Day 19, with intertextual call-backs! It's all beginning to come together!
Today I chopped off about half my hair and got an AO3 account (no causal relationship). Nothing much else of interest.
I have a fringe again for the first time in at least a decade. I'm trying to remember how to manage it.
... It's in my eyes. (/.\.\\)
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Daisy, Daisy Adair of Dead Like Me.
I'm not terribly big on non-human characters, they're rarely interesting to me. I don't need to relate to a character to find them interesting for the most part, but non-human usually puts it past me. Whatever the appeal of them, I don't seem to feel it. (What is the appeal, does anyone feel like explaining? Is it a fantasy/escapist thing? I've never got the hang of those.) So I'm making do with a motley crew of characters that were human, and are now ... not really all that much different.
Daisy is a 1930s Hollywood pre-starlet-cum-post-mortem-grim-reaper, transferred from Soho to Rube's screwy little band of reapers in Seattle and promptly took up rooming with main-character George, regardless of what she, George, thought about the arrangement. Rube snarkily dubs her "Princess" (as opposed to the outright affectionate/exasperated "Peanut" for George), and there's more than a touch of the Cordelia about her on the outside. Tart with a hint of true sweetness, blunt, playful, self-absorbed, pragmatic, and always cheerfully ready to relate some kind of sexual escapade, often with some bigwig from Hollywood's heyday, her mortal status at the time notwithstanding. As far as Daisy's concerned, she is a lily of the field, toiling not and neither spinning, designed to delight any and every audience she has, and made for fame.
To wit:
GEORGE (stuck outside bathroom)
Do you work for a living? Because I do, and I have to be there on time.
DAISY (from inside)
That sounds dreadful!
GEORGE
You know Daisy, I have a job. I mean, what do you do?
DAISY (opens door)
Today, I'm going to buy The New York Times, since you obviously don't have it delivered. Then I'm going to sit in that little shop on the corner and have a green tea and a muffin, and then I'm going to look for a sweater set. This afternoon, if I'm so obligated, I'm going to collect someone's soul before they die, and if I look really pretty while I'm doing it well then good for me, that's what I do, Georgia.
DAISY (closes door)
Of course, that's all on the surface, and why on earth would she ever want to scratch it and uncover ugliness or pain, especially when the surface is so very stylish and pretty? She reportedly died in a fire on the set of Gone With the Wind, and she definitely borrowed from Scarlett O'Hara's cast-iron denial of anything she doesn't want to think about. But, unlike Cordy or Scarlett, a fundamental fragility could very occasionally be seen under all her sugar-sweet swagger; Holly Golightly was after Daisy's time but much more of a kindred spirit. The show was only just beginning to really peel that back when it was cancelled.
(Living boyfriend turned abusive asshole? Check. Unwilling, sneaking, potentially romantic connection with stoner fuck-up and fellow reaper? Check. Occasional fatherly moments from gruff reaper boss Rube? Check. Superstitious searching for faith and hope? Check. Accidental murder of abusive boyfriend and messing with the natural order of mortality? Check. The sense that after twenty-odd years of living and seventy-odd years of not-living, she was finally going to have to stop running away from anything she didn't like? Check! And then - cancelled. Of course. So, I guess add her to the "needs more screentime" column too. We're not talking about the movie. Ever. What movie.)
And the reason I picked her is because of all that fascinating potential. I love characters with great potential for growth and change, and characters who keep lots under the surface that we never get all of. That's along with her snarky, indifferent commentary on anything and everything in her sightline, a favourite quality of mine (and something Whedon has a wonderful knack for writing, all credit where credit's due). Any character that doesn't go on angstily navel-gazing and waxing trite about ~philosophical epiphanies~ is a big bonus. Also, especially when she wrinkles her nose just so, cute as a button.
... Much like my hair. Call-back full circle! \o/
master list
I have a fringe again for the first time in at least a decade. I'm trying to remember how to manage it.
... It's in my eyes. (/.\.\\)
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Daisy, Daisy Adair of Dead Like Me.
I'm not terribly big on non-human characters, they're rarely interesting to me. I don't need to relate to a character to find them interesting for the most part, but non-human usually puts it past me. Whatever the appeal of them, I don't seem to feel it. (What is the appeal, does anyone feel like explaining? Is it a fantasy/escapist thing? I've never got the hang of those.) So I'm making do with a motley crew of characters that were human, and are now ... not really all that much different.
Daisy is a 1930s Hollywood pre-starlet-cum-post-mortem-grim-reaper, transferred from Soho to Rube's screwy little band of reapers in Seattle and promptly took up rooming with main-character George, regardless of what she, George, thought about the arrangement. Rube snarkily dubs her "Princess" (as opposed to the outright affectionate/exasperated "Peanut" for George), and there's more than a touch of the Cordelia about her on the outside. Tart with a hint of true sweetness, blunt, playful, self-absorbed, pragmatic, and always cheerfully ready to relate some kind of sexual escapade, often with some bigwig from Hollywood's heyday, her mortal status at the time notwithstanding. As far as Daisy's concerned, she is a lily of the field, toiling not and neither spinning, designed to delight any and every audience she has, and made for fame.
To wit:
GEORGE (stuck outside bathroom)
Do you work for a living? Because I do, and I have to be there on time.
DAISY (from inside)
That sounds dreadful!
GEORGE
You know Daisy, I have a job. I mean, what do you do?
DAISY (opens door)
Today, I'm going to buy The New York Times, since you obviously don't have it delivered. Then I'm going to sit in that little shop on the corner and have a green tea and a muffin, and then I'm going to look for a sweater set. This afternoon, if I'm so obligated, I'm going to collect someone's soul before they die, and if I look really pretty while I'm doing it well then good for me, that's what I do, Georgia.
DAISY (closes door)
Of course, that's all on the surface, and why on earth would she ever want to scratch it and uncover ugliness or pain, especially when the surface is so very stylish and pretty? She reportedly died in a fire on the set of Gone With the Wind, and she definitely borrowed from Scarlett O'Hara's cast-iron denial of anything she doesn't want to think about. But, unlike Cordy or Scarlett, a fundamental fragility could very occasionally be seen under all her sugar-sweet swagger; Holly Golightly was after Daisy's time but much more of a kindred spirit. The show was only just beginning to really peel that back when it was cancelled.
(Living boyfriend turned abusive asshole? Check. Unwilling, sneaking, potentially romantic connection with stoner fuck-up and fellow reaper? Check. Occasional fatherly moments from gruff reaper boss Rube? Check. Superstitious searching for faith and hope? Check. Accidental murder of abusive boyfriend and messing with the natural order of mortality? Check. The sense that after twenty-odd years of living and seventy-odd years of not-living, she was finally going to have to stop running away from anything she didn't like? Check! And then - cancelled. Of course. So, I guess add her to the "needs more screentime" column too. We're not talking about the movie. Ever. What movie.)
And the reason I picked her is because of all that fascinating potential. I love characters with great potential for growth and change, and characters who keep lots under the surface that we never get all of. That's along with her snarky, indifferent commentary on anything and everything in her sightline, a favourite quality of mine (and something Whedon has a wonderful knack for writing, all credit where credit's due). Any character that doesn't go on angstily navel-gazing and waxing trite about ~philosophical epiphanies~ is a big bonus. Also, especially when she wrinkles her nose just so, cute as a button.
... Much like my hair. Call-back full circle! \o/
master list