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Guess who's coming to dinner
Nov. 17th, 2011 12:32 pmThere's a dinner party game in which people are invited to name the six fictional characters they'd most like to invite round for a meal. The idea is to have the most interesting/exciting/fun/pleasurable group of guests imaginable whilst simultaneously showing off how erudite you are in front of all your friends. It's certainly an interesting question. For example, I would invite Emma Peel and get her to come along by telling her that I'd invited five other people as well, and I'm sure you lot have other, worse, suggestions than that.
Perhaps more enjoyable, though, is considering who the worst six fictional guests would be. It's easy to run through a list of villains to make up a list of guests for a disastrous dinner party - You know, Dracula, Hannibal Lecter, the clown out of IT, perhaps, but I'm more intersted in who you could invite for a party which would just be bloody awful without descending into carnage.
My list:
Professor Calculus from Tintin
Like global warming, there is near unanimity in the world when it comes to the subject of calculus being the single most irritating character ever committed to paper. With his "hilarious" deafness and "rib-tickling" malapropisms coupled with his "riotously funny" inability to comprehend that anyone might ever despise the very ground he walks upon, the loathsome little bastard...
Sorry, getting carried away there.
Anyway, I've never understood why Tintin and Haddock - especially Haddock - tolerate Calculus for one second and don't just bludgeon him to death with one of Captain Haddocks many whiskey bottles.
Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace
There's a common fallacy amongst authors which is that a "Cute kid" can in anyway improve a piece of literature or entertainment. There are many examples - The Little Prince (whose cutesy observations once raised me to such a towering rage that I went on a rampage, killing people for just looking like Antoine de St-Expuery), Wesley Crusher, Batmite, Macauley Culkin - but eight-year-old Anakin Skywalker wins not only for being staggeringly unlikeable, but also being the idea which almost singlehandedly (with able assistance from Jar-Jar Binks) wrecked one of the great film franchises.
Oh, and he squeals "Yippee!" in joyous glee whilst consigning hundreds to terrible fiery or vacuum- related deaths.
Mr Rochester and Heathcliff from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
Two characters who could be put straight by someone grabbing them by the lapels and saying "Look. Just f*** off. Really. You're just a twat", but sadly that never happens. In fact, Wuthering Heights would be amazingly improved by someone punching Heathcliff in the face around about page sixty and not stopping until he agrees to stop acting like such a wanker. As it is, the authors of both books appear to think that characters who nobody ever challenges are in some way attractive or interesting, and the only reason to have them both in the same room would be to watch them tearing at each other's throats.
GK Chesterton's Father Brown
Nobody likes a know-it-all, and Father Brown is one of those creations who not only knows it all, but is morally superior to, well, everyone. I always find this a failing on the part of an author - a Mary Sue tendency to write a character who happens to agree with everything the author himself believes, and that just makes him cleverer and just plain better than anyone else he meets. Lots of authors fall into this trap. Iain M. Banks' Culture is this tendency written on a galactic scale, whilst Mikael Blomkvist in The girl with the dragon tattoo is not only staggeringly right-on in a really preachy way, but he's also cleverer than anyone else and all the girls fancy him so there. Its displays an incredible neediness for confirmation on the part of the author and Father Brown is the prime example.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot from the Dragonlance series.
Literature is full of 'happy go lucky' thieves who say things like "Oh, I didn't think you needed this", or "It just fell into my pack" as justifications for nicking your stuff. Burrfoot is just a particularly egregious example. What the author misses is that these characters are never likable. They're thieves, and thieves should be hanged*.
It's possible to write a loveable rogue - Han Solo is a good one - but to do so you have to accept that they're actually, at some level, bad people. Trying to make a character who makes their living by theft seem a cheery innocent unaware that what they are doing is wrong never works. Ever.
So. Who would your guests be?
*To quote Conan, a much more sympathetic character.
Perhaps more enjoyable, though, is considering who the worst six fictional guests would be. It's easy to run through a list of villains to make up a list of guests for a disastrous dinner party - You know, Dracula, Hannibal Lecter, the clown out of IT, perhaps, but I'm more intersted in who you could invite for a party which would just be bloody awful without descending into carnage.
My list:
Professor Calculus from Tintin
Like global warming, there is near unanimity in the world when it comes to the subject of calculus being the single most irritating character ever committed to paper. With his "hilarious" deafness and "rib-tickling" malapropisms coupled with his "riotously funny" inability to comprehend that anyone might ever despise the very ground he walks upon, the loathsome little bastard...
Sorry, getting carried away there.
Anyway, I've never understood why Tintin and Haddock - especially Haddock - tolerate Calculus for one second and don't just bludgeon him to death with one of Captain Haddocks many whiskey bottles.
Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace
There's a common fallacy amongst authors which is that a "Cute kid" can in anyway improve a piece of literature or entertainment. There are many examples - The Little Prince (whose cutesy observations once raised me to such a towering rage that I went on a rampage, killing people for just looking like Antoine de St-Expuery), Wesley Crusher, Batmite, Macauley Culkin - but eight-year-old Anakin Skywalker wins not only for being staggeringly unlikeable, but also being the idea which almost singlehandedly (with able assistance from Jar-Jar Binks) wrecked one of the great film franchises.
Oh, and he squeals "Yippee!" in joyous glee whilst consigning hundreds to terrible fiery or vacuum- related deaths.
Mr Rochester and Heathcliff from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
Two characters who could be put straight by someone grabbing them by the lapels and saying "Look. Just f*** off. Really. You're just a twat", but sadly that never happens. In fact, Wuthering Heights would be amazingly improved by someone punching Heathcliff in the face around about page sixty and not stopping until he agrees to stop acting like such a wanker. As it is, the authors of both books appear to think that characters who nobody ever challenges are in some way attractive or interesting, and the only reason to have them both in the same room would be to watch them tearing at each other's throats.
GK Chesterton's Father Brown
Nobody likes a know-it-all, and Father Brown is one of those creations who not only knows it all, but is morally superior to, well, everyone. I always find this a failing on the part of an author - a Mary Sue tendency to write a character who happens to agree with everything the author himself believes, and that just makes him cleverer and just plain better than anyone else he meets. Lots of authors fall into this trap. Iain M. Banks' Culture is this tendency written on a galactic scale, whilst Mikael Blomkvist in The girl with the dragon tattoo is not only staggeringly right-on in a really preachy way, but he's also cleverer than anyone else and all the girls fancy him so there. Its displays an incredible neediness for confirmation on the part of the author and Father Brown is the prime example.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot from the Dragonlance series.
Literature is full of 'happy go lucky' thieves who say things like "Oh, I didn't think you needed this", or "It just fell into my pack" as justifications for nicking your stuff. Burrfoot is just a particularly egregious example. What the author misses is that these characters are never likable. They're thieves, and thieves should be hanged*.
It's possible to write a loveable rogue - Han Solo is a good one - but to do so you have to accept that they're actually, at some level, bad people. Trying to make a character who makes their living by theft seem a cheery innocent unaware that what they are doing is wrong never works. Ever.
So. Who would your guests be?
*To quote Conan, a much more sympathetic character.
