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Her neon mouth with the blinking soft smile ain’t nothing but an electric sign
The new online issue of Cabinet des Fées is up, containing work by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
upstart_crow, time_shark, eredien, other talented people whose livejournal handles I do not know, and myself. This marks the first time a piece of mine has appeared online without a corresponding print version, as has always been the case with Vestal Review or online reprints from Not One of Us. I move slowly into the dubious world of pixels rather than ink . . .
With reference to yesterday's meme, and in particular the question about which film character would I have sex with,nineweaving asked me a question that I shall place behind an lj-cut, in case it's a spoiler rather than an incitement to see the film—
44) If you could have sex with any film character, who?
This is also not a question I ask myself much of the time . . . Viktor Bychkov as Psholtii (Ivan) in The Cuckoo.
Why Psholtii? He's the surlier and more bewildered; the betrayed; the one who wears the skirt, the one who stews the amanita; the one who shoots his comrade and repents; the last bedded.
(I would swear this is a Tarot card.)
To which I can only respond: there's your answer. He's complicated. Complication is sexy. (Assume normal operating limits of safety and sanity. And the sense to know the difference between what appeals on the page and what works in the real world.) I've never fallen for anyone pretty and dull. I've never fallen for someone I haven't first gotten to know, mind you, so the meme's question is still purely academic; but what the hell, I can still extrapolate from the screenplay.* If I were to meet this character. If we were to assume that said character wouldn't take a dislike to me. It's the layers on layers that make a person fascinating: not necessarily the secrets, but the unexpected combinations, the discrepancies and the consistencies, the stories and all the shadings that keep actual people from being cardboard. I'm rarely interested in heroes. There's nothing sympathetic about flat golden light and connect-the-dots gallantry; but give me a morally ambiguous supporting character or a sympathetic antagonist, and I'm with you all the way. (See a summer post about Severus Snape for much of the same.) And so, since this particular character is a knockabout collection of cynicism and grudges and vulnerability and misfires, some well-meant, some not—and how on earth does a poet not recognize Dostoyevsky?—I'm not all surprised that he was my favorite. And unlike any number of other characters I've liked from films, in the end he's stable enough that I could actually consider a relationship with him, rather than the more common "You know, you're terrifically cool on the screen, but you'd be like radiation in my actual life, kthnxbye." Complication that's safe to get close to. That's very attractive.
All of this has been theorized while waiting for my name to be called at the pharmacy, however, so I may look at it in a few hours and decide that I was dead wrong. But probably not about everything. Feel free to contradict.
* I can appreciate any number of people aesthetically, but attraction to the body is always secondary to attraction to the person: we do not love people because they are beautiful, they are beautiful because we love them. So you can have "a face like the back of a bus," as Mary Gentle said of Humphrey Bogart, and so far as I'm concerned that doesn't interfere with your sexiness in the least: provided you're not dull . . .
upstart_crow, time_shark, eredien, other talented people whose livejournal handles I do not know, and myself. This marks the first time a piece of mine has appeared online without a corresponding print version, as has always been the case with Vestal Review or online reprints from Not One of Us. I move slowly into the dubious world of pixels rather than ink . . .With reference to yesterday's meme, and in particular the question about which film character would I have sex with,
nineweaving asked me a question that I shall place behind an lj-cut, in case it's a spoiler rather than an incitement to see the film—44) If you could have sex with any film character, who?
This is also not a question I ask myself much of the time . . . Viktor Bychkov as Psholtii (Ivan) in The Cuckoo.
Why Psholtii? He's the surlier and more bewildered; the betrayed; the one who wears the skirt, the one who stews the amanita; the one who shoots his comrade and repents; the last bedded.
(I would swear this is a Tarot card.)
To which I can only respond: there's your answer. He's complicated. Complication is sexy. (Assume normal operating limits of safety and sanity. And the sense to know the difference between what appeals on the page and what works in the real world.) I've never fallen for anyone pretty and dull. I've never fallen for someone I haven't first gotten to know, mind you, so the meme's question is still purely academic; but what the hell, I can still extrapolate from the screenplay.* If I were to meet this character. If we were to assume that said character wouldn't take a dislike to me. It's the layers on layers that make a person fascinating: not necessarily the secrets, but the unexpected combinations, the discrepancies and the consistencies, the stories and all the shadings that keep actual people from being cardboard. I'm rarely interested in heroes. There's nothing sympathetic about flat golden light and connect-the-dots gallantry; but give me a morally ambiguous supporting character or a sympathetic antagonist, and I'm with you all the way. (See a summer post about Severus Snape for much of the same.) And so, since this particular character is a knockabout collection of cynicism and grudges and vulnerability and misfires, some well-meant, some not—and how on earth does a poet not recognize Dostoyevsky?—I'm not all surprised that he was my favorite. And unlike any number of other characters I've liked from films, in the end he's stable enough that I could actually consider a relationship with him, rather than the more common "You know, you're terrifically cool on the screen, but you'd be like radiation in my actual life, kthnxbye." Complication that's safe to get close to. That's very attractive.
All of this has been theorized while waiting for my name to be called at the pharmacy, however, so I may look at it in a few hours and decide that I was dead wrong. But probably not about everything. Feel free to contradict.
* I can appreciate any number of people aesthetically, but attraction to the body is always secondary to attraction to the person: we do not love people because they are beautiful, they are beautiful because we love them. So you can have "a face like the back of a bus," as Mary Gentle said of Humphrey Bogart, and so far as I'm concerned that doesn't interfere with your sexiness in the least: provided you're not dull . . .
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Um, depends on where you put the ephasis on your description. Almost certainly reversed.
Gut says either Hanged Man reversed, or perhaps one of the kings reversed. Cups, maybe? Need to give me more to go on . . .
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is not a bad summary. Each deck varies subtly though, and that's the Rider Waite version . . . but it's a good start to getting the idea.
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I'd love to find a time to come visit and see it. Heck, I could bring Spaceballs and after 5 years of telling you that you should see it, actually do something about it!
If you know a weekend that would be good, email me? Planning is good . . .
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For the record: that's
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Amen to that.
Am I the only one here who doesn't fall for the villain? Of course, I don't root for the hero either: by definition, he's a drip. Or a stick.
If there are hobbits, I root for them. Or the child or the fierce old woman or the witch or the bewildered man or the girl, until she gets romantical. Then I have to sigh and shrug and go on; but it's less interesting. If there are none of these in a book, I find it tough sledding.
If it's Shakespeare, I root for the language.
Nine
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I don't fall for the villain: if he's cardboard, I have exactly as little interest. I root for the complicated.
If it's Shakespeare, I root for the language.
I'll always root for language.
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What Sylvie in Moonwise would call "evil cheeses": fascinatingly striated.
I'll always root for language.
Me too.
Nine
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(a) I accept heroes in an epic context: Achilles, Odysseus. But notice that both of these characters are complex, human, and in some ways seriously flawed.
(b) How do you feel about "protagonist"? Or do you prefer the supporting cast in all situations?
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Nine
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DonnaQ here, also up at the CdF.
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