Ganked from a number of people:

[camwyn]

Name a character from some fandom I know and I'll tell you three (or more) facts about them from my own personal headcanon.

Comments

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

John Constantine.

[camwyn]

1. Has a number of American cousins of whom he is not aware; the American line split off about four generations back. He makes a great deal in some of his stories about being the last Constantine. Imagine his surprise when he finds out neither he nor Gemma ever was.

2. Bloody fond of using rubbers during sex. Just because the Lords of Hell put him back together without any diseases doesn't mean he wants to take a chance on getting something worse than lung cancer.

3. Can do an absolutely flawless imitation of most of the actors to play James Bond, but is of the opinion that this has little or nothing to do with accent and everything to do with attitude and body language. Is not above using that aspect of the imitation with women, either.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Would any of these American cousins look anything like Keanu Reeves?

[camwyn]

Ah, so you too are familiar with the Dance of Fandom Rationalization?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well it does make sense... in a way. If you kinda look at it sort of lopsidedly...

[camwyn]

's not as if John's an uncommon name. And patterns repeat themselves, sometimes.

There are others, though. Most of them are bigger bastards than the one who looks like Keanu. It runs in the family.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, look at Johanna... Is that how you spell her name? The one who talked to Dream?

Bigger Bastards than our beloved John?

You are going to write that, aren't you?

[camwyn]

The one who looks like Keanu is not our beloved John.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

He is the diet RC Cola of Constantines.

[camwyn]

Just one calorie. Not enough bastard.

[ex_amurderofcrows752]

Harry Wells (Despite that I know most of it)

[camwyn]

1. Met Annie when he was eighteen and she was sixteen. The eventual mutual interest pissed her father off to no end and involved a number of threats and a few nights climbing into windows.

2. Has never been especially religious, but what he does have in the way of religious impulse owes considerably more to the fact that he regularly read Narnia books to his daughter than to any effort on the Church of England's part.

3. After watching one of the youngest soldiers under his command in Bosnia die slowly and painfully (the soldier had been rescued after several Geneva Convention violations had already been perpetrated), has privately resolved that if he is ever in such a situation again, he would be willing to end it for them at need.

[countgeiger.livejournal.com]

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

[camwyn]

Not, alas, a fandom I know. I'm very sorry.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

The late Errol Partridge, Brother of the Tetragrammaton

[camwyn]

Oo.

1. Was born some time before the Nine Years' War, which is the war I firmly believe was later referred to as World War III. Most of his childhood memories are of running, hiding, and refugee living.

2. Attracted notice from the early Provisional Government because of his attempts to organise the local survivors, all that remained of his community- despite the fact that his voice had only barely finished changing. At the time, all he wanted was stability; he did not realise that the Provisional Government was changing and that stability was meant to become solidity and then permanency.

3. First got reminded of what had been lost, many years later, when on one of his raids he encountered part of a magazine. Nothing grand or culturally significant; it was an old tourism advertisement for somewhere in New England, and the scenery looked heart-breakingly familiar for a moment despite years of personal discipline and quite a lot of medication. The image stuck with him and provided the Resistance with their in, whether they knew it or not.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Oo.

What? You didn't think I was going to make this easy, did you? :)

[camwyn]

Heh. Okay, you have a point there.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

Spoon.

(Before there was no Spoon)

[camwyn]

1. First name: Ronald. Seriously, it's not mentioned in the movie and it's not in the credits. The other soldiers get first and last names, either in the course of the movie or in the credits- Cpl. Bruce Campbell, Pvt. Terry Milburn, Pvt. Joe Kirkley, Pvt. Laurence Cooper- but Spoon? He's a last name and a nickname.

2. Tried University for a few years, didn't find it sat well with him, joined the Army 'cos all the jobs in his native Hartlepool were shite, turned out to be a hell of a lot better at learning and working when he had military structure to hold him to his task than he ever could've done back at Uni.

3. Decent with computers, but only to the point of getting them to do what he wants them to do, which mostly means emails home to Mum and Dad and the occasional first-person shooter based on a movie franchise. Otherwise they're really not worth his time; he mostly leaves the technology nitty-gritty to guys like Bruce.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thanks.

The main reason I asked for him is because I had no idea what you would come up with. This falls under the heading of pleasant surprise.

[camwyn]

I played him at Apharsites for a while, so I had to come up with a fair amount of stuff for him.

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

Winston Zeddemore.

[camwyn]

1. Does not like to talk about his time in the 82nd Airborne because you just don't talk about that kind of thing. He's not ashamed, he just doesn't see where it's important to what he does these days.

2. Member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is considerably more slanted towards social justice and doing the right thing than formal structure.

3. Is good friends with one of the policemen at the mounted police stables just around the corner from the firehouse; they have a softball rivalry going.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Ray Stantz.

[camwyn]

1. Son of a chemical engineer father and a mother who worked for Random House Publishing; engineering is a long-standing profession on that side of his family and he was expected to go into it as a career.

2. Did not have a lot of childhood friends other than the imaginary kind and his penpal, a weird kid named Egon Spengler who he never actually met until he was already in college. He had trouble interacting with the other kids the way they expected; he blamed it on his parents not letting him watch television like everyone else, but it was more likely an undiagnosed case of Asperger's affecting his ability to notice when people expected him to stop nattering on, dammit.

3. Had a considerable gap between graduating college and going for his PhD's in electrical engineering and parapsychology; this was because his parents died in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway and he was left to take care of his younger sister and get her through school. This was the point at which he worked in the private sector, and the instant he got his acceptance to Columbia's graduate program, he promised himself he was NEVER LEAVING ACADEMIA AGAIN.

[minkhollow]

Martin Bishop.

