Why does "Hazel Blackford" redirect here? Is this a Nutball joke? TR 04:52, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Who the fuck is Hazel Blackford?
Ah. That was that Dingo weirdo, the Bundeswehr officer. Turtle Fan 06:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
It's gone now.
That A-Z function our German op friend put up is quite useful. TR 16:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
So it is. Turtle Fan 16:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
TL-191 Marriages[]
You know, I was thinking of POVs' spouses in TL-191. A few of them really complemented the POVs well--Marie Galtier, Elizabeth Driver, Laura Secord Moss, Libbie Custer, and especially the Enoses, whose marriage we got to see from both sides. I'd also put in Achilles Driver and Grace Chang, even though neither were POVs. Achilles was always a very interesting supporting character, not just for himself but for the way he showed social progress for the Drivers and for black people in America, and to that end marriage was interesting for the way it challenged racial paradigms as well as for the personalities involed. Leonard O'Doull and Nicole Galtier worked for a while, until O'Doull became O'Dull and there was no saving him.
Others, like Hosea here and Hal Jacobs, were interesting characters in their own right but shouldn't've gotten bogged down with these marriages. They contributed nothing to the story, and they had no chemistry. The late-in-life babies were also tiresome.
I'm not sure where to put Junior Enos. Connie wasn't interesting in her own right, but she did play a role in Junior's character development. She was needed because Junior was there to revisit his father's story, as witnessed by "Go to bed boys. Gasp! Of course! That's why Dad sent me to bed early that one night! I've been obsessing about that for as long as I've been a POV! You'd think I'd be over it by now!" Had Connie been a POV herself, and retold Sylvia's story, I think she might have become a good character, and made their marriage really interesting.
Most of the characters' spouses were useless, though, created only because HT thought it would let him give them some character development on the cheap, or so the characters could have children who may or may not prove useful some day. I speak of Maude McGregor, Rita Martin, Magdalena Rodriguez, Bertha Colleton, Bathsheba, Agnes Morrell, Mort Pomeroy, Merle Grimes (who didn't marry a POV but did marry a long-established character), and especially Edith Blades Pinkard, whose marriage to Jeff had a ghoulish aspect which further highlighted the utter lack of chemistry. I kept thinking "Edith, you seem like a nice girl--What's wrong with you? Can't you tell he's evil? Have you forgotten what happened to your first husband?" Of course not--She was way, way too static to think of such things.
Finally, Lucien O'Doull and Amanda Driver were characters we had never seen as adults, thanks to their fathers being sent off on pointless, tiresome POV assignments in the SA books. They got married to give their fathers reasons to give us one last scene with each of their families. Their spouses were created completely ex nihilo as devices to enable these scenes to be created. Why HT would think anyone could possibly give the slightest fraction of a shit about Paulette Archambault or Calvin Washington . . . Turtle Fan 19:30, October 27, 2009 (UTC)
Pallbearers[]
I don't believe Al Smith was a pallbearer for Blackford's funeral. Instead he sent his VP. I would check this myself but don't have my copies of the series handy. ML4E (talk) 20:05, September 13, 2015 (UTC)
- He wasn't. I remember that scene-he called Flora to express his condolences and his regrets that he couldn't be there. Flore figured he was trying to distance himself from Blackford's failure. LaFollette was there, but I don't think he was a pallbearer, either. TR (talk) 20:37, September 13, 2015 (UTC)
Births[]
Hosea Blackford is mistakenly placed in the OTL birth category.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 10:30, November 8, 2015 (UTC)