Meme time
A very long time since I did one of these.
From beer_good_foamy
1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter. (If you don't want a letter but feel like commenting anyway, feel free.)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
1. Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sévigny
If you've read Dorothy Dunnet's wonderful books you'll understand why. Lymond is both hero and anti-hero, strong, talented, charismatic yet vulnerable, fallible and sometimes brutal. The Lymond Chronicles stretch over six books, and they grab you hard, twist and choke you with tension, excitement and humour. Crawford is a Scots nobleman on the mid-sixteenth century, so we get real people such as Mary, Queen of Scots and Nostradamus in the mix, but Francis has my heart. Oh yes, and he has blond hair and blue eyes.
2. Faith Lehane
Well, there had to be one BtVS character in the mix. Faith is Buffy's mirror image, literally on one occasion, metaphorically most of the time. She identifies herself as a "bad girl" and, later, as "the bad Slayer", but she is more than that - damaged, conflicted, desperate to be part of a group but unwilling to subdue herself to the demands of others, she's a fascinating character. I rather wish Eliza had gone for the spinoff instead of Tru Calling.
3. Fanny Price
The most difficult of Austen's heroines to love. She's the Cinderella in the tale, complete with the ugly sisters, but she is so consistently in the right it's hard to feel sympathy for her, possibly particularly when she's right - when she refuses to have anything to do with amateur theatricals in the home, for example, "because it is wrong", or stays sitting on a bench while all the other young people cavort around the parkland and grounds of Sotherton. The book is a masterpiece, but I do rather feel she is both rewarded and punished when platitudinous parson Edmund finally notices what has been under his nose forever.
4. Marcus Didius Falco
Roman fireman ("Vigiles", a name still used by Italian firefighters) by association, but by trade an informer - in modern terms a private eye. Lindsey Davis has written about a score of these books now, all told in the first person, all mixing modern humour, an intriguing soapish story and fascinating characters with murder mysteries. He's perceptive and widely-travelled but very much a man of Vespasian's Rome, limited by class barriers but very much in love with his patrician wife. He's besotted with his children but wholly practical about the poverty and slavery around him. He's a modern take on Ancient Rome, of course, but the books are enormous fun.
5. Fifth Doctor
That's Peter Davison, in cricketing clothes, the youngest Doctor until Matt Smith and also burdened by following Tom Baker. I missed the bescarfed one, but Five was funny, lively, witty and as heroic as needed. And one of the Doctors had to get in my list somehow, because the show has almost spanned my entire life, and the old, wobbly-setted series matters as much as the new one. Fifty years old next year, and the Tardis, no longer any sort of camouflage, is still going strong!
From beer_good_foamy
1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter. (If you don't want a letter but feel like commenting anyway, feel free.)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.
1. Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sévigny
If you've read Dorothy Dunnet's wonderful books you'll understand why. Lymond is both hero and anti-hero, strong, talented, charismatic yet vulnerable, fallible and sometimes brutal. The Lymond Chronicles stretch over six books, and they grab you hard, twist and choke you with tension, excitement and humour. Crawford is a Scots nobleman on the mid-sixteenth century, so we get real people such as Mary, Queen of Scots and Nostradamus in the mix, but Francis has my heart. Oh yes, and he has blond hair and blue eyes.
2. Faith Lehane
Well, there had to be one BtVS character in the mix. Faith is Buffy's mirror image, literally on one occasion, metaphorically most of the time. She identifies herself as a "bad girl" and, later, as "the bad Slayer", but she is more than that - damaged, conflicted, desperate to be part of a group but unwilling to subdue herself to the demands of others, she's a fascinating character. I rather wish Eliza had gone for the spinoff instead of Tru Calling.
3. Fanny Price
The most difficult of Austen's heroines to love. She's the Cinderella in the tale, complete with the ugly sisters, but she is so consistently in the right it's hard to feel sympathy for her, possibly particularly when she's right - when she refuses to have anything to do with amateur theatricals in the home, for example, "because it is wrong", or stays sitting on a bench while all the other young people cavort around the parkland and grounds of Sotherton. The book is a masterpiece, but I do rather feel she is both rewarded and punished when platitudinous parson Edmund finally notices what has been under his nose forever.
4. Marcus Didius Falco
Roman fireman ("Vigiles", a name still used by Italian firefighters) by association, but by trade an informer - in modern terms a private eye. Lindsey Davis has written about a score of these books now, all told in the first person, all mixing modern humour, an intriguing soapish story and fascinating characters with murder mysteries. He's perceptive and widely-travelled but very much a man of Vespasian's Rome, limited by class barriers but very much in love with his patrician wife. He's besotted with his children but wholly practical about the poverty and slavery around him. He's a modern take on Ancient Rome, of course, but the books are enormous fun.
5. Fifth Doctor
That's Peter Davison, in cricketing clothes, the youngest Doctor until Matt Smith and also burdened by following Tom Baker. I missed the bescarfed one, but Five was funny, lively, witty and as heroic as needed. And one of the Doctors had to get in my list somehow, because the show has almost spanned my entire life, and the old, wobbly-setted series matters as much as the new one. Fifty years old next year, and the Tardis, no longer any sort of camouflage, is still going strong!