anythingbutgrey | Top Characters of the Decade Picspam

Before we begin, this has full-series spoilers for the following: Alias, Battlestar Galactica and Angel. Every other fandom you should be safe. This is for

picspammy's Challenge 14: End of the Decade

10. Sydney Bristow (Alias)

Sydney Bristow and I broke up. Alias fell from brilliance to failure in record time, and she and I parted ways. However, once upon a time, I loved this girl, and so, thus, I pay homage. Sydney was the icon of my childhood - she was strong, and vulnerable, and fierce, and terrified and a whole mess of complications but what she ultimately was was a force to be reckoned with and everyone knew it. She was the pride and joy of both the CIA and SD-6 because she did what she did well. It is no wonder to me that the CIA used Jen Garner in their recruiting videos, because Sydney was an inspiration to me, and I'm sure to many other women who wanted to grow up and make a difference in the world.

9. Inara Serra (Firefly/Serenity)

Okay, so a lot of this influenced by my complete and total girl!crush on Morena Baccarin. Absolutely the most beautiful person since ever and so talented. And Morena makes Inara shine. Inara is, much like Sydney, much like all the women on this list, incredibly powerful. She's smart and brave and a mother to the crew of Serenity in so many ways. She faces life with an amazing sense of dignity and grace. She's also the only person on that ship that Mal will listen to. As you'll see in a lot of this picspam, a great deal of the love I have for these characters comes from the love they have for other characters. It's a relational piece. And Inara's strength, at the end of the day, comes from this bright, burning place of love, and that's really something special. The internet doesn't really seem to appreciate Inara enough, which I think is a tragedy. She had a depth of emotion to her, something complicated and at times dark but also full of this light that shone on everything she touched, and I wish people appreciated her more.

8. Six (Battlestar Galactica)

Six has always been my favorite Cylon. I recognize she has different personalities, different characters entirely, different tragedies, but the Six model is always powerful. I fell in love with Six as Gina, the Cylon who is raped and tortured on Pegasus. That's a storyline that I carried with me for years. But what strikes me about the Six models is that they are always vital to the mission. A Six is the first Cylon we see, walking through the din of the human-Cylon safe-zone and promptly blowing it up. Caprica brings down the human race and she also decides to stop chasing them and people listen because she is important and respected. But it's not just Caprica. Gina, for all her torment, was powerful once and, in some ways, remains so until her death. Natalie is the representative from the Cylons on Galactica. Sixes are powerful and in charge always, and that is why I love her. Them.

7. Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly/Serenity)

I MEAN DUH. There are few better crafted characters out there in the 'verse, and there are a grand total of three male characters on this list and Mal more than deserves to be one of them. He protects his crew with a ferocity to be admired, fights for what he believes in with the most courageous strength, and he's just -- wonderful. You'll find that all of the characters on this list are inherently playing games of extremes - they love and hate and fear and fight with the same intensity. I think that's very human, and Mal is, above all things, human. He doesn't fear the Alliance for a second but he's terrified of the companion who lives down the hall. He doesn't even really like Simon, but he protects him because he's his crew. And River might be a witch, but she's their witch. So don't mess.

6. The characters of Friday Night Lights

Is this cheating? This is cheating. But I was trying to pick one person out of this cast and I couldn't do it. Every person on this show is a part of a wonderful, glorious, epic whole, and trying to choose one would just be impossible because it all fits together into one awesome milieu. I tried to get almost all pictures of people smiling because I love these kids - the only exception to the smiling really is Tyra, but that's because that's the scene where Landry - who didn't fit in this picspam, unfortunately - is telling her how she's awesome and deserves better and ughh her faaaace. Precious. I love everyone on this show so much. Oh goodness. I suppose Smash's face is less smiley than I originally thought - but it looked smiley and he's all preparing for state and stuff so he's pumped and ready to go. I miss him.

5. Ted Mosby (How I Met Your Mother)

I am legitimately torn all the time about whether I want to marry Ted Mosby or be Ted Mosby. Most of the time it's the former. Because man, he's so precious and I love him and he makes me happy and wears plaid and falls in love all the time and gets squashed on and still keeps trying which is something I am very bad at. I just would love to meet someone like Ted. It's nice to see someone believe in Love, capitalized, as much as I do. He is a college professor, I want to be a college professor. He falls in love with Robin instantly and their relationship - friendship or otherwise - is always my favorite part of the show. He's on this wonderful journey and I love watching him on it. The mother better deserve him, k. I get that fandom hates him for reasons I have never understood, but seriously - I don't get it; he's so wonderful.

4. Lilah Morgan (Angel)

How do I love Lilah Morgan, let me count the ways. She's the little pinprick of awesome that is the fail of season four of Angel. I often talk to my fellow geeks about how while Buffy was a better show, Angel was better with character development, and Lilah is a prime example. This is a woman who is the only remotely powerful woman at Wolfram and Hart who just takes the whole thing over. She goes over her boss's head (and then cuts it off) to talk to the big evil people upstairs. And then, along the way of her evil, devious plans, she falls in love and it's horrible. That episode where she dresses up as Fred? God, my heart. And you know she should leave Wesley but she just can't do it and he doesn't love her enough and she's never loved anything before and -- I get really worked up about it. OTP. But Lilah is wicked smart and just plain old wicked in this delicious way. She runs the show, she runs her life, and she fights her way to the top despite the consequences. My absolute favorite moment in probably the entire series is when Wesley tries to burn her contract and get her out of hell and she tells him it doesn't work that way and says, "Fire wouldn't be eternal if it actually consumed anything. But it means something that you tried."

