Um.

[telophase]

This was SUPPOSED to be a short answer to chomiji's question below, originally asked here, but it turned into a huge, rambling essay looking at a particular type of character and why I like that type, so I'm posting it in a new entry. Hopefully it'll spur some discussion. :D my current default icon is so appropriate right now.

chomiji: Why do people like Gin, anyway? He gives me the creeps ... always has, even before we found out what he was really like.

Good question - especially because he hits a whole lot of my narrative hot buttons. :D So I've been trying to work out, exactly, what it is about him* that I like. (and ended up with a hell of a lot of digressions into heroes and anti-heroes, but hey. XD) I can't say why other people like him - I'm afraid a lot of it boils down to "He's cute!" judging by reactions to other bad guy characters I see online - but I can attempt to explain why I like him as a character.

* Which I need to do anyway, because the guy in the 'fragments of a dream' thing shares a lot of these traits and it's going to be bloody hard to write so that people understand the attraction. I think I also need to reread Louise Cooper's Time Master trilogy - I last read it when I was 15 or 16 and ISTR a lot of the same buttons being hit there also. I'm sort of afraid of doing that, though, because I may discover that it actually sucks. XD


[Warning: below this may be spoilers about character and motivation in Bleach, both in the Soul Society and post-Soul Society arcs, later volumes of Samurai Deeper Kyo a wee bit about Kyo, and a bit of Death Note, for L and Mello.]


First off: I love me a good bad guy. The hell with noble heroes: the bad guys, if they're not one-dimensional, are usually way more interesting, especially when compared to your usual shounen-retard manga hero. If they're the protagonist of the story, they're anti-heroes. Kyo in Samurai Deeper Kyo (at least as far as I've read - vol 24) lives here: he's bad-ass, not fighting for Good or Right or Protecting My Loved Ones (at least not overtly), he's out for his own goals and pretends not to give a damn for anyone in his way. Any hero who overtly fights to protect someone tends to give me the willies, because I'd prefer someone who fights beside me, or who pushes me to fight my own battles. This is why I've grown to really like Kyo as his methods and motivations become clearer, because he protects people by booting them in the butt to force them to become stronger, and why I like Kenpachi, too: Kenpachi protects Yachiru by making sure she's stronger than the enemy, not by wrapping her in cotton wool the way that Ichigo and the Karakura people do to Orihime. (I at least admire Rukia for taking Orihime and giving her some training, although she can't get her up to the level of the others in the time she has.)

Manji in Blade of the Immortal is like this, too: he's been, technically, a bad guy (in a world where there *are* no good or bad guys, really) and still sort of is. He helps and rescues Rin when she needs it, but at the same time helps her to become stronger herself.

So I like characters who aren't noble, and who don't run around trying to protect people. I *think* it's canon that Byakuya has pulled strings to keep Rukia from being assigned a seated officer position in order to keep her safe, which DRIVES ME UP THE FUCKING WALL (if it's fanon and not canon, it's certainly within his character), not to mention his tendency to keep people in the dark regarding his motivations, even when they REALLY FUCKING NEED TO KNOW. I already have serious ethical problems with him because of his rigid adherence to the letter of the law because of his vow when it doesn't occur to him that if the law itself is criminal, he has a moral and ethical obligation to attempt to change it, instead of submitting to it. (I draw a parallel here with criminal military orders: a subordinate has a duty to disobey criminal orders, no matter the personal cost. This topic is not explored near enough in manga, I think. :D) One of the signs of a good manga is that you have room to seriously over-think things in what is, essentially, a stupid shounen series. XD

I have *no* idea what fangirls see in Byakuya. I think he's reprehensible. I'd call him a snake except that I rather like snakes. Hell, I'd pick Gin over him simply because Gin *knows* he's an utter bastard and doesn't try to hide it behind a coat of honor. Byakuya's not tragic, he's a bloody idiot. This is also why I want to bitchslap Tousen: Tousen is Byakuya taken even farther in his rigid adherence to a personal moral code despite the costs to anyone and everyone else.



