All cheap and debonair

[sovay]

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.)

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But the relationship in which he sees himself is not precisely a fatherly one—

" . . . 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.

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