The 12 Character Fanfic Meme: Opera Edition

There's a meme going around the Livejournal community, particularly the sizeble segment that read and write fanfiction. I found it in the Harry Potter community, but it probably has spread to the other large fandoms - Buffy, LoTR, Star Wars etc.

I thought I'd do something a little different and use characters from the world of opera. Yes, there is such a thing as opera fanfiction (I haven't read any yet, but I have seen it *shudders*).

The Meme:
First, write down the names of 12 characters. Then read and answer the questions.You can't look at the questions (or click on the cut) until you write down the 12 characters you're going to use.

My 12 characters from the world of opera (I have tried to spread it around a little, but ended up with two Pucinnian heroines. Perhaps I should drop Tosca for Aida? Naah, I like 'em wenches who murder for love).

1. Flora Tosca (Tosca)
2. Melisande (Pelleas et Melisande)
3. Siegfried (Wagner's Ring Cycle)
4. Porgy (Porgy and Bess)
5. The With (Hansel and Gretel)
6. Otello (Otello)
7. Lucia (Lucia di Lamermoor)
8. Turandot (Turandot)
9. Don Juan (Don Juan)
10. Oktavian (Der Rosenkavalier)
11. Cinderella (La Cerenatola)
12. Canio (Pagliacci)


Questions have been adapted. I don't maintain a friend list here, so those questions have been changed slightly. And opera fanfic isn't something I want to get my mind around, so I have dropped a couple of questions on who might read and write this stuff.



Have you ever read a Six/Eleven (Otello/Cinderella) fic? Do you want to?
Heh. Jealous general and innocent princess-to-be. It's not a stretch. Desdemona could well have been a Cinderella type before marrying Otello. Obviously, I haven't read any fic with this pairing, nor does it probably exist. But I could get behind this, if I am bored enough.


Do you think Four (Porgy) is hot? How hot?
When he sings "Bess, you is my woman now", he's hotter than Jude Law and Colin Firth put together. But that might have something to do with the drop-dead-gorgeous Gershwin music, rather than poor old Porgy himself.

What would happen if Twelve (Canio) got Eight (Turandot) pregnant?
"Off with the clown's head"!! I don't know if he could ever get close enough to her to get her pregnant, though.

Can you rec any fic(s) about Nine (Don Juan)?
Don Juan the opera character, no. Don Juan the literary character, probably a few. He's popular with the ladies, this one.

Would Two (Melisande) and Six (Otello) make a good couple?
Wow, I am getting het couplings so far (but probably spoke too soon! Watching out for disturbing slash to come, I am sure). Well, they both die at the end of their respective operas, and Melisande does have a vaguely Desdemona like vibe, so yes, I can see this couple happening.

Five/Nine (The Witch/Don Juan) or Five/Ten (The Witch/ Oktavian)? Why?
This is cracking me up. I am still managing to get het couplings, but only just. Oktavian, after all, is sung by a mezzo-soprano. Choice between Don Juan and Oktavian? Don Juan, hands down. Oktavian ain't man enough for The Witch!


What would happen if Seven (Lucia) walked in on Two (Melisande) and Twelve (Canio) having sex?
5 minutes of impassioned coloratura expressing shock and a dismayed realisation of being just the slightest bit intrigued. Melisande would be serene and inscrutable. Canio would be guilt-ridden. (Hahaha, still getting the het coupling!)

Make up a summary for a Three (Siegfried)/Ten (Oktavian) fic.
Siegfried finally gets squicked about having an affair with his own aunt and leaves a broken-hearted but brave Brunhilde. He travels the world (well, western Europe, I suppose) in search of his destiny. In Austria, he meets a newly-divorced Oktavian, whose ex-wife Sophie has left him when his voice refused to crack even after 5 years of marriage. Together, Siegfried and Oktavian nitpick the plotholes of their operatic past and form an unlikely alliance to preserve the right of composers to write lush scores requiring over-sized orchestras. (Hey, first slash couple, but like I said before, Oktavian is dodgy anyway).

Is there such a thing as One (Tosca)/Eight (Turandot) fluff?
Haha, femmeslash with my two Puccinian heroines!! Turandot and fluff? The mind cannot compute such a possibility.

