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timepiececlockI just finished reading The Last Unicorn (oh why did I wait until my 20s to read this?) and later today I'll read its coda, Two Hearts. But I was browsing the back of my hardcover, which has an index of Peter S. Beagle's published work, and what do I find listed under essays but this?---
"The Good Vampire: Spike and Angel", Peter S. Beagle. Five Seasons of Angel, 2004.
OH MY @$&)*#&$*()#&(@!.
So, not only is the book every bit as amazing as I remember the film being, in fact better times about 10 because the descriptions are just as wonderful as the dialogue, and not only was I reading it the whole time thinking of both my childhood, my dreams of how to write fiction well, and how I know somewhere in my bones that at least one of the people who made Princess Tutu must have watched/read this story, but now all that is topped with the pure and untainted joy of realizing that the author is a BTVS fan.
Who wrote an essay about Spike and Angel character analysis.
That was published in a collection.
That I can hunt down and read in the bookstore.
This is a freaking great morning already! I love discovering fellow fans, even if I don't interact with them personally. Just knowing that someone whose writing I now admire ardently also loved my all-time favorite tv show enough to write an essay about it twists the plaits of my heart. So I will top this joyous entry with an icon that calls to mind another great fantasy story with the words of another great fantasy song: truisms both.
ETA: Italics are comments by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rasielle:
There were so many great lines in The Last Unicorn! I'm wondering right now what sort of icons they'd make with Princess Tutu screencaps. Also, I'm going to dig around for that thread in which you first brought up The Last Unicorn during PT discussion. Stories without endings - I remember that bit!
I haven't read Two Hearts yet, but I finished tLU. Pretty much every line in this book could be word-switched for PT.
Fakir: "Life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move."
Duck: "I have been mortalhuman, and some part of me is human yet."
And the line about regretting! "I am not like the others now, for no duck was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret."
"The townspeople are free from the story and the lost Prince has his heart again. No sorrow will in me as long as that joy--save one, and I thank you for that, too."
It's odd. I am so Unicorn/Lir in this book and so Ahiru/Fakir in PT, but I am absolutely convinced that Fakir=Schmendrick. But that's okay too, because even in a book where two characters like them aren't meant to be romantic, they still have this awesomely complex relationship. I feel like there's not a little bit of Ahiru in Molly Grue as well, and definitely some of Rue in Amalthea (though the Unicorn is all Ahiru, an older and wiser version).
(I haven't seen this PT image before either, nor have I yet to see it beyond this icon. Isn't it sad? I can't get over Tutu's expression. I wonder, how different are Tutu and Ahiru, really?)
No different at all in Fakir's eyes, I suspect. From episode 18 when he held her after the dark ghost knight attacked and despaired that he couldn't even protect his princess (he practically named himself as her knight!) I was certain that regardless of what insecurities Ahiru had about being Tutu, Fakir had total faith in her. It's quite amazing.
While I was reading it, I kept imagining that it would make a great animated movie - it also helped that you once mentioned the movie in a previous PT discussion.
The movie was beautifully loyal to the book, I can now say. Also, Beagle wrote the screenplay. Most of the dialogue is lifted verbatim, and all the important stuff was in there. It's not a long book, so the only things that got cut were less important-- the town of Hagsgate, the prince and princess calling for the unicorn, Haggard's four men at arms. Everything else was there, and some bits, like the tree that fell in love with Scmendrick, were given a very amusing treatment, a few lines longer in the film than in the book, I think.
Peter S. Beagle describes the landscape with a lot of vivid details, bringing Tolkien to mind, but his metaphors were very whimsical and reminiscent of fairy tales. The writing is also clever, and he makes so many allusions to other works that even I caught a few of them, to my delight. ^^ It was a great, colorful, yet inexplicably wise book, and it would sound fantastic read aloud, especially to children.
I loved his writing! It was whimsical, but so precise and efficient and vivid. Nothing wasted. He also used strange, almost random roundabout ways to describe things, but the result was so fun to read, and always delivered the intended meaning, if in an unusual way. Sometimes I'd look at a word and think "where did THAT come from?" but to change it would lose some of the magic. I also liked how his characters jumped back and forth from fairy tale talk to normal talk... in fact you can almost mark in a scene where their dialogue changes from how you'd expect people to talk in person to how they speak when they're saying what a fairy tale requires them to say. But instead of being clunky or awkward, the transitions are beautiful and appropriate. There's the ironic sense of meta to the characters and the story itself, the same you find in PT, that allows the characters to drift back and forth from Real to Fantastical. I adored it.
I also caught some allusions! Though some went over my head. I only recognized the name Allan A'Dale because I've been watching BBC's Robin Hood series.
Schmendrick was complex in the novel, I thought; he didn't get as much of the spotlight that the unicorn did, but we were frequently given parts of the story from his perspective, and he developed so well despite being so flawed. Reminded me of Fakir when it comes to drastic character development, despite their different roles - and excepting that Fakir seemed to get younger and Schmendrick older.