Second: intelligence. Ichigo and Renji and all of them are OK on some levels, but have the emotional and intellectual intelligence of a bag of hammers. I like characters with whom it seems I could have long, twisty, strange conversations and insights. Obviously, this would be where Kenpachi falls down. XD Gin, OTOH, is certainly intelligent enough to be able to work out what buttons to push to manipulate people, and my interpretation of him is that he's pretty damn smart. Kubo Tite may make him more cunning than smart in future episodes, but until that point, my interpretation stands. :D



Third: mystery. His motivations remain mysterious. It's possible that we already know his motivations, that he's simply a yes-man who attaches himself to the most likely-looking victor, but it's also possible that he's got motivations underneath that. We don't know. He lives behind the smiling mask, but when it's taken off, there's another smiling mask underneath it. Aizen falls down as an intriguing bad guy for me, because he's all "I wanna be a god MUAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA!!!!!" and there's no indication as to why, other than power-lust. (Gin is all "I'm just a total bastard," which I can understand far more than power-lust. XD) Anyway: we don't know what he wants or why he wants it. Aizen is a one-note bad guy who's pretty tiresome, actually. Momo's Stockholm Syndrome is the most interesting thing about him.

So - there's something about a man in a mask - it makes me want to find out what's behind it, and what makes him tick. If it's revealed too soon, or too early, then it loses its power. Sometimes, if it's revealed at all, it loses its power, which is why I rather like that Gin's mask still there - I'm not sure that knowing his true motivations would make him more interesting. (Although I admit the motivation of "Well, I'm just kind of a bastard" is way more interesting than power-lust, because it's not used that often in three-dimensional characters.)

In Death Note, L remained somewhat mysterious, because we never really learned about his childhood and reasons for his motivations, even as his character was slowly revealed. Mello - who is similar to Gin in his amorality (see #4 below) - retained my interest even though his motivations were transparent, because he was just fucking crazy and didn't have any serious high-minded motivation, which is awesome when it's handled well. But the high intelligence was a really good selling point; someone less so wouldn't have held my interest, I think.



Fourth: depth and amorality. The point at which Gin became my current favorite villain is the point at which he turned to Rangiku when she was holding him captive, and said something on the order of "It would have been nice to be captured for a while longer," and we see the flashback of when they were kids and he saved her life, and they stayed together. He's got depths there - he's not just the manipulative bastard yes-man, and he's not pure evil (although I read a fic this weekend that posited he said that precisely because he was evil - it was a good story and great logic, although not *my* interpretation of Gin, because a purely-evil person isn't as interesting to me as one with spots).

Note that L and Mello are also amoral, in a bit of a Machiavellian way: for L, the greater good is worth most of the techniques he uses to get there, although he does get challenged. Mello is the same way, although for "greater good," read "his personal goals." But their quirks and social maladjustment lead to their depth, or illusion of depth.



Fifth: But the Gin/Ran scene leads into the fifth point: the romance kink/cool bit of The Love of a Dangerous Man. This is not Reforming the Bad Boy, because there's no reform involved - it's more like being the only one who is safe from the danger (I see it as the clownfish who lives in the anemone's tentacles, safe from the venom, actually). We know he's capable of that, because of the Rangiku moment. This point is just a personal romance/literary kink, and if someone doesn't have it, they don't have it. I haven't run across it much in my non-romance prose reading: the Time Master Trilogy I pointed out in the footnote above had a bit of it, and I think Anne Bishop's gawdawful Black Jewels trilogy attempted to do it, before the Mary Sue emasculated all of the male characters and most of the female ones (when the Man is no longer Dangerous, he totally loses all his cool XD). It's what made Lord Byron so attractive, even though the guy was basically a complete jerk. I wouldn't characterize Gin as darkly Byronic in the least - although it's a standard romance trope - but he's still in the Dangerous Man category.

And the tricksy, shifting nature of him leads to interesting drama - the_z linked to a Gin/Rangiku fic a friend of hers wrote called The Recovery of Salt that shows how that can work. You know how in experiments it's shown that inconsistency with rewards actually reinforces behavior more strongly than rewarding something every time? It's why you have to be consistent in discouraging bad behavior from dogs when training them, because if they sometimes get rewarded for misbehaving, then it strengthens the misbehavior. And part of why people stay in abusive relationships, and why abused children can show strong attachments to their abusers: the inconsistent rewards of the occasional times when things are good are extremely powerful. This is part of the Dangerous Man button: the occasional moment when it seems like the mask is dropped reinforces the attraction more than a complete reveal would. Now ... this is so not good in real life. But because of Gin's character - the comment to Rangiku - this point leads directly into...



