![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some in rags, some in gemstone halters
I am back in town. I have been since Sunday, actually, but I've sort of been hibernating. It's been nice.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
muchabstracted tapped me for one of those favorite-character memes. I haven't done a meme in ages, so knock yourself out below the cut-tag.
Comment and I give you four fandoms. You repost and list your favorite character from each, with explanation.
1. Slings & Arrows, Oliver Welles. Even before he was hit by a pig truck and came back as a bitchy, bewildered ghost in an unfortunate suit, I had gravitated toward him; I am not quite sure why, except that he got many of the best lines and he was complicated. One of the structural conceits of Slings & Arrows is that each season's action draws from and comments on its central play—Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear—but one of the show's virtues is that they're never simple transpositions. So in the first season, Geoffrey looks like Hamlet, with his old director's ghost hanging over his shoulder, but in fact he's Ophelia; he's the one who ran mad and committed suicide. Ellen is the one who put on an antic disposition and played for years in a poisoned court. Where this leaves Oliver is a curious blend of Claudius and Gertrude, the incestuous surrogate father with Yorick's skull and some of the Player King's conscience-catching skill, otherwise known as a practiced hand on the guilt-trip—he is a sympathetic character, but not an innocent one. He's hurt, very badly, people he claimed to love. He wasn't a good director when he died. And though the show turns on his postmortem efforts to restore amends, it's not as though he's a disinterested party; he still messes reflexively with Geoffrey's head, isn't good at straight answers, and he really hates being a ghost. Nonetheless, by the third season I found that I cared more about whether he would achieve his requiem aeternam than whether Geoffrey and Ellen would work their rocky relationship out. Lots of stories have ghosts, but few of them are as three-dimensioned and difficult as the people they haunt. I remain sad that I could not, the season I discovered Slings & Arrows, figure out a way to see Stephen Ouimette at the Stratford Festival.
2. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Uncle Iroh. It's hard for me even to tease out the reasons I love this character so much, because the man was a catalogue of awesome (and voiced by Mako), but I think it's not insignificant that while one of the show's ongoing reveals is the extent to which the mellow, seemingly self-indulgent ex-general is in fact several different kinds of stupendous badass, they invalidate none of his funnier, quirkier aspects. His tea fetish is precisely as real as his one-man-army firebending and his knowledge of the spirit world; the missing pai sho tile is a bit of subterfuge, but the tsungi horn really is for music night. He flirts shamelessly with everyone from bounty hunters to immigration clerks and he's the only person in the world who can redirect lightning. He breaks himself out of prison like apocalypse passing and he accidentally poisons himself attempting to field-collect a rare tea. He gives career advice to a would-be mugger. He may have been someone quite different in the past, when his son was alive and he was the darling of the Fire Nation's armies, the Dragon of the West. Some of his moments of greatest awesome are the quietest.1
Leaves from the vine falling so slow
Like fragile tiny shells drifting in the foam
Little soldier boy, come marching home
Brave soldier boy comes marching home
3. The Iliad . . . Yikes. Come back and ask me about the Odyssey; I am not sure that I have favorite characters from the Iliad. Andromache, perhaps. She knows the costs of war.
4. The Lady's not for Burning, Thomas Mendip. Yes, I know my profile quotes Jennet Jourdemayne, but it is Thomas whose particular mix of reluctant romanticism and real death-wish fascinated me when I was thirteen and does still; he has some of the most beautiful and some of the most bitter passages in the play. Bruised and sardonic, conjuring with English as if it were one of Jennet's alleged spells, he's the wry scene-stealer given center stage and then confounded with an equal leading lady.
Into Pandora's box with all the ills.
But not if that little hell-cat Hope's
Already in possession. I've hoped enough.
I gave the best years of my life to that girl,
But I'm walking out with Damnation now, and she's
A flame who's got finality.
The genius of the character is that he's not less cynical than he believes. He's not converted by love so much as his sense of humor cannot resist the aptness with which a woman under sentence of death for witchcraft and a man who's spent all day trying to talk himself into his grave should find themselves drawn irresistibly together; their romance is a volta on the steps of the gallows and the third partner is Death. I love you, but the world's not changed. Do the last scene right and the audience should barely be able to breathe, caught between tears and smiling. I suppose this is more of a shout-out to the play than to one of its protagonists, but I am nonetheless very fond of him.2
1. By way of contrast, this is as good a place as any to admit that I have also a wholly undeserved fondness for Captain/Commander/Admiral Zhao. Yes, I've read the fancomic.
