how or where does one draw the line between competent, informed leadership and Macho Sueism?
I only saw two seasons of SGA, but from those I wouldn't call John Sheppard a Macho Sue. A macho character, surely. But not a Sue in the sense I understand it. I don't know who Jethro Gibbs is.
If I've got the concept right, Macho Sue is the hero who can do anything, no matter how heinous, and it's portrayed as an heroic act simply because he's the one doing it.
This perfectly describes Dean, and to a lesser extent Sam, in the last two seasons of Supernatural: they can murder as many people as they deem necessary, for example, and it's okay because those people were possessed, and killing the demons is heroic. The human lives lost are less than collatoral damage - they're not even noticed in the narrative.
Any "typically masculine" hero will have elements of the type (and there's nothing wrong with that - Macho is an archetype); it's when (as with a Mary Sue) the whole narrative and morality turns about him that he becomes Macho Sue.
no subject
I only saw two seasons of SGA, but from those I wouldn't call John Sheppard a Macho Sue. A macho character, surely. But not a Sue in the sense I understand it. I don't know who Jethro Gibbs is.
If I've got the concept right, Macho Sue is the hero who can do anything, no matter how heinous, and it's portrayed as an heroic act simply because he's the one doing it.
This perfectly describes Dean, and to a lesser extent Sam, in the last two seasons of Supernatural: they can murder as many people as they deem necessary, for example, and it's okay because those people were possessed, and killing the demons is heroic. The human lives lost are less than collatoral damage - they're not even noticed in the narrative.
Any "typically masculine" hero will have elements of the type (and there's nothing wrong with that - Macho is an archetype); it's when (as with a Mary Sue) the whole narrative and morality turns about him that he becomes Macho Sue.