❧ Looseleaf Reviews ❧: Top Ten Tuesday

Ten Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don't Get or Ten Characters That I Love But Others Seem to Dislike

I'm going to split this question in half and do 5 of each. First off...

Five Characters I Love But Others Seem to Dislike

1. Juliet Capulet from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

I just have a lot of feelings about this character. I owe this respect for Juliet's character mostly to an

amazing actress named Rachel I had the pleasure of working with during school who, while working on scene work together, confessed to me that she was so emotionally distressed because she "didn't feel like she was doing Juliet justice." Given everything that's happened to this girl's life, she makes some fairly sound decisions for a fourteen-year-old girl. Tragedy of course befalls her, but with the mistakes of the spiteful parents, the rash Romeo, and the Friar messing literally everything up, Juliet is honestly one of the most together characters of the play. I get really defensive whenever someone says she's just a dumb teenager.

2. Severus Snape from Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

I think the Tumblr feminists of our time went a little crazy attacking Snape that it's not "cool" to like him anymore. Don't get me wrong, he's 110% a creepy neckbeard and I'm not justifying his actions, but he's one of the most emotionally complex characters in YA literature to date, and my childhood was defined by the ups-and-downs of wondering if Snape is evil or good. I rarely talk about fanfiction on this blog, but Lily and the Half Blood Prince by greeneyes117 on FFN is one of the greatest character explorations I've ever read.

3. Tris Prior from Divergent by Veronica Roth

Don't get me wrong, Tris is a selfish and impulsive bitch, but that's what I love about her! She's such
a unique main character and honestly the only reason that the Divergent series stands out so much against all of it's competitor YA novels.

4. Alaska Young from Looking For Alaska by John Green

This is another one that is objectively a fairly awful person, but I love her for the part she plays in her story. Alaska is the epitome of manic pixie dream girl, but her story is one of the few that shows you that "damaged" girls aren't a prize to be sought after. Even look at the quote "If people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane." Yeah okay, but who exactly wants to welcome a hurricane?

5. Sansa Stark from ASOIAF by George R.R. Martin

I saved the best for last. I'm gonna draw on the meme here: I judge people by the way they judge
Sansa Stark. With all the unimaginable sh*t that happens to this girl, she still holds her head high to face another day. You look at any other "strong females" of the series--Arya, Dany, Cersei, Asha, Arienne--and they're all pretty awful people as a result of their hardships. Sansa is the only only woman (with maybe the exceptions of Brienne and Margaery) who I think emerges stronger for everything she's survived. Not to mention that she has observed many of the key political players playing their games and learned from the best, so to say. If I had my way she'd be the endgame queen of Westeros.