Welcome to the new Letters to the Editor section of The Pride Lands Online. As the Chief Editor for the PLOL, I will respond to any letters that ask of one. You may of course write in a letter simply to share your feelings, insights or ideas, or to respond to a letter you have read. Please send any letters to [email protected] and be sure to mark them as Letter to the Editor that you wish to have put online.
SPOILER ALERT--INFORMATION ABOUT JOE MCCAULEY'S "A QUIET PLACE" AHEAD.
To the editor--
I had a fortunate opportunity to read Joe McCauley's fanfic "A Safe Place" just a few days before its release in Pride Lands Online. I must say I liked the story tremendously. Even more interestingly, I found in it a possible clue to what a popularly-interpreted version of Scar might have become had he chosen to handle his problems constructively instead of destructively.
I find there to be some interesting similarities between the character of Hofu in this story and Scar, particularly as the latter is often interpreted by members of the TLK fandom community highly sympathetic to him. Both are aloof, reserved characters with a certain self-contained amount of pride. And in this interpretation of Scar, both appear to have had problems with parental acceptance--and are treated poorly, as outcasts in some sense of the word, from their home pride.
Under this line of thinking, Scar reacts to his perceived circumstance in TLK by taking up arms against his proverbial sea of troubles and attempting to vanquish them. Interestingly enough, Hofu suggests what might have happened to Scar if had he decided to leave the Pride Lands instead. Had Scar left, he would likely have either tried to join another pride or decided to fend for himself, perhaps in the manner of one of Sam Simpson's rogue lions. Had Scar managed to survive as a rogue, he would have to have toughened up physically, as he would have to successfully feed himself on a consistent basis or die; he may indeed have become a physically strong lion like Hofu under these circumstances. Being relatively aloof and cut off from all other leonine contact for so long, Scar may also have reached the point of inarticulateness and discomfort with personal interaction that Hofu had achieved. And in this particular fandom interpretation, Scar is considered to be a "fundamentally good-hearted lion gone wrong by circumstances;" perhaps under the right circumstances then, the feelings that in TLK turn bitterly evil and lead to murder could have flowered in a solitary existence to love two mischevious cubs, if only from afar.
The analogy is not a complete and clean one, by any means. But enough of the parallels could be construed to be there to suggest this possibility. To Joe McCauley, I say "Bravo!" for a job well done--and many thanks for suggesting (intentionally or not) an interesting subtext for Hofu.
Comments are welcome and encouraged.
Dave Cleary
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