Otter's Rock

laurajv asks: What's your favorite character, from any media, and why?

And the problem with this is the same problem I have with any "what's your favorite?" question, and that is that I've never had any one book or character or movie or anything that I could point to and go "this one is my favorite."  Even if you narrow it down, so it's "what's your favorite character on a particular show?" I almost always go, "well, that depends on my mood."  My fannish affections are extremely poly; I've never had anything resembling an OTP or OTC.  I mean, I have pairings that I like (I'd never choose to pair Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade with anyone else, nor Han and Leia with anyone but each other), but it's not a strong enough thing to go THEY CAN'T EVER BE WITH ANYONE ELSE.  Like, if someone wrote an interesting, well-written story with no character bashing where one of those two pairs broke up or never got together in the first place, I'd read it and enjoy it.  (Well.  Let me clarify that.  If you were going to pair Luke with Callista, you would have to re-write the end of Children of the Jedi so that she didn't end up in Cray's body, because that really, really weirds me out.  Like, ew, and then after that she went off the rails in the other two books she appeared in, but if she weren't in Cray's body to begin with those other books would be different, so.)  But my favorite Star Wars characters are probably Corran Horn and Mara Jade, if you take all things together.  (But then there's Thrawn!  Pelleon!  Padme!  Winter!)

Star Trek characters, well, Saavik and Spock for classic trek, everyone on DS9, B'Elanna Torres and Tuvok on Voyager, Trip and T'Pol on Enterprise, TNG I can't pick favorites, and TOS everyone but Kirk.  (He's too much of a fratboy.  They took out all the character's good points and exaggerated his bad ones.)

Babylon 5, um.  HOW CAN ONE PICK FAVORITES?  They're all awesome!  I start off with Delenn and Lennier, but then would I put them as more beloved than Londo and G'Kar?  And Vir and Na'Toth and Susan and Marcus?  Er.  Well, no.  I mean, my favorite culture to do worldbuilding with is definitely the Minbari which would normally dictate what characters I want to write about.  (Boy, howdy, does that happen with Star Trek.)  But I love Londo and G'Kar and Vir and Na'toth and all the rest so much I love to write them too even if their culture is less interesting to poke around in ...

Battlestar Galactica, I love me some Cylons.  Love 'em, love to hate 'em.  Particularly the Final Five.  And then there's Bill and Laura, love them!  Billy!  Felix!  Lee and Kara annoy me separately and together, but mostly because the show focused on them.  Like, Kara was not the only screwed up person in that fleet.  Neither was Lee.  And the last season and a half there were so many stretches that were all about their issues when I wanted to know what was happening to all the other characters that I love, but we didn't get it because we had to get Yet Another Go-Around on the Lee and Kara show.  (Or the Lee's Daddy Issues show.  Or the Kara is Messed Up Because Life Done Her Wrong show.  And I appreciated in the abstract how rare it is for a heroine to be allowed the kind of damage that Kara was while still being a hero, and it's rare for a heroine to have a Traumatic Backstory not involving rape (I mean, the messed up stalker guy who may/may not have raped her in that creepy New Caprica apartment came long after Kara was screwed up by her mother's abuse, it was a complicating factor not THE REASON FOR EVERYTHING), but still, it was too much for my taste.)

Once Upon a Time.  I ship Belle/Rumple but I'm glad she kicked him out--that's what I like about that pairing, that she's the kind of person who would do that if she had to, they love one another but Twu Wuv doesn't conquer all, and I have been so worried since the beginning that they would try to paper over the ethical issues inherent in that relationship and go "it doesn't matter that he's evil because she loves him!"  So I can't read much fic in that pairing because most of the fic tends to be in that vein.  I hate, loathe, and despise Hook with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  I love Emma, Regina, Neal (I miss Neal!) ...those three are actually probably my favorites on the show, and my favorite character that doesn't get enough love is definitely Neal.  (I mean, I prefer Emma with Neal than anybody else, but like I said I'm not really an OTP type person, and there's a lot of gen Emma and Swan Queen both, and lots of Outlaw Queen as well, to give my my Emma and Regina fixes.  Not much Neal at all.)  Other than that, Mulan and Aurora had so much potential, sigh.

MCU, my favorites are (in no particular order) Peggy, Sam, and Steve.  My favorite character there that fandom that fandom doesn't much care about is Maria Hill.  I believe in Jasper Sitwell.

