A Brief Marvel Avengers Movie-Verse Rant

[megpie71]

I swear, Darcy Lewis' middle names must be "Mary" and "Sue".

That is all.

(This rant brought to you courtesy of a lot of Avengers Movie-verse fanfic, from various different authors, where Darcy Lewis gets to be a sorta-sidekick-in-training for just about everyone on the Avengers team, and apparently has the super-secret superpower of superhero wrangling. I keep meaning to watch the Thor movie just to find out whether her apparent ability to be a useful plot device under all circumstances is canon or not).

Comments

[feywood]

I have to disagree. I think that just because her character is being expanded on in fanon and she's being made useful/interesting because of that doesn't necessarily have to mean she's a Mary Sue.
From the fic I've read, she isn't exactly being made into the perfect queen of everything so I really haven't had the same reaction.

[megpie71]

The point about the Mary Sue isn't that she's the "perfect queen of everything" - it's that she's the author's self-insert character doing the things the author wants to be able to do in a particular canon. This is why the most ubiquitous type of Mary Sue in the LOTR canon is the "tenth walker", why Mary Sue keeps breaking up canon relationships, why Mary Sue is somehow attractive and likeable to just about everybody she finds attractive (and why the people she doesn't find attractive are the only ones to dislike her), and why events start to circle around Mary Sue's presence, as though she needs to be there as a catalyst for things to happen.

It's possible to have a Mary-Sue who's absolutely normal - the true Sue test isn't about her, it's about the way that canon is warped around her.

So far, in the range of Avengers-verse fanfic I've read, I've seen Darcy Lewis paired up with every available male Avenger except Iron Man (Thor doesn't count as "available"), and I'm expecting to see the Darcy/Tony stuff materialise any day now. She's been employed by SHIELD and put into a lab setting (even though everything I've read implies she isn't a science major, and never was) rather than just handed a non-disclosure agreement and a payoff to deal with her college loans. She's inevitably working in New York (regardless of where Jane may have been based previously or where her studies might have been taking place). If she's present in SHIELD, she comes into contact with the Avengers almost as a matter of course, rather than being shuffled off into the back blocks of administration to wrangle paper rather than superheroes. She's treated as almost supernaturally likeable - nobody gets irritated with Darcy except possibly Nick Fury (and Nick Fury gets irritated with everyone). If Darcy shows up in a story, she's present as a plot device - a sort of walking, talking deus ex machina.

She may not be a canon Sue (as I said above, I'm wanting to see the Thor movie in order to find out whether or not this is the case), but she's certainly being used as a Sue stand-in by a number of writers.

[feywood]

Again, I disagree. Self inserts are annoying and bad writing and childish, but they're not necessarily a Mary Sue.
Anyway I'm not seeing this with Darcy. Neither the self insert bit nor the Mary Sue. Maybe I've just read less or stuck to better fic than you, who knows.

[coneyislandbaby]

It seems that she ends up as Tony's daughter because the actors played father and daughter in another movie. Honestly that's just a different hat on the same Mary Sue idea, though.

She's okay in canon...

[(Anonymous)]

But she's one of my least favourite characters in fanon.

From what I've seen of her so far, she's the young, snarky,busty, pop culture referencing girl who is well liked by ALL the Avengers, is in a serious relationship with one or two at the same time, is constantly credited with being the 'heart' of the team who bakes them pie after they come home from missions and is always a shoulder to cry on and who is A) either entrusted to a SHIELD position because Coulson or Fury adore her or B) plays mother hen to Jane, Bruce and Tony who all adore her.

Suddenly, this taser wielding girl is a SHIELD agent being personally trained by either Black Widow or the Winter Soldier, complimented on her prowess with firearms, and considered an asset to agents like Hill, Coulson and Fury. All while managing to keep her peppy, upbeat nature.

Some of the Darcy/Loki stuff is okay if she isn't being written as the reason why Loki suddenly falls in love with the earth and humanity. I mean, Darcy/Loki is at least keeping her inside her own medium (the Thor movies)

But you can hardly read an Avengers ensemble fic these days without this random popping up.

I've literally just finished reading a fic where this character SHOOTS Deadpool after reminiscing like old friends and manages to name check both Wolverine and Storm for no apparent reason other than to make her relevant and credible as a character who could shoot Deadpool and get away with it.

Her fandom is rife with those kind of fics. If that isn't a Mary Sue then I dont know what is.

[kickair8p]

Seeing Thor is useful just from all the backstory it gives Avengers, but re Darcy? She may be the only person in it to never touch an idiot ball, and that's including Coulson. Although the narrative uses her primarily for an exposition target and comic relief, she shows both intelligence and insight (poli-sci is a major frequently chosen by those intending to become lawyers, just because the hard-science types look down on it doesn't make it a cakewalk). She's idealistic and naive, but no more so than many college kids. And she acts both quickly and correctly in every dangerous situation, most notably when she tasers an apparent large and angry drunk under circumstances where she wouldn't've been able to run or hide effectively.

Under the circumstances I'd say it's realistic that someone with her talents who's already aware of Thor's situation would be a top target for recruitment by both SHIELD and the Avengers, and not just to get her out of the way. I won't say she's never been misused in fic, but per canon she really is pretty awesome. More so than Rick Jones, who's the comics-canon guy usually in the slot we often see Darcy fill in fanfic.

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