You make good points. Rey is a Mary Sue but there wasn’t really much effort put into her to make her interesting. I think those two things go together to make her character unlikeable. Sometimes a particularly interesting character can be really overpowered, often without explanation, and it isn’t a problem for viewers.
I think most people sort of associate Rey with annoyance. Annoyance in that the character herself is bland and unappealing and is given all sorts of power for no reasons. It's generic boring hero tropes. I've read enough to recognize the style. Typically it involves giving someone a superficial flaw that isn't really a flaw, at best a foil to put the hero in a bad spot to prove how noble they are. Like when the boss from the office is asked about his weakest/worst quality, he responded with "sometimes I care too much about other people".
It's not a flaw that shows something ugly within the character itself. In those books, what you'll find is that the villains are actually more likable than the villains, because the writer isn't afraid of giving the villain an ugly side and may even manage to balance it with good attributes as their desire for greater sophistication in their writing shines through.
Rather, it's a sign that the writer is immature as they are unable to separate their personal image with that of the character they are writing. By producing a hero who has no flaws, the writer hopes to avoid implying that he has any. Only the superficial flaws that people will daily admit to having as they are of little to no consequence. Such as being clumsy or a bad cook.
I kind of feel that modern left wing writers are emotionally less mature than writers have traditionally been, even left leaning ones. It’s not enough for them to have their hero with the right demographic background, they can’t let that hero have weaknesses, can’t make them flawed, can‘t allow them to suffer. They can’t even bear to see a bad guy that is too competent. It’s almost like what a very young child might want from a story.
I don't think that's the case actually.
If you look, before she was consumed by her progressive politics, JK Rowling was producing excellent work. The Harry Potter series is very much a left-leaning political book, but it is well executed in almost every details. Fantastic characters, good story, beautiful style, and a creative setting that has kept people engaged on a level that despite its youth, rivals older franchises. Martin too is another writer who views himself as a feminist and is left leaning and from what I hear, is a fantastic writer.
No, I think the problem isn't that good left writers don't exist, but rather that they are not being raised up. Because while an obvious sign of a novice or a bad writer is a character who has no flaws or flaws that are merely superficial in nature, they are great for zealots. It presents the ideology with no real soul searching into the nature of that ideology, because within the current frame that leftist progressives exist, such a thing is a danger to the entire political alliance. Instead, a writer who produces a story where the socially acceptable hero is always right and the enemy is always evil, stupid, ugly, and malicious is far more preferable as it reinforces the in-vs-out tribal aspect of their political alliance.
So instead more talented writers on the left side get pushed aside or pushed to the right because they are not pure enough in their views.
You go back a few decades and look at sci-fi and fantasy movies from then. The writers and directors were almost all left wingers, they liked to have badass women, and throw in a token non-white here and there. But they actually tried to make deeper stories too, not like this generation of SJW’s who want their flawless female or POC characters to breeze through the poor excuse for a plot without breaking a sweat.
As I said, it's not entirely their fault. Those writers are out of their debts and instead of getting good feedback, they're told that they're perfect and any sort of criticism is a form of assault. You can't blame a spoiled brat for being a brat when he doesn't win if his parents keep coddling him when he loses.
I would contend that if you’re a male feminist, your life has become a failed shit test. Feminism is a giant shit test that western societies need to pass in order to survive.
Not entirely.
Some male feminists are good looking enough or well enough off financially that a feminist will marry (girlfriend?) up into what she could not otherwise obtain. You'd be surprised at the thin guys I've seen with fat, ugly girls who essentially control them via a mixture of feminist ideology and the faint hope of getting sex that month. And they generally accept it because either they're too soft to fight for what they want or because they don't think they can do any better. That said, it's not really an existence I would wish upon anyone.
As for feminism itself, I think feminism needs to be judged in the light of its true intentions. Which is obviously not about equality, but rather about preventing predatory men from preying upon women. When you look at feminism in that light, it all makes sense. Economic equality was just a means to an end to allow women a way out of a relationship with a predatory man. Support for divorce was a way for a woman to leave a predatory husband even without support from her family. Abortion was for a way for women to dispose of a child of predatory men.
The problem feminism faces is its own success. The moderate voices got what they wanted and the more extreme ones were left over. And instead of simply producing means to allow women to escape abusive situations, they are seeking to remove competent men from the equation on the basis that those same competent men are the most capable predators. It began first by trying to suppress the shadow of male psyche--but that hasn't worked. Removing competent men has produced a lot of men who are more dependent upon women economically and socially. And what's worse is that since you can't actually destroy the shadows, they go underground and they begin to manifest themselves in other ways. Trying to guilt women for sex, threats of self-harm for attention, and other such manipulation tactics. So now I think they've given up and are just targeting masculinity in general.
Feminism itself can work so long as it exists to offer a woman an out for a bad relationship that is a danger to her and her children. Feminism begins to fail when it seeks to remove male competency in hopes of removing the inherent risk in social relationships with men.