Suggest a title for a Seven (Lucia)/Twelve (Canio) hurt/comfort fic.
Oh, this is practically "canon", isn't it? Or would be, if the two were in the same opera. I am not sure who would be comforting who more, since they are both great figura tragedia. I can hear the duet now - a violent clash of coloratura and anguished verismo. And the title? "Madness shared is madness doubled". Or maybe "Caterwauler and Clown: A Meditation on Crying, Craziness and Cluelessness." (Still with the het pairing!)

What kind of plot device would you use if you wanted Four (Porgy) to deflower One (Tosca)?
A good old fashioned courtship. Porgy, in my books, is essentially a good-hearted romantic, if a little inclined towards jealousy, as is Tosca. Heck, he just needs to sing "You is my woman now" and she'll fall into his arms (such a great, great, great operatic duet). (The het continues!)

Does anyone you know read Seven (Lucia) slash?
Is there such a thing as Lucia slash? Don't want to know, really. Who would you slash Lucia with? Don't want to know that either.

Does anyone you know read Three (Siegfried) het?
If there is Siegfried/Brunhilde het, yes, there are people who would probably read it, if they could get past the semi-incest angle.

What might Ten (Oktavian) scream at a moment of great passion?
"Marie Therese!" (well, that's the opening line of that wonderful trio in Der Rosenkavalier which builds rather orgasmically)

If you wrote a song-fic about Eight (Turandot), which song would you choose?
Well, I could cheat and say "In questa Reggia" which Turandot herself sings. For something a little more contemporary, "Fever". Or "I Can't Make You Love Me" - told from the Calaf's Point of View, of course.

If you wrote a One (Tosca)/Six (Otello)/Twelve (Canio) fic, what would the warnings be?
Murder, suicide, extreme morbidity, all major characters dead by end of story. Boy, this is what you get when you put three Italian operas together! (As threesomes go, this isn't a bad combination!)

What might be a good pick-up line for Two (Melisande) to use on Ten (Oktavian)? "What's your Symbolism?" Really, I can't imagine Melisande using a pick-up line on anyone, not even Pelleas! Oktavian might try something on Melisande, though. (Het-ing on!)

When was the last time you read a fic about Five (The Witch)?
Well, not ever, really.

What is Six (Otello)'s super-sekrit kink?
Bondage with hankies!

Would Eleven (Cinderella) shag Nine (Don Juan)? Drunk or sober?
Yes! Drunk AND sober. He's Don Juan, after all. I think that Cinderella could be quite the lusty wench. Nobody pulls of her coloratura fireworks without having a bit of fire in her. (Oooh, the het pairings continue ... what did I do right, or wrong?)

If Three (Siegfried) and Seven (Lucia) get together, who tops?
Lucia. Siegfried is too naive for tops. (And onward het couplings!)

One (Tosca) and Nine (Don Juan) are in a happy relationship until Nine (Don Juan) suddenly runs off with Four (Porgy). One (Tosca), broken-hearted, has a hot one-night stand with Eleven (Cinderella) and a brief unhappy affair with Twelve (Canio), then follows the wise advice of Five (The Witch) and finds true love with Three (Siegfried). What title would you give this fic?
Hehehe, I LOVE this. I would title this "The Fairy Tale of Flora Tosca: How I dated a slut but learnt to love a virgin". (Starts and ends with a het pairing!).

How would you feel if Seven (Lucia)/Eight (Turandot) was canon?
Okay, for this to be "canon" someone would need to write an opera pairing Lucia with Turandot. Nothing off-putting about this combination, but they are an extremely unlikely pair. Over the top Lucia and ice queen Turandot. I think I might actually find it rather boring! Now, Lucia/Tosca would have been more like it! (Okay, it ends on a femmeslash note!)

Recently Read: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

This is not a proper review, just a series of thoughts.

My HP readership history:

I saw the first two HP movies before reading any of the books. The movies did not particularly entice me to read the books, as they were entertaining but ultimately did not really convey enough wonder and magic. And okay, here's my snob's confession: I did not really see myself finding much enjoyment from reading what were essentially children's books. Not that I have anything against children's literature at all. In fact, one of my favourite books last year was Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time". My impression at the time was that the HP books were aimed at very young readers aged below 10. More Enid Blyton than Robert Louis Stevenson, as it were. The book covers did not help correct this mistake impression, neither did the first two movies.

