#just victorian holmes x watson being adorable

[holmesxwatson]

#holmes x watson

[fizzingwizard]

A rank of your fave characters. Male and female.

Since you don’t specify a fandom, does that mean across all my fandoms? XD I have a list in my “about” tag, but I’ll use this question to gush a little about a few of them!

(A note: While these are a few of my favs, I would have some different answers if the question were more like “which characters impress you the most” or “which stood out the most” etc. A favorite tends to be a personal bias with varying degrees of justification. That’s totally legit - just something to keep in mind, it’s not about who’s the “best.”)

Lyra from His Dark Materials is absolutely a number one, because she’s so fun and interesting and real to me. She’s smart, sassy, a risk-taker, a liar, and independent. I’m super excited for the TV show, but for me personally, it’s all going to hinge on how much I like what they do with Lyra. (I love Will too!) Though she’s scrappy and strong, Lyra is too young to be one of those heroes who don’t need anyone. And this is to her benefit as a character, because it means she uses her silver tongue to gain both friends and accomplices.It makes her both vulnerable and an unexpected threat. Also, she’s besties with a polar bear.

Holmes and Watson - because I can’t possibly pick one over the other - are another definite one. I am never not reading Sherlock Holmes stories. I love Holmes because he’s so different from your typical “superhero” type, even with Victorian conventions. He’s not a Don Juan, he’s a loner who likes it (unlike many other “loner” characters who do it out of necessity and are miserable), he’s obsessed with his craft in a palpable way, he’s snarky and mean and smooth and kind all at once. I could go on in a similar way about Watson but suffice to say I like Holmes better than I would because of Watson.

Lorelai Gilmore. OK, she’s quite a departure from the first two, who I like because they’re independent smart asses. My dad always calls Lorelai flaky, and she can be - we could also say she doesn’t settle for less than what she wants. I always liked that she didn’t date jerks, the men in her life were not perfect and she said goodbye when they weren’t the right fit, but they weren’t assholes. And she’s not a bad person either - she’s a very real, fun, relatable, honest person who didn’t expect the hand she got dealt but understood the difference between expectation and reality. So she had a good life and she gave her daughter a good life. And Luke/Lorelai is one of my very few favorite ships to actually be end game.

Taichi from Digimon. I’m sure this surprises no one. I love him in Adventure when his childish confidence and optimism enable him to keep the team on their feet, and how he slowly learns to realize that’s what he does - to realize it and misuse it, to learn how to use it correctly, and as a result to show us that he’s actually quite the unexpected strategist! One of my favorite Taichi things is how in the final battle against Piedmon, his role - the main character’s role - is to get beat up long enough for his friends to arrive and save the day. In spite of being the leader, I see Taichi as the shield of the team, rather than the sword. Although Digimon Tri is controversial among fans, I love what it did with Taichi. I see it as he continued to want to be the shield, but in the last instance, had to become the sword - but only after he saw how that sword could also be protective.

Ed from Full Metal Alchemist. He’s cheeky and cool and nerdy. (So just my type.) He’s just the right sort of hero for that story. What he wanted was relatable. How he tried to play god to get it was relatable. How he tried to take back his life and do right by his brother made him a favorite. And the ending. The ending of FMA is just one of my faaaavorite things. It’s the meeting of pride and hubris and and the acceptance of the equality of both. We need pride to survive, but we need humility to move on. They seem like opposites but they coexist simultaneously. Ed’s the paradigm of that.

Nightcrawler from X-men. I debated whether to include him because, while a long time true favorite of mine, I often feel that what I like about him isn’t really what comics are interested in doing much with. But in the beginning, I really did like this hero who was softer and more humble, who was so grateful to have friends and a place to come home to that the rest was the icing on the cake. He was an acrobat in the circus and loved it because he could use his talents and he could make people smile. He became an X-man and loved it because he could use his talents and make people smile. When the X-books stray away from that, there’s not much use for Nightcrawler. But he’ll always be the one I keep my eye on.

Last I’ll put Spock and Kirk from Star Trek TOS. Spock is my actual fav, but it’s because of the way he’s put in contrast with Kirk (and McCoy, whom I also adore). Spock by himself probably wouldn’t interest me as much, because what I like about him is his journey of growth, a lot of which is spurred by the closeness he develops with Kirk. And Kirk grows as well thanks to him. Kirk’s like Holmes only to the extent that he was married to his job. But Kirk throws that away to save his best friend. It’s a big deal. On a smaller level, what made me love them enough to watch up till that point was how they banter with and frustrate each other and grow closer then colder, then closer again, without making a huge deal about it, because we’re in Space to do Science. TOS should be subtitled “Making Love in Space for Science.”