Who was the first fictional character you fell in love with?

[nkf]

Mine was Prince Caspian.
And my most recent was the King of the Gyptians in The Dark Materials.
Show how I've changed. It used to be a boy King. Now it's a fatherly type.

God I love this thread!

Scummy Mummy - I am not alone re: Gum - thank you!

eachPeach - are you still here?! Thnkas for the rec: he's read "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" and "Sputnik Sweetheart" so far.

Libra - I read the first "Flambards" last night. Mark is hideous - a horrible bully just like his father. I get the feeling things may improve with him a bit in the rest of the series then? Are they worth reading? I really enjoyed the first one - it felt like my guilty teenage Jilly Cooper phase!

Love it too.

janeite (considering name change to 'fellowjaneite'), Mark does improve considerably. Maybe it's the attraction of a character who can change.

I also had a teenage Jilly Cooper phase and of course love all her heroes - Ace Mulholland, could he possibly have a cooler name?

libra - I think it's called My Darling Villain by Lynne Reid Banks. I loved it (and him) too.

Oh yes it is !! Will get on to Amazon immediately. Many many thanks!

Janeite - Mark improves immeasureably I assure you! Just three books to go...

CJCregg. You have reminded me about Ace. And all her other heroes..,, There was one called Rory who lived romantically in the Highlands.

Doesn't Mark improve after he's crippled, in a rather Mr Rochester sort of way?

MmmmmmmmmmmmmmMrRochester.

okay - sequels and improved Mark, here I come.

Dick is still the man for me after book one though.

Ooh good thread... usual suspects for me - Dill in To kill a mockingbird (has nobody said him yet?), Holden Caulfield, most Jilly Cooper menfolk but especially Ace Mulholland (Prudence)and Matt (Imogen).
Girl crushes were definitely Clover in What Katy Did, and, ummm, Pollyanna ( am sooo like her in real life!)
I think I may have also vaguely fancied that one of the Noel Streatfield kids who did 'swirling'... was it in Gemma and Sisters? My sister will know!

Wasn't it Robin and his friend Ned )?) who did swirling? He was about 5 wasn't he?!

Robin 'swirled"!

Robin's friend was called Nigel.

Oh that was it - Robin... yes, I think he may have been quite young. It was only a minor crush after all!
But Dill. Well, Dill smoked his own home-made fags made out of string. That pretty much did it for me (am over it now of course) .

Right, now I've read those books (back in the shrouded mists of time) but cannot for the life of me remember wtf swirling was. Could someone please enlighten me?

janeite, you have to get past Dick somehow. Sometimes people are given names for a reason, see?

I do so love this thread.

Swirling is when you take a popular song and mix it around a bit, like a cake, and some bits stick and some bits don't.

I've always remembered the cake simile for some reason!

Aniyan - oh my gosh can't believe there is a fellow MNtter out there who read Sweet Vally High. hehehe
Thought Jeffery French was a bit of an alrighter...

Don't remember Jeffery French - what sticks in my mind most is the description of the sickening blonde twins with their dazzling blue eyes and their gold lavaliere (whatever the hell that is) necklaces that started every single book

My friend bought every one as they came out and it would get passed round our whole group of friends. We'd then spend the rest of the month dyyyying for the next one to come out (in typical 13-year-old girl fashion)

Thanks, Marmite! I have a nasty feeling I'm going to have to revisit the books, now.

Sweet Valley High ... where is the emoticon for something swooping right over someone's head?!

CJCregg - I think a thank-goodness-that-one-passed-me-by emoticon would be more suitable - it was a pretty dreadful (and interminable) American series of books about 2 high school girls and their floppy-haired boyfriends who always had lop-sided grins for some reason.

As a hormonal 13-year-old I loved them but I doubt very much they'd stand up to a re-visit after all this time - unlike some of the classics already mentioned on this thread.

Gilbert Blthye. SWOON. Always thought Sebastian was a bit of a git, but there was so much chemistry between him and Veronica [dork emoticon]

In the 'Emily' books, (also LM Mongtomery) I quite fancied the bloke in that, but can;t remember a thing about them.

And thanks for the Flambards reminder - those books were incredibly sexually charged weren't they. Considering they were for young adults.

I am now getting antsy about the fact that my dad has certainly thrown all my books away and they're prob out of print and WHAT WILL MY POOR DD (as yet unconceived) READ???How will she know how to do an identity swap to audition for the Wells?

I'm going to have to find out about these Wells books - I was a ballet-mad kid but these seem to have passed me by - had to make do with endless re-reads of Ballet Shoes!

I think Gilbert Blythe is in the lead so far for most-fallen-in-love-with fictional male

The Wells books are fab. Haven't read them for years so don't know whether they stand up to adult rereading, but am definitely going to get them for dd once she's old enough.

Charitygirl - they're on amazon but all seem to be secondhand. Am similarly grief-stricken as I'm sure my mum has thrown all my treasured copies away ... how do these things happen? Still, if your dd is yet to be conceived you've got time to trawl old bookstalls!

Who are these Flambards fellows?

Masterful bastard Mark, sensitive crippled Will, forelock-tugging stable boy Dick. She had 'em all. Great stuff!

I embarrassed myself in the staffroom today. I was talking to a colleague about how much I'd enjoyed the first one and then said "I suspect the rest of the series will be all about which one she actually shags first" and then realised that the whole room had gone silent.

Thanks to this thread I am going to have to re-read Flambards and neglect my children and the housework further. I only read them once in my early teens but recently found them in a charity shop.

The L. M. Montgomery 'Emily' books had the hero Ted (?) - dark-haired artistic type who was definitely desirable, but also a much older Byronic sub-love interest called Dean - I definitely find him more interesting now ...

I do think the Wells books stand revisiting - far more say than the Chalet School or something. They were good characters. And there was realism in them, I remember Veronica in her lodgings at Mrs Crapper's, getting the tube home etc. All quite humdrum and believable amid the dancing.

I can even hum the Flambards theme tune - actually I am humming it.