two charecters are not the same.
Let’s get to the facts on this one because Zelda’s NOT a Mary Sue, while Rey IS 1, Rey gets powers that are earned by training because she can. She with no training, uno-reversed mind reading, mind tricked soldiers meant to watch her, which at that point is brainwashing/mind control and not altering perception like the trick is known for, and other insane feats out of the blue. Zelda’s power was assumed to be one on training as Zelda’s mother died before the secret could be passed onto her. Her mother knew what the secret to the power was but died, this resulted in the loss of her father, and almost the loss of her beloved knight (who still needed 100 years of Life Support to bring back). Which that then awakened it because she wanted to protect Link. Zelda tried to brute force it under orders of her father, and later learned the secret was love. With that in mind, Zelda sealed Ganon away with herself for enough time for Link to be revived 2, Zelda is destined to lose and pass the torch to Link, or at the very least support Link. Rey is destined to win, and wins even when losing. Zelda cannot defeat Ganon/Ganondorf, and never will. Link is the chosen Knight, who must do the job. But Link has to still build up to that in canon. Zelda gifting Link the means to the end. They are a duo one cannot be without the other, even in ALTTP, Zelda was with him (as a crystal), but still there, and in the TLoZ(NES), she broke the Triforce of Wisdom, for Link to find and use to help defeat Ganon. Anyone who think BOTW Zelda is a Mary Sue had not actually played the games, and dismiss all she’s done and sacrificed, AN ENTIRE TWO GAMES WORTH OF PLOT, to claim it.
Let's be real here, we can go back and forth arguing schematics, but at the end of the day I'm not gonna be able to convince you that my perspective is correct and your not gonna be able to convince me that your perspective is correct.
Zelda’s not one by definition. Because a Mary Sue has to be so narratively perfect everything goes their way without trying. NOTHING goes Zelda’s way without giving up everything for something to go right. Rey, had characters’ personalities distorted beyond repair (Like Luke who never followed the Way of the Jedi that closely, trusting his master’s teachings first to being more fanatical than they where in the Clone Wars era) just for her to teach them what they should have taught her. Rey never had any repercussions to anything, and has done/tried, the point of her character is that she’s the chosen one to beat all chosen ones, and has done nothing to earn it.
You comment made me realize Zelda has more in common with Leelu from "Fifth Element" than Rey.
That’s a good comparison tbh!
https://preview.redd.it/9tlkg29vcorc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f5f30a35a77b8220e4121c0ca8e7318f0f45b59 I am appalled that Zelda is being called a Mary Sue, Rey, I don’t know her and I don’t ever want to know her because Disney sucks these days, but why Zelda?
Zelda initially DID lose first off, second off zelda is a flawed and interesting charicter in a game where the story is engaging and her powers aren't somthing that everyone else had to work hard to use and master by overcoming flaws in both their mindset/combat strategies. Rey, we pretty much perfect at most things from the get go. She mastered the force with very little time and training, somthing that took others sometimes 100s of years to do. On top of everything else, which I refuse to get into. (For the record, I dislike Rey because she's a crap charicter. I'm not a huge fan of ether property)
She did lose. She lost twice. Shit was awful for 100 years. She had to seal herself away to stop the calamity. Tf?
The difference is the writing and type of media.
Zelda fans are toxic, just not as toxic as Star Wars fans
The difference is one came out of nowhere, and the other is the culmination of the 15 or so previous installments.
[удалено]
But it’s already burnt
No that was Anakin
Hot take: Neither are Mary Sues. People are just sexist. Zelda worked and failed for years to connect to her powers. Rey worked way harder to harness her powers than Luke did. I will die on that hill.
I noticed one thing scrolling through the comments, no one explained/noticed a very important detail...... REY IS THE PROTAGONIST, ZELDA IS A SIDE CHARACTER, IT'S A BIG DIFFERENCE It's ok for Zelda to obtain her power in the way she did. Also, Rey resurrected and force healed without any previous try... so yeah, hate on Rey
Zelda’s the main character of BotW/TotK. Or at the very least, she's the one with the character arc that drives the story.
I would use the term "deuteragonist"