Character meme, E!
Apr. 1st, 2012 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impy1. Leave a comment to this post!
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
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luxken27 assigned me "E".
Ezra Fitz, Pretty Little Liars
Tv!Ezra as I don't really recall much about book!Ezra and they've gone onto different paths now anyway. When the show premiered, you knew two things even if you hadn't read the books. One of them was that there was a serious push for the relationship between Aria and Ezra. Oooh, scandalous! Only... I really didn't give a rip. It wasn't that I didn't like them as a couple, or felt repulsed by the whole "young teacher falls for student" storyline. I just felt bored by it. We're in the middle of a murder investigation, people! I don't care!
Until the second episode of the second season, which threatens the 'ship quite seriously.
^Spoilers. You know you'll want to watch along with me in five years so... be warned! That's the song that played during the moment I was converted.
Ezra still isn't my favorite guy on the show (there's a line in front of you, dude) but I think his actor might actually be my favorite or right up there. Even when I wasn't on board for Ezria, I didn't want Ezra gone because Ian Harding does such a good job of making Ezra pretty likable in a situation where it would be easy to cross over into creepy town at any time.
Dr. Elliot Reid, Scrubs
Like most of the characters on Scrubs, Elliot is insane. She's also one of the most neurotic characters to dance across the screen (sometimes literally) and yet has managed to grow and evolve over the seasons. Still neurotic to the end, she managed to harness some of that crazy and own it. What used to define her in bad ways, she flipped and used to her advantage. She became one of the few characters not to be scared by Dr. Cox and even Kelso, though going private practice probably helped a great deal. She's also just about the only person in the hospital the janitor seems to actively like, which comes in handy fairly often. Yay for blonde doctor!
Oh, and I totally use "frick!" way more than I probably should. Passed it on to Widget even. :p
Emily Fields, Pretty Little Liars
The other thing you knew about PLL going in (if you read the press for it) was that Emily was gay. Or bi, at the very least. Scandalous! Only, you know, not. Emily changes the most from the books to the show in that book!Emily's family would be horrified that she's not lily white. Racist and homophobic, huzzah! Some people have a serious hangup with this. Me, I accepted it as part of the trade off that made the show better than the books.
Back to Emily. She's easily the nicest of the group. I've seen Aria described as the nicest, but she's the most friendly. Emily is the one who first reaches out to Mona, she's the one who first befriends Toby even though literally the entire town is against him, and then she stands her ground. She forgives Paige (nyargh, no!) and is the first to chat with Aria when Aria returns to the states. Emily is nice.
She's also the only Liar who repeatedly wants to take their case (as it may be) to the police and let the professionals do their job. She's frequently the voice of reason when things go completely haywire and no one else is listening to the audience scream out the obvious solution. She gets a lot of flak from A and the fans for being the weakest link, but I think she's just the most sensible. Someone stalking your ass? Go to the cops. Find the start of a potential snuff film emailed to you? Go to the cops. You get the idea.
Em does suffer from a massive lapse in judgment where her romances are concerned. Paige, in general. Leaving Hanna alone in the middle of nowhere to try and take a call from someone and leaving the door wide open when you're being stalked? Not smart, Fields! She's also cycled through more partners than anyone, not always waiting for the official break-up from one before skipping along to the next. (I really don't know how much of this had to do with the guest stars' availability, but it didn't reflect positively on poor Emily.) Random to note, but A has also tried to kill Emily way more often than any of the other Liars.
Long story short(er): Em is the PLL I'd most want as a friend. She has her hight maintenance side for sure, but she's also the one least likely to leave you high and dry when you need her.
Elizabeth Wakefield, Sweet Valley
So. We've come to perhaps the obvious one when given the letter "E". Elizabeth. Liz. Saint Liz, the patron saint of condescending. Oh, how adulthood has made you so insufferable at times. And yet... and yet. Is it simply that your average SV reader was already more like Liz than Jessica simply by being someone who was reading to begin with that made so many turn to the Jessica side? Is it because Liz was forever the one stuck cleaning up after people but bitching about it as she got older and the series (any series, really) progressed? Did growing up alter our relationship? I'm not really sure, to be quite honest.
There's a moment when you look back on the SV series as a whole and realize that for all the shit Jessica got for being flighty and not being the best friend ever, she at least maintained her friendships while Elizabeth cycled through a new friend every series, usually breaking up with them in a later series... frequently because they could no longer stand her or live up to her impossibly high standards. Perhaps this merely echoed the way fans would treat Liz later on, a glimpse into the future if you will. Then there was the fact that Liz never met a boyfriend she didn't cheat on but who she so rarely ever came clean to about said cheating. Classy, Liz. Classy.
And yet...
And yet Elizabeth started out with such promise. Go on, re-read Double Love. Liz is snarky and fully aware that she's brought quite a bit of the unfairness of her situation upon herself. She's not presented as the other most popular girl in school, she's the twin sister to the most popular girl in school. The twin thing probably helped Jess far more than it helped Liz at this point (oooh, special! Twins!) and Liz is exactly the kind of girl I'd have wanted to be my friend at this point in the series. She's funny! She's enough of an outsider to Jessica's popularity that she can legitimately gripe about things and it's not an eye-rolling inducing thing. She's in love with a guy who may or may not know she's alive. She gets knocked down in the hallway and the world does not stop and shun the person who knocked into her.
