HIGHLA-L Digest - 24 Mar 2001 to 25 Mar 2001 (#2001-107)
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There are 5 messages totalling 233 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Raven comments from a new viewer (2)
2. <No subject given> (3)
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:05:05 -1000
From: Geiger <geiger@maui.net>
Subject: Re: Raven comments from a new viewer
Marina (about Amanda vs. DM staying true to their roots, & to Wendy,
but...)--
>>>Duncan has been doing the same thing for 400 years. Protecting people.
Living up to his "clain chieftain's son" obligations. What's different?>>>
I think one difference is that DM is trying (& generally succeeding) to make
the world a better place. While Amanda's screwing it over for the fun of
it. I'd think that _would_ get old after a few hundred years. I just find
it irksome & unbelievable that in Raven Amanda saw this particular light w/
Nick, rather than w/ DM.
Marina--
> HL never bored me once in all six years. Made me angry
> enough to spit, made me cry, made my laugh, you name it. But it
> never bored me.
Well, a few eps came darned close to boring me--The Zone, See No Evil,
Reasonable Doubt, & several eps in S/6.
me before--
> >She loves DM way more than he loves her, which I think IS sort of the
> >issue re: Nick.
Marina--
> I've never seen that. On what do you base that? I think they love
> each other in that friendly way they have, but they'd kill each
> other if they spent more than a few weeks together.
I think it was clear throughout the series that Amanda loved DM a lot more
than he loved her; I don't think it was "friendly" at all on her part. We
always see her coming to DM (never the other way around) & then trying to
get him to run away w/ her or otherwise proposing a long-term relationship.
He either refuses outright, or he somehow manages to keep their relationship
casual & temporary. A couple times, she wanders away from him after awhile,
but it seems due to other issues or in fact _because_ she realizes he can't
be what she wants him to be--_hers_, essentially. The finale's tag is
rather pathetic that way--DM confesses his love for her, yet what he means
isn't really what she needs.
More than once, we saw them asleep, & she had her hand over his
heart--symbolic, I thought.
DM _loves_ Amanda & always will. Amanda is _in love w/_ DM & always will
be. At some level, she must know it can't work as a full-time relationship,
but she'll still always crave that from him. Maybe it's part of the
centuries-old imprint she carries of her mortal life--a starving young girl
desperate for what she can't have. Nothing she steals, nothing she has,
will ever be enough.
And as for DM being Amanda's primary support in the series (something
mentioned in an earlier post, I think) despite our only seeing her in
selected tiimes & places over her very long lifetime, I think TPTB showed
_they_ thought that to be the case, in the series finale. In the alternate
universe w/o DM, Amanda was a vicious murderer, rather than the flighty
thief w/ a good heart we know. So, it wasn't Rebecca or anyone else who
primarily shaped Amanda--it was DM. W/ Amanda, it was always DM.
That (among other things) made Raven rather hard for me to swallow, as they
set up the show--Nick, Lucy, Amanda's sudden conscience, etc. And I know
TPTB didn't make Raven for established HL fans, but still.
It's not that Nick wasn't DM; Nick just wasn't much of anything special.
When exactly did we see him do anything to sweep Amanda off her feet, for
instance? Why exactly _should_ Nick have caught Amanda's attention & become
important to her (in a change-your-whole-life way)? I just never saw
anything to make the relationship plausible. And if there was no personal
relationship (as there really wasn't by season's end, the chemistry/UST bit
being down-played by then), then the work relationship--indeed the whole
set-up of playing goodie-goodie detectives--made no sense at all to me, for
_Amanda_.
> But I like Nick. He has
> principles and he isn't scared of Immortals the way a lot of us
> would be.
OK. But to me, he has principles (when convenient), & he hits people over
the head w/ them. And, considering what he knows, if he isn't deep-down
scared of Immortals, then he is either truly stupid, or he has a death wish.
Even in Raven, Immies are scary.
Nina
geiger@maui.net
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:06:57 -0800
From: ctaylor <ctaylor@indy.net>
Subject: <No subject given>
CHANGE HIGHLA-L ctaylor200@onemain.com
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:12:16 -0500
From: jjswbt@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: Raven comments from a new viewer
I wrote:
>>There are some elements of Voyager that I have enjoyed over the years.
>>Most..not. The basic plot should have been fine...lost in space is
>>always fun. But....The Delta Quadrant ended up (after a very short time)
>>as being, basically, just like the Alpha Quadrant.
Marina concurred:
>Yup. That's a common criticism of Voyager. I don't think they had
>one new script idea in seven years.
I have this recurring fantasy where Paris says "We could reconfigure the deflector shield." and Kim says "Stay the *F*&#* away from my deflector shield! I haven't got it repaired from the last time you screwed with it!"
