Would have put this up earlier, but the site was being stupid...
I've had this meme from Lina-san for a while now. Sorry if I ramble, but this is stuff I hardly need an excuse to talk about. ^^;; (Any replies that don't want to do the meme are fine, too. Just tell me.)
Reply and I'll give you four fandoms. You then have to make an entry writing about your favorite character from each fandom (you can elaborate on the character if you wish).
Yu-Gi-Oh:
My favorite character was Noa. Hands down, and without argument. Possibly assisted by the fact I still harbor a bemused dislike for Kaiba to this day.
Please keep in mind that certain arcs were on TV when I was twelve, and my view of the world was a lot more black and white. Scumbag who screws people over and only cares about his brother isn't redeemed by caring for his brother because people are supposed to care for their siblings in pre-teen Skunky's world. In hindsight I probably got a vicious pleasure out of seeing Noa try to take Mokuba for himself, and the triangular platonic dynamic there between the three Kaibas was something I certainly found fascinating enough. Still do, come to think of it, but I haven't thought on it in years.
As years went on, and I started to Roleplay Yami Bakura, and Yami Malik, I grew in fondness for them. Bakura himself was probably my second favorite because of his sheer nastiness, tenacity, and cunning. Also, this was assisted by the fact he's deeply occultic, and at thirteen I was still dabbling in and horribly fascinated by the idea of the modern occult.
Skuun's early fandoms were approached...far more simplistically. And I got into Yu-Gi-Oh a few years before I was writing nightly, and venting out ideas all the time. It was probably my big fandom coming out of Star Wars. (I'd been into the expanded universe and indeed, written my first fanfiction in that when I was eight, by hand into big yellow legal pads, and, on one memorable occasion, into an American Girl "my story" book.)
Because I was into Yu-Gi-Oh for such a long period (probably five to six years) the characters I liked probably evolved, or shifted around more than a lot of my other fandoms. The list would include Joey (Jou), Alister (Amelda), and even Raphael apart from Noa and Bakura. But Noa and Bakura have been the characters I remained fondest of all the way through. Yu-Gi-Oh was the fandom that shaped by experiments on the importance of having a compelling character as your villain: a character capable of driving the plot. So it's not surprising I remained fond of mostly villains.
...Unfortunately, I tended to lose interest in Yu-Gi-Oh's tendency to have all villain characters have sparkly redemptions a la the power of friendship and children's trading card games since I was using it to explore the concept of "evil". (Which is pretty camp in Yu-Gi-Oh's dub at least...)
It probably comes as little surprise that the characters who weren't redeemed were general favorites, because they lent a more interesting feel to the whole series for me.
DOGS / DOGS: Bullets and Carnage
From the start, and from book zero (The original book "DOGS" that is), I had an irrational affection for Magato, and for Badou.
In Magato's case, I thought this was probably the villainy thing again. He's just made to look so MONSTROUS in the start with Naoto. Like a creepy borderline rapist and brutal assassin rolled into one. And then there's his funny habit of dropping information, and his strange, genuine joy over Naoto's landing a hit on him. From the start he seems to have a few cogs running loose and whirly under the surface, but you don't see him again for so long. He's literally set up in such a way that you're meant to despise him. Which was pretty much enough to catch my attention. A character like that...is designed for a reason.
I literally cheered in my head when he showed back up again with his marvleous speech about not being able to help himself when it comes to killing dogs. His funny roundabout creepy speech about the importance of death days...
Magato is still probably my favorite character in DOGS because unlike most, he really is nasty, and he'd slit your throat as soon as look at you, but it's in the category of absolute absence of any moral standard as opposed to some ideal of immorality. So he's actually as likely to give you what you want (if you entertain him with a knife fight) as he is to try to take a swipe at you. (Actually, he reminds me of nobody so much as Ryuk from DeathNote. And Ryuk's my favorite character there, too.)
There's nothing quite so interestingly dangerous as complete and utter lack of moral compass.
Also? The sudden inexplicable humor of him coming up, referring to himself as "Onii-chan" to Naoto, pointing at Heine and shouting "Onii-chan does not approve of this no-brows guy!"
I just really like Magato. Trying to explain why is just...difficult, though. It's the "potential", I'm sure.
On the main cast, my favorite's always been Badou. Let's face it: Badou has everything. A really bizarre sense of humor, a profound sense of self-deprecating melodrama that would shriek like he's been shot if he papercut himself just to see everyone else tell him to stop whining and consequentially complain about them. In addition, he has a "water off a duck's back" attitude towards all the weirdness around him which makes him invaluable in a series where weirdness is the norm like DOGS.