When Order of the Phoenix came out two years ago, I came around to realising that JK Rowling probably did not write a 800 page book for readers aged below 10. Then I found out that my brother had read all the books and had also purchased OotP. I considered reading OotP, but was told that it wouldn't make much sense if I only knew the HP world through the first two movies. To appreciate OotP, I would basically need to read PoA and GoF, relying on the movies to fill in for the first two books. It all just seemed so much effort at the time and I had as always, at least 20 other books on my planned reading list.

One day last year, I was feeling slightly under the weather and not up to reading anything too heavy. My brother had left his much read copy of Prisoner of Azkaban in the living room (it's usually in his car as his stand-by reading material while waiting for people or stuck in traffic - he had told me that it was the best book in the series and the one that most repays rereading). I had just seen Chamber of Secrets on HBO a few nights earlier (I think this was around the period before the movie PoA was to be released). More on a whim than anything else, Prisoner of Azkaban became the first HP book I read and remains my favourite in the series (but more on that later). I was instantly hooked. I went through the other books in about a week, including the mammoth Order of the Phoenix and the only slightly less mammoth Goblet of Fire.

Thoughts on the JK Rowling:

JK Rowling is not a great writer, in the sense that you could not label her a modern-day Austen or Faulkner. Amongst contemporary authors, she lacks the edge of genius that elevates the likes of Beryl Bainbridge and Salman Rushdie to greatness. I certainly do not think that she suffers in comparison because she writes children's literature. LM Montgomery, Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and Louisa May Alcott are all great writers of children's literature. JK Rowling is not a great writer because she lacks the deft use of language of these authors and their innate sense of how to structure and pace their work. That said, Rowling is a great story-teller, with a gift for imaginative flights of fancies and inventive plots. Her richly detailed Potterverse is testament to her talents.

Thoughts on the HP Series as a whole:

The books are wonderfully imaginative, and full of the wonder of magic. To me, they are far superior to the movies, that have been able to show us much because of the "magic" of visual effects but have left us little of the magic of our imagination.

I think the reason that JK Rowling has struck a chord with adult readers is that magic aside, the books are rich in characterisation. Harry Potter himself is a wonderful creation. As the books are told from his point of view, his is the most developed of the characters. I liked the fact that Rowling has written Harry as a very ordinary boy, who happened to have a significant destiny. Unlike his father, Harry is not a brilliant student, although he is a great Quidditch player,the one skill that Rowling gives him that distinguishes Harry from other students. To me, Harry is the Everyman hero, he is not obviously extraordinary but will save the world because of his courage, loyalty and sense of friendship.

Rowling has surrounded Harry with a colourful collection of loyal friends, schoolmates, professors and various members of the wizarding community. True to the dictates of children's literature, they are drawn economically but with enough detail that for the most part, they are never just plot devices and appear to have real personalities.

I have found it fascinating how the books have matured as their readers grew up. In the first two books, the characters were drawn in broad strokes, particularly the Muggle family of the Dursleys. Dudley and Uncle Vernon seemed less like characters than caricatures. I think this handicapped JKR in later books, as she was stuck with cartoon-like character attributes that were so extreme that it was difficult to soften them.

In PoA, we had Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, two complex grown-up characters. We learnt a little about Snape's past interaction with Harry's father, casting new light on this most interesting of the Slytherin characters. In GoF, we met Rita Skeeter and various unsavoury politico-types from the Ministry of Magic. We learnt of Hagrid's half-breed origin, lending a real gravity to this gentle giant. Somebody died in GoF (in an excellently written scene), and a even more devastating death came in OotP. From PoA onwards, Harry's world became darker and his struggles more difficult. While the first two books had Harry and friends triumphant against Voldemort, books 4 and 5 set us up for the return of the Dark Lord to power. By the end of OotP, the wizarding world was at war.

My favourite book in the series is PoA, by a mile. Tightly plotted and a real page turner, it has the happy position of being the "middle book", more mature in tone than the first two books and less gloomy and dark than the books that followed. PoA ends on a triumphant note as Harry and Hermione manage to save Sirius Black. And yet there is a sadness underlying the triump, as Sirius is on the run and Remus Lupin has lost his job after Snape reveals his werewolf background. The book foreshadows the coming darkness but is itself a good balance of despair and hope.

