Favorite Characters - Update

So, last year I made a blog post about my top favorite characters, and largely that list holds up to scrutiny (though my feelings towards Jude Duarte dropped drastically after the terrible Queen of Nothing. Way to butcher everything I love about a character, Holly Black... #neverforgive).

But I'd like to add three new members to the favorites club; two of whom are ruthless killers who look like pre-teen boys, while actually being a whole lot more.

First is Number Five from The Umbrella Academy (specifically, Netflix's adaptation of TUA. I didn't care for the comics). I don't watch a lot of TV because I'm easily bored (reading is easy, because I'm doing something. But just sitting and watching a screen without getting distracted or bored, my mind wandering in a million different directions? That's hard). Also, I don't have a TV. Or internet. I do all my online stuff on my phone, which is hardly beneficial for streaming. But over a span of months, I managed to watch my way through TUA every time I visited my parents' house, and Five is boss AF, okay??? It feels like he was engineered specifically for me to love him. He's hyper-competent, brilliant, angry, arrogant, ruthless...

He gets all the best fight scenes in a show full of great fights (and the show features that one trope I love, where it juxtaposes gory fights against a light and cheery soundtrack... I'll never get tired of that). Most importantly, he will do and sacrifice anything for his loved ones while pretending all the while that he doesn't care about them at all. I eat that shit up, man. The fact that he looks like a little kid while actually being a foul-mouthed, alcohol-swigging old man delights me endlessly... The comedy and tragedy potential is endless. Much of my love for him is owed to actor Aidan Gallagher, who is only seventeen, but holds his own with a seasoned cast twice his age. He gives Five a nuanced depth; you really believe you're watching an elderly time-travelling assassin trapped in a child's body with his world-weary air. His condescension towards his "younger" siblings (while still being so protective of them) and the very uncomfortable sexual tension he has with Kate Walsh's evil character are subtle, but done well.

I've read several thinkpieces regarding how TUA is just X-Men with more focus on character and trauma (and daddy issues), which... Is probably why I love it, to be honest; I'm an X-Men fangirl and I often complain that Western comics are too plot-driven and should be more character-focused, soooooooo...

(Also, I can't stop watching this fan-made music video of him. Please help.)

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The next guy on my list is sort of a new-old favorite. I began re-reading Animorphs recently, and am just over halfway finished with the series (which is about 64 books long, depending on how many spinoffs you count as canon). Due to the iconic silliness of the covers, many people don't know just how deep and dark the series gets. It accurately depicts the trauma of war and the tragedy of child soldiers. I've heard people ask how such dark books could be considered a children's series, considering the violence, cannibalism, racism/bigotry, genocide, treachery, PTSD, major character death (child death!), war crimes committed by the heroes, body horror, and general horrors of war contained within... But it is a children's series (pre-teen characters with child problems and interests; information presented in a child-accessible way), and one I have high respect for. It doesn't wrap everything up in a pretty bow. Most of the endings are bittersweet, or outright tragic. The "enemy" are people, too; nuanced, complicated people; at no point does the series allow you to brush their deaths off as incidental.

Of our six POV characters, our child soldiers (Jake, Rachel, Marco, Cassie, Tobias, and Ax), I most relate to and care for Marco, and not just because he's confirmed by the authors as being bisexual (despite Scholastics' 1990s censorship. We can show children getting disemboweled, but heaven forbid two boys kiss, right?). I love that boy's strategic, ruthless mind. This is a boy willing to kill his own mother for the greater good (literally. That's not a metaphor. I told you this series is dark!). Each Animorph falls into a certain role in their group which may or may not reflect their true personality; they're just aware they must play this role or the others will fall apart, and that's something they can't afford. So, Marco is the chess master. And some of the choices he makes are absolutely harrowing. I particularly identify with the way he relies on graveyard humor, with an "if you can't laugh, you'll cry, and never stop crying" outlook. He deliberately disassociates from his emotions when asked to, say, murder a small child in the woods. I like how as the series goes on, he struggles more with feeling any empathy at all. The series never lets you forget how fucking traumatic all this is for kids, for their developing brains, and the way he looks to Jake to tell him how he should feel about things breaks my frigging heart.

I have a lot of feelings about every Animorph character, and Marco in particular. It frustrates me how he's so often overlooked by the fandom (I had to stop listening to one podcast that kept calling him an "incel," despite him being thirteen years old. "In another life, he'd be a school shooter." Shut the fuck up; clearly you don't know what trauma is, what it does to people. Mind, this is the same podcast that called Cassie the "magical black friend cliché" because... She sometimes does really cool stuff while under pressure? Whatever; I love Cassie, she's awesome and adds a lot of depth and complexity to the series. So tbh their opinions are obviously shit. No loss.)

The series ends with (spoilers) one Animorph dead, one missing, both romances permanently severed, and the cliffhanger of jumping right into another war. At the backlash that followed, Applegate responded with "So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? [...] Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents." (You should read the entire letter she wrote to address the topic; it's phenomenal.)

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The last fave I wanna add is a teensy bit superficial, I admit, but c'mon. C'mon. It's Dracula. Specifically the Dracula voiced by Graham McTavish in Netflix's "Castlevania" series. (I never played the games. I don't really play games at all.) Like TUA, I had to watch CV in bits and pieces at my parents' house, so it took me a while. Can I just say the series has the best villains? Dracula for seasons one and two, and the Council of Sisters in season three (all four of whom I want to do beastly things to me)? Like, sure, I know they're evil, but who cares? They're hot and dangerous and I'm into that shit.

And honestly, I can't help but side with Dracula! He gave the townspeople who murdered his wife fair warning: "you've got one year to leave town before I come back and butcher all of you." It's not his fault they didn't listen! Feed 'em to the demon dogs, Drac.

Yes, he's a lil crazy. But I loved his relationship with the human Lisa and I wanted good things for them. And his last episode made me cry. A lot. Like, an embarrassing amount.

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I'm gonna add Cassie Thomas from the 2020 film "Promising Young Woman" as an honorable mention, because I saw that movie for the first time last week and I'm already a teensy bit obsessed (I can't stop watching behind-the-scenes shit and interviews and 'the making of's). But I still need more time to process it and watch it a couple... Dozen more times to really iron my feelings out. I love the movie, I love the aesthetic, the soundtrack, the wardrobe (give me EVERY OUTFIT CASSIE WEARS. And her rainbow manicure), I love Cassie's modus operandi, I love how it explores the vast treachery of the rape culture we all live in... Hell, I even love the ending, despite all the backlash. Next time I update this list, she'll probably be on it in much greater detail.