Board Thread:Manga/@comment-27321453-20191208140701/@comment-44086949-20191211191021

Neetaku wrote:

I have made my argument, and if it gets ignored in favor of more "Gabi is a Mary Sue" screaming, then I will continue to reuse it until someone actually addresses it. Challenge accepted.

Neetaku wrote: The definition of a Mary Sue is "an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character" who can "usually perform better at tasks than should be possible given the amount of training or experience, and usually are able through some means to upstage the main protagonist of an established fictional setting, such as by saving the hero." Isayama has attempted to blur the lines between good and evil in this world. If Eren is the protagonist, Gabi upstaged him by nearly killing him. If Reiner is the hero, Gabi upstaged him by successfully landing a lethal blow to Eren, saving the Marleyans. Either way, she's upstaging everyone because she's awesome.

Neetaku wrote: With this in mind, I would say that Gabi is actually a subversion of the Mary Sue trope. Whereas Mary Sues are characters who are impossibly good at tasks that they have no training for, Gabi is a character who was introduced as being at the top of her class in the Warrior Cadets who has utterly failed at everything she has tried to do since the battle of Liberio. The last thing she was successful at was blowing up the armored transport in For Slava, and since then it has been one failure after another. She had no shown training of riding a horse, operating Anti-Personell Manuever Gear, nor firearms, and yet performs all three things. She also shows no prior knowlege of Titan physiology, and yet killed a titan by aiming for it's weak spot. If that's "utterly failing" at everything she attempts to do, I would be fine being a complete nuissance to society if it means I get to succeed at half the things I attempt.

Neetaku wrote: She boarded the zeppelin to kill Eren but only succeeded in killing one soldier, and then had to be saved from being shot by Falco. She managed to escape her jail cell, but then got utterly lost and had to be rescued and taken care of by the Blouse family. She didn't just board a zepplin, she killed a moving 3DMG user with pinpoint accuracy and no shown firearm training, which would be illogical to just assume she got. Then, she used the dead man's 3DMG, in which she knows nothing about, and somehow used the equipment to board the zepplin. That alone is a mary sue feat, and killing an eldian was a means to an end, not a failure. Escaping her jail cell was another mary sue feat because the plot demanded her guard's incompetence for her exit. Finding the blouse family isn't a failure, that's literally the goal of escaping her jail cell: finding refuge elsewhere.

Neetaku wrote: She was completely inept at doing farm work while living with the Blouses, and when she tried to get help from Niccolo she had to be saved from him by Falco. Then she had to be saved again from Kaya by Mikasa and Mr. Blouse. Then she had to be saved from Eren by Pieck. Those "savings" from Mikasa, Pieck, and Falco were the result of either the situation being literally out of her hands(not something she could possibly succeed or fail at) and/or because they had found some sort of inherent value in her. Being saved in general doesn't debunk a mary sue, sometimes it actually strengthens the argument by proving that many characters find value in her because the plot demands them to.

Now that I have responded to your copypasta, let's not repeat the same thing over an over as if it's a fact.