Guilty Pleasures: My Secret Love Affair with Gibbs

"Should I call you Leroy?  Or Jethro?"

Pause.

"Gibbs it is, then."

What amazes me about this show is that the season premier this week had me on the edge of my couch cushions and it's the tenth season!  A crime drama centering around the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, it got its start as a spinoff of JAG, or Judge Advocate General, a military courtroom drama.

What sets NCIS apart, for me, is the strength of the writing and the rapport between the characters.  The shows from week to week aren't the same-old, same-old.  Each time we get a little glimpse into the lives of each of the people we've come to love and, unlike some other cop shows that I've enjoyed but then found to grow dull, we are kept interested by the development of those characters.  Tony Denozzo, for example, started out as a cad and has become a well-rounded man with a yearning for a real relationship but a fear of being hurt.  Each of the characters has matured and changed, evolved, if you will.

I find it useful to watch these kinds of shows because a) they have to tell a tight story in a specific time frame, which is good discipline for a storyteller and b) because they have to keep the audience engaged over time, even with the same characters.  That isn't easy to do and I think those of us who write in series can learn a lot from these shows.

And besides, am I the only one that has a crush on Gibbs?  Come on, ladies, 'fess up.  Who's your favorite?

The character crush...

I first began reading romance novels when I was about twelve/thirteen years old. I'd wander over to a little drugstore near our home and plunk down my month's allowance for every Harlequin Presents novel they had in stock. Ah, the thrill of those crisp, white covers still brings back a fluttery feeling. :)

Those were the days when falling in love seemed simple enough. A little attraction... a little conflict... always a big misunderstanding... followed by declarations of undying love. Believable? Um, probably not. But I devoured the stories as if they were true-to-life guide books to adulthood.

Recently, one of those stories -- a particular favorite of mine -- came to mind, along with the strong desire to read it again. Problem is it's been out of print for quite a while and my dog-eared copy had long ago disappeared on some cleaning spree or other.

Thank heaven's for the Internet and used book sellers everywhere. ;)

It wasn't the story itself, so much, but the characters that captured my imagination. Some heroes have the ability to stay with you over time, imprinted on your heart/mind like an old friend. I still think of Mr. Rochester... Mr. Darcy... Dr. Neil MacNeill (in the book, Christy)... among others. All of them strong, yet vulnerable, men who captured my heart.


Yes, I have periodically developed full-blown character crushes on very Alpha-type men. The kind I would likely smack or run from if I met any of them in real life... Okay, maybe not Mr. Darcy. ;) Books feel ever so much safer, after all. ;)

So, why do some fictional characters appeal to us despite their obvious flaws? Why can we accept actions -- particularly in a hero -- that would disgust us in reality? Yes, it's all subjective and have a lot to do with our own experiences in life, but in this case, I think it mostly has to do with that part of me which thrills at the 'bad boy' personality. At least, as he's portrayed in fiction. Like I said, in life, it probably wouldn't stay so appealing.

Really, how sexy is it when a woman can bring a tough guy like that to his knees?

Today, I do groan inwardly at the 'punishing kisses' of old Presents novels. My first instinct would be to firmly plant a knee to the man's groin. An action I do believe any of my heroines would mimic. So much for romance after that. And yet...

Yes, I've had a bit of a nostalgia trip this week as I skimmed through my 'new' book. I know the story well, so I don't have to read it from cover to cover to fresh my memory on the rather simplistic plot. While I did cringe at the bruising first kisses, I did wind up sighing with pleasure at the end. Yes, it's a guilty pleasure. So sue me.

However, I still wish we could 'see' the story through the hero's eyes as well as the heroines'. I wish I could have really seen him fall in love -- in his own mind -- instead of trying to interpret his feelings from the naive heroine's point of view. That would probably have sent my teen crush into overdrive.

Do you have any crushes you consider a guilty pleasure? A character you hate to love?

~~Meg Allison
Indulge your senses...
http://www.megallisonauthor.com

Characters I Love

When I saw Star Wars at the age of nine in the theater (or maybe it was The Empire Strikes Back), I had a HUGE crush on Luke Skywalker. Dashing, attractive, daring, he was everything I wanted my hero to be.

Remember the scene in the first part of Star Wars, where they show the two ships fighting the lasers go whizzing past with lots of loud noise?

I hid in my dad’s shirt when that happened.

I also hid when Darth Vader and Luke fought the first time, and when Luke lost his hand. How I hated Darth Vader! That breathing!

I remember a few years back that modern audiences don’t find Darth Vader scary at all, but that the new set of Star Wars movies had Darth Maul as the new big-bad.

Say what?? How could you not find that breathing scary?

Then I saw Space Balls (somehow I missed it when it first came out). Not at all scary, and I tried to tell myself I agreed – Darth Vader isn’t scary.

But I still shiver when I think of him, and that awful breathing.

