Sex with Fictional Characters

[queerbychoice]

lil_e_beth tagged me for this one, and it's way too hard. :p

List ten fictional characters that you would like to have sex with. Then tag five friends to do the same. (I refuse to tag anyone to do anything this hard!)

1. Teddy Ottinger, the bisexual female aviatrix/journalist/third-to-last survivor of the human race, who was entirely unwittingly tricked into bringing about the human race's extinction, in Gore Vidal's novel Kalki.

2. Jeanette, the semi-fictionalized autobiographical narrator of Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, who's a lesbian being raised by scary Christian fundies, and who opposes the notion of a biological basis for sexual preference, too! (However, I would most likely not have sex with the real Jeanette Winterson, if only because it might make me feel guilty about the fact that I haven't really been that fond of any of her more recent books.)

3 & 4. Both the autobiographical narrator and her girlfriend Yan, who struggle to carry on a covert relationship in a totalitarian work camp in Maoist China, in Anchee Min's novel-like autobiography Red Azalea. (Technically they aren't fictional characters, but the book has some mildly surreal elements that lead me to think of them in the same way I'd think of fictional characters; also, I might have the same problem here in that I haven't liked any of Anchee Min's later books nearly as well as this first one - but I've liked all of Anchee Min's books better than a lot of Jeanette Winterson's, so the problem would be milder here.)

5. Christopher Ferris, queer domestic-violence victim in Maria McCann's novel As Meat Loves Salt.

6. George, the aging gay professor whose lover has recently died, in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man (although I might need to somehow get him to mistake me for a man in order for him to be interested).

7. Janet Evason, the woman from a future Earth in which a disease has made men extinct but women have made medical advances enabling them to reproduce without men, in Joanna Russ's novel The Female Man.

8 & 9. Tracy Johnson and Sara Polatkin, the lesbian couple who have an extremely unpleasant dinner with Sara's parents in Sherman Alexie's short story "Indian Country."

10. Mr. Pierre, the lavender-haired gay hairdresser in Rita Mae Brown's novel Bingo. (Again, I'd probably have to somehow miraculously get mistaken for a male by him to have any chance; but really, he was far more my type than any of the queer female characters in this book.)

Comments

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

1 & 2 The Bailey sisters, Ann and Rose; through his hesitation in deciding which sister he was in love with, Jaques Revel lost both to his two best friends in "Passing Time" by Michel Butor.
3. Jerry Cornelius, yes please, from Michael Moorcock's "The Final Programme"
4. Thursday Next, literary detective, from Jasper Fford's "The Eyre Affair", in which Ms Next, aided and abetted by her time-travelling father, investigates a cunning literary theft.
5. Sebastian from Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisted", cuddly little teddy bear that he is.
6, 7 & 8. Would love to join Moshe, Nana and Anjali's menage a trois in Adam Thirlwell's "Politics".
9. Kurtz's unnamed native African lover, who appears at the end of Joeseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Conrad pens a powerful portait of her as the boat moves off up river carrying the corpse of her European-man-gone-native.
10. Mrs Lovett, who makes meat pies out of the gentlemen that Sweeny Todd polishes off in his barber's shop. "Sweeny Todd" Author unknown.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The only one of those that I've read is Heart of Darkness, and I have to admit I don't even remember that character. Sadness! Now I'll have to go look up this powerful portrait you speak of.

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

How about Orlando from the Virgina Wolfe novel?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. I can't think of anything not to like about him/her.

[princesswitch.livejournal.com]

1. Verena Tarrant, the Bostonians (The sexy, fun-loving bi woman caught in between an unworthy man and an unworthy woman)
2. Teddy Ottinger
3. Anchee Min
4. King Solomon, in the Bible. Hey, the man could talk to women! And he was smart!
5. Valerie Seymour, Well of Loneliness. Bet she (and her real-life counterpart Natalie Barney) would've been fun...
6. Legs Sadovsky, the ringleader of the Foxfire gang in Joyce Carol Oates' Foxfire.
7. Davy Dempsey, criminal male love interest in Jennifer Crusie's Faking It
8 and 9. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England, as represented in Sharon Kay Penman's "When Christ and his Saints Slept"
10. Gillian Owens, the troubled younger sister Witch in Alice Hoffman's "Practical Magic"

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

That was quite interesting. We seem to have rather similar tastes in women. I don't remember much about the fictional Valerie Seymour, but if I ever get my hands on a time machine I'm definitely seducing Natalie Clifford Barney.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

Just give me a menage a trois with Leo and Helen from Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies. Though, seeing as they're all qbc, or at least satisfyingly genderqueer, it would be far more gratifying if they were the ones who wanted a one-night-stand with me. Only that they don't exist, dammit.