Random late-night poll

[lotesse]

brought to you by my tendency to plunge back into obscure childhood fandoms when faced with schoolwork. I've been reading in The Dark is Rising, and I keep finding fic that labels Bran as an albino, either in narration or in dialogue. And it keeps hitting me as incorrect, somehow - though I've no idea why. So I'm putting it to you all.

Poll #2314

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

Hey kids, would you call Bran Davies an albino?

View Answers

yes
5 (50.0%)

no
4 (40.0%)

maybe?
1 (10.0%)

something that I will expound upon in the comments
0 (0.0%)

And if he is/is not, how on earth does that intersect with the Evil Albino trend that's been running these last couple of years?

Comments

[laughingrat]

It's been running for a while! I remember an "evil albino" in some TV show in the 70s, ferinstance. Maybe an ep of Incredible Hulk?

Bran had golden eyes, didn't he? So, not albino.

[lotesse]

Yep, she calls them hawk-like. And I'm beginning to feel like the Evil Albino thing will never end!

[laughingrat]

I wonder when the first instance was? Would TV Tropes tell us? Who wants to volunteer to dive into the seething, entrancing whirlpool that is TV Tropes? :)

[starlady]

I think Evil Albino started centuries, if not millennia, ago.

Isn't he canonically described as an albino?

[lotesse]

He's described as colorless - pale skin, pale hair - with fairly arresting golden eyes that he keeps hidden behind dark glasses. He talks about being teased, called one of the Tylwyth Teg. But I don't think Cooper ever uses the term "albino," though I could be wrong.

[starlady]

No, I think you're right that Cooper never uses "albino"--but clearly the characterization strikes people as albino, aside from the eyes. It occurs to me that the real Evil Albino in the books is the White Rider.

All right, so, let me ask--I loved these books as a kid, and I still think they're pretty great, but in retrospect I really don't think much of the characterization of Susan. What did you think (of anything about them, really)?

[lotesse]

Is it Jane you mean?

I've remained passionately in love with TDiR ever since I first read them as a twelve-yea-old. We're talking at least yearly rereads, here. And - I mean, Jane isn't Will or Bran, but of the three Drew children I feel like she comes off best. She's perceptive and compassionate, and Cooper gives her more moments of connection to the mythic than either of her brothers. Jane gets to talk to the Greenwitch, and to the Lady, and there's a girl in the Lost Land with a face that looks like hers. Not to mention that she pretty much gets the last word, at the end.

Jane isn't destined, again not like Will and Bran, but Cooper clearly doesn't think less of her characters for that. It's one of the things I really like about the books - the way that the ordinary and the sacral bump shoulders and inform one another.

[sistermagpie]

It never occurred to me he was supposed to be anything else. I just figured his particular albino situation led to him having eyes that would be considered golden. The still seem to be going for the same idea, being light-sensitive etc. I think I always figured his eyes would have been brown if he had more pigment?

[lotesse]

That's interesting - it never occurred to me that he would be! And I see your point about light sensitivity, but I think it's interesting that you perceive his eyes as being somehow lessened in pigment - I always saw them as intensely colored, and I think that's part of the reason why albinism didn't come up for me. In my mind, he's without color except for his eyes.

What do you make of the fact that Cooper doesn't use that term to apply to him?

[sistermagpie]

Funny I never even thought about her using the word. I don't know! I mean, I think when I thought about it it was more to think about why she made him lacking in color in the first place, you know? Re: the eyes, I guess I saw them more lacking in a darker shade than lacking in color. Like, some true albinos have eyes that are pink or violet. Or even red--which is a striking color, it's just not from the pigments in the eyes. Bran, though, does have color in his eyes.

Maybe she didn't want Bran "diagnosed" in the text? So she just described what he looked like without labelling him an albino? IT seems like even if he really wasn't albino other people would have assumed he was given his coloring--people in his world, I mean.

[starlady]

She's perceptive and compassionate, and Cooper gives her more moments of connection to the mythic than either of her brothers.

But to what extent are these stereotypically girlish traits? I don't know where the line is, which is why I ask.

It's one of the things I really like about the books - the way that the ordinary and the sacral bump shoulders and inform one another.

Definitely. I think it's clearest in The Dark Is Rising, but it's definitely in all the books.

[ashkitty]

(Okay, I know this is MONTHS AND MONTHS late, but I'm now hunting for fic and noticed and just wanted to make the teensy, teensy comment that Cooper does use the word, and so does Bran. It's right after the encounter with Caradog Pritchard--my copy of TGK has it on page 34:

'You will find out,' Bran said, 'that people like him are a bit afraid of me, deep down. It is because I am albino, you see. The white hair, and funny eyes, and not much pigment in the skin-a bit of a freak, you might say.'

I remember because at the time I'd only ever heard the word used for horses. ;) But that's a bit of subvertng the Evil Albino thing right there, really--clearly he isn't, but knows about it well enough.

Anyway, sorry for poking in late. ;)

[sistermagpie]

No apologies needed--thanks! I really did wonder whether the word was ever used in the text. It probably is good that Bran uses the word, actually, because really that's all he is. It's not really a magical thing so I can see him wanting to just say yeah, I have a condition from birth that makes me lack pigment.