If my eyes don't deceive me

[rivkat]

I have book reviews, but first I want to talk SV fic. I just reread Lanning's excellent Agenda. I love the Identical series, I love Eli (though I doubt he'd call a man a yenta as he did Jonathan, but maybe that's just the way my family uses the term), I love the twists and turns and the way Lionel loves Lex, after his fashion. Yet I discovered

Comments

[ter369]

I don't know that biography is all that useful a genre in general; does it matter in a broad sense that Nash had affairs with men and women, went crazy and then recovered in time to accept his Nobel Prize in mathematics?

No, but biographies can be character studies, and I enjoy them on that level. I fall into a chain reaction, where minor players in Coco Chanel's life lead to my next round of biography reading. Or I browse the library and realize I finally want to know what's up with Queen Marie of Rumania, other than being a Dorothy Parker snark spot.

[rivkat]

See, I like biographies of Winston Churchill because he was witty and important, and I'm loving Caro's Johnson books, but I love Master of the Senate most, in large part because of the wonderful history of the Senate -- necessary to get the full import of Johnson's achievements as Senator, but not the stuff of traditional biography inasmuch as it covers over a hundred years before Johnson was even born -- with which it begins. Biography is something I only read by accident, usually.

[siobhan_w]

It seems like a lot of the time Lex turns his own mom into a bit of a Mary-Sue. It's understandable. She died when he was young and he clings to the happy memories of his mother and, because he has an exceptionally dysfunctional father, Lillian can't help but come off as better in his memory.

Perhaps if she had lived she would have proven to be more like Lionel but because Lex lost her when he did and because he is left with only his memories, Lillian never had a chance to prove she wasn't perfect.

[liviapenn]

I agree with you that a more human Lillian is probably more realistic-- but the show so far actually supports angelic!Lillian characterization. Yeah, 99% of our view of her is filtered through Lex's loving memories, but yeah, apparently it was too much that the writers actually tell us *how* she reacted to Lionel's infidelities, his business practices and his whacked-out approach to child-rearing

[rivkat]

Yes, exactly. Lillian's posited existence in too many stories -- encouraged, as you rightly point out, by the show's idea that she was Dead Lana Minus Dead Parents -- contradicts what we know about Lex, and further muddies the waters on Destiny, Fate and Character. The canonical blank, and the fact that we know her mostly through Lex, makes it easy for me to imagine that she was something less than perfect. But as loving as she might have been, it clearly wasn't enough

[thornsilver]

Didn't Eli suggest that Lillian was in love (or perhaps "infatuated") with Lionel when they were younger, but, ultimately, she married him for resources he could provide to protect herself and her children. The "Identical" series Lillian strikes me as different from (so far) cannonical angelic perfect wife and mother (another ideocy that should be put to Goth and Miller's door). She is a strong woman, who has her priorities. Plus, I strongly suspect that Lionel got worse in time. As my mom tells it, "You become more you as you age". Even cannot Lex admits that Lionel has gotten worse after Julian's death.

I guess, what I am trying to say, is that I have no problem with Lanning characterisation. :)

[rivkat]

Thinking through it, I don't have a problem with the characterization as Lillian's described to us; rather, I think that Lanning's Lex and Eli are deluding themselves in their descriptions. Eli probably knows it, too. Eli's explanations are simply insufficient, and Eli can't understand why anyone would love Lionel so he can't explain what it was that drew Lillian. But Lionel is tremendously vital, sexy because he's dangerous -- a lot like Lex, really -- and Lillian had to be a certain type of person to be attracted to that, maybe someone who didn't want to be the good girl that others around her wanted to see.

What I don't buy is that Lillian needed Lionel's resources. First, she comes from a wealthy family herself, and Eli could have protected her. Second, she never heard of alimony and child support? Third, and probably most important, if I accept that she believed this to be true, that makes her a softer version of Lionel, sacrificing her son's emotional health for his wealth

Re:

[thornsilver]

Yes, dead are so much nicer then the living...

Do we really know that Lillian's family would have been in the Lionel's magnitude of rich? Or that they would have kept their wealth?

I just kept getting a funny feeling that it was not so much wealth, as the... less savory resources were things that made Lionel more attractive.

[rivkat]

Yeah, I agree that Lillian was probably looking to put a tiger in her tank. But Lex probably doesn't want to think about his father's animal magnetism or how sexy his amorality is.

[silveraspen]

Concerning Lillian characterization on the show, chalk me down opinion-wise with those who think that we're getting a lot filtered through Lex's eyes. She died when he was just a child, too, so it'd be quite easy to channel a lot of the dissatisfaction with current affairs into the "if she'd lived, things would have been different" sort of view. (Not to mention that while she was alive, Lex could have blamed lack of interference with his father, or whatever, on her illness.) It'd be interesting to see if there is anything on the show that shatters that pedestal

[rivkat]

I agree with everything you've said, with only the addition that, unless further information develops, I don't understand why Lillian needed Lionel to protect her and therefore I think she made a serious mistake that has caused immense damage to Lex. Lionel's money doesn't seem significantly more than hers -- the Eduoards clinked glasses with the Rothschilds, we're told -- and his power, well, we don't know what it was in his youth, but it probably didn't extend to Europe where Lillian's troubles seem to have been. Surely Lillian could have found a rich idiot to marry, and a woman of her apparent calculating nature could have exercised power on her own. Until I hear why Lillian couldn't protect herself, I think this is an excuse rather than an explanation

[j_bluestocking]

Just speculating. If Lillian was in so much trouble she needed billionaire-type wealth to protect her, it seems reasonable to me that she needed more than wealth; i.e., she needed someone capable of using that wealth in dark and ruthless ways, to pressure/remove/whatever her enemies, with an infrastructure that would permit easy movement. (That is, a worldwide business empire with employees in different places -- and Lionel's empire could, I think, have extended to Europe, and even if it didn't, he would certainly have formed many contacts there, because the movement of money breeds those

[rivkat]

Well, frell. LJ ate the first version of this, so let's pretend I was much wittier the first time around