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selenakOne of the most pleasant aspects of the livejournal world: one discussion leads to another, with aspects you'd never have thought of on your own. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrogirl2 continued her line of thoughts on John Crichton and hero archetypes
here;neuralclone pointed out
here that while the Wise Old Man/Young Hero version of the mentor/protégé relationship got increasingly battered in recent years as far as genre is concerned, we've got presentations of successful mentor/protégé bonds which grow instead of lessen... but not exactly where you'd usually expect them. She offered Scorpius and Braca, as well as Londo and Vir, and talked about parallels which had not occurred to me before...
Simultaneously,andrastewhite in her comment to yesterday's ponderings reminded me of the extremely ambiguous origins of the Merlin prototype, comparing the Merlin of old to a combination of the rising Trickster and the falling Sky God. This in turn made me think of the Trickster-as-Mentor, something which does come up in pop culture more than once in recent years. The first example I thought of was Methos on Highlander: The Series, who certainly fulfils just this position for the show's hero, Duncan MacLeod. Of course, the advantage of having a Trickster character in a mentor function, from a narrative pov, is that he/she is a wild card, a character which does not follow fixed parameters and whose lessons, while necessary to the story, might not always be good ones. I'm not using the word "good" in a moral/ethical sense here; to use a Farscape example, certainly Harvey qualifies for the Trickster position in John's life, but in his earliest incarnation as the chip-driven neural clone he also caused John to kill Aeryn, which imo has a lot to do with John's later obsession to save Aeryn at all costs, including the rest of the galaxy. Even Scorpius in a way could qualify for the Trickster archetype, though he is more a shadow self, which is not mutually exclusive; in any case, he and John are agents of change for each other, a function usually inherent in Tricksters.
Trickster-as-Mentor: Wednesday (aka Odin) in American Gods by Neil Gaiman certainly qualifies as well. Many fanfic writers, fascinated by Tricksters in TV shows, make the mistake of whitewashing them and giving them solely beneficial intentions towards the hero. Not so Neil Gaiman. Wednesday is a fascinating character, and certainly Shadow becomes not just your ordinary hero but a more real, feeling, and sovereign person through Wednesday and his machinations, but at the same time, Wednesday's aims are as wrong as it gets.
Speaking of Neil Gaiman: I finally acquired a copy of the first issue of 1602 and...
...so far, love it. Of course, not knowing the Marvel universe that well except for the movies and two or three paperbacks stopped me from catching all allusions, but the annotations here and here are helpful in this regard. On the other hand, I am something of a history buff and so was very amused by the alternate Elizabethan England Gaiman conjures up. Methinks he's setting the dying Elizabeth up for being one of the witchbreed (i.e. a mutant) herself; after all, her mother, Anne Boleyn, was suspected of being a witch and accused of having a physical deformity, a sixth finger on one hand, which was regarded as proof of the accusation. And of course there has to be a Guy Fawkes tie-in. *g*
(Sidenote: He alluded to the Guy Fawkes conspiracy in the last Sandman tale, at the end of "The Wake", with Shakespeare and Ben Jonson inventing the doggerel. Plus of course Guy Fawkes is something of a role model for the main character in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta.)
I wonder, though, whether the Grand Inquisitor is meant to be Magneto. This would be something of a disappointment since it would mean a strictly villainous Magneto instead of a morally ambivalent one, and one minus one of his crucial traits, the obsession with mutant (or in this case, witchbreed) rule as a means to counter persecution. Or maybe the Inquisitor is not all he appears to be?
astrogirl2 continued her line of thoughts on John Crichton and hero archetypes here;
neuralclone pointed out here that while the Wise Old Man/Young Hero version of the mentor/protégé relationship got increasingly battered in recent years as far as genre is concerned, we've got presentations of successful mentor/protégé bonds which grow instead of lessen... but not exactly where you'd usually expect them. She offered Scorpius and Braca, as well as Londo and Vir, and talked about parallels which had not occurred to me before...
