Favourite Character Meme

[obstinatrix]

candesgirl gave me Supernatural, Star Trek: TOS, Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek: TNG.



1. Supernatural

You may have noticed that I've fallen fast and hard for this fandom, and that's more than anything to do with my love for Dean Winchester. I fell for him in the pilot episode, and everything we learn about him from that point on just makes me love him more. The thing about this fandom is that, actually, there isn't really anyone I don't like - I love Sam too, bless his sensitive little heart, and Castiel is 100% made of win, in every conceivable way. But despite this, making the 'favourite character' decision here didn't even give me pause. I think Dean is well-rounded and complex in ways that very few characters on television are. He wants you to think he's such a tough guy, this leather-jacket-wearing, Led Zeppelin-loving, swaggering demon hunter in his muscle car, all slick charm and sex, but the moment you start to look at his relationships with the people he loves, you know that's all a sham. I mean, he is that guy, but he's so much more than that. He's a kid who never had a childhood, who's been an adult since he was five years old. He's been the mother and wife of this fucked-up little family, looking after his father when his father should have been looking after him, and invested in his little brother to this truly unhealthy extent. Dean loves so hard, and it's admirable and terrifying, because there's such self-loathing mixed up in it. I love the little observations other people make about Dean, particularly the demons, the minor characters like the girl in the Christmas episode who wonders why he can't drop the act and be 'the way he is with his brother'. Ultimately, he's a righteous man. As Castiel puts it, he just doesn't believe he deserves to be saved, and that is just - just -

oh, Dean.

That's all I got.

2. Star Trek: TOS

Again, this is a show where I love everyone. I love the main trinity, and their interactions with each other; I love Scotty, I love Uhura. But I love Kirk best. I shouldn't, really - I should love Spock best, for obvious reasons; or McCoy, for his goddamn adorable grumpy Southernness. But I don't. I love James T. Kirk, for many of the same reasons, really, that I love Dean Winchester. He's so shiny-shiny-fantastic on the surface, but so layers and layers deep with insecurity and uncertainty under all the bravado. He's brave, he's a good soldier, but he doesn't blindly obey the letter of the law if he thinks it'll do damage to the people he loves. He puts his ship first, but to him, that really does mean the ship, as a family, including its inhabitants, rather than the ship as representative of the Fleet. I love the way he's drawn with humour; I love his relationship with Spock. I even love his failtastic inability to walk past a girl without flirting with her. And it's no secret that I really, really love his face.

I could probably go on about Kirk for a lot longer, but suffice it to say that there was no contest here, for me, either.

3. Sherlock Holmes

Watson.

Next!

No, no, okay. I'll admit it: I have a thing for overlooked sidekicks. People who appear to be ordinary, people who have no special obvious talent, but who manage to win out anyway, despite the fact that they're ordinary. The people about whom nothing is extraordinary except everything. You may have noticed that I go for the characters who love really hard. It's like Xander, in Buffy, who is the only one without any special power, anything holding him up outside of his own self and his beliefs, and yet who saves the world just with how much he loves his best friend. Watson's one of those. He's clever, he's handsome, he's a surgeon, he's a soldier, but of course he looks like nothing next to Holmes. Holmes rags on him all the time, and he puts up with it, because he isn't the genius; he isn't the brains of this operation. But Holmes needs him. And it does become obvious that this is very much the case; Holmes doesn't want Watson to leave him, increasingly can't imagine it, goes to great lengths to try to express his affection for Watson in his own, messed-up way. Watson is so warm, so steadfast, so necessary as the support for Holmes's madness; he keeps him in place when he could so easily have spun out of control without that pivot. Holmes would be lost without his Boswell. He knows it. Nothing pisses me off more than television adaptations that don't.

4. Star Trek: TNG

Hmm. I don't love TNG the way I love TOS, and the main reason for it is that I just don't love the characters enough. I think there are too many of them, maybe? Again, there's nobody I violently dislike, except Tasha Yar, possibly, but there's nobody I adore, either. I like Data, I like Geordie. I think my favourite is probably Worf. Goddamn, I love his voice. It's a lot of fun to randomly say things in Worf-voice, for example. Mundane statements become somehow elevated. "I am a delicate flower," for example. "Unicorns are real."

See?

Yeah, okay, this was a crappy answer. WORF!



If anyone wants me to give them four fandoms, just comment and ask. :)

Comments

Re: Favourite Character Meme

[obstinatrix.livejournal.com]

TOS, Harry Potter, Buffy, Sherlock Holmes? :)

Re: Favourite Character Meme

[majestic-shriek.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right :P

But you get a reply tomorrow evening/Thursday because I have to have an early night tonight. GOING TO ALTON TOWERS at a crazy hour of the morning. In the rain. BUT YAY.

Re: Favourite Character Meme

[majestic-shriek.livejournal.com]

...whoops. LATE REPLY THAT'S NOT WHEN I SAID IT WOULD BE FTW!

Right.

TOS
Well...see, I thought about this one, and in the end it probably comes down to my two inevitable answers. McCoy, and Kirk. My favourite character in TOS for a long long long time was Kirk, I don't know, something about him, something about the way his shirts kept getting ripped, something that whenever he was hurt or in a bind my heart gave this little lurch, something about Shatner, and I do still adore Kirk. But then DeForest came along. I started focusing more on McCoy. And goshdarnit, if I didn't just fall in love with the curmudeognly ol' doctor. I love his grumping, I love his interactions with Kirk and Spock, I love his long suffering comments, but the way that you know, you just know that he cares so much about them, and about everyone, and that he'd do anything to help them, even to the detriment of himself...well. I just love him.

And I love DeForest, so, well, that kind of works quite nicely really.

Harry Potter
Now, this one was more difficult. It's another one that's changed over time. When I first started reading them, and especially during the first few books, my favourite was Hermione. I don't know, maybe I liked to think I identified with her, or something. I was at school at the time, and constantly being called a "boffin" and feeling like I was telling everyone the answers all the time, and...yeah, I guess she just appealed to me. Now, well, I think I'd say Lupin. I don't really know why, I just really like him. Or Sirius. But not as much as Lupin, so Lupin probably wins that round.

Buffy
Easy. Willow. Partly because I adore Alyson Hannigan, and also because I love Willow's character progression through the seasons, her struggle with dark magic, and Tara's death (oh! Tara *sob*)and I love early Willow, all shy and booky and then getting together with Oz...I just love Willow. I think I also wanted to be Willow. Or Alyson Hannigan, I'm not quite sure. Possibly both. :D

Sherlock Holmes
...I think it would have to be Watson. I thought about other characters, but none resonates so much as Watson. I think it's the faithfulness, and the never-ending acceptance of all of Holmes' idiosyncracies; the way he's always there for Holmes' when he needs him, even after he's got married to Mary and moved out of their flat. Then again, I love Holmes as well, but on balance, I'd probably just about tip my hat in favour of Watson.