Disneyan Shallowness or the Trivialisation of the Bastard Hero

[flyingskull]

There's a thing that's been annoying me for a long time... Well, alright, there's lot of things that annoy me, I'm easily irritated, but now I want to talk about one particular attitude towards a particular type of character (in all media) that annoys me to the point of rage.



Unnecessarily Reforming the 'Decent' Bastard

If Henry Fielding were a contemporary author and he'd written Jonathan Wild last year, tons of readers would love and adore Jonathan and proclaim him a Good Hero, because the novel proclaims it every other page, you see, and if the author tells you persistently a character is a Hero Noble and Brave, then he must surely be. (There's another can of worms with female characters which I'll explore in another post, this is way too long as it is) A few, more critically inclined readers would get that he's a criminal with no redeeming features whatsoever, but they would be screamed at by legions of fen who'd consistently quote Wild's noble words about virtue as gospel and testament to his pure heart.

Yet, as we all know, Jonathan Wild is a political satire about 'Great Men' who gain power by cheating, stealing, murdering and conniving. The 'Great Man' is a hypocrite and all his words are lies. "Judge people by what they do," Fielding says, "not by what they say."

In other words, many contemporary readers, probably beaten down by the Politically Correctedness of our times, need authorial statements to know whom to admire and whom to despise in a story and when the above are lacking the only parameter they follow is the 'virtuousness' of their lines of dialogue. A Hero must say Noble and Kind words to everyone and, if sometimes he gets righteously angry as well he may, he'll express his contempt for his enemy or rival with scathing words of Noble Outrage (like 'you loser' or 'you coward').

Literature forbid we have a hero who's also a rude bastard, how can readers (yes, yes, a lot of them NOT all of them) resolve the confusion about the character?

Well, it's easy. Thanks to the Disney School of Good Feelings and Feeling Good, readers (NOT all of them, and this is the last time I specify it. Take it as said every time) either decide the Bastard is not a Hero, after all, or they decide that he isn't really saying all those rude and insulting snarky things. Jane Austen had a wonderful career based on readers' blindness to conflicting information, after all. Shallowness as an analysis tool prescribes that there is NO subtext, nothing is ever implied and actions are not important at all. What does it matter if character A saves the world, if he's rude about it? What does it matter if character B has deep and strong feelings for character C, if he never says it?

I'm not very clear, am I? Alright, on with the examples.

Diana Wynne Jones' Christopher Chant, the Chrestomanci, is an arrogant, selfish, vain, sarcastic bastard. He's also a sort of permanent saviour of worlds who has a deep respect for justice and all societal Good Things and a deep respect, affection and love for his wife, children and friends. Does he express his feelings with loving words? Not on your life, because he's also a deeply private person - a consequence of his isolated childhood and subsequent betrayal by his mentor - one who'd die before exposing his 'weaker' feelings to rejection and ridicule; one who hides behind sarcasm and rudeness because he really thinks most people are fools who won't understand anything but assurance and brusqueness.

That is a fully realised three dimensional character, obviously, but do some readers see him as worthy of being the Hero of a Series? They are shocked by his rudeness, to them it doesn't compute. Here's an example:

... Cat's secret dread was that one day he would be there, making polite conversation, and actually see one of Gabriel's lives as it went away. If he did, he knew he would scream.

The dread of this happening so haunted Cat that he could scarcely speak to Gabriel for watching and waiting for a life to leave. Gabriel de Witt told Chrestomanci that Cat was a strange, reserved boy. To which Chrestomanci answered "Really?" in his most sarcastic way.

"How can Christopher be so mean to Cat?" some say. "How can Christopher be so mean to Gabriel?" some other, more astute readers say. "It makes Christopher not so enjoyable as a protagonist and hero," both the factions say and run off to write fanfics in which he's the personified Milk of Human Kindness and Never But Never Says an Unkind Thing to Anyone (he also says 'I love you' a hell of a lot). We can't have kindness through deeds and unsaid respect for others now, can we?