That is my Elizabeth Wakefield. She shows up sporadically throughout the series (although I don't really think she comes out to play much after the minis took over) but she is the original Liz. It's those other Elizabeths, the high and mighty, the condescending, the hypocritical, the Saint Lizs that are the pretenders to my Elizabeth's throne.
And we do not speak of the Elizabeth series. Because that's just a big pile of no.
Enid Rollins, Sweet Valley High
Let's be clear. As far as I know, I don't have a shameful drug-fueled past, nor did I mow down a kid while hopped up on anything, legal or otherwise. But I still relate massively to Enid. She's a bit quiet in social settings, preferring to make snarky one-liners to her best (and possibly only) friend when no one else is really in danger of overhearing. She believes in the healing powers of baking cookies, or at least eating the cookie dough. She doesn't react well when she's in danger of losing someone. Her self-esteem is high enough that she can tell Jessica Wakefield thanks, but no thanks in the friend department, but she sticks with bad boyfriends a little too long.
But Enid gets no love in the fandom. NONE. The only time I remember someone standing up for her was the debate as to why Elizabeth's friendship circle towards the end didn't include Maria, Olivia, and occasionally people would throw Enid in if they thought about it. You have no idea how sad this makes me. No idea. I'm an island, adrift in a sea of Enid hate or at the best, apathy, and I'm alone in my love for her. Did you people not re-read the tale of Amy's return and how Enid reacted? (I happen to have numerous experiences of playing the third wheel in a friendship so...) Did I stutter when I pointed out that she saw through Jessica's selfishness? Don't give me that garbage about Alex in SVU. She should sue!
She's also been known to call Liz out on her sanctimonious ways, but does this get her any love? No. No it does not. Sigh. Come on, Enid. We'll go eat some cookie dough and watch a movie or two.
♥
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
luxken27 assigned me "E". Ezra Fitz, Pretty Little Liars
Tv!Ezra as I don't really recall much about book!Ezra and they've gone onto different paths now anyway. When the show premiered, you knew two things even if you hadn't read the books. One of them was that there was a serious push for the relationship between Aria and Ezra. Oooh, scandalous! Only... I really didn't give a rip. It wasn't that I didn't like them as a couple, or felt repulsed by the whole "young teacher falls for student" storyline. I just felt bored by it. We're in the middle of a murder investigation, people! I don't care!
Until the second episode of the second season, which threatens the 'ship quite seriously.
^Spoilers. You know you'll want to watch along with me in five years so... be warned! That's the song that played during the moment I was converted.
Ezra still isn't my favorite guy on the show (there's a line in front of you, dude) but I think his actor might actually be my favorite or right up there. Even when I wasn't on board for Ezria, I didn't want Ezra gone because Ian Harding does such a good job of making Ezra pretty likable in a situation where it would be easy to cross over into creepy town at any time.
Dr. Elliot Reid, Scrubs
Like most of the characters on Scrubs, Elliot is insane. She's also one of the most neurotic characters to dance across the screen (sometimes literally) and yet has managed to grow and evolve over the seasons. Still neurotic to the end, she managed to harness some of that crazy and own it. What used to define her in bad ways, she flipped and used to her advantage. She became one of the few characters not to be scared by Dr. Cox and even Kelso, though going private practice probably helped a great deal. She's also just about the only person in the hospital the janitor seems to actively like, which comes in handy fairly often. Yay for blonde doctor!
Oh, and I totally use "frick!" way more than I probably should. Passed it on to Widget even. :p
Emily Fields, Pretty Little Liars
The other thing you knew about PLL going in (if you read the press for it) was that Emily was gay. Or bi, at the very least. Scandalous! Only, you know, not. Emily changes the most from the books to the show in that book!Emily's family would be horrified that she's not lily white. Racist and homophobic, huzzah! Some people have a serious hangup with this. Me, I accepted it as part of the trade off that made the show better than the books.
Back to Emily. She's easily the nicest of the group. I've seen Aria described as the nicest, but she's the most friendly. Emily is the one who first reaches out to Mona, she's the one who first befriends Toby even though literally the entire town is against him, and then she stands her ground. She forgives Paige (nyargh, no!) and is the first to chat with Aria when Aria returns to the states. Emily is nice.
She's also the only Liar who repeatedly wants to take their case (as it may be) to the police and let the professionals do their job. She's frequently the voice of reason when things go completely haywire and no one else is listening to the audience scream out the obvious solution. She gets a lot of flak from A and the fans for being the weakest link, but I think she's just the most sensible. Someone stalking your ass? Go to the cops. Find the start of a potential snuff film emailed to you? Go to the cops. You get the idea.
