Category: ruminations

The Definition of a Mary Sue: What Is a Mary Sue?

On By E. A. SolinasIn ruminations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of debate online about what a Mary Sue (or its male equivalent, a Gary Stu) actually is.

That’s because there is no one definition of it that everyone can agree on. For instance, some people think it’s always a self-insert character, but that’s not the case, and not all self-insert characters are Mary Sues. Just look at Agatha Christie’s Ariadne Oliver. Some think that it’s a character who is powerful or superhumanly adept… and again, that is not what defines a Mary Sue.

Some pretend that Mary Sues aren’t a real thing, or are something made up by misogynists to complain about Strong Powerful Women. Both of them are extremely incorrect, and these people are either ignorant of how fictional characters and their narratives work and exist in the real world, or are just cowards who don’t want to risk public disapproval by supporting criticism of this character type.

Seriously, I dare anyone to read the Anita Blake series and tell me, “Oh no, she’s not a Mary Sue.”

But one thing that has contributed to the dismissal of Mary Sues as a concept is just the fact that no two people can agree on what one is. It’s like two people trying to discuss rodents, but one of them is talking about capybaras and one is talking about rats. Furthermore, a lot of people are incorrect in their belief about what Mary Sues are, because they incorrectly believe them to all be synonymous with self-inserts, or characters with superpowers, or things like that.

The thing is, those are not definitions of a Mary Sue. There are self-inserts that are not part of some kind of personal fantasy, and there are Mary Sues who are not self-inserts. There are also Sues who have superpowers, and Sues who do not; conversely, there are many characters with superpowers who are not Sues. You could make a case, for instance, that Batman is much more of a Gary Stu than Superman is, since instead of being a part of his biological makeup, his abilities are simply that he has become the best at almost everything.

There are also gradations of Sueness. It’s not a binary thing, where all characters who qualify as Sues are Rey from Star Wars. Plenty of characters who are not really Sues or Stus have qualities associated with such characters, but because it’s low-grade, it’s easier to forgive. Harry Potter, for instance, has some Stu qualities, but I wouldn’t say overall that he is a Stu, because he is noted to be unexceptional and average in many ways, and his status as the “Chosen One” is confirmed by Dumbledore to be a matter of Voldemort creating the enemy he feared would arise rather than actually just being The Special.

However, it is possible to create a definition or description of “Mary Sue” that pretty much describes all of them, and I stumbled across one a few years ago. I think it more or less covers almost every single Sue or Stu I’ve come across, and addresses the core problems with the characters rather than the superficials like “has amazing powers” or “is extremely capable.”

That description is simply that a Mary Sue is a character who warps the universe, characters and rules of the world he/she is written into.

Let’s use Bella from Twilight as an example. Bella is a petty, selfish, hateful and rather unintelligent person, but every character around her is warped to only think of her as a selfless, glorious, brilliant figure whom everyone is either jealous of or adores. No one gets to legitimately dislike her for any of the things she does, and the universe is slanted so that she will receive everything she desires and more with minimal effort – I mean, the villains literally want her to have exactly what she wants. In addition to the characters, the universe and rules of the world around her are warped, in that she becomes the only newborn vampire to immediately gain perfect control of her thirst, so everyone can stand around marveling at how magnificent she is. The rules don’t apply to her.

And the sad thing is, a character being a Sue can be dodged very easily. All you have to do is write them as not instantly being the most well-beloved, the most improbably powerful, the one for whom the world’s rules, consequences and probability do not apply.

Take John Wick. He’s almost a Stu. He’s ridiculously skilled and practically legendary, and he spends 85% of the movie carving his way through the Russian mob. But John gets hurt, sometimes very badly. He’s forced to abide by the laws of the assassin underground. His actions have consequences. And he can’t do everything alone – he has to be rescued by Willem DeFoe sometimes, which leads to even more consequences. Furthermore, he isn’t an elegant killing machine just mowing through enemies – he almost dies in undignified ways several times, sometimes by stuff like being throttled by a piece of plastic or thrown bodily from a balcony.

So the fact that the universe and characters around John don’t bend to accommodate him is what keeps him from being a Stu. His struggles are what keep him grounded, and also what contribute to us cheering him on. The fact that he’s an elite assassin with superior skills who ultimately wins over everyone does not make him a Stu.

So that’s my perspective on Mary Sues/Gary Stus. It’s not having powers or skills or attractiveness or whatnot that decides whether a character is a Mary Sue – it’s how they bend and twist the universe around them to glorify them and give them what they want.

Again, read Anita Blake if you want proof that they exist.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows and Mikey’s Cloudcuckoolanderness

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

One of the many, many aspects of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows that was a massive improvement on the not-very-good first film was Michelangelo. To put it bluntly, in the first movie Michelangelo came across as a budding sex offender – pretty much every single line he uttered revolved around his extremely sexual obsession with April O’Neil, often in very tonally inappropriate places. It was, to put it simply, creepy.

And yes, I know previous iterations of Michelangelo (the 1990 and 2003 versions) have asked “Can we keep her?” about April as well…. but that seemed a lot less sexual and lot more childlike.

Well, thankfully they dialed that back to a single joke line in the sequel (which he is immediately tased for), and Mikey even seems completely cool with the idea of April dating Casey Jones. Instead, he’s rewritten to be more in line with many other depictions of Michelangelo – a pop-culture-loving, skateboarding, soft-hearted sometimes-cloudcuckoolander, the most childlike and most loving of the four Turtles.

And they definitely made him a cloudcuckoolander, at least some of the time. In fact, it initially seems a little inconsistent – sometimes he’s just a little flaky and sweet, and sometimes he’s absolutely spaced out of what is going on around him and has no idea what people are talking about. Take the scene where Raph is running his master plan past April and Casey – Mikey’s only contribution is a strange, staring-eyed declaration of “You’re right,” and then he spends the entire scene eating pizza and not noticing what anyone else is saying.

