Shmeiliarockie's videos
Aug. 18th, 2013 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redwoodalchan So to help me with my Sue-sporking I've revisited a couple of the videos in Shmeiliarockie's "You Are Bella" series.
Although I'm not an expert on the history of anti-Twilight communities, I can't help but feel like she was something of an original when her videos first came out nigh these many years ago. It seems as though she was the first person, or one of the first people, who actually sat down and tried to figure out why the Twilight books were popular, rather than just screaming and raving and ranting about how awful it was that they were selling. And she managed to be pretty on-point in identifying what a narcissist's fantasy it was too, particularly in, for instance, her "Validation-Contempt" videos. Additionally, she may have been the first, or one of the first, in the anti-Twilight community to point out in her "Equals?" video that, at least after a certain point, Bella always got her way and everything became about making her happy, as opposed to simply insisting that the book was sexist because Edward was so controlling.
That said, I'm actually not impressed by everything that got into her videos. In particular, I was revisiting some of them and I felt like she made some rather unfortunate generalizations about gender and the like. Her "Edward Cullen-Gary Stu" video in particular seems to have this problem, since she asserts that "there are two kinds of Gary Stus, one written by men and the other by women" (I'm quoting from memory here). She goes on to explain that when men write a Gary Stu he's a badass fighter who gets all the girls, whereas when women write a Gary Stu it's so he can be a love interest. Which...is a gross oversimplification of how that works.
Case in point: Railrunner. He very much fits in the "macho badass warrior" category of Gary Stus (taken to its most revolting extreme, no less)--and he was written by a woman. Furthermore, I distinctly remember that when I was getting into writing fanworks as a young teenager (like 13 and 14 years old), I wrote quite a few such works that featured Gary Stus who were heroic characters rather than love interests. So all told, it's incorrect for Shmeiliarockie to assume that the only kinds of Gary Stus women create are designed to be love interests for Mary Sues.
I was also kind of irritated by the way she rambles on about how Edward acts nothing like a straight guy--when he doesn't act like a person, period! No actual person is going to ask people about their favorite flowers or gemstones unless it were necessary to put together a present or something, and being a straight guy (or whatever) has nothing to do with it. Besides that, straight guys aren't a monolith. Neither is anyone else. It would have been a lot less problematic and stupid if she'd simply pointed out that Edward doesn't act like a REAL PERSON and left it at that.
I also remember her leaving a comment on one of her videos about how she can understand Meyer's desire to give her avatar a daughter because she (Meyer) has three sons. Because apparently ALL little boys are handfuls and little girls NEVER are.
Although I'm not an expert on the history of anti-Twilight communities, I can't help but feel like she was something of an original when her videos first came out nigh these many years ago. It seems as though she was the first person, or one of the first people, who actually sat down and tried to figure out why the Twilight books were popular, rather than just screaming and raving and ranting about how awful it was that they were selling. And she managed to be pretty on-point in identifying what a narcissist's fantasy it was too, particularly in, for instance, her "Validation-Contempt" videos. Additionally, she may have been the first, or one of the first, in the anti-Twilight community to point out in her "Equals?" video that, at least after a certain point, Bella always got her way and everything became about making her happy, as opposed to simply insisting that the book was sexist because Edward was so controlling.
That said, I'm actually not impressed by everything that got into her videos. In particular, I was revisiting some of them and I felt like she made some rather unfortunate generalizations about gender and the like. Her "Edward Cullen-Gary Stu" video in particular seems to have this problem, since she asserts that "there are two kinds of Gary Stus, one written by men and the other by women" (I'm quoting from memory here). She goes on to explain that when men write a Gary Stu he's a badass fighter who gets all the girls, whereas when women write a Gary Stu it's so he can be a love interest. Which...is a gross oversimplification of how that works.
Case in point: Railrunner. He very much fits in the "macho badass warrior" category of Gary Stus (taken to its most revolting extreme, no less)--and he was written by a woman. Furthermore, I distinctly remember that when I was getting into writing fanworks as a young teenager (like 13 and 14 years old), I wrote quite a few such works that featured Gary Stus who were heroic characters rather than love interests. So all told, it's incorrect for Shmeiliarockie to assume that the only kinds of Gary Stus women create are designed to be love interests for Mary Sues.
I was also kind of irritated by the way she rambles on about how Edward acts nothing like a straight guy--when he doesn't act like a person, period! No actual person is going to ask people about their favorite flowers or gemstones unless it were necessary to put together a present or something, and being a straight guy (or whatever) has nothing to do with it. Besides that, straight guys aren't a monolith. Neither is anyone else. It would have been a lot less problematic and stupid if she'd simply pointed out that Edward doesn't act like a REAL PERSON and left it at that.
I also remember her leaving a comment on one of her videos about how she can understand Meyer's desire to give her avatar a daughter because she (Meyer) has three sons. Because apparently ALL little boys are handfuls and little girls NEVER are.
