Character meme: Five people starting with E
1. Comment on this post with I VOLUNTEER!
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ/DW.
musesfol gave me E. I sort of subconsciously picked characters I really like (I don't want to talk about characters I don't like). Then I not-so-subconsciously picked only girls. It was quite easy; there were several characters I came up with that I eventually left off the list, like Esther from Vampire Diaries. (Yes, Esther came to mind before Elena. Don't ask me why.)
Anyway, enough ramblings. Here are my characters. Volunteer and I'll give you a letter for yours!
Elda from The Dark Lord of Derkholm / Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
I probably wouldn't have picked Elda if I hadn't currently been re-reading YotG, but since I am, I think she's well worth contemplating. The griffins in this universe are a bit unusual just from their background, since they're all genetic experiments with enough humanity in them to each have their own personality and interests, as well as a fun sibling dynamic.
As shown even more in the second book, Elda isn't at all what you'd expect of a griffin. She's a happy, friendly, talkative person at heart, fond of oranges and chess, and she "looks athletic but isn't." At the same time, she doesn't come off as just a person who's nominally a griffin. Physically and instinctually, she's very much a griffin, and she has been a griffin her entire life, meaning she's used to every aspect of it, from how to move in cramped areas to how to deal with people's reactions. And because she is such a bubbly person, very little phases her. Like so many of DWJ's characters, she's more interesting the more I think about her.
Emma Shannon from The Young Riders
Watching TYR twenty years after I first did is a mixed bag. Some bits are cheesy. Some bits are just plain bad. But then there are the gems, like any scene in season 1 involving Emma. She served as a mother figure to the riders at a point where they still needed one, and her strength and compassion is palpable.
There's never any moment in Melissa Leo's performance where it feels like she's giving the role less than her all. Emma comes off as a real, breathing, very likable human being, and I'm not surprised that Leo's one of the actors from this show who's had an actual career afterwards.
Emma Woodhouse from Emma by Jane Austen
Another Emma, this one the most classic of that name. Austen's assertion that no one but the author could love this heroine is well known, and ironically, she's the most likeable of Austen's protagonists, specifically because she's so far from a paragon of virtue. She's headstrong, self-centered, a bit shallow - but she also has a great deal of heart, so that when, despite her bungling, everyone has come to a happy ending, we don't begrudge her one of her own.
On a sidenote, Emma has been portrayed onscreen several times, but for me, the best was Alicia Silverstone's Cher in Clueless. Amy Heckerling gets Emma, and gets Jane Austen, in a way few filmmakers do; free from empire dresses, she cuts to the core.
Esmeralda from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
So it's not like the original. After they gave The Little Mermaid a happy ending, I stopped expecting that. And truth be told, I only ever read the original in an abbreviated version and I didn't even like it that much. So, Disney.
Okay. Thing is, Esmeralda is a mess of stereotypes, to the point where I don't think I could ever show this in a classroom without getting the urge to hide my face. But she's also funny, badass, and drop-dead gorgeous. She's not my favourite Disney lady (that would be Mulán) or even my favourite secondary lady (that would be Nani). But by the time in the mid-nineties when she appeared, I haven't seen anyone more lovely than her.
It doesn't hurt that she has the most beautiful of Disney songs either. (Swedish version as well.)
Ezri Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Someone made a guess for this character in the shipping meme, and I instantly felt guilty for not including her, but the truth is, I don't actively ship Ezri/Julian. I just found it annoying, during my post-DS9 fic-reading time, to see the number of fics that dismissed the relationship out of hand, assuming that it was just a leftover Jadzia thing, that Julian - the little black dress of DS9, with five canon and two major fanon love interests - couldn't possibly be interested in her for any other reason. That nothing about her was inherently lovable.
Well fuck all that for a game of soldiers.
Ezri is a sweet, friendly, honourable, slightly muddled person, who is charming enough in the Ezri Tigan traits of herself that even though the Dax symbiont certainly serves to make her character more complex and interesting, it in no way is the be-all and end-all of her appeal. (Also, cute as a button.)
Admittedly, she's not much of a councellor, but I'd rather have her make a bungle of things and know it, than Deanna Troi saying platitudes as if they were Truly Deep Shit. (And now I've been mean to another character. Sorry!)
