graycardinal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
graycardinal) wrote2008-09-27 03:21 pm
graycardinal) wrote2008-09-27 03:21 pm
Entry tags:
Meme: Lettered Characters
Inherited (and then much delayed in responding) from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
azarsuerte:
1. Comment on this post.
2. On request, I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters whose names begin with that letter.
4. Post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
I was assigned the letter T, which produced a reasonably good-sized list. Characters I considered but didn't ultimately choose for comment included T'Pau (and a lot of other female Vulcans), Tasha Yar, Tara Maclay, Terry (Batman) McGinnis, Thundarr the Barbarian, Thomas Magnum, Tigger, Titania, Tony DiNozzo, and Trixie Belden.
Those who did make the cut:
Talia al-Ghul (Batman/DC Comics universe)
I don't know that I ever really understood the dynamic of the romance between Talia and Batman (perhaps most because I can't even begin to imagine Talia and the Bruce Wayne aspect of the Bat having had any sort of chemistry). But Talia is a fascinating character nonetheless. In a real sense she's the direct counterpart of Robin/Batgirl/Beyond!Batman -- the heiress to Ra's al-Ghul's legacy as the others are heirs to the Bat's. But she is far less constrained, or constrained in very different ways, than any of the Robins, etc., ever were.
Mind, the story I'd like to see someone write (or if someone's written it, to read) is the prequel to the Batman Beyond episode in which we see Talia -- that is, the moment in which the Key Moment of Transition occurs. (If you have not seen the episode, I'm not going to say more about that; if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about.) Somehow, I very much doubt that matters were as tidy as we're told they are....
Temeraire (Temeraire series, Naomi Novik)
The fascinating thing about Temeraire, for me, isn't so much that he's a dragon. It's that he's an innocent -- but a uniquely and enormously powerful innocent. What makes Temeraire's character interesting is that, for all that he's an instrument of war and can kill great numbers of people in one fell swoop (and here, "fell swoop" is a literal reference rather than metaphor), he is in many ways an emotional toddler, asking "Why?" all the time -- not to be annoying, but out of a sincere desire to learn. Only in Temeraire's case, because he's got much greater raw intellect than the average toddler, his "Why?" questions are deeper and more difficult -- and because he's got much greater physical power than a human toddler, the consequence of not answering those questions to his satisfaction is much greater. Novik does an impressive job of adapting the "Why" stage of childhood to the draconic life cycle, and it remains fascinating to watch the series develop. [There are also "Superman" parallels to be drawn here, but that's probably another essay for another time.]
Canon Thomas Tallis (Time universe, Madeline L'Engle)
We do not see a lot of Canon Tallis -- I first ran across him in Arm of the Starfish, and he subsequently appears in various of the books focusing on Poly (and possibly also, if I remember right, in The Young Unicorns). But he's enormously influential and enormously likeable; he is a rock in the face of danger, and a useful shoulder, and that rarity, a deliverer of morals who manages not to be preachy about them despite being an agent of organized religion. I always wanted to read more about Canon Tallis -- it seemed to me that, just as there are clearly many more stories about Charles Wallace than L'Engle chose to tell, there are more about the Canon than we were ever told. And it's not an exaggeration to suggest that Canon Tallis ,and L'Engle's formulation of Christian philosophy, had a great deal to do with the development of my own attitudes toward spiritual belief in general and Christianity in particular.
Tom Swift (Tom Swift series, "Victor Appleton")
Strictly speaking, "Tom Swift" is several different characters. I'm not old enough to have run into the true first-generation Tom Swift (who invented a Motor Boat, a Motor Cycle, et cetera, and actually married sweetheart Mary Nestor partway through the series) as a youngster; my first Swift was Tom Jr., inventor of Flying Labs, Spectromarine Selectors, and all manner of other vehicles, robots, and mechanical marvels. But my favorite Swift is the fourth Tom, whose 1990s series relocated Swift Enterprises to modern southern California and combined solid action plots with actual science fiction ideas -- time travel, nanotech, artificial intelligence -- while giving due credit and homage to its forebears. More than any other version, Tom #4 had fun with science fiction . . . and too little tween-SF has done that in any age.
Trot (Wizard of Oz universe, L. Frank Baum et al)
It will surprise no one who's read my Oz-based Yuletide story that Trot is by far my favorite Oz heroine. I never really took to Betsy Bobbin (and as far as I can tell, neither did Baum -- she fades pretty much into the woodwork after her first appearance). Dorothy is appealing in the early books, but once she moves permanently to Oz, the stories tend to portray her as taking her good fortune too much for granted, and she loses a certain sense of innocence. By contrast, Trot seems to retain a degree of wide-eyed wonder, and also to enjoy adventure for its own sake in a way that Dorothy never does. [I really need to track down copies of Sky Island and The Sea Fairies....]
azarsuerte:1. Comment on this post.