And after rewatching the movie a few times, I think I’ve nailed down why. Mikey becomes a cloudcuckoolander and detaches from what is happening around him when he’s suffering some kind of emotional distress.

About halfway through the movie, Mikey overhears Leonardo and Donatello secretly discussing a purple alien goo that might be able to turn them into humans, or at least make them look human externally (the movie is little vague). Mikey then goes to Raphael and tells him everything – not because he actually wants Raphael to do anything, but because he just needs to vent his feelings. When Raphael predictably blows up and goes off to confront Leo, Mikey physically tries to stop him because he desperately doesn’t want his brothers to fight. It’s played for laughs, but his distress is very obvious.

Unsurprisingly, Leo and Raph end up angry at each other, having a fight, and eventually Leo and Donnie leave on a mission without Raph and Mikey. When Raphael rages about how he’s going to get his hands on the purple goo without Leo, Mikey… well, he agrees with Raph, but emphasizes repeatedly that he does not understand what Raph is doing.

This seems to be the first of the two situations in which Mikey goes cloudcuckoolander: strife in his family. He’s always at his best when he and his brothers are united, and when they work together, he seems fairly sharp mentally. But he seems to actively withdraw from the world around him when his brothers are fighting, because he cannot cope with it, and he cannot fix it by himself.

This also applies to taking part in Raph’s plan. Mikey goes along with Raph’s plan because… well, he’s kind of a people-pleaser. But he withdraws from the conversation when Raph is scheming behind Leo’s back, and drawing Casey and April into his plan. This is clearly not something Leo will put up with, so Mikey withdraws rather than taking an active role.

The other situation is after Raph and Mikey’s plan to infiltrate police headquarters goes boobies-up, and the brothers are all exposed to the eyes of the entire NYPD. Exposure is less upsetting to Mikey, however, than the reactions of some of the cops: they’re called “monsters” and treated with fear, horror and hate. This visibly hurts Mikey from the very moment it happens, even though it’s coming from total strangers.

When they return to the lair, Mikey reveals his hurt and misery to his father Splinter, who tries to reassure him, but obviously nothing your parents say is going to overcome rejection by the entire human race. And about a minute later, when Donatello identifies where Bebop and Rocksteady are, Mikey has become a cloudcuckoolander once again, giving a silly answer that doesn’t make any sense. Once again, he’s withdrawing from a situation that is hurting him, and only reemerges in subsequent scenes, where he and his brothers are more or less getting along and there are no non-villainous humans to hurt him.

I don’t know if this pattern was deliberately placed in the script by the writers, but it definitely does exist, and it honestly makes Mikey feel like a much more vulnerable and sweet-natured person. He just hates conflict among people he loves, and he wants to be loved and accepted for who he is rather than what he is. And who can dislike that?

All meditations on Mikey aside, I recommend Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows very highly. It’s not what you’d call a very good movie, or a particularly smart one, and it bungles the character of Casey Jones. But it does have a lot of love for the franchise and characters in general, and it makes you really like and feel the connection between the brothers.

And it enjoys throwing in over-the-top spectacle, such as the Turtles battling Rocksteady and Bebop on a crashing plane… using a tank. It’s wonderful. It’s just a fun popcorn movie, and no, you don’t need to have seen the first Bayverse movie to understand it.

The selfishness at the heart of Batwoman

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

I haven’t blogged about stuff for awhile, but I had to speak up on the subject of the CW’s laughably bad TV series, Batwoman. The shared universe formerly known as the Arrowverse is now several years past its sell-by date, and while it’s never been good exactly, it is pretty rancid by now. It didn’t help that they cast Ruby Rose as a character we’re presumably supposed to like, despite her inability to do anything but smirk.

Lately, I’ve been watching Youtuber ProcrastiTara’s reviews of Batwoman, and also keeping abreast of the news of the second season, which will be recasting the role with an entirely new character… more on that later. I’ve known for awhile that the people making this show don’t understand Batman, but I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the reason they don’t is because they’re too selfish to appreciate a character whose core is selflessness.

At the beginning of Batwoman, we’re informed that Batman’s real reason for donning the cowl and fighting crime isn’t to save others from the heartbreak that he has suffered, and it isn’t to protect the people of Gotham from evil. No, it’s because he’s edgy and he doesn’t like rules!

You see? They cannot grasp that he chose to be Batman for unselfish reasons, because the kind of people who write this sort of character are in themselves fundamentally selfish. If you have any doubts, we’re assured, at the end of the very first episode, that Kate’s reason for becoming Batwoman is because she wants “the freedom to be myself.” Her core reason for being a superhero is purely about herself, not about wanting to help others. No wonder the character is such a despicable tool.

Honestly, there is nothing heroic about a person who only does good things because they want to “be themselves.” Batman may be more fully himself when he dons the cowl than when he is Bruce Wayne, but that is NOT his motivation for doing what he does.

This was absolutely cemented by the promotional text released to publicize Batwoman 2.0, who is an entirely new character who is somehow able to be a superhero despite being a homeless drug addict with no combat training. What is this new character’s motivation? To “no longer be a victim” and “be powerful.” Again, it’s not about being good, noble and unselfish, about saving people who cannot save themselves – it’s about feeling an artificial sense of empowerment (which, let’s face it, describes pretty much all empowerment – most of the time, it’s just feeling a fake pleasant sensation, not actually changing anything or accomplishing anything).

People who are too selfish to come up with noble reasons for superheroes to do what they do should not be allowed to write/showrun for them. Period. I have zero admiration for these characters, and zero reason for cheer for them. Hopefully they’ll shoot this series in the head at the end of the second season, which they really should have done already when you consider the ratings.

Why Mulan 2020 Sucks: Brains Vs. Brawn

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminations2 Comments

Disney is pretty much the Empire from Star Wars at this point, only with less creativity. Right now their main exports, aside from Marvel movies, are terrible adaptations of classic books (Artemis Fowl, A Wrinkle In Time) and terrible live-action remakes of their classic movies that completely miss the point of why the originals were good.

