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Dec. 18th, 2006 01:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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ship_manifestoTitle: She'd look at me. Dr.JekyllXMina Harker
Author: Alison_Swift
Fandom: The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.
Pairing: Dr.Henry Jekyll/Wilhelmina Harker
Spoilers: Just the movie.
Authors Notes: God I hope this goes over well. @_@ I'm so paranoid. >_> Sorry for the unnatural lateness! I figured out too late that the due date was the 14th, not the 19th, and on the 14th just when I noticed, I had to leave on vacation! Please forgive!!
Here's the scoop.
How it Began.
To start, i'm slow on the uptake.
Seriously.
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman came out in 2003.
I found out about it in 2006.
See? Slow. So, heres what happened.
Some time ago I was watching the TV, content with periodically switching from Kingdom Hearts 2 to watching Adult Swim sometime around ten O' clock at night. The exact date I do not know. So, by accident, I switched to the FX channel, and caught the literal last few moments of, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. It was then I caught my first glimpse of Edward Hyde.
At this moment in time I didn't know it WAS Mr.Hyde. In fact, I thought it was an Ogre. Or some kind of pointy-headed troll. Nonetheless, as the movie ended and I caught sight of Dr.Jekyll,(I still had no idea who these people were and why they were so cool.) I was infatuated. Right after it ended, they replayed the movie. I was up until 1:30 that night, slowly and surely, being drug into a fandom.
And that, my freaky darlings, is where our story begins.
Who Why What?
The Characters.
Dr.Henry Jekyll and Mr.Edward Hyde
*Pure Fanservice*
Doctor Henry Jekyll is a character from the book 'The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde', written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. Jekyll is a shy, passive, fairly jittery red-headed man. He easily succumbs to things, and people(including Hyde) call him weak. He is anything but, at least on an emotional level. Jekyll was a chemist at one point, clearly, and made an elixer that was supposed to separate the dark side inside him from the light side, leaving only good, but instead, it gave him Mr.Hyde. Whenever Jekyll takes the potion now, he changes into the huge hulking figure that is Edward Hyde. Hyde overwhelms Jekyll quite a bit, and it seems Jekyll almost enjoys letting Hyde loose. Whilst Jekyll continously says that he is 'A good man' and wants to forget about Hyde, he always succumbs to Hyde's taunts and goading into taking the elixer.
Jekyll is the last recruited member of the league.
Mr.Hyde is pretty much the total opposite to Jekyll's kind shyness. He's wild, violent, and speaks the hard truth. He's surprisingly poetic for a 'beast', and even describes London as 'sweet as a rare wine'. But besides that, he's brash, he likes to fight, he's a brawler. He also is the first of the two sides to fall for Mina.
Wilhelmina 'Mina' Harker
*Pure FanBOYservice*
Mina Harker is from the book 'Dracula', written by Bram Stoker in 1897. The widowed wife of Jonathan Harker, it is unsure if her husband was killed by her vampiric nature, or by something else. She was a schoolmistress engaged to Jonathan Harker, a bank clerk. When Dracula came to London, Mina, a man named Dr.Van Helsing, and her husband teamed up to destroy him. But Dracula got to her first. Apparently, she has a son named Quincy, the whereabouts of him are unknown. If you didn't guess, Mina is a vampire. Which means she needs the blood of others to survive, and lives... Pretty much forever. (Must make having long-term relationships difficult.) She is also a seemingly well-educated scientist, as she was able to determine the powder found in the wheel-room of the 'Nautilus' as Magnesium Phospherous. (What photographers use to make a flash.) Smart, beautiful, and deadly. A wonderful combination. Just about half the league go after in the movie. Sawyer does, but she repeatedly shoots him down, Skinner doesn't really but since she's the only woman in the league he has to make some advances, as is his way, Dorian does too, even going so far as to totally seduce her. But Dorian dies at the end of the movie. That leaves us with three other members.
Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, and Dr.Henry Jekyll. Quartermain is crossed off immediatly. He's clearly not into the fact that a woman can hold her own, and he is probably too old to want a vampire as a lover. Next comes Nemo, ok, hm... Maybe, but they have no interaction with each other in the movie at all. Except maybe introducing themselves to each other when they first meet, there's no subtext. At all.
So, with the lovely power of elimination, that leaves us with Dr.Henry Jekyll.
Mina was the third to join the league.
Theres Evidence?
YES. There is!
The very first time you see Hyde,(without shadows, that is.) is the first clue to what might lie beneath. He looks right at Mina, and says: 'I'm yours.'
That, my duckies, is the most profound declaration of love I have ever heard. So now you see what spawned my squealing fangirlish love of the two. Mina's oh-so articulate response is: 'Hm.' and a raised eyebrow. How cute. The second clue is when Dorian seduces Mina. The exchange between Hyde and Jekyll tells so much about their relationship together.
