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When somebody destroys me, I want to feel it
I was browsing in Rodney's yesterday when I ran across the novelization of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). I was morbidly curious, so I took ten minutes and read it. Like most novelizations, I think it was done from the shooting script, so it's an improvement on the finished film in that it includes some evidently deleted scenes in which character development occurs rather than clichés and explosions, but that didn't make it good. Mostly it reminded me that the movie annoyed me so much that I wrote 4300 words about it in 2006. I still like Jason Flemyng's Jekyll. He could have done with a better film around him.
And he's not the only one. Among characters I like, there is a small subset I have mentally classed as "better than the stories they came from." Sometimes it's an actor salvaging their screentime—I'm thinking of the time I kept watching The High Bright Sun (1964) just for Denholm Elliott's cynical British agent, or Mercedes McCambridge's torch-singing survivor standing head and shoulders above the psychobabble of The Scarf (1951), or the compulsive professionalism Peter Cushing brought to otherwise deadly roles like Henry Miles in The End of the Affair (1955). Sometimes it's the sense that a character got away from their author, like Waldo Butters in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files; he is so instantly and eccentrically himself that I was not surprised to find out he was intended as a one-off who just refused to stay offstage. Sometimes it feels like structural failure elsewhere in the narrative: Nicholas Flokos' Nike (1998) disappointed me by slamming a sudden hard right into tragedy for no good reason I could discern then or now, but its protagonist Photi Anthropotis is a lovely sad clown of a modern Greek luftmensch and I still feel very tender toward him more than fifteen years later. And every now and then I have absolutely no idea what happened, but it's a fact that I actively like Licinus Honorius of Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006) even when I want to clobber much of the novel around him.
I could go on, but I'd rather ask you. Who are your favorite characters who deserved better stories? What narratives do you revisit just for the supporting cast or a choice subplot? (What narratives would you never revisit, but you remember that one bit really fondly?) Recommendations? Warnings? Can you fix it with fic? I'm going to see if it's too late in the day to buy donuts.
And he's not the only one. Among characters I like, there is a small subset I have mentally classed as "better than the stories they came from." Sometimes it's an actor salvaging their screentime—I'm thinking of the time I kept watching The High Bright Sun (1964) just for Denholm Elliott's cynical British agent, or Mercedes McCambridge's torch-singing survivor standing head and shoulders above the psychobabble of The Scarf (1951), or the compulsive professionalism Peter Cushing brought to otherwise deadly roles like Henry Miles in The End of the Affair (1955). Sometimes it's the sense that a character got away from their author, like Waldo Butters in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files; he is so instantly and eccentrically himself that I was not surprised to find out he was intended as a one-off who just refused to stay offstage. Sometimes it feels like structural failure elsewhere in the narrative: Nicholas Flokos' Nike (1998) disappointed me by slamming a sudden hard right into tragedy for no good reason I could discern then or now, but its protagonist Photi Anthropotis is a lovely sad clown of a modern Greek luftmensch and I still feel very tender toward him more than fifteen years later. And every now and then I have absolutely no idea what happened, but it's a fact that I actively like Licinus Honorius of Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye (2006) even when I want to clobber much of the novel around him.
I could go on, but I'd rather ask you. Who are your favorite characters who deserved better stories? What narratives do you revisit just for the supporting cast or a choice subplot? (What narratives would you never revisit, but you remember that one bit really fondly?) Recommendations? Warnings? Can you fix it with fic? I'm going to see if it's too late in the day to buy donuts.
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Sideways to this, my sister read Hamlet when I read it (she's my younger sister, meaning she got to it earlier in her development when I did) and was so confused when I told her it wasn't a comedy. "But everyone dies at the end!" she protested. "It's completely ridiculous!" And...yeah.
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I think everyone imprints on Mercutio. Even in Tanith Lee's alt-historical
Zeffirelli fanficretelling Sung in Shadow (1983), Flavian "Mercurio" Estemba gets all the best lines."But everyone dies at the end!" she protested. "It's completely ridiculous!" And...yeah.
Oh, please tell me someone introduced her to The Revenger's Tragedy. It's meant to be like that. It is awesome. (I adore Alex Cox's dystopian Liverpool remix Revengers Tragedy (2002) and and also recommend it. Music by Chumbawamba. Sexual tension by Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard.)
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I saw it because I was taking a course on Senecan tragedy and it was shown as a double feature with Julie Taymor's Titus (1999). It remains one of the best double features I have ever seen in my life.
(I enjoyed that class. I wrote a paper about Sweeney Todd as revenge tragedy in the tradition of Seneca. I should have done something with that.)
[edit] I should make it clear that I've read Dean's Tam Lin—my first semester of college, right before I declared for Classics—but it was neither my introduction to The Lady's Not for Burning nor the reason I finally saw The Revenger's Tragedy. I learned to make cherries jubilee because of Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing with Dragons (1990), though.
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Dean introduced me to rather a lot of literature, I must admit.
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Cherries jubilee is cherries flambéed in kirschwasser and poured over vanilla ice cream. It's great.
Dean introduced me to rather a lot of literature, I must admit.
There is nothing wrong with that! Discovering books through other books is kind of the way a literary tradition works.
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(And before anybody says "you can't taste the alcohol!" -- I often can, even when other people don't.)
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(I believe you; so can I.) I don't know what happens if you order it in a restaurant, because I never have, but homemade cherries jubilee tastes like kirsch to me—it just doesn't usually taste like live alcohol because of the flambé-ing. Otherwise it has a hot sweet fruit taste and I like it a lot. I haven't made it in years. Now I want to, when it's not quarter to four in the morning.
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But I hope to try it someday! And yes, a quarter to four in the morning is probably not the time to go lighting fruit on fire. :-)
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Nine
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Nine
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See reply to
abovebelow—yes, but I am no longer certain if it's any good or just a curiosity. Given the popularity of Tim Burton's film a few years later, I suspect all my conclusions were scooped by fandom anyway.no subject
Yes, but it was written in the spring of 2004, so I consider it mostly terrible from a prose perspective and probably not as intellectually well-developed as it could have been.
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This is where I ask if you've heard "Oor Hamlet."
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