It's Badou's weirdness-ambivalence, and accepting nature that actually probably makes Heine (who's notoriously shifty with straight answers) spill to him when he actually asks. They're such a wonderfully superficially vitriolic duo in an all-banter way. And the explainations Badou gives to Naoto are classic. Badou's representative of the "normal" human within DOGS (though his cigarettes thing seems to make him pretty borderline at times) and he and Mihai both end up being surprisingly nurturing influences on some of the crazier, more disassociative characters. They are, essentially, likeable. Purely likeable.
Little bits of Badou have snuck into other characters I deal with. And his mercenary attitude's a lot softer than it might be for all his complaining. (He takes some pretty pathetic jobs throughout the series along with the cool, adventurous ones he spends all his time complaining about during their occurances.)
I've grown to warm to Heine lately and all, but...Badou's that character I always keep wanting to really work on, but never have. For YEARS, I never have. There's always something in the way. (Like Tracer. Or Yuuko. I never like having more than one mercenary or proprietary character in my head at once just in case they rub off on one another and become "diluted".)
Someday, I'll do Badou the justice he deserves. It's rare I feel the sort of outside-of-story genuine affection for a character's personality that I do for Badou's. It's easy to say "I like this character because of this writing technique beauty reason, and THIS lovely plot nuance", but it's quite another thing entirely to look at a character and think wistfully, "Ah. See. There are people like this in the world. Good people. If I were to meet one, they would be exactly the sort of person I'd want for a friend. Exactly the sort of person I'd admire."
Because when it comes down to it, Badou does remind me of people I've known, and I've literally lost portions of my DOGS collection bringing my copies to them, thinking that that's a special thing indeed, and maybe there's the slightest chance they might see themselves in it a little bit and smile.
Badou's not a character I get excited about analyzing or babble about greatly, but he feels comfortable to me, and as if I know him without a great deal of deep analysis. That makes him unusual and special enough. A definite sort of favorite, if not one that's as brightly gushing as some of the others I might mention here. Someday, I'd very much like to play him.
Nabari no Ou
Nabari's my most recent fan addiction, so it should be remarked that my taste in characters has adjusted slightly. Starting off, I like most people was very fond of Yoite. To be honest, he drives so much of the protagonist's actions and personality evolution it's impossible to come into the book and not at least take an interest in Yoite, and note his construction as a character.
But along came a sneaking, slant-eyed little loud-mouth...
And. Well.
My first REAL favorite from his lead-in a bit later than Yoite was actually Gau. (Which will surprise nobody who's RP'd with me in the past year or so, since at one time I think I was actually playing him in three places at once.)
Gau's such a minor character he only really has relevance to Raikou, and in the fleshing out of Raikou's character through him as a foil. He's "the ordinary guy", naturally. He's the classic pre-superpowers justice!geek, and the greatest thing is the fact he never develops any powers. Well. Not unless you count serious organization and implied ability to stalk down information. He's at once ustterly comic, but he has an unexpectedly serious undertone to him, and he's really the only character in the whole of the series who's relatively unchanged by the end.
Granted, there's a lot of physical change that occurs to Gau for certain plot-relevant things, but his inner core's unchanged throughout. He still believes in making the world a better place when he's done. He'd still follow Raikou anywhere and believe he's part of that force of good (a belief Raikou quite frankly needs or who knows what he'd fall into), he'd still pick his friends and their lives and their honor over even the society he pledges to, and he'd still run right into danger screaming and throwing his notebook knowing full well the first punch that hits him will probably take him out but beleiving it's worth it.
Gau's masochistically loyal, seriously anal retentive, utterly hot-tempered, and really...a lot of fun. And it's interesting to see the dichotomy between him and Raikou as characters, and the subtleties of their relationship. (Despite instances of fanservice and their "ambiguously gay duo" act from the start...) Gau's interesting points as a character are brought to life by Raikou's explainations, by Raikou's focus and value of him when he's physically the msot worthless character in the series. (Seriously. A not just average, but actually, weak kid in a show full of samurai and ninjas? Enough said.)
