![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Now that I am back to scrubbing for my OT3 and not just Mac's ridiculous life on its own, Li Ann is coming back into focus and I am reminded quite strongly that I still do REALLY LIKE GIRLS. This is a relief. And she's pretty much my perfect woman right there. Which got me to thinking that I really do have pretty strong preferences in type when it comes to my fictional crushes.
Women? Super competent, independent, and a strong sense they could at any point throw me to the ground and kick my ass (or, um, other things). It's not so much that I like girls with guns as what the guns usually represent, which is a take no bullshit attitude. I have the same kind of reaction to women characters that are super competent and in control in any sphere of influence, it is just that very often tv shorthand involves giving her a gun or the ability to punch people in the face, especially in genre tv. As I am a big fan of people getting punched in the face in my fiction (Jesse during our last visit "Are you sure you're a pacifist?") this is not a conflict for me.
What's interesting to me is that my taste in dudes has not really changed with the addition of the occasional "I'd so hit that" of late. Adorable goofballs, weirdos, fuckups and tricksters only need apply. It's pretty much my exact opposite taste in women. Actual dudely dudes with no mitigating loserboy tendencies can mostly just walk on by.
So yeah. That's my type. What's yours?
(I have not slept yet due to insomnia again, which means I'm trying to stay awake to a decent enough hour that when I do fall asleep it is on a somewhat normal schedule so I may be spamming today)
Women? Super competent, independent, and a strong sense they could at any point throw me to the ground and kick my ass (or, um, other things). It's not so much that I like girls with guns as what the guns usually represent, which is a take no bullshit attitude. I have the same kind of reaction to women characters that are super competent and in control in any sphere of influence, it is just that very often tv shorthand involves giving her a gun or the ability to punch people in the face, especially in genre tv. As I am a big fan of people getting punched in the face in my fiction (Jesse during our last visit "Are you sure you're a pacifist?") this is not a conflict for me.
What's interesting to me is that my taste in dudes has not really changed with the addition of the occasional "I'd so hit that" of late. Adorable goofballs, weirdos, fuckups and tricksters only need apply. It's pretty much my exact opposite taste in women. Actual dudely dudes with no mitigating loserboy tendencies can mostly just walk on by.
So yeah. That's my type. What's yours?
(I have not slept yet due to insomnia again, which means I'm trying to stay awake to a decent enough hour that when I do fall asleep it is on a somewhat normal schedule so I may be spamming today)
From:
no subject
And fictional crush types, hm. I tend to crush on a major way on female characters with smiles that light up a room, who want to make the world a better place and are really earnest and sincere and adorable. Kaylee from Firefly, Gwen from Merlin, etc.
On the other hand, I do also love really stoic action heroine types with secret feelings that they're bad about expressing in words. Olivia Dunham, Sarah Connor, Cara from Legend of the Seeker, etc.
The fact that Amy Pond combines the adorable sunshiney thing with the bad about feelings thing quite possibly explains why I love her quite as much as I do.
One of the fastest ways a male character can enter my heart is by genuinely liking/appreciating/admiring the awesome women in their life and respecting their choices etc. Being cute and dorky totally, totally helps.
From:
no subject
What is funny about the Ponds is that Amy and Rory both pretty much slot into their gender respective crush categories for me. This is quite possibly why I OTP them SO HARD.
I think the last time I got a couple (though I've got my OT3 that covers it on OAT right now as well) so well suited to my particular needs was Zoe/Wash on Firefly.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
As for male characters: Like you, I have a huge soft spot for goofballs and weirdos, and I am happy to 'ship them with the female characters I have the hots for (hence my undying love for Wash/Zoe). But my own crushes tend towards guys with Massive Issues -- not stoic repression, but manic I-am-acting-out-all-over-the-place-because-of-my-issues, or else some combination of emotional openness and self-deprecation. This is why I am fond of (and exasperated by) Fraser but find Ray Kowalski (and for that matter Geoffrey Tennant) HOT. It is also why my crush on Spike reached truly epic proportions while watching "Fool For Love." Heh.
