Who fascinates you?

[Colleen Thomas]

I read a lot of history. Given my druthers, I'll as often settle in with some esoteric treastise on history than with a novel. That which has come before just fascinates me.

Today I started on a work describing the Nuremberg trials. In some ways, this is old hat, as I have studied the trails a good bit, but in other's it's a very good read.

yet i noticed from my reading, and ponderings from there that a lot of the people who fascinate me from history were really prize ratbags.

Julies Striecher, for instance.
Matsuoka from Japan
Henry Ford
Beast Butler
Gen. Gough
Atilla
Gengis Kahn

The list of people I really enjoy reading about is almost a who's who of psycopaths, egomaniacs and just plain old bad people.

I like some honorable figures too, but I seem to gravitate towards the real bad guys.

It got me to thinking about who fascinates writers here and does it affect your writing? I guess the most obvious outgrowth would be fan fics. But I think it goes deeper, at least, I can see characteristics and actions in a lot of my antagonists that closely mirror the antics of some of history's bad guys I seem to take such perverse joy in studying.

So who fascinates you? And do they find a way to sneak into your stories?

 

[Guest]

So who fascinates you? And do they find a way to sneak into your stories?

I don't know some of those on your list. Woe, my public education.

Eisenhower was a recent fascination-read about four biographies of him.
MacArthur too, to a lesser degree.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Serial killers fascinate me.
I don't have anyone that specifically makes their way into my stories but there is usually an underlying dark element.
I did toy with an idea for a story on Lizzie Borden once.

 

[cloudy]

King John fascinates me, for some reason. He had such a grasp of the politics of the time, and manipulated people like a master.

Bad guy, for sure, but like most bad guys, there were things about him that were endearing. He adored his children, ALL of them, and often made bad choices in politics because one asked him to do or not do something. His daughter Joanna, that was married to Llewellyn Fawr, comes to mind.

 

[Pure]

Bundy, Hindley

 

[Guest]

 

[BlackSnake]

The female character in my "Girlfriend" story. She is my dream girl. She is totally awesome to me.

1) She fucks her boyfriend's brains out

2) She allows her boyfriend to give her transgender roommate her first vaginal fuck

3) She goes nude sun bathing with the boyfriends horny father

4) Now she is in a fight scene with the boyfriend's mother, but I'm still working on that. The girlfriend is squeezing the mother's head between her legs and having the same done to her. Their faces are smashed against each other's pussies, and neither one will let go. The girlfriend is trying to get to a candle because the mother has jammed her finger into the girlfriend's butt. Oh, did I mension that they already have ripped each other's clothes off?

 

[Selena_Kitt]

The Amish fascinate me (I've yet to write a story... maybe some day) or any type of Orthodox religion. (Think: Price Above Rubies.)

Helen Keller utterly entrances me. Anne Frank, too.
I do have a thing for girl heroes in that tradition... not the lara croft kind..

some serial killers... that BTK guy really gave me the creeps...

People who spend years living in the wild or with animals... Jane Goodall... Trackers like Tom Brown.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

Interesting thread idea, Colly.

Since I was a little kid, I've been fascinated by heroes and villians. As a writer, I like to write good guys who aren't all that good and bad guys who have that tiny shred of goodness in them. For me there always has to be a reason, a history to the bad guys. I don't think the bad guy with the miserable upbringing or hard knock life ever gets old. Just like I love to see a hero who's made mistakes but rises above all that to win out in the end.

My good guys and bad guys, who vary in degrees of bad and good:

Moses
Blackbeard
Queen Isabella
Ann Bonny
Marie Antoinette
Rommel
William Randolph Hearst
Chaplin
Martin Luther
Albrecht Durer
Nostradamus

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Interesting thread idea, Colly.

Since I was a little kid, I've been fascinated by heroes and villians. As a writer, I like to write good guys who aren't all that good and bad guys who have that tiny shred of goodness in them. For me there always has to be a reason, a history to the bad guys. I don't think the bad guy with the miserable upbringing or hard knock life ever gets old. Just like I love to see a hero who's made mistakes but rises above all that to win out in the end.

My good guys and bad guys, who vary in degrees of bad and good:

Moses
Blackbeard
Queen Isabella
Ann Bonny
Marie Antoinette
Rommel
William Randolph Hearst
Chaplin
Martin Luther
Albrecht Durer
Nostradamus

I'm a big Rommel fan. No one epitomizes the character of the nobel enemy better.

