Fictional Characters Meme

[donnaimmaculata]

From florahart:

* Comment on this post.
* I will give you a letter.
* Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.

Flora gave me T and it took me long enough to come up with five characters. Here they go:

1. Tigger from A.A. Milne's "House on Pooh Corner". Winnie the Pooh was probably my first fandom. I made my parents read the books to me over and over again, and I knew them by heart by the time I was, oh, four years old. I also replayed vital scenes with my little plastic animal toys, such as the adventure where Tigger and Piglet get stuck in a tree and have to jump down. I spent hours pushing little plastic!Tigger from the back of an armchair onto a handkerchief. Also, I totally imitated Tigger's roar ("Uorauorauora"), which is the thing Pooh hears when Tigger makes his first appearance showing up on Pooh's doorstep at night. However, being too young to be able to produce an "r" sound, the roar came out as "Uoiauoiauoia" instead. It's still being quoted at me as part of our family's conversation canon.

2. Tom Sawyer. A fanboy if ever there was one. I'm pretty sure I used to play "Tom Sawyer" with my friends as a child, and so there was me roleplaying Tom who was roleplaying a pirate or an Injun. There's a meta commentary in there somewhere.

3. Teddy Kent from Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Emily" series. I am not a great fan of Teddy's, but he is a good example to illustrate why I'm not too keen on LMM's romances. I think that her novels could do without squeezing in the soulmate-ish, meant-to-be true love and work perfectly well as young girls' coming-of-age stories. ("Jane of Lantern Hill" does exactly that.) I think that her friendships between girls ring very true and are very touching, but the romances with the boys feel a bit tacked on. The only instance where I got the love vibe between Emily and Teddy was where he rescued her from Mad Mr. Morrison, but apart from that there isn't all that much real interaction between them. Emily speaks of Teddy as of one of her closest friend, but we don't see them being close friends together. We see Emily and Ilse being close.

Teddy and his mother, on the other hand - now there's a story to sink your teeth in.

4. Tiffany Aching. The only female character with a "T" I could think of!

I am as yet undecided on Tiffany. On the one hand, Pratchett writes female characters that I like (he makes them attractive, no-nonsense and independent), on the other hand, Tiffany is not self-absorbed enough for my taste. She's level-headed, rational and sensible - all qualities that I like and admire in real people, but I prefer my fictional characters to be more... I don't know... convinced that theirs is the only right way of acting and thinking? Possessed by the hiver, Tiffany was an interesting character, because she was ruled by her deepest and darkest desires. Non-possessed Tiffany is a bit bland. Also, I didn't particularly like "Wintersmith" and that has probably tainted my view on Tiffany. Let's see how she fares in future books.

5. Tom Lefroy. Strictly speaking, he's not a fictional character, but the Tom Lefroy from "Becoming Jane" very much is. I was surprised and delighted to see that the love interest in the Jane Austen "biopic" didn't resemble the conventional Jane Austen hero, but the Jane Austen anti-hero. The Tom Lefroy in the film is charming, elegant, playful, witty, superficial and a great coxcomb - everything that her anti-heroes are and her heroes are not. I like him a lot. I like the scheming seducer in the Jane Austen novels. And as much as I love BBC's "Pride and Prejudice", I wish they had made Wickham a deeply charming bastard you can't help but love, instead of a slightly creepy lech.

Comments

[babycakesin.livejournal.com]

Tom Sawyer! Man, I used to LOVE the cartoon when I was a kid (then, yes, I read the book).

I'm game - letter please? *g*

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

I never watched the cartoon! And I think the book gets better the older you are - Twain's satire is lost on children.

Have an "I", then. Have fun!

[babycakesin.livejournal.com]

I should read it again then - I read it when I was 11 or so, therefore... yeah! lol

"i"... you couldn't pick an easier letter, could you? *giggles* Let's see who I find...

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

It was a random choice!

