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Originally Posted by SlickyTrickyDamon
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I read that and the Io9 apologetics. It is them who are missing the point. I'm arguing from a purely writer's perspective. They are sites documented to be biased on the side of identity politics and they're doing damage control after hyping up the concept of 'FEMALE STAR WARS HERO SO COOL'. They are going to have to accept that the criticisms for such character types can be put upon her without it being interpreted as an issue with female heroines in general.
This is why I prefaced my write up by saying I don't have any issue with female heroes. At all. In fact I have preference
toward them. But Rey is the very definition of Mary Sue. I'm not asking her to be depowered. I'm not calling for no more female heroes in Star Wars. This is about the development of Rey herself.
I didn't write anything political at all. Mary Sue/Gary Stus have long been defined and debated about for years preceding the current social political critique of characters. Rey is not above it.
Rey is a Mary Sue character. I'm not 'missing the point', I'm applying a writer's term by exact definition. They are merely doing damage control. This is what happens when you have sites like Io9 and Salon making habit out of politically filtered review: When they come across an uncomfortable fact, they circle the wagons and do spin control. This would not be the case had the characters were switched between Finn and Rey. Same movie; but
Finn is the badass pilot/techy/Force adept who saves the day in the final duel.
Hazard a guess how the response articles would read then? Here's a hint, "Male Power Fantasy". They would shred Finn and his portrayal as not only OP, but blah blah yet another dismissal of women in movies blah blah why did she have to be saved so many times. Finn's story arc on Rey would all of a sudden be detrimental to how women are portrayed. Rey's story arc on Finn would be blasted as Gary Stu and typical male dominance or whatever. This is the problem with that kind of critique versus my purely technical critique; they have to contextualize a narrative based on gender, while I adhere to set in stone terms and definitions.
I described a character type, they are protecting a narrative. In order for their articles to make sense we would have to throw out everything we know about how to spot a Mary/Gary - and I'm not doing that because people can't separate character criticism from attacks on all characters of that gender. Fuck that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rogerer
She pulls the Jedi mind trick out of her are, that was the bridge too far for me.
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When even Rog thinks they jumped the shark with her, we are dealing with a Mary Sue.
And again, once a-fucking-gain - I am not blasting this as 'bad'. There's nothing to defend purely from a technical standpoint. But they protests too much (as I stated in the other post). They project. Their reaction being some kind of damage control is because
they think there was damage. They think female heroes is some kind of new movement they have to protect with unofficial PR articles. Only they care about it this way, not me or others. Because
they are the ones with the slant.