But of all the bad live-action remakes, the remake of Mulan might be the worst. This is a movie that people were divided about before it even came out, mainly because it was eliminating the characters of Mushu and sorta-bisexual icon Li Shang. But others wanted to see it succeed because it was supposedly a more “faithful” and culturally-accurate version of the Mulan legend. More on that later.

Then it came out, and it was… amazing. Amazingly bad. It managed to miss everything about what made the 1998 animated film work as a story, and as a feminist work. One of the biggest problems was that it turned Mulan from a relatable, ordinary girl with immense willpower and strategic thinking… into a Strong Female Character with ubermensch powers who can do anything. She became Asian Rey.

And one of the worst aspects of this change is that the movie devalues female intelligence. The original (meaning the 1998 film) gave Mulan a story arc that emphasized her fierce intelligence as well as her fighting ability. It’s clear in the film that she is not going to be able to rely on her strength alone, because… she’s a woman in an army full of men, and men are, in general, physically stronger than women.

So instead, we are shown that Mulan compensates with her brains – her ability to figure out a way to the top of the pole, turning her disadvantages into advantages; her clever triggering of an avalanche; her use of her combat skills in unconventional ways to defeat her enemies, and so on. From the earliest scenes of the movie, we are shown that Mulan is a problem-solver, a quick thinker, and a strategist. This – along with her courage and determination – is ultimately what leads her to glory, not her brute strength.

Hmm, a realistic yet uplifting message for young girls, about how they can use their intelligence to stand as equals to men? How can we ruin this?

Why, make it so that Mulan succeeds through brute strength, of course! No need for that silly intelligence to succeed and become a legendary warrior. Mulan 2020, instead of featuring Mulan using her intellect to reach the top of that pole and retrieve the arrow, has her just floating up the mountainside with a bucket of water on each arm. She’s unbothered by the physical weights that are causing the mere mortal men to flop on the ground and cry, because she’s superior to them. Yay, brute strength! Who needs intelligence and problem-solving abilities?

And of course, they take one of Mulan’s greatest triumphs from her, namely her use of an avalanche to wipe out the enemy army. A great moment that highlights that brains can beat brute strength, and gives a female character a win that her male friends could not.

So what do they do? Well, the avalanche is no longer a deliberate act triggered by Mulan. Instead, it’s a dumb accident caused by the bad guys… because their aim is bad. Something Mulan did NOT engineer deliberately, and had no way of knowing would happen, and thus cannot be credited for because there’s zero indication that she intended it to happen that way.

They took away the female lead’s biggest strategic achievement.

In fact… Mulan is kind of stupid in this movie. At no point does she show any strategic skills or problem-solving abilities. Even her father’s demand that she hide her chi (groan) isn’t handled logically – she shows off her ubermensch abilities at the matchmaker’s, but later she chides herself for not hiding her chi… while disguised as a man. And she’s too dumb to realize that if chi is supposedly a male-only thing (groan) then she can use it openly while masquerading as a man.

And this lack of respect for intelligence even seeps into the ending. In the 1998 movie, the offer from the Emperor is that he wants her to be his advisor. He wants her to be a PROFESSIONAL smart person who will help him govern China wisely. In the live action film? He offers her a job as a personal guard. No smarts needed, just chi and a sword.

So yes… in the name of female empowerment, they made a smart, capable, likable heroine who proved that you don’t need brute strength to be successful…. into a bimbo who uses brute strength.

Bravo, Disney.

Good things about “Man of Steel”

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

Man of Steel is a movie that was divisive when it first came out, mainly because the infamous scenes in which Jonathan Kent tells his adopted son Clark that he “maybe” should have left a bunch of other kids to drown, and later lets himself die when Clark could have saved him because people were watching. I suspect the point of the scenes was to suggest that Jonathan loves his son so much that he wants to keep him safe at all costs, but the execution was faulty.

Oh, and the Superman killing Zod thing, which wasn’t necessarily bad (yo, fanboys, Superman HAS killed Zod before. Remember Superman II? Because Supes killed Zod in that movie, and he didn’t even seem to feel bad), but which they kind of undermined by having him joking and messing around in the very next scene.

And yes, I have my issues with the movie. For instance, it drives me insane that they call that skull fragment a “codex.” It’s not a codex. A codex is literally a bound book. Don’t call things what they aren’t, Zack!

Pictured: Not A Codex

But the opinions really started going against the film when Zack Snyder produced the follow-up, Batman V. Superman, which had a lot of weird attempts to deconstruct DC’s classic heroes by having them all either be psychopaths or really reluctant to be superheroes. Retroactively, Man of Steel became the “bad” Superman movie (even though I’d argue that artistically in direction, writing and overall acting, it’s superior to most of the other Superman films — certainly Superman 3 and 4, and Superman Returns).

But honestly? It’s actually a pretty good movie. Yes, it has Zack Snyder’s tendency to overthink things and subvert iconic figures, but the movie does treat Superman as a truly inspiring figure who makes the world better with his presence. And while it is a slow build, it does provide a lot of interesting ideas that add to Superman’s mythos.

For instance, I really like the idea that Clark Kent had to essentially grow into his powers, and develop discipline in his use of them. After all, having the superpowered senses… isn’t entirely natural. Had he lived his life on Krypton, he never would have had them. So we see him struggling to cope with senses going haywire in seemingly ordinary circumstances, such as rushing into a closet to hide from the stimuli, like an autistic child who is getting overwhelmed.

Or how about his anger? I’ve seen people complain about the scene where Clark essentially crucifies a guy’s truck, that it was stupid of him to do that. But… think about it. Clark Kent is a guy who has never been able to express his anger when people treat him badly. He’s been treated as a freak, a weirdo, a victim, and lived his life in fear of others. He has never once fought back, no matter what, because he knows his strength would kill anyone he attacked. This is the only way he can express his anger, and he’s probably bottled up a lot, especially if he blamed himself for his father’s death.

