Avaitor's Top 10 Fictional Characters (And Yours, Too?)

[LumRanmaYasha]

Now, can you guess what my top characters are going to be?

I'll go for the safe bets, Daria and Daffy Duck. 

Of course, I think you said before that your top two choices will be ties, if I remember correctly, so I dunno. 

[Avaitor]

#2-


Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck

I may be more of a Daffy guy, but I do love Bugs a lot myself. If I could take anyone's irreverent sense of humor at adversity combined with strength, I'd have to go with him. How great would that be? I mean, just look at how he takes on Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian or whoever gets him in a wrong mood. And he's always hilarious.

Then there's Daffy. I'd have to say that the only sides of him that I'm not crazy on are the 60's shorts where he'd try to capture Speedy Gonzales, or the later, more commercial products you'd see him in. But Tex's original, wacky as all hell interpretation of the duck? Classic. Clampett's expansion of Daffy and his frequent meshing with Porky? Yes please. The later greedy take no his persona? Great! The combination of all of the above in Duck Dodgers? Quite underrated.

And yes, I do love his feud with Bugs. I can't say that it's my very favorite, but obviously I have to talk about it.

I love them both separately, but they're nearly as great together than not. Bugs works as a great straight man and an irritated schemer as opposed to Daffy's black and white arrogance, and nearly every short with them in together works thanks in part to their chemistry. Watching "Ali Baba Bunny" again the other day just reminded me of their overall strengths together.

I also put them together because it just seems to fit, based on the Bugs-Daffy complex. You want to be Bugs, but you wake up and you're Daffy. You can arguably say the same about Mary and Rhoda, or Professor X and Magneto, but there's nary a greater compare-contrast of life than putting these two side by side.

[Foggle]

I never would have guessed.

[Avaitor]

Fuck it, I'm going to try for #1 now. Here we go.



Barney Stinson wasn't going to be the way he was. Craig Thomas and Carter Bays initially wanted a Jack Black-type to play this character, a sloppy, arrogant, pseudo-ladies man that got lucky every once in a while. Your basic breakaway character. He could've been funny, and knowing Bays and Thomas, they would have built on this character quite well if it lasted.

Then entered Neil Patrick Harris. About as far away from a Jack Black type as you can get. But by some miracle, Thomas and Bays saw a new angle on their character in Harris's audition, which made them go with NPH, this recently-outed side actor, to play Barney Stinson.

Together, they created a monster.

Comedically, for one thing, what can I say that eight seasons haven't? His resume. My god. Barney's commitment to achieving a lifelong of awesomeness is insane. Then there are his many, many Playbook tricks. It's amazing how many of his crazy schemes to attract women work, some of which include him pretending to be a statue in a museum, "coming back" 50 years from the future to warn a girl that sleeping with the present-day Barney will save the universe, and talking like a baby boy. The even crazier part? Even though his friends will cheer Barney on during his craziest schemes, when he treads towards downright misogyny, which is surprisingly rare, he is never once vindicated by the gang, and he is able to learn his lesson the hard way. Which often makes for even funnier results.

You have Barney's childish tendencies. His magic tricks. How he considers the villains of movies to be the heroes (but let's be real, who doesn't root for Hans Landa?). His deeply layered logic (see: the Ewok theory and "Choo + choo= train"). His Get Psyched Mix (both versions). And this.



Barney is a very funny character. Even people that don't like the show wouldn't knock this notion. But anyone with a marginal bit of history of the show can tell you that's more than just laughs to Barney's character. For every recurring joke, for every tick, there's a deep-seeded history to go with them.

Barney's desire to suit up started after Shannon, his first love, left him for a businessman during their hippie phase. After this, it became a character flaw to Barney to not look at your presentable best 24/7.

His promiscuity comes from after his first time, which was with a friend of his mother's, a former prostitute. This was suggested to the both of them by his brother, shortly after Shannon left him, and premature "praise" from the woman after Barney's first go made him build himself up into a sex god, until he finally became one. It still takes a few times to rock a cougar or two, but it's what Barney is best at, as many will agree. The fact that his mother was also a prostitute in her time helped toward this as well.

