5 fictional characters meme

Jumped on from Kalinara at Pretty Fizzy Paradise who gave me the letter O.

5 Characters Meme
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ (or blog).

Here we go:

1) Oracle
Barbara Gordon. She used to be Batgirl doncha know, until the Joker shot her in the spine, leading to dear old Babs becoming paralysed from the waist down. now she's in a wheelchair. And now she's Oracle, holding information for all the world's superheroes. And in my opinion she's far more interesting as Oracle. I think she's come into her own, I think she's a positive role model for wheelchair users and I think it's fantastic that she can still pretty much take anyone in a fight. She's works out, she's got pretty damn good upper body strength.

When I think of Oracle I think of a panel in Nightwing, drawn by Greg Land, whereby Dick has taken Babs to the circus and they are practicing on the rings, swinging about way up high, recapturing Barbara's feeling of freedom she had when she could walk. It's a really uplifting (no pun intended) panel.

Barbara apparently has photographic recall and a near (if not actual) genius intelligence. Now while I'm happy with the super bright aspect of her, I'm not with the photographic recall bit. It just seems that for someone who is not a meta human, the writers felt they had to stretch it a bit and make her more interesting by giving her a photographic memory, and that's a cop out. I want Barbara to be like an ordinary person, to be like me. And while I'm not a genius, I can work hard, I can understand things, I can test and strengthen my intelligence, but I can never have photographic memory and neither can the majority of people. I don't think she needs this aspect, I think she's capable of doing what she does w/o it.

Also, Babs was a librarian in her day job, and that's just cool. :)

2)Ororo Munroe
Storm from the X Men. I don't read much X-Men, because I can't afford to follow two universes, and DC will always win out on the strength of their characters.
So far as I know, Storm was born in Africa whereby her tribes people treated her as a witch because of her mutant weather capabilities. At some point she came to America and was a master (mistress?) thief, and was picked up by Professor Charles Xavier and taken to the school for gifted children. I believe she led the X-Men for a bit.
In the X-Men movies she had a kick ass costume, in the 80s she had a lame ass punk inspired costume and I'm sure previously had a barely there costume. Using the excuse that she can control the temperature around her body due to her weather abilities, and therefore doesn't need to wear clothes, is not acceptable.
I understand that some people are offended that Ororo, who is black, has blue eyes and white hair. It represents a whited up version of the character, which is doubly offensive when there are so few black characters, who have black features, in the Marvel Universe.
I also recall seeing complaints that when Ororo got married she became a supporting character in her own book. That sucks.

3) Optimash prime
The Mr Potato Head version of Optimus Prime. This isn't cheating.
I didn't watch Transformers as a kid, I couldn't see the big deal about Robots that transformed into cars, or trucks, or stereos. Consequently I couldn't tell you if Optimus Prime is a good guy or a bad guy. Though I do know it's Autobots vs Decepticons. I quite enjoyed the Transformers movie. It's big, it's silly, it's full of plot holes so big you could drop one of the robots in it, but it's fun.
When I learned of the existence of Optimash Prime, I creased up. I think this is a wonderful piece of merchandise and it brightens my day whenever I think of it.
Potatoes in disguise!

4) Offler the crocodile god
From the Discworld. The Discworld has a massive pantheon of Gods, loosely based on our earth ones. I believe that Offler is inspired by an Egyptian deity.
He has a human body and a crocodile head. He talks with a lisp, due to his massive fangs. In theory he's quite keen on smiting the unbelievers, or anyone who disagrees with him, or offends him, but unfortunately he's also rather idle and so doesn't pay much attention to what's happening on the Disc.
Add this to the increasingly secular* nature of inhabitants of the Disc, and you get a God with dwindling power. Honestly, I think he just likes to it on Mount Olympus, eat and drink and play games with humanity using the Chess board style game of the Gods.

*By Secular I mean the denizens of the Disc know that the Gods exist, which is precisely why they don't see the point of worshipping or believing in them. You don't go around believing in chairs or tables do you?

5) Oberon, King of the Fairies.
Specifically, the Oberon that appears in A Midsummer Nights Dream, the only Shakespeare play I really care about.
This Oberon is a proud, selfish jerk. He treats Titania, his wife, abominably. She's taken care of this human child and Oberon wants the kid for himself. So he gets Puck to drug Titania so that she'll fall in love with the first thing she sees when she wakes up from the drug induced slumber.
This turns out to be Bottom, currently sporting an asses head. Titania woos Bottom and they fuck.
Oberon thinks this is hilarious. I think that's a fairly vile thing to do to your wife and should be construed as sexual assault.
However, Oberon isn't all bad, as he has a soft spot for humans. He sees the Demetrius/Helena relationship and gets Puck to lace Demetrius' eyes, except Puck laces Lysander's eyes, and then there's this massive balls up and a complicated love quadrangle between Demetrius-Helena-Lysander-Hermia.
Anyway, when Oberon sees how it's all gone wrong he berates Puck and fixes the situation so everyone loves the correct person. So he can do some good.
Basically, hes' a fairy, and fairies act as fairies act and that isn't according to human morals or requirements. Trust a fairy like you'd trust a cat.