Meme Answers 1

[osprey_archer]

Yesterday I posted a meme, and today I am beginning to tackle the answers! In the interest of not spreading the answers over too many posts, I’m sticking these two questions together.

landofnowhere asked: 20. If you could ‘unkill’ any character from any story, who would it be?

Sirius Black. After I finished the fifth Harry Potter book, I basically went into mourning and walked around for the next week with my own personal raincloud over my head. It just strikes me as so incredibly sad - not just that he died - but that he spends years in prison, and then he breaks out and he’s on the run and he’s forced to take shelter in his family’s old house (which he hates) and he’s not even exonerated before he falls through that stupid veil. No chance at happiness or freedom. Just misery and imprisonment and a few miserable years in hiding and then pow, that’s it, a completely unheroic death.

There are other characters whose deaths I would undo if I could (...still hoping the MCU will see the light about Natasha, frankly), but the combination of miserable life followed by death with no chance for happiness in between is mercifully rare.


redrikki asked: 15. What kind of character do you wish you saw portrayed more often?

Cranky girls. Not justifiably enraged revolutionary types (not that I have anything against the justifiably enraged revolutionaries - viva Katniss! - but I feel that they’re easier to find) but girls who have a low-grade fire of omnidirectional crankiness always burning in their souls for no particular reason, and it makes them sarcastic and short with people. Like Jaye from Wonderfalls or Joni from Saints Rest. (Catra is the OTT version of this who is not so much “cranky” as “constantly enraged.”)

Comments

[eglantiere]

i really appreciate the neverending crankiness of pretty much all of frances hardinge's heroines. they're so angry! they're so ready to dig their heels in and let the cogs of the world break over them! it's super refreshing.

[osprey_archer]

Somehow the first time around I read this as Frances Hodgson Burnett and I was like "...?" although actually upon further reflection I can see it at least for some Burnett characters, like Mary Lennox, notwithstanding that part of her journey is about becoming slightly less cranky. Although I'm sure that if anyone ever harmed her garden her crankiness would come back FULL STRENGTH and she personally would take down the Luftwaffe plane that dared to harm the garden through sheer force of will.

However, Frances Hardinge does make more sense! That's definitely more common in her work than FHB's.

[skygiants]

CRANKY GIRLS. Perhaps my number one narrative weakness! I imprinted on Mary Lennox early on, FOR SURE, and in my heart she stayed at least moderately cranky forever, whatever Frances Hodgson Burnett tried to tell me. See also: numerous Diana Wynne Jones heroines.

[osprey_archer]

One of the things I really liked about the movie version is that Mary Lennox never totally loses her crankiness. She learns how to control it rather than just being cranky all the time, and when she's having fun in the garden or whatever she's not cranky, but you still feel the underlying capacity for crankiness that she could surely call forth if anyone threatened the garden.

[skygiants]

A novel I have talked about for ages, but will probably never actually write, is the one where a grown-up Mary Lennox and Sara Crewe start a postwar detective agency; Mary obviously is the one who stomps up and irritably confronts the suspects in their lair while Sara sweetly works round them from the other end.

[osprey_archer]

They would be do an AMAZING good cop/bad cop routine.

[redrikki]

I just reread The Perilous Gard and I love how 100% done Kate is with all the idiots around her. She's less cranky than annoyed, but I feel you with female characters who are allowed to be annoyed at the world's bullshit.

[osprey_archer]

KATE! YES! Possibly more annoyed than cranky, but certainly cranky-adjacent. The way that she puts Christopher in his place whenever he's getting all emo about everything!

[ancientreader]

Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman, has a cranky girl protagonist. Maybe closer to the constantly enraged end of the spectrum? Or, well, she oscillates between cranky and furious, how's that?

[osprey_archer]

I think I've heard of Tess of the Road! Except I think I'm confusing it with another book with Tess in the title, except not Tess of the d'Urbervilles? I may have conflated two or three books into one...

[ancientreader]

What's funny about that is supposedly Tess of the Road is a reimagining of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but nobody I know who has read both books (okay, a grand total of two people) can find the slightest resemblance.

[osprey_archer]

They both have a Tess! What else do you need? (Okay ideally probably a lot of other things, BUT the shared name in the title did link the book to Tess of the D'Urbervilles in my mind, so that's something?)

[lucymonster]

Honestly, I'm still not over Sirius's death for all the reasons you outlined. :(

[osprey_archer]

I expect to be forever crushed. Most authors at least have the decency to give these characters a little bit of happiness before they die, you know? To the point that in, say, a war story, if one of the characters has a particularly good day it's practically a guarantee that they're going to die soon. But at least that's less soul-crushing than "he was in prison and then he was on the run and his name was never cleared and then he had to spend a year sitting miserably in his hated childhood home and then... he died."