This is something that not many Superman stories address. Clark Kent/Kal-El may be an alien, but his heart is very human. He can be angry. He’s allowed to feel anger. Anyone who is mistreated will feel anger. And yet, we see him as someone whose dedication to not hurting others leads him to stand there and take the abuse rather than exerting his power.

In a sense, it’s part of his arc, because we see him freed from his anger and misery when he finally discovers who he truly is. After Jor-El gives him his pep talk, Clark/Kal-El seems newly at-peace and happy for the first time.

Which brings me to another thing I like: Supes’ first flight. It’s not so much the animation of the flying itself, which is… you know, it’s good. What I like is Clark’s reaction to flying for the first time — we see him laughing giddily with exhilaration, like a child who has just learned how to do something. It’s really very adorable.

This is more a personal like than an objective point, but I also really liked the design work for the Kryptonian clothing and ships — they gave the feeling of immense complexity and technological advancement that had fallen into decadence and decay.

I’m not going to go into a full-length pros-and-cons analysis of Man of Steel — not right now, anyway — but I wanted to note the things that were, in my opinion, good from a storytelling perspective and a character development perspective.

I feel like a lot of the reactions to Clark’s development in Man of Steel is based on this idea that Superman is perfect, and wouldn’t experience doubts or anger or whatever. And that’s not really conducive to good storytelling. I’m not saying that pure-hearted, noble characters cannot exist and should be subverted whenever possible, because that is not the case. But you can have pure-hearted, noble characters make mistakes and struggle. It doesn’t make them any less good.

A good example is Captain America in the movie Civil War. The climactic battle is sparked off when it’s revealed that Bucky killed Tony’s parents many years ago, and — more hurtful to Tony — Cap knew about it and did not tell him. This is not done out of malice, but because Cap feared what Tony’s reaction would be, especially since Bucky was brainwashed at the time the murders took place.

So do we see Cap as less of a noble, pure-hearted figure because he did that? No, for two reasons:

  1. It was essentially a mistake, and a mistake that any one of us might make, because it’s in kind of a moral grey area. Should you reveal all and risk someone doing something terrible for revenge on an innocent person, or should you keep an important secret from someone who has a right to know? I don’t think there’s a clear-cut “right” answer.
  2. He apologizes. He admits wholeheartedly that he was completely in the wrong and he does not make any excuses.

And that’s kind of how I see Superman in Man of Steel. He’s noble and pure of heart, but it doesn’t mean he’s devoid of internal struggle and personal flaws. A person can inspire hope and be a hero while still stumbling and getting back up again.

At the very least, Man of Steel should be commended for at least trying some angles that previous adaptations hadn’t, and trying to think about how it would be to grow up with superhuman powers. I do not wholly embrace Zack Snyder’s approach to superheroes, except maybe in Watchmen, but I don’t believe his depiction of Superman is a failure either.

Eowyn and Feminism: A Rant Part 2

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminations1 Comment

Which also brings me to Griffin and Liang’s complaint about Eowyn having her “happily ever after.” They managed to completely miss the entire point of everything that the good guys do at the end of the war. Eowyn turning away from her fighting days at the conclusion of the story is not just about her becoming a wifey. It’s about her choosing to embrace life rather than death, about creating something new and good and wholesome rather than seeking out martial glory.

Again, this is a thing that all the male characters do. Aragorn is rebuilding Gondor after its devastating war; Faramir is doing likewise to Ithilien; Legolas brings in a bunch of Wood-Elves to help fix the place up, and Gimli brought in Dwarves to fix up the war damage to Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep and build a whole new kingdom. And of course, the hobbits return to the Shire and find it’s been wrecked by Saruman and his human lackeys, so once they drive them out, they have to restore the Shire to its former glory, which Sam plays a big part in, since he has a box of special Elven dirt and a mallorn seed. He literally causes the Shire’s plant life to return.

This is what Tolkien thought should happen after a war: not more fighting, but repairing the damage from the war and building things that are better and more noble. Everybody in his book takes part in this. So why is the woman expected to stay a warrior and keep slaying, when all the men are busy fixing stuff up and moving past the killing and death to peaceful lives?

Eowyn’s character arc is not about how she becomes a warrior and stays one forever because WOMAN FIGHTING EMPOWERED. That way, in Tolkien’s world, just leads to decay, blood, death and loss. Instead she embraces a new life of rebuilding and growth and life, which includes embracing romantic love. She even says at the end,

“I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

Faramir even highlights this plan by saying,

“And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

Furthermore, a sane person would not see Eowyn getting married as being somehow a bad thing. Not only is it her embracing life rather than her suicidal rush towards death, but her relationship with Faramir is depicted as being one of equals. He respects her both as a woman and as a warrior, seeing no conflict between those two things, but wanting her to be happy and fulfilled in a way that fighting ultimately won’t make her.

Their relationship also makes sense because they were both recovering from similar experiences when they died: feelings of alienation and rejection, seeing their civilizations crumble from the corruption of outside forces, the recent death of father figures, and the Black Breath. Yeah, Tolkien could have outlined their relationship more, but her connection with Faramir goes a lot deeper than Liang’s contemptuous “Tolkien thinks women should get married to ANY man available.” They have a lot of similarities to build on, and unlike with Aragorn, she gets to know him as a person and not just crush on him because he’s an easy way out of a life she can’t stand anymore.

At the same time, Faramir is a more optimistic and sunny person than Eowyn, who tends to be kind of dark and moody. He lifts her up. He also provides a perspective for Eowyn beyond that of the Rohirrhim, where great deeds in battle are glorified. Gondor’s a little more sophisticated, and gives her an opportunity to learn to be something more positive than a warrior.