Em does suffer from a massive lapse in judgment where her romances are concerned. Paige, in general. Leaving Hanna alone in the middle of nowhere to try and take a call from someone and leaving the door wide open when you're being stalked? Not smart, Fields! She's also cycled through more partners than anyone, not always waiting for the official break-up from one before skipping along to the next. (I really don't know how much of this had to do with the guest stars' availability, but it didn't reflect positively on poor Emily.) Random to note, but A has also tried to kill Emily way more often than any of the other Liars.
Long story short(er): Em is the PLL I'd most want as a friend. She has her hight maintenance side for sure, but she's also the one least likely to leave you high and dry when you need her.
Elizabeth Wakefield, Sweet Valley
So. We've come to perhaps the obvious one when given the letter "E". Elizabeth. Liz. Saint Liz, the patron saint of condescending. Oh, how adulthood has made you so insufferable at times. And yet... and yet. Is it simply that your average SV reader was already more like Liz than Jessica simply by being someone who was reading to begin with that made so many turn to the Jessica side? Is it because Liz was forever the one stuck cleaning up after people but bitching about it as she got older and the series (any series, really) progressed? Did growing up alter our relationship? I'm not really sure, to be quite honest.
There's a moment when you look back on the SV series as a whole and realize that for all the shit Jessica got for being flighty and not being the best friend ever, she at least maintained her friendships while Elizabeth cycled through a new friend every series, usually breaking up with them in a later series... frequently because they could no longer stand her or live up to her impossibly high standards. Perhaps this merely echoed the way fans would treat Liz later on, a glimpse into the future if you will. Then there was the fact that Liz never met a boyfriend she didn't cheat on but who she so rarely ever came clean to about said cheating. Classy, Liz. Classy.
And yet...
And yet Elizabeth started out with such promise. Go on, re-read Double Love. Liz is snarky and fully aware that she's brought quite a bit of the unfairness of her situation upon herself. She's not presented as the other most popular girl in school, she's the twin sister to the most popular girl in school. The twin thing probably helped Jess far more than it helped Liz at this point (oooh, special! Twins!) and Liz is exactly the kind of girl I'd have wanted to be my friend at this point in the series. She's funny! She's enough of an outsider to Jessica's popularity that she can legitimately gripe about things and it's not an eye-rolling inducing thing. She's in love with a guy who may or may not know she's alive. She gets knocked down in the hallway and the world does not stop and shun the person who knocked into her.
That is my Elizabeth Wakefield. She shows up sporadically throughout the series (although I don't really think she comes out to play much after the minis took over) but she is the original Liz. It's those other Elizabeths, the high and mighty, the condescending, the hypocritical, the Saint Lizs that are the pretenders to my Elizabeth's throne.
And we do not speak of the Elizabeth series. Because that's just a big pile of no.
Enid Rollins, Sweet Valley High
Let's be clear. As far as I know, I don't have a shameful drug-fueled past, nor did I mow down a kid while hopped up on anything, legal or otherwise. But I still relate massively to Enid. She's a bit quiet in social settings, preferring to make snarky one-liners to her best (and possibly only) friend when no one else is really in danger of overhearing. She believes in the healing powers of baking cookies, or at least eating the cookie dough. She doesn't react well when she's in danger of losing someone. Her self-esteem is high enough that she can tell Jessica Wakefield thanks, but no thanks in the friend department, but she sticks with bad boyfriends a little too long.
But Enid gets no love in the fandom. NONE. The only time I remember someone standing up for her was the debate as to why Elizabeth's friendship circle towards the end didn't include Maria, Olivia, and occasionally people would throw Enid in if they thought about it. You have no idea how sad this makes me. No idea. I'm an island, adrift in a sea of Enid hate or at the best, apathy, and I'm alone in my love for her. Did you people not re-read the tale of Amy's return and how Enid reacted? (I happen to have numerous experiences of playing the third wheel in a friendship so...) Did I stutter when I pointed out that she saw through Jessica's selfishness? Don't give me that garbage about Alex in SVU. She should sue!
She's also been known to call Liz out on her sanctimonious ways, but does this get her any love? No. No it does not. Sigh. Come on, Enid. We'll go eat some cookie dough and watch a movie or two.
♥
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 02:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 03:16 am (UTC)LOL. I can safely say that not even the promise of Liz finally ~having sex~ was enough to tempt me to this series o' WTF. If the premise is that bad that even modern romance would scoff, then you know it's horrid.
I like Double Love Liz, too. All it takes is a reread of that book to remember why I fell in love with the series anyway.
And End! She's also awesome, though obviously written to be easily put down upon. Which sucks - somebody needs to keep Liz in line, and it sure won't be Amy! :P (And how weird was it that they retconned Amy into being her mousy BFF in middle school? LOL WTF.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 11:19 am (UTC)*cackles* I thought Jess was to keep Liz in line, although maybe that's just keep her in holding til Jess needs to pull the twin card.
I... don't understand the Amy retcon thing. I like SVT Amy. I don't get how she goes from that to SVH Amy. Why, SV, WHY?
Sigh.