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All cheap and debonair
Talk to me about supporting characters. When you're supposed to fall for the heroine, and instead it's the second spear-carrier from the left who turns out to have the thorniest moral dilemma or the most fascinating backstory. This happens to me all the time; I can't be the only one. So who are your scene-stealers? Movies, books, operas—your own work—which character roles do you remember long after you've forgotten who played the protagonist?
(This post brought to you courtesy of Eleanor Cameron and L.M. Montgomery.)
(This post brought to you courtesy of Eleanor Cameron and L.M. Montgomery.)
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From Laurel K. Hamilton's series (which I don't recommend, though it might be fun to watch your head exploding in horror), Asher.
From Robert Jordan, Min.
Jack from The Blue Sword. As far as I'm concerned, the only interesting hero from Robin McKinley's Damar books was Tor. Luth and Corlath had their points, I suppose, but I never appreciated them as much as I was supposed to.
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Dean Priest, from the Emily trilogy. For whose sake I have exceeded the character limit and must respond in two comments; I'm sorry about that. He's always been my favorite. Even when he hurts Emily as badly as he does (and he really does), he remains the character out of the entire series that intrigues me the most. And I'm not sure he's meant to. He's described rather attractively, if ambiguously, when he first appears—
Emily sat down, all at once more shaky than she had been through all the danger. Dean Priest leaned against the gnarled old fir. He seemed "trembly" too. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Emily looked curiously at him. She had learned a good deal about him from Aunt Nancy's casual remarks—not always good-natured remarks, for Aunt Nancy did not wholly like him, it seemed. She always called him "Jarback" rather contemptuously, while Caroline scrupulously called him Dean. Emily knew he had been to college, that he was thirty-six years old—which to Emily seemed a venerable age—and well-off; that he had a malformed shoulder and limped slightly; that he cared for nothing save books nor ever had; that he lived with an older brother and travelled a great deal; and that the whole Priest clan stood somewhat in awe of his ironic tongue. Aunt Nancy had called him a "cynic." Emily did not know what a cynic was but it sounded interesting. She looked him over carefully and saw that he had delicate, pale features and tawny-brown hair. His lips were thin and sensitive, with a whimsical curve. She liked his mouth. Had she been older she would have known why—because it connoted strength and tenderness and humour.
In spite of his twisted shoulder there was about him a certain aloof dignity of presence which was characteristic of many of the Priests and which was often mistaken for pride. The green Priest eyes, that were peering and uncanny in Caroline's face and impudent in Jim Priest's, were remarkably dreamy and attractive in his.
"Well, do you think me handsome?" he said, sitting down on another stone and smiling at her. His voice was beautiful—musical and caressing.
Emily blushed. She knew staring was not etiquette, and she did not think him at all handsome, so she was very thankful that he did not press his question, but asked another.
"Do you know who your knightly rescuer is?"
"I think you must be Jar—Mr. Dean Priest." Emily flushed again with vexation. She had come so near to making another terrible hole in her manners.
"Yes, Jarback Priest. You needn't mind the nickname. I've heard it often enough. It's a Priest idea of humour." He laughed rather unpleasantly. "The reason for it is obvious enough, isn't it? I never got anything else at school."
—but by the third book he's become something like the villain of the piece, perhaps because the author didn't quite know what to do with him. In Dean, she had created someone who is broken in several important ways and yet has been good for Emily, the cynical dreamer who can lose his cynicism with her, the scholar and traveler who spins for her legends of the ancient world and anecdotes from foreign countries, Emily's link with all the myths and wonders of life outside New Moon and Prince Edward Island and, in some ways, the modern day. She assimilates him immediately into her father's place as the person with whom she can talk about anything, show all of her poems and expect fair criticism and consideration in return, believe in fairyland and whatever comes into her head: she trusts him implicitly.
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Now, Emily was never my favorite set of books. But she is very emblematic of this sense of "how to live" that L.M.Montgomery tried to create in her books. I think -- Dean is a better character because he is a more accurate portrayal of an actual person. Emily is wishful thinking. She's a state of being/philosophy that L.M. Montgomery was aspiring to, and is therefore less interesting.
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They are mine, I think. And possibly this is because of Dean. I'll admit that I haven't re-read the Anne books in years, and there are some L.M. Montgomery novels I've never even seen—The Blue Castle, The Tangled Web—but of all her people, he's always felt the most real to me; perhaps because he's such a mess. It's the same reason he doesn't quite seem to fit into his plot arc. He has too many odd angles and corners and edges to smooth off into a recognizable type.
Which are yours?
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" . . . Do you think a star should be pretty?"
"No," she said finally, "the word doesn't suit a star."
"I perceive you are an artist in words. Of course it doesn't. Stars are prismatic—palpitating—elusive. It is not often we find one made of flesh and blood. I think I'll wait for you."
"Oh, I'm ready to go now," said Emily, standing up.
"H'm. That wasn't what I meant. Never mind. Come along, Star—if you don't mind walking a bit slowly. I'll take you back from the wilderness at least . . ."
—and perhaps because so few people have ever valued him, the crook-shouldered boy whom no one would play with, the sarcastic man no woman ever seems to have fallen in love with, a faint bitterness always in his smile and does he also see Emily's father, "the only friend I had at school—the only boy who would bother himself about Jarback Priest," somehow mirrored in her? the older she grows, the more Dean needs that value proved to him in no uncertain terms. Whether that means giving up her childhood sweetheart or her ability to write, he needs to be first in her heart or he's no one. And of course it's never a good idea to rely on other people for one's self-esteem, and romantic love is not the only kind that matters, and the best way to lose someone is to hold on to them too tightly, but when did that ever stop anyone in the real world? Dean is damaged and damaging in all too believable ways. But I still wonder about his arc. Was he meant from the beginning to come across as a danger? Or are we, like Emily, intended to trust him completely and then be hurt and stunned? Or did the third novel blow up out of nowhere? I can't quite shake the feeling that L.M. Montgomery needed someone as a plot-counter to the One True Love of Emily and Teddy, and there was Dean. Their triangle is so traditional, I wonder if there was too much hazard in leaving him as a positive character; if he might have provided a valid alternative, and that was not the sort of book Montgomery was interested in writing. I don't know. But I do know that I cannot remember most of what happens to Teddy in the course of the trilogy, but I can quote Dean Priest.
Jack from The Blue Sword.
Yay!