Harry in PoA is also "between" phases. He is no longer a child, and not quite yet the difficult teenager that he will become in GoF and OotP. He is genuinely sympathetic and likeable, as are Ron and Hermione. I particularly liked Hermione's character development in this book, she was as loyal a friend as Harry could ever hope to have.

In PoA, there is plenty of plot development that happens not only because of events, but because of characterisation. We get a glimpse into the past, when Harry's parents were at Hogwarts and are introduced the the quartet of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. We find out about who did what the night that Harry's parents died and how more than one life had since been wrecked.

PoA also introduced my favourite HP character, Remus Lupin. He is amongst Rowling's finest creations - a genuinely good man, a wonderful teacher and a werewolf. Rowling drops phrases that economically describe the difficulties that Lupin has faced - shunned all his adult life, difficulty finding employment, his ill and prematurely aged appearance - and we appreciate anew how much more admirable it is that he has remained kind and likeable, and a good teacher.


Thoughts on Half Blood Prince:

This was a very enjoyable read, especially after the relentless darkness and angst of OotP. There is a war raging on in the background, but the tone of the book is considerably lighter. While Sirius' death at the end of OotP seemed to plunge Harry (and the reader) into even deeper levels of depression, the death in this book, and the aftermath, was genuinely moving. The last chapters pack a real emotional wallop and the book ends on just the right bitter-sweet note. What I liked best is that Harry had grown up and matured since the last book and is much less of a pain in the neck in this book. This makes a big difference to my enjoyment of the book as much of it is told from Harry's perspective.

Apart from the death of a major and beloved character, not a lot actually happens in HBP. Much of it seems to be Rowling setting up for the grand finale in book 7. Even the title of the book - Half Blood Prince - did not seem to have a clear connection to the story-line (mainly because there really was not much of a main plot), unlike in the previous books. I can only assume that it will become important in Book 7 that we know about the Half Blood Prince, because otherwise, there isn't much that is that edifying about the fact that Harry did rather well at Potions for one year.

We learnt a lot about Voldermorth/Tom Riddle's past, in a series of Pensieve episodes. I greatly enjoyed these, although they were not really moving any plot forward and were more expositionary than anything else. It was good to have a change of pace, to learn something about the history of Harry's nemesis. On the face of it, these passages appear to suggest that Rowling had chosen a rather meandering way to tell us about the Horcruxes and that Tom Riddle likes Hogwart alot. But I have no doubt that these memories will become vital to the events of book 7.

Much of the book was also Rowling's dropping of hints and red herrings, particularly about Snape and Draco Malfoy. And yes, also about Dumbledore. She has truly mastered the art of diversion and misdirection in her writing, using Harry's POV narrative to great effect. I think that perhaps Rowling's true calling is as a writer of mysteries or detective stories.

The main event is of course Snape's apparent murder of Dumbledore. I haven't a definitive stance on the great "Is Snape Evil?" debate. I think Rowling has been very deliberate in not revealing anything that will tip the argument conclusively one way or the other. For every clue that she drops in favour of one side of the debate (eg. Snape stops the other Death Eaters from killing Harry), she drops a hint for the other (eg. Snape's expression of loathing before he kills Dumbledore). I am inclined to think that it cannot be as cut and dry as Harry seems to think - that Snape has to be a Death Eater that has re-pledged his alliance to Voldemort. Snape has been written with great ambiguity - truly unlikeable but seemingly redeemed by Dumbledore's faith in him, although essentially still a mean-spirited person who cannot let go of his hatred of James Potter. His motivations , whatever they are revealed to be, should hopefully be just as complex as his character has been written to be so far.

I do believe that DD is well and truly dead, although the folks at Dumbledoreisnotdead.com make a few pretty convincing arguments. Rowling has gone on record saying that she has written HP in the tradition of other literature where the hero's journey is one that he ultimately makes on his own. Dumbledore's death,sad as it is, has a purpose in this grand scheme.

