December Blogging Meme Topic #9:

[ajodasso]

Do you have fictional buttons, character constellations, or themes that you particularly love to read (and/or write) about? Are there clichés that you love?
-rheasilvia

This will sound slightly absurd, but I didn't catch on till this year that I have a definite thing for thwarted apocalypses wherein the world (whether it's the microcosm of a relationship

Comments

[rheasilvia]

Thwarted apocalypses! Neat - and yes, Good Omens may be the prototype for that theme. :-)

I completely understand the attraction of the symbolic rebirth through a near-apocalypse. It's hard to think of a more harrowing fire to make characters go through, or a more meaningful and hopeful new beginning.

[ajodasso]

Actually, if we're looking at sheer timeline, Lord of the Rings is probably the precedent-setter in my world for beginning to prefer that kind of paradigm. Good Omens and Pacific Rim are the far more obvious ones that just happen to have been the ones to stick around. And who knows what new worlds will come.

(My existence has been one small apocalypse after another, and I'm still waiting for a happy ending; if I can't have one, I can at least give them to the characters I love best. I think that's the heart of the matter.)

[rheasilvia]

Well, in terms of literary history, you'd have to go back to the original heroic epics (whose conventions Tolkien drew on for LotR) to get to the first recorded instances of the apocalypse storyline. Even the bible qualifies, as do the other heroic epics of the time (such as the Gilgamesh epic).

My personal favorite is the Nibelungenlied, which is just... lovely. :-) It's a little short on the happy ending, but (as always in heroic epics) some people do survive and carry the tale out into the world. Probably not what you are looking for in this kind of story, though! (I can't resist reccing the Nibelungenlied whenever the opportunity presents itself, though, so, sorry. *g*)

[ajodasso]

Ugh, I love Gilgamesh. I know the Nibelungenlied as well, but for some reason it never grabbed my fascination to quite the same extent.

[alltoseek]

I can't remember if you've mentioned watching the British show In The Flesh. Sounds like it might interest you, along the lines you mention here (haven't seen it myself, but have friends who highly recommend it. Maybe you were one of them :-)

[ajodasso]

I am such a fan of In the Flesh that there are already 30,000 words out there to prove it ;)

[alltoseek]

Yeah, had a niggling feeling you were one - I can't keep track, sorry! :-)

Anyway, you can defnly add it to your list of near/post-Apocalyptic fandoms, I think.

(Sorry, but I can't find enough interest myself in trying it out - I watch so few shows and movies at all these days.)

[ajodasso]

You're absolutely right about that.