Definitely; it seemed to me that almost as soon as they introduced him and Molly, the story went from the unicorn's perspective to his then to Molly's then back to his again. It ends in his POV, not the unicorns. But I understand that, like a necessary distance. All the characters change so much over the story. Molly gets younger, the unicorn gets realer, Schmendrick gets older (but freer too), and Lir gets wiser. As I said in my comments below, Schmendrick = Fakir in my head, as these two stories connect. Both got kinder and more aware of themselves. Both had to accept, sacrifice, and grow into their power, and both had to submit to it to own it... and likewise both had to perform the act of "magic", the deus ex machina, that allowed the heroine to save the day. They acted as enablers for the heroes and yet propelled plot at the same time. Plus... writers and magicians aren't too different in their professions, I think.
And I kept finding the same metaphysical suggestions in The Last Unicorn that exist in Princess Tutu! The mention of the roles of heroes, and and and the unicorn vs Amalthea, and Princess Tutu vs Ahiru, and their asymmetrical, bittersweet endings...
YES! Meta and storytelling and like minds and books written by rabbits. A world turned to right despite true love being separated. And yet, new love also being found (Scmendrick and Molly were the luckiest characters in the book I think, though no doubt Schmendrick will always carry some guilt for having stolen a unicorn's innocence.)
Gyah ;_; It tickles my fancy that The Last Unicorn is something Fakir could've thought of writing, when I think solely of the ending. In any case, it was the same brand of wisdom, I think, and the same contemplation on Right Choices in stories.
When I finished my first thought was of writing a drabble just to say that Fakir was the author of this story (its so iconic! a unicorn, a magical bull of fire, a wizard and a disenchanted woman and a true love separated by mortality) and also somehow grew into this. I can imagine Fakir almost punishing himself by writing it, too-- the unicorn loves the prince, the magician begins as a fool but comes to wisdom just in time to do his part. But because Fakir is a good storyteller the same way Schmendrick will be a good magician, he can't help but adding Molly Grue, who has all the human goodness of Ahiru, even if Tutu's perfect grace goes to the Unicorn. And because he believes in truth he adds Amalthea, full of rue and beauty, who chooses the prince in the end.
Wow. I can't believe I wrote Peter S. Beagle out of existence and attributed his legacy to a fictional character who might or might not be a reincarnation/decendent of a wizardwho saved a unicorn and then when he was an old, crazy man trapped a town in its own time loop... no, I'm stopping there. I'm not going to turn Schmendrick into Drosselmeyer. Even though the bookkeepers could be the townspeople of Hagsgate and the cat is like Edel and there is a tree that wants to keep Schmendrick/Fakir forever in its warmth and the Harpy hungers like a Raven and and and
and
and I need some breakfast.
"The Good Vampire: Spike and Angel", Peter S. Beagle. Five Seasons of Angel, 2004.
OH MY @$&)*#&$*()#&(@!.
So, not only is the book every bit as amazing as I remember the film being, in fact better times about 10 because the descriptions are just as wonderful as the dialogue, and not only was I reading it the whole time thinking of both my childhood, my dreams of how to write fiction well, and how I know somewhere in my bones that at least one of the people who made Princess Tutu must have watched/read this story, but now all that is topped with the pure and untainted joy of realizing that the author is a BTVS fan.
Who wrote an essay about Spike and Angel character analysis.
That was published in a collection.
That I can hunt down and read in the bookstore.
This is a freaking great morning already! I love discovering fellow fans, even if I don't interact with them personally. Just knowing that someone whose writing I now admire ardently also loved my all-time favorite tv show enough to write an essay about it twists the plaits of my heart. So I will top this joyous entry with an icon that calls to mind another great fantasy story with the words of another great fantasy song: truisms both.
ETA: Italics are comments by
rasielle:There were so many great lines in The Last Unicorn! I'm wondering right now what sort of icons they'd make with Princess Tutu screencaps. Also, I'm going to dig around for that thread in which you first brought up The Last Unicorn during PT discussion. Stories without endings - I remember that bit!
I haven't read Two Hearts yet, but I finished tLU. Pretty much every line in this book could be word-switched for PT.
Fakir: "Life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move."
Duck: "I have been mortalhuman, and some part of me is human yet."
And the line about regretting! "I am not like the others now, for no duck was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret."
"The townspeople are free from the story and the lost Prince has his heart again. No sorrow will in me as long as that joy--save one, and I thank you for that, too."
It's odd. I am so Unicorn/Lir in this book and so Ahiru/Fakir in PT, but I am absolutely convinced that Fakir=Schmendrick. But that's okay too, because even in a book where two characters like them aren't meant to be romantic, they still have this awesomely complex relationship. I feel like there's not a little bit of Ahiru in Molly Grue as well, and definitely some of Rue in Amalthea (though the Unicorn is all Ahiru, an older and wiser version).
