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Post by Dante on Aug 24, 2015 9:22:01 GMT -5
I absolutely agree about backstory being the best thing that ever happened to the white-faced women and Fernald. I think you could probably at least add some throwaway context to the bald man and the androgynous assistant, and I think that playing up the TCC angle where everyone treats all these perfectly nice people horribly because they happen to have a faintly unusual body would definitely help. At the same time, though, I'm a little bit ambivalent about the issue of names; the reason the characters don't have names is to make them seem like faceless forces of evil, and that's why becoming a named character is the ultimate evolution of Fernald's character. (Although he was always the most interesting, and I get the feeling Handler thought so too - the hook-handed man appears in the most books out of all the troupe members.) If they kind of got names retrospectively - like if one of the later books gave us a flashback of the entire troupe in their younger years, acting like actual human beings rather than faceless forces of evil, then that would work for me, where giving them names right off the bat might not. Though I can see that not giving them names for a while would also be perhaps awkward, but again, one of the advantages of a visual medium is that you don't need to worry about naming a character every time they show up.
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Post by Strangely on Aug 24, 2015 10:33:22 GMT -5
I would prefer that they get names at some point, even if they're not used within the show. I don't really have a problem with how they referred to in the early books, but as time went on and some characters were developed it seemed weird that there weren't names. This was especially the case with the white faced woman who were finally given depth in TSS only to walk out of the book and never be seen again.
And I get have nameless villains, faceless evil is fine for a while, but it gets old. At some point, especially if it's a long series, characters need identities beyond nameless evil. Though ultimately DH chose to kill off most of the existing troupe and replace them rather than develop whoever he already had.
My final issue of no names is simply that we have no names to refer to those characters. It gets cumbersome typing out these weird and long descriptors. At least with the Hunger Games the writer had the decency to give unnamed characters short nicknames (Foxface may have been referring to a physical description but at least it's not a mouthful).
Not that I don't love the joke of "the man with a beard but no hair" and "the women with hair but no beard" but it becomes cumbersome for characters like the troupe members who appear all across the series and are even discussed when they're not present in the book.
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Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Aug 24, 2015 11:25:22 GMT -5
Woah what an interesting debate I missed.
About the troupe member who looks neither like a man or a woman, I never felt it was insulting/offensive until now. I agree that the gender thing is a way to dehumanise. We're talking about a monstruous being because of who he/she is, and the lack of gender marks aren't the horrible thing but it makes him/her more mysterious/enigmatic.
Anyway talking about the series, I really really hope they expand on all the troupe members and secondary characters. I agree that nowadays they'd make the person who looks neither like a man or a woman a great character with a nice story to tell, and given all the LGBT stuff Handler includes in his work I'm sure he'll be eager to that too.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Aug 24, 2015 19:17:25 GMT -5
I feel that, despite everything, Tim Curry is still the perfect choice for the androgynous character. EDIT: Aw hell, or would've been... I didn't know the poor guy has suffered a stroke
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Post by Linda Rhaldeen on Aug 24, 2015 19:20:37 GMT -5
I feel that, despite everything, Tim Curry is still the perfect choice for the androgynous character. That's an idea I can get behind.
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zakeno
Catastrophic Captain
"yikes"
Posts: 87
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Post by zakeno on Aug 24, 2015 20:04:23 GMT -5
Man, I'm just mad uncomfortable and worried even thinking about casting. I reaaally don't want to see another character being androgynous and monstrous at the same time. And I really really don't want to see a non-androgynous actor pretending to be androgynous at all.
It brushes me all the wrong ways. I kinda hope they just decide to make the character male or female without any fuss about gender/visual androgyny at all. Or change them entirely. Or let them be androgynous but never really verbally mention it because, knowing writers for these things, it's going to end up a crappy joke or very out-of-place and cheesy sounding. Or as I said before, let other characters be more (visually) androgynous to even it out (the quagmires would be an A+ choice for this. imagine. imagine a beautiful world with androgynous gender-variant quagmires. /dreamy sigh... what I wouldn't do....)
Maybe Joseph R. Gannascoli would be an alright casting decision for them, but I don't know. yikes. yikes is my general feeling towards this character in general. As I've probably said enough. But I really don't want to see more harmful stereotypes being perpetuated by this series.
On the 'nameless villain' front, though, I don't really think the troupe needs names, other than Fernald, who needs one because of the role he plays with other characters (the Widdershins). Keeping them nameless and then suddenly giving a name to Fernald and showing his background is what really fleshes out the schism. If all the troupe had names and backgrounds, it would start to get a little trite. Kinda like the newest season of OITNB where they decided to give everyone a background and suddenly no one was very interesting.
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Post by Linda Rhaldeen on Aug 24, 2015 21:15:42 GMT -5
You're right about the Quagmires, aren't Duncan and Isadora described as being identical to each other? If they decide to take that literally then one or both of them may very well be non gender conforming.
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Post by Dante on Aug 25, 2015 3:12:28 GMT -5
TAA describes Duncan and Isadora as "absolutely identical," with the only distinguishing factor between them being the colour of their notebooks. With that said, I don't recall the Baudelaires ever having trouble telling them apart, and seem in their first appearance to be able to discern their genders at a glance, too. Helquist's illustration of the Quagmires at the end of TAA gives one of them very slightly longer hair. (It's a bit vaguer as to how identical Quigley is. He's encountered in very different circumstances, and in the one illustration we have of him he's soaked with water.)
