Wow, I wrote this almost a week ago and got distracted and didn't post. Oops.

[tesla]

The things that all of the critics inexplicably got wrong about Stardust:

1. Stardust was a graphic novel. Nope. It was an illustrated novel. Without the illustrations it would have been a novel. Remove the illustrations from a graphic novel and you have (at best) a TV script.

2. Capturing the star (and eating her heart) will make the witches immortal. The witches clearly say that doing so will regain them their youth, but that they will continue to age. It's like resetting the odometer but not disabling it, and continuing to drive the car.

3. The dead princes' ghosts are in "limbo." Well, no; they're in Stormhold. That's why we get to see them. I could be just as wrong about this one; I think locations probably get a little fuzzy when one is dead.

But didn't the Catholics declare limbo doctrinally unsound, whereupon it collapsed into itself in a puff of illogic?

Comments

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Following the method of the scholastics of the middle ages (Thomas Aquinas, et al) who invented limbo, one must believe that it exists for those who think so.

Of course, we are under no obligation to follow the method of the scholastics.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Which, on reflection, would put said scholastics into a sort of limbo-limbo, where, I imagine there is nothing to do except, perhaps, engage in novelty dances from Trinidad, which would then be known as...

Okay, skip it.

[shadowflyer.livejournal.com]

OK, so that's not as tortured a setup as the Help-Slip-Franklin's in The Phoenix Guards.

But it's up there.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Smiles beatifically.

[aelburr.livejournal.com]

"Following the method of the scholastics of the middle ages (Thomas Aquinas, et al) who invented limbo"

They may have happened upon the concept independently but if the Astral, Ethereal or 'in-between' state wasn't thought up much earlier in several eastern mysticisms I am much mistaken. Something about still being chained to the wheel of something seems to be nagging at my memory.

[aelburr.livejournal.com]

"1. Stardust was a graphic novel. Nope. It was an illustrated novel. Without the illustrations it would have been a novel. Remove the illustrations from a graphic novel and you have (at best) a TV script."

Ah, so I see you understand why I call them all comic-books...

Oops! Who opened this can and why are there worms in it?

[danguyf.livejournal.com]

Limbo was just for unbaptized babies. It was one theory proposed as a way to keep them out of Hell. It was later discarded in favor of the theory: "God isn't a meanie; he's not going to send babies to Hell."

I think the reviewers meant Purgatory (and they'd still be wrong, of course).