From:
no subject
I think we have some crossover on the dudes because often the two overlap. Like, I would totally put Spike in my goofball/fuckup pile but not really RayK...not because of my CKR thing, but because as adorably funny as he can be his twitchiness really is so intertwined with his ISSUES that it's not quite the same vibe for me. But it is close!
From:
no subject
Part of it, I think, is that while I tend to be very fond of loserboys up to a point (like so many of my favorite male students, they remind me of me at a certain age), I still have a competence kink a mile wide. (This is why I love Wash so much: he's a goof and a dork, but dude knows how to pilot a ship. I have a similar thing about Peter from Fringe, actually.) There is something really appealing to me about a character who is kind of a total mess, at least on the surface, but who does his job well and without unnecessary drama because it's his job.
It occurs to me that this is partly because I spent nearly eight years in a relationship with a guy who seemed to be totally on top of things but eventually turned out to be a repressed mess and then couldn't get his shit together to do his job (or much of anything else). So, so not sexy. If I ever get similarly burned in a relationship with a woman I may stop finding repressed female characters quite so hot, but for the moment? Sarah Connor and Olivia Dunham are still WELCOME IN MY HOME, is all I'm saying.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Clearly they need to sell Faith Lehanes and Zoe Washburnes and Aeryn Suns in six-packs, is what I'm saying.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
See: Sherlock (wounded and woobie but maybe not so rugged); John (definitely pretty rugged and wounded and woobie); Erik (SO WOOBIE); Maximus (Gladiator); Balian (Kingdom of Heaven); Dean (Supernatural); Logan (Dark Angel); Mr. Darcy (again, maybe not so rugged, but SO WOOOBIE).
As for women: my fictional crushes on women far underweight my real life crushes on women. I often find fictional women so poorly drawn/written/portrayed that I cannot engage with their character. So they may be very pretty, but I don't care about them.
But fictional women -- I like them to be competent, strong, real, and a little complex or even contradictory. Fictional women include: Frida Kahlo (from the film Frida, wherein Salma Hayek plays Frida); Meg Ryan's character in French Kiss slays me; Laura (from High Fidelity, because she is normal by contrast to her boyfriend's eternally pending angst); Li Ann (\o/ \o/ \o/); Max in Dark Angel; River Song; pretty much any woman Eva Green has ever portrayed (Sibylla in Kingdom of Heaven, Morgan Le Fey in Camelot, Versper in James Bond); I think I am nursing a crush on Olivia in Fringe too, now that I am watching the show.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE AMY/RORY too, but I love them together more than apart.
In real life none of this is really true. Dudes who are usually that rugged and manly are too straight for me, or don't have enough going on inside to be interesting. (Cutting, maybe, but that's just my experience. I don't pretend it's universally true.) Women are much more interesting to me in real life because they are, well, real, and they are so rich and diverse and fascinating.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I also love longsuffering best friend characters who put up with a lot of craziness and nonsense without going crazy themselves and pretty much anyone who, situationally, ought to be a complete woobie but who's actually more of a teflon angst shield. The more they respond to tragedy by going out and Getting Things Done, the more I like them, especially if other characters are surprised by this.
(What a shock both that I like Miami Vice and that Sonny is not my favorite character on it.)
From:
no subject
You did not namedrop here so I will do it for you. GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS!!!!! (who also has enough goofball loserboy tendencies for me to be head over heels with him)
From:
no subject
My most favoritest best friend ever is actually Rico though for the impressive feat of combining the longsuffering best friend character with the noir hero who punches fate in the face a lot. (Being on TV, he gets to be around enough non-dead recurring characters to make this possible. Noir cinema and hard boiled detective fiction only rarely feature two leads who are both alive and not evil by the end.)
From:
no subject
Competant enough to get the crap beat out of them. Not so competant that they set off an anxiety attack.