the ideal male protagonist

(I'm back from wordpress, by the way - even though I liked the layout of the site way better, formatting was a bitch.)

I'm very particular about my favorite male protagonists. I like them a certain way: young, attractive, charismatic, arrogant, lazily aristocratic, somewhat delicate-looking, anti-heroic, blond, pale, precocious, occasionally rather tormented, and, most importantly, devastatingly sarcastic. I also tend to like them more if they're a tiny bit evil or at least really, really self-absorbed. I wonder what this says about me.

Anyway, my favorite fictional characters (I'm not just limiting myself to novels, but I am excluding films) are as follows. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Amory Blaine from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise
I love Amory Blaine. So much so, in fact, that I went through a three month phase where I was determined to name my first child after him (until Mackenzie told me this was way too cruel). Seriously, what's not to love? He's brilliant, careless, and dashingly good looking, goes to Princeton in the 1920s, and says things like, "I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again." Oh, and another one of my favorite lines is when he realizes he has only $24 to his name and observes, "Well, people make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do."

Zooey Glass from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
I just read this book for my American Novel Since 1945 class. I always found Catcher in the Rye a little angsty and trite, so I wasn't expecting to really enjoy this much. HOW WRONG I WAS. Zooey is "surpassingly handsome, even spectacularly so," makes people extremely nervous (it's probably all the hilariously cutting remarks), and appears to have the exact same personality that I do. Consider, for example, what his mother says about him: "Neither you nor Buddy know how to talk to people you don't like...If you don't like somebody in two minutes, you're done with them forever." Or perhaps the reason he himself gives for not wanting to get married: "I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window any more when you're married." I just can't explain how awesome he is. You'll have to read the book yourself (it's only 200 pages and very tiny, so there's no excuse not to).

Hamlet from Shakespeare's, uh, Hamlet
Okay, I know how pretentious it is to put Hamlet on the list. BUT OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM. I reread it this year for my Shakespeare class last semester and became hopelessly, terribly obsessed. I watched the Lawrence Olivier film version twice in 24 hours. And also the marathon Kenneth Branagh version, which I think is honestly almost five hours long (and has S-E-X. Yesss). So how could I not include him? He's incredibly intelligent, rhetorically gifted, desperate, tortured, and, best of all, quite possibly crazy! Yeahhh. I'd do him.

Light from Death Note
I'm just going to say this and get it over with: yes, this is an anime series. DO NOT JUDGE ME. It is the only one I watch, and I only watch it because it is so dark and sexy and well-written and compelling. Anyway, the best part of this series is the barely suppressed sexual tension between the two main characters, Light and L, both of whom are, of course, stratospherically intelligent, bitingly sarcastic, and completely obsessed with defeating each other with strange little mind games. Except Light is evil and also hotter, so I am clearly on his side. No, seriously, he is unbelievably good-looking. And super evil. And he treats women as expendable. So much to love.

Draco from Cassie Clare's The Draco Trilogy
Since I'm making embarrassing revelations, here's another one. Yes, this is a fanfic series. Yes, I used to read Harry Potter fanfic. So shoot me. 95% of it is absolute crap, but there are a few truly gifted writers in the fandom, and Cassie is one of them. She's a published author now, and even though apparently her original fiction isn't as good, this fic is absolutely outstanding. The trilogy is very, very long (the length of three actual books easily, if not longer), but it's one of the best stories I've ever read. The characters themselves are so vibrant and alive and wonderful - almost as if J.K. Rowling had actually bothered with serious character development (I love her, but she does have her weaknesses). But I'm spending too much time explaining myself. Draco needs no explanation. He's the standard I hold all my other fictional favorites to. See the above list? He meets every single qualification. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Ender from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
Is there anyone in the world who didn't like this book? (Except for my little brother, who "didn't get it.") I still cry every time I read it. Poor Ender. I love him so. I'd write more but I'm sooo tired.

Okay, I'm done for the night. But uh, I hope I have effectively communicated how much I love these boys.