(A little background info) Good god, that all came from when I saw an artist acquaintance who I otherwise liked well enough drew and posted the shittiest art calling Tauriel a Mary Sue and totally pointless, blah blah etc. Then justified it later by saying "Well, I'm okay with female characters as long as they're good." And then I ascended into pure rage and spat some acid all over the place. Aaaand then she blocked me. Oops.
The thing I still don't get? Why the fuck make a point shaming Tauriel for being poorly written when her character was literally shafted by a shitty dude writer and showrunner? Why put work into shaming the iota of representation women have been given in an adaptation of a mythmaking work instead of shaming the shitty dude who wrote her that way? Where's the "Hi, I'm Peter Jackson and I have the emotional maturity of an 11 year old boy which is why I shafted this amazing female character, but I'm going to get off scott-free because you will blame a fictional character with no agency before you'll blame me for writing her that way" post? *throws hands up in the air* *buys insurance* *lights fandom on fire*
And yep, I am in a middling spot when it comes to Tolkien, honestly, and I would have seen the movies anyway, but Tauriel made the second movie 100x better for me than it otherwise would have been; because I was really invested in her story, and I also evolve into a mega-level gay whenever she's on screen. And there's not much that could save the third, but Evangeline Lily and Lee Pace tried really hard to bring some nuance and I appreciated that. She's a character I feel more strongly about than I feel about her franchise.
The other thing that really pisses me off about Tauriel hate specifically is that she is LITERALLY framed opposite fucking Legolas, with VERY few narrative differences between their characters. Like, they come from more or less the same background, they have the same weapons and skillset, and even their gender presentation isn't that different...and that makes Tauriel getting thrown under the bus by fandom that much more egregious in my book.
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Good god, that all came from when I saw an artist acquaintance who I otherwise liked well enough drew and posted the shittiest art calling Tauriel a Mary Sue and totally pointless, blah blah etc. Then justified it later by saying "Well, I'm okay with female characters as long as they're good." And then I ascended into pure rage and spat some acid all over the place. Aaaand then she blocked me. Oops.
The thing I still don't get? Why the fuck make a point shaming Tauriel for being poorly written when her character was literally shafted by a shitty dude writer and showrunner? Why put work into shaming the iota of representation women have been given in an adaptation of a mythmaking work instead of shaming the shitty dude who wrote her that way? Where's the "Hi, I'm Peter Jackson and I have the emotional maturity of an 11 year old boy which is why I shafted this amazing female character, but I'm going to get off scott-free because you will blame a fictional character with no agency before you'll blame me for writing her that way" post? *throws hands up in the air* *buys insurance* *lights fandom on fire*
And yep, I am in a middling spot when it comes to Tolkien, honestly, and I would have seen the movies anyway, but Tauriel made the second movie 100x better for me than it otherwise would have been; because I was really invested in her story, and I also evolve into a mega-level gay whenever she's on screen. And there's not much that could save the third, but Evangeline Lily and Lee Pace tried really hard to bring some nuance and I appreciated that. She's a character I feel more strongly about than I feel about her franchise.
The other thing that really pisses me off about Tauriel hate specifically is that she is LITERALLY framed opposite fucking Legolas, with VERY few narrative differences between their characters. Like, they come from more or less the same background, they have the same weapons and skillset, and even their gender presentation isn't that different...and that makes Tauriel getting thrown under the bus by fandom that much more egregious in my book.
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