My Love of Fictional Characters

I have strange opinions when it comes to fictional characters. Some characters I like, and some I don't. However, there doesn't seem to be any sort of rational characters. So now, just because I am bored, I'm going to share a few of my favourite characters, complete with the reason I like them. Of course, to be fair, I need to share a few of my least favourite characters.

The Broken Well Trilogy

The first lot of characters all fall within the same series; the Broken Well Trilogy, by Sam Bowring. I find it fascinating for a few reasons:

1.  It's a very well written series of novels
2. It's a thought provoking read
3. It's not a sterotypical light-vs-dark story, despite the potential for it to have been just that
   
4. I intensely like some of the characters, while I intensely dislike others

 The basic plot revolves around a the prophacy of the Blue-Haired Man, and the battle between Kainordas (the light) and Fenvarrow (the shadow). In their battle, the forces of the light and the dark, the blue-haired baby is split into two, with each side taking one of the babies.

First of all: the characters that I like. My favorite character is Losara, the blue haired man taken by the shadow. He is thought-provoking, logical and compassionate, with strong morals. He knows that if he were to fail, many people - his people - would suffer. While he does kill in defense of his land, he does not want to. On the flip side, I really hate Bel - the blue-haired child of the light. He is arrogent, self absorbed and violent. He believes that he will win, because he is the prophecy child. He believes himself to be better than everybody else.

Then there's the females: Jaya, the sprite-blooded thief and Bel's lover, and Lalenda, the prophetic mire-pixie, and Losara's lover. I like Jaya. She is a believable character, with fears, motivation and a desire to still fight alongside Bel, not be put safely aside. Lalenda, on the other hand, changes completely. She goes from timid to bold, scared to rebellious. She becomes a different person, and while I don't dislike either personallity specifically, when a single character develops from one to another, it doesn't work.

In general, I like the shadow a lot more than the light, but I can't say too much without potentially giving away some of the plot.Despite disliking and loving various characters, they are still excellent books, and I would freely recommend them to anybody.

The Inkworld Trilogy

I won't go into the detail too much, because I've already written more than I wanted to about the Broken Well Trilogy. Basically it involves characters with the ability to read items and characters out of (and into) books, and features one book in particular - Inkheart.

I don't have strong opinions of the characters for the first two novels, but in the third one, I hate all of the major characters but one. They all become whiny and irritating, except for one, who I like for two main reasons, which I will discuss later.

Meggie complains that Farid prefers Dustfinger over her, Farid worries and pines over Dustfinger, Mo worries about his new identity as a killer, Resa worries about her unborn child and wants to go home, Roxanne worries about Dustfinger and hates Farid for his death.

The only major character that I genuinly like is Dustfinger. He is wonderfully flawed and unreliable, and I have a weakness for the flawed characters. You are never sure what he is doing and who is trying to help at any particular moment, and he has very justifiable reasons to hate both sides. And besides, he's just generally awesome - he's been to Death's realm and back, he can talk to fire and he is an expert in his own world.

Harry Potter

Now I just need to say, I like the books but I absolutely hate Harry Potter. He's an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk, with a bad temper who doesn't know when to accept help. Without every other character, he would be so screwed. I've never really liked Harry. His father was a jerk too, as was, although he may not have been later on, Sirius Black. Lupin was less of a jerk, although he did still play a role.

My favourite characters are Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. I love the development of Neville throughout the series. He's a wonderful character - not overly smart, good at magic, popular or, at the beginning, confident. He is however (in my opinion) one of the bravest characters in the whole series. Luna is good too. She's interesting, ecssentric, and brave. You can see that all she wants to do is help, and be accepted, but she refuses to change to be accepted, clinging to her beliefs.

I also like Voldemort, but that's for completely different reasons.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (and others)

This applies more the the movies than the books, but my opinion is formed on both.

I love Edmund. He is wonderfully flawed, and as I stated earlier, I love the flawed  characters - they're just more believable. Edumd is flawed - he fell into a trap, and then tried to redeem himself. However, it is his betrayal that makes him so likable to me. His siblings seem so perfect, and judgmental, and I found myself defending his actions on multiple occasasions when we studied the text earlier this year.

In my opinion, Lucy is annoying, Susan is just... well in the later books she denies Narnia, and Peter is like 'yeah, I'm the boss'. He's up himself. I mean, Peter the Magnificent?

Finally I just want to acknowledge my latest fictional crush - a certain Italian assassin named Ezio Auditore de Firenze, living in Renaissance Italy. I don't develop many actual crushes on fictional characters - usually it's just affection - but I think this is reasonable to call a crush. 

I like my last fictional crush was Losara - the same Losara I talked about earlier.

Wow this is long. I think I'm going to stop writing now.