Meme Answers (with Commentary Where Appropriate)

[alixtii]

Here are twenty-five favorite characters from twenty-five different shows, in no particular order.

1. Dawn Summers (Michelle Trachtenbeg) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Fred Burkle (Amy Acker) from Angel
Bonus! Drusilla (Juliet Landau) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
3. River Tam (Summer Glau) from FireflyIs there really anything else to

Comments

[wisdomeagle]

I was pretty sure I was guessing in the wrong 'verse in MRN, but constructing Fred Rogers as charater is... not problematic so much as just difficult? I mean, I lovedlovedloved Mister Rogers, quite a lot, but thought-think of him as real. Which... performance, life is performance, life as text, et al, but he's not quite a *character* the way even the other people inhabiting his life -- like Mr. McFeely -- are.

re: Mac. World of yes. I always construct her as a geek in my head and then watch the actual show and am all, "Oh, wait, she's not." And I don't think it's a failure on the part of the writers -- at least, not a failure to execute their intented character concept -- it's just that... they aren't geeks, they don't like geeks, and they don't symapthize with geeks. (Or, at the very least, the hero they've written doesn't.) Which. Sigh. Jossssss!

[alixtii]

Everything you say re: characters is true, but at the same time, it's not as if the term were doing weighty theoretical work in this post; there's no niche for non-characters (or less-characters) to inhabit. So if you'd rather replace it in your mind with "person from the show who is cool" feel free to do so. It's not that I don't think he is real (although of course he is performing, playing himself), I just never saw a need to set him aside for that reason.

And yes, sigh. Joss.

[hermionesviolin]

4. Huh. I remember watching that cartoon but don't remember "Player" at all.

7. Your "monster" tag is broken. I think you meant "http://alixtii.livejournal.com/tag/monsters"

22. seeing a president as a monster hits too close to home for me. I want a different type of escapist fantasy with my TV Presidents

I can certainly understand that first sentence, but the second one makes me go "Wow!" because I suspect that is the complete opposite of what I want in President-type figures in my tv shows (I don't think I would separate out Presidents and, say, Starfleet Captains, and want different things in them -- though never having seen The West Wing or anything like it I can't actually say for sure).

Then in (23) we get the interesting contrast where I never was and still never am especially into the villainous characters except in rare instances (and those usually -- always? -- when there is a lot more to the character than their villainousness).

[alixtii]

4. All s/he ever did was sit in front of hir computer and snark with Carmen, so I can how s/he could be forgettable, but yeah s/he was there.

22. I definitely draw a line between presidents and starship captains. A maverick starship captain is by nature of their position operating under a certain anti-establishment position, as they act with autonomy while on their missions. So they can step outside of the system (feeding my adolescent fantasy) without really threatening it (and upsetting my politics). I can be thrilled by the sheer display of power inherent in a captain breaking the Prime Directive without really needing to approve of their action or questioning the directive as a general principle.

But a president is the establishment personified, so when they overstep their bounds they are in doing so revealing the entire establishment to be inherently oppressive (and to that degree illegitimate), because if we don't have the rule of law, what do we have? The exception would be a case in which the President is clearly being coded

[likeadeuce]

As always, having a teenaged girl as a POV character really worked for me (even if Wolverine was inexplicably Scottish).

OK, I'm dying of curiosity about whether you mean that "Wolverine behaved the way one would expect Scott Summers to behave" or "Wolverine walked around crying, 'ach me poor bairns!' (James Doohan style)."

Joss has confessed the self-insert thing re: Kitty (though he's also said similar things about identifying with Scott, and there are very few superficial similiarities b/t those characters).

[alixtii]

OK, I'm dying of curiosity about whether you mean that "Wolverine behaved the way one would expect Scott Summers to behave" or "Wolverine walked around crying, 'ach me poor bairns!' (James Doohan style)."

The second one.

[likeadeuce]

. . .

Somebody just reminded me that the actor Dougray Scott was originally supposed to play Wolverine, and it would have been damn confusing to figure out who was meant when someone talked about what "Scott" did in the movie. Maybe he would have gone all one-name. Like Logan. There can't be that many Dougrays out there.

[alixtii]

According to Wikipedia, Wolverine's accent was actually Australian, not Scottish. (It's been a while.) Still, it was very inexplicable.