[ SECRET POST #2202 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2202 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Sorry, early today!

Also: I'm not going to officially warn for tongue-in-cheek "triggers" just to provide anyone with a fandom-specific in-joke when there are none in the secret.

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 140 secrets from Secret Submission Post #315.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[ariakas]

Would help if you mentioned what the series was.

[(Anonymous)]

An unrelated comment: your nickname sounds like an agjective in one of my languages, and every time I see it I'm trying to come up with a possible meaning.

[ariakas]

http://dragonlance.wikia.com/wiki/Ariakas

He's the Big Bad from the Dragonlance Chronicles, but he gets killed off in like two paragraphs at the end, which I always thought was a waste of such a great character name. It's been my internet handle (shortened to Ari) since I was wee netchild.

[fromherbones]

It started as "the Rhapsody Trilogy," but the author (Elizabeth Haydon) added more books, so now it's "the Symphony of Ages."

[ariakas]

Any good? I'm always on the lookout for new recs, and F!S usually delivers.

[(Anonymous)]

The leading lady is an IMMENSE Mary Sue. I didn't mind very much except for four or five specific little things, because it's usually so over-the-top that it becomes hilarious.

IF you can deal with a character being so unbelievably beautiful the sight of her causes literal riots in the streets, while she is still sincerely convinced it's actually because she's hideous... give it a try.

[ariakas]

Uh....

...Yeah, based on that I'll give it a pass. Unless the Sueism is so brutal it comes back around to being hilarious.

[fromherbones]

Hahaha, basically what anon said. I really liked the books when I first read them (probably middle school or early high school,) but when I read them again a few years later it... just... nope. I had nostalgia to help me get through it, but yeah. Massive Sue. And this is coming from someone who tends to be completely oblivious to Sue-ishness.

(Also, anon forgot that Rhapsody's waist is soooo tiny that her man-friend can wrap both his hands around her and his fingers meet. (I seem to recall that at least, and I'm pretty sure it was in there, because I've been baffled by how the hell that's possible for years now.))

[truxillogical]

HA! Every now and again, I'll put my hands around my waist (I've got a pretty small one) and remember exactly how unorganed Rhapsody must be.

Let's not forget how down she is on herself. "Achmed says my greatest fault is trusting too much." And being too wonderful.

In all fairness, Ash was the most awful Gary Stu as well. They were both just terrible. Achmed was fun times, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Loved Achmed! He deserved to be in a better story, no?

[(Anonymous)]

Really? To me, Achmed came across as an ~edgy~ Gary Stu -- that is, Gary Stu abilities + asshole. It didn't so much work for me.

[truxillogical]

If I went back and read it now, I don't doubt that's exactly what I'd see him as. But I guess I have a little more tolerance for ugly-and-angry Gary Stu characters than noble-and-angsty ones. Personal preference.

[kamino_neko]

Look, just because a dude has freakishly long fingers doesn't make him a bad person. >_>

[fromherbones]

Clearly this long-fingered man cannot be trusted. What's he usin' them prodigious digits for, anyway? Something nefarious, I bet! Bein' all dexterous and shit. Very terrible indeed.

[something_greater]

For what it's worth, my waist is natively 25 inches (I'm 5'8" and weigh about 150 pounds) and when I was 18 and in the middle of a pretty well developed eating disorder I had at least three male friends who could do that.

All of them are over 6'2" and have very large hands, but. It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

[truxillogical]

It's not completely impossible, but it was sort of the icing on the cake of this character who's fault was that she was too kind, and who magicked her way through a cleansing fire to come out so beautiful anyone who saw her stopped and stared, overcome by her beauty, and for the better part of a whole book, she just assumed she was so ugly and that's why everyone was staring, even if they told her she was pretty.

Rhapsody...she's a wee bit grating.

[something_greater]

Augh, yeah. Those are the worst kind of wish fulfillment Sues.

I just always get sad when people start talking about how ludicrously unrealistic things like that (or the anime characters with heads as big as their waists) are, because I basically am that person.

[(Anonymous)]

It usually does! At least in my opinion. Like I said, there were only a handfull of small things that I thought weren't interpretable as funny, be it by the author's intent or not. (There's a scene somewhere between the female lead and the resident lord of death, or something like that, where he finds her oh so tragic and extraordinary because her difficult past (poverty forced her into prostitution after she ran away from home looking for a boy she fell in love with and lost her virginity to in the span of knowing him for one day) makes her long for death, and he's NEVER seen that before among her race. Even though, IIRC, that race is comprised of immortals who became immortal hundreds of years earlier, when they were forced to flee across some kind of time-space barrier on a handful of ships while their homeland was burned down and ravished by demon-things and then sank into the ocean, taking everyone who didn't fit onto those ships with it. A cataclysm SHE, by the way, missed, because she went off adventuring before it happened and fell through a short cut to the future.)

[(Anonymous)]

da

holy shit that is so bad it wraps back into being awesome

i must read these books

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, the Sueness didn't bother me terribly because it was part of the setting. Most, if not all of the major characters were immortal (or at least supernaturally long-lived) or part (or all) dragon.

[(Anonymous)]

Anon, you are so totally right about Rhapsody being a Mary Sue. I loved the series when I first read it. I didn't know what a Mary Sue was back then, but now... I don't know if I can like it any more because of that. Just thinking about it all makes me want to groan, and one would think Haydon knew better since she was a book editor before this series.

[(Anonymous)]

IF you can deal with a character being so unbelievably beautiful the sight of her causes literal riots in the streets, while she is still sincerely convinced it's actually because she's hideous...

I eventually decided that had to be the symptom of some sort of unusual mental disorder, one of the ones where incoming information on reality just has no effect on the fixed delusions. Poor woman. Well, if she's going to live forever, there's probably still time for her to seek treatment.