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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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They marry! - well, I mean, they actually marry in book four, after which Gelis is like "HAHAHAHAHA GOT YOU NOW I'M GOING TO DEDICATE MYSELF TO MAKING YOUR LIFE A MISERY, how about a NO-HOLDS-BARRED FIGHT to the ECONOMIC DEATH?" But by the eighth book they have reconciled and settled down to actual wedded bliss, so of course Gelis fades into the background while the hero deals with the actual series villain, and all their friends politely stop mentioning that they nearly killed each other multiple times and also between them brought a small country to economic ruin. Water under the bridge!
I find it hard to comment on the actual quality of Lindsey Davis' work -- I find some of it better and some of it worse, but overall it's very soothing to me. I do appreciate the long-running prosaic life-and-family subplots that wind through the series, all the nieces and nephews and brothers-in-laws and so on that make the characters feel a part of a genuine human network.
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But that is such a terrible idea! There are so many reasons it is such a terrible idea! Did no one ever point it out to her?
But by the eighth book they have reconciled and settled down to actual wedded bliss, so of course Gelis fades into the background while the hero deals with the actual series villain, and all their friends politely stop mentioning that they nearly killed each other multiple times and also between them brought a small country to economic ruin.
Yeah, seriously, if that's what your courtship was like, your marriange should not be boring. I liked Busman's Honeymoon least of all the Harriet Vane mysteries for years, but at least Sayers never assumed that her heroine would functionally cease to exist the moment the romance resolved.
I find it hard to comment on the actual quality of Lindsey Davis' work -- I find some of it better and some of it worse, but overall it's very soothing to me.
Fair enough. I don't have any series that I'm reading like that at the moment, but I have had them in the past. (I think I skipped a couple near the end, but I read at least through Lord of the Silent (2001) in the Amela Peabody series. Alas, I started with The Last Camel Died at Noon (1991), so it took a little backtracking for me to realize that the entire series was not H. Rider Haggard high parody.)
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Dunnett's work was deeply formative for me, but the main trouble with Dunnett's work is that it is all centered on the premise that the universe revolves around her central character. Gelis' arc for most of the series is basically 'if I'm gonna be in orbit around this asshole AT LEAST I'LL BE SHOOTING LASERS AT HIM.' Once she runs out of lasers, she's still pretty much locked into place by narrative gravity -- it's not that she's not there, but her function is very much that of a moon. :(
Hah! Yeah, I started the Amelia Peabody books at the beginning and got, like ... three in ...? and then lost momentum. I always plan to make it all the way through a lengthy mystery series and then get sidetracked somewhere when I can't find the next proper book; I think the only one I've successfully managed it with so far is Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, and I was so proud of myself, and then she went and wrote more books. >:(