anghraine

I'm cleaning up old tags because I'm finally running up against the max even for an upgraded account. And there was a period around 2012 when I'd started using tags on livejournal/Dreamwidth in a Tumblresque running-commentary-under-my-breath way even though 1) they don't work as well on LJ/DW in that way, because they're automatically alphabetized and 2) I wasn't likely to reuse those specific tags, so it's ultimately kind of a waste.

At the same time, I (obviously) prefer to preserve old posts and such as a kind of record of what I was doing and thinking and saying at the time (really putting the "journal" in livejournal!), so I haven't wanted to delete these Tumblr-style tags. They were part of what I was doing back then!

This is especially glaring for an admittedly very wanky series of posts I put together. For context, the liberal-leaning Star Wars blog fangirlblog had recently posted defenses of slave Leia and Padmé Amidala from an allegedly feminist perspective that were making the rounds at the time. I found both takes ... objectionable. It was difficult enough to put together a coherent response that I ended up simply recording myself reading it and responding in real time, and then transcribed that recording into text, ultimately spread across nine different posts. It's very 2012 in a lot of ways—including my much more overt hostility towards the prequels and the OP's extremely binary concept of gender—but also, I do still think the defenses of slave Leia (and even of Padmé in some ways) are short-sighted at best and deeply rooted in fucked-up concepts of gender at worst. In any case, I decided to preserve my tags before deleting them as organizational tags by making a new post (this one!) with the old tags listed.

Part 1: Intro (touches on gender, representation, diversity, marginalization of women in the OT and PT, and over-reliance on "Watsonian" or in-world explanations for choices made by overwhelmingly male creators in constructing narratives). Tagged: #ahoy false catch-22 #feminism marches on #i try to be fair but i hate the prequels #strong female characters

Part 2: Slave Leia and constructed narratives. Tagged: #fanservice for great justice #reading comprehension failure #rotj makes me cry inside #stories don't come from shangri-la #strong female characters

Part 3: General commentary & rambling. Tagged: #stories don't come from shangri-la #strong female characters

Part 4: Padmé's derailment. Tagged: #chaotic evil younglings don't count #dudes here dudes there dudes everywhere #enabling is collateral damage #intent is not magic #new qualities as the plot demands #strong female characters #strong male characters #webster emerged from the ether

Part 5: Heroic badasses. This part is pretty meandering and nitpicky even for 2012 me, my transcription is hurried so it's more typo-ridden, and it meanders off into the Harry Potter discourse I'd seen at the time. Tagged: #incorruptible pure pureness (is boring) #lightsabers are awesome #mistress mary quite contrary #nitpicking #power of heart #rule of cool #stanning policing #strong female characters #strong male characters #women aren't a monolith

Part 6: Wherein ... I defend Padmé? Kind of? Tagged: #bad choices imply choices #badass normal #badassery is not (just) spectacle #c-span with lasers #clarissa harlowe doesn't belong in space #death by despair #enabling is collateral damage #i try to be fair but i hate the prequels #mistress mary quite contrary #not everything is about manpain #politics don't have to be boring #stfu rape culture #strong female characters

Part 7: Comparing Padmé. This is one of the earlier times when I was trying to articulate why the Luke = Padmé thing annoys me so much, though I only got partway through it here. #bad parenting #bizarro world #death (nearly) by lightning #death by despair #false equivalency #fantastic aesops #i can fanwank but i shouldn't have to #i ship them for their children #i try to be fair but i hate the prequels #love by scientific method #moral dissonance #new qualities as the plot demands #nitpicking #omnia vincit amor #strong female characters #tell your sister you were right #uninformed consent is icky

Part 8: Further compare/contrast. This one is mainly a continuation of Part 7, though it does have one of my earlier articulations of gender wtfery mentioned in passing ("I don't want children, and I'm not really gung-ho about a career and I, my only struggle with my identity as a woman is that, frankly, I feel androgynous and that I've been socialized into being a woman and I resent it. But I don't struggle with - I don't - eh"). Tagged: #anecdata #aromantics are yeti #bad choices imply choices #badass siblings #chaotic evil younglings don't count #death by despair #doylist problems are watsonian problems #eliza haywood ftw #false equivalency #female success shouldn't be family #i try to be fair but i hate the prequels #moral dissonance #narrative roles #princess leia ftw #strong female characters #subjective interpretation is subjective #success requires endeavour #women aren't a monolith

Part 9: The end. At the time, I described this as the weakest part on my end. Possibly! Tagged: #bad choices imply choices #death by despair #false equivalency #i am the least concise person ever #i try to be fair but i hate the prequels #not everything is about manpain #princess leia ftw #strong female characters #success requires endeavour #tragic flaws are not bad luck

Honorable mention: My response to that female characters post. This was about a different post that I don't actually recall, but I tagged it in the same way as the fangirlblog rebuttal. Tagged: #dudes here dudes there dudes everywhere #i can fanwank but i shouldn't have to #narrative roles #stories don't come from shangri-la #strong female characters #women aren't a monolith