extremely niche interests

[kaydeefalls]

Been rereading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series, and goddamn I need these books to get the epic HBO miniseries adaptation they deserve so that I can make a creepy Phedre/Melisande vid to Vienna Teng's "My Medea".

Extremely niche interest, I know.

In need of distraction right now, so here's a meme I've seen floating around tumblr and most recently via muccamukk:

GIVE ME A CHARACTER, and I’ll break their ass down:

1. How I feel about this character

2. All the people I ship romantically with this character

3. My non-romantic OTP for this character

4. My unpopular opinion about this character

5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I read the first Kushiel book and it was wild! Like fanfic!

[kaydeefalls]

I unironically adore those books. They're clearly written by someone who understands the queer and kink communities, for one, but the worldbuilding is an absolute delight. (The prose is a bit more purple than my usual tastes, but I don't even care, the world just fascinates me.)

[musesfool]

Katara?

[kaydeefalls]

YESSSS.

1. How I feel about this character
Katara is a goddamn delight. She's so smart and determined and refuses to give up hope, which is a freaking radical act in itself, and the way she just blossoms into her powers over the course of the series is so uplifting to watch, because she remains kind and caring throughout all the utter crap life throws at her. And she learns to acknowledge and respect her own inner darkness, too -- accepting that sometimes, forgiveness just isn't possible, but vengeance doesn't have to twist you up inside. UGH I LOVE HER.

2. All the people I ship romantically with this character
Zuko. Pretty much exclusively. I get why the show didn't go there, but I really think their friendship evolved with a strength and maturity that could easily lead to romance as well, and I find their dynamic fascinating. (I think she'd be fun with Suki or even Toph as well, but don't particularly ship it.)

3. My non-romantic OTP for this character
I love her sibling relationship with Sokka so much.

4. My unpopular opinion about this character
Hmmm...I'm not heavily involved with fandom, which seems to skew a bit young (understandable, given the source material). I'm sure the Katara/Aang shippers clash with the Katara/Zuko faction, but whatever, ship and let ship. I really don't like her with Aang, though, canonically -- she's too much of a maternal figure for him for that relationship to feel healthy in the long term, and it feels too much like she was the prize he won for saving the world.

5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
I really wish we'd seen more of who she'd become as a person and a powerful bending master in her own right in LoK, rather than just a mother to Aang's kids.

6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.
...I got nothing.

[musesfool]

<333

[muccamukk]

Bill Guarnere

[kaydeefalls]

AW YEAH OL' GONORRHEA HIMSELF.

1. How I feel about this character
Oh, Bill, my angry little ball of underbite and rage. He's an asshole, but mostly in a good way, and he gets the fucking job done.

2. All the people I ship romantically with this character
I don't particularly? Toye's the obvious one. Maybe Lipton or Malarkey. I kinda feel like all the Easy noncoms deserve a cuddlepile.

3. My non-romantic OTP for this character
His prickly-but-respectful relationship with Winters is fascinating. The real dude's enduring lifelong friendship with Babe Heffron is adorable, too.

4. My unpopular opinion about this character
Not involved enough in fandom to know what would constitute a popular or unpopular opinion about him -- I just read the fic. I wish he'd show up more in fics where he's not part of the main pairing, because he's just such a great character.

5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
I wish we'd seen more of his friendships with Buck and Malark, because those guys were so heavily affected by his injuries, but I don't feel like the show built up their relationships enough beforehand. (I'm going purely off the show as "canon", here, not the actual history -- it's always complicated when real people's lives are involved.)

6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.
He definitely keeps count of all the Germans he's personally killed, probably in friendly competition with several of the other guys. No one's sure who's winning. (Spiers is definitely winning. We don't talk about that, though.)

[muccamukk]

I wish we'd seen more of his friendships with Buck and Malark, because those guys were so heavily affected by his injuries, but I don't feel like the show built up their relationships enough beforehand

The show had a really bad habit of realising they needed to build up relationships in the same episode as something terrible happened to one of the parties. To the point where if you suddenly start seeing more of a character, you can be pretty sure something terrible will happen.

So we get a bunch of Bill and Buck and Bill and Don scenes in Bastogne and Breaking point, but other than the Buck rescue scene in Replacements... I'm struggling to think of major interactions they had. Couple of lines in Day of Days, maybe, and the cooking scene same ep.

[dogstar]

You know it got optioned by Starz, right? :) Check JCarey's twitter :)

(DW and I are over here praying that it somehow ends up with the creative team that did the Borgias- they'd be perfect for it. :D)

And to make this reply topical, how about .... hmm. Melisande, or, if you want a more complicated one, Ysandre? :)

[kaydeefalls]

Nifty! At least that's a step in the right direction, though there's a loooong way between being optioned and actually getting produced. *fingers crossed*

I'll take Ysandre. ;)

1. How I feel about this character
I love how cool and calculating she is, despite the enormity of her heart. And I love that she makes some pretty serious mistakes later on with Imriel, but learns and grows in spite of them.

2. All the people I ship romantically with this character
Drustan/Ysandre is obvs the OTP there, but I do ship her with Phedre, too. (I mean...we ship everyone with Phedre, right?)

3. My non-romantic OTP for this character
Also her platonic friendship with Phedre is great.

4. My unpopular opinion about this character
IDK what fandom's opinions are, but I think Ysandre was lucky to have Isabel L'Envers as a mother, and not Edme de Rocaille. Despite all the trauma that caused her parents' generation, I don't think she would have survived long as Queen without that L'Envers cunning. She would have been completely blindsided by D'Aiglemort & Melisande's betrayal and lost the throne like halfway through book 1 if she'd had a happy childhood, as cynical as that sounds.

5. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
We don't get to see enough of Ysandre in general, I think. I would have loved to see her grow into her strengths as a ruler between books 2 & 3, and the fact that we see a great deal of her later on through Imriel's eyes is...not entirely fair to Ysandre.

6. Random pet theory about this character that you won't convince me is not true.
She totally had a starry-eyed crush on Delaunay for years based on her dad's diary. And she absolutely slept with Phedre at some point in the ten-year peace (with Drustan & Joscelin's knowing consent).