Is Cassie a Mary Sue character?

[wotw2112]

Honestly, I had never heard the term "Mary Sue" before coming to this forum.  If i'm not mistaken the term "Mary Sue" relies to a character who is essentially a super "fix all" character.  She is the best at everything and whenever a situation arises that the heroes are unprepared for the mary sure character simply "gets another power" to take care of it.  Essentially the character is ridiculously special and a cure-all for lazy authors.  (The male equivalent is a Gary Stue or something like that I believe).

I don't know if this has been previously discussed but I think Cassie may be the exact definition of this character.

For example: she was the one who rooted them in time (can't recall what they called it) when they went off on their fantastical journeys, she was mysteriously immune to the disease Ax and the rest caught, she was a fantastic morpher, she single handedly started the yeerk peace movement, etc.

There were many more instances that I can't recall.

Does anyone have any thoughts or instances?  Maybe a reason to disagree?

[Darth Revan]

I'd believe that. She seemed to be the groups reality ground. Her and Marco constantly gave the others a reality check.

[Kitulean]

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeees

[goom]

yeah, i'd say she fits that description quite well.

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeees

haha, nice.

[Kitulean]

Thanks.

Longer Answer: The Ghostwriters made her much worse than she was, but the foundation was laid early.

[morfowt]

short answer: probably.

long answer: it's probably true but I don't care. I still like her...

[rocklobster]

I don't think so.  She clearly has a flaw in her reluctance.  This reluctance is clearly defined in many of her books.
And high five to morfowt.  I think we need more cassie fans!

[Kitulean]

The thing about Mary Sues is that they tend to have so called 'flaws' that are simply cleverly (or not so cleverly) disguised ways to to push their own agenda/needs.

Cassie being the moralist who is shown to be right occasionally and wrong occasionally and somewhat in between most of the time would be good. The Cassie we saw was a moralist who ENDED UP being right 99 percent of the time, usually through writers contrivance.

The fact that they took her back with no reluctance and no further friction after she quit the team and told the world to burn in hell as long as she didn't have to dirty her hands, and insulted Rachel, her supposed best friend, is still annoying.

[Chad32]

She didn't single handedly start the peace movement. The Yeerk whose name escapes me at the moment started it. But Cassie helped her see the light. She played a huge part, no doubt.

Cassie is, I believe, a Mary Sue character.

[Darth Revan]

Where did the term Mary Sue come about? Why was Mary Sue the name chosen to rep all the super-characters?

[Chad32]

This is a paragraph taken from a site called TV tropes and idioms, that deals with a lot of things, including Mary Sue.

The name "Mary Sue" comes from the 1974 Star Trek fanfic "A Trekkie's Tale". Originally written as a parody of the standard Self Insert Fic of the time (as opposed to any particular traits), the name was quickly adopted by the Star Trek fanfiction community. Its original meaning mostly held that it was an Always Female Author Avatar, regardless of character role or perceived quality. Often, said characters would get in a relationship with either Kirk or Spock, turn out to have a familial bond with a crew member, be a Half Human Hybrid masquerading as a human, and/or die in a graceful, beautiful way to reinforce that the character was Too Good For This Sinful Earth. Even back then, there wasn't a total consensus on what was or wasn't Mary Sue, since it's not always immediately obvious which character is an Author Avatar. As this essay reveals, suspiciously Mary Sue-like characters were noted in subscriber-submitted articles for 19th-century childrens' magazines, making this trope Older Than You Think

Read the full page here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

[EscafilDevice]

Cassie's a canon-sue, but only because the ghostwriters handled her so badly.

She had conflict in the earlier books, but yeah, it was always a little bit there. The change wasn't as drastic as with Rachel.

[anijen21]

am I the only one who thought the "subtemporal anomaly" thing actually made sense for her character?

and I don't think Cassie's a Mary Sue, but that doesn't mean I like her character at all

[Chad32]

The sub temporal space anomaly thing was just weird and unnecessary. They could have taken the part about Cassie coming back from the dead to kill Visser three, and just had jake not miss. Then the ending would be the same. Though some other parts would need some changing. But I think it could work fine. Then Crayak or the Drode return things to normal in order to give the Yeerks a better chance at winning.

[wotw2112]

am I the only one who thought the "subtemporal anomaly" thing actually made sense for her character?

Might I ask why?  Her "connection to mother earth" or something like that?  Just curious.

To me it just seemed like yet another bs reason to justify Cassie's presence among the Ellimist's (disputedly) stacked deck.  Rachel dies because she was the random member who had no real purpose (Ellimist tells her as much in book 54).  The nonsense about subtemporal grounding combined with all her other "miraculous abilities" was the bs way to justify Cassie's presence.