2. I did not know until a few nights ago that Decca had released a recording of the original cast with John Gielgud and Pamela Brown; I found out from the back cover of a 1959 LP that double-featured Agnes Moorehead in Sorry, Wrong Number and James Mason reading Edgar Allan Poe. Chances are I'll never hear it, but I once discovered Richard Burton's Hamlet in a bin of dollar records at a used book store. I can hold out hope.
The same conversation also informed me that Theatre@First's production of The Lady's Not for Burning will be focused around Appalachian folk music, which almost makes me want to see if I can audition as a folksinger. And the Underground Railway Theatre is doing Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code, which I have been waiting to see on stage since high school. I just need not to go broke before this spring. At least I've already bought my opera subscription.
muchabstracted tapped me for one of those favorite-character memes. I haven't done a meme in ages, so knock yourself out below the cut-tag.Comment and I give you four fandoms. You repost and list your favorite character from each, with explanation.
1. Slings & Arrows, Oliver Welles. Even before he was hit by a pig truck and came back as a bitchy, bewildered ghost in an unfortunate suit, I had gravitated toward him; I am not quite sure why, except that he got many of the best lines and he was complicated. One of the structural conceits of Slings & Arrows is that each season's action draws from and comments on its central play—Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear—but one of the show's virtues is that they're never simple transpositions. So in the first season, Geoffrey looks like Hamlet, with his old director's ghost hanging over his shoulder, but in fact he's Ophelia; he's the one who ran mad and committed suicide. Ellen is the one who put on an antic disposition and played for years in a poisoned court. Where this leaves Oliver is a curious blend of Claudius and Gertrude, the incestuous surrogate father with Yorick's skull and some of the Player King's conscience-catching skill, otherwise known as a practiced hand on the guilt-trip—he is a sympathetic character, but not an innocent one. He's hurt, very badly, people he claimed to love. He wasn't a good director when he died. And though the show turns on his postmortem efforts to restore amends, it's not as though he's a disinterested party; he still messes reflexively with Geoffrey's head, isn't good at straight answers, and he really hates being a ghost. Nonetheless, by the third season I found that I cared more about whether he would achieve his requiem aeternam than whether Geoffrey and Ellen would work their rocky relationship out. Lots of stories have ghosts, but few of them are as three-dimensioned and difficult as the people they haunt. I remain sad that I could not, the season I discovered Slings & Arrows, figure out a way to see Stephen Ouimette at the Stratford Festival.
2. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Uncle Iroh. It's hard for me even to tease out the reasons I love this character so much, because the man was a catalogue of awesome (and voiced by Mako), but I think it's not insignificant that while one of the show's ongoing reveals is the extent to which the mellow, seemingly self-indulgent ex-general is in fact several different kinds of stupendous badass, they invalidate none of his funnier, quirkier aspects. His tea fetish is precisely as real as his one-man-army firebending and his knowledge of the spirit world; the missing pai sho tile is a bit of subterfuge, but the tsungi horn really is for music night. He flirts shamelessly with everyone from bounty hunters to immigration clerks and he's the only person in the world who can redirect lightning. He breaks himself out of prison like apocalypse passing and he accidentally poisons himself attempting to field-collect a rare tea. He gives career advice to a would-be mugger. He may have been someone quite different in the past, when his son was alive and he was the darling of the Fire Nation's armies, the Dragon of the West. Some of his moments of greatest awesome are the quietest.1
Leaves from the vine falling so slow
Like fragile tiny shells drifting in the foam
Little soldier boy, come marching home
Brave soldier boy comes marching home
3. The Iliad . . . Yikes. Come back and ask me about the Odyssey; I am not sure that I have favorite characters from the Iliad. Andromache, perhaps. She knows the costs of war.
4. The Lady's not for Burning, Thomas Mendip. Yes, I know my profile quotes Jennet Jourdemayne, but it is Thomas whose particular mix of reluctant romanticism and real death-wish fascinated me when I was thirteen and does still; he has some of the most beautiful and some of the most bitter passages in the play. Bruised and sardonic, conjuring with English as if it were one of Jennet's alleged spells, he's the wry scene-stealer given center stage and then confounded with an equal leading lady.
