fannish5: Favorite Geniuses
Name your five favorite geniuses - evil or otherwise - from any fandom.
This is trickier to answer then you'd think. Because of the "genius" part. Take my beloved Arvin Sloane from Alias. I think he's brilliant, both in the sense of him being a great character and him being very clever indeed, but I don't think he's smart on a genius-level. Now if the criteria were "mastermind" instead of genius, I'd name him immediately. (Same goes for Irina Derevko, or the Empress Livia. Or Lost's Ben Linus.) On the other hand, Doctor Who's Master, whose overcomplicated plans fail far more often than Arvin Sloane's do, does qualify as a genius, due to being able to invent a number of gizmos for which one does need genius-level skills. (Including one made out of food when he has amnesia and thus not even access to his Time Lord memories.) Then there are characters who are geniuses and whom I like, but not in a "I really love them to bits" manner; for example, River Tam from Firefly, and as it's sympathy but not love for her, I can't name her in good faith.
After much to and thro, I came up with these choices:
1.) Marshall from Alias. Aw, Marshall. Whether it's presenting Sydney with favorite song compilations after two years of absence, whipping up entertaining plot-needed MacGuffins, or delivering his best Jack Bristow imitation ("the name is Bristow, Jack Bristow" from Tuesday is one of my all time favourite Alias moments) when confronting villains, I just love him.
2.) Tony Stark (Iron Man, both comics and film). I completely blame likeadeuce for this, as she made me wildly curious about this Stark character about a year before the movie came out, which meant I read up on some comics at the very time he was one of the most unpopular characters in the Marvelverse, which meant I was way more intrigued than I would have been had he been universally loved. But yes, Tony, and his messed up ways.
3.) The Master (Doctor Who), or to be more specific: Delgado!Master. I mean, love Simm!Master, too, but am only mildly sympathetic to Ainsley!Master on his good days, and in some stories I do dislike him (and not just in the sense that he's the villain anyway). And we don't talk about Erik Roberts. Crispy!Master is interesting in his last pre-Ainsley appearance but not so much in The Deadly Assassin. So, with the Master, my fannish love is very period-specific - i.e. Third Doctor Era and New Who, and when I had to choose one, it would be the Roger Delgado incarnation for sheer suaveness and charm.
*footnote: while with the Doctor I really can't limit myself to one incarnation - I more or less love them all, though some less then others. Also, the reason why I avoided putting the Doctor and the Rani on this list is that I wanted to limit myself to one character per fandom.
4.) Hank McCoy (X-Men): how can one not love Hank? Witty, kind, extremely versatile and, after his secondary mutation, one of the most visibly "other" of the X-Men, which makes for great angst in stories without making it all the character is about.
5.) Joss Whedon. (There was no "fictional" in the question, folks!) Has given me three shows I love passionately, a comic I adore (his AXM run), and other output that I like or dislike in varying degrees but which never bores me and most often makes me think. Can write songs in addition to witty dialogue. Is most definitely evil. In conclusion: does qualify.
This is trickier to answer then you'd think. Because of the "genius" part. Take my beloved Arvin Sloane from Alias. I think he's brilliant, both in the sense of him being a great character and him being very clever indeed, but I don't think he's smart on a genius-level. Now if the criteria were "mastermind" instead of genius, I'd name him immediately. (Same goes for Irina Derevko, or the Empress Livia. Or Lost's Ben Linus.) On the other hand, Doctor Who's Master, whose overcomplicated plans fail far more often than Arvin Sloane's do, does qualify as a genius, due to being able to invent a number of gizmos for which one does need genius-level skills. (Including one made out of food when he has amnesia and thus not even access to his Time Lord memories.) Then there are characters who are geniuses and whom I like, but not in a "I really love them to bits" manner; for example, River Tam from Firefly, and as it's sympathy but not love for her, I can't name her in good faith.
After much to and thro, I came up with these choices:
1.) Marshall from Alias. Aw, Marshall. Whether it's presenting Sydney with favorite song compilations after two years of absence, whipping up entertaining plot-needed MacGuffins, or delivering his best Jack Bristow imitation ("the name is Bristow, Jack Bristow" from Tuesday is one of my all time favourite Alias moments) when confronting villains, I just love him.
2.) Tony Stark (Iron Man, both comics and film). I completely blame likeadeuce for this, as she made me wildly curious about this Stark character about a year before the movie came out, which meant I read up on some comics at the very time he was one of the most unpopular characters in the Marvelverse, which meant I was way more intrigued than I would have been had he been universally loved. But yes, Tony, and his messed up ways.
3.) The Master (Doctor Who), or to be more specific: Delgado!Master. I mean, love Simm!Master, too, but am only mildly sympathetic to Ainsley!Master on his good days, and in some stories I do dislike him (and not just in the sense that he's the villain anyway). And we don't talk about Erik Roberts. Crispy!Master is interesting in his last pre-Ainsley appearance but not so much in The Deadly Assassin. So, with the Master, my fannish love is very period-specific - i.e. Third Doctor Era and New Who, and when I had to choose one, it would be the Roger Delgado incarnation for sheer suaveness and charm.
*footnote: while with the Doctor I really can't limit myself to one incarnation - I more or less love them all, though some less then others. Also, the reason why I avoided putting the Doctor and the Rani on this list is that I wanted to limit myself to one character per fandom.
4.) Hank McCoy (X-Men): how can one not love Hank? Witty, kind, extremely versatile and, after his secondary mutation, one of the most visibly "other" of the X-Men, which makes for great angst in stories without making it all the character is about.
5.) Joss Whedon. (There was no "fictional" in the question, folks!) Has given me three shows I love passionately, a comic I adore (his AXM run), and other output that I like or dislike in varying degrees but which never bores me and most often makes me think. Can write songs in addition to witty dialogue. Is most definitely evil. In conclusion: does qualify.