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*

[frek.livejournal.com]

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

[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...

[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...

[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.