Into Pandora's box with all the ills.
But not if that little hell-cat Hope's
Already in possession. I've hoped enough.
I gave the best years of my life to that girl,
But I'm walking out with Damnation now, and she's
A flame who's got finality.
The genius of the character is that he's not less cynical than he believes. He's not converted by love so much as his sense of humor cannot resist the aptness with which a woman under sentence of death for witchcraft and a man who's spent all day trying to talk himself into his grave should find themselves drawn irresistibly together; their romance is a volta on the steps of the gallows and the third partner is Death. I love you, but the world's not changed. Do the last scene right and the audience should barely be able to breathe, caught between tears and smiling. I suppose this is more of a shout-out to the play than to one of its protagonists, but I am nonetheless very fond of him.2
1. By way of contrast, this is as good a place as any to admit that I have also a wholly undeserved fondness for Captain/Commander/Admiral Zhao. Yes, I've read the fancomic.
2. I did not know until a few nights ago that Decca had released a recording of the original cast with John Gielgud and Pamela Brown; I found out from the back cover of a 1959 LP that double-featured Agnes Moorehead in Sorry, Wrong Number and James Mason reading Edgar Allan Poe. Chances are I'll never hear it, but I once discovered Richard Burton's Hamlet in a bin of dollar records at a used book store. I can hold out hope.
The same conversation also informed me that Theatre@First's production of The Lady's Not for Burning will be focused around Appalachian folk music, which almost makes me want to see if I can audition as a folksinger. And the Underground Railway Theatre is doing Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code, which I have been waiting to see on stage since high school. I just need not to go broke before this spring. At least I've already bought my opera subscription.
no subject
no subject
I'll steal my daddy's dulcimer to lend to you if you do.
no subject
If you have an ancestral dulcimer, that is so cool.
COMMENT!
Okay—Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Seventh Seal, and The Wicker Man? (The original, for the love of God.)
no subject
The original, for the love of God.
NOT THE BEES!
It's been a very long time since I have seen either The Seventh Seal or Wicker Man, this should be interesting.
no subject
no subject
That's still cool.
NOT THE BEES!
Were you to consider the bees your favorite character, you would be entirely justified.
I'm actually going to have to see them again (oh the tragedy).
The new Criterion DVDs (and Blu-Ray, if you go for that sort of thing) fixed the subtitles on The Seventh Seal, so you don't even have to hunt down old VHS. Make sure you get the 99-minute version of The Wicker Man, though.
no subject
So did Much Abstracted give you these fandoms, is that how it works? I like your choice of Andromache.
Nice music you're listening to, too.
no subject
(Can do.)
So did Much Abstracted give you these fandoms, is that how it works?
Yes; I commented on her post and she assigned me these. I had never previously thought of the Iliad or The Lady's Not for Burning as fandoms, but evidently the term is general-use.
no subject
no subject
no subject
All right. How do you feel about Babylon 5, Saiyuki, Gilbert & Sullivan, and the Aeneid?
no subject
I know the answer to the first two instantly; the last two will require some thought.
no subject
I do hope you audition; I'd love to see and hear you in that play.
Nine
no subject
Well, I don't even know if I can audition. If they put out a casting call for musicians, I'll answer. But I'm certainly going to see the play when it's staged!
no subject
The same conversation also informed me that Theatre@First's production of The Lady's Not for Burning will be focused around Appalachian folk music, which almost makes me want to see if I can audition as a folksinger.
Actually, if you're seriously interested, it might be worth finding out about, even if there's not a call for musicians.
no subject
Thank you!
(It's always nice when I can enjoy therapy sessions in TV and movies.)
My mother has the same problem. One of the reasons M. Night Shyamalan depresses her is that the protagonist of The Sixth Sense was a good child psychologist—she had reasons to hope. And now he does bad rewrites of Avatar.
Thank you for your answers; you see Thomas and Oliver in more interesting ways than I do.
You're welcome; I'm glad they were useful. Who do you like best from those works?
Actually, I find Slings & Arrows frustrating in that I know it is saying more about each play than I have figured out, but I haven't been able to understand *what* they are saying.
Possibly this is an unanswerable question, but how so?
Do you know any of the folk involved?
I exchanged five minutes' conversation after The Margaret Ghost with
There are a few I know who I could ask, and vouch for you as being someone worth talking to about such things, if singing does fit with their plans.
