I was always fond of her sudden laugh upon being being offered the Ring. She's all, "Yeah. This is the Valinor sense of humour. Super-slow build, then POW. All right, Altariel, gameface." Shame Jackson couldn't parse that on screen.Dave wrote:As bad in her way as what Galadriel would have turned into, if she'd accepted the Ring from Frodo and taken on Sauron's power. "In place of the Dark Lord you would set up a Queen, beautiful and terrible! All shall love me, and despair!"
A writer has to leave their mark on a mythos, or it won't stand out, but it can't deviate so broadly as to be pure randomness, or it's randomness not a mythos. I really like what Paul has done with vampires, which I feel are played out everywhere else. Dying alone and forgotten only to rise again with bloodlust; to die a second time nigh-requiring another being to effect it, thus de facto negating the agony of abandonment-- good stuff. I liked them cavorting on the beach, too. All they need are straw hats.Dave wrote:(That is, if a Wapsiverse incubus is indeed simply the male counterpart of a Wapsiverse succubus. I recall Pablo making the point here in the forum that the characteristics of Wapsiverse mythics such as demons and succubi do not match the popular portrayals of the beings with those same class-names in popular literature. A Wapsiverse incubus might be something else entirely... possibly more of a Pan-like or satyr nature?)
Dave wrote:(I'm reminded a bit of the story "The Region Between" by Harlan Ellison... Ellison's story involves a being known as the Succubus, who stole souls. Nothing at all sexual about it... the Succubus was reselling them (or leasing them out) to fill a demand in the market...)
That's a tale of constant rebellion, as Harlan will do, and often righteously. Atsali has the teen challenge of fitting in and living up to the adults' expectations; learning to control herself. Light-years away from an Ellison rage-jam, certainly a 180 from the youthquake of the Sixties. Atsali and Calista wish (and need) to learn to govern well: Monica and Shelly (and Jin) have to show them the pitfalls of being the shining example, while avoiding falling into those pits themselves.
Though I still believe Monica is on course for challenging the failures and excesses of the existing divine regime. More than ever, really. We know only so much about it, and it will not precisely resemble existing myth. But some of those myths were, shall we say, ones Monica would not like to hear. If her "portfolio" is to be built upon her first victory in the wild, then some beings high on the totem pole may be wondering what that scratching noise approaching portends...
Tolkien never really finished Galadriel's backstory. Maybe the Valar exiled her out of fear.