Faramir makes her a better, happier person by being who he is, and that’s ultimately a sign of a healthy, good relationship. Turning aside from being a shieldmaiden and marrying Faramir are part of a whole “deciding to live” change in Eowyn’s personality. You know, character growth. Something you don’t find in a lot of poorly-written characters that Griffin would define as “strong female characters.”

And even if Tolkien wanted to marry off his characters for a happy ending… so what? Is that so bad? Would Griffin and Liang have preferred it if Eowyn had just been miserable and lonely at the end of the trilogy? I already outlined why the “Eowyn stays a warrior and goes around killing stuff” thing was not going to fly in Tolkien’s world, so precisely why shouldn’t she get married?

This is why interpretation of a text from a particular political perspective is not the sole way you should look at it. Unless you’re very well-informed and dedicated to fairness and research, you can end up attributing motives and attitudes to the text and the author that are not fair or just, and you can end up bitching about things that are not actually problems. Like when you get upset when a female character does something that THE MEN ALSO DO, or when you totally ignore how a character’s actions dovetail with the attitudes and beliefs of the author.

That’s ultimately why I can’t take Griffin or Liang’s outrage seriously. Their feminist analysis is so shallow, so blinkered. They don’t think deeply about why Tolkien would have written Eowyn this way, they just condemn it because it doesn’t slavishly follow “strong woman” cliches and have Eowyn turn into Xena.

Seriously, how am I supposed to take “scholars” seriously when they can’t think outside of an incredibly narrow political viewpoint, or interpret a text by actual analysis? Major fail, you guys.

Eowyn and Feminism: A Rant Part 1

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminations3 Comments

J.R.R. Tolkien is sometimes criticized for his female characters not being numerous or prominent enough. Despite this, he created the character of Eowyn, a warrior woman who disguises herself as a man so she can ride into battle alongside her brother and uncle, and was actually Aragorn’s love interest in earlier drafts. I read somewhere that Eowyn was created by Tolkien so his daughter would have a character to look up to, but I haven’t been able to find a source for it.

Anyway, Eowyn was an interesting and well-developed character that Tolkien clearly had some affection for. And she was treated with respect: her yearning to go fight and the unfairness of being left behind is treated sympathetically by both Tolkien and his characters, and never once is she dismissed because of her gender. Hell, she’s given the honor of killing the second most powerful bad guy in Middle-Earth (once Saruman lost his power) — even Aragorn didn’t get a memorable kill like that!

But when I glanced at her wikipedia page, I saw that feminist Peggy Griffin apparently claimed that Eowyn almost qualified as a “strong female character” (her exact phrasing) but didn’t because she decides to turn away from fighting and marry Faramir. The sneering implication of her text is that Eowyn is just being shoved into a romantic role with some random guy (not one of any importance), now that she’s done “playing” as a warrior.

What. A. Crock.

First, I do NOT like the stock “strong female character who wants to be a warrior, wears armor and defies authority” as an archetype, because it’s increasingly antithetical to good writing. It produces characters like the live-action Mulan, who has no flaws, no weaknesses, no identifiable qualities, no real obstacles to overcome, and thus flopped epically as a character because she was being compared to the well-developed, intelligent, hard-working, likable character from the 1990s. I’m not saying the “strong female character” archetype can’t be done well, but she needs to have more than “I rebel against all authority and I dress like a dude! Me so empowered!”

A female character should be written to be a good character first, and a woman second. Female characters should have to work for their triumphs, train, struggle, persevere, and work against their personal flaws in order to grow and become better (or if villains, possibly worse) people. Same as male characters. A good example is Leia from the original Star Wars trilogy: she was smart, capable, dynamic, strong-willed and an excellent leader on and off the battlefield, but she also had some personal flaws she had to overcome before she could find happiness. She had a bad temper (presumably inherited from her father) that often made her very snappish, and she had difficulty in Empire Strikes Back with expressing her deeper feelings that she has to work past (which she has, by the beginning of Return of the Jedi, which also coincides with the subsidence of her anger).

So it pisses me off that Ms. Griffin dismisses Eowyn’s journey just because it involves falling in love and retiring from the battlefield. You know why that isn’t an antifeminist thing to do?

Because all of the men do it.

Okay, not all the men get married at the end, but a substantial portion of the cast does. Aragorn gets married within a year, as does Faramir (obviously, since he married Eowyn), and Sam. Even Eowyn’s brother Eomer immediately starts sniffing around the Gondorian ladies in order to find himself a queen as fast as possible. Merry and Pippin didn’t get married to their wives right away (especially since Pippin is still technically a kid when the war ends) but they do settle down and get married, and later become the respective leaders of their clans.

And precisely why should Eowyn make being a warrior a way of life? All the men stop fighting when the war ends. Sure, some of them have to have some small-scale, brief conflicts because they have kingdoms and the Shire, and bad guys will inevitably attack. But none of the male characters continue fighting as a lifestyle after the war. And yet Griffin and her sneering cohort Liang claim that the ONLY reason a woman would quit her martial pursuits and get married is because she’s being forced into subservient domesticity under the patriarchy.

That’s because neither of them understand how Tolkien thought… and I suspect that is because neither of them has ever been a soldier, or even probably talked to one. Tolkien was a soldier, in the most hideously wasteful, pointless, poorly-handled wars in the history of the human race. He did not think that war and fighting were things that people — male or female — should do as a full-time pursuit, as a way of life. He thought that after the war was over, then people go home, get married and live peaceful lives.

Eowyn is literally being criticized for being treated exactly the same as the male characters. It probably never would have even occurred to Tolkien that he should write her eschewing marriage, donning a metal bra and riding around looking for people to kill. Not because he wanted to deprive a female character of power, but because it literally would not have occurred to him that anybody should do that. It’s not a matter of male vs. female, it’s just how he thought everyone should live.

That’s because Tolkien didn’t think of fighting as empowering, because he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that being a warrior was not just dangerous, but painful, messy, and capable of taking a terrible toll on a person (presumably he witnessed the shellshock victims after the wars). He knew that some people might find fame and honor on the battlefield with impressive deeds, but he didn’t believe that fighting should happen for its own sake. The male characters of Lord of the Rings only ever fight to save the world, not because they think it makes them look awesome.