Sixth: as this is fiction, it allows for exploring this and other ethical dilemmas involved in unpredictable relationships safely. In real life would I go for a Gin? Hell, no: he's scary, sadistic, and unpredictable and I'd probably get PTSD or at least whiplash from all the about-faces if I were dating or even friends with a man like that. (Or, more likely, say "Fuck you! I don't need this shit!" and get the hell out.) But in fiction, you can handwave away, or ignore, the real-world consequences and the ethical dilemmas involved with unpredictability (as in the fic above) and violence: In Blade of the Immortal, I love Anotsu (and Manji, and Magatsu...) and would totally do him *within the context of his violent and amoral world*, but in real life there are very serious ethical issues with his actions. In Samurai Deeper Kyo, Kyo, also, is an intriguing and attractive character, but he lives in a fictional world of blood and pain and violence where you have to be the biggest, baddest motherfucker out there to survive and you have to spill a lot of blood to ensure the safety of the most number of people, and there are very, very few truly innocent civilians - he can be pretty sure that almost everyone he's killed deserves it. They're probably guilty of something, if not what he killed them for. If I were in that world, I'd totally do him. In this world: no fucking way. :)



Seventh: trickster archetype, which is a literary archetype I have liked for a really long time. There are several types of tricksters - the cheeky smartass that makes you want to slap him every so often (Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan, Bova's Sam Gunn, Ferris Bueller), the holy madman (*trying to come up with pop-culture examples and failing*), and the amoral shifty guy (maybe Mello fits here? Yukimura in Samurai Deeper Kyo might, also, but I don't know enough about him yet). There's probably a better name for that last subtype XD. (Coyote covers the whole spectrum there - he goes from almost evil, to a spiritual leader, to a smartass, to someone who ends up the butt of his own jokes; he's the One Size Fits All of tricksters.) Gin fits the last subtype - he's explicitly drawn to resemble the Japanese kitsune, with pointed features and slanty, slitty eyes, and his name kanji are a play on the phrase "silver fox". Foxes in Japanese (and Asian in general) folklore are almost never fully evil. They're tricksy and amoral and driven by whims, but not relentlessly evil. They play tricks because it amuses them, and may grant boons to or punish someone out of whimsy or personal revenge, and can be loyal friends and lovers or relentless enemies, sometimes at the same time,* which makes them far more interesting than pure good or pure evil archetypal characters. They're not out to rule the world, just tiny bits of it. I, especially because of my background in anthropology and my interest in folklore and Jungian archetypes**, can't help but interpret his character in this light.


* I've read several stories so far in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling that deal with fox lovers who have a genuine attachment to their lovers but who also, at the same time, are slowly killing their lovers because every time they sleep with them, they draw away part of their life essence, as Taoist thought has it.*** If they stay away for a few days in between sexual encounters, the lover-victim can regain the essence, but the love-bonds are strong enough that neither partner can resist, with sometimes fatal consequences. I think that sort of encapsulates the attitude towards foxes - occasionally the fox doesn't care they're killing their lover, but sometimes it's a source of great sadness to him or her that they can't resist their desires. (I think I may need to explore this in regards to the thing in my head: how can you make it convincing that someone wouldn't resist it, if they truly loved their partner? It would require an alien mindset, which is something else that I want to explore. Huh.)

** Probably goes with my librarian needs to categorize things. XD

*** One is even a gay relationship, which is quite interesting, and would make a good yaoi manga. Hot mansecks! Lovers killing each other even as they make love! Reincarnation! Godawful puns made possible in the English language since the characters are named Huang and Wang, which I keep reading as Hung and Wang! Suicide! Corrupt officials! Drugs! Bisexuality! Date rape! Crossdressing! Bad poetry! And all in ten pages!





So there you have it - lots of random thoughts on heroes and villains and what makes characters interesting for me. :D There's a lot more - I haven't even bothered to figure out why I love Hotaru in Samurai Deeper Kyo or to really examine the big bruiser with small wee cutie archetype that I like. Hopefully this will spur some interesting discussion in the comments, since what was supposed to be a short answer explaining a character's appeal turned into a Fucking Fandom Essay, just about.

