When I am With You

A forum for discussing fan fiction related to Let The Right One In
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dongregg
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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Mon Dec 30, 2013 5:40 am

Jameron wrote:
dongregg wrote:Thanks, a_c_l. I look forward to reading it.
Make sure you're on your own when you read it, unless you don't mind people seeing a grown man cry :cry:

.
Well, Jameron, that's pretty much the kiss of death. I was born during WWII, and things mostly went down hill from there--with a brief interlude beginning with the Easter Be-in in Central Park, Woodstock, the Summer of Love in S.F., and ending with the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. A lovely time, and a lovely respite from a generally disastrous century. Who could blame an old man for seeking happy experiences and shunning sad ones? (What, no crying smilie?)
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: When I am With You

Post by Jameron » Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:51 pm

dongregg wrote:
Jameron wrote:
dongregg wrote:Thanks, a_c_l. I look forward to reading it.
Make sure you're on your own when you read it, unless you don't mind people seeing a grown man cry :cry:

.
Well, Jameron, that's pretty much the kiss of death.
Don't let me put you off, it isn't a sad story on the whole, but it has its moments of angst. I guess the crying emoticon was misplaced, but when you read something that is so true, pure, and 'right' it can't help but stir your emotions [i.e. "when seen with love"], that is what I was (clumsily) referring to. Acl has a talent for tugging the heart strings, and only sometimes in a sad way.

.
"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was … himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."

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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Mon Dec 30, 2013 4:43 pm

Thanks, Jameron. OK, I'm "in" again. I look forward to reading "Reflections at Dawn." Since I cried while writing "When I Am With You," I admit that I don't mind crying over a story. As Trige once mistyped, "Poorn Eli." Trige's sweet words popped into my head more than once as I was writing.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:37 am

a_contemplative_life wrote:I tend to see Eli's desire for companionship with Oskar as being driven not merely by "falling in love," but also because Oskar awakens a deep-seated need within Eli to be human again, and not only human, but a human child again. If true, it is a desire that is unique to Eli, arising as it would out of her being turned into a vampire at an early age.


Wow, a_c_l, thanks for that. I've looked at this more as Eli and Oskar both driven by their loneliness being penetrated for the first time, but your take is very deep. Yes, Eli's deep-seated need to be a human child again, to return to a happy place in her heart, where she was before she was turned.

I had written on another thread:
dongregg wrote:We can see that Eli's yearning for Oskar's company grows quickly and innocently. I think it is somewhat misleading to say that Oskar and Eli come to love each other. They yearn for each other. They develop a fierce attachment. Even when Oskar asks Eli to go steady with him, it …means he's using whatever preteen concepts he's picked up--and doesn't necessarily understand--to signal how much he wants to be with her. When Eli asks, "What do you mean?" he doesn't say; he just restates it using another concept. It suggests to me that he doesn't have a clear idea himself what "going steady" means other than that it implies being in a relationship.
Your words add new meaning to why having someone to play with is so important to Eli--It's not just a release from her loneliness and her boredom, but a blessed chance to be a happy child again.

Here are some further thoughts as to why I see them bonding intensely and why just "falling in love" doesn't sufficiently account for it. However, I agree with everyone that they are "in love" in some sense of the phrase. "When I Am With You" only makes sense without love at first sight, and that only makes sense if--as you wrote--they are meant for each other. Although the perfect fit of such an unlikely pair is grounded in what they bring--extraordinary isolation and loneliness--the idea of Eli taping into a deep-seated desire to by happy again, as she once was, makes the rapid change from "Beat it, kid" to the Rubik's cube make more sense. It also repositions the Rubik's cube to a central place in the story.

Here's what I see—They want to be with each other every chance they get. (Maybe Eli more so than Oskar.) Much follows from that, including Oskar accepting Eli as she is; each of them laying out to protect the other; and ultimately going away with each other. Here's what I don't see: holding hands; Eli's head on Oskar's shoulder as they sit side by side; verbal expression of feelings for one another (except when Eli asks at the candy kiosk). It is the lack of physical closeness and verbal expression of feeling that incline me more to "desperately needy" than to "in love" to explain how quickly and fiercely they bond. My joy is beyond telling when Oskar hugs Eli at the kiosk; when Eli caresses Oskar's arm in his bed; when Oskar hugs her after she hemorrhages; and the goodbye kid kiss.

Seen in this light, I believe the K-I-S-S tapped on the train takes on a huge meaning, largely, I would say, because we are all rooting for this to be a love story, and it seems at last to have blossomed into that as they leave Blackeberg together.

In the end, though, I believe that "keeping things the way they are" isn't about either the gender issue or whether they love each other. "The way things are" is really pretty great for both of them because they are no longer alone. And that theme is handled nicely by all the threats to them being together that JAL and TA have used to anchor the story and to drive it forward.

Your astute observation that Eli is reclaiming her childhood is powerful. She becomes more childlike as the story progresses: having Oskar to play with seems to her to embody the whole relationship until she is challenged to look at what else it means to her at Oskar's apartment and, especially, after Oskar rejects her in her apartment.