Barney's innocence and logical twisting was brought on by his mother, who tried to make the world as safe for her sons as possible. This includes covering up why none of his classmates came to his birthday parties (damn you, Postmaster General!), wh Barney was too awesome to play on the basketball team, and what happened to his "Uncle Jerry". Also why he thought Bob Barker was his dad, but that's another thing entirely.

Barney's issues with women, relationships, and abandonment? It isn't obvious by now? The amazing thing is, Barney has definitely changed since the very first season. He still fools around, occasionally relapses, and acts childish, but his heart is in a better place. Barney's more overt, he's sharper, and more heartfelt than before. A big reason to thank all of this?

Who I'm tying him with.



I don't think it's too much of a surprise that Barney is a great character. Neil Patrick Harris is an incredible actor, and brings such life to every little line. What's far more surprising is that Robin Scherbatsky, the little plot twist that made the show's pilot as memorable as it is, has grown into as strong of a persona as she is now.

Robin initially started as a bit of a fifth wheel, the new girl in a well-formed group. The perfect bouncing board to expand upon the group's crazy stories. It didn't take much time for Robin to have her own stories to share with the gang, and she finally got to expand as her own character.

What is there to Robin as a character? She's stubborn, but open. Strong, but still broken. Sardonic, but not as sharp as she thinks she is. And did I mention she was a teenage pop star in Canada during the mid-90's? Cobie Smulders is able to make all of these aspects feel authentic, and typically hilarious, and in no time she became one of my favorites on the show.

Robin Scherbatsky is in many ways the quintessential modern day woman, but Bays and Thomas are too smart to shove this in your face ala Murphy Brown, or to frequently humiliate herself to "make her human" like Ally McBeal. She just... is. Like the rest of the gang, aside from Barney, Robin has been fighting her way to her dream job over the course of the show, which happens to be an elite news anchor, and by now, she's at a big news station and had her share of reports on the screen, like it was nothing. The funny thing is, she didn't even have to deal with much adversity because of her sex or even her nationality. There were plenty of struggles, but all ones that could happen to everyone, and Robin has made it through by the end.

What makes Robin so popular among fans, besides her music, is her conviction to not have children, something she has stuck by over the course of the show, from beginning to now. It was one of the biggest deal-breakers between her and Ted, as well as her brief relationship with Kevin the therapist. And despite Ted's feelings for her, this is what causes him to stay back at the end of the day, and why we know that she isn't the mother.

It even went to the point that we discovered that Robin can't have kids. Her reaction to this was a little controversial, since some found it unrealistic that someone as strongly against childbirth ("I like cars, but I wouldn't want to push one out of my vagina!") would be so openly distraught towards a loss like this, as she was in the episode this was revealed, but from what I've discovered over the years, news like this will be likely to affect you no matter who you are. If there's one thing people hate, it's to be told that they can't do something. Seeing Ted hold Robin and having him dry her tears as "Highway to Hell" plays along to newly-lit Christmas lights still remains one of the sweetest moments I've seen in all of TV.

Then there's an aspect that I don't think is addressed enough on the show- Robin's growing appreciation of her femininity. As we learn, her dad was not ready to have a daughter, and he didn't really raise a daughter. It's only until around the time she put on a blonde wig and started to sing about malls and beavers with Alan Thicke that this started to change. We see Robin embrace girlier clothing, make-up and the like with more ease on a subtlety growing basis, all making logical sense for the character.

Robin can make me laugh, she can make me sad, and she can be inspiring. But why am I siding her with Barney? Because, one way or another, they're just meant to be together. Barney wants a girl with daddy issues, which Robin has in spades, and Robin wants someone who's willing to take their time with a relationship but knows what she wants. Ted is firmly in the latter territory, but I think that Barney has grown to prove both at this point. Even then, Neil and Cobie have insanely strong chemistry together.

This is what Robin looked like when Barney and Ted first met her.



This is them 8 years later.



And these are my two favorite characters in all of fiction, separately and together. I hope you enjoyed seeing my list!

[Spark Of Spirit]

 

He is most definitely the highlight of the show, and Robin as well is very funny. Without them the show would merely be watchable.

[Foggle]

Very nice final post, lots of detail! Sadly, I'm only passingly familiar with your favorite characters, so I can't really comment on them at all.