Sadly, I had to modify this meme

The original, scrounged from sartorias, read:

List five fictional people—from television, movies, books, whatever—that you had a crush on as a child (or early teens). Then post this on your LiveJournal so other people can know what a dork you’ve always been.

As a child, however, I did not acquire crushes on fictional people. (Or real people, frankly. What can I say? I was a late bloomer.) Occasionally I acquired a burning desire to meet certain characters, converse with them, and perhaps smack the more frustrating ones upside the head. More often something about them caught my interest, so that without wanting either to know or be them, I still returned to them over and over; and in some cases, still do. Here is my meme, therefore: five fictional people, in no particular order, on whom I imprinted when young.

1. Schmendrick the Magician (The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle)
"Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic only you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young could tell the difference 'twixt the two—the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue."

2. Deth (Riddle of Stars, Patricia McKillip)
"Do you want a half-truth or truth?"
"Truth."
"Then you will have to trust me." His voice was suddenly softer than the fire sounds, melting into the silence within the stones. "Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. Trust me."

3. Londo Mollari (Babylon 5)
"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you'll ever be. Then you accept it—or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors."

4. Lord Peter Wimsey (eponymous mysteries, Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I have nothing much in the way of religion, or even morality, but I do recognize a code of behaviour of sorts. I know that the worst sin—perhaps the only sin—passion can commit, is to be joyless. It must lie down with laughter or make its bed in hell—there is no middle way."

5. Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens—but I must confess that Ronald Colman in the 1935 film went a long way toward cementing my fascination)
"Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at his own image; "why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow."

And now you know entirely too much about my psyche . . .