I'm currently reading Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, an excellent book about how our personalities leave an imprint on the types of things we keep around us. It's fascinating, and only 80 pages in, I'd absolutely recommend it. One of the ideas I'm currently reading is how most people have a narrative that they weave throughout their life and that if you listen to their stories and look for that, you'll often learn a lot about the person.

I've recently been gorging myself on stories - I'm about to go watch the Star Trek movie again, I've been gobbling up the new Dr. Who episodes, and I recently watched some of the original episodes of the Star Trek TV series again. All this made me think about what you can tell about a person based on their favorite characters or heroes.

Here are my five favorite characters (some fictional, some not), roughly in order of appearance into my life:

Joan of Arc: My very first hero; at different points of my life I've found different parts of Joan interesting. Some of it was how she blazed her own, extremely unusual path, despite serious opposition on all sides. But I've also always admired how much she accomplished in pursuit of an ideal and her extreme faith under duress.

Spock: The recent Star Trek movie reminded me of my early fascination with Spock. I think he and Joan formed early equal and opposite heroes -- his intellect counterbalanced Joan's simple-mindedness. (He also shares the devotion to an ideal that she did.) As I've gotten older, I love the character for capturing so perfectly a war between head and heart and for the fact that he's complex enough to keep me interested at different stages in my life.

Delenn: One of my early favorites from the Babylon 5 series, I've always wished I could be as completely unflappable, wise, and politically astute as Delenn.

Veronica Franco: I had a little trouble deciding on this one, because there are so few examples of this type of character -- a smart woman who influences without force and by using uniquely female influence. I mostly know Veronica through the movie Dangerous Beauty, though my readings of the historical woman seem to fit with the movie's portrayal. It's probably no surprise that Inara, a very similar character, was my favorite on Firefly; I was disappointed to not see more of her.

The Doctor: The Doctor is my latest favorite character, partially because he's an updated, technological McGuyver. But also, in the 10th incarnation, he's also an unabashed fan of humans, makes the people around him better and more fully human, and is so enthusiastically present in all situations. I love how a character that is supposedly 900 years old can still find things that thrill and amaze him.

So, what are your five favorite heroes, and why? Consider yourself tagged.