I didn’t have imaginary friends growing up. Instead, I told myself stories, and others too. I wrote the first one when I was nine; an embarrassing-to-me-now piece about a cat named Marge.

Hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right?

Then I discovered Star Trek on re-runs. I used to watch it on my parents’ old black-and-white TV in their bedroom while my mom was in some other part of the house, sewing or cleaning or what-all. The shows captivated me. I wanted Captain Kirk to be my dad. Or at least an uncle.

Then came the alien probe episode.

I’m sure, if I watched it now, I would find it quite unscary. After all, we’ve progressed light-years from the olden days of special effects. But that probe episode sticks with me, for the sheer dread I felt while watching it. There were a couple others that I found equally riveting, and that had characters that scared me. But the idea of a machine attacking people, to me at the time, inexorable.

Somehow, the Terminator must have gotten my brain scans, because they couldn’t have conceived of a scarier redux on that idea! I mean, it’s a machine, shaped like a man! It could be anyone! Schwarzenegger’s gotten a lot of bad press lately, much of it self-inflicted, but he will forever have my admiration for the portrayal of that heartless, soulless machine in the first movie. Not to mention, he was unstoppable! I know everyone remembers the “Ah’ll be bahk” quotes. But to me, the seminal moment is when the terminator is crushed in the machine and STILL keeps coming, even without his legs working.

Yikes!

I remember reading a quote attributed to Lois McMaster Bujold relative to her character, Miles Vorkosigan. She said something along the lines that she simply imagines what horrible tortures she can do to Miles, and then figures out a way for him to surmount them, and that’s how she comes up with her stories. In the process, she’s created one of the most amazing characters of science fiction. Here is a man who is crippled, maimed, and some might say, deformed. Yet he manages through sheer force of personality to abscond with a mercenary army and then return to take command of that army – despite not being of legal age to drink.

For me, what makes characters, good or bad, memorable is how they handle the consequences of their actions or the actions around them. It isn’t enough to just do “stuff” to a person. What’s interesting is how that person responds to it. I remember my father ranting about the movie The Perfect Storm, because the men upon whom the story is based were drunk and stupid. He felt that was no way to tell a story, since the people involved had no redeeming characteristics. I didn’t quite know what he meant until I saw the remake of The War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise’s character was awful! The portrayal wasn’t bad, as Mr. Cruise is a skilled professional. But the man he portrayed was, to put it bluntly, a waste of time. He didn’t stay with his wife, was a neglectful father, and a coward. Yet the entire movie revolved around him as though he was some sort of reflection of everyman, a modern-day hero.

To that I say, poo. I want heroes like Luke Skywalker. Men and women who take what is given to them and turn it into something grand. Villains who intimidate by a look or a gesture.

Characters, in short, who make me believe, even for only a short while, that they are real, that they live and breathe, and that I could one day meet them.

~A. Catherine Noon

Characters Welcome, And Readers Too!

Greetings, Kittens!

Happy August and thank you for joining us here at Beyond the Veil today. You may have noticed some new faces among us, I'd like to formally welcome our new bloggers and share with the world how thrilled we are to have them with us!

Members aren't the only new thing we have going on at Beyond the Veil, this month we've launched the first of our new monthly themes. Each blogger with touch on the topic of the month in their own unique way. Whether a member brushes by the theme, barely disturbing the air, or dives deep and lays down a point by point dissertation on the whys and wherefores, you can rest assured that it'll be worth the read.

The theme for August is: Characters Welcome: Favorite Characters We Love or Love to Hate

Yes, I watch more than my fair share of USA Network and it was a perfect slogan to pay homage to as we each brought you our personal viewpoints on the characters that touch us the most. Some will be favorite characters we've written, others will be those we've read and still others will be our favorite screen characters, who knows, it may be all three and more if you catch one of us in the right mood!

As the author kicking off this lovefest, I thought I'd play to my strengths and go straight to the idea of Character Crushes. *smile*

I'm a generous veiwer and I hope a generous reader. I may grumble over the things that I'd do differently, but I embrace a good segment of the genre work out there and a few offerings are even met with fangirl abandon.

My first literary crush in memory is Lestat from Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. Yes, it was Interview and not his redemptive book The Vampire Lestat, that brought that initial crush. Think what you will about that, (people usually do), but Louis' whiney tome could not hide how deeply in love Lestat had fallen with Louis and the family they created with Claudia. I was young and impressionable and I felt for Lestat with an intensity that only a pre-teen girl in the throws of early puberty truly could. I wanted to run off and be forever with Lestat, gathering others as the times changed and forever falling in love and living intently with those that came our way. I was an intense kid.

Running a very close second in the early book based crushes is Nick Andros from The Stand by Stephen King. Nick was the first character with a disability that I'd ever read and I was deeply invested in everything to do with him from the moment he walked across the page. Add to it that he'd just taken a beaten by multiple foes and yet held his own, and all I wanted to do was take care of him and let him know I had his back in the viral apocalypse. As that kind of dedication undoubtedly always leads, Nick is also the first literary character I ever wept for, I mean unabashed grief that struck me consistantly the first few times I reread the book. Adolescence is a trip.