It shouldn't be any surprise that Gau and Raikou now tie for my favorite character spot in Nabari. It's hard to find a pair of characters so matched, mirrored, and perfectly foiled. I can't think of another pair of characters more complimentary, really. Oh, it's easy to find characters who find another character's "the same as them" and make a pairing out of it, or see possible points of attraction. Gau and Raikou on the other hand work as a matched set, with their weaknesses perfectly compensated for by the other. It's a little different. It's what happens when you have the sort of familiarity and reliance that you get with a good pairing after a few years. The "old married couple" if you will.
And there's the repressed kinkiness feel, too. The implications of Raikou's Sadism, and Gau's Masochism. (The words are even acutally used.) Gau as a redemptive force for Raikou, and as Raikou's beacon of hope in his layered and rather fractured little view of the world and his past, is irreplaceable.
And...of course I mentioned I adore Raikou, too. His is a more obviously layered and less straightforward character. (He and little sis Raimei both, actually, since even Raimei's implied to get locked up in her own thoughts enough to mistake people for other people no matter how "stupid" she shouts she must be.)
But I won't digress on Raikou since his sheer amount of awesome is built up so beautifully over the course of the work, and isn't implied or revealed by other characters like Gau's is. (Raikou's a main character after all, and starts out as such a lovely, sadistic-looking villain...)
Point is, I love Raikou and Gau as characterized in Nabari, and I could wax poetic on them for pages and pages, and HAVE in private. "The Shimizu Clan" trio in general have a fantastic dynamic and as we speak I'm attempting to literarily dissect it with great enthusiasm.
Also: YUKIMI. That is all.
Well...almost all. I feel bad about liking Yukimi because I mostly just like him because if he and I sat in a room together, we'd end up having the exact same reactions, except he's a little more reliable than me. We even talk the same way when I'm not a nervous wreck. Crazy "big brother" figure characters...
Black Butler / Black Butler II
First off, YES, I know Black Butler. I'm behind, but I read it. The reason I don't often mention it is because I don't particularly like what the fandom's done with it, or some of the shortsighted kinkiness that takes up a large part of the fiction I've seen. Also, it's a large fandom, and generally those don't interest me as much. (I also know DeathNote, for example, but I never really explored it much because of the overwhelming, crushing popularity of it, squeezing most of the life out of the discussions and the possibility of connecting with the others who knew of it. Please pardon the frankness of this opinion. It isn't designed to be offenseive or point fingers. It's a general statement rather like a sigh.)
In the original, it must be noted that I'm fond of the circus arc characters, and I also have a special fondness for the bumbling house servants of phantomhive manor. This is consistant since usually there's misconstruction and misconstruing of any of the other characters I might have a fondness for to the point I lose interest in them. (Like the demon characters.) Black Butler is something that very much disillusions me as a fandom, I'm sorry to say. It's...difficult enough for me to maintain interest in a fandom that gives itself over like that, but the shota themes in addition rather clinch it for me. (Shota is...something I continue to have especial difficulty with for various personal reasons relating to my own childhood and sundries thereof.)
Somehow, though, I've seen all of Black Butler II despite that, and though the subtlety of the first series seems rather lost and thrown to the dogs (The overt sexual overtones, I mean. And in addition Sebastian's outright flirting with Grell. I'm not a fan of Grell in particular because he gets used as an excuse for shipping with everything that moves, and seems to suffer the most from fan misuse. Sparingly seen, he's hilarious, but over a period of time, he can become grating and absolutely unrestrained.)
Despite all that, I still enjoyed the dynamics between the demons in Black Butler II. I still am rather interested in Claude and Hannah as characters, even if I'm utterly repulsed by the usual shipping frenzies. Because as characters in an otherwise debauched and increasingly gritty story, they're almost disdainful in their way of preying on the weaknesses of humanity to sate their various hungers. I also particularly like Hannah's growing role as a "demon redeemed in part by altruism" in juxtoposition to her almost masochistic overtones. I also am interested in Claude due to a theory I have on how each of the demons in Black Butler exemplifies a particular one of the seven deadly sins.
(Where Sebastian is clearly wrapped into his goal of Pride, Claude is rampant Gluttony, and Hannah is the rather Sub. side of Lust according to my theory. Also, Claude and Alois are interesting if they follow through with their canon one-sidedness. When I see Claudes who don't follow through with this and give into sex because of the unwritten assumption everything in the universe is driven by sex, it drives me nuts. Claude's so clearly driven by "feasting" within the series it's ridiculous. And actually the misunderstandings betwetten characters where Alois seems to interpret this as sexual when Claude apparently means stomach is pretty plain. In fact, Claude probably wouldn't be as repulsed by Alois if it weren't so clear how much sex drives Alois.)
