Musing: fandom - Rinoa Heartilly

Final Fantasy VIII's Rinoa is often quite disliked. I can see why people dislike her character, too, though replaying the game once I was slightly more mature I tried to look for what was interesting in her, what was realistic about her. I don't mind, though, when people just can't stand her.

What I mind, though, is when someone says they don't like her because she's [quote] "a silly slut". There is absolutely no evidence for that in the game -- she has a romantic plot with Squall and a past with Seifer is implied. If that makes her a slut, I despair of the world entirely.

I hate the trend of flinging the word "slut" around, in its entirely -- I hate it when I see it applied to any female character because nine times out of ten, it's just knee-jerk "oh noez [female character] stole my bishie, fuck u wh0re diiiie" and/or "oh noez [female character] broke up [slash pairing], fuck u wh0re diiie".

This just in: Rinoa Heartilly is not a slut. Switching fandoms, neither is Anna Milton, or Jo Harvelle, or Cassie Robinson, or Jessica Moore... (SPN fandom is a big culprit.)

Dean Winchester? Probably a slut.

When/if I run the Women of SPN Big Bang, I think I'm going to ban the word slut.

Reviews - A Room of One's Own and The Railway Children

A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf)

I don't generally enjoy Virginia Woolf's writing very much, I must confess. I don't find her writing, in general, very compelling. But reading this essay, I did. I didn't want to put it down. It helps that it has a narrative, kind of a story, and that it's well-suited to a stream-of-consciousness style.

The things she says are not irrelevant yet, either. Certainly not when you're looking at the development of women's writing, but also not when you're thinking about women's writing now. I'm sure modern female writers disagree about such ideas as the androgynous mind being necessary, or the idea that one might need to get away from having a family to be a writer, or whatever, but I think it's still important to read this. All the better if men read it too. If nothing else, the last few pages, where she points out the impact that women have not -- yet -- had. We're closer now that we were then, but still not close enough.

The Railway Children (Edith Nesbit)

Ah, nostalgia. I've been meaning to reread this for a while, and it's probably a pity I didn't do it in time for my children's literature exam. Still, there it is. I felt like the English Lit student was ticking boxes in my head as I went through: morality lessons, check, didactic narrator, check, discussion of the different roles for men and women, check, happy domestic life, check...

Still, it's also fun to disregard that and read about the three kids getting into trouble and helping their mother, etc, etc. I used to like Roberta/Bobbie the best, but she's really quite goody-goody most of the time.

It's funny reading it now and seeing the narrator talking down to me/the child reader. I can't think how I didn't find that annoying when I was younger, because I generally didn't like being told what to do by books, but I took both this and some of the lessons in Little Women (which in a way is very like this only for older girls) completely to heart. I don't think that was a terribly bad thing.

I love the ending. It's so unlikely, everything going right and all the people and friends they've made feeding into a happy ending, but still, everyone's a sucker for a happy ending sometimes.