2. On request, I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters whose names begin with that letter.
4. Post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
I was assigned the letter T, which produced a reasonably good-sized list. Characters I considered but didn't ultimately choose for comment included T'Pau (and a lot of other female Vulcans), Tasha Yar, Tara Maclay, Terry (Batman) McGinnis, Thundarr the Barbarian, Thomas Magnum, Tigger, Titania, Tony DiNozzo, and Trixie Belden.
Those who did make the cut:
Talia al-Ghul (Batman/DC Comics universe)
I don't know that I ever really understood the dynamic of the romance between Talia and Batman (perhaps most because I can't even begin to imagine Talia and the Bruce Wayne aspect of the Bat having had any sort of chemistry). But Talia is a fascinating character nonetheless. In a real sense she's the direct counterpart of Robin/Batgirl/Beyond!Batman -- the heiress to Ra's al-Ghul's legacy as the others are heirs to the Bat's. But she is far less constrained, or constrained in very different ways, than any of the Robins, etc., ever were.
Mind, the story I'd like to see someone write (or if someone's written it, to read) is the prequel to the Batman Beyond episode in which we see Talia -- that is, the moment in which the Key Moment of Transition occurs. (If you have not seen the episode, I'm not going to say more about that; if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about.) Somehow, I very much doubt that matters were as tidy as we're told they are....
Temeraire (Temeraire series, Naomi Novik)
The fascinating thing about Temeraire, for me, isn't so much that he's a dragon. It's that he's an innocent -- but a uniquely and enormously powerful innocent. What makes Temeraire's character interesting is that, for all that he's an instrument of war and can kill great numbers of people in one fell swoop (and here, "fell swoop" is a literal reference rather than metaphor), he is in many ways an emotional toddler, asking "Why?" all the time -- not to be annoying, but out of a sincere desire to learn. Only in Temeraire's case, because he's got much greater raw intellect than the average toddler, his "Why?" questions are deeper and more difficult -- and because he's got much greater physical power than a human toddler, the consequence of not answering those questions to his satisfaction is much greater. Novik does an impressive job of adapting the "Why" stage of childhood to the draconic life cycle, and it remains fascinating to watch the series develop. [There are also "Superman" parallels to be drawn here, but that's probably another essay for another time.]
Canon Thomas Tallis (Time universe, Madeline L'Engle)
We do not see a lot of Canon Tallis -- I first ran across him in Arm of the Starfish, and he subsequently appears in various of the books focusing on Poly (and possibly also, if I remember right, in The Young Unicorns). But he's enormously influential and enormously likeable; he is a rock in the face of danger, and a useful shoulder, and that rarity, a deliverer of morals who manages not to be preachy about them despite being an agent of organized religion. I always wanted to read more about Canon Tallis -- it seemed to me that, just as there are clearly many more stories about Charles Wallace than L'Engle chose to tell, there are more about the Canon than we were ever told. And it's not an exaggeration to suggest that Canon Tallis ,and L'Engle's formulation of Christian philosophy, had a great deal to do with the development of my own attitudes toward spiritual belief in general and Christianity in particular.
Tom Swift (Tom Swift series, "Victor Appleton")
Strictly speaking, "Tom Swift" is several different characters. I'm not old enough to have run into the true first-generation Tom Swift (who invented a Motor Boat, a Motor Cycle, et cetera, and actually married sweetheart Mary Nestor partway through the series) as a youngster; my first Swift was Tom Jr., inventor of Flying Labs, Spectromarine Selectors, and all manner of other vehicles, robots, and mechanical marvels. But my favorite Swift is the fourth Tom, whose 1990s series relocated Swift Enterprises to modern southern California and combined solid action plots with actual science fiction ideas -- time travel, nanotech, artificial intelligence -- while giving due credit and homage to its forebears. More than any other version, Tom #4 had fun with science fiction . . . and too little tween-SF has done that in any age.
Trot (Wizard of Oz universe, L. Frank Baum et al)
It will surprise no one who's read my Oz-based Yuletide story that Trot is by far my favorite Oz heroine. I never really took to Betsy Bobbin (and as far as I can tell, neither did Baum -- she fades pretty much into the woodwork after her first appearance). Dorothy is appealing in the early books, but once she moves permanently to Oz, the stories tend to portray her as taking her good fortune too much for granted, and she loses a certain sense of innocence. By contrast, Trot seems to retain a degree of wide-eyed wonder, and also to enjoy adventure for its own sake in a way that Dorothy never does. [I really need to track down copies of Sky Island and The Sea Fairies....]