Pterry's Vimes. Yes, I'm the Queen of Obvious and am a descendant of Monsieur de Lapalisse. Deal with it. Vimes is another Bastard. He's not the arrogant, vain bastard, but the raging, violent, sarcastic (all Bastards are sarcastic, after all, it's a mark of Intelligence), selfish - yes, selfish. He really is. Selflessness isn't a healthy thing. - Bastard with a capital B. You won't catch Vimes saying "I love you, fluffybunny" to Sybil because A) Pterry's too good a writer to mire himself in sentimental nonsense and B) even if Vimes says mushy things in private, which I can't believe, he'd never express his feelings in public. Because, say it with me, Bastards are intensely private persons, If they weren't, they wouldn't be Bastard Heroes, their Bastardiness - UGH, sorry, filthy neologism there - is in their words and attitude, NOT in their actions and feelings. And Vimes is SO near to being a villain, in a sense. He always has to reign himself in, to deny himself expression of his rage. It's not by chance that his greatest victory - in Night Watch, of course - is not killing Carcer. Vimes' societal values are solid and good, his societal mores (politeness, conformity) non-existent.

And yes, I've read fanfics in which Vimes was an abusive husband or lover and others in which he was soooooooo politically correct in Disneyan lovey-dovey that I don't know which nauseated me more.

And Murakami's Yuki Eiri (see icon). Because, if fen of good writers can be shockingly blind and/or stupid, they can't hold a candle to the sheer blindness and/or stupidity of a multitude of manga and anime fen. Give them a hell of a fascinating character who happens to be a Bastard of the broody, cold, violent, insulting and sarcastic persuasion whose past trauma (I'll post all about Murakami's Gravitation ASAP) assures that he'll never be able to express his feelings because - boring innit? - he's a VERY private person. Yet his societal values are solid... I'm repeating myself amn't I? And URGH! how he's treated by fen! Abusive, sadistic lover or mushy idiot because he has to be redeemed and reformed into a Disneyan image of goody-goodiness, if he is to be good.

Let's not even dwell on poor Draco Malfoy, what's been done to him makes me weep for humanity.

In conclusion, I suspect lots of fen are repulsed by intelligence, because if there's one thing that distinguishes the Bastard Hero from the Bastard Villain is exactly intelligence as in the OED definition:

The action or fact of mentally apprehending something; understanding, knowledge, cognizance, comprehension (of something)

Intelligence makes people appreciate and espouse the basic societal values of justice, respect of others' life and rights, it doesn't necessarily make people appreciate and espouse the societal mores of politeness and conformity. Intelligence is threatening because it tends to put in discussion established mores. Intelligence allied to passion is lethal for conformity, the desire to be what I call the 'invisible burgeois'. Intelligence plus passion plus impatience does a marvellous Bastard Hero make, my favourite kind of hero, by the way, but I suppose I've shouted that from the rooftops already. A certain kind of fan - they come not single soldiers but in BATTALIONS! - is shocked and put out by the Bastard Hero and they all frantically re-write him into a one-dimensional bland nothingness that negates the richness of the character and, incidentally, all the work the author put into creating him. But who cares about complexity when we can have Disneyan shallowness and everything in black-and-white simple stupidity?

Long live all Bastard Heroes and long may they continue insulting friend and enemy alike! They have my support, at least.

PS: I wanted to add Dunnett's Lymond, but I fear mistful sarcasm, so I've refrained. :-D

Comments

[agent-tomato.livejournal.com]

Word. It's all Disney's fault. Although, sometimes even Disney characters can have a little Bastard-ness in them. At least they did in some of the old movies.
And as an intelligent but frequently misanthropic person, I can confirm the statement of intelligence =/= politeness.
You get a virtual hug for using Vimes as an example, because he is my idol.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Yay! Virtual hug! *is all warmed up*

It IS Disney's fault. I can proudly say I never could stand the Disney things, even at three. The tweeness, the hypocrisy... Argh.

Politeness is useful, I'm not denying it, especially as I work in the service industry, but it's just a veneer. A conforming to unreal expectations. One can use it and still not be polite in one's inner self at all.

Intelligence is a much more useful and fruitful thing for society at the end of things.

Of course I used Vimes! I'm a Pterry lover through and through. :-D

[cognitiveleague.livejournal.com]

(God, and my kingdom for a Mal icon now...>_> Jayne'll do, though he might just be a bastard through and through.)

I love you for this essay. I saw you mention it on fanficrants, and thought, "Hmm! I shall go take a look and see how that turned out!"