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Aug 25, 2015 4:06:26 GMT -5
I feel that, despite everything, Tim Curry is still the perfect choice for the androgynous character. That's an idea I can get behind. He's not androgynous, though, he's just a sweet transvestite.
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Post by Strangely on Aug 25, 2015 7:09:58 GMT -5
Man, I'm just mad uncomfortable and worried even thinking about casting. I reaaally don't want to see another character being androgynous and monstrous at the same time. And I really really don't want to see a non-androgynous actor pretending to be androgynous at all. I don't think you need to worry that much. This character appears in only three books, mostly just acting as a guard for Olaf, usually only two scenes in a book. For the movie the character had maybe five minutes of screen time and almost no lines. The movie didn't bother portraying this character in a monstrous way either, in fact deleted scenes actually made this character appear to be one of the more innocent and nice members of the troupe (Other than maybe the bald man who apparently just wanted to be famous and respected). I'm doubting the Baudelaire's encounter with them in the third book could be translated into live action anyways (That scene was so over the top and unbelievable), more than likely that'll be changed. So all that's really left is a scene guarding the tower and then dying in a fire. We're looking at maybe five minutes of screen time for the entire series. It brushes me all the wrong ways. I kinda hope they just decide to make the character male or female without any fuss about gender/visual androgyny at all. Or change them entirely. Or let them be androgynous but never really verbally mention it because, knowing writers for these things, it's going to end up a crappy joke or very out-of-place and cheesy sounding. Honestly I think we'll see this character simplified into just a brutish and homely woman rather than someone androgynous. I have a feeling we're going to see someone like Melissa Mccarthy being used as the "muscle" of the troupe. But I really don't want to see more harmful stereotypes being perpetuated by this series. At least this stereotype is something the Netflix show can easily change or just get rid of completely. As much as I love this series I think it does include many harmful stereotypes surrounding foster children and the foster system. Apparently all foster parents are greedy and selfish and children from broken homes are apparently destined for lives of crime.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Aug 25, 2015 9:19:53 GMT -5
That's an idea I can get behind. He's not androgynous, though If he's a good actor (he is) then it doesn't matter; that's what actors do. Although I'm afraid that in his current condition he won't be very much up to the task. It's a shame, he would've been a very cool connection to ASoUE (he narrates the audio books, fabulously) and a reference to Rocky Horror.
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Aug 25, 2015 9:28:47 GMT -5
He's not androgynous, though If he's a good actor (he is) then it doesn't matter; that's what actors do. Although I'm afraid that in his current condition he won't be very much up to the task. It's a shame, he would've been a very cool connection to ASoUE (he narrates the audio books, fabulously) and a reference to Rocky Horror. I know, that was just to make the reference. I honestly think Tim Curry could play that role (as well as many others in the series) to near-perfection. I hadn't heard about his stroke until I read it here. I'm sorry to hear about it, he is indeed a great actor.
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zakeno
Catastrophic Captain
"yikes"
Posts: 87
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Post by zakeno on Aug 25, 2015 11:44:47 GMT -5
Yeah, overall I'm not horribly horribly worried about it since they are a more minor character, I think just the more I talk about it the more antsy I get. Oop That being said, I am so 100% behind gender-variant Quagmires. TAA describes Duncan and Isadora as "absolutely identical," with the only distinguishing factor between them being the colour of their notebooks. With that said, I don't recall the Baudelaires ever having trouble telling them apart, and seem in their first appearance to be able to discern their genders at a glance, too. Helquist's illustration of the Quagmires at the end of TAA gives one of them very slightly longer hair. (It's a bit vaguer as to how identical Quigley is. He's encountered in very different circumstances, and in the one illustration we have of him he's soaked with water.) Sure I'd be psyched to see just some pretty androgynous looking Quagmires! But give them all shorter hair, Isadora would rock it, tbh. But I quietly always enjoyed the idea of actually gender-variant by identity Quagmires (mostly Isadora and Quig?) When I was like... 13 or some crap I wrote a fic where those two would just take each other's places in school to be able to openly be the opposite gender since it made me feel better about the junk I was going through in the real world. Man, I just want transgirl isadora and agender or transboy Quig This is more personal character speculation than a hope/fear for the netflix series because there's very little chance of it happening and I'm just being a agender twerp in dreamland. Here I am.... amongst the clouds..... its nice up here.... there's............ casual representation in the media that isn't centered around murder or other verbal/physical/etc abuse of transpeople..... nice /end my sad gay dreams But yeah Tim Curry is a great actor, but in an alternate world where he didn;t unfortunately have the stroke, I wouldn't cast him as this character. He's too small and thin, and most of his acting comes from personality-based acting, so it wouldn't really make much sense to cast him for a role that is rather personality-less. He could easily be another villain in the series though, there's plenty of them. He could be the bald man with a beard, or a council member in the village of fowl devotees, or something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You know who would be fun to cast though? All the characters in TCC. I'm excited to see all those fantastically terrible audience characters on the screen, should be a riot, literally. Can't wait to see who they cast for Kevin too, hahaha. They better be actually ambidextrous (<-this was a joke)
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Aug 28, 2015 14:41:30 GMT -5
Considering the theme of different items' 'secret histories' in TE, I hope the TV series will confirm, or at least imply, that the bird cage in TE is the same as the one in TBB, and that the knife in THH is the same as the one in TRR. In the same vein, I hope that many items will recur in the same manner - perhaps we could get some small glimpses of R's ring ahead of its arrival in TE.
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Post by Dante on Aug 28, 2015 16:23:06 GMT -5
They have at least one good reason to establish such similarities: It means they can simply recycle the props.
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