[camwyn]

1. Has a subscription to 2600. Gets it delivered to a PO box about two zipcodes over from his office.

2. Met Liz early on in college, before Cosmo. Dropped off the face of the Earth when Cosmo got arrested, but contacted Liz some months later- entirely by accident, when he ran into her at a convenience store while too lonely to think of his own self-preservation.

3. Was originally turned down for venture capital for his company, but encountered Donald Crease at a seminar on starting your own business and wound up forming an alliance with him to get started in the security testing line.

[genarti]

Sam Vimes.

[camwyn]

1. Looks almost exactly like the animation they have for Hannibal of Carthage in the video game Civilization IV, although without the leopardskin bits. I consider personal appearance to be a fact when the resemblance is that striking.

2. In the version of events where he got yoinked off to Arda to do the Valar's dirty work at the end of the War of Wrath, he intended to go back to the Discworld, but found out the hard way that he was stick in Arda. This resulted in some amazingly frightful threats to the Herald of Manwe, and at one point Sam had to be restrained from grabbing Maedhros' sword and lunging at Eonwe with it.

3. Would love the Discworld equivalent of Taco Bell if there were such a thing. Not the Discworld equivalent of Mexican food. The Discworld equivalent of Taco Bell.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Ah, the lure of crunch, cheesey, ground beef, liberally doused with hot sauce and salt. He'd probably be fond of almost any tacqueria, except that they'd all be run by Senor Corta-mi-Garganta Dibbler and his extended family. Nothing against Senor Dibbler, but don't ask where he gets his meat from. While his protestations as to the quality of his beef or chicken may be sincere, you'll be left with the impression that he shops at the local pound.

[daniidebrabant.livejournal.com]

Beldin

[camwyn]

1. Has the single most formidable liver on Gara. Never mind Belgarath's. Beldin's is virtually unkillable no matter what you pour down his throat.

2. Considers one of the advantages of bird form to be the ballistic weaponry, so to speak; while he was proud of having turned into a flea and bitten Zedar, he's personally more satisfied of the number of times he expressed exactly what he thought of his traitorous brother while in the form of a vulture.

3. Was the first person to devise a system of written musical notation on Gara.

[lone-gunfreak.livejournal.com]

Egon Spengler.

[camwyn]

1. Father's name was Hinnerk, mother's name was Zsofika, and he grew up in a residential neighbourhood in a suburb somewhere. He vowed to get the hell out of there when he was very young because these people were TOO INTELLECTUALLY HOMOGENOUS FOR WORDS.

2. Attended MIT at a very early age, but took four years to finish his undergrad degree. The triple major in physics, nuclear science, and linguistics probably had something to do with this. Parapsychology was always an interest of his but it only became an academic one when he started formulating theories about the effect of the human mind on quantum fluctuations.

3. Continued studying languages in graduate school, though most of his attention was on the physics and the parapsych. This was fortuitous, because at one point when he was studying Hindi or Rajasthani he wound up in a conversation with an incoming freshling named Ekantika (thanks to his leaping ahead on the admissions process, they were of similar ages). A brilliant freshling, I might note.

I am simply going to note here that I do not subscribe to the Real Ghostbusters fanon that's apparently out there about him being unicorn bait. He and Ekantika alike would laugh for a very long time over that.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

... I don't get the reference. (Or is Ekantika a RG character?)

[camwyn]

No particular reference. Ekantika means 'singularly focused', or something along those lines; I spent some time once working out what it would take for a woman to get Egon's attention romantically speaking, and figured she'd have to be brilliant and at least as potentially obsessive as he is.

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

Gandalf.

[camwyn]

1. Has worn the guise of a much younger and more ordinary-looking Man in the past, many times, the better to assess the peoples through whose lands he travels and learn from them. Particularly to keep up his forms of staff and sword combat, as even a Maia may learn.

2. Has sent searchers and messengers, now and again, into the farthest East to see what news may be found of Alatar and Pallando, whom he has not seen in an Age of the world.

3. Knows many things, but cannot in truth say for certain exactly what Tom Bombadil is; his belief is that Bombadil is the living spirit of Arda, but he has never been able to entirely ascertain this.

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going to drag Eddings into this...

Patriarch Bergsten.

[camwyn]

... who?

No, seriously. I have no clue who that is.

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Guess you haven't read much of the Elenium?

[camwyn]

It's been years. I got disgusted with the series at some point and gave up on it entirely.

[sithmom.livejournal.com]

Peter Venkman.

[camwyn]

1. Is considerably smarter than he lets on- not as smart as Egon or Ray, but smart enough that he coasted through school and still got B's without having to deliberately turn on the charm. This is not to say that personality didn't factor into it, but he didn't have to exert any particular schmooze-tastic effort; he really did know what he was doing, for the most part. That there's a fully legitimate psychology doctorate he's got.

2. Heavily involved in a fantasy baseball league.

3. Occasionally does volunteer work at a couple of different city charities, which he claims is for the sake of Ghostbusters PR. This is not the case; it's a matter of personally feeling that he ought to be doing more for the city than just the ghost stuff.

[ymfaery]

What the heck, I like multiple views: Severus Snape.

[camwyn]

1. Snape is fluent in Russian, Greek, German, Aramaic, and several other classical languages.

2. Snape has maintained letter correspondence for several decades with a number of wizards and witches he either met briefly in his youth or never met at all. One is in the Congo, another is in Mongolia. He feels no particular need to ever meet these people in person again; the letters are quite satisfactory and provide him the sort of intelligent conversation he prefers, and indeed may be the only thing that has kept him from being far worse to his students.

3. Snape has a very nice personal library of Muggle fiction and literature. None of it was published after 1650.