And then I came here, and you have a wonderful rant on my most favorite of archetypes (why would people not like snarky sons of bitches with secretly buried, never shown unless unavoidable good hearts?). Complete with Vimes, and Yuki!

My day is made, I hope you know.

Do you mind if I friend you? Because you seem very interesting, and I always like to see what intelligent people are doing with their time.

-Someone with a rude, snarky, quite honestly hateful main character whom she loves to death.

[cognitiveleague.livejournal.com]

(Ack, tag malfunction...sorry!)

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

If you think you have a probbo with HTML tags, just see how badly I can manage to typo and things... :-D

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

I'll be honoured to be friended by a Bastard Hero Loving person. :-D

why would people not like snarky sons of bitches with secretly buried, never shown unless unavoidable good hearts?

Well... apart from the fact that I personally would go a parsec and back to avoid the 'good heart' cliché - though I have absolutely nothing against the thought implied by that cliché - people HATE characters that can't be put in a convenient - and acceptable to contemporary social mores - box. So they try all they can to reduct said characters into their convenient little boxes. UGH.

Oh yeh, Vimes AND Yuki Eiri AND Christopher Chant AND Lymond AND Draco AND... who is it you were kingdoming about? *she says adopting a Shuichi face* They are all bastards and they all have truly good reasons to be and they are decent people for all that and I hate that fem want to dumb them down to total Disneyan blandness.

I should have added House, I know. Point is, it'd have been another repeat of traits that WORK AS THEY ARE! Grrr... I can see Eiri, Christopher, Vimes and Lymond having a hell of a Snarkfest. Er... Get thou Back Thouh Bunny of Plots! Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!

In other news, who is Mal? Who is Jayne? Why do I think I know that face in your icon?

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how remiss of me. Do you mind if I friend you back? Also, if you like Yuki Eiri, perhaps you'll like my take on Gravitation which is right after this rant. Heh...

[cognitiveleague.livejournal.com]

As has been mentioned by others, I see, since I went to sleep and work, Jayne and Mal are both from Firefly, and regardless of any animosity you have for Whedon, I recommend it highly- it's some of the best stuff that's come out on the TV sci-fi front in years, IMHO.

Plus, Mal is an unidealistic, blood-on-his-hands, snarky as Hell bastard who does things like repeatedly referring to a member of his own crew as a "whore" (never mind the veracity of the statement) just to piss her off, but really doesn't do anything unnecessarily evil on a large scale, and does wind up doing a bit of world-saving from time to time. And Jayne is, well, a crude, self-centered, excessively violent guy who you're never quite sure actually likes the good guys enough to stay with them in the long run. As I said, might not be quite enough on the "Hero" side to apply to this rant, which is why I wish I had the Mal icon from this set.

Dumbing down of characters in general drives me crazy-- you can have characters who are just so complex and human, and people will just categorize them to death. Stereotypes in general are just so destructive to storytelling- You don't need to be a nice guy to be more or less okay, there's more than one kind of crazy, relationships can have tons of different dynamics, etc etc. I hate losing that kind of reality and complexity just because it's easier for people who like things spoon-fed to them.

Mm, Snarkfests. Sorry, what?

If you haven't seen Firefly and recognize the face...um, he was in Independance Day as one of the feds, but I can't recall anything else I've seen him in...

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Jayne is a supreme bastard. Every time he says something, you feel slightly soiled for having heard it. It's fun. :D

Mal would be a perfect example of Jane's Bastard Hero, though - a great number of despicable habits, underlined with a few solid, noble principles.

[nenya85.livejournal.com]

I came here from fanficrants, because I wanted to see if you had posted on characters who are both just people and total bastards. Although Eiri Yuki is the only character I’m familiar with, I totally got and agree with your essay, and could really see how your other examples fit in.

I see this with one of my favorite characters, Seto Kaiba from Yugioh. In the manga and the original anime, he has been the sole person responsible for his younger brother since childhood. In his fairly young life he has literally been abandoned, defrauded or in some way injured by almost every person he comes into contact with except his brother. Not surprisingly, he’s distrustful and wary of revealing anything of his thoughts or feelings because he believes that knowledge would be used against him.