Comments

[gorogoro.livejournal.com]

I quite like Gin, myself, and was enjoying your discussion, until I got completely sidetracked by the fact that someone other than myself had read the Time Master Trilogy. Oh my god! They exist!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

They do exist! They do! XD I really am afraid they won't stand up to the test of time, though. *here's hoping*

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

I've read it! Although I got them used, and found "The Outcast" first, so...was very confused for a while. XD But then that's the hottest book, so it worked out.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Very interesting essay. I think there's more to Aizen than you do because I recognize his type. His is a fairly common academic type, I think. I'll keep thinking about this and post more later.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Convince me! I know I'm totally reading lots into Gin that isn't really there in the manga - Kubo Tite's genius is allowing room for me, and other readers, to read things like this in - and I'm totally willing to let myself be convinced there's more to Aizen than blind power-lust. :)

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

See, I love Kyo and I love Kenpachi but I just don't like Gin. But in his case, I think that's an instance of where the hot buttons override anything else about him. I just can't see past them to his actual character. Logically, I know all the stuff you pointed out but they don't come together to form a "I like you" impression like they would under other circumstances. Instead the hot buttons succeed in forming a "You creep me out" reaction.

Granted, "You creep me out" is a pretty cool reaction to have though. But it prevents me from saying, "Oh, I like you!"

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Also: I too have read The Time Master trilogy but I think I might have been in 6th or 7th grade so I remember very very little.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Perfectly reasonable - hot buttons are hot buttons, and they don't have to be consistent between people or even make sense. :D

Thinking about it, I expect that if I'd ever known a man in real life similar to Gin, I'd be actively poisoned against him. And that may be why I have such a visceral reaction to Byakuya and all characters who have protecting people as their primary motive, especially if they don't tell the protectees why - I was actively "protected" like that by people I knew in my school days who assumed I was this wee little innocent, sweet thing, and it was suffocating and horrible.

But I think it's a good sign for the writing that Gin's character elicits strong emotions either way.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I don't like Gin, but I find the character kind of creepily intriguing. I end up wanting to know more about him, his background and his motivations, all while being thorougly repulsed by him and that's something I have to give Kubo Tite some credit for because that's a hard dynamic to maintain.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I get that. For me, the attraction is more than the repulsion, probably because of my long-standing fascination with the trickster archetype, but I see that in my absolute conviction that I would get as far away as possible from a man like this if I met him in real life.

And also part of why I'm looking at this: the thing in my head that I might try to write has a main character like this, and to make it convincing, I've got to somehow move the dynamic for the reader over onto my side of the court for people without my particular hot buttons, I think.

[chomiji]

I think the reason why I find Gin so disturbing is that I'm having trouble believing that it's mere tricksiness, and a lot of it has to do with Momo, and the she was used. But of course that was probably mostly Aizen's idea. I would be ever so happy to find out that he's really been on the right side all the time, but I have my doubts - there's something very vicious about him that creeps me out, even with your explanation ... he enjoys other people's pain, is what I think I'm trying to say.

Go Kyo! Yes, he really does have more to him than the bad-assness that initially smacks one in the face. Yukimura is rather more tricksy, but like Sarutobi Sasuke, I have to say "I believe in him."

I hadn't really glommed onto Byakuya's sins with regard to not letting Rukia find her own way, but OK, yes, that stinks. And I'm right there with you about Tousen. I think the main reason Byakuya appeals to me is he's got that "hold to the one true noble way even if it's tearing my heart to bits" thing going on ... this is actually true of several SDK characters as well. (I have no idea why I like that, given that IRL, I generally feel that any such one way is wrong and should be abolished, if it means you have to treat innocent people you love like crap ... .)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It's all about the hot buttons, I think. :D Gin's sadism is not as important to me as other aspects of his character.* I see the Momo thing as way more Aizen's fault, since he deliberately cultivated and set her up for this, which speaks to a long-term evilness. Gin's sadism towards Rukia, in getting her hopes up and crashing them, and to various other characters, seems more of a momentary whimsy, in the fox-trickster tradition.

He does enjoy other people's pain, but the moment with Rangiku (unless you subscribe to the theory in the fic I linked XD) shows that there are people who are safe from that, which is part of the Love of a Dangerous Man dynamic. Yeah, if I were writing fic about him, I'd have to think damn hard how to make him sympathetic because of that, though.

