On Rey and Mary Sue and FORCE AWAKENS and Twitter and fanfic and awesome

On December 21, 2015December 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Politics, Writing2 Comments

The following chunk of paragraph, which does not itself actually contain any spoilers, appears in my spoiler review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens:

Hello, Daisy Ridley! Lemme be clear here: Rey is the best thing about this movie. Period. She is my favorite Star Wars character. She is so awesome that she borders on being a Mary Sue. Hell, she probably is a Mary Sue. I just don’t care.

It is clear, I hope, that I have an enormous amount of enthusiasm for this character, and she is never described in anything less than glowing terms throughout the review, or the non-spoiler one that came before it. I was rather taken aback yesterday afternoon to discover a raging argument happening on Twitter about whether or not Rey was a Mary Sue, and about all the sexist assholes who were describing her as such.

Here’s the thing: I had looked up the term before I used it, because it’s not something I say a lot. And other than not finding herself in a romantic relationship with the more-famous male leads, she fits. She’s literally incredibly good at everything she does throughout the entire movie. Do I care? No, not a bit, and if you want it a bit more clear why I’d suggest you read the spoiler review, as I don’t intend to be spoilery here.

But yeah. Twitter was mad, and a certain subset of Twitter who I try to listen to very carefully before/if deciding that they’re wrong (I try to be careful, as a man, about deciding “nope, I’m not being a sexist here, and the women are wrong”) was mad too.

Thing is, they were saying things like WOULD YOU EVER SAY LUKE OR ANAKIN WERE MARY SUES? WHAT ABOUT RAMBO? OR BLAHBLAH HAMMER?

And my answer to that was no, yes, yes, and who? in that order, and furthermore I don’t really have any ego bound up in this term. Call whoever you want a Mary Sue. I might debate you on it a bit, but I ain’t gonna get mad about it. Luke, for example? Nah, at least not in ANH; he’s whiny and gets his butt kicked in Mos Eisley, he’s not (ever) actually portrayed as a particularly exceptional pilot, has no particular technical skills, and while he does hit that exhaust port when Wedge (one person) failed, he treats it less as something amazing that he could do than something that ought to be easy (“I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-46 back home; they’re not much bigger than 2 meters.”).

Anakin? Rambo? Sure. Fine. I don’t care. I’ve never even heard of the Hammer dude who kept getting tossed around but everyone was certain that I’d be mad hearing him called a Mary Sue. Whatever. This is not something I’m willing to fight about. I don’t like being accused of sexism, especially when I think it’s wrong, but there are also times where I’m more interested in brushing off my shoulders and moving on with my life than bravely mounting my horse and riding off to defend the castle, and this needed to be one of those times.

Anyway.

Yesterday evening, this time speaking with people who I “know” a lot better and who have more or less the same reach on Twitter than I do, I actually did get into a fruitful and interesting conversation about whether Rey was a Mary Sue or not, one that is going to lead to me leaving the phrase in the review but probably just avoiding it altogether in the future. And then this happened:

(Screw the HTML; I just ended up screencapping it, but here’s a link to the Storify anyway.) The long and short of it is I got somebody to write Benevolence Archives/Star Wars fanfic, and it is the greatest thing ever.

Which … well, that was probably a long story for a one-sentence punchline.

But still: BA Twitter fanfic! That’s awesome!

Now somebody gimme some fan art. I want fan art of Brazel and Rhundi and Grond in the worst way, and the Internet keeps not producing it. 🙂

Lazy Sunday

On December 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Apparently I’m not writing anything today, so enjoy these two brief and loosely-related videos instead of reading a blog post.

And also this, just for the hell of it.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is a miserable, wonderful mess of a movie: a spoiler-filled #review

On December 19, 2015December 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews19 Comments

OKAY. Here’s the deal, children. I was going to put this behind an actual password and decided against it. I will, instead, drop all of the spoilery parts behind a jump. And understand me: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW UNTIL YOU SEE THE MOVIE. I intend to spoil every second of the film that I can remember, and chances are I’m going to get some stuff wrong, and chances are some of the stuff I’m going to complain about is going to be resolved satisfactorily in future films, and I may make some shit up partway through just for the sheer hell of it.

But see the fucking movie before you read this.

Note also that virtually the entire review is going to be complaining and nitpicking. This is because I am a horrible person and I enjoy that sort of thing. I am not standing in front of you in the theater holding this review in front of your face, so since I’m telling you in paragraph 3 that this is what you’re about to read, I’d like to suggest that if you already know you don’t want to read that sort of thing, you skip my review. I bet you can find at least one more site on the web talking about Star Wars if you are very good at Google and look very carefully.

