Literary Crushing, Not Necessarily Hetero

In the comments on my Good Ways to Ruin Your Life for the Sake of Inspiration post, Popeye shared his appreciation of the character of Atticus Finch. I began a reply, then realized it would take a bit more than just a comment paragraph to respond. On my homepage, I have a list of (male) fictional characters I have lusted after. (I'd provide the link, but my homepage is all in one Flash file, and therefore I cannot currently link separate pages. I'd love for you to read it, though. It's under "Lists".) But I don't have a list of female characters. So without further ado...

Jill's Possible Same Sex Literary Crushes

1. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series was the first one to come to mind. She's a geek; she mothers her friends, well; she always knows where to find the information to help save their asses, and has put her own on the line more than a few times; she charmed the heck out of Viktor Krum, world-famous Quidditch star. Sure, maybe early on, her hair needed a deep-conditioning treatment, but I think she's learned to take care of that. Especially now that she's clearly got her heart set on the oh-so-oblivious Ron. This choice might make me a pedophile...but just a fictional one, right? At least I didn't say Lolita.

2. Next, I thought of Arwyn of Lord of the Rings fame. Except I don't think I actually have a crush on her. It's more like I want her immortality, or her man. Or both. She's not really fiesty enough for me. I'd love to slay her and take her place. Which is something Eowyn could have done. Now, there's a crush-worthy Tolkien woman.

3. Tinkerbell. Forget. Wendy.

At this point, this list becomes a truly informative exercise. Because, if I am limiting myself to literature...well, there aren't a whole heckuvalotof female characters that entice me. Let's examine Shakespeare. Lady Macbeth is trying to act out her own ambitions through her husband, Ophelia can't cope, Gertrude is either an adultress or too easily manipulated, Miranda is sheltered, Juliet is naive, as is poor Desdemona, Cleopatra is...Cleopatra, Cordelia is somewhat likable, though her sisters clearly aren't, the girls in Midsummer's are too simple (it is a romantic comedy, after all), but...

4. Beatrice. What a wit! And fiesty indeed.

5. Katharina. The Shrew. Taming, my ass.

6. Elphaba. From Wicked. I don't care if she's green. No, I haven't seen the musical. I may be the only person in New York, or that has visited New York in the past year or two, that hasn't. I'll get around to it.

7. Catherine, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning David Auburn play, Proof. Young but complex. Plagued by people making false assumptions about her. Some of them false, anyway. Deadpan humor. And brilliant.

8. Sabine. From Nick Bantock's Griffin & Sabine series. Bantock is an artist, illustrator, writer and creator of pop-up books. This series tells the story through the correspondence of the title characters. Each page--their letters, postcards, and the like--is an artwork. And Sabine is the mysterious woman who initiates it all. If you're the type of person who wanders through bookstores looking for things to touch, and flip through, and lose yourself in, sit down with these. The text is limited enough to read over one cup of tea, but you really won't want to leave without the book(s).

Literary crushes, anyone?

"Oh, Westley!":The Princess Bride and Comfort Food

Yesterday was a hot, sticky day. It's been like that all week. August in New York is one of those experiences that you erase out of your consciousness after every instance, and the next time it happens, you're blind-sided. I've been living on Gatorade, fruit, and random salty things all week. The air conditioning in my car gave up again. And yesterday, at rush hour, I had to drive through Manhattan, up to Kim's, for a quick run-through of the show in preparation for our final performance.

The West Side Highway was like a parking lot. It took me 47 minutes to drive...8 miles? I had forgotten to recharge my iPod, so I couldn't use the transmitter. But, because it was rush hour, all the radio stations were trying to be supportive. And because Bryan had taken the time to pre-set all the good rock stations on my radio the last time I'd been staring out at the Hudson wishing I could jump in, there was very little searching for me to do. For some reason, every rock station in NYC became obsessed with Joan Jett and Van Halen between 4:30 and 6pm yesterday. This, of course, was not a problem. In fact, it made me very, very happy, even though I was sitting in a pool of sweat and un-triumphantly watching the Carnival Triumph sail by. I opened all the windows, sang along, and tried not to bang my head against the steering wheel.

By the time I got to Kim's I was starving, but so was everyone else. For some reason, they allowed me to pick the take-out place that we would order dinner from. I think it had something to do with the passionate way I was reading menu selections aloud. With mashed potatoes...oh my God... Barbecue sauce was sounding so damn appealing, and I'd been fantasizing about those sweet potato fries since I'd first laid eyes on that menu two months ago. So yes, we went with the barbecue chicken sandwiches (all white meat, kaiser rolls, unbelievable sauteed onions) and those orange orgasms.

After we ordered, we sat around in the living room, staring at each other. There was just no way work was going to get done until we were fed. That was abundantly clear. So we did the only thing a bunch of reasonable people wanting to goof off could do--rifled through Kim's DVD collection. We decided on the cinematic equal to the comfort food we were eagerly awaiting--The Princess Bride.

Now, I love this movie. Everyone I know that has seen the movie, loves the movie. (Amazingly, Ingrid had never seen the movie. We all tried to not ruin it for her. We tried.) But you've got to admit, Buttercup is a priss. What Westley sees in her, I have no idea, especially when she's standing by letting him get his ass handed to him by a Rodent of Unusual Size. Jump in, birdbrain! Westley, don't you want a woman who's got your back? Come on! Incidentally, I am not the only woman to feel this way. The other three females who were there and had seen it said exactly the same thing. The lone male...well, Bryan is smart enough to keep quiet when he's outnumbered, even if he agrees.

When the food finally arrived, the fries were slightly soggy, and of course they weren't accompanied by the fancy-pants sweet chili sauce & crème fraiche that Eight Mile Creek does to perfection...but what they didn't offer in crispness, we all made up for with our voracious need for fat & carbs. And the perfectly sauteed onions earned the place brownie points in our takeout rolodex. Then we had frozen Snickers bars for dessert.

Joy, my friend and a super editor, just called. I've got to run out to meet her (so she can give me a guilt trip about how I called one of my essays "The Final Draft" even though I knew it was no where near finally done.) I told her what I was writing about, and by freaky coincidence, she also watched The Princess Bride last night. Really freaky coincidence. I didn't ask her how she felt about Buttercup and the Rodent. I'll just keep that up my sleeve until I need to change the subject from the revising guilt trip.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.