love's whole quiver
Sep. 16th, 2008 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseThe letter meme, from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiamatschild, who gave me "L":
Laurie Lawrence (Little Women): Who didn't love Laurie? He was the perfect Boy Next Door. And while I'm actually - unbelievably - not one of those girls who never forgave Alcott for not letting him marry Jo, I'll agree that he's wasted on Amy. Laurie is sweet and insecure and lonely, and more importantly he's not scornful of girls, and he has no need to dominate them. His friendship and passion for Jo is accepting and genuine - he doesn't want her to be anything less than what she is. I love a man who isn't threatened by strong women!
Lucy Pevensie (Narnia): Oh, Lu. I've always wanted to be Lucy. She manages to be a True Believer without being an ingenue, or ever being saccharine. She's a powerhouse: she rides to battle with the men, she understands the ways of magic, she's not afraid of daring deeds and high adventures, and she gets that boats are awesome. Lucy is wild and strong and faithful, and I love that combination of things. Just because she believes doesn't mean she's all sweetness and light. She understands that Aslan isn't a tame lion because she herself is a wild girl. I still haven't forgiven the movies for not getting it right and making her blonde. That really mattered to me as a little girl, because in books the pretty girls are always blonde, and the alt/nonpretty girls are brown- or red-haired. As a nonpretty weirdo blonde, it never felt like there was a place for me except Lucy.
Luthien (Tolkien): Arguably totally Tolkien's Mary Sue, Luthien still manages to kick ass and take names. She's one of those fairytale heroines who at first sight seem overly precious - she's so beautiful, her singing, her dancing, the Lady of Shallott meets Rapunzel escape from Doriath, the self-sacrifice. She's very goddessy, very highly symbolic and heraldic. But when you strip her down to plainer language, you realize that this broad defied social convention for love, daringly escaped her smothering family, went up against Morgoth himself, totally tricked the hell out of him, and lived to tell the tale. Feanor who? Aragorn what? No one manages what she did, and I'm sure none of them looked half as cool doing it.
Leela (Futurama): I heart Leela. She's the only together member of a merry bunch of fools, but she finds them inexplicably charming nonetheless. I'm a sucker for reverse cat-and-dog pairings, and Fry and Leela totally deliver (no pun intended) on that score. She's the badass who needs to learn to love, and he's the sweetie with the crush who patiently, for the most part, waits for her to learn to love him. Also, she's dead hot.
Professor Lupin (Harry Potter): Alas poor Remus, forced into a closeting marriage and then killed off. My heyday in HP fandom circled pretty tightly around the tangled set of relationships between Harry and Sirius and Remus - I'm a sucker for happy endings, and I love families of choice. You've got these three fundamentally broken people who could all conceivably fix one another, if they could get round to it. I love Lupin's weary decency, the way he still looks out for others even when his own life is in shambles. He's total h/c bait, plus the whole sexy werewolf/dom!power thing he's got going on under the surface. He walks softly and carries a big stick, but when it comes down to it he will wallop you right hard. Plus the smart guy thing - books n' cleverness, and good old academia.
Leia Organa: Leia's pretty much the first. She steps out into the midst of her most dangerous enemies and smoothly insults them. She's gorgeous, but her white robes come all the way up to her throat. She might have long princess hair, but she wears it sensibly pinned up or braided back out of her way. I regret deeply what was done to Leia in RotJ - they made her loose weight before they put her in that bikini, and you can tell. They also cover her in makeup, and take away her fangs. But at her best, Leia transcends the position of The Girl, and becomes just as much a person as any of them. Her electric UST with Han derives its power from just how much of a Real Person she is, instead of just being an object for masculine conquest. Leia loves genuinely, hates genuinely, fights genuinely, and nurtures genuinely. She loses everything and does not crumble. She believes in her cause and in her friends. She's got a sharp tongue and a warm heart, and she's nobody's damsel in distress. She's also unabashedly political - Luke is pretty quick to start looking for the hidden good in Vader, once he finds out about their blood tie. Leia is less willing to overlook her father's crimes, and for that I admire her intensely. She's deeply committed to justice in the abstract, no matter what. But she's also pretty free of prejudice - she doesn't even consider pulling away from Luke when he tells her about the Skywalker family drama, about who's son he really is. Her capacity to love runs deeper than that, and stronger.
tiamatschild, who gave me "L":Laurie Lawrence (Little Women): Who didn't love Laurie? He was the perfect Boy Next Door. And while I'm actually - unbelievably - not one of those girls who never forgave Alcott for not letting him marry Jo, I'll agree that he's wasted on Amy. Laurie is sweet and insecure and lonely, and more importantly he's not scornful of girls, and he has no need to dominate them. His friendship and passion for Jo is accepting and genuine - he doesn't want her to be anything less than what she is. I love a man who isn't threatened by strong women!
