Tangle 8/?

Nov 12, 2010 22:07

Disclaimer: Wow.  Um. No.  I don't own Star Wars.  I'm so sorry you were confused ...

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ferus isn't quite an alpha-male, and Ryn talks dirty to Anakin ... )

ryn orun, jedi, tangle, ffv, anakin skywalker, fandom: star wars, ferus olin, fic, obi-wan kenobi

Leave a comment

darth_eldritch November 13 2010, 12:55:52 UTC
What? You don't own Star Wars? So why is Anakin's speeder parked at your place and wherever you go? XD!!!!

Anakin and Ferus trying to compete, ha ha! That is so funny! Yeah, there was no love lost between them in canon. Two hot guys fighting for the honor of the lady's favor!

(Okay, what did Ryn whisper in Ani's ear?)

This scene reminds me of Scarlett O'hara surrounded by her admirers trying to win her over!

And, grrrr, this is what self described sue-hunters can't stand, their beloved canon male characters showing attention to a female OC. Some jealousy there, do you think? I mean, it's not meaningful literary critique there, it's get yer mits offa my squee. I'm going over a piece I was thinking of posting, and, oh, dear, one canon male is thinking of my OC, oh, the hair, oh, the eyes... and I was like, fuck it. If they don't like it, they can back button.

So eager to please, so easily wounded.

So true. You've got a real feel for dear Ani.

Reply

wyncatastrophe November 13 2010, 18:26:34 UTC
ZOMG I couldn't resist his hot ride.

Those two amuse me when they're together. It's so juvenile and yet so much like what grown men do! (Forget the Feminine Mystique, it's men who are a mystery!)

I've never read Gone With the Wind, so I can't say. I will say that the scene was supposed to be sort of ridiculous. I mean, we're not supposed to think that Ryn is worth all this attention, but rather that Anakin and Ferus are being absurd. To my mind, this is what makes it different from a true Mary Sue: in a Mary Sue, presumably this female OC would deserve all the adulation. With Ryn, she's a decent person and attractive enough that boys will in fact make themselves stupid over her ... but to anyone who isn't a hormonally charged adolescent male, it's all clearly over-the-top. I'm not sure whether it came across that well to readers, but in this scene we are meant to roll our eyes at Anakin and Ferus's rivalry, and snigger at Ryn's predicament as their most recent bone of contention ( ... )

Reply

darth_eldritch November 13 2010, 18:40:13 UTC
That bright yellow speeder stands out anywhere. Wait a minute, isn't that Obi-Wan coming around to scold Anakin for not returning the hotwired vehicle? I mean, we're talking Grand Theft Speeder here. Not good for Jedi careers.

In the Gone with the Wind movie there's one scene with Scarlett outside taking lemonade on daddy's plantation and she literally has six guys vying for her attention and she was playing like a fiddle.

I saw it as two adolescent boys. (I've seen grown men act like that... not to pimp myself, but it was over me...logic being that it's a guy thing.)

There is a lot of pro-Mary Sue stuff on the metafandom lists. For those exact reasons. Problem is that most people don't pay attention to it, or take it seriously, and continue to have their pointless fun by bashing sues.

Some people say that calling your OC a Mary Sue is not a bad thing. Sort of owning it, I suppose.

Reply

wyncatastrophe November 13 2010, 18:55:09 UTC
"Anakin, quick, get under the blanket! What's that, Master Kenobi? No, why would he be here?"

I'd totally like to do that. I don't think Ryn enjoys it as much.

*giggle* Fun times.

I have to admit, I think it's absurd to venerate self-indulgently bad writing as some sort of political statement. And my opinion of the academic was that he was stretching way farther on that limb than was wise. But then, academics frequently do. Some of what's out there shouldn't be taken seriously. And a lot of academics shouldn't take themselves so seriously. Especially if they are men writing about the feminist nature of a Mary Sue. You'd need some serious ethnography to make that credible.