Kaiba is impatient, angry, hyper-competitive, and pushes away anyone trying to have a civil conversation, and in fact struggles with the concepts of friendship and trust throughout the entire story. His manner is incredibly and irritatingly self-centered, but his actions are much less so. He refuses offers of a home to be able to care for his brother, Mokuba, and his life goal is to build amusement parks and games for to give children, particularly orphans, a better childhood than he had. These seem like two incompatible sides, but they really aren’t. But in fanfic, you often see him as either a totally evil character, or as melting into a pile of goo, neither of which to justice to what is a fairly complex character – which is I think my main objection – that often what happens is that characters who are interesting for their complexity get flattend into on-dimensionality.

I really liked your entry, and the Eiri one. This is funny – I thought your screen name looked familiar, I just realized we had a conversation about changing first person point of views and thoughts about readers. Ironically I found your journal just before going on vacation, but I’d like to add you to my friends list. I’ve really enjoyed reading what you have to say.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Hello. Yes, I remember our conversation, it was interesting.

Do add me, I'll add you, and thank you.

Have a lovely vacation and, again, thank you for your kind words.

Undoubtedly Kaiba is another Bastard Hero, happily they're not so rare and yes, they are almost always dumbed down in fanfics, and not by teenaged writers only, as well.

There seems to be a sort of mental laziness in not wanting to think about what one reads (or watches), nowadays. Everything has to be spelled out in giant letters. I personally find Things Spelled Out in Giant Letters dead boring and I'd rather have to work with the book (of film, or whatever) than being fed predigested pap.

[nenya85.livejournal.com]

Hi! This makes a nice break from packing!

There seems to be a sort of mental laziness in not wanting to think about what one reads (or watches), nowadays.

I get asked a lot, “Which one is he?” as if someone could be have one motivation or feel one thing at a time.

The other thing that many people seem to have trouble with, especially in romances, is the idea of restraint. Oddly enough, I don’t mean this sexually. But one thing I’ve noticed is that often people expect one half of a pair to constantly rush in any time the other half has been insulted or is angry or trying to figure something out, rather than giving them the space to sort things out on their own, regardless of whether that character is at all likely to do that, or whether their partner would be at all likely to appreciate it.

Oh, BTW Anuthor’s Notes in anime are a fairly standard practice, but she uses them much more imaginatively than most, especially in her letting them fill in the background and margins of the frame itself, and the way she uses them almost as a bizarre counterpart to the story.

The other thing that struck me about mangas -- I'm not sure if you'd agree, is that unlike American comics, the manga-ka is much more likely to let the pictures tell a larger part of the story, to the point where wwith some of them, the words can at times be embellishment.

[kestrelsparhawk.livejournal.com]

Well, I gotta go the other way, and look up fanfic rants! But I'm glad to see you post, and especially loved this one -- didn't know half the writers, but obviously Jones and Draco. (do you think he's a bastard hero? Although he can be in fanon, and is most fun like that, I think JKR wrote him as simple bastard.)

btw, Jayne is from Firefly -- canceled sf tv show. (and film) Jones has been my absolute favorite fantasy writer since I was a child, and gets better and better, imo. I totally agree that Christopher is a perfect example of someone whose actions are at variance with his public appearance, and are what he should be judged on. (btw, what did you quote that segment from? I don't recall Cat meeting Gabriel, though I thought I'd read everything. Must reread or go find.)

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Firefly... was that by Joss Whedon?

The Cat/Gabriel/Christopher scene is from Stealer of Souls in the Mixed Magics collection of short Chrestomanci stories. I quoted that because someone posted it (a longer version, but that was the part that grated) in the comm dianawynnejones and was all confused about Christopher's apparent cruelty to Cat. It was actually that post that sparked this rant o' mine.

Well, Draco... the problem with Draco is that he's massacred by the author of canon. I mean, JKR - who can't write - presents him as a certain kind of person: the little spoiled rich boy and that would be alright, a bit cliché, but why not?

Then she gives him all sorts of fascinating hobbies (he draws, he makes badges, he composes songs, he writes lyrics) and makes him one of the best students, particularly good at potions. WTF? This is an intelligent and interesting person! This is the Artist as a Young Man! But no, wait! He's totally and masochistically stupid in antagonising the Hero - who's an underdog only not really - he can't win and still he tries. Ah-HA! Who's the plucky underdog now, JKR? He snarks like nobody business at Hagrid and well he may, Hagrid is TEH PITS as a teacher.

