Fandom meme!

[auroracloud]

Meme via cookiegirl, because yay fandom memes and I haven't done in a while. Also, an easy way to create public content that isn't a Write Every Day check-in post! I'm tweaking the definition because I don't watch a lot of movies but I read a huge load of books.

How about we do that thing where you give me a show/moviebook/fandom and I’ll tell you:

my favorite female character
my favorite male character
my favorite book/season/etc.
my favorite episode (if it’s a TV show)
my favorite cast member
my favorite ship
a character I’d die put a reasonable amount of effort into defending
a character I just can’t sympathize with
a character I grew to love
my anti-OTP

Feel free to pick anything you know I've watched/read/enjoyed. Big fandoms as well as tiny fandoms of two are equally welcome! My commenting energies have varied lately, so if I take a while to come back to some comments, don't worry, I'll get there eventually.

Comments

[ysilme]

Heh, that's a fun meme! I don't know if we have any suitably common fandoms/shows/books/whatever for this, though, as thanks to my deplorable memory, I also don't remember which books we've already talked about... would the Astrid Lindgren books work for you?

[auroracloud]

While I've loved Astrid Lindgren's books, it's a good 15-20 years since I've reread any, so I might not be that good at answering.

However, though I'm not in any way active fannishly, I've lovingly read The Lord of the Rings a number of times. ;-) (As well as The Hobbit. The Silmarillion, too, but it's been longer since that one.)

[ysilme]

Heh, in this case, The Lord of the Rings! ;o)

[auroracloud]

Sorry for being laaaaate with the reply! But I'll try this now. :-)

my favorite female character: Éowyn. I think I only properly found her in my teens, though I'd read the book already as a kid (I was precocious, especially with reading). But at some reread it really hit me powerfully to see that there was a woman challenging the role she was expected to fill, finding a way to stand for something she believes in and make a difference, but also ultimately choosing a different way of life than one of violence. Her story also reads as finding her way out of depression, which is powerful.
my favorite male character: I was always partial to the Hobbits, though it's hard to say which one of them is my absolute favourite. I also love Aragorn.
my favorite book/season/etc. I definitely read through the Fellowship of the Ring faster than the others. There's so much discovery of new worlds, new stories, the thrill of the quest without yet descending into the darkest depths of Mordor.
my favorite episode (if it’s a TV show): I'll try to pick a favourite chapter/passage for this one. The Mirror of Galadriel, maybe - Lothlórien was generally a wonderful, magical section, I really enjoyed Galadriel's character, and the omens and their uncertainty... I also love The Knife in the Dark, it's so thrilling and powerful
my favorite cast member not bringing the movies into this
my favorite ship: I don't ship this fandom, especially since I was a kid when I discovered it and it took me into adulthood to get at all interested in shipping. Though I am partial to Éowyn/Faramir, because I loved their characters and they deserved something decent in the end, even if putting them together it's a bit random, like "oh, neither of them have anyone - hey, they can get together!" If I actively shipped any non-canon pairings, I'd be most likely to ship Boromir/Aragorn, because the characters are both very interesting, and there's something about their relationship to each other I'd love to explore.
a character I’d die put a reasonable amount of effort into defending Any of the hobbits.
a character I just can’t sympathize with I know Gollum is important for the story and his part in the end is touching, but despite it I don't manage to sympathize with him the way some people do. And of course the bad guys, like Saruman, Wormtongue and of course Sauron (but Sauron is such an Incarnation of Evil that he doesn't even count as a real character to me, he just... is).
a character I grew to love: Boromir. I disliked him at first, but he grew on me during the story, and especially on rereadings. He's more complex and more human than most of the good characters, and I like that.
my anti-OTP: Don't know if I have any... I wouldn't want Aragorn and Éowyn to get together, though, she needs the character growth that comes from not finding in him a solution to her problems.

[trobadora]

Hmmm ... I could be predictable and say Doctor Who, but I could also be even more predictable and say Sherlock. *g* Either one would be cool!

[cookiegirl]

Torchwood!! :D

Good luck with the writing, looks like you're doing great!

[auroracloud]

my favorite female character Toshiko Sato. I'm just going to love the intelligent, geeky introvert who also happens to be bisexual.
my favorite male character:Jack and Ianto both.
my favorite book/season/etc. Series Two. Series One is very uneven and is still having trouble showing the team as a team and focusing on everyone, and the characterizations are all over the place, especially for Jack. Series Two is where the show really finds its feet. And I've turned out to be one of those for whom Torchwood only has two series, plus those various audio dramas and books and such (I haven't read any of the books, but I've listened to a few of the audio things).
my favorite episode (if it’s a TV show): I think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang wins this one. Enough humour to balance out the darkness of the show, great interactions between a lot of the characters, enough focus on all members of the team, lots of great dialogue, and oh, the scene where Jack asks Ianto for a date!! And James Marsters is pretty cool, too.
my favorite cast member Um, John Barrowman is by far the one I pay the most attention to outside the actual show. I've got his CDs, a couple of the concert videos, the first of the memoirs, three of the YA novels he and his sister wrote, and I periodically check out his social media accounts because he amuses me and I love his "who cares what anyone else thinks, I'm who I am" attitude, even if he makes me roll my eyes a lot, too. He's sweet, but if I ever met him, he'd probably wear me down in about 15 minutes. :-D I know less about the others, and haven't watched a lot of interviews and show extras yet, though I check out people's Twitter accounts every now and then. The best actors of the regular cast are Burn and Gareth, though.
my favorite ship Jack/Ianto, hands down. I was anyway going to love Jack actually having a long-term relationship with a guy, let alone a guy I totally loved, and I love their interplay, the way they're in lots of ways polar opposites who complete each other, but also have strikingly many similarities under the surface. They lead themselves to lots of lovely banter, there's so much emotional stuff to work out, and of course they're good fodder for lots of sexy scenes that the powers that be neglected to include in the show but that we all know happened. And there's just so much brilliant fanfic out there for these two, especially because the show gives lots of openings that it doesn't follow through, so tons of fic fodder!
a character I’d die put a reasonable amount of effort into defending Jack. He's the most likely to need defending, because sure, his actions are questionable at times, and I don't think he's actually a good leader - he never was someone who wanted to be a leader, he's happier following someone else's orders. He has some very dark moments, but then he's gone through a lot of awful stuff, so I'd be surprised if that didn't cause some less than great reactions in him. I'd also put a reasonable amount of effort into defending Gwen, because while she's not among my big favourites, she in no way deserves all the backlash she gets.
a character I just can’t sympathize with I can sympathize with all of the main characters and most of the recurring side characters. I guess... I don't sympathize with John Hart nearly as much as many people do. He did a right thing in the end, but he still did an awful lot of horrible stuff.
a character I grew to love Owen. I really disliked him in almost all of S1, but in S2 they started making him nuanced and I liked him a lot more.
my anti-OTP Hmm. I've got a few, though I'm not ragingly passionate about it. While I'm fine with past Jack/John Hart, I don't like that ship in the present of the show or in the future, because Jack's grown and changed and that's just not the direction I want him to go to. I don't like Jack/Gwen as other than UST or a part of a threesome with Ianto (that I like, as long as it doesn't paint Gwen as meaning more to Jack than Ianto does). And I never liked Tosh/Owen - don't get me wrong, their interactions in S2 are kind of sweet, Owen being so oblivious and Tosh trying to covertly make him see; I just don't see any real chance of a relationship between them, and frankly, I don't see what Tosh sees in him. They don't seem at all compatible with me, and it makes me feel like they just threw it in randomly. Like they decided that someone needed and unrequited crush, and those two were available and nobody else was, really.