LITEROTICA PODCAST
LIT CAMS (200 Free Tokens)ADULT TOYSVOD MOVIES

Favourite (minor) fictional character

oggbashan

oggbashan

Dying Truth seeker
Joined
Jul 3, 2002
Posts
56,017
This evening my wife and I were discussing our favourite characters in Moliere's plays. (What else do you expect from the Og household?)

It started me thinking about minor fictional characters that I could not do without. Major ones are easy. I excluded any characters in Shakespeare or Chaucer.

My list started like this:

Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop
Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell 'A Handbag?'
Sir Walter Scott's Rebecca from Ivanhoe
Benn Gunn from Treasure Island
Umslopagas from Rider Haggard's African romances

and from more obscure authors:
Captain Kettle from Cutcliffe Hyne's stories
Herne the Hunter from Harrison Ainsworth's Windsor Castle
The villainess Irma from Sapper's Bulldog Drummond books

Who would you choose as essential lifetime reading?

Og
 
oggbashan said:
This evening my wife and I were discussing our favourite characters in Moliere's plays. (What else do you expect from the Og household?)

It started me thinking about minor fictional characters that I could not do without. Major ones are easy. I excluded any characters in Shakespeare or Chaucer.

My list started like this:

Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop
Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell 'A Handbag?'
Sir Walter Scott's Rebecca from Ivanhoe
Benn Gunn from Treasure Island
Umslopagas from Rider Haggard's African romances

and from more obscure authors:
Captain Kettle from Cutcliffe Hyne's stories
Herne the Hunter from Harrison Ainsworth's Windsor Castle
The villainess Irma from Sapper's Bulldog Drummond books

Who would you choose as essential lifetime reading?

Og
Click to expand...


Do you realy think Rebecca in Ivanhoe is a minor Character? I felt more for her and wanted a good ending more for her than I did for any of the others. Although I guess she really isn't the main love interst.

Cap Roundtree: From Louis Lamour's sackette books
Captain Holly: Richard adams Watership Down
Campion from the sequel
Any one of the three musketeers, but particularly Athos
Lenny & the Colonel from Laumer's Bolo
 
I'm rereading Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues for about the fifth time, and he has some absolutely wonderful minor characters - unforgettable, in fact.

There is "the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota" who showed up with a high school basketball team for a tournament, and just never left - he welcomes the dawn each day yelling "The end of the world is near!" He is described as having "cheekbones so big that he knocked people over when he turned his head from side to side."

There is also Simon, who owns a truck that is stuck in reverse, so that's the way he drives it: backwards everywhere he goes.

And Thomas Builds-the-Fire's father, who emodies the despair that leads to alcoholism when they find him passed out on the kitchen table one morning with no idea how he got there. He disappears the same way.
 
Ackley. Holden Caulfield's roommate from Catcher in the Rye. The guy who used to pop his zits as he talked and whose teeth were green and furry from not brushing.

Awkward Davies, the ferociously strong and violent seaman who was devoted to Captain Aubry in the Patrick O'Brian books. Aubry saved him from drowning and so Davies schemed to be on all his voyages with him, and bitterly resented anyone else who fell overboard, afraid they were trying to steal his captain's affection. He used to foam at the mouth before a battle.
 
In Andrew Vachss Burke series... Pansy.

Although, she went out like she should have.

Sincerely,
ElSol
 
I like the characters suggested so far. I'd prefer Mrs Weasley to the other Weasleys but she has a larger part.

Any more overlooked minor roles?

I could list for hours. I'd rather learn who other people value.

Og
 
Oh...

Paradise Lost... Abdiel.

A story about him IS coming from him... my absolutely favorite minor character ever.

An angel other angels call 'The Faithful One'... GAAAAH!!!

Sincerely,
ElSol
 
oggbashan said:
I like the characters suggested so far. I'd prefer Mrs Weasley to the other Weasleys but she has a larger part.

Any more overlooked minor roles?

I could list for hours. I'd rather learn who other people value.

Og
Click to expand...
Warden Dios of Stephen Donaldson's Gap Series. He gave up his humanity, in order to save all of humanity. Tons of other great and horrible characters in there as well, but Dios and his subordinate Min Donner are the ones I remember most of all.

(Interestingly, the Gap Series was the one book (series) my mom ever forbade me to read as a child, and, looking back, she was right.)
 