Well, I definitely didn't get the feeling that gizzi1213 meant for it to sound like a bad thing. And her guess wasn't unreasonable, given the information available. If I'm going to invite people to take guesses at the OC's identity, then I don't have a lot of room to complain about what they come up with! So in the context of that game, what she said made ( ... )

Reply

darth_eldritch November 13 2010, 19:26:14 UTC
Kenobi's keen Force senses twitch, but no expression of it shows on his calm face. "Tell him I am waiting for him, should he decide to show up," he seems frienly enough. But he knows his padawan well, and passes the bright yellow speeder without comment as he leaves.

Yeah, a lot of this sue stuff is written by teen agers frustrated with what they feel is the lack of acceptance. Just call it what it is. Sometimes women will write a "sue" into a story to address the imbalance of male predominance. But that isn't always the case. sometimes we write the damned sues to have hot sex with the hottie male leads. not our faults if the canon males are so hot. hey, we're just having fun. They do get carried with the politics of it. It's like they're trying to start a revolution with eash paragraph of meta ( ... )

Reply

wyncatastrophe November 13 2010, 20:42:18 UTC
*snort*

There's nothing wrong with some heated fantasies, lol! But I would distinguish them, even when written, from storytelling as such. Imagining a scenario is not the same as telling a story, IMHO. And in the former, and in many PWPs, there is no real expectation that characters will be developed in a well-rounded way: it is not the point. If you're going to tell a long story that purports to do more, that is when you need to worry about characterizations. And I personally would not self-insert as a political move. And probably wouldn't self-insert in a fic I posted, period. No promises about my private stash, lol.Yeah, some folks are really anti-OC, but that's not the vibe I get from Gizzi, either in that particular thread or in others where the OC thing has come up. I didn't feel attacked, or anything like that. I just thought it was a good example of how hard it is to try and define the whole Mary Sue problem, even when all the people involved pretty well agree that Moar Writing Is Good ( ... )

Reply

darth_eldritch November 13 2010, 20:58:58 UTC
Agree with the self insert as a political move as the primary objective.

Oh, I believe that a story should stand on it's own merit. I just feel like saying that if you don't like OCs this character might be sueish to you. Not that I care, but you have only yourself to blame if you don't like how I describe her hair and eyes since so many of you have such a obsessive hangup about hair and eyes being a sue trait. lol. (I think there's treatment for that obsession. It might be a happy pill, it might be a laxative. Besides, the canon male is going to fall for those hypnotic huge eyes anyways, lol)

It's because what you say further down; this persistent belief that fanfic writers can't develop their own characters. Maybe some can't; they are writing for fun, afterall, and that's perfectly okay. They don't need arcane literary analysis to do what they do. But some do make good OCs and do a great job of it, like yourself.

Reply

wyncatastrophe November 13 2010, 21:11:26 UTC
*squints at screen* Wait, which part do you agree with? Gimme some context?

That is a good point. Although it turns out that people not deeply involved in the fandom don't actually realize that Ryn isn't canon. Evidently some of my friends at school were reading my fic (I'll have to explain, some other time, about the general awesomeness of colleagues who are just randomly supportive enough to read SW fanfic even if they aren't fans) and didn't realize that she wasn't in the PT until they ran across a discussion about developing the OC. So I think that's evidence, of a sort, that many OCs (because I could totally see this happening with other characters) don't have any internal characteristics that make them Sueish; they are identified as such only by people who have sufficient knowledge of canon to declare them outsiders. That is, some readers find Sueish qualities in OCs because they have already decided they are thereIt's too true: all participants in a Mary Sue discussion (pro, con, and abstaining) are wont to forget that ( ... )

Reply

darth_eldritch November 13 2010, 21:26:20 UTC
What I mean that I would not do a self insert as a political point, at least not as the primary objective, because at some point it stops being a story and becomes almost a political tract. I've seen the pros do this, and it gets annoying. There's a lot I can say about this, because it isn't necessarily cut and dried, because some politcal or meta themes can be dynamic part of a story. Like OCs, it's how it's handled and doesn't warp the story about it ( ... )

Reply


Leave a comment

Up