selenak, posts by tag: coraline - LiveJournal

Five characters who would like to explore or travel in space (who haven't done so already.)

1.) Clyde from The Sarah Jane Adventures. Well, technically speaking he already was in space, but being locked in a satelite or bodyswaped for a minute or two to another planet doesn't count as exploring. You know he'd love it. (So would Rani and Luke, of course.)

2.) Hiro Nakamura from Heroes. Since I stopped watching in early s3, I can't know for sure he hasn't done for, but I think it's a reasonable assumption. And he would adore it.

3.) Andrew Wells from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Mind you, he'd talk the crew's ears off with comparisons to just about every sci fi show and film ever, when he wouldn't be analyzing their dynamics and talking about UST. So he might not end the journey alive. But he'd sign on in a heartbeast.

4.) Coraline from the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Exploring hidden space is her speciality, and after the Other Mother, she'd have no problem with whatever the universe might be throwing at her.

5.) Ellie from Up! With Carl at her side, of course. You just know she was an early sci fi fan and never missed a serial.

This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/6912…. Comment there or here, as you wish.

Trickier to answer then you'd think, because presumably the phrasing excludes all roughly human-shaped aliens and robots. I wonder about John Henry from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It would probably be cheating to include him, for despite him being actually in the form of several boxes, it's the human-shaped extension and the actor of same who sells us on John Henry as someone to care for. Similarly, someone like Chewbacca from Star Wars or Novice Hame or Brannigan from Doctor Who would be out because despite being covered by fur from head to foot, they come in human size and shape. So, let's see, beloved characters who really don't appear in human form.

1) Pilot from Farscape. Aka the one everyone is thinking of when they tell Farscape sceptics "the muppets will make you cry". Gentle, occasionally snarky, with as much tragedy in his life as any of the human-shaped characters. Pilot is immensely huggable (complicated by the fact he has a lot of limbs), and that's a fact.

2) Rygel from Farscape. As if I'd leave my beloved Dominar out. Rygel is Pilot's opposite, starting with the fact he's probably the oldest character on the show until Noranti in s4 (and Pilot is very much a teenager for his species, though we don't have confirmation of that fact until s2). He's greedy, eternally hungry, very shrewd, great at negotiations, actually very dangerous if you underestimate him due to size, and over the course of the show finds himself starting to care for certain people despite himself.

3) Matthew from Sandman. A borderline case as he used to be human before dying and becoming a raven in the Dreaming, but that's his Swamp Thing backstory before Sandman starts, and we never see Matthew as anything but a raven in Sandman (and wouldn't know he once was human if not for two or three lines of dialogue in ten volumes), plus the saga makes the point that his form is also his nature now when he finds himself feasting raven-style. Hence I say he counts. Matthew is one of my all time favourite sidekicks as well, no-nonsense, loyal but asking questions anyway if he doesn't understand something, and putting up with a lot from having to yell driving instructions at Delirium to being sent out in tandem with a serial killer with teeth for eyes.

4) The cat from Coraline. It's very evident from his works - both comics and novels - that Neil Gaiman likes cats (and cat godesses), and my favourite of his cats is the one from Coraline. The cat - who refuses to be called by a human name ("I know who I am") - is the one ally Coraline has (in the novel; the fact this is changed for the film makes for a somewhat different story), and so very, very feline both when silent and when speaking. No one's sidekick, I'd call it Coraline's occasional companion - when it chooses to be.

5) Fuchur the luck dragon from The Never-Ending Story (again, book, not film; the design for Fuchur was one of the many things Michael Ende disliked about the movie, because the description for Fuchur in the novel is pretty definite - think Chinese style dragon). Fuchur was the first friendly dragon I encountered in fiction as a child, and no less impressive or awesome for this; when Atreyu finds Fuchur escaped Ygrammul's net along with himself I was so relieved like you wouldn't believe. Fuchur is still my favourite dragon, come to think of it.

One year later than in the English-speaking countries, the film by Henry Selick based on Neil Gaiman's novella finally made it to the German screens. It turned out to be a highly enjoyable fantasy movie (with one nitpick on my part); I saw it with two boys age 9 and 10, and they loved it, though one of them afterwards confessed to having nearly cried because he was so scared. (Apparantly his parents don't raise him with ideas of manly stoicism. Good for them!) (I'll get to which sequence scared him in the spoilery part of my review. Suffice to say it wasn't done by gore if you're a parent and wondering whether or not to show this to your children. It was the good old "damn it, little Red Riding Hood, don't you see that's not your grandmother?!?" effect.) I can't say anything about the 3-D effect as we saw it the conventional way (such is the lot of provincial cinemas). Generally speaking, it seems to confirm Gaiman does better than Moore when it comes to cinematic adaptions, not least because the film doesn't commit either of the big mistakes (which would be either to become just an illustrated highlights of version, with no cinematic life of its own, or to have so little to do with the material it's based on that all the charm of the original is lost). And it's just plain fun, that one nitpick aside.

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Idle thought of the day, which is a Torchwood/Heroes crossover of sorts: in Cardiff, Jack Harkness summons his team and asks: "Who the hell ordered a container full of iPods?"

(This is obscure enough not to be spoilery, I hope.)

(But you know, Torchwood would end up with the iPods. They so so would.)

Then there's fannish5: What are your five favorite pets or animals, in any fandom(s)?

1) Mr. Muggles, of Heroes. Clearly the true mastermind in the Bennet family, certain horn-rimmed glasses wearers not withstanding.

2) K-9, of Dr. Who. I admit this is an acquired taste, but no matter what you think of him in the 70s, can you deny his showdown in School Reunion was glorious?

3) The cat in Coraline (novel, written by Neil Gaiman). N.G.'s thing for cats is well-established, but they're usually goddesses in disguise. This one is a cat. Definitely not Coraline's sidekick, but provider of snarky commentary and enigmatic to the last as cats should be.

4) Matthew the Raven in Sandman (still Neil Gaiman). This one might be considered cheating, as Matthew was a human before he became a raven, but he's a raven throughout the Sandman saga, so he counts. One of the best sidekicks ever, and his reaction to Morpheus' fate gets me every time.

5) Spot the cat in Star Trek: The Next Generation, owner of Data and recipient of his poetry. Once upon a time, I could even recite the damm poem!

(I did consider nominating Jean-Luc Picard, on account of him being canonically Q's pet - Data says so! - but felt I was stretching it with Matthew already, so...)