amberdreams | Talking meme - 2nd December (Reply)

septembers_coda Wanted to know who was my favorite child character ever, in any fandom?

Supernatural is my first real "fandom", so I'll have to talk books instead, especially as the tv shows I've been in love with before SPN didn't really have any children in that I can think of (Babylon 5, Firefly, Stargate Atlantis, Alias Smith and Jones, Star Trek...oh, unless you count Wesley, but though I liked him he wasn't a fave character).

I've been wracking my brain for child characters and when I started putting this post together I still wasn't sure who would end up top of my list.

I'd have said Arya Stark straight off, except I am still too dischuffed about what dear George has done to her in the last couple of books - I barely recognised the feisty little girl who charmed the socks off me in Book 1, so I couldn't bring myself to put her top of my list. Lyra Belaqua is a great character, but I didn't really like her all that much, even while I understood her very well. So I looked a bit farther back and remembered one of my childhood heroes, Harry Wharton, from Frank Richards' Magnet comics. I imagine most of you will never have heard of him or the comics, though you might have heard of Billy Bunter. The Magnet was a weekly comic (narrative-based not cartoons) that ran from the early 1900s to around the 1940s, with stories about Greyfriars public school. I had a real thing about reading those. The bulk of the stories featured the Remove Form, who were about 14-15 year olds. Frank was an orphan, one of those upright, noble chaps with a fiery temper who always tried to do the right thing. There was also a bad boy character in that series who I had a soft spot for, Herbert Vernon Smith, also known as The Bounder. He was the rebel with a good heart, he smoked and gambled and often saved the day in spite of himself. I used to write fanfiction about these characters without knowing that was what it was!

But then I thought some more, and if I stretch the definition of a child character to teenagers, I think I can go for Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf (with a side order of Rich, his little brother) from M K Wren's The Phoenix Legacy. At the start of the books Alexand is about 16 or17, while his brother is 12-14. Alexand has so many of the qualities I love in a hero - he's fiercely loyal, he's intelligent and thoughtful, he loves hard and strong with everything he's got, he has utter trust in his brother, he's flawed and makes mistakes, he's willing to sacrifice his life and happiness for the greater good.

Yup, I do have a pattern in the characters I fall in love with...