(I haven't seen this PT image before either, nor have I yet to see it beyond this icon. Isn't it sad? I can't get over Tutu's expression. I wonder, how different are Tutu and Ahiru, really?)
No different at all in Fakir's eyes, I suspect. From episode 18 when he held her after the dark ghost knight attacked and despaired that he couldn't even protect his princess (he practically named himself as her knight!) I was certain that regardless of what insecurities Ahiru had about being Tutu, Fakir had total faith in her. It's quite amazing.
While I was reading it, I kept imagining that it would make a great animated movie - it also helped that you once mentioned the movie in a previous PT discussion.
The movie was beautifully loyal to the book, I can now say. Also, Beagle wrote the screenplay. Most of the dialogue is lifted verbatim, and all the important stuff was in there. It's not a long book, so the only things that got cut were less important-- the town of Hagsgate, the prince and princess calling for the unicorn, Haggard's four men at arms. Everything else was there, and some bits, like the tree that fell in love with Scmendrick, were given a very amusing treatment, a few lines longer in the film than in the book, I think.
Peter S. Beagle describes the landscape with a lot of vivid details, bringing Tolkien to mind, but his metaphors were very whimsical and reminiscent of fairy tales. The writing is also clever, and he makes so many allusions to other works that even I caught a few of them, to my delight. ^^ It was a great, colorful, yet inexplicably wise book, and it would sound fantastic read aloud, especially to children.
I loved his writing! It was whimsical, but so precise and efficient and vivid. Nothing wasted. He also used strange, almost random roundabout ways to describe things, but the result was so fun to read, and always delivered the intended meaning, if in an unusual way. Sometimes I'd look at a word and think "where did THAT come from?" but to change it would lose some of the magic. I also liked how his characters jumped back and forth from fairy tale talk to normal talk... in fact you can almost mark in a scene where their dialogue changes from how you'd expect people to talk in person to how they speak when they're saying what a fairy tale requires them to say. But instead of being clunky or awkward, the transitions are beautiful and appropriate. There's the ironic sense of meta to the characters and the story itself, the same you find in PT, that allows the characters to drift back and forth from Real to Fantastical. I adored it.
I also caught some allusions! Though some went over my head. I only recognized the name Allan A'Dale because I've been watching BBC's Robin Hood series.
Schmendrick was complex in the novel, I thought; he didn't get as much of the spotlight that the unicorn did, but we were frequently given parts of the story from his perspective, and he developed so well despite being so flawed. Reminded me of Fakir when it comes to drastic character development, despite their different roles - and excepting that Fakir seemed to get younger and Schmendrick older.
Definitely; it seemed to me that almost as soon as they introduced him and Molly, the story went from the unicorn's perspective to his then to Molly's then back to his again. It ends in his POV, not the unicorns. But I understand that, like a necessary distance. All the characters change so much over the story. Molly gets younger, the unicorn gets realer, Schmendrick gets older (but freer too), and Lir gets wiser. As I said in my comments below, Schmendrick = Fakir in my head, as these two stories connect. Both got kinder and more aware of themselves. Both had to accept, sacrifice, and grow into their power, and both had to submit to it to own it... and likewise both had to perform the act of "magic", the deus ex machina, that allowed the heroine to save the day. They acted as enablers for the heroes and yet propelled plot at the same time. Plus... writers and magicians aren't too different in their professions, I think.
And I kept finding the same metaphysical suggestions in The Last Unicorn that exist in Princess Tutu! The mention of the roles of heroes, and and and the unicorn vs Amalthea, and Princess Tutu vs Ahiru, and their asymmetrical, bittersweet endings...
YES! Meta and storytelling and like minds and books written by rabbits. A world turned to right despite true love being separated. And yet, new love also being found (Scmendrick and Molly were the luckiest characters in the book I think, though no doubt Schmendrick will always carry some guilt for having stolen a unicorn's innocence.)
Gyah ;_; It tickles my fancy that The Last Unicorn is something Fakir could've thought of writing, when I think solely of the ending. In any case, it was the same brand of wisdom, I think, and the same contemplation on Right Choices in stories.
When I finished my first thought was of writing a drabble just to say that Fakir was the author of this story (its so iconic! a unicorn, a magical bull of fire, a wizard and a disenchanted woman and a true love separated by mortality) and also somehow grew into this. I can imagine Fakir almost punishing himself by writing it, too-- the unicorn loves the prince, the magician begins as a fool but comes to wisdom just in time to do his part. But because Fakir is a good storyteller the same way Schmendrick will be a good magician, he can't help but adding Molly Grue, who has all the human goodness of Ahiru, even if Tutu's perfect grace goes to the Unicorn. And because he believes in truth he adds Amalthea, full of rue and beauty, who chooses the prince in the end.
Wow. I can't believe I wrote Peter S. Beagle out of existence and attributed his legacy to a fictional character who might or might not be a reincarnation/decendent of a wizard
and
and I need some breakfast.
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