The character of Stu Redman, also from The Stand, has become a clear crush in later years, but that's entirely the work of Gary Sinise portraying him in the mini-series. Technically that makes it a movie/tv crush and I'll happily follow that transition to my most enduring series based crush.

I took to the character of Dr. Daniel Jackson in the original Stargate film. I think that James Spader did a wonderful job of being brilliant and vulnerable and needing to be taken care of by the right person. (Are you sensing a theme within the theme?) Yet as lovely as Spader did, it was Michael Shanks as my beloved Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1 that caused me to fall in love.

From the pilot in 1997 to right now as I type, my crush has only grown stronger. And why wouldn't it? Daniel Jackson is perfect and cursed. He's absolutely brilliant, cultured, compassionate, empathetic, intellectually passionate, intense, kind, wholly benevolent and went from cute in the pilot to outright hot in later seasons. Oh and all his girlfriends die or become Goa'uld. She he's got the whole dangerous to love but born to be loved thing that became so popular in vampire fiction recently, but without the fangs and emo brooding. I wanted to break the curse, not necessarily with me, (but I'm at the front of the line), I wanted him happy with someone and I'm still waiting on my movie where he gets married and she survives. Although I'd happily see the "ship" fans and "slash" fans both happy and have him end up with Jack and Sam. But why breakup the band, let's throw in Teal'c too. I'm not like that, it all works for me.

Moving solely to the big screen, I blame Lestat for my insistance on becoming endeared to the ambiguous, chaotic-neutral-striving-towards-chaotic-good characters. (Is my geek showing?) I don't like villains, but I can come to love the redeemable character left with little choice but to act villainous. To that end, the character crush that surprises my friends the most, (and proves they don't really know me), is Riddick from Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.

Admittedly, I like my men and women of questionable intent a little less questionable on average, but Riddick was clearly another Lestat. His rejection of the things around him don't stem from a desire to be done with the world, but rather from being convinced that the world was long ago done with him. Both were killers but neither come off as murderers and yes, there's a difference. Riddick is the classic example of a character that puts himself first because no one else ever has. He doesn't want to destory the world or to rule it, he just wants to be left alone and he doesn't take well to it when others refuse that courtesy. He doesn't want to be a hero and doesn't think he can be, but he's willing to let that doubt go the first time he's sincerely shown that it doesn't have to be that way.

Riddick, like Lestat needed someone. Not merely someone to love, but someone to die for and in turn, live for. For both of them the entire world would be a different place with the right person at their back, covering their six and refusing to be moved. (I know what you're thinking, I must be an awesome friend. Yes, it's true.)

Since I mentioned Men-of-Questionable-Intent, I can't close without talking about Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly and Serenity. Another wronged and lost man who falls to the criminal side of things when the world moves on without him. The only reason that Mal's moral compass runs truer than Riddick or Lestat's, is that Mal had Zoe at his back. He never had a doubt about her loyalty and knew that they would die together with their boots on--preferably in a retirement home at the age of 100. I wanted Riddick and Lestat to have their Zoes too.

I'd be remiss if I didn't wrap by touching on one of my own characters. After all, I spend more time with them on a more intimate level than I will ever view or read another's creation. The problem is that the first ones to come to mind for this are in stories you can't read yet, because they haven't been released yet. They came to mind first because everything I wanted to say about the characters you can read, threatens to give something away. Still, I'm going to go for it because it's a great chance to talk about Quintus from Ghost of Christmas Past and Dawn's Early Light.

Quintus rather snuck up on me. He was always meant to be a background character, perhaps coming into his own somewhere down the line in an unrelated story. By the middle of the first chapter in Ghost of Christmas Past, I was taken. By the fifth chapter I was in love and by chapter ten I was ready to give him anything he wanted--and I did. The strength, vulnerability, dignity and passion in Quintus run down to his marrow, and his willingness to sacrifice for the agents in his care is extraordinary. After Ghost of Christmas Past I was ready to give him Dawn's Early Light and then to hand over Saint Valentine, but he's so unassuming that he refused to take them. He gets his chapters in all three and Ghost of Christmas Past is as much his story as Torrin's, so it's enough. How can I not love that?

I could go on and on, and I plan to, but not here. Crush of the Week will become a regular Friday feature at Erotic Diaries and will include several characters, so come by, hang out and talk about your favorite crushes!

In the meantime, while I have you here, who are some of your favorite character crushes to date? Have you ever wept over a character in a book? Who's your favorite misunderstood anti-hero? Who do you want to take home to meet your family? Who do you just want to take home? *grin*

And there you are, Kittens.

Character Ramble ~ Done!

~Xakara