Ensign Johnson... or is it Jones?

The Kenny of Star Trek...

"OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED ENSIGN JOHNSON! YOU BASTARDS!"

Sincerely,
ElSol
 
The Warden of Harriet Vane's college in Dorothy L Sayers Gaudy Night.
 
Rand Morgan "The Windflower" Best. Pirate. Ever.

The Fictional Emperor Norton in "Bloodsucking Fiends" by Christopher Moore
(led me to realize there was a nonfictional Emperor Norton with dogs by the same names, Lazarus and Bummer)

Dogberry in "Much Ado About Nothing"
 
oggbashan said:
This evening my wife and I were discussing our favourite characters in Moliere's plays.

Og
Click to expand...

OG -

I realise that what goes on in the privacy of one's home is their affair, but surely there have to be SOME limits.

It wouldn't work in our house, my missus doesn't know the meaning of the word 'play'. (or discussion now I think about it).
 
elsol said:
Ensign Johnson... or is it Jones?

The Kenny of Star Trek...

"OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED ENSIGN JOHNSON! YOU BASTARDS!"

Sincerely,
ElSol
Click to expand...
You, in the red suit, go see what that noise is. :D
 
chris 44 said:
OG -

I realise that what goes on in the privacy of one's home is their affair, but surely there have to be SOME limits.

It wouldn't work in our house, my missus doesn't know the meaning of the word 'play'. (or discussion now I think about it).
Click to expand...

Limits? What are they?

We were discussing them in French which we cannot continue for long before she gets a fit of the giggles at my appalling accent.

Tomorrow afternoon will be a debate about whether we can live without Corneille and Goethe in the original languages. We probably can, but if we dispose of the books, the chances of us finding them in our local library are as close to zero as is possible.

Og

PS. Keep posting and you'll soon lose your cherry.
 
- This is Stevens, from accounts.
- Didn't know we had an accounts department. Stevens?
- Ah, yes Captain, it's just last time we had a landing party 400 packed lunches were reported eaten and only 3 people went, so I thought I'd beam down with you.
- That's a very nice red shirt you're wearing there Stevens.
- Yeah, it's my favourite.
- Rather nice target motif on it too.

Second time I've quoted Eddie Izzard on the board today.

Kasigi Omi in James Clavell's Shogun. I'm reading it for the Godknowshowmany'th time and still love all the subtle little threads. And inbetween you see this man evolve, scheming, cleverer than his station deserves and you see him change through Blackthorne's perception of him and his perception of Blackthorne.

Love that book so much.

The Earl
 
oggbashan said:
Limits? What are they?


PS. Keep posting and you'll soon lose your cherry.
Click to expand...

YIPPEE !!!!!


I just did :nana: :p :nana:

It's such a weight off my mind (not to mention my nuts)
 
Butterfly McQueen. Gone With The Wind, film obviously...
Character: Prissy
Famous line: "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies."

but the novel, her character was even more awesome.
 
cloudy said:
I'm rereading Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues for about the fifth time, and he has some absolutely wonderful minor characters - unforgettable, in fact.

There is "the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota" who showed up with a high school basketball team for a tournament, and just never left - he welcomes the dawn each day yelling "The end of the world is near!" He is described as having "cheekbones so big that he knocked people over when he turned his head from side to side."

There is also Simon, who owns a truck that is stuck in reverse, so that's the way he drives it: backwards everywhere he goes.

And Thomas Builds-the-Fire's father, who emodies the despair that leads to alcoholism when they find him passed out on the kitchen table one morning with no idea how he got there. He disappears the same way.
Click to expand...


*Curiosity aroused...so book ordered!*
 
vella_ms said:
Butterfly McQueen. Gone With The Wind, film obviously...
Character: Prissy
Famous line: "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies."

but the novel, her character was even more awesome.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. I'm not into that novel much though. ;)
 
David Eddings filled his Belgariad and Malloerean series with hundres of interesting secondary, tertiary and incidental characters -- it's hard to pick just one or two.

Of course, it all depends on what you mean by "minor character." Most of my favorite "minor" characters are nameless incidental characters like the old Karand farmer and his "peg" Garion pumps for information, or the old miner that shelters Belgarath and Polgara for the winter.

I think one of the reasons I like David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Robert Jordan's World of Time series, and the Harry Potter series is because they all have a profusion of interesting tertiary and incidental characters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top