Oh, Tom Sawyer is great to read as an adult. And Huckleberry Finn is a must ;-)

[frek.livejournal.com]

I need to procrastinate some more, so I'd like a letter. :)

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

I understand the impulse. Have a B.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

What an awesome meme! I am intrigued enough to try it.

I love that you included Tom Sawyer, because I don't hear enough about him regularly. Tigger too, because now I'll always think of that unique roar...

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Talking about fictional people is always good fun.

Tom Sawyer is one of the frequently-reread books on my bookshelf (I seem to have an endless supply of those; I should try reading something new more often), and I love how you suddenly begin to understand Mark Twain's satire when reading the book as an adult. The essays by young ladies on Examination Evening are a particular joy, aren't they?

Have an N. Enjoy!

[lyras.livejournal.com]

I prefer my fictional characters to be more... I don't know... convinced that theirs is the only right way of acting and thinking?

But Tiffany is still finding her feet (very young, subject to constant disorientation by witches and various other beings), and I suspect that once she does so, she'll have a much stronger personality.

I was disappointed with Wintersmith, too, although I think it was partly because I was expecting so much of it - the cover, title, blurb and beginning were fantastic and then it sort of fizzled, for me.

Teddy has always struck me as a bit of a cipher - odd that we get to know Dean much better than Teddy, although possibly that's because even LMM needed to show the romantic reader what a manipulative bastard he was...

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

I must admit I'm hoping for Tiffany to become a bit more self-righteous. She's very level-headed - again, a quality that I admire in real people, but I like fictional characters to be more wrapped-up in themselves. (Susan and Agnes are level-headed, too, but they're still beautifully messed up. It's something Pratchett is really good at.) Tiffany's problems, so far, have been mostly caused by external factors. That's why the hiver was such a good plot device, because it brought out Tiffany's dark side. Hopefully, it will become more pronounced when she gets older.

I don't even remember Wintersmith all that clearly. I know I found the beginning very touching (the vision of the village dying under the snow), but the rest seemed so... blah. In his recent books, Pratchett has always managed to put a new spin on the Discworld universe, but I don't think he succeeded with Wintersmith.

Teddy isn't much in the books, that's the problem. We get a lot of interaction between Emily and just about everybody else, but not him. LMM only tells us that they were close friends, but she never shows the friendship. We get to see more - and more poignant - interaction between Emily and Teddy's mother!

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I always have to chime in when you talk about Emily. I agree about Teddy; not only is the relationship between him and Emily tacked-on feeling, but it's dull, too. There's the interesting part you mentioned, where he hears her calling him from miles away in that church, and there's the part where he draws a character of somebody who's wronged/offended Emily (was it an editor? a teacher? Someone else?) being tortured by devils with pitchforks. That was a fun detail, too. Otherwise, though... zzzzz. Even the mixed-up love angle with Ilse nearly marrying Teddy didn't make for much excitement.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

He isn't in the books much. We learn much more about Emily's interaction with just about everybody else, but Teddy is mostly mentioned in passing, as part of the group. Even Perry gets more spotlight and more character development. Apart from the Mad Mr. Morrison passage, I don't even remember any lengthy dialogue between Emily and Teddy. The whole true love thing is very much a tell-don't-show.

In "Emily's Quest", we are told that Teddy puts some details of Emily's face into all his paintings, which I think is a nice idea, but again, he's not really in the book.

Gilbert Blythe isn't much in the Anne books, either (at least the early ones, I haven't read past "Anne of Windy Poplars"). He shows up in the last third of "Anne of Green Gables", isn't really in "Anne in Avonlea", is only a minor character in "Anne of the Island", and in "Windy Poplars", Anne writes letters to him, the romantic part of which is not included in the book. They could have been letters to Diane and it wouldn't have made any difference.

That's why I don't care for LMM's romances all that much. The books don't need a romance, either, they work very well as stories of young girls growing up into independent, mature women, and as stories of friendship between women.