Okay? Okay. Let’s get started.

Continue reading “STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is a miserable, wonderful mess of a movie: a spoiler-filled #review” →

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, spoiler-free #review

On December 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews7 Comments

There will be a spoiler review, although I’m not committing to writing it tonight. If I do, it’ll be password-protected. The password will be SKYWALKER, all caps. Just so you know.

Note that for the purposes of this conversation “spoiler” means “something you do not already know if you have watched the trailers and seen the toys.”

So. We ready? Okay.

(Sits and thinks for ten minutes)

(May not, in fact, be ready)

…I actually don’t know what I thought of that, guys. I Tweeted a one-word review after walking out of the theater, and the one word was “Worthy.” And I’ll stick with that, and I’ll say that if you’re a Star Wars fan you should definitely see this movie, and if you’re not a Star Wars fan you probably ought to see this movie anyway. In fact, I think that there are some weaknesses to the film that will only be visible to people who have seen the movies a million times before.

I will say that this movie features two of the finest performances– from Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley– that I have ever seen in a Star Wars movie. In fact, screw it, there’s no competition: Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver have the two best performances in Star Wars history, period, and their scenes together are amazing.

I guess that’s a spoiler. Rey and Kylo Ren meet, guys. I hope I didn’t just ruin the movie for you. Some of the other performances are not as good. Harrison Ford is mostly kind of embarrassing, actually, although he redeems himself toward the end of the film.

Here’s part of my frustration, and I think I can do this without getting into details: a lot of this movie isn’t going to be something I can fairly evaluate until I see at least the next film. If you’re someone who will see that as a weakness… well, be prepared for it. There’s a lot of stuff quickly passed over, or not explained, or just assumed, and I’m okay with waiting until Episodes 8 or 9 to fill in some of the details. If you aren’t like that, adjust expectations downward.

I have a very tangled relationship with my own Star Wars fandom, guys, and if you’ve been following my blog since the first trailers for this dropped you may have felt some of that ambivalence. I was in line, in costume, for three days for Episode I. I saw it ten times in the theater. By the time Episode III came out the lines really weren’t a phenomenon any longer, but I still saw that one at least two or three times. Right now, my main relationship to Star Wars is through the books, and the books by and large have not been very good lately. My wife and I talked last week about watching a Star Wars movie a day until this one came out. We didn’t rewatch any of them. I can’t bring myself to any longer. I can no longer enjoy watching the prequels; a decade-plus of arguing about them has drained whatever fun they might once have had out of them, and even the thought of watching the OT frustrates me now because the movies have been altered so much and in so many different ways that I no longer even feel like I know what I’m watching. The way I’ve phrased it before is that I will love Star Wars until I die; I’m just not interested in being a fan any longer.

I’m not sure this movie helped. I told my wife earlier that my main goal was to not be sad when I walked out of the theater, and I wasn’t. But that was a couple of hours ago, and the initial exhilaration has already worn off and I’m not sure what it’s been replaced with.

I can’t take my son to it, either. Not yet.

There’s going to be a Star Wars movie a year forever now, guys. That was the last one we get to look forward to. Was it a worthy Star Wars film? Did JJ do a good job? Yeah. Do I want to see it again? Sure.

I’m just not sure if I’m happy about it.

TODAY

On December 18, 2015December 16, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, MusicLeave a comment

Tomorrow

On December 17, 2015December 16, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn movies1 Comment

#Fridayfictioneers: Priorities

On December 16, 2015December 16, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories8 Comments

(NOTE: I didn’t do this last week. Why? I took the picture. Knowing the context screwed up my ability to make stuff up about it. 🙂 )

Eve watched the fog roll in over the lake and sighed. There was much to do before nightfall: secure the windows and doors, repour the salt at the threshold, and the garlic at the corners of the lot was probably rotten by now. She’d have to make sure they had enough candles, too; electric light drew more attention than fire. One might find a weak spot.

There was laundry, too, and the carpets needed vacuuming. At least the dishes were finished.

“Jim, can you take the trash out?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“In a minute, babe. The game’s on.”

Word Count: 99

Friday Fictioneers is a weekly blog hop hosted by Rochelle. She posts a photo prompt then challenges readers to write a 100 word story inspired by the prompt. It’s a fun challenge. Give it a try! Check here for the info then write your story and post it, link up and enjoy the other stories!