 

[Lady Reiha]

Anton LeVey
AndrewWK
Courtney Love ( if you pass her Heroin addiction and craziness)
Rob Zombie
Marilyn Manson
Jonathan Davis

^ all of the above are super intellegent geniuses!

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Marius, Gaius Juliius Caesar, Augustus, Julian, Constantine, Diocletian, Aurelian, Tiberius, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Bismarck,
Edward VII, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Trotsky, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Brutus, Cassius, Robert Todd Lincoln (son of Honest Abe), Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, William the Conqueror, King Stephen of England, Henry II, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, Oliver Cromwell, William III (he had some balls, as seen in his refusal to come to England unless he got equal status), Eisenhower, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Kosciusko, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Theodoric the Great, Boethius, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, Canute, Leif Ericson, Christopher Columbus, Haroun al-Raschid, Uluch Ali (the Italian convert to Islam who fought the Austrians and Spanish at Lepanto), and Mehmet Ali, the Albanian who made Egypt an independent state again. Oh, and Septimius Severus, Simeon Bar Kochba, Marcus Aurelius, Vespasian, and Titus.

 

[rgraham666]

I've a soft spot for warriors.

Heinz Guderian and Eric von Manstein for instance. They were the best of the German generals in WWII. Rommel was good, these guys were great.

Douglas Bader was a fave of mine when I was younger. Lost both legs in a plane crash in the early '30s. Was told he'd never walk again. Learned to walk, play golf and climbed into a Hurricane and knocked down over twenty Germans in the air.

Socrates is a fascinating person. So is Thomas Jefferson.

 

[cloudy]

Eleanor of Aquitaine - strong, strong woman, and willing to risk everything for love. Can't get much better than that.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

I've always wanted to know more about the thinkers, the people who saw the world through different eyes than the rest of society and excelled at a variety of disciplines.

Leonardo DaVinci
Pythagoras
Isaac Newton
Archimedes

 

[Guest]

Eleanor of Aquitaine - strong, strong woman, and willing to risk everything for love. Can't get much better than that.

She's one of my favorites. I've only read two biographies on her -- one a slightly fictionalized one for young adults (A Taste for Scarlet and Miniver is the title I think). She also showed up in a historical mystery I read last year -- the Canterbury Papers.

 

[Aurora Black]

Alexander the Great
Cleopatra
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Raphael
Botticelli
William Shakespeare
Imhotep, Galen, Hippocrates (Can't you tell I once wanted to be a doc? )
Aristotle
Plato
Euripides
Dimosthenes
Thomas Jefferson
Josephine Baker
La Belle Otero
Charles Baudelaire
Edgar Allan Poe
Vincent Van Gogh
Henry Fuseli
Gustave Eiffel
Galileo Galilei
King Ludwig II of Bavaria

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I've always wanted to know more about the thinkers, the people who saw the world through different eyes than the rest of society and excelled at a variety of disciplines.

Leonardo DaVinci
Pythagoras
Isaac Newton
Archimedes

All good choices. And another favorite of mine is Diogenes the Cynic. I like his reply to Alexander, "Only stand out of my Sun." By the way, another favorite is Libanius of Antioch. He is not as famous as Socrates, but he had a huge impact on the Emperor Julian, as did Plotinus and Porphyry.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

All good choices. And another favorite of mine is Diogenes the Cynic. I like his reply to Alexander, "Only stand out of my Sun."

Definitely not a "Wind Beneath Your Wings" kinda guy.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Definitely not a "Wind Beneath Your Wings" kinda guy.

No. More of a "I'm alright, Jack" kind of fellow.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Jonathan O'Leary.

John Stuart Mill.

Harriet Tubman.

Case #126.

A generous and noble spirit.

Always, always, Oscar Wilde.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Tenzin Gyatso--His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Stephen Hawkings...

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Anton LeVey
AndrewWK
Courtney Love ( if you pass her Heroin addiction and craziness)
Rob Zombie
Marilyn Manson
Jonathan Davis

^ all of the above are super intellegent geniuses!

I don't think I've heard Courtney Love or Marilyn Manson mentioned in the same sentence with the word genius before. Or even the word intelligent...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I don't think I've heard Courtney Love or Marilyn Manson mentioned in the same sentence with the word genius before. Or even the word intelligent...

and she forgot Ted Nugent!

 

[drksideofthemoon]

and she forgot Ted Nugent!

LOL...Ted's feelings will be hurt...