And on a side note: Oskar and Eli have to confront who they really are--Oskar could never exact the mortal revenge against Conny and Co. that he envisions because it is against his nature--he is repulsed by the actual act of killing folk; and poorn Eli is not merely a vampire who thinks, of course, that she can walk away from anyone who comes into her life.

Edit: Considerable alterations
Last edited by dongregg on Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: When I am With You

Post by a_contemplative_life » Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:10 am

I think you're spot on about Eli's and Oskar's relationship with each other being founded on a kind of powerful yearning for one another that is not truly romantic, but in some ways might be thought to eclipse romantic ideas. They are, in some sense, "made for each other."

Funny--I don't know that I can point to something specific in the film to support my ideas about Eli. I'm not even sure there is something specific in the novel I can point to.
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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:37 pm

a_contemplative_life wrote:I think you're spot on about Eli's and Oskar's relationship with each other being founded on a kind of powerful yearning for one another that is not truly romantic, but in some ways might be thought to eclipse romantic ideas. They are, in some sense, "made for each other."

Funny--I don't know that I can point to something specific in the film to support my ideas about Eli. I'm not even sure there is something specific in the novel I can point to.
I think "made for each other" is right. I modified my response above in such a way that some things support that idea. After all, how do two people who don't seem to be made for anyone bond so quickly and completely? They are two pieces of a puzzle that just snap into place when they get close to each other. Click! Whoosh! And the story takes off.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Sun Feb 02, 2014 4:27 am

a_contemplative_life wrote:P.S. - so much of what you attributed to Eli reminded me of my first FF, Reflections at Dawn. If you haven't read it and are interested in understanding why I say that, I would urge you to give it a try. I think you'll see what I mean...
I'm so glad you directed me to "Reflections at Dawn." I see the correspondences between Eli there and Eli in "When I Am With You." But I also see a well told tale that greatly overshadows my modest visit with Eli and Oskar in Blackeberg. Another big thank you!
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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Sat Feb 15, 2014 1:18 am

metoo wrote:A little remark about Swedish pronunciation.
She starts to say Elias, but she cuts it off at Eli.
Eli, as pronounced throughout the film, has the first syllable stressed, while the Swedish pronunciation of Elias stresses the second syllable. This creates a very notable difference in the pronunciation of the vowels e and i. The difference is called long and short pronunciation.

Here is a Wikipedia article on the subject.

Eli has a long e and a short i, while Elias has a short e and a long i (and a short a). Thus, to say Eli you have to intend doing so from the start. If you begin saying Elias but cut yourself off, you end up with something quite different.

Furthermore, the name Eli doesn't sound particularly girlish to me. In fact, about the same (small) number of Swedish men and women use it as a first name: 225 men to 171 women. The name is much more common in Norway, though, where it is primarily a women's name (8367 women to 14 men).
How's this:

She slides close to the boy and asks him if she smells better. He asks her name, and she hears herself say her name for the first time since she recruited Håkan. She starts to say Elias, but she cuts it off at Eli. The boy tells her his name is Oskar. He asks her how old she is, and Eli answers that she is about twelve. The boy says his age. He's twelve, too.

"Too pretty to be a boy." Eli remembers why the phrase bothers her. She remembers that her family—and others—said it a lot when she was a boy. Once she became neither a boy nor a girl, lacking the reproductive capability of either gender, she got used to presenting herself as a girl—as Eli, which worked better than Elias. That way, people responded to her normally, as a normal-sized girl rather than as a pretty, undersized boy.

I can see that Eli would work for a boy or a girl in Sweden, but Elias is a boy's name (according to the Swedish baby name sites I found), so it works that she uses the unisex Eli rather than the masculine Elias.

Thanks again for language information.
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Re: When I am With You

Post by intrige » Sat Feb 15, 2014 2:05 am

dongregg wrote:Thanks, Jameron. OK, I'm "in" again. I look forward to reading "Reflections at Dawn." Since I cried while writing "When I Am With You," I admit that I don't mind crying over a story. As Trige once mistyped, "Poorn Eli." Trige's sweet words popped into my head more than once as I was writing.
HAHHAHA!! :lol: God how imberresing! :lol:
Oh well :roll:
Bulleri bulleri buck, hur många horn står upp

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Re: When I am With You

Post by dongregg » Mon Mar 24, 2014 10:17 pm

Well, nobody has asked yet about the five section headings, so I'll just tell you. They are from the song Getting to Know You from the King and I with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brenner. Aside from the selected verses fitting the action of LTROI, the symbolism works: Anna is the outsider from an alien, British culture; the King represents the local, normative culture. So, Eli the vampire and Oscar the human. The song nicely mirrors Eli's anxiety about being pushed away by Oskar, just as novel Oskar worried about being pushed away by Eli.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU (Oscar Hammerstein)

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.

Getting to know you, putting it my way,
But nicely,
You are precisely,
My cup of tea.

Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy.
When I am with you,

Getting to know what to say
Haven't you noticed
Suddenly I'm bright and breezy
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I'm learning about you
Day by day.
Last edited by dongregg on Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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