the fannish friday five, y'all
I don't usually get around to these, but today's is a good one. I predict at least half the people who answer this include my #2.
fannish5: What five character deaths affected you the most?
In no particular order:
1. Matthew Cuthbert, Anne of Green Gables. Oh, god in heaven, I think this was the first time I ever had my heart broken. I probably read the books for the first time when I was seven or thereabouts, and I've read them over and over again since, and I still bawl my eyes out at that bit. (To put this in context, I didn't cry AT ALL while reading any of the Harry Potter books, even the last one.) There are a lot of deaths in childhood books which affected me a lot -- in Little Women, and Heidi, and even the Song of the Lioness books -- but nothing hurts quite as badly as Matthew.
2. Wash, Serenity. I went to an advance screening in June, which is to say, I saw it in a theatre packed with several hundred very devoted Firefly fans (plus Jewel Staite and her family). The moment, and the associated sound of hundreds of people gasping in unison, was like being suckerpunched. And then run over by a freight train. Jesus.
3. William Bush, Lord Hornblower. The thing about this is -- I was spoiled for it way, way, way before I read it, and the way it happens in the book is odd, and almost deliberately low-impact in the way that it's drawn out over pages and pages -- hmm, Bush is late turns into hmm, I hope nothing's happened turns into oh my god, I hope he's not dead turns into oh my god, he's most likely dead turns into yeah, big explosion, nobody got out alive. We never actually see a body, because there isn't one; we never have that one visceral kick-in-the-chest moment, so we have to mourn slowly, along with Hornblower. And the way it's done, Christ, it's so good, because it's low-impact only insofar as Hornblower himself can't fucking deal, and then the way he slowly cracks up -- the way he mentions it to Barbara and ruins her night, and then is pissed off at her for it -- and, oh yeah, the PYRAMIDS OF SKULLS -- yeah. It's good. But it also, you know, hurts me in my heart, because Bush is my One True Character in this fandom and I love him with a great big love made of pineapples and pipe tobacco. And so on.
4. James Norrington, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. There's been a lot of wank over the manner of his death and all that, so I don't want to go there in too much detail, but -- it affected me. I have a lot of love for Norrington -- he's very much my one true character in this fandom, as well -- and even though I kind of knew it was likely to happen, it hurt. But as much as it hurt, and much as I maybe wish he'd never fallen from grace so it didn't have to end that way, it did feel right given what had happened, so it affected me in some positive ways, too. It righted some wrongs. (Also, talk about the easiest "out" imaginable; within a couple of days of it I'd written a story where he comes back to life, and I've still got several more on the back-burner or in vague drafting stages.)
5. I'm going to be sneaky here and lump Boromir (The Fellowship of the Ring) and Denethor (The Return of the King) together, and say that the passing of the House of Mardil affected me a lot. I pretty much don't read/get into fantasy as a genre these days -- I don't know, something just sort of switched off in my brain within the last few years and it's lost a lot of its appeal for me -- but the mythology of Tolkien is vast and mighty and will always be a fixture on the landscape of my mind and all that jazz, and I'm particularly attached to Minas Tirith, both as city and as symbol, so these two hit me where it counts. In both cases, kind of like for Norrington, it's narratively necessary that they die; what really affects me is the tragic way in which good men in hopeless situations are forced to make impossible choices, and then pay for them. Also, I have a Manhattan-sized Thing for stories of dynastic decay and the whole end-of-an-era vibe (see also my Faulkner kick and my profound love for East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude when I don't like any of the authors' other works remotely as much), which this has in spades, although obviously it's informed by/fleshed out by the fact that I'm enough of a tool to have read not only the Silmarillion but the Unfinished Tales as well.
(For Denethor it was also a question of disliking what they did with him in the film, although the actual moment of his death and Gandalf's line so passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion is brilliant and spine-tingling and tear-inducing -- really my only two issues with the gorgeous, gorgeous films are wrt
1. Denethor, who's portrayed as cruel, insane and pathetic with no reference to why he's this way (i.e., you know, ~SAURON~, who is essentially controlling him, except that Denethor is such a strong character Sauron can't actually fully subjugate his will) and
2. Faramir, who is distinguished by being THE ONLY PERSON in the books who isn't tempted to take the Ring from Frodo, so it really grates on me to have that altered in the film -- yes, I totally understand why they did it and yes, it makes sense from a narrative/pacing/conflict perspective for the sake of the film. But I still don't like it.)