That sound you're hearing is my heart still shattering. Plus, a line from her inspired my username:

Wesley: There is a line, Lilah, black and white, good and evil.

Lilah: Funny thing about black and white. You mix it together and you get grey. And it doesn't matter how much white you try and put back in, you're never gonna get anything but grey.

Word. Should have brought her back instead of putting in stupid Eve. Fuck you, season five.

This was a very long section. Also, for the record, Angel is incredibly difficult to picspam. Never doing that again.

3. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter - the books)

I learned doing this picspam that Harry Potter movies are incredibly difficult to color and that Emma Watson looks very nice in blue lighting and sweaters. Anyway, Hermione Granger. This girl was my hero at age ten and she kind of still is. She is so smart and brave and a fighter and the things I aspire toward. She loves books as much as I do and she loves her friends as much as I do and she wants to save the world and I want to save the world and Hermione sort of provides a road map to that, which basically is Be Brave and Be Prepared. Sort of like girl scouts for the wizarding world. She gets respect because of her intelligence, not in spite of it, something I think a lot of girls could stand to learn. And while she ended up with a fondness for redheads while I continue to have a thing for boys with green eyes and dark hair, I still love her.

For the record, Emma Watson isn't my Hermione, but I used her in this picspam instead of art because, um, I don't know where to find Hermione art, and while Emma can't act, she does take a good still photograph.

2. Kara Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)

Dear gods this woman. She's a fighter. She's probably up there with Mal in terms of best developed characters of the decade. I thought about making her number one for a long time, but then I was working on number one and knew there was no choice in the matter. But I still love Kara endlessly and when she died in Maelstrom I wept for way too long and was just sort of screwed up for days. Don't get me started on the finale. This is a woman who had a destiny that - well, was kind of weirdly explained (thanks RDM), but it meant something. She was a leader. She couldn't make up her mind. She was broken from birth and never got fixed. She's a screw-up. She'll take on Cylons without a glimmer of fear but she can't say yes to a boy who loves her. She's the best pilot Adama has ever seen. She's got a gift. She's got a gift for frakking up, too. It was an absolute wonder to watch her character, the depth of her, the complications. I know that I'll always be trying to figure her out, like some grand puzzle piece, because she was just so complex and so wonderful.

1. Lee Adama (Battlestar Galactica)

I wasn't sure where to put Lee at first. He's the first panel I did, followed by Kara, but I almost ended up doing a third one of him and that's when I knew. I still think Kara is the best crafted character on BSG, but this isn't about the best crafted characters. This is about my favorites. And Lee is my favorite. He has a tag entitled, "Lee Adama is my favorite," in fact, because he so is. I realized this in the middle of his courtroom speech in "Crossroads." Sure, he screws up. He screws up all the time. Dee was a fiasco from beginning to end, though I understand why he did it. Sometimes. He's a mess, and still so much a boy who thinks his dad doesn't love him enough. He's idealistic to a fault. He makes brutal calls -- because it's what he thinks is necessary to protect his family.

I love Lee Adama because he inspires me. This is a man who makes the choice to create radical shifts in his life all the time. When we meet him he is arrogant, and broken, and so angry, and by the time we see him again in "33," he is someone entirely new. This is a man who never forgets the events with the Olympic Carrier for a second in his life and strives to become a better leader every single day because he knows what he believes in -- and when what he believes in ends up wrong, he changes himself for the greater good. His father isn't evil and the law itself is important and Gaius Baltar is not the only criminal in the room and Kara Thrace is a disaster area but damn if he doesn't love her more than his very being anyway. I love Lee Adama because I would love to meet a man like that. I love Lee Adama because he deserves so much more than the fate that was handed to him. I love Lee Adama because he is what I aspire to be -- someone who is idealistic beyond what others would deem appropriate, someone who fights for what he believes in without restraint, someone who loves and hurts and breaks and still makes it through everything by the strength of his soul.

And that's that. Tell me what you think - and any advice you have on the images too, I'm not very experienced at photoshop, though doing this taught me a lot. :) Enjoy.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

visiblemarket.livejournal.com

This is a wonderful picspam. I especially loved your inclusion of Inara, because she's amazing and gets so little love, and of Lilah, because...well, just because of everything you said. She was fantastic too.

From:

anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com

inara does not get enough love from the internet. i am going to edit that in right now. do you know how difficult it is to find inara-centric fic in the internets? WAY TOO DIFFICULT FOR A CHARACTER SO AWESOME.

i'm glad you enjoyed the picspam!

but i just couldn't say it out loud

Top Characters of the Decade Picspam

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