All the above wouldn't make him a Hero, no, but Draco is the one who's trying to shift a body that's double his own mass in the midst of a raging inferno - even though said body turned out NOT to be such a good friend, after all - thus saving Greg's life by risking his own. And not only that, to save his not-so-good friend's life he humiliates himself to his rival. And that promotes him to Bastard Hero to me. He's got the Good Solid societal values and no societal mores. Voila! If JKR wanted me - and about a billion other readers - to hate and despise Draco, she'd better learn how to write characters. She's the Disneyan reader, in a sense, she thinks that only what she, as the Author and Creator, says and what the characters say counts.

DO read Terry Pratchett's books. Diana Wynne Jones admires them and he admires hers. Totally different authors in style, totally in agreement about worldview and social ethos.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

(*picks up megaphone*)

WATCH FIREFLY!

(*hides megaphone behind back*) (*looks innocent*)

Don't mind me, I was just on my way to respond to your main post. =]

[kestrelsparhawk.livejournal.com]

Firefly was a Joss Whedon production, yes; and a really fun one. A friend loaned me the cd of the year's worth of episodes which is all it lasted. Definitely worth watching,m if you like sf, not just fantasy.

I don't entirely agree that JKR is a bad writer, but I certainly agree characters are not her forte. I put a paper together talking about different genre values, and it's primarily in the literary genre that it's most important. (Hence, imp't to me!) I would rather argue that JKR is good at developing characters, but not good at noticing what they're becoming. I've had characters who took on their own life, and they just won't do what they're told -- but if you adapt to that, they can be the most interesting and fun. I think she was so invested in a plot planned from the beginning that she couldn't see outside her own box.

I do find Draco an interesting character to work with, because he's smart and talented and has such a strange father. But then, I also find Harry interesting, partly because he's a whole person, including the bad parts. I love Harry and hate it when people badmouth him, because he really is a hero, and a child struggling to do something no child should have to, as well.

I also am completely committed to the idea that school bullies are unhappy, or they wouldn't be bullies -- and unhappy children often turn into the most interesting adults, and not always the nasty kind of interesting. Your arguments on Draco's heroism are really persuasive to me. However Bastard hero he is -- after all, he broke Harry's nose when Harry was completely defenseless, though Rowling may not realize that an attack to the nose can kill. (My defense class taught us how, emphasizing its last ditch nature.)

Oh well. I'm sorry, I write long. I've read one of Pratchett's books, and have him on my list for the big annual book sale I go to every year. I loved his humor, and also the book he and Gaiman wrote together. And I do appreciate this conversation.

[ingriam.livejournal.com]

A good rant, a very good rant, and I definately have to agree with you about the bastards. Heck, Agito and Aptom are two of my favorite characters, and those boys are two of the most bastardly bastards to ever live.

Especially Aptom, since he tends to eat the people who annoy him.

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks! Glad you liked.

We-ell... Aptom is borderline exactly because he eats people. I see how in a War Story killing is allowed and Aptom seems to be on the side of the angels, but he doesn't give the impression - and I trust you as a fanfic writer in the interpretation of characters - of having solid societal values (eating people is not a value in that society, besides I was talking about justice, respecting people's rights and so on) which is my definition - I know, I'm arbitrary - of a Hero. Aptom seems to me to be more the Likeable Bastard.

OTOH, Agito is exactly the Bastard Hero. :-D

[ingriam.livejournal.com]

Oh, and If you're considering getting into Firefly, you might want to check this out. It's a bit spolier-ific, especially the individual episode reviews, but I'll gladly welcome a new person onto the Firefly bandwagon. ;)

"You know, they tell ya never hit a man with a closed fist, but it is on occasion hilarious." --Mal

"What'd y'all order a dead guy for?" --Jayne

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

In other words, many contemporary readers, probably beaten down by the Politically Correctedness of our times, need authorial statements to know whom to admire and whom to despise in a story and when the above are lacking the only parameter they follow is the 'virtuousness' of their lines of dialogue.

This is a modern thing, then? People used to be better at reading between the lines?

How about HP fandom, which has turned into a fine art the reading into the text of things that most definitely were not intended to be there? =]

Anyway, I agree with you. I love bastard heroes. They're a lot more human than the ordinary kind, really - and they have a lot more potential.

