But Martin Shaw never *was* Doyle, for better or for worse; he might or might not have been tough or sneaky or snarky or courageous or anything else you love about Doyle.
Oh, and this is precisely the point! Yes! Seeing him in the flesh made it difficult for me to remember this - we went back to the hotel and watched the ep, and I couldn't stop myself from seeing the current MS superimposed over Doyle, from thinking that the person I was watching was gone forever.... The effect didn't last. But it did throw me for a loop; it did take me a little while to reorient myself, to remind myself that MS isn't Doyle, never was, and that the Doyle I love, unlike MS, isn't bound by the linear constraints of time. (But as I said in response to one of these comments, it's not that I'm bothered by ageing; I wasn't intending to imply that MS couldn't be sexy because he's "old." It's just that his ageing, seeing it close up, threatened my view of Doyle as ageless. If that makes sense.)
I like seeing photo shoots of MS - from when he was Doyle. Those are pictures of Doyle, to me; pictures that look too little like Doyle and too much like MS arouse the same reaction in me as you describe.
Your comment about Serenity is interesting ... I haven't seen it, and I know little about Firefly. But I have been thinking, as I wrote, about Belief (specifically as it pertains to fandom).... not an easy issue to get your hands around, but sort of fascinating.
Forever Wilt Thou Love and He Be FairexecutrixOctober 13 2005, 01:23:43 UTC
I had a similar cognitive disconnect when I was wibbling about Avon and someone pointed out that Paul Darrow was, after all, a fair age, and I said that Avon was 40-ish when he died at Gauda Prime* and never got any older.
In a way, Bodie and Doyle are frozen--they are and always will be between 31 and 35, or whatever age they were when their adventures were filmed. But in another way, fanfic makes all characters fluid--i.e., it's not only possible to write Crimean War! Bodie/Doyle but to write about six different flavors of Bodie-in-primary-school.
*Yeah, I've fanwanked it in various ways, but, well, they really all DID die, for values of "really" for fictional characters
Oh, and this is precisely the point! Yes! Seeing him in the flesh made it difficult for me to remember this - we went back to the hotel and watched the ep, and I couldn't stop myself from seeing the current MS superimposed over Doyle, from thinking that the person I was watching was gone forever.... The effect didn't last. But it did throw me for a loop; it did take me a little while to reorient myself, to remind myself that MS isn't Doyle, never was, and that the Doyle I love, unlike MS, isn't bound by the linear constraints of time. (But as I said in response to one of these comments, it's not that I'm bothered by ageing; I wasn't intending to imply that MS couldn't be sexy because he's "old." It's just that his ageing, seeing it close up, threatened my view of Doyle as ageless. If that makes sense.)
I like seeing photo shoots of MS - from when he was Doyle. Those are pictures of Doyle, to me; pictures that look too little like Doyle and too much like MS arouse the same reaction in me as you describe.
Your comment about Serenity is interesting ... I haven't seen it, and I know little about Firefly. But I have been thinking, as I wrote, about Belief (specifically as it pertains to fandom).... not an easy issue to get your hands around, but sort of fascinating.
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In a way, Bodie and Doyle are frozen--they are and always will be between 31 and 35, or whatever age they were when their adventures were filmed. But in another way, fanfic makes all characters fluid--i.e., it's not only possible to write Crimean War! Bodie/Doyle but to write about six different flavors of Bodie-in-primary-school.
*Yeah, I've fanwanked it in various ways, but, well, they really all DID die, for values of "really" for fictional characters
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