![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyFrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slaymesoftly:
1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter. (If you don't want a letter but feel like commenting anyway, feel free.)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
I got B! So, five off the top of my head:
Buffy Summers, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
...well, duh. Summing up absolutely all my thoughts on Buffy would take quite a few posts, even ignoring the new adventures of the Buffybot. Suffice to say that while there are other characters in the Buffy canon that probably mean more to me, Buffy is my kind of hero; the way she has to balance everyday life and the big questions, the way she fails and deals, the way she cares and snarks... And, of course, the fact that her story doesn't end in a sacrifice, but in living, in going viral.
I am not alone. I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don't sleep on a bed of bones.
BOB, Twin Peaks
The Big Bad of Twin Peaks happened by accident. During one particularly emotional scene, one of the crew happened to get caught on camera, reflected in a mirror, and nobody noticed until editing. And it scared the bejeezus out of David Lynch, who immediately rewrote the script so he could cast said crewmember as BOB, the demon who lives in the corner of the eye, who makes people do things we call inhuman, possibly the single scariest monster in TV history. It's so fitting it could only have happened by accident: the monster, the one that's always there, that in fact (whether as a crewmember or as a representation of something in mankind) HAS to be there for there to be a story at all. We need someone to blame, after all. (BOB, incidentally, is an acronym for Beware Of BOB. Lynch is endlessly recursive.)
Through the darkness of future past
The magican longs to see
One chants out between two worlds:
Fire! Walk with me!
Bubbles, The Wire
Well, it was him or Bunk. The Wire probably has the lowest rate of cynicism to realism of any TV series ever made, and rivals most movies and books in the last 20 years as well. It's grim, it's intelligent, it's so free of blinders you almost need a shower after every episode and definitely one after the whole series spends 5 seasons peeling back every layer of society. And in the middle of it all is Bubbles, a homeless drug addict, used by good guys and bad guys alike, a victim both of his own flaws and a society that doesn't give second chances... and somehow, his story is what redeems the whole goddamn thing. And he does it, in the end, in a show acclaimed for its dialogue, without a single word.
Ain't no shame in holdin' on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.
Belbo, Foucault's Pendulum
An outsider, perhaps? Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is one of my all-time favourite novels, both a brilliant conspiracy theory and a vicious deconstruction of conspiracy theories, and the snarky (anyone see a theme here?), too-clever-by-half meta-conspiracist Belbo, with his memories of growing up in Fascist Italy and his conviction that knowledge will set you free, is what makes it more than just a learnéd discourse. He's the smart one, the one who figures it all out, can piece anything together, and doesn't realise until too late just how too clever he is. How people don't want truth, they want The TruthTM.
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Billy AKA Dr Horrible, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
I believe I've said this before, but I do think Dr Horrible is one of the more interesting things Whedon has done, thematically. The point isn't entirely about Penny, though a huge part of it is that caught in a society that offers her either Macho Man Hammer or Nice Guy Billy, she's screwed either way. But in just 42 minutes, Billy achieves more than that; Whedon deliberately makes us cheer for him by painting him as hapless, a victim, the shat-upon underdog... and those are always right, aren't they? Everything in every story we've ever read or watched tells us he's the good guy. And when he ends up the villain, he's even surprised himself at how easy it is when you have the narrative on your side.
And sometimes theres a third, even deeper, level. And that one is the same as the top, surface one. Like with pie.
Five who almost made the list: Betty Draper, Beavis (but not Butthead), Bernard Black, Billy Pilgrim, Bridget/Saffron/Yolanda.
slaymesoftly:1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter. (If you don't want a letter but feel like commenting anyway, feel free.)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
I got B! So, five off the top of my head:
Buffy Summers, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
...well, duh. Summing up absolutely all my thoughts on Buffy would take quite a few posts, even ignoring the new adventures of the Buffybot. Suffice to say that while there are other characters in the Buffy canon that probably mean more to me, Buffy is my kind of hero; the way she has to balance everyday life and the big questions, the way she fails and deals, the way she cares and snarks... And, of course, the fact that her story doesn't end in a sacrifice, but in living, in going viral.
I am not alone. I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don't sleep on a bed of bones.
BOB, Twin Peaks
The Big Bad of Twin Peaks happened by accident. During one particularly emotional scene, one of the crew happened to get caught on camera, reflected in a mirror, and nobody noticed until editing. And it scared the bejeezus out of David Lynch, who immediately rewrote the script so he could cast said crewmember as BOB, the demon who lives in the corner of the eye, who makes people do things we call inhuman, possibly the single scariest monster in TV history. It's so fitting it could only have happened by accident: the monster, the one that's always there, that in fact (whether as a crewmember or as a representation of something in mankind) HAS to be there for there to be a story at all. We need someone to blame, after all. (BOB, incidentally, is an acronym for Beware Of BOB. Lynch is endlessly recursive.)
Through the darkness of future past
The magican longs to see
One chants out between two worlds:
Fire! Walk with me!
Bubbles, The Wire
Well, it was him or Bunk. The Wire probably has the lowest rate of cynicism to realism of any TV series ever made, and rivals most movies and books in the last 20 years as well. It's grim, it's intelligent, it's so free of blinders you almost need a shower after every episode and definitely one after the whole series spends 5 seasons peeling back every layer of society. And in the middle of it all is Bubbles, a homeless drug addict, used by good guys and bad guys alike, a victim both of his own flaws and a society that doesn't give second chances... and somehow, his story is what redeems the whole goddamn thing. And he does it, in the end, in a show acclaimed for its dialogue, without a single word.
Ain't no shame in holdin' on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.
Belbo, Foucault's Pendulum
An outsider, perhaps? Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is one of my all-time favourite novels, both a brilliant conspiracy theory and a vicious deconstruction of conspiracy theories, and the snarky (anyone see a theme here?), too-clever-by-half meta-conspiracist Belbo, with his memories of growing up in Fascist Italy and his conviction that knowledge will set you free, is what makes it more than just a learnéd discourse. He's the smart one, the one who figures it all out, can piece anything together, and doesn't realise until too late just how too clever he is. How people don't want truth, they want The TruthTM.
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Billy AKA Dr Horrible, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
I believe I've said this before, but I do think Dr Horrible is one of the more interesting things Whedon has done, thematically. The point isn't entirely about Penny, though a huge part of it is that caught in a society that offers her either Macho Man Hammer or Nice Guy Billy, she's screwed either way. But in just 42 minutes, Billy achieves more than that; Whedon deliberately makes us cheer for him by painting him as hapless, a victim, the shat-upon underdog... and those are always right, aren't they? Everything in every story we've ever read or watched tells us he's the good guy. And when he ends up the villain, he's even surprised himself at how easy it is when you have the narrative on your side.
And sometimes theres a third, even deeper, level. And that one is the same as the top, surface one. Like with pie.
Five who almost made the list: Betty Draper, Beavis (but not Butthead), Bernard Black, Billy Pilgrim, Bridget/Saffron/Yolanda.