This is also the "shipping" book. Befitting a bunch of 16 and 17 year-olds, hormones are on the loose and relationships are formed and broken-off. I keep out of the HP fandom by and large, but I know about the rabid shipping communities, in particular the Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione camps. With this book, Rowling settles the issue - Ron and Hermione will happen in Book 7 and Harry likes Ginny Weasley - although the Ron/Hermione development has been rather obvious to me since GoF, and even in PoA. The Harry/Ginny dynamic was set in motion during CoS, and her active role in OotP was a giveaway that she would be Harry's object of affection. All the passages on 'snogging' were rather fun, although Rowling isn't quite as deft with teenaged romance as she is with the fantasy elements. What she did manage to convey was the sheer turbulence of emotion that these teenagers experience.

In a nod towards the maturity of its protagonist, this book reveals adult relationships that a younger Harry might have paid less attention to. The pairing of Lupin and Tonks was a nice touch by Rowling. The revelation of this relationship at the end didn't take me by surprise, because she had dropped clues liberally throughout the book. I had also thought that OotP established a comfortable camaraderie between the two characters and a step up towards a romantic relationship was not unexpected. Rowling hints at the complexities of the emotions on both sides, contrasting this more adult relationship (which will carry baggage, not least of which is Lupin's lycanthropy) with Harry's less complicated relationship with Ginny. Perhaps these relationships, together with Bill Weasley and his fiance Fleur, are meant to illustrate the power that Voldermort knows not - the ability to love. Even Draco Malfoy's seeming redemption at the end appears to be motivated by love for his family (In my books, this is a very slight redemption, if it is as such. Draco Malfoy might love his mother and be a 16-year-old caught in over his head, but he is a thoroughly spoilt, sadistic brat and a racial supremacist to boot. It will take a lot more than losing his resolve to kill Dumbledore to render him completely sympathetic.)

It was a bonus to learn about Lupin's mission with the werewolves and his history with Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who bit him as a child. Greyback is as malevolent a creature as Rowling has ever written, as evil and repellent as even Voldemort himself. I hope that Greyback will appear again in Book 7. It would seem strange to introduce him only for one book, when the werewolf sub-plot holds such promise.

The big plot points that will carry to book 7 are the Horcruxes and the identity of R.A.B. I fully expect R.A.B to be Regullus Black, so we can revisit scenes from the first Wizarding War, possibly exploring in depth the dynamics of the Black family, not only Sirius and Regullus, but their Death Eater cousins Narcissus Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. These scenes from the past would also perhaps lead to a resolution of Snape's motivations, his relationship with Voldemort, Dumbledore and James Potter.

The Horcruxes are an interesting invention, and will set things up well for a treasure-hunt like plotline. I imagine that even while Harry has decided not to return to Hogswart, the search for the Horcruxes will lead him back to his beloved school. My suspicion is that there is a Horcrux connected to an object owned by Gryffindor, and that object will be found at Hogswart. It might even perhaps be something that has been innocuously mentioned in previous books, or even something that had been close at hand to Harry throughout his years at Gryffindor Tower. (Oh, here's an idea: the Sorting Hat is a Horcrux! Heh, wouldn't that be interesting.) I don't plan to go back and comb all the previous books for additional clues, but I think the Internet HP sleuth community should already be on the job.

In summary, Half Blood Prince is clearly a "bridge" book, rather like the Two Towers was a bridge in the LOTR series. It is exposition heavy and leaves a million loose ends to be tied up. It lacks its own central plot, because it mainly functions to drive the series forward to its conclusion in the final book. Because of that, there is a sense of incompletion at the end of HBP, rather like having read the first half of a novel that has had the rest of its pages torn out (that's what I meant by JKR lacking a great writer's skills with pacing and structure). That said, I think this is the best HP book after PoA. Not a lot happens, but we learnt something new about important characters, especially Voldemort, Snape (well, we got more ambiguity, but heaps of clues to ponder over for two years) and Harry himself. The expositions will reward rereading as we try to find the real clues and tie them together. Finally, HBP makes us feel as well as think. It is the first HP book that succeeds in being emotive without accompanying overwrought drama that cause the more cynical to roll their eyes a little (Harry's all-caps and exclamation-pointed shouting in OotP being a prime example). Rowling honours Dumbledore with a movingly written funeral chapter. Almost as moving was the gesture of friendship extended by Ron and Hermione to Harry in the final two pages. It reminds us that in the final analysis, the true magic that Harry found at Hogwarts was loyalty and friendship.