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/575003.html and has
comments there.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ/DW.
musesfol gave me E. I sort of subconsciously picked characters I really like (I don't want to talk about characters I don't like). Then I not-so-subconsciously picked only girls. It was quite easy; there were several characters I came up with that I eventually left off the list, like Esther from Vampire Diaries. (Yes, Esther came to mind before Elena. Don't ask me why.)
Anyway, enough ramblings. Here are my characters. Volunteer and I'll give you a letter for yours!
Elda from The Dark Lord of Derkholm / Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
I probably wouldn't have picked Elda if I hadn't currently been re-reading YotG, but since I am, I think she's well worth contemplating. The griffins in this universe are a bit unusual just from their background, since they're all genetic experiments with enough humanity in them to each have their own personality and interests, as well as a fun sibling dynamic.
As shown even more in the second book, Elda isn't at all what you'd expect of a griffin. She's a happy, friendly, talkative person at heart, fond of oranges and chess, and she "looks athletic but isn't." At the same time, she doesn't come off as just a person who's nominally a griffin. Physically and instinctually, she's very much a griffin, and she has been a griffin her entire life, meaning she's used to every aspect of it, from how to move in cramped areas to how to deal with people's reactions. And because she is such a bubbly person, very little phases her. Like so many of DWJ's characters, she's more interesting the more I think about her.
Emma Shannon from The Young Riders
Watching TYR twenty years after I first did is a mixed bag. Some bits are cheesy. Some bits are just plain bad. But then there are the gems, like any scene in season 1 involving Emma. She served as a mother figure to the riders at a point where they still needed one, and her strength and compassion is palpable.
There's never any moment in Melissa Leo's performance where it feels like she's giving the role less than her all. Emma comes off as a real, breathing, very likable human being, and I'm not surprised that Leo's one of the actors from this show who's had an actual career afterwards.
Emma Woodhouse from Emma by Jane Austen
Another Emma, this one the most classic of that name. Austen's assertion that no one but the author could love this heroine is well known, and ironically, she's the most likeable of Austen's protagonists, specifically because she's so far from a paragon of virtue. She's headstrong, self-centered, a bit shallow - but she also has a great deal of heart, so that when, despite her bungling, everyone has come to a happy ending, we don't begrudge her one of her own.
On a sidenote, Emma has been portrayed onscreen several times, but for me, the best was Alicia Silverstone's Cher in Clueless. Amy Heckerling gets Emma, and gets Jane Austen, in a way few filmmakers do; free from empire dresses, she cuts to the core.
Esmeralda from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
So it's not like the original. After they gave The Little Mermaid a happy ending, I stopped expecting that. And truth be told, I only ever read the original in an abbreviated version and I didn't even like it that much. So, Disney.
Okay. Thing is, Esmeralda is a mess of stereotypes, to the point where I don't think I could ever show this in a classroom without getting the urge to hide my face. But she's also funny, badass, and drop-dead gorgeous. She's not my favourite Disney lady (that would be Mulán) or even my favourite secondary lady (that would be Nani). But by the time in the mid-nineties when she appeared, I haven't seen anyone more lovely than her.
It doesn't hurt that she has the most beautiful of Disney songs either. (Swedish version as well.)
Ezri Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Someone made a guess for this character in the shipping meme, and I instantly felt guilty for not including her, but the truth is, I don't actively ship Ezri/Julian. I just found it annoying, during my post-DS9 fic-reading time, to see the number of fics that dismissed the relationship out of hand, assuming that it was just a leftover Jadzia thing, that Julian - the little black dress of DS9, with five canon and two major fanon love interests - couldn't possibly be interested in her for any other reason. That nothing about her was inherently lovable.
Well fuck all that for a game of soldiers.
Ezri is a sweet, friendly, honourable, slightly muddled person, who is charming enough in the Ezri Tigan traits of herself that even though the Dax symbiont certainly serves to make her character more complex and interesting, it in no way is the be-all and end-all of her appeal. (Also, cute as a button.)
Admittedly, she's not much of a councellor, but I'd rather have her make a bungle of things and know it, than Deanna Troi saying platitudes as if they were Truly Deep Shit. (And now I've been mean to another character. Sorry!)
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/575003.html and has
comments there.