ANYWAY, that was kind of a long and wanky digression. But yeah.
fannish5: What five character deaths affected you the most?
In no particular order:
1. Matthew Cuthbert, Anne of Green Gables. Oh, god in heaven, I think this was the first time I ever had my heart broken. I probably read the books for the first time when I was seven or thereabouts, and I've read them over and over again since, and I still bawl my eyes out at that bit. (To put this in context, I didn't cry AT ALL while reading any of the Harry Potter books, even the last one.) There are a lot of deaths in childhood books which affected me a lot -- in Little Women, and Heidi, and even the Song of the Lioness books -- but nothing hurts quite as badly as Matthew.
2. Wash, Serenity. I went to an advance screening in June, which is to say, I saw it in a theatre packed with several hundred very devoted Firefly fans (plus Jewel Staite and her family). The moment, and the associated sound of hundreds of people gasping in unison, was like being suckerpunched. And then run over by a freight train. Jesus.
3. William Bush, Lord Hornblower. The thing about this is -- I was spoiled for it way, way, way before I read it, and the way it happens in the book is odd, and almost deliberately low-impact in the way that it's drawn out over pages and pages -- hmm, Bush is late turns into hmm, I hope nothing's happened turns into oh my god, I hope he's not dead turns into oh my god, he's most likely dead turns into yeah, big explosion, nobody got out alive. We never actually see a body, because there isn't one; we never have that one visceral kick-in-the-chest moment, so we have to mourn slowly, along with Hornblower. And the way it's done, Christ, it's so good, because it's low-impact only insofar as Hornblower himself can't fucking deal, and then the way he slowly cracks up -- the way he mentions it to Barbara and ruins her night, and then is pissed off at her for it -- and, oh yeah, the PYRAMIDS OF SKULLS -- yeah. It's good. But it also, you know, hurts me in my heart, because Bush is my One True Character in this fandom and I love him with a great big love made of pineapples and pipe tobacco. And so on.
4. James Norrington, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. There's been a lot of wank over the manner of his death and all that, so I don't want to go there in too much detail, but -- it affected me. I have a lot of love for Norrington -- he's very much my one true character in this fandom, as well -- and even though I kind of knew it was likely to happen, it hurt. But as much as it hurt, and much as I maybe wish he'd never fallen from grace so it didn't have to end that way, it did feel right given what had happened, so it affected me in some positive ways, too. It righted some wrongs. (Also, talk about the easiest "out" imaginable; within a couple of days of it I'd written a story where he comes back to life, and I've still got several more on the back-burner or in vague drafting stages.)
5. I'm going to be sneaky here and lump Boromir (The Fellowship of the Ring) and Denethor (The Return of the King) together, and say that the passing of the House of Mardil affected me a lot. I pretty much don't read/get into fantasy as a genre these days -- I don't know, something just sort of switched off in my brain within the last few years and it's lost a lot of its appeal for me -- but the mythology of Tolkien is vast and mighty and will always be a fixture on the landscape of my mind and all that jazz, and I'm particularly attached to Minas Tirith, both as city and as symbol, so these two hit me where it counts. In both cases, kind of like for Norrington, it's narratively necessary that they die; what really affects me is the tragic way in which good men in hopeless situations are forced to make impossible choices, and then pay for them. Also, I have a Manhattan-sized Thing for stories of dynastic decay and the whole end-of-an-era vibe (see also my Faulkner kick and my profound love for East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude when I don't like any of the authors' other works remotely as much), which this has in spades, although obviously it's informed by/fleshed out by the fact that I'm enough of a tool to have read not only the Silmarillion but the Unfinished Tales as well.
(For Denethor it was also a question of disliking what they did with him in the film, although the actual moment of his death and Gandalf's line so passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion is brilliant and spine-tingling and tear-inducing -- really my only two issues with the gorgeous, gorgeous films are wrt
1. Denethor, who's portrayed as cruel, insane and pathetic with no reference to why he's this way (i.e., you know, ~SAURON~, who is essentially controlling him, except that Denethor is such a strong character Sauron can't actually fully subjugate his will) and
2. Faramir, who is distinguished by being THE ONLY PERSON in the books who isn't tempted to take the Ring from Frodo, so it really grates on me to have that altered in the film -- yes, I totally understand why they did it and yes, it makes sense from a narrative/pacing/conflict perspective for the sake of the film. But I still don't like it.)
ANYWAY, that was kind of a long and wanky digression. But yeah.