Simultaneously,
andrastewhite in her comment to yesterday's ponderings reminded me of the extremely ambiguous origins of the Merlin prototype, comparing the Merlin of old to a combination of the rising Trickster and the falling Sky God. This in turn made me think of the Trickster-as-Mentor, something which does come up in pop culture more than once in recent years. The first example I thought of was Methos on Highlander: The Series, who certainly fulfils just this position for the show's hero, Duncan MacLeod. Of course, the advantage of having a Trickster character in a mentor function, from a narrative pov, is that he/she is a wild card, a character which does not follow fixed parameters and whose lessons, while necessary to the story, might not always be good ones. I'm not using the word "good" in a moral/ethical sense here; to use a Farscape example, certainly Harvey qualifies for the Trickster position in John's life, but in his earliest incarnation as the chip-driven neural clone he also caused John to kill Aeryn, which imo has a lot to do with John's later obsession to save Aeryn at all costs, including the rest of the galaxy. Even Scorpius in a way could qualify for the Trickster archetype, though he is more a shadow self, which is not mutually exclusive; in any case, he and John are agents of change for each other, a function usually inherent in Tricksters. Trickster-as-Mentor: Wednesday (aka Odin) in American Gods by Neil Gaiman certainly qualifies as well. Many fanfic writers, fascinated by Tricksters in TV shows, make the mistake of whitewashing them and giving them solely beneficial intentions towards the hero. Not so Neil Gaiman. Wednesday is a fascinating character, and certainly Shadow becomes not just your ordinary hero but a more real, feeling, and sovereign person through Wednesday and his machinations, but at the same time, Wednesday's aims are as wrong as it gets.
Speaking of Neil Gaiman: I finally acquired a copy of the first issue of 1602 and...
...so far, love it. Of course, not knowing the Marvel universe that well except for the movies and two or three paperbacks stopped me from catching all allusions, but the annotations here and here are helpful in this regard. On the other hand, I am something of a history buff and so was very amused by the alternate Elizabethan England Gaiman conjures up. Methinks he's setting the dying Elizabeth up for being one of the witchbreed (i.e. a mutant) herself; after all, her mother, Anne Boleyn, was suspected of being a witch and accused of having a physical deformity, a sixth finger on one hand, which was regarded as proof of the accusation. And of course there has to be a Guy Fawkes tie-in. *g*
(Sidenote: He alluded to the Guy Fawkes conspiracy in the last Sandman tale, at the end of "The Wake", with Shakespeare and Ben Jonson inventing the doggerel. Plus of course Guy Fawkes is something of a role model for the main character in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta.)
I wonder, though, whether the Grand Inquisitor is meant to be Magneto. This would be something of a disappointment since it would mean a strictly villainous Magneto instead of a morally ambivalent one, and one minus one of his crucial traits, the obsession with mutant (or in this case, witchbreed) rule as a means to counter persecution. Or maybe the Inquisitor is not all he appears to be?
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Date: 2003-08-30 10:11 am (UTC)Oh, I'm not complaining about the set-up...
Date: 2003-08-31 02:17 am (UTC)Also, Q.
Date: 2003-08-30 11:16 am (UTC)Scorpius is not really the Trickster so much as he is the Magus. Actually, *John* is Trickster throughout a good part of the series, and interestingly, although Scorpius is the Magus Scorpius comes to John to learn from Trickster (since their role vis-a-vis each other is very much Magus vs. Trickster. Scorpius wins by being devious, calculating and several steps ahead of John; John wins through dumb luck, the help of his friends, and a willingness to do things that are absolutely insane, but work.)
Q, of course!
Date: 2003-08-30 11:23 am (UTC)While we're talking Trek, Garak would be another Trickster, in regards to Bashir, and later for one episode in regards to Sisko as well.
John-as-trickster with Scorpius-as-Magus: works for me.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 08:00 pm (UTC)As for Harvey as trickster - yes, Harvey is a trickster. A "pooka" in more ways than one. However I think Crichton is also a "trickster", in that he's the "little guy" who prevails through cunning and luck, and I don't think the "mentoring" has only been going one way. To quote a Ben Browder interview of a few months ago:
"You can think about Harvey's journey as the opposite of Crichton's journey. Crichton starts off as this sort of innocent guy who doesn't know anything and he becomes harder and more knowledgeable. Harvey, in an odd way, does the reverse. He starts off as this hard being in Crichton's head who knows everything and he's become more innocent and playful as he's gone along. It's an interesting cross-pollination.