Thank you. If it turns out to be relevant, I would be serious; folksinging is one of the things I've been paid for.
no subject
Slings & Arrows? I am torn between being helplessly fond of Geoffrey -- both for things like handcuffing himself to the door of Theatre sans Argent and for things like telling Ellen outright when she's out of line. And for the other reasons he's supposed to be appealing; namely, caring about plays and having charismatic thoughts about art and Shakespeare -- and with Anna, for being remarkably wonderful. Maria, Cyril, and Frank are all up there.
They did a great job of making Richard dislikable in all stages of his character.
The Lady's Not for Burning: my favorite was Thomas, also; probably because he is witty, sharply aware of the brokenness around him, and honest in ways that are down to the bone. (Kind of like the end of Slings & Arrows.)
I'm not sure how to remark further on Slings & Arrows and how it makes me feel like it is saying more than I understand, sadly. I will have to watch it again, which will be a great hardship. It does end up in the rare category of movies and TV shows that I feel are so carefully crafted anything it is impossible to overanalyze them; Princess Tutu and Stage Beauty being the other two.
There is a large overlap between Theatre@First and Arisia, for the record. (There is also a large overlap between Theatre@First, Arisia, and the shul I go to.)
no subject
Yes; she's awesome. Agreed also on Frank and Cyril. "An inopportune fellatio at the '79 Royal Winter Fair, I've been persona non bloody grata ever since!"
They did a great job of making Richard dislikable in all stages of his character.
Actually, there were places in the second season I was quite fond of Richard; I was not ultimately surprised by his arc, because he had demonstrated from the beginning that he spins to the prevailing winds, but I was sorry. At the point where he'd gotten Anna a stress ball for Christmas and his attempts to be a patter baritone were inspiring a kind of horrified affection from Frank and Cyril, he was the closest to human he'd ever been and not un-adorable.
It does end up in the rare category of movies and TV shows that I feel are so carefully crafted anything it is impossible to overanalyze them; Princess Tutu and Stage Beauty being the other two.
I would love to hear what you have to say about Stage Beauty; I found it a mixed film, though I loved its actors and the recurring line, "Who am I now?"
(There is also a large overlap between Theatre@First, Arisia, and the shul I go to.)
Evidently you go to an awesome shul.
no subject
What a great scene! That was the best part of Season 2. (I think it was season 2?)
That's true. Richard was very cute with the baritone practice. He annoyed me when he was drunk with Anna, though; the self-absorption irritated me, particularly when Anna was being so nice. As she is.
I do go to an awesome shul! At one point,
Hmm. I think I will rewatch Stage Beauty so as to refresh my memory. But as I recall, it felt that they were thinking very carefully about gender, performance, and sexuality, and that they put that thinking into the story without having the story suffer. (Except that the ending was bizarrely and unnecessarily heteronormative, and Maria was not very interesting or appealling.)
Princess Tutu, on the other hand, was a very carefully thought-through series with a brilliant ending.
Billy Cruddup was spectacular, though.
no subject
I'll have some fandoms! Not sure when I'll get around to posting, but hey.
no subject
No problem. I may not be terribly specific with my requests, but would you like The Etched City, Red Dwarf, Homeric epic, and anything by Mary Renault?
no subject
no subject
We should organize a party of people to go.
no subject
no subject
Right . . . Diana Gabaldon, Naomi Novik, X-Men (any version), and Oz?
no subject
*has vague, desperate hope that maybe by Boskone we will have some money, as I have also never seen The Lady's Not For Burning*
no subject
Now I have that problem where I try not to give everyone the same few fandoms I think we share . . . Cloud & Ashes, the works of Diana Wynne Jones, Retvolutionary Girl Utena, and Saiyuki.
no subject
Um. How much Saiyuki have you read? My favorite character is a huge spoiler. I mean huge. Of the central quartet, I am a Hakkai person, although my favorite relationship in terms of how complex and interesting it is is Sanzo and Goku.
I also know for a fact that you haven't gotten to my favorite character in Utena. Of the people you have seen so far, my favorite is Juri, who was My Very First On-Screen Lesbian and shares several traits with highschool-me to an extent I first found painful and now find nostalgic.