Lucy Pevensie (Narnia): Oh, Lu. I've always wanted to be Lucy. She manages to be a True Believer without being an ingenue, or ever being saccharine. She's a powerhouse: she rides to battle with the men, she understands the ways of magic, she's not afraid of daring deeds and high adventures, and she gets that boats are awesome. Lucy is wild and strong and faithful, and I love that combination of things. Just because she believes doesn't mean she's all sweetness and light. She understands that Aslan isn't a tame lion because she herself is a wild girl. I still haven't forgiven the movies for not getting it right and making her blonde. That really mattered to me as a little girl, because in books the pretty girls are always blonde, and the alt/nonpretty girls are brown- or red-haired. As a nonpretty weirdo blonde, it never felt like there was a place for me except Lucy.
Luthien (Tolkien): Arguably totally Tolkien's Mary Sue, Luthien still manages to kick ass and take names. She's one of those fairytale heroines who at first sight seem overly precious - she's so beautiful, her singing, her dancing, the Lady of Shallott meets Rapunzel escape from Doriath, the self-sacrifice. She's very goddessy, very highly symbolic and heraldic. But when you strip her down to plainer language, you realize that this broad defied social convention for love, daringly escaped her smothering family, went up against Morgoth himself, totally tricked the hell out of him, and lived to tell the tale. Feanor who? Aragorn what? No one manages what she did, and I'm sure none of them looked half as cool doing it.
Leela (Futurama): I heart Leela. She's the only together member of a merry bunch of fools, but she finds them inexplicably charming nonetheless. I'm a sucker for reverse cat-and-dog pairings, and Fry and Leela totally deliver (no pun intended) on that score. She's the badass who needs to learn to love, and he's the sweetie with the crush who patiently, for the most part, waits for her to learn to love him. Also, she's dead hot.
Professor Lupin (Harry Potter): Alas poor Remus, forced into a closeting marriage and then killed off. My heyday in HP fandom circled pretty tightly around the tangled set of relationships between Harry and Sirius and Remus - I'm a sucker for happy endings, and I love families of choice. You've got these three fundamentally broken people who could all conceivably fix one another, if they could get round to it. I love Lupin's weary decency, the way he still looks out for others even when his own life is in shambles. He's total h/c bait, plus the whole sexy werewolf/dom!power thing he's got going on under the surface. He walks softly and carries a big stick, but when it comes down to it he will wallop you right hard. Plus the smart guy thing - books n' cleverness, and good old academia.
Leia Organa: Leia's pretty much the first. She steps out into the midst of her most dangerous enemies and smoothly insults them. She's gorgeous, but her white robes come all the way up to her throat. She might have long princess hair, but she wears it sensibly pinned up or braided back out of her way. I regret deeply what was done to Leia in RotJ - they made her loose weight before they put her in that bikini, and you can tell. They also cover her in makeup, and take away her fangs. But at her best, Leia transcends the position of The Girl, and becomes just as much a person as any of them. Her electric UST with Han derives its power from just how much of a Real Person she is, instead of just being an object for masculine conquest. Leia loves genuinely, hates genuinely, fights genuinely, and nurtures genuinely. She loses everything and does not crumble. She believes in her cause and in her friends. She's got a sharp tongue and a warm heart, and she's nobody's damsel in distress. She's also unabashedly political - Luke is pretty quick to start looking for the hidden good in Vader, once he finds out about their blood tie. Leia is less willing to overlook her father's crimes, and for that I admire her intensely. She's deeply committed to justice in the abstract, no matter what. But she's also pretty free of prejudice - she doesn't even consider pulling away from Luke when he tells her about the Skywalker family drama, about who's son he really is. Her capacity to love runs deeper than that, and stronger.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-17 02:52 am (UTC)Then there is Luthien. I forgive Tolkien so much for giving us Luthien. She is all kinds of awesome.
And, erm. Please to be giving me recs for family-of-choice Remus-Sirius-Harry fic? Because I AM ALSO A SUCKER FOR THIS, YES YES YES.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-17 04:50 am (UTC)Lesee,
Iniga has a whole bunch of stuff that I loved as a fifteen-year-old.
Mmm, so many of my bookmarks are dead ! Okay, have another family of choice - Snape/Harry, turned into children, parented by grown-up Ron and Hermione. A Nick In Time by Tira Nog.