Hee - Byakuya hit me right away with that, because of my personal history, as I mentioned in a previous comment. XD We hates him, yes we does. I can get the "hold to the one true noble way even if it's tearing my heart to bits" hot button, but not in the way *he's* expressing it. (I can't think of any other characters that hit that at the moment, but I expect they're out there.)


* Luckily, this is fiction. XD

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think of it as tricksiness, and I don't think it's as much that he enjoys other people's pain as the fact that he enjoys control.

I see his story as a progression from powerlessness as a child in the Rukongai to exalted positions that give him ample opportunity to control and manipulate individuals (and groups of individuals) both in the Seireitei and Hueco Mundo. Aizen is the one offering him the ability to do all of this, but I have to wonder if he'd be quite so loyal if he himself had the ability to manipulate so many minds on his own.

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

What you're saying makes a lot of sense. I think the obstacle I run into with a lot of Dangerous Man characters, as I've gotten older***, is that I have a hard time separating my real-world response to that kind of person from my in-context response. The real-world response tends to override. I thought Tarod was intensely sexy when I read the trilogy in junior high; when I read The Outcast now, there's still an echo of the sexiness, but I also want to punch him a lot.

***Which is not to imply any kind of correlation between DM response and maturity; I think it's just having accrued a particular set of experiences that makes me very wary of certain kinds of people.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yes, that's what I'm afraid of if I reread the trilogy. I love darkly Byronic antiheroes, but they've got to be handled well not to fall into the punch-him-in-the-face place.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

One of the great things about manga is that they aren't afraid to make the "villains" the most interesting or developed characters(at least half the manga out there), or to only have a thin line separating the heroes and "villains"(BotI, SDK, Basara, Death Note, maybe even Saiyuki)

I don't think I've ever "liked" Gin(like chomiji, I find him to be on the creepy side) but I've always found him to be very interesting.

I've never decided whether or not I like Byakuya, though...sometimes I do, sometimes I want to punch him in the face.

I am absurdly fond of Mello and L, though(even if Mello did creep me out regarding chocolate bars for a while there)

I also like the "big bruiser with small wee cutie archetype"...I think W Juliet described it as a chihuahua(which I probably misspelled) taming a pit bull, or something along those lines.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yes, the line between good and evil is a fascinating place to explore, and it's something I really like to see done in fiction, and part of why I like manga so much.

Although I have to admit that I occasionally like complete and utter psychopaths whose only motivation is that they're just fucking crazy. *coughShirainBladeoftheImmortalcough*

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

I think Byakuya is so popular because he's got the whole "ice prince ... with a raging inferno in his HART!1!" thing going for him. I used to dislike him heartily, and then I started finding him funny -- like, really, really funny, to the point where I'd just crack up the minute his hair-noodles hove into view -- and now I love him dearly. But he's an asshole and a massive idiot, I agree.

I've never found Gin very interesting, because, I think, I don't read him as morally ambiguous; I read him as pretty much straight-up evil. I saw his saying to Rangiku "It would have been nice to have been captured for a while longer" as him twisting the knife in the wound, not him expressing genuine regret. *ponders* That's probably part of the attraction of Gin, though -- that his actions and words are open to so many interpretations.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

...the minute his hair-noodles hove into view...

You just broke me with that. XD

Yeah, at the heart of it, it's all down to personal hot buttons and interests, and the hallmark of good writing is that it leaves enough open that we can bring our own experiences and interpretations to it.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

But... but Aizen isn't evil at all! Or at least, not in his overall schema, though I don't approve of what he does to Momo.

Seriously, look at the cosmology of Bleach. As an afterlife, Soul Society is fucking horrible. You can live in poverty and meaninglessness, or you can become a shinigami and live in regimented meaninglessness, or you can reincarnate (definitely the best option), or you can become a Hollow. Those are the options we know about, and that the shinigami know about. They suck.

So of course Aizen's trying to become God, or at least to gain enough power to really figure out what the hell is going on with the cosmos and rearrange it. It's just like you said earlier about Byakuya: one needs to have the responsibility to notice when the laws, when the entire system you're dealing with, is innately fucked up and criminal and wrong. Tear the whole thing down and start over. And of course Gin is going to help with that: the system fucked him over too. And that's why that guy whose name I can never remember, the blind one, is in on it despite being the famous ultimate stickler for law and order; he hasn't betrayed his principles at all; he's serving a higher law. And all three of them are working on the idea that the ends justify the means. Momo is an example: this is what you get if you believe the lie that Soul Society works and is a good place to be.