Then..about Amanda on Raven, I said:
>>I meant "hero" in the sense that she actively placed herself in danger
>>for people and things that were not strictly related to *her* well
>>being. From everything we knew of Amanda before..and everything Lucy
>>says in Raven... Amanda's answer to "the call of duty" ( be it
>>answering an Immortal challenge or helping her fellow man) has been to
>>buy a plane ticket to Fiji.
Marina:
>She didn't run away when Methos needed her help. She helped Duncan
>out before. ??
Most of the times she comes to Duncan with a problem...and he helps her solve it. Or..her presence creates a problem for Duncan and she stays to help Duncan solve it. The operative word here is *Duncan*. She has a 300+ relationship with Duncan. She loves Duncan.She knows that Duncan will do almost anything for her.What does she really owe Nick? What does she owe *Bert* for heavens sake? Granted there are centuries of Amanda's live about which we know nothing. But..based all everything we saw on HL:TS..there was no reason to believe that she spent her time solving crimes or protecting the innocent (if there wasn't a big payoff involved.)
>>Suddenly she is willing to stay in one place..get mixed up in
>>numerous scams and operations with little financial reward and
>>lots of personal risk. The *only* way it makes sense is if she
>>is madly in love with Nick ..which I saw *no* evidence of at all.
>It does come across that she likes him, cares about what happens
>to him.
I agree that she seems to like (not love) him..that she seems to care what happens to him. What isn't clear to me is...why? I never saw any indication that she had fallen madly in love..that she couldn't bear to see Nick die *except* for "A Matter of Time" and in the last episode. They raised the idea and they dropped it. There weren't any smoldering glances..no apparent longing for his touch..no moment when she realizes it's love....nothing...just a friendship based on..what?... guilt???
>>But..I don't see where being from the modern world or not makes
>>Amanda hard to understand. Do you mean that because she is so old
>>and was raised to believe different things, we can't empathize with
>>her today?
>We won't ever know what it's like to live in an era when people
>could be bought and sold as property. We can't know what it was
>like to be living in an era of a plague with all the attendant
>"bring out your dead" kind of stuff. We have science, hospitals.
>We know how things work. We can't know what it was like for Amanda
>to be a woman, illiterate and starving, then to wake up Immortal.
True. But we saw lots of Immortals over the years..many as old as Amanda. In the other cases, you could (generally speaking) see both where they came from and what they had become. Ceirdwyn and Constantine were no longer merely warriors. Methos was not *just* Death on a horse. Fitz had been many things. It was usually the bad guys who were stuck in a rut no matter how many years they had lived. Amanda just seemed ....static.
>>She never strikes me as 1200 years old.Or perhaps I should say..she
>>strikes me as someone who has been doing the same thing for 1200 years
>>because they ,apparently, haven't brains or initiative enough to try
>>anything different.
>Duncan has been doing the same thing for 400 years. Protecting people.
>Living up to his "clain chieftain's son" obligations. What's different?
But Duncan has been lots of things. Warrior...newspaper man...spy...antique dealer...actor. Now..within those roles, he has certainly always tried to protect the weak and helpless...but he hasn't spent 400 years doing one thing. It appears that Amanda has *always* been a thief.
>>Nick was frequently grumpy - but then he was suddenly saddled with a
>>meddlesome Immortal who wouldn't even sleep with him.
>Why do you think that was, from the point of view of TPTB? Did they
>think having a heroine who engaged in headboard rattling would be
>thought of as a slut and no one would watch?
Yes..I think that was it. Male leads can sleep around and be fine..female leads must wait and wait and be deeply in love and certainly never sleep with two guys in one season (unless we're talking Ally McBeal )(who *is* considered a slut..right?)
>>I suppose they were all counting on a second season. Fools!
>They must have realised early on that it wasn't working out,
>surely?
Yes..They had enough warning to write the last episodes to "wrap up" the Series..hence hints of Nick's Immortality in the last couple of episodes and his "death" in the finale.
Wendy(I could see Amanda and Bert having fun.)(They both were criminals at heart <eg>)
Fairy Killer
jjswbt@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~jjswbt/index.html
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:09:36 -0800
From: ctaylor <ctaylor@indy.net>
Subject: <No subject given>
----- Original Message -----
From: ctaylor <ctaylor@INDY.NET>
To: <HIGHLA-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 5:06 PM
Subject: [HL]
> CHANGE HIGHLA-L ctaylor200@onemain.com
>
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Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 17:12:53 -0500
From: Debra Douglass <ddoug@catrio.org>
Subject: <No subject given>
On 3/25/2001, on HIGHLA-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU, ctaylor wrote:
>>CHANGE HIGHLA-L ctaylor200@onemain.com
All commands should be sent to LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu
-Debbie Douglass
--
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|Debra Douglass ddoug@catrio.org http://www.catrio.org|
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End of HIGHLA-L Digest - 24 Mar 2001 to 25 Mar 2001 (#2001-107)
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