Say, are you familiar with the Magnificent Bastard (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.MagnificentBastard)? It's not quite the same thing - you are talking about bastard heroes, after all - but it's still close, and my favourite kind of character.

The definition is of the you-know-it-when-you-see-it variety, but it goes something like this - the Magnficent Bastard is a character prone to doing things that are so smart and so shamelessly, relentlessly mean that they leave you unable to do anything for a moment but stare and gasp, "oh [name of character], you magnificent bastard..." =]

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

People used to read, the ones that could, of course. They weren't distracted by TV or cinema or radio or comic books. Reading was an intellectual pleasure and exercise.

Still cretins abound and my namesake based her whole career on people's willful blindness to what they didn't want to see. I think nowadays it's gotten worse and worse with Hollywood (and TV but they're the same) dictating the norm of dumbing down things to insipidity and also offering products which tax the intellect less and less. Confront the magnificence of silent films with the easy one-layer products of today. Right, there are excellent films around, they're just very few.

HP fandom (not all of it, of course, but wast swathes of it) wants to find things that are actually NOT. Like continuity, worldbuilding and coherent characterisation. But do they see that the Nominal Hero is a piece of shit? Nope, because the Author tells them he's a Noble Hero and he scoffs, I tell you SCOFFS! at death. That's what I was trying to say, if they do it with Pterry... I mean flattening out Vimes, for example into a fluffy-bunny-lovey-dovey, they are going to be thrilled to have a Hero that won't force them to blink away entire conversations.

Yes, thank you luv, I know the Magnificent Bastard trope and it's true that he can be either a Hero or a Villain, Lymond is a perfect example of the Magnificent Bastard Hero... almost.

The point, and thanks again for forcing me to rethink things and be clearer, is that to me the difference between the Bastard Hero and the Magnificent Bastard Hero is that the first is human and vulnerable and the second slighty inhuman and not vulnerable at all. I love me a Magnificent Bastard Character, but, no matter his alignment, he can't be the Hero, just one of the heroes because when one takes that kind of characterisation too far, one loses the layers and subtext that makes the character sympathetic enough and reduce the Magnificent Bastard to a sort of thinking machine with NO respect for other people's right in a society. Being manipulative is not the same thing as being rude, in fact, it's the opposite.

Vetinari is a Magnificent Bastard - actually TEH Magnificent Bastard to end all Magnificent Bastards in the annals of Literature - and that's why Vimes - the bastard with no magnificence about it - is the Hero. For reasons of Humanity and Three-Dimensionality, donchaknow?

As I said, Lymond is the only borderline case of the Magnificent Bastard being also the Bastard Hero, I mean Dunnett brought the thing so far in the first book of the series that a slow reader would actually assume he was the villain for three-quarters of the story. Or even longer, depending on slowness and stupidity. It oculd only work once, of course and she didn't try it again, but he's borderline alright.

My problem with exceedingly Machiavellian characters is that they either have far too much power for the story to contain and fall over into godhood or that they are boring because no suspense is possible around them.

[sirena-lune.livejournal.com]

Total effin' WORD. I love Bastard Heroes. Those types of people are the kind I'm most used to dealing with in real life. XDD

It saddens me when people make these characters either teh goodness or teh ebil. They are neither one thing, nor another... They're just themselves!

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Utterly love your icon, but that is by the way.

To accept that a person or a character is just her/himself means to accept the fact that human beings are multifaceted, incoherent and, at times, double-faced - both in a Bad Villainy way and in a Good Heroish way. I think that's the hardest thing to learn for people who'd rather others did their thinking for them.

Mind you, in my tyrannically personal definition a Bastard Hero is Good, he just don't talk Good, he talks Sarcastic and Rude. Oh, alright, sometimes he May Lose It and get a bit violent, but his actions must always tend to societal good - which implies individual good things as well - or he slides into the Embattled Bastard or even into the Bastard Villain. I know literature - and life, of course - can't be divided into little boxes, but taxonomy is useful when everyone agrees that it tends to simplify.

Thanks for commenting and visiting.

just what i needed

[(Anonymous)]

i'm eric. joining a couple boards and looking
forward to participating. hehe unless i get
too distracted!

eric

Re: just what i needed

[flyingskull.livejournal.com]

Hello Eric.

Feel free to participate, or not, as the whim takes you.