How Harry Potter Can Be a Mary Sue or Gary Stu?
Agree with @oldnewsisgoodnews. Sometimes, Harry Potter really can come across as a Mary Sue or Gary Stu especially in light of everything you’ve pointed out.
It’s like he’s a special snowflake. The blatant main character favoritism can be quite infuriating.
For example, what about all the times when Harry had gotten or was given special treatment? Like during his first year in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
First years weren’t allowed to be on the Quidditch team. They weren’t even allowed to bring their own brooms to school. And yet what happened with Harry?
He broke the rules. Yes, he was trying to get Neville Longbottom’s remembrall, but that doesn’t erase the fact that he broke the rules. He was told not to fly without supervision and yet he still did.
Even if it’s just a light punishment or something, he should have still been reprimanded. How ‘bout giving him points for trying to help Neville then giving him detention for breaking the rules?
It was no wonder that Harry was deemed as the youngest seeker in a century. If other first years had been allowed to join the team, then maybe he wouldn’t be the youngest seeker in a century.
But, no, the seeker position was basically handed to him on a silver platter. He didn’t even have to try out.
This wasn’t fair for the other first years who might have wanted to try out next year. This wasn’t fair for the older students who might have been planning to try out for the position this year.
Lucky Harry Potter
Yeah, Harry does have it easy. He finds out he’s rich, so it looks like he never has to worry about money problems anymore. Most fawn over him because he’s the Boy-Who-Lived.
Even if some people dislike him or end up shunning him, it doesn’t really matter much. Why?
Because Harry is never really alone. He has friends who are always there for him, so he never has to deal with things on his own.
For instance, when people were shunning him for supposedly being the Heir of Slytherin and for opening the Chamber of Secrets, his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley stood by him.
There’s always at least one person who will be there for Potter regardless of the situation. Like during book 4.
Ron and the others might have thought that Harry put his name in the Goblet of Fire, but Potter didn’t have to deal with the tournament on his own. He had people like Hermione and Hagrid to help him get through it.
If one really looks at it, the Parseltongue thing wasn’t really so bad for Harry. It was only really an issue in book 2. But, as already mentioned, Harry didn’t have to deal with that problem on his own.
Having him know Parseltongue seemed to be yet another way to show off just how much of a unique and special snowflake he is.
Ron Weasley’s Skills
I agree that it would have been great and much more interesting to see Ron Weasley be the one who was good at flying and Quidditch. For once, Ron could have the limelight instead of Harry.
Besides, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Harry would react to the knowledge that his father was good at flying, but he himself was only average at best?
I’d also be interested in seeing more of Ron’s skills at strategy and playing chess. It’s really too bad that we never really see any of this anymore after that chess scene in book 1.
Giving Ron more of a chance to shine, so he’s not always in the sidelines could have been a good way to show that not everything was about Harry and that the entire world doesn’t revolve around Potter.
Your Thoughts and Opinions
What do you think about all of this? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by clapping this post or by leaving a comment below.
Note: As mentioned in this post, I’m now trying to finish working on all the articles listed on the drafts page of this blog after a very long hiatus from Tumblr. This particular post is one of those drafts. The post date is listed as Jul 1st, 2016 3:47:01am.
Sources:
- Pics are from Amazon.com; links shown above
- Text was added to the Harry Potter pic using Canva
This, this, this! I feel like so much is just… laid out for Harry without him having to try. He suddenly discovers that he’s rich without having done anything to earn it (debate all you want about whether he deserves it — he still didn’t earn it). Everybody adores him without him even trying — and yeah, that can get annoying for him sometimes, but may we all have such problems. Harry can even speak a language that few other wizards can speak (parseltongue) without even being aware of its existence (yeah, he gets misunderstood for it, but like… I’m sorry, that’s some serious Mary Sue/Gary Stue stuff there). And even with him constantly having to go up against Voldemort, Harry consistently defeats Vodie through sheer luck (e.g. there’s no way he would’ve survived in the fourth book if it weren’t for the wand core thing, and goodness knows how he defeated Voldie in the last book with that Jesus-ex-machina “come back from the dead” shit and the lame-ass “expelliarmus totally makes other spells ricochet” BS).
Like… seriously, J.K. had to give Harry all those frakking-lucky-and-impressive innate superpowers (speaks to animals without trying, excessively lucky, etc.) and all, and she then also has to throw in “Yeah — is totally awesome at this new sport that he’s never even heard of, using a high-speed, airborne vehicle (of sorts) that he’s never seen — much less used — before.” As much as I love the books,* it aggravates me to no end how much of a Gary Stu Harry can be. Like… think about it. He’s a savior figure. Everything he needs just kinda… falls into his lap without him really having to work at them — including talents that serve to either make him even more popular, or help him to defeat Voldie. (The two significant exceptions I can think of are occlumency and creating a patronus. Even then, he’s considered to be really advanced at the whole patronus thing, especially for his age. And occlumency is the only time I can remember Harry’s shortcomings having any real/significant, lasting repercussions — repercussions that were, notably, important for moving the plot forward. And they were presented in such a way that one has to wonder how big an impact those flaws/mistakes would have had if J.K. didn’t need a way to get Harry to the Ministry of Magic.) Not to mention that when people disliked Harry, it generally didn’t come from him actually doing anything wrong, but from them being jealous of and/or misunderstanding him — and almost everybody who disliked him was either a bad person (Draco, Umbridge, Death Eaters) or else a good guy who came around in the end (Seamus, Ernie Macmillan, even Ron for a bit in the fourth book). These are all hallmarks of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character, and it kinda drives me nuts.
I would have loved to see Harry to be on a little less of a pedestal/have a little less handed to him on a silver platter; and I certainly would have loved for Ron to be allowed to shine a bit more in his own right (like… even just if the books just played up his skill at strategy games and such a bit more than it only really coming in handy that one time in the first book). As much as people defend Ron by saying that movie!Ron doesn’t do justice to book!Ron, I think that he got kinda underused in both the movies and the books, and that J.K. wasted a lot of potential in that regard.
*e.g. I will always love and defend Ron and Hermione — both as individual characters and as a couple — with all my heart. I am so glad that I was able to grow up reading books like these that had two such prominent characters with whom I related so well.
I feel like Rowling should have made Ron the one who revealed himself to be good at Quidditch at the first lesson. It gives Harry an unnecessary edge over everyone else when he’s already so elevated.
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Originally published on potter-plotholes.tumblr.com.
