Drive-by recs

[selenak]

Citizen Kane:

The Hay Scale: a glimpse at young Charlie Kane and Jed Leland, which manages to capture so much about the relationship and about Kane, and does so in an elegant subtle way. It's one of those "you can imagine the actors saying those lines" cases.

Buffy:

Ophelia's Reconstruction, set during the summer between season 5 and 6, this is a Tara point of view. I loved Tara pretty much from the moment she showed up in Hush, and this story is a good demonstration of why. It also does justice to the reality of grief, and offers great glimpses at Xander and Dawn. (The Xander scenes in particular made me wish we'd have gotten more interaction between him and Tara on screen.)

The Three Musketeers:

Some day, I'm going to write my own Dumas meta. Meanwhile, I'm glad when other people do. This post takes on one of my pet peeves* - Milady de Winter (one of my favourite villainesses), the backstory which is supposed to make us feel sorry for Athos but even when I was a teenager made me feel sorry for Milady instead, and the general rendition of her fate.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course Milady isn't a misunderstood lamb, she's quite responsible for her choices later, BUT in the episode with Athos specifically, I regard her as the one wronged. She didn't do anything to him but marry him without telling him about her past (and what kind of husband needs a fall from a horse to see his wife's shoulder for the first time anyway, I ask you?), and he, according to both of them, immediately responded by hanging her on the next tree. Not for her crime - he had no idea what she had done or hadn't, he just knew by the mark on her shoulder she had to be a criminal -, simply because his sense of honour was outraged by the idea of having married a criminal. This makes him a man of his time, but not necessarily a sympathetic one, and certainly not the victim in this marriage.

D'Artagnan: kills me in the last novel, when the others are either corrupt, gone or otherwise lost. I really feel for him there.

[lynnb.livejournal.com]

and what kind of husband needs a fall from a horse to see his wife's shoulder for the first time anyway, I ask you?

LOL! Yes, I wondered at that myself ;) I agree that Athos was not in the right in that case. I just felt that it couldn't be the sole cause for Milady's future choices.

I think Athos began to be redeemed first by his affection for D'Artagnan, then when he became a father.

D'Artagnan broke my heart after Athos' funeral, when he sadly told himself to just go forward.