[Jekyll can no longer bear watching Mina and Dorian]
Hyde: Thats right, Henry. Look, but don't touch, as is your way.
[Begins to walk quickly down the hall]
Jekyll: Just shut up. I won't be tricked again.
Hyde: Trick? You've known what I was about each time you drank the formula.
Jekyll: No.
Hyde: You wan't it. Even more then you want her.
Jekyll: NO!
Hyde: She barely even looks at you...
Jekyll: Be quiet!
[Hyde grabs onto Jekylls neck, cutting off his airway.]
Hyde: She'd look at ME!
So we see here that Hyde certainly effects Jekyll's decisions and the way he thinks. After all, Hyde is, in a sense, Jekyll, and Jekyll is, in a sense, Hyde. But it's pretty clear that Jekyll doesn't want to get close to anyone, even if he is completely taken with them. Probably because he's afraid that Hyde will hurt them.
BUT, Hyde seems to genuinely like Mina too. So why is Jekyll so scared? I'm not sure. Maybe he doesn't even know. But we can most likely assume that, he truly beleives that she could never care for someone like him. He's shy, he's unsure, he's afraid to come out of his shell. So Hyde does it for him.
Mina has actually very few reactions towards Jekyll, as it seems Sawyer can't leave her be. (He continously tries to woo her throughout the movie.) But when she does, it's unbearably cute. The look on her face when Hyde says: 'I'm yours' is so very cute and so shocked, that really thats all the evidence you need right there for a full on canon relationship! Another fun moment is when their listening to the Record of M and Dorian, Jekyll clutches his head and groans. Mina is the first person to ask if he's ok, his response is that his ears hurt, and that it's nothing. The fact that she cared enough to ask, and notice that he was in pain, is just too sweet.
But by far my most favorite scene is after Hyde has saved the 'Nautilus' from sinking, and Jekyll hands Mina some bandages for a man in a hammock. There is a pause between the two of them, and Jekyll smiles his only real smile in the entire movie, and it's directed at Mina.
A Vampire and a Beast
How I came to Love them and why
I'm a slash fan at heart. Really. But on the occasion, a hetero couple jumps out at me and I grab it and hug it for all eternity. It happens. Since, at first, I had only seen the ending of LXG, where Nemo and Jekyll/Hyde are fighting the Dante beast, I was tempted to put Jekyll and Nemo together. Partly because Hyde kept yelling for Nemo's help. You can't tell me you don't do the same.
But then Mina appeared onscreen with Jekyll and HOLY HELL IN A HANDBASKET my own heart went a flutter. They have such chemistry with one another! You see, it seems that Canon is twisted more in the direction of Mina/Sawyer, but theres something so much more deeper about Mina/Jekyll then anything else in the fandom.
They both keep a monster locked up inside. They both desperatly try to keep their demons back and away from other people. The rest of the league doesn't have that problem. Sure they all have their inner demons, but Jekyll and Mina have actual demons. I think that together they could help each other keep them at bay.
It seems as if this relationship is a one-sided one, almost. Mina rarely reacts to Jekyll, however, in the behind the scenes of the Venice sequence, you can see they hold hands when the bombs go off. However in the movie itself, they use a camera angle in which you cannot see this. However, the subtext is there, you just need to look hard enough.
Uh-Oh.
I seem to have run out of cute titles.
I'm not saying 'follow this fandom or I shall hunt you down, peasant!', but I am saying give it a chance. I know the majority of this fandom centers around Jekyll/Skinner, and Sawyer/Mina. But there is a tight knit group of us who deeply enjoy Jekyll/Mina and have wonderful talents with the coupleing itself. Though I shouldn't speak for myself, I have yet to write anything about the two.
The world of LXG is interesting and full of things to play with. It is an Alternate Universe movie/comic book/graphic novel, which means there are things in it that don't apply to actual history. How else would it be 1899 and they have automatic rifles? But besides the history bit of it, you can pair up characters from all these books over history. And they have chemistry together. Mina is from the Dracula novels, Jekyll is from something totally different. And yet, together, there is something about them that is truly amazing.
Wait, I have one more.
Stuff from the fans.
I've spent the majority of my time on this manifesto locating fics, and fanart. (As that was the hard part, trust me.) So, I now present to you, a collection of fanfics, and some bits of fanart! Please note that this section's unfinished. It should be once I gather a bit of time.
Connection, By Ariana. A lovely collection of small stories, very in character and well done.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2834414/1/
Spark of a moment, By Drakena The Destroyer. A well written oneshot in Mina's point of veiw, that small moment on the Nautilus.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1995094/1/ /
The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain, by Lady Norbert. Amazing writing, very in character and wonderfully in period. I really suggest this one, it's amazing. :)
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/13343/
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Date: 2006-12-18 09:46 pm (UTC)thanks!
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Date: 2007-02-03 01:51 am (UTC)http://www.fanfiction.net/~ladynorbert
Hope you like it!
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