Doctor Who!  Eleven is my favorite doctor, but Martha and Donna are my favorite companions.  I loved early!River, before she was ruined by making EVERY SINGLE THING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE EVER ABOUT THE DOCTOR AND SHE'LL DO INCREDIBLY SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS BECAUSE OF HIM AND HIDE IT FROM HIM SO HE DOESN'T FEEL BAD.  Gah.  I don't have enough time watching Classic Who to have informed opinions there.  I like Rose as seen on the show, but get really annoyed by Rose as seen by fandom, where SHE IS THE ONE TRUE COMPANION AND EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ABOUT HER AND THE DOCTOR GETTING TOGETHER AND/OR STAYING TOGETHER AND HE COULD NEVER CARE ABOUT ANY OTHER COMPANION THE WAY HE CARES FOR HER.  Because of this I rarely read any fanfic in which Rose occurs.

Stargate: Sam and Teal'c and Sha're and Hammond are probably my favorites, but I love them all.  And I was never into SGA enough to really have favorites, as such.  It was okay, and I think I saw every ep at least once, but eh.  I read a lot of McShep because there was a lot of it, but the two of them, separately and together, are my least favorite characters on the show.  It's not that I dislike them, but, look, they were the most formulaic and least interesting.

Terminator, I love Sarah Connor and Catherine Weaver and James Ellison and John Henry and Cameron and Jesse and ... look, the Sarah Connor Chronicles are definitely my favorite part of that franchise, and I love almost everything about that show except that it wasn't longer.

Vorkosiverse, again, there's nobody that I don't absolutely love.  Ivan, Simon, Alys, and Elli are the only major characters that I don't think I would ever say is my favorite.  All the rest, yeah, at different times and in different moods I would choose different ones from among them as my favorite.

So, I was just reading a fic and it was a good story, but there were quite a number of grammatical issues: misplaced commas and apostrophes, wrong homonymns, etc.  There was a note at the bottom "Rewritten--grammar issues fixed!"

I don't want to know what it was like before ...


Fics what the Intarwebs have not provided for me that I would love to read.

1. A Downton Abbey AU where Mary got pregnant when she slept with Mr. Pamouk in season one, and she and Cora went to America to "visit" *cough*have the baby in secret*cough* and when they came back, they passed it off as Cora's child.  (And if it was a boy, even told Robert that it was Cora's--after all, a son of Cora's and Robert's would inherit the title, cutting Matthew out of the succession again, and that would be Dishonerable! and Robert would object.  Cora, however, strikes me as much too practical for that, and much happier with her own grandson (even if he is a bastard) getting her money and the estate than letting someone else get it.)  To make things even more interesting, you know of course that O'Brien would have to go along with them--Cora would never leave her maid behind, even if she wanted too it would be too suspicious.
2. OuaT fic that is neither RumBelle nor Swan Queen nor about Captain Hook.  There are so many wonderful, fascinating characters and events that just beg to be explored, and what do people write?  98% of fic falls into three categories.  First is the woobification of Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold to make him into a Tragic Love Interest (and ignore all the things that make his and Belle's relationship interesting, and also forgetting that his number one motivation is getting Bae back and his number two motivation is power and only then does Belle come into things).  I find this trait disturbing on a number of levels, not least of which is that most people I know who woobify bad guys on TV are also likely to do it in real life ("oh, he means well!  it's okay because he loves me!  of course he does bad things and treats me badly, but it's okay because he had a bad childhood!")  Second you have the Emma/Regina stories, which do often woobify Regina but are at least less likely to be as blatant at it (because of all the hate!sex fics).  And, you know, while I think their relationship (in a non-sexual sense) is fascinating and would love to see it explored, I don't much care for woobification and I like hate!sex even less, so there's most of that pairing that I have no interest in.  And then you have fic about Captain Hook, who fills a role on the show but is pretty much your stock antihero/villain.  I mean, there's nothing about him that I haven't seen a thousand times in other characters.  Come on folks!  There is so much more interesting stuff going on in this show!

And, finally, and most grossly: ( RL Plumbing woes )

You know what is cool about the latest Once Upon A Time episode?

Prince Charming?  Is the damsel under a sleeping curse that Snow White has to rescue against all odds.

not_primetime is a fic exchange for fandoms that are too large for Yuletide but still small.  Here are my three favorites from this year.

As on a Darkling Plain byraspberryhunter .  Once Upon A Time, Emma & Mr. Gold, AU.  Honesty isn't the best color on Mr. Gold; Emma's talent is finding people. Emma and Gold make a deal.  I betaed this, it does a good job of exploring the dynamic between the two and aspects of Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin's past that most of fandom kinda ignores.

Solitude by teShara .  Babylon 5, G'Kar.  When G'kar is doing his time in the brig, he has time to think about what it all means.  Great missing scene that shows us what the show didn't: while in the brig after assaulting Londo, G'Kar went from bitter and angry and vengeful, to peaceful and introspective.  This gives us a taste of how he got from one to the other.

Walk With Me by Zebra .  Babylon 5, Timov & Delenn.  There is not enough Timov fic in the world.