One of the things I've always liked about Bleach is that the villains are right; the problem with them is how they treat people. And the protagonists have just never thought any of it over-- I mean, Ichigo-tachi are still fighting for Soul Society after what it did to Rukia? The fuck?

I can make a pretty good case for the Head of the Thirteen Squads as the real villain of Bleach, and the protagonists as definitely working for the wrong side on occasion. Note that Ichigo's mentor figures, Urahara and Yoruichi, have both gotten the hell out of Dodge and express grave disapproval of Soul Society a good deal of the time.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I could buy into all of that if it wasn't explicitly clear that Aizen's purpose in turning the systems on their respective heads was personal power. Yes, the system is broken, but so is the person overthrowing it.

[sanada.livejournal.com]

~Directed here by chomiji~

Hehe, I think I agree with mscongeniality and chomiji... I don't like Gin, but I find him interesting. I'm hoping that Aizen is the one being manipulated by Gin, because you're right: Aizen is pretty boring. It doesn't help that his best scenes are with Momo and there's something cringe-inducing about Momo. But as good of a villain as Gin would make, part of me wants to see him as the traitorous anti-hero in Aizen's inner circle. I don't think he could ever be a "good guy", but Soul Society is in desperate need of reform and Gin has a high enough opinion of himself to believe that he's the one to change it... with ruthless, Machiavellian tactics. He doesn't need over power or recognition, he just wants control.

Byakuya is a character that I initially thought would be really interesting, because my love of cheesy samurai TV dramas has primed me for the whole duty vs. personal interest conflict. (In classic Japanese literature, the only way to resolve that dilemma is with an honorable death, and somehow I always like the characters that get killed off...) One of my favorite personality archetype is the Asshole Hero who cares about people deep down but can't get past his Major Personality Issues. But Byakuya fell very, very flat because Kubo can't seem to consistently rip off other shounen manga... >_>;;;

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hey, the more the merrier. :D *waves hello*

What I like about the Momo situation, is that Kubo's at least following through with that and keeping her as the full-on victim of Stockholm Syndrome, even after he stabbed her and left her for dead. The effect she has on Hitsugaya makes me want to wrap him in a blanket and give him a cup of cocoa adds depth to him, for one.

Byakuya could have been interesting to me, too - I love the cold, stoic type with hidden depths a lot, but unfortunately he's not a repressed cool person, he's a repressed jerk. XD

[incandescens]

It is canon, re Byakuya: he did deliberately have Rukia kept unseated, even though she was of sufficient ability and power to rate a seated position. (And I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during some of the probable conversations between Ukitake and Byakuya. Did Byakuya play on Ukitake's guilt re Kaien, maybe?)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, thanks. :D A couple of months ago I'd decided I had it up to here with waiting for the translations, so mainlined vol 21 to the current chapters in scanlations over a weekend, and since them have been soaking in the fandom, so there's lots of little pieces of information floating in my head now that I'm not entirely sure I remember where I got them. :D

And, wow, yeah, that must have been some confrontation. Ukitake is one of the oldest and most experienced captains, and I can't imagine him backing down to an upstart like Byakuya that easily. :D

[incandescens]

Oh, and I knew I had the url for this one somewhere. http://half-sleeping.livejournal.com/6661.html?style=mine might amuse you: the first one in particular.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Haa! Yes! Thank you! :D

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Okay. My analysis of Aizen's conspiracy is over at http://fmanalyst.livejournal.com/39017.html. It's massively long, and only really covers the conspiracy leading up to the end of the Soul Society arc. The end of the arc and Hueco Mundo will have to wait for other essays.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks! I'll go read. :D

[droiche.livejournal.com]

Note to self: Read all of Telo's essay soonish.

A friend of mine and I kind of had a similar conversation about Genjyo Sanzo being a jerk blah blah blah. I love Genjyo because he's been through the school of hard knocks and has the guts to spit in the principal's eye upon graduation. I can identify with him (I've been through a lot of similar crap), and I wish I had the guts to be like him. Does that make sense?

Anywho, this brings me to the "why women love bad boys" question. I guess it depends on why a person is a bitch/jerk.