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Character Letter Meme
Mar. 20th, 2012 03:47 pmApparantly I am a numpty and should have posted this on my own journal and not as a comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
f4f3OP.
I will say nothing about failures to communicate resting with the person trying to send you a message.
These are the rules.
1. Leave a comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter. (Edited to point out, only if you ask for one, you can comment without having to do this yourself)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows
f4f3gave me a D.
Dan Dare – pilot of the future. Basically, a Spitfire pilot in SPAAACE.
When I was a boy I, and both of my brothers, had a weekly comic. We’d read ours and then swop. I had The Eagle, with Dan Dare. Rugged, fair play and wavy eyebrows. I remember more about the feeling than I do of the stories. I enjoyed the anticipation of the episodic nature of each story.
Years after I moved to Australia and stopped reading the Eagle I came across a Dan Dare story where one of his own crew sells out humanity to the Mekon. The sense of betrayal still makes me want to hit people.
Dave Lister – the last human. Basically, a scouser in SPAAACE. Through a series of accidents Dave manages to end up the last living human being, many millions of years into the future and a very long way away from home. He lives in a large space ship with huge resources available to him. It ought to be paradise, but the type of paradise that would drive a normal man insane with ennui or drink or doughnuts. So the ship’s computer provides Dave with a roommate, the holographic computer generated ghost of his former roommate, who is vain, stupid, cowardly, anal, petty and cruel. The struggle to live with such an unappealing character keeps Dave sane in the face of the bleakness of being alone.
D’artagnan - basically Luke Skywalker in FRAAANCE. Not quite. He’s less involved in a fight between good and evil than he is a minor player in a fight for priority between two sets of toffs. D’artagnan sets off poor but proud to become a famous warrior. Arrogant, chauvinistic, heroic, politically compromised, handy with a rapier he works as a spy and agent for the what passes as the government of France. Although not actually a member D’artagnan is by far the most famous member of the most famous threesome in history.
I think also of interest as a historical romance set many hundred years ago written a few hundred years ago.
Diziet “Dizzy” Sma, basically, M in SPAAACE. Dizzy is a handler for Special Circumstances, the militant wing of the Culture. Her job, when we encounter her, is to manage the relationship between Special Circumstances and the mercenary general who is hired to do jobs that the Culture finds distasteful, of doubtful morality, difficult or desirable to disavow. Why the Culture can’t ask one of its Ships to run a simulacrum of the mercenary I don’t know.
The Daleks. Nazis in SPAAACE. That’s all you need to know. The main adversary of enigmatic time travelling hero, the Doctor Daleks are perhaps the most famous British science-fiction villain of all time. The Daleks have a terrifying combination of a genocidal superiority complex, resting on a deep-seated inferiority complex and near invincible* armaments. They are mutant warriors encased in a tank armed with a death ray. Racial purity, extermination and living room are their main pre-occupations. Death rays, multi-functional sink plungers and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope are their main weapons. And Fear. Responsible for more nightmares than Tim Burton the Daleks have rolled their way through the fevered imaginations of small children since the 1960’s. Fear and Surprise. No, not surprise.
In recent years they have been over used to the point of nausea. In in recent series of Doctor Who it is an even bet that if you don’t know what is going on it is part of a series long story arc involving some convoluted plot by the Daleks to steal the earth, turn all humans into Daleks or re-paint the Tardis bright pink and use it to sell coffee. What ever it is, it has to be Epic. More EPIC than last time. More EPICALLY EPIC ™ than the last lot did. And it has to fail. It has to fail because their plan is so Epic that if they succeed then that is end of the universe. So it fails, epically. An Epic fail. There’s no surprise left and little fear. They turn up every time and every time they get their eyestalks handed to them using some Deus ex Machina contrived by the ultimate god in a box.
Daleks used to be terrifying. I now find them boring.
*I say near invincible because they get the living crap kicked out of them *every single time* by some eccentric hippy armed only with a screwdriver.
f4f3OP.I will say nothing about failures to communicate resting with the person trying to send you a message.
These are the rules.
1. Leave a comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter. (Edited to point out, only if you ask for one, you can comment without having to do this yourself)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows
f4f3gave me a D.Dan Dare – pilot of the future. Basically, a Spitfire pilot in SPAAACE.
When I was a boy I, and both of my brothers, had a weekly comic. We’d read ours and then swop. I had The Eagle, with Dan Dare. Rugged, fair play and wavy eyebrows. I remember more about the feeling than I do of the stories. I enjoyed the anticipation of the episodic nature of each story.
Years after I moved to Australia and stopped reading the Eagle I came across a Dan Dare story where one of his own crew sells out humanity to the Mekon. The sense of betrayal still makes me want to hit people.
Dave Lister – the last human. Basically, a scouser in SPAAACE. Through a series of accidents Dave manages to end up the last living human being, many millions of years into the future and a very long way away from home. He lives in a large space ship with huge resources available to him. It ought to be paradise, but the type of paradise that would drive a normal man insane with ennui or drink or doughnuts. So the ship’s computer provides Dave with a roommate, the holographic computer generated ghost of his former roommate, who is vain, stupid, cowardly, anal, petty and cruel. The struggle to live with such an unappealing character keeps Dave sane in the face of the bleakness of being alone.
D’artagnan - basically Luke Skywalker in FRAAANCE. Not quite. He’s less involved in a fight between good and evil than he is a minor player in a fight for priority between two sets of toffs. D’artagnan sets off poor but proud to become a famous warrior. Arrogant, chauvinistic, heroic, politically compromised, handy with a rapier he works as a spy and agent for the what passes as the government of France. Although not actually a member D’artagnan is by far the most famous member of the most famous threesome in history.
I think also of interest as a historical romance set many hundred years ago written a few hundred years ago.
Diziet “Dizzy” Sma, basically, M in SPAAACE. Dizzy is a handler for Special Circumstances, the militant wing of the Culture. Her job, when we encounter her, is to manage the relationship between Special Circumstances and the mercenary general who is hired to do jobs that the Culture finds distasteful, of doubtful morality, difficult or desirable to disavow. Why the Culture can’t ask one of its Ships to run a simulacrum of the mercenary I don’t know.
The Daleks. Nazis in SPAAACE. That’s all you need to know. The main adversary of enigmatic time travelling hero, the Doctor Daleks are perhaps the most famous British science-fiction villain of all time. The Daleks have a terrifying combination of a genocidal superiority complex, resting on a deep-seated inferiority complex and near invincible* armaments. They are mutant warriors encased in a tank armed with a death ray. Racial purity, extermination and living room are their main pre-occupations. Death rays, multi-functional sink plungers and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope are their main weapons. And Fear. Responsible for more nightmares than Tim Burton the Daleks have rolled their way through the fevered imaginations of small children since the 1960’s. Fear and Surprise. No, not surprise.
In recent years they have been over used to the point of nausea. In in recent series of Doctor Who it is an even bet that if you don’t know what is going on it is part of a series long story arc involving some convoluted plot by the Daleks to steal the earth, turn all humans into Daleks or re-paint the Tardis bright pink and use it to sell coffee. What ever it is, it has to be Epic. More EPIC than last time. More EPICALLY EPIC ™ than the last lot did. And it has to fail. It has to fail because their plan is so Epic that if they succeed then that is end of the universe. So it fails, epically. An Epic fail. There’s no surprise left and little fear. They turn up every time and every time they get their eyestalks handed to them using some Deus ex Machina contrived by the ultimate god in a box.
Daleks used to be terrifying. I now find them boring.
*I say near invincible because they get the living crap kicked out of them *every single time* by some eccentric hippy armed only with a screwdriver.