Consider this quote:

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend…”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

That quote, by the way, is by the male character that Liang dismisses as “any” man as if he had no importance. I think being the author’s mouthpiece on the morals and purpose of war is probably something reserved for important characters. Especially when the author specifically says that he identifies the most with that character… but hey, I’m not a “feminist scholar.” I just do research.

(Tolkien also didn’t have Eowyn dress as a man as some kind of feminist political statement — her dressing like a guy was purely practical, because she had to blend in with a force of men)

They also managed to miss the fact that Eowyn’s lust for battle-based glory is not depicted as a good thing. Eowyn’s longing for glory on the battlefield is at least partially based on suicidal depression and her frustrations over having to take care of her aged uncle, while her cousin died and her brother was exiled. Eomer suffered the same experiences, but he was able to go out and do something productive about it, because he was a man. By the time Eowyn kills the Witch-King, she’s pretty screwed up from months or YEARS of this treatment.

She’s not trying to fight from a healthy head-space — she’s trying to go out in a blaze of glory, after being trapped by her struggles in a country threatened with decay, because she sees nothing worthwhile in the life of a protector and leader off the battlefield. Aragorn explains in the Houses of Healing that she her crush on him was because he represented escape from Rohan and a chance for great deeds. That is not healthy.

And yet Tolkien is still completely sympathetic to her desires and wishes, even though they are not really in tandem with his own views on warfare.

“But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

I can’t say for sure, but Tolkien probably saw a lot of women who wanted to do things, and had the spirit and inner strength to accomplish them, but were constrained by society’s gender roles. Hell, he worked at Oxford — he probably saw a lot of this sort of thing. And he clearly had sympathy for them and their struggles.

And yet, Griffin and Liang just see it as “herp derp, woman fighting good, woman getting married bad, fighting is empowering, herp derp!”

TO BE CONTINUED

Various “Venom” thoughts

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, reviews, ruminationsLeave a comment

Venom is probably one of my favorite movies that is not… very good. I fully acknowledge that it isn’t a particularly good movie, but I do find it very entertaining and diverting.

A lot of that is due to Tom Hardy in the dual role of Eddie Brock and Venom, which is… really good. His accent is strange, but he does a really excellent job with the odd performance required of him.

However, it does show some signs of being a rewrite of a rewrite. For instance, the beginning of the movie sees the symbiote Riot in the body of a dying American astronaut. He’s loaded into a Malaysian ambulance and is being driven to the nearest city, when he decides to hop into the body of the accompanying EMT, presumably because the astronaut is too far gone. So far so good.

But for some reason, the first thing he does after possessing the EMT is… kill the driver… while the ambulance is still moving. Unsurprisingly, the ambulance is wrecked. Why did he do that? If he had just possessed the EMT and sat there patiently, he would have gotten to the nearest city (his intended destination) in a very short amount of time. By killing the driver and causing the vehicle to flip, he made it so he has to WALK to the nearest city, which takes a considerable amount of time and energy, especially since he has to fix the EMTs broken leg.

And of course, there’s the infamous timeskip error. After reaching the nearby city, Riot consumes some eels and kills various innocent Malaysian townspeople, only sparing an elderly lady. He swaps bodies (for some reason), possessing the elderly lady… and there’s immediately a six month timeskip. A few scenes later, we see Riot-as-elderly-lady again, at an airport. What WAS he doing for those six months? Playing shuffleboard? Griping at the grandkids with their Twitters and TikToks? Talking about how much better things were in her day?

Riot’s questionable choices kind of continue when he gets to San Francisco, now in the body of a little blonde girl who just… walks right into the Life Foundation building. Wouldn’t it be easier to swap out into a security guard and not have to worry about someone trying to stop Riot on the way in, and possibly setting off the alarm?

Then again, the security at the Life Foundation is not very good, since obviously Eddie was able to break all the way into the cells with the alien-infected people. Eh, I guess they just wanted the creepy factor of a possessed little girl sauntering up to Riz Ahmed, rather than Carlton Drake being chased through the building by a burly security guard.

But now, something positive.

A lot is said about the relationship between Eddie and Venom, and I’ll admit that it is a wonderful odd-couple relationship. But I also like the interactions between Eddie and Dan, the man is now dating Eddie’s former fiancee, Anne.

Now, in most movies, the Other Man is a douchebag of some kind. He has to be a bad person, because that’s the most immediate and cheapest way of showing that the Love Interest should ditch him and get back together with Our Hero. Of course, it makes the Love Interest look like an idiot for dating him in the first place when he’s so clearly a douchebag, and it’s completely unrealistic because people who date your exes are likely not bad people, but…

Anyway, I really like that except for a bit of awkwardness when they first meet, there’s no jealousy or assholery in the relationship between Eddie and Dan. Dan is depicted as a genuinely good, kind, unselfish person who admires and wants the best for Eddie, and even keeps Eddie from being hauled away by the police by claiming that Eddie is his patient. There’s zero hostility towards a man who was engaged to his girlfriend six months ago.

And Eddie, in his turn, clearly wants Anne back, but shows zero hostility towards Dan. Like I said, he seems a little awkward when they first meet, but he’s never antagonistic, and he never says a mean thing about Dan. He meekly accepts Dan’s medical help, and even asks for his advice. In fact, when Venom attacks Dan, Eddie blurts out, “I’m killing you! I’m so sorry!”

So yes, Venom has some flaws, and I fully acknowledge that these are flaws even though I like the movie. But it also has some good points that many “good” movies don’t possess, and I really do like the depiction of Dan.

Recommendation: Batman: The Brave and the Bold

On By E. A. SolinasIn recommendations, ruminationsLeave a comment

I love Batman. I love Batman media, from the Adam West TV show to the dark gothic animated series, from The Batman from the early aughts to the Christopher Nolan trilogy. I fully expect to love The Batman (movie, not series). No, I do not love, or even like, the Joel Schumacher movies, but I do sometimes watch them if I want to laugh and cringe at the same time.

