Subject: Hmmm....
Author:
Posted on: 2012-03-22 01:31:00 UTC
I'd have to say Davis Bloome from the latter Smallville seasons. He had potential: The whole Jekyll/Hyde thing he had going on was actually a pretty interesting take on the Doomsday character...and then they derailed him into a complete sociopath because...um...uh...CHEDDAR!
I was thinking about this while rereading some old sporkings. Some books and movies are really, really awful; we all have our particular bete noirs, though Twilight seems to be the popular favorite. However, very few works are actively rotten through and through, and sometimes there's a character or two you just sort of want to . . . save.
For me, it's the Anita Blake character Edward. A professional assassin with a lot of experience and another life he keeps pretty tight-lipped about, Edward is actually much more interesting to me than Anita, who's gotten kind of--well, useless in the past few books. He has a cover identity as a good ol' boy federal marshal, but wound up falling in love with a widow while in his undercover guise. Now Edward is torn about what he might wind up putting this woman (and her children) through, and actually has people to care about. A bit cheesy? Maybe. Hella more interesting than anything Anita gets up to? Definitely.
(I might have some unresolved Anita Blake issues.)
I can take or leave the entire rest of the series, but when it comes to Edward, I'm dying to rescue him from the books and put him into a series where he'll be appreciated. It's actually painful to me to know that he's still in the books, because I'm afraid he'll wind up joining Anita's harem.
So how about you guys? Anybody else have a character they'd love to rescue from an otherwise objectionable work of fiction? Maybe a character you keep reading/watching for, even if the others are driving you nuts?
Kai and Xev from Lexx. If their TV show was anything REMOTELY less close to an acid trip, these two could be interesting.
Your mileage may vary in regards to the quality of the movie in question here, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
The entire cast of Nadesico: The Prince of Darkness. The movie was completely pointless, nothing any of the characters did actually mattered, and the final battle was an utter curbstomp. The entire cast had already shown that they could be good characters in the TV series, even if some didn't get as much development as they should have, and they still had some entertaining moments in the movie. However, there was no reason to bring them all together again apart from simple nostalgia, which wasn't enough to prevent it from being meaningless in the end. I don't know what went wrong between the show and the movie, but they deserved a much better sendoff than they got.
On that note, Lapis Lazuli, also from Prince of Darkness. I don't know who she is or where she came from or anything at all about her, other than that she has a ship apparently as powerful as the Nadesico and is probably from the same program that made Ruri the child genius that she is. There's just enough from her one appearance to raise plenty of questions, but all of them go unanswered. There might have been a sequel planned, but as it is, she is still a mystery wrapped in an enigma with a ribbon made of question marks, and will likely remain that way forever. Poor girl didn't even get a chance.
Not TECHNICALLY a character, but I would have to say the vampires from The Mortal Instruments. My reason? Mainly because they come off as so horrible snobbish that is comes around to hilarious.
... Also, not to infringe on the thread or anything, but I was wondering if I could use Agent Suicide (name only, and a small, brief visual mention) for something that may come out some time soon. I could the contents and what exactly I would like to use him for along to Phobos or Nesh or someone who has some wy to contact you, of course.
And so-bad-it's-good is a legit reason to want to save them. XD They could be entertaining as hell in a better series, if written as they actually are instead of how the author wanted them to sound.
If you want to use Su for a cameo, honestly, feel free. :) You don't need to ask permission for a little one-liner or something; I know you won't damage him.
I'll be sure to credit you, of course! :D
As for the race of vampires... My brother was telling me about the series because he had just read them all. I own all three books, but have yet to crack them open >.>
Anyway, he said that there were only beautiful vampires, and I was about to go in full Anti-Twilight mode ranting when he interrupted me, and explained that the reason there were only beautiful vampires is because they didn't allow ugly people to be turned.
They don't allow ugly people in. This one fact elevated them from sparklepires to more traditional vampires with some serious pretentiousness. From what else I heard, they are pretty regular vampires, so they get a pass in my book.
I wanted to rescue a lot of characters from the Nightside books, just because the author has an unfortunate habit of coming up with something extremely cool/creepy and then killing them off in the next five pages. The Lamentation in particular comes to mind; it just seems like such a waste to make an abomination of that caliber and then just blow it up without it actually getting to do anything.
I'd have to say Davis Bloome from the latter Smallville seasons. He had potential: The whole Jekyll/Hyde thing he had going on was actually a pretty interesting take on the Doomsday character...and then they derailed him into a complete sociopath because...um...uh...CHEDDAR!
Not quite what you're talking about, but I never liked what happened to Stark's character in his later appearances in Farscape. I love the show to death, but it's like the writers forgot that his craziness when we first met him was an act, and he became sort of a stock lunatic to make bad decisions and mess things up (as if the crew of Moya needed help making bad decisions and getting into trouble—hah!). I was disappointed, and I would've liked to give him a better deal. Also, I have a soft spot for dudes with only half a face. >.>
More on topic, Brom from Eragon. I don't remember much about the book and I never read the other ones, but I remember that he was interesting, and in the hands of a better writer his adventures would probably be pretty fun to read. And maybe Saphira, too. I understand she gets pretty well shafted by her rider, which is not cool. I know! Let's give Saphira to Brom instead of that dumb kid, what's his name, and let them be the main characters!
~Neshomeh
I've always wished that I could pull Alois Trancy out of the train wreck that is Kuroshitsuji Season 2.
Renesmee Cullen. If I could get her into another series, she could grow up with a name that isn't completely ridiculous, in a family that isn't going to force her into a relationship that's the endorsed result of child grooming. She may be a proto-Sue, but nobody deserves that.
Tina, Artie, Mike and Mercedes from Glee. In another series, they could get more plotlines, some actual development and not exist to stand in the background.
Even if just in-canon. Granted, I've never actually read her novella, but still.
Alice from Twilight would be my first thought. I know, I know, people think she's just as annoying as Edward and Bella/ a Sue in her own right. But in the hands of a GOOD author (as opposed to Smeyer), the minor characters' stories are actually INTERESTING.
Especially if you take the tack that getting turned into a vampire can't fix crazy. Then Alice is a BRILLIANT character.
She's been driven mad by a low-level psychic talent she can't control, and spent most of her adolescence in the nuthouse. She can see her future, and can sort of control it, but doesn't always have the good judgement to make the choices that will get her there. She is kind of manic, and makes really bad choices (e.g. stealing fast cars) on a regular basis. She's an incurable optimist, even though (Being a vampire) there's not much to be optimistic about. Oh, and she's in love with a guy who's a stone-cold killer, and doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't like him.
Maybe I'm reading her character wrong, but that's how I saw her.
I read the entire series (still not entirely sure why), and in all four books she is the only character that I found had a unique personality; as well as being the only female that wasn't either pathetic, underdeveloped, or a b****.
One of my dreams is to write a mashup of Twilight and Vampire: The Masquerade, where the Twilight characters act according to the rules of the VtM verse.
This means that it'd be kind of a badfic... According to VtM, there ARE no good vampires, there are just sympathetic ones and Complete Monsters. The trick is staying as human as you can, however you can. Problem is, with most of the Cullens' (canon) weak, bitchy personalities, they'd fall into the darkness pretty quickly.
I was thinking of doing it with Alice as the sympathetic, but batsheet insane, heroine, and the rest of the Cullens being truly nasty. Anyone up for co-writing?
... but I have the old WoD core rulebooks for both Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Dark Ages. (Plus the core rulebook and a couple splatbooks for old WoD Mage: The Ascension, if anything from that would help.)
That ... actually makes a lot of sense.