fictional characters meme

By request of kid_prufrock.

Meme rules:

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen fictional characters (television, films, plays, books, games) who've influenced you and who will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

I fail at the "not taking too long" part, but here are fifteen characters, in chronological order by approximate period of influence, starting around age four.

Laura (The Little House books)
Alice (Alice in Wonderland)
Sara Crewe (A Little Princess)
Oswald (The Bastables)
Inigo Montoya (Princess Bride. I thought he was the coolest person ever when I was eight.)

Nan (Witch Week)
Alanna (from the Tamora Pierce books. Yay sex ed?)
Cyrano de Bergerac (yes, me too)
Nazhuret (Lens of the World)
Elinor (Sense and Sensibility)

The author (The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn)
Hideo (A Fisherman of the Inland Sea)
Lawrence Waterhouse (Cryptonomicon)
Stephanie (Still Life, A.S. Byatt)
Charlotte Drummond (Wild Life, Molly Gloss)