But one show that seems to get overlooked sometimes in the world of Batman media is Batman: The Brave and the Bold, an animated show that aired from 2008 to 2011, before being sadly cancelled in order to make way for Beware the Batman. Not that Beware the Batman was bad, but it didn’t have the heart and soul of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

And this heart and soul are easy to identify: the people who made this movie not only love Batman and his history, they love the entire DC Comics universe. Not just the major heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman (who are only introduced in the final season), but characters obscure (the Metal Men) as well as iconic. And old as well as new – lots of characters from decades ago (Adam Strange, Wildcat), alongside newer characters like the third Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes (who has many appearances as a fledgling hero who needs Batman’s guidance) and Ryan Choi (the third Atom).

And it’s all done with immense respect and liking for these characters, whether they’re good or evil. For instance, one of Jaime Reyes’ first episodes sees him trying to investigate the legacy of past Blue Beetles, which allows the makers of this series to pay homage to the previous iterations, especially Ted Kord. You can feel all the love they have for DC’s whole history and all their characters, including the goofy and weird ones. Like, I had never heard of Gentleman Jim Craddock before this – I know technically he appeared in one of the DCAU series, but I honestly don’t remember him because he wasn’t put center stage. Or Red Tornado, who just doesn’t get as much attention as his earnest little robot self deserves. Or the Weeper. There’s actually a supervillain whose signature is CRYING.

Basically, every episode features Batman teaming up with some other superhero (sometimes a group of them, like the teen rebels known as the Outsiders) and dealing with a problem on other planets, or in another time period, or on Dinosaur Island, or England, or parallel universes, or in Batman’s own body (Aquaman and the Atom go on a Fantastic Voyage to cure Batman of silicon-based critters). Sometimes we don’t even know how Batman came to be where he is, such as when he pops up in the Old West to save Jonah Hex (who promptly insults his supersuit).

Okay, the focus isn’t always 100% on Batman and his team-up. One whole episode is about Aquaman going on a family vacation, during which he is forbidden to superhero. It even highlights the nature of Batman’s mythos and his fandom in some fourth-wall-breaking encounters with Bat-Mite.

And it’s wonderfully bonkers, and very much embraces the corniness (Diedrich Bader says the most hilariously cheesy things) of old comic books. It wants to be fun, and it IS fun, balancing out plot and characterization with the need to entertain. I mean, one episode has a sitcom version of Aquaman’s life! Another one was clearly dreamed up just because they wanted Batman to team up with Sherlock Holmes.

But it’s worth noting that not all is funny and goofy. There are serious conflicts in here, such as the invasion of Starro that spreads across the second season, and which ends with a truly heartrending loss. Or the ongoing battle against Equinox, a force that seeks to balance out order and chaos, and is willing to do horrifying things to make that happen. There’s also Chill of the Night, a really magnificent and totally serious episode in which Bruce Wayne’s soul is literally held in the balance, as he discovers who was responsible for his parents’ death.

It also has a great voice cast – you’re guaranteed to be a big fan of at least one person who had a hand in this. Diedrich Bader is an outstanding Batman (probably why they brought him back for the Harley Quinn show), and it has homages to Batman’s past by having Adam West and Julie Newmar play the Wayne parents, as well as Kevin Conroy playing an alternate-universe Batman.

So if you’re a fan of Batman, or even just of DC comics and its history, then this series is one you definitely need to see. Even if you don’t normally watch lighter incarnations of the Dark Knight, this is clever and well-written, and its love and joy are infectious.

The Snyder Cut Trailer (Hallelujah!) – Part 2

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, reviews, ruminationsLeave a comment

So, having explained my complicated thoughts on Zack Snyder, my uncomplicated thoughts on Joss Whedon, and my perception of the theatrical cut of Justice League, here are my thoughts on what we see in the Snyder Cut trailer:

  • 1. First, the choice of music. I was a little offput by the choice for two reasons. One, “Hallelujah” doesn’t seem entirely in tune with the operatic scif-fi-fantasy environment…. and two, Zack Snyder used this before. In Watchmen. During an absurd sex scene. Erm. Okay. I guess he likes the song.

But as the trailer went on, I minded it less and less. For one thing, the new footage we’re seeing is actually edited pretty well to flow along with the music. For another, the music kind of complements both the warmer, more human moments we see, and the grander, more epic moments as well. So… yeah, the music is all right with me.

2. Then we see Darkseid right at the beginning of the trailer, which… well, people are a little divided about how he looks, but as I understand it, this is Darkseid before he actually became Darkseid. I’m cool with that, and want to see more.

  • 3. The movie seems to have a lot more alien-attack aspects than the theatrical cut, which I am absolutely on board with. Honestly, the scope of the theatrical cut never felt as big as it should have – most of the fights were relatively small skirmishes, and Steppenwolf just sort of boom-tubes in and out of wherever he is with a handful of Parademons. Even the climax, which overruns a Russian town, feels small because… it’s just a town, not even a big city.

So I was glad to see some big alien ships raining destruction on major cities, and signs of their actual destruction in the Justice League HQ. Which, hopefully, will not be Wayne Manor as in the theatrical cut, because that was stupid – if Bruce is going to openly turn his house into the JL clubhouse, he might as well just announce to the world that Bruce Wayne is Batman.

  • 4. I perked up considerably when I saw the football game being shown, presumably either in flashback or an early scene set shortly before Cyborg is turned into, well, a cyborg. And this is because Cyborg’s story is probably the most bungled part of Josstice League.

Hear me out: in any story about a character forced to undergo traumatic change, you need to see both a Before and an After. We need to see the transition, the change in this person to feel how much their circumstances have hurt, traumatized and altered them as a human being. But in Josstice League, we only see the After. We see Cyborg angsting about his inhumanity and his robotic body… but we never see what he was before. Was he happy? An extrovert? How did he interact with others? How did he see himself? Did he have friends? What precisely has he lost?

