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yakalskovich) wrote2008-02-05 02:49 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2008-02-05 02:49 pm
Snerk!! Ancient badfic alarm!
OMGWTFBBQ!!! What a Sue!
I have finished reading the one act play from 1897 where the whitetext was from (I had only known the quotes![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carolinw had quoted by email, wisely not recommending that I ought to read the whole play), and in those pages, I met the Worst Canon Sue Evah Printed!! Technically, her name may be Balthilda*, but functionally, she's the Sue to end all Sues. All the Sues out there are really Balthildas, so to speak.
That 'play'** is about the last night of King Teja's life***, and the 'plot' is as follows: Some Gothic nobles put a woman in Teja's bed for that last night, and because we're in a play from 1897, they make him marry her first; of course, he doesn't touch that 'queen for one night'*, the afore-mentioned Balthilda. She comes back to his tent after Teja and his nobles held one last council, and, moved by her sweet, modest and mild nature*, Teja opens up to her and tells her his Innermost Heart™ * and things he has never told anybody before; then, they get sweetly* silly, with the tiniest detour via a hint of D/s*, but then people come back, and it is time to go and die. She nobly* gives him her blessing. The end.-
First, I cringe at that mere paraphrase. And then I die of gigglefit. That was a play!! It was printed! In 1897! It was probably even performed! Onna stage! Professionally! People paid money for it!!!
Yes, some of the actual sentences are good and insightful, and phrased nastily drastic enough to be used for srs whitetext, but the thing as a whole? Is an incredible hoot!!
I can see how Sudermann went for the female, slightly 'liberated' audience of the day, starting out with the guard who goes 'I used to have a wife, but a Greek raped and dishonoured her; so I stabbed her dead', thus setting the tone that those Goths treated their women really atrociously, and the playwright has no sympathy for them that way; then following up with Balthilda, who goes to her one-night marriage pushed by her mother hoping for advantages. But a Sue that's meant for the female audience to identify with, pure wish-fulfilment for all those female Teja fans****to they point where they would pay money for that rot* is no less a Sue than one where a female fanfic author fulfils her own wishes and inserts herself.
* Snerk!!
** Really a piece of awful, awful badfic that got printed because in 1897, people didn't know about badfic, just as they didn't know about slash, or Sues; and the writer was a a published author of modest repute. One would suspect the whole thing was really written by his teenage daughter; but she wasn't old enough at that time, one would assume, to write anything, so nobody knows where that thing came from.
*** Sudermann's Teja is very much Dahn's Teja, from temper and general personality; I rightly called it a derivative work.
**** And they existed! Very much so! 'Struggle For Rome' was a huuuuuuge best-seller in Germany in the last quarter of the 19th century.
I have finished reading the one act play from 1897 where the whitetext was from (I had only known the quotes
carolinw had quoted by email, wisely not recommending that I ought to read the whole play), and in those pages, I met the Worst Canon Sue Evah Printed!! Technically, her name may be Balthilda*, but functionally, she's the Sue to end all Sues. All the Sues out there are really Balthildas, so to speak.That 'play'** is about the last night of King Teja's life***, and the 'plot' is as follows: Some Gothic nobles put a woman in Teja's bed for that last night, and because we're in a play from 1897, they make him marry her first; of course, he doesn't touch that 'queen for one night'*, the afore-mentioned Balthilda. She comes back to his tent after Teja and his nobles held one last council, and, moved by her sweet, modest and mild nature*, Teja opens up to her and tells her his Innermost Heart™ * and things he has never told anybody before; then, they get sweetly* silly, with the tiniest detour via a hint of D/s*, but then people come back, and it is time to go and die. She nobly* gives him her blessing. The end.-
First, I cringe at that mere paraphrase. And then I die of gigglefit. That was a play!! It was printed! In 1897! It was probably even performed! Onna stage! Professionally! People paid money for it!!!
Yes, some of the actual sentences are good and insightful, and phrased nastily drastic enough to be used for srs whitetext, but the thing as a whole? Is an incredible hoot!!
I can see how Sudermann went for the female, slightly 'liberated' audience of the day, starting out with the guard who goes 'I used to have a wife, but a Greek raped and dishonoured her; so I stabbed her dead', thus setting the tone that those Goths treated their women really atrociously, and the playwright has no sympathy for them that way; then following up with Balthilda, who goes to her one-night marriage pushed by her mother hoping for advantages. But a Sue that's meant for the female audience to identify with, pure wish-fulfilment for all those female Teja fans****to they point where they would pay money for that rot* is no less a Sue than one where a female fanfic author fulfils her own wishes and inserts herself.
* Snerk!!
** Really a piece of awful, awful badfic that got printed because in 1897, people didn't know about badfic, just as they didn't know about slash, or Sues; and the writer was a a published author of modest repute. One would suspect the whole thing was really written by his teenage daughter; but she wasn't old enough at that time, one would assume, to write anything, so nobody knows where that thing came from.
*** Sudermann's Teja is very much Dahn's Teja, from temper and general personality; I rightly called it a derivative work.
**** And they existed! Very much so! 'Struggle For Rome' was a huuuuuuge best-seller in Germany in the last quarter of the 19th century.
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no subject
I think he did it to capture the, erm, imagination, of the female audience...
Also, I think he felt daring by letting Dahn's noble Goths be rough and uncouth, and making the noble, noble Teja go 'Huh?' several times.-