Diana Wynne Jones: tough call. Good candidates include Howard from Archer's Goon and Tonino from The Magicians of Caprona, but I think I will have to say Sophie, because I knew from about page three that I wanted to grow up to be Sophie. It's the pragmatism combined with the completely stubborn romanticism. She won't take any nonsense, except from herself.
Cloud & Ashes: Thea. She's the one makes deep intuitive sense to me. I'd have done all the same things, in her position.
no subject
I read up through however much Saiyuki there was in English at the beginning of last summer, so nearly the complete Reload? Since then, nada. I should hit somebody up for the new volumes.
but I think I will have to say Sophie, because I knew from about page three that I wanted to grow up to be Sophie. It's the pragmatism combined with the completely stubborn romanticism. She won't take any nonsense, except from herself.
Sophie is one of the rare cases where I like the protagonist as much as the supporting characters.
no subject
no subject
You know, that's who I thought it would be.
no subject
no subject
no subject
These are four fandoms: Babylon 5, Middle-Earth, Pushing Daisies, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Tell me why.
no subject
B5: the finalists are Londo, G'Kar, Lennier, and Vir. I love the relationship between Londo and G'Kar (I daren't call it a friendship because if word leaked out, either would have my head, but I do think it qualifies). And then there are the two loyal retainers, and (excising "so clearly I am drawn to that role for reasons I'm not sure I fathom") I think that means that I value loyalty more than I realized. Lennier is more defined by his devotion to Delenn (it's almost all there is to him) than Vir is by his loyalty to Londo, but Lennier also has an infinitely easier job of it (well, except for the unrequited love part). Vir has the other dimension I love, which is the paradoxical mix of a type of low regard for himself with the sort of self-assuredness that allows him to famously tell off Morden. It's as if Vir knows exactly who he is (in theory, not much) except for the part where he fails to consider that knowing exactly who you are makes you capable of unexpected greatness. So it's Vir, and I think he's one of the very greatest characters I know of.
Middle Earth: My first reaction was Sam, but that's supposed to be your first reaction. For the correct answer, consider that the scene in the book that I have re-read most is Eowyn's slaying of the Witch-King and that my favorite scene unique to the film is her swordplay with Aragorn. She is, of course, the capital-letters answer to the ludicrous charge that LOTR doesn't do right by women -- as a war story, there should be no women at all (where exactly were the strong female characters in the Great Escape or Saving Private Ryan?) and she gets not only the most heroic battlefield moment but also the only interesting romantic story arc (the lower-case answer to the charge is Galadriel, the wisest and most potent non-divine character in the book and one who spends much of her conversational time gently correcting her husband). Eowyn is, I think, the only character in the book who has Shakespearean complexity (the lack of such complexity in the other characters is not a flaw); if LOTR were a play there would be productions where she is clinically depressed and her desire to die in battle is genuinely suicidal, and productions where she instead embodies a dark turn on the Battle of Maldon creed, desperately hoping to live even as she despairs of the possibility. The best productions would acknowledge the truth of both; her problem is that she is faced with a Battle of Maldon without faith in anything worth dying for. In his first draft, Tolkien intended that she would marry Aragorn (he had to rewrite their scenes to make her interest unrequited); he didn't realize that Aragorn needed something more exalted until he got to the wedding scene. I think it's very telling that Tolkien instead married her off to the character that reminded him most of himself.
no subject
no subject
WAoVW: Well, I don’t think anyone much likes the younger faculty, so that leaves us with George or Martha, right? And of course I was going to be snarky and say Martha’s imaginary son (and yes, I think it’s clear that it’s her baby and that George collaborated in his creation largely out of his love for her rather than for his own relatively modest desire for progeny. He couldn’t have killed him otherwise.) After a moment I realized that it’s sort of the correct answer and maybe not just for me but for everyone. We tend to like characters that other characters love (q.v. Frodo and Sam). That’s a basic way to make a character likable. It’s part of the brilliance of the play that Albee shows us a very deep love between George and Martha that doesn’t make either one likable in the least, since it’s more than negated by the part where they loathe themselves. So who is there to like? Who gets unconditional love here? The son who isn’t. The only problem, of course, is that he isn’t actually a character. So it turns out that my favorite character is the part of Martha who loves Sonny. I wouldn’t want to spend any time in Martha’s company but I could love the woman who so desperately wanted a son that she invented him in heartbreaking detail.