When people ask my favorite character in a piece of media, I struggle to answer. I argue there are different types of favorite characters. How I answer depends on what type of favorite I’m thinking about.
Crush Character: Your undeniable crush pick. Oh sweetie honey baby pie ahhhhhhhhhhh uwu~
Fuck Character: Oh. Oh no. They are hot. Ohhhh they are hot. Oh they are HOT and you can’t stop staring. What visuals. What allure. FUCK. You would **jump** at the opportunity to have them physically.
Obsession Character: When you wake up, you are thinking about them. When you are at work, you are thinking about them. When your friend mentions lettuce, tables, spaceships, hierarchical compatibilism, lottery tickets, or the status of agriculture in the 1530s, you think of them. You can’t stop thinking about them. You foam at the mouth. Someone mentions their name and you launch into a 6,000 word unprompted infodump. You have diagrams that diagram diagrams about their character arc. You know everything about them. Everything. You are always trying to look up more about them, and no amount of fanart or canon content is enough.
Standard Fave: You know you prefer this character. Their scenes are the ones that hold your attention. Obsessions for various characters or media may come and go, but your advocacy, affection, and defense of this character is forever. If you’re asked if you like X or Y more, you almost always say X, because X is your fave. Of course. They don’t keep you awake at night chewing on your bedframe, but you are their advocate to defend them and vouch for them every time they’re mentioned. This could be your favorite character in a piece of media you’ve never obsessed over but still like, or this could be your favorite character (outside of your obsessee) in a piece-of-media-that’s-rewritten-your-brain-chemistry.
The Underrated Endorsement: This is the underrated character that you have taken a campaign on to endorse. You assigned yourself wingman. This is specifically for those characters that are more obscure, are forgotten, are secondary, or are even background, etc. You have taken to be the champion to make sure people remember they exist and they’re great. You have a soft spot for them and are here to make them known.
Favorite of a Subset: Favorite villain, favorite protagonist, favorite captain, favorite side character, favorite male character, favorite animal character, favorite alien, favorite character in the sequel, favorite character in this season, etc. They won’t come to the top unless you put a filter over them, but at that point, they come to the forefront.
Top Half of the Pack: Yeah, they're cool enough. You like them more than 50% of the characters in the media. But that's about all.
More controversial and strained uses of “favorite,” but you still made a choice and have a campaign for preference, don’t you?
I Said This Because No One Else Does: Saying a name you like out of the pile to bring out dialogue that never seems to happen. “Hey why don’t we talk about Y? Y is great.” Someone you’ve chosen more for the sake of carrying and creating fandom dialogue. Not an emotional favorite so much as trying to fill out the gaps (but you still like them).
I Fucking HATE Them: Your chosen character to HATE and you fucking TALK about it. As in, those instances where loving and hating are two sides of the same coin and this is still diversion somehow. You won’t go off 6,000 words of unprompted diatribe if they’re brought up. More like 60,000. Your friends bring them up because they want to hear the speech.
The Contrarian Dispreference: I have specifically chosen to dislike, disregard, or feel ambivalent about this character because everyone else obsesses over them. This is as much of a choice and a hill to die on as the campaigns I have for forgotten characters, etc. I am a stick in the mud. I’m proud of it.