User blog:Tim Thomason/Medea Shmedea

So, Talk:Medea has decided that the two Medeas are probably separate. I have no problem with this, since it takes a little thought to connect those two (the same thing happened with Castor and Castor of Argos, which was far more tenuous and I found that out myself).

But... I'm still pretty sure nothing bars them from being the same person. Hera seems to have problems with Jason independent of her issues with Hercules (e.g. Marcus in "Once a Hero" and the monster in "The Wedding of Alcmene"). What better way to get back at Jason than to force her prisoner (Medea) into killing Jason's family. Or better yet, impersonate the tragically killed Medea ("Medea, you're alive!") and then brutally kill Glauce and kids. That would blow his mind.

Mythologically, Medea just ran away, either back to Colchis or to Persia (a region known as "Medes" supposedly founded by her children), never to pay for her crimes. In the show, her fate isn't spoken of (well, the first one was probably killed onscreen). Could Jason have sought his revenge against her? (duh-duh-duh) Only to find himself still void of feeling and withdrew into alcoholism?

This does cut to the heart of an issue. I've always liked the linking of characters between episodes, even unintentional ones by writers that only die-hard fans would make. There are some rules that I go by when I see characters:
 * 1) The Lt. Leslie rule: When a character is seen multiple times, but unnamed most or all of that time, they are probably the same person. That's assuming the character wasn't killed in anything but the last appearance, and/or the character doesn't do things that make no sense, like meet Hercules more than once or talk about his father Domesticles and later his father Colchis.
 * 2) The Captain Shelby rule: If a character is named in one appearance, but not seen, they are probably the same character as one with the same name and seen in another appearance (barring of course, illogical reasons like above). That's less tenuous, but it's good to keep from having multiple pages on characters that have nothing to suggest they *aren't* the same (unlike Castor and Medea, and the Cyanes, and Thesei, et cetera).
 * 3) There's also the T'Pau rule: If two actors portray a character that otherwise seems the same, but the actors don't look the same (different ethnicity, what have you), we should still assume it's the same character regardless of appearance. Actors come and go, characters should stay the same.