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Jul. 18th, 2006 07:09 pmSo. I've finished reading Wicked, and I'm about half way through S2 of Buffy.
It took me a while to get into Wicked - basically, things picked up pace *dramatically* as far as I was concerned once Elphaba arrived in Shiz - once I made it there, I finished the rest in about three days! (Including two hours today when I really should have been doing something else! *g*)
I really like Elphaba, and Glinda both, but especially Elphaba - in fact, as I was mulling it over on my various kid collection trips today - Elphaba has many of the same characteristics that I like so much in Nikita; so much that I've had a whole new series of muzzy thoughts about another possible future for Nikita in Section.
The only thing that I didn't like so much was, oddly enough, that the story-line also reminded me a good bit of what frustrated me about Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley's re-write of Camelot from the POV of Morgaine; that is, that so much of the plot is driven by the need to make Elphaba/Morgaine's fates conform to canon that they both repeatedly make guesses that turn out to be just a little crucial bit wrong, combined with a refusal to share information or ask basic questions when it matters - or have a good backup plan.
It didn't really 'feel' like a classic tragedy to me though, because her story was so constrained by the source material, the shape of the story as PTerry might say, that it didn't really matter *what* she did or was like, the plot was going to melt her no matter what. Which brings up an interesting constraint on fanfic sorts of stories - that is, stories where the reader already knows what happens by being familiar with the source material(s) in the end can't really write 'character-driven' stories about anyone but the original protagonist unless they are going to deviate from canon altogether at some point.
It took me a while to get into Wicked - basically, things picked up pace *dramatically* as far as I was concerned once Elphaba arrived in Shiz - once I made it there, I finished the rest in about three days! (Including two hours today when I really should have been doing something else! *g*)
I really like Elphaba, and Glinda both, but especially Elphaba - in fact, as I was mulling it over on my various kid collection trips today - Elphaba has many of the same characteristics that I like so much in Nikita; so much that I've had a whole new series of muzzy thoughts about another possible future for Nikita in Section.
The only thing that I didn't like so much was, oddly enough, that the story-line also reminded me a good bit of what frustrated me about Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley's re-write of Camelot from the POV of Morgaine; that is, that so much of the plot is driven by the need to make Elphaba/Morgaine's fates conform to canon that they both repeatedly make guesses that turn out to be just a little crucial bit wrong, combined with a refusal to share information or ask basic questions when it matters - or have a good backup plan.
It didn't really 'feel' like a classic tragedy to me though, because her story was so constrained by the source material, the shape of the story as PTerry might say, that it didn't really matter *what* she did or was like, the plot was going to melt her no matter what. Which brings up an interesting constraint on fanfic sorts of stories - that is, stories where the reader already knows what happens by being familiar with the source material(s) in the end can't really write 'character-driven' stories about anyone but the original protagonist unless they are going to deviate from canon altogether at some point.
