February - 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #60: Dana Scully

Joe Pace

Feb 29, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #60: Dana Scully

I was slow to warm to The X-Files. I eventually started watching it because Jen was a faithful devotee, and if she was making this list, I suspect Fox Mulder might have shown up in the first week of January. But for me, it was always about Dana Scully. She was a hardheaded, no-nonsense agent from the Clarice Starling school of petite FBI badassery. She was a scientist, steeped in logic and reality, and the perfect foil for Mulder's fantasies. As time went by and the series tw

Favorite Fictional Characters, #59: Basil Fawlty

Joe Pace

Feb 28, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #59: Basil Fawlty

Basil Fawlty owns a hotel. At least, his wife Sybil does, and she allows him to think he does too. Running that hotel would be a joy to Fawlty if it weren't for the guests and their incessant requests and desires. He's a broken man, beaten down by his inescapable position in Britain's class structure, by the incompetence of his staff, by the airy condescension of his wife, but mostly by his own inability to properly navigate most social situations. The simplest complications

Favorite Fictional Characters, #58: Haymitch Abernathy

Joe Pace

Feb 27, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #58: Haymitch Abernathy

I'm not a huge fan of the Hunger Games books or movies. Katniss is a bit too Mary Sue for me, and Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal a bit too alternatively wooden and manic. The story tries too hard to be complex, and gets lost in its own meandering political narrative. There are some moments of good storytelling, but on the whole it is an edgier Twilight, an episode of The OC with a body count. I'm mildly curious about the praxis of the District system, but instead of worldbuild

Favorite Fictional Characters, #57: Victor Frankenstein

Joe Pace

Feb 26, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #57: Victor Frankenstein

In 1816, young Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Shelley visited Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. Byron suggested they write ghost stories. Mary Shelley's entry would eventually be published in 1818 as Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. It is one of the greatest books ever written, the forerunner of the science fiction and horror genres, a brilliant weaving of Gothic and Romantic themes, and a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare. And as compelling as the monster is, the true center

Favorite Fictional Characters, #56: Barney Stinson

Joe Pace

Feb 25, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #56: Barney Stinson

How I Met Your Mother was a great show, then a decent one, before descending into mediocrity for the last third of its run. Most viewers were just hanging around to see how the thing would end, and the introduction of the mother breathed new life into the stagnating narrative. Then the show's creators, in an act of stunning hubris and creative betrayal, destroyed the heart of their own story in the finale. But this isn't about that. This is about one of my favorite characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #55: Marion Ravenwood

Joe Pace

Feb 24, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #55: Marion Ravenwood

Indy's true love, Marion was a throwback to the tough-broad school of 1930s Hollywood serials, less damsel in distress than land mine in a dress. Rugged enough to operate a watering hole in the Nepalese mountainside, drinking locals twice her size under the table, cunning enough to use her sexuality to seduce and nearly escape Belloq, and human enough to hate and love Jones over the long years of his absence. Karen Allen is more charismatic than beautiful, and plays Marion wi

Favorite Fictional Characters, #54: Philippe the Mouse

Joe Pace

Feb 23, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #54: Philippe the Mouse

Ladyhawke is an underrated classic. The plot is simple and effective, the cinematography is consistently beautiful, Rutger Hauer is at his glowering best, and Michelle Pfeiffer at her most porcelain beautiful. The best part of the film is young Matthew Broderick's portrayal of Philippe the Mouse, a glib pickpocket with a fluid morality, whose running one-sided conversation with God provides comic relief and accessibility to a film that might otherwise collapse under its own g

Favorite Fictional Characters, #53: Professor X

Joe Pace

Feb 22, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #53: Professor X

The X-Men were unusual in the early 1960s for several reasons. They were young, students really, but more importantly they were minorities. They were a comic analogue for the various real-life minorities then (and now) struggling for equality and safety in a society that feared and derided them. The mastermind behind the team was Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound professor and strongest telepath on Earth. The obvious early contrast, of course, was the strength of his mind co

Favorite Fictional Characters, #52: Flora-717

Joe Pace

Feb 21, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #52: Flora-717

Be warned: The Bees by Laline Paull is a weird book, an odd, foreign feminine manifesto. It follows the experiences of Flora-717, a female sanitation worker in a hive of bees. By all rights she should live out her days cleaning up after the drones and soldiers under the benign hegemony of the queen. But Flora is a mutant with a strange set of abilities that cast her into a very different destiny. In some ways, The Bees is a typical story of a young female heroine with unique

Favorite Fictional Characters, #51: OWEN MEANY

Joe Pace

Feb 20, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #51: OWEN MEANY

It is likely that some portion of my affection for A Prayer for Owen Meany stems from the setting. Irving's Gravesend is a not-even-thinly-veiled Exeter, and all of us who grew up there recognize the geography throughout. The locations that make this such a deeply personal book for the author make it deeply personal for those of us who are as intimate with the streets and landmarks as he is, and who love it as he does. The book, excellent in so many ways, is also a love lette

Favorite Fictional Characters, #50: Darth Vader

Joe Pace

Feb 19, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #50: Darth Vader

The Empire Strikes Back is the first movie I can remember seeing in the theater. I was five years old, and it's hard to parse my actual reactions from the layers of Star Wars experience since. I do know this: Darth Vader was an enormous presence. He was the biggest, baddest villain in any galaxy, far, far away or not. He swaggered and bullied, astride the Empire like a shiny obsidian colossus. Tyro tyrant Kylo Ren's immature tantrums are in stark contrast to his grandfather's

Favorite Fictional Characters, #49: Amy Gardner

Joe Pace

Feb 18, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #49: Amy Gardner

I could probably do a whole week or more just on West Wing characters. Among them would be, without question, Amy Gardner. There's so much to like about her. She's blisteringly smart, able to go toe-to-toe with Josh Lyman and the others. She's dedicated to her policy agenda, almost obsessively so. She's a woman unafraid to acknowledge her sexuality but not be defined by it. In an overwhelmingly male world, she carves out a role on her own terms. And honestly, I always thought

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