Does this early Peanuts comic may provide Lucy the motivation for her endless football revenge on Charlie Brown?
Mitch4 sends this momentary CIDU in: “I was puzzled until learning that both “Mary Sue” and “plot armor” are fandom terminology.”
Hang on to your wallet, Auntie!
Here’s some information on the football gag in Peanuts.
https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Football_gag
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Thanks, Pete! It’s nice to see that Richard Thompson had his facts right:
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Except he didn’t, as Violet did not pull the football away; she pulled her hand away and the football fell.
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“Plot armor” is such a nice phrase. In murder mysteries, for example, you know a first-person narrator or Hercule Poirot isn’t going to get killed. In TV series, you’re pretty sure the main characters aren’t going to disappear, except perhaps in the season-ending episode.
But “plot armor” seems to be a recent term (at least, not one I remember hearing before). Is there an older, equivalent term that I’m not remembering at the moment?
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There may not have been terms, but Agatha Christie was well aware of the common plot devices, and did her very best to subvert all of them. I remember my first time reading through Agatha Christies, I somehow fortuitously read them such that each succeeding one upped the impossibility of the whodunit. The first was a Tommy and Tuppence one, where already she was somehow subverting the already trite cliche of “the butler did it”; then I can’t remember exactly, but she managed to convincingly have the least likely conventional suspect do it, and then she really started pulling up the stakes. First it was a Poirot in which she has the narrator do it. I never read it, but (spoiler alert) apparently everyone did it in Orient Express. And then of course (spoiler), the last Poirot, in which Poirot does it. I didn’t know the term “plot armor”, but I knew that that concept was not to be trusted when reading a Christie!
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Watch the 21st century version of ‘Doctor Who’ for numerous examples of supporting characters given the ‘Mary Sue’ treatment.
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In Dickens’ “The Old Curiosity Shop”, the Old Curiosity Shop was out of business by Chapter 3 or so. In “Dombey and Son,” Dombey’s son dies somewhere around Chapter 6. Those title characters certainly didn’t have Plot Armor. The early death of a title character are probably why “David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations” are told in the first person, making their early demise unlikely.
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@lark: Let’s not forget The Murder of Roger Ackroyd!
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I, too, had never heard of “Mary Sue” or “plot armor.” Thanks for the exposition on the latter. Now, what is “Mary Sue” in this context?
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Ed, that’s actually a tricky question to answer well. A Mary Sue is a fictional character. They can be either sex, but some people prefer “Marty Stu” for male Mary Sues.
A Mary Sue has no meaningful flaws (but obsesses over trivial flaws with great angst). Bonus points if they have a “flaw” that is an unusual, strikingly attractive physical characteristic (“Captain Kirk could never love me with these hideous deep violet eyes”). Also bonus points if a flaw is colorable but just never comes up except for angsting over it.
They’re hypercompetent at anything they attempt without earning that ability from the narrative. Indeed, they’re the best there is at whatever they does. Everyone of the appropriate orientation is (secretly!) in love with them, and some will change their orientation.
Traditionally, Mary Sue is a secondary character introduced to an existing story after which she becomes the main focus. That’s becoming less true over time, but whether the main protagonist can be a Mary Sue or it requires a narrative takeover is a matter of some debate.
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@lark: Let’s not forget The Murder of Roger Ackroyd!
I think larK did mention that book, altho not by name. He mentioned the radical plot twist that it used.
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Good to see Lucy’s talent for punting the ball backwards over her head originally appeared in the comic strip before it was used as a gag in the early 90’s direct-to-video animated special You’re In The Super Bowl Charlie Brown. Lucy performs very poorly in a punt, pass, and kick contest while wearing an LA Raiders uniform.
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Notably though, Mary Sues do not necessarily have plot armor. A tragic demise, usually while saving the rest of the cast, can be the fate of the MS. This, of course, only elevates her legend.
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The Baldo arc was interesting. In spite of the tone of the strip included here, in the end the “niece”, actually a daughter of a cousin or something, said how nice it was to reconnect with Tia Carmen and picked up the lunch tab. Either it was meant to go against expectations, or it’s a long con on the part of the niece and the writer.
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