redbrunja | One Girl Revolution

You have good taste.

Thank you!

I owe Alanna so much. She taught me how to deal with gender inequality. Basically: fuck it.

Why thank ya, my dear!

Did you get Reload 8?

Five creators (of something) you'd like to kill in slow, painful ways. Or at least maim.

Top five male characters.

Top five het romances.

Top five fictional women you'd take to bed.

Yes. But the fantastic orgasms would make up for it.

(They're heart stopping. Literally.)

Interesting choices.

And what are you top five 'I dislike how this character's written' which bonus 'what would you change'? If I can bug you some more.

Indeed I did.

Oh, Goku.

...whoo. That's hard. :O I'm gonna cheat and go with my favorite five anime/gaming males, because otherwise I'll never be able to narrow it down.

So, in no particular order...

1) Edward Elric
2) Zidane Tribal
3) Iroh (yes I count Avatar as anime what're you laughing at XO)
4) Howl Jenkins (a close Ghibli loss to Pazu and Seiji Amasawa; and to Tamaki Suoh, but I'm trying to be fair and I can only fit one flamboyant blonde in here)
5) Wander

Edward, because I have a ridiculous amount of stuff in common with him, right down to likes, dislikes, and being the shortest people in our families and constantly getting ribbed about it; and he is my longest-running RPing character. I am inordinately fond of that boy, particularly the manga version.

Zidane Tribal, for being the ONLY well-adjusted, friendly, charming, constitutionally optimistic and happy Final Fantasy hero in the straight I-XII line, and a cutie-pie who gets the girl in the end, to boot. He gets brownie points for being good with kids, too. Anyway I have an incurable weakness for saucy rascals (see: George Cooper). XD

Iroh, because what else needs to be said? He even beats out Sokka, Zuko, and Aang. Let the man finish his roast duck, he ain't going nowhere just yet.

Howl is a total spaz. ♥ I realize my fondness of the novel is creeping in and corrupting the strict anime/gaming limit here, and I don't care. He almost lost out to Seiji just for not being able to play the fiddle, though. Born an unmusical Welshman, and all that.

Wander, for being the best boyfriend EVER, even if he was a naive, doomed iconoclast. Who can really say no to a guy who can hit a colossus in the eye at a hundred yards, shooting standing on horseback--and who does it several hundred times just to save your soul? Especially when he's also a big woobie who loves his horsie and can't use a sword to save his life and has a tendency to trip over small animals.

Edited 2008-06-18 05:31 (UTC)

Call me right now. Like..Seriously. Right now.

Well, given my tastes, it's inevitable that none of these are going to be anything that's normally shelved in the "Romance" section! ;)

1. Mara and Sheftu from Mara, Daughter of the Nile (http://www.amazon.com/Mara-Daughter-Puffin-Story-Books/dp/0140319298). YA, and YA written in the 1950s, so it's really pretty chaste, the action never goes any further than some swoony kisses; but this was I think the first love story that really, really clicked with me as a young girl, and that was *plenty* of action at the time. The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that this is really one of my ur-relationship texts that had me imprinting on patterns that I see in a lot of more recent favorites: the witty verbal sparring between parties; the trust issues (not quite full-fledged enemies-as-lovers, but for a while there Mara is secretly playing two sides against each other for her own ends, until with further experience she sees the corruption of one side and whole-heartedly throws her lot in with the other, at risk to herself); the attraction that may be sparked by looks, but is ultimately based on mutual respect for wit and bravery and strength of character; and both parties having complementary strengths and skills and getting to save each other's bacon at critical points in the story. (Also, that final scene...um, did you read it yet? Don't want to spoil you if not, so suffice it to say that a big bit at the end may be what ultimately kinked me hard for both hurt/comfort and "character goes ballistic when love interest is hurt by baddies" scenes...)

2. Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey, various Dorothy Sayers mysteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Vane). This is another one of those really formative stories for me, and what probably left me with such a serious weakness for romances that are truly passions of the mind...and UST, for that matter, as theirs is a very slow, indirect courtship that's drawn out for years. Gallons of trust issues as well, although on a more personal level as Harriet's been badly burned by love before, and given both the era, and her own prior bad experiences, is understandably dubious that a man could truly respect a woman as his intellectual equal, or welcome such a bluestocking as a wife.

3. Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlander_(novel)) books. I avoided picking up this series for years, despite seeing it around all the time, because it was giving off romance-novel vibes, but finally saw enough reviews from folks who weren't fans of conventional romances that I finally took a chance, and was very pleasantly surprised. I love, love, love how it reverses so many of the tiresome tropes by having Claire be the one who's older and sexually experienced and Jamie be the young virgin; I love what a great partnership they have, with mutually complementary skills and strengths and knowledge -- this isn't one of those cases where "healer" means "token helpless girl who has to get rescued all the time by fighters". Claire and Jamie each get chances to rescue each other or fight for each other in their own ways. And while the later books as a whole just aren't as satisfying to me for various reasons, one thing that I do love is that they've consistently shown Jamie and Claire as still being passionate about each other; it's far too common to see older characters, especially ones who are parents and/or in a long-term marriage, be just totally desexualized, and that's very refreshingly NOT the case here.

4. Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel La Motte, A.S. Byatt's Possession (http://www.amazon.com/Possession-Romance-S-Byatt/dp/0679735909). It's a tragically ill-starred relationship, which isn't generally a deal-breaker for me, and it's a double infidelity (Ash is married, La Motte is in a closeted lesbian relationship), which typically is a sticking point -- but the passion-of-the-mind aspect, which is absolutely central here as it's a relationship built on correspondence about writing, is strong enough to outweigh that squick. (It probably helps a lot that it's presented as a sort of madness, both parties deliberately cut it off after a time to try to prevent any pain to their original partners, and there are still all sorts of unhappy consequences anyway...) I'd also list the parallel modern relationship between Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey here -- it's so inextricably tied in to the Victorian story line that I can't really list it on its own, and while it's also very much an intellectual passion, the component of physical attraction is more immediate as they're working together in person, whereas the Ash/La Motte relationship is, other than their lost weekend together, purely a matter of correspondence...

5. Lian Nichang and Zhuo Yi-Hang, The Bride With White Hair (http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/bride_with_white_hair.htm). Epic tragic romance that hits oh so many of my pet kinks and tropes. Enemies as lovers, and trust issues by the bucketful! Books usually get me much, much more strongly than visual media, but there's just something special about this film. Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung were at the top of their game, the chemistry is great and the love scenes are astonishingly sensual for the time and genre.

Honorable mentions to Robin of Loxley and Lady Marion in the 1980s UK television series Robin of Sherwood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_of_Sherwood), Sarah and Jareth in Labyrinth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(film)), Túrin and Níniel/Nienor from J.R.R. Tolkien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BArin_Turambar), Amelia and Emerson in Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Peabody), and Oscar and André (Oscar is a girl, honest!) in The Rose of Versailles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rose_of_Versailles)...

Exactly! She essentially decided it wasn't worth her trouble, and took herself out of it altogether, basically forcing everybody to change the rules. She's been my role model since 11.

Meme sounds awesome. Hit me.

Same here.

On the subject of awesome, top five favorite scenes for the Lioness Quartet.

Ooh, good one. Also, wonderful, since I just re-read it last month.
1. The entire final battle where Alanna, almost beaten, finally just lets go of her sword, and, in doing so, defeats Roger once and for all, while simultaneously permanently sealing his magical gate of evil with her sword. Especially lovely given the symbolism of Alanna's letting go of her carefree days of youth and taking up the responsibility of being not only a knight, but the first Lady Knight and the King's Champion.
2. The scene in Woman Who Ride Like A Man in which Jonathan, accepting his own responsibility to his people - all of them, regardless of race, becomes the Voice of the Bahzir tribes, coinciding wonderfully with Ali Mukhtab's death and Alanna's realization that she and Jon really cannot fulfill their duties or both be themselves while in a romantic relationship with one another.
3. Alanna defeats and kills Alex. This scene was just executed really, really well. Alex disarms her. She makes a comment about how, in a civilized match, she would be allowed to get her weapon. He comments that this is not a civilized match. She promptly shoves his nose into his brain. How can you [i]not[/i] love that? Yes..this scene is in here just for being badass. I could try to justify it with some deep literary analysis..but, that wouldn't be honest.
4. Alanna knowingly commits an act to end a relationship, survives a blizzard that could have killed her when she has a low cold tolerance, and goes up against an Elemental all for her country. And she gets the jewel not because she's a hero, but because she's a loyal, sincere, and brave person. I normally dislike anything dealing with Patriotism, but this really just set up the epicness of the ending very, very well.
5. Alanna heals Jon from the Sweating Sickness. Not as great as the others, and this is partially because, in the first book, Tamora Pierce hadn't entirely developed her writing style. Still, this scene basically begins the arc dealing with Alanna and Jon's relationship, as well as her parental closeness with Myles. It also shows her competence as a healer for the first time.

Honorable mentions go to..anything involving Thayet and Buri, Jon and George's friendship, Alanna's moment talking to Roger on the wall in Lioness Rampant, and Alanna, Thayet, and Buri training with Liam.

...wow. I wish this weren't so Lioness Rampant heavy, but since that was the conclusion to the quartet, it really was amazing, and extremely epic.

Still... You've got some really good and hot ladies there. ^_^

Oh, those are all cool scenes. It really makes me want to get out the books and reread the series.

Oh, thank you for these.

Shamelfully, when you posted this, I had not yet even started reading 'Mara', (I swear, my to-read pile is insane. Not to your standards, but to mine...) but prompted by this, I did. And I have to say, I REALLY like Mara. Although I'm sad that the queen is going to end up being evil - I have a soft spot for the Egyptian queens who said, 'fuck it, I'm ruling' and did.

One Girl Revolution

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

tl;dr :D

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Warning: Obviously, spoilers for SoTL.

no subject

Re: Warning: Obviously, spoilers for SoTL.

no subject