We never see. We don’t know the “old” Victor Stone. There are only a few seconds of pre-Cyborg Victor seen, and in those, his body is mostly obliterated. How can I be emotionally invested in the change this character has experienced, when I don’t know what he used to be BEFORE the change? I couldn’t, and honestly Cyborg was my least favorite character because by the end of the movie, all I had seen was pouting and angsting. They didn’t really dive into his feelings and his trauma; they just had him bro out with a couple of other guys, and get over his pain at the end.

The Snyder Cut looks like it’s going to be rich with Cyborg – we see him struggle, we see him losing someone he loves, ripping up a grave, and we’ll see him when he was just an ordinary college guy playing football. I expect to like Snyder Cut Cyborg much better than the theatrical cut’s.

I also wonder what is up with the image of Victor (still in his human form) redirecting a sky full of missiles.

  • 5. There’s also some superheroing for Barry Allen, who is shown rescuing a young woman – I assume it’s Iris, given how the camera lingers on her face – from a car crash.

This seems to be part of a more serious, less “look at how quippy and quirky I am! I’m written by Joss Whedon!” take on the Flash. You know, a Flash who has a serious part to play in the plot, rather than a Flash who faceplants in Wonder Woman’s boobs (such feminism, Joss!) and rambles about brunch. I admit I found the Flash amusing when I first saw the theatrical cut, but time has changed my opinion.

I’m not entirely sure what the Flash’s place in the Snyder Cut plot is, but the glimpses we have indicate that he is going to be doing something more cosmic, more important, more GRAND.

  • 6. Batfleck… sigh. I am going to admit my bias right out of the starting gate: I do not like Batfleck. This is partly because I disagree with Zack Snyder’s handling of the character in Batman V Superman, but it’s also because I dislike Ben Affleck as a human being and as an actor. I just have never seen a good performance from him; he always seems incredibly wooden and douchey to me.

And honestly, Batfleck was a weak point in Justice League. I do not say this because I dislike either the character or the actor – I say this because I love the character of Batman. Batman’s whole point as a member of the Justice League is that he can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the overpowered superhumans like Wonder Woman or Superman, because he uses his brains and his technology to compensate for his lack of superpowers. He is their equal.

But in the Josstice League cut, Batfleck feels like a liability. He seems to spend most of the action scenes bouncing around at the end of a grappling hook, avoiding getting attacked by others. When he does go up against someone else, he gets hurt physically in ways that the others do not. He seems less competent, more fragile, less capable. You’re left wondering why this guy is even going into battle if he contributes so little compared to, say, the butt-kicking Wonder Woman.

But he looks like he’s actually holding his own in the Snyder Cut trailer, where he’s using his body armor to block blasts of energy. So I have real hope that Batfleck is actually going to demonstrate that he’s an asset in these fights, not just a guy who swings around a lot.

Oh, and I’m looking forward to Batfleck’s Whedonisms like “I don’t NOT like you” and “something’s definitely bleeding” being excised. Batman should never sound like a Whedon character in a life-and-death situation. NEVER.

  • 7. A few of the scenes look familiar, if you’ve seen the theatrical cut, but they’re definitely different. It looks like the conversation between Martha Kent and Lois Lane is different, and probably going to be less painfully cringy. Martha is apparently going to pop in during the cornfield scene. And Aquaman’s encounter with Mera looks like it will be somewhat different, given his defiant attitude and her look of distress.

8. Desaad! At first I thought this was Steppenwolf in another outfit because… well, I’m only a moderate comic-book geek with gaps in my knowledge, and I only know about some of the residents of Apokalips. But I’m told it’s the character Desaad, and I’m very curious to see what he is all about. It certainly makes the movie feel more expansive and operatic to have multiple people from Apokalips appear.

  • 9. It also looks like a very different fate is in store for Silas Stone. If you remember from the theatrical cut – you probably don’t – he gets captured and then rescued, and at the end everybody is happy and smiley. But in the Snyder Cut, it seems that his exploration of the Motherbox has some unfortunate results. I smell character development for Cyborg!
  • 10. The redesign of Steppenwolf. Oh, man, this is beautiful to behold. I don’t know what they were thinking with his design in the theatrical cut, but it was terrible. Nobody liked it. It was partly that it didn’t feel finished, as if they literally did not have time to finish rendering the character properly.

But it was a bad design at its root. It was just some grayish guy in a big hat, and he wasn’t very intimidating or impressive at all. I can only assume that WB didn’t want anything too scary, so they insisted on this dumbed-down design. There were other designs, oh yes. You can google them and see the much more intimidating version that was originally conceived.

The Snyder Cut’s design… actually looks menacing. He no longer just looks like a creepy guy in a big hat, but a truly alien creature encased in rippling living armor. There’s some influence from the Destroyer robot featured in Thor, but you know what? I’ll take it.

Oh, and there’s a really dynamic imagine of a black-clad Superman punching Steppenwolf in the face.

11. Speaking of the black-clad Superman, I find myself wondering where the suit comes from and how he’s wearing it. I mean, when we last saw him, he was buried and presumed dead. Does his normal costume turn black when he needs to soak up some yellow sun rays? Does someone in the cast recover this for him? Are we going to have a post “Death of Superman” scenario where his body vanishes, and he later turns up alive and well?

I’m sure this will be explained in the movie. I’m just very curious.

  • 12. Batfleck’s final line is perhaps the one thing I wasn’t enthused about in this trailer, just because it’s a very clunky line. But you know what? If that is the only problem the Snyder Cut has, I will be a happy viewer.

So anyway, those are my thoughts about the trailer for the Snyder Cut. Overall, it looks like a vast improvement on the Frankenstein cut, and I am going to give Snyder a legitimate chance to wow me with his vision.