Stolen from Cindy at Quotidian Light. She stole from someone else. We are a community of thieves!
So, my top ten literary crushes?
1. Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L Sayers)–In real life, superrich, superskinny, and superblond don’t do much for me. But Gaudy Night is one of the perfect books in the English language, and Harriet Vane may be a Mary Sue but I don’t care.
2. Mr. Darcy (Jane Austen)–I think he would show up on more lists than anyone else. There’s just something about Mr. Darcy.
3. Superman–I can’t help it, no matter how lame it is.
4. The Scarlet Pimpernel/Sir Percy Blakeney (Baroness Orczy)–One of my earliest crushes, and one of the most defensible.
5. Sidney Carton (Charles Dickens)–I see a French Revolution theme growing here.
6. The Bastard (Lois McMaster Bujold)–I think this will be the only god on the list, and I tell ya, it’s a little embarrassing.
7. Jack Bauer (24)–The least defensible one on the list is this sociopath with a heart of… well… something very black and hard. We shall call it coal.
8. Sherlock Holmes (Laurie R King)–I have no interest in Doyle’s original Sherlock, but King’s Sherlock is pretty damned dreamy, and pretty damned Lord Peter, too.
9. James T Kirk–Damn, do I ever have a thing for heroes.
10. Aslan (CS Lewis)–Dammit, dammit, dammit. I said only one god, but I lied.
i always fancied Becky Sharpe till I met Spiderman’s first girlfriend, Gwendoline Stacey.
Let’s hear it for Iago, the real star of Othello, & Edmund, by far the most compelling character in King Lear.
It’s interesting how few of these guys I’d like to be, even if it meant women would have inexplicable crushes on me–only Lord Peter, maybe, except for the shell shock/PTSD, and Superman, even if there aren’t any more phone booths. But Jack Bauer? Darcy? At least you didn’t pick Rochester (either Jane Eyre’s or Jack Benny’s).
And when I followed your links, I learned that the other women playing the game made choices just as unaccountable to me. Aslan? Really? Neville Longbottom?
Gee. I was going to pick Buffy, Briseis, and Valentine Wannop. (Can’t pick Juliet: she’s underage and too readily influenced by Nurse.)
Well, crushes generally are unaccountable, I think. The only ones I would actually potentially want to spend any time around are Lord Peter (possibly, though he could just be a supercilious snot), and Holmes. Or my alternate choice, Miles Vorkosigan, though I’m sure he’d end up getting me killed.
You’re right. “Unaccountable” is the right word. I had no idea who Miles Vorkosigan was and had to look him up in Wikipedia. I made it as far as,
Miles’ life becomes more complicated when he discovers that he has a clone, created by Komarran terrorists with the intent of killing Miles and his family and ultimately becoming Emperor of Barrayar
and then turned away. But I don’t mean to be supercilious about it. After all, Buffy was on my list.
It’s hard to come up with ten, too. You have to streeeetch the outer limits of the definition of “crush”.