If it weren't for that theory, and for friends who play characters within this universe in RP with me, I might abandon even reading on in the series for sheer disgust with it's fandom. It's nto that I haven't seen people overcome this general trend and play the characters beautifully, but the majority do not.
The demons themselves are interesting. And the Faustian story elements. And I get tired of that, too: the number of people who go in, faced with Claude's last name even, who take the soul element out of the series and turn the series into blatant sexualization. While the hints of sex can be used to hint at the state of the soul and the idea of corruption, the fandom takes this grossly out of proportion to a stomach-turning extent. Used sparingly, it spices the Victorian dish. Used the way it's typically used, it's like eating a plate of nothing but peppercorns.
While it is a set Christian notion for the body and the soul to be interrelated--ie: that toll on the soul takes toll on the body, for the fandom to so weakly use that to prop up the sheer amount of mind-numbing kink that goes on there is wearying to me, and isn't somethign I have a great deal of stomach for from the start.
Still, I can't deny that the interplay between the three demons in Black Butler II was worth seeing the series FOR. And it highlights beautifully the differences between Sebastian and other demons of his kind. (Claude for one seems almost ravenous next to him, and for all his spider themes, more clumsy and overt in his manipulations. Less clever.) Hannah does a wonderful job of providing the confusion point for other demons: why a being of her supposed power and ability would willingly put herself under without a soul contract for a soul that isn't even as "desirable" as Ciel's: Alois's. The romanticization of that that you can add in there: of a demon choosing their victim, and relating to them. It's the triangular working and back-and-forth between them and their "meals" that makes the second series, and I did enjoy it for all that.
But though I might write an essay on the relationships between those three demons, I can't see myself writing anything more playful with them. There isn't enough joy in the series for me for me to put it into fiction. (Should anyone else want to, though, I might read it.)
So for that reason, even the characters I like in Black Butler aren't generally enough for me to stay in the series with the level of joy I do with others. People just don't take it seriously, and it's a series that can be taken seriously, and thought about. The thought behind it is fascinating, and wonderful, but until people can think about it clearly, and not just turn the thing into a mess of fantasies, it's not something I can stay in even with its possibilities and ideas.
EDIT: I forgot Ronnie. How could I forget Ronnie?
Shinigami with a lawnmower. Enough said. Though I'm not a fan of either the Holmes arc, or this one with zombies.
Reply and I'll give you four fandoms. You then have to make an entry writing about your favorite character from each fandom (you can elaborate on the character if you wish).
Yu-Gi-Oh:
My favorite character was Noa. Hands down, and without argument. Possibly assisted by the fact I still harbor a bemused dislike for Kaiba to this day.
Please keep in mind that certain arcs were on TV when I was twelve, and my view of the world was a lot more black and white. Scumbag who screws people over and only cares about his brother isn't redeemed by caring for his brother because people are supposed to care for their siblings in pre-teen Skunky's world. In hindsight I probably got a vicious pleasure out of seeing Noa try to take Mokuba for himself, and the triangular platonic dynamic there between the three Kaibas was something I certainly found fascinating enough. Still do, come to think of it, but I haven't thought on it in years.
As years went on, and I started to Roleplay Yami Bakura, and Yami Malik, I grew in fondness for them. Bakura himself was probably my second favorite because of his sheer nastiness, tenacity, and cunning. Also, this was assisted by the fact he's deeply occultic, and at thirteen I was still dabbling in and horribly fascinated by the idea of the modern occult.
Skuun's early fandoms were approached...far more simplistically. And I got into Yu-Gi-Oh a few years before I was writing nightly, and venting out ideas all the time. It was probably my big fandom coming out of Star Wars. (I'd been into the expanded universe and indeed, written my first fanfiction in that when I was eight, by hand into big yellow legal pads, and, on one memorable occasion, into an American Girl "my story" book.)
Because I was into Yu-Gi-Oh for such a long period (probably five to six years) the characters I liked probably evolved, or shifted around more than a lot of my other fandoms. The list would include Joey (Jou), Alister (Amelda), and even Raphael apart from Noa and Bakura. But Noa and Bakura have been the characters I remained fondest of all the way through. Yu-Gi-Oh was the fandom that shaped by experiments on the importance of having a compelling character as your villain: a character capable of driving the plot. So it's not surprising I remained fond of mostly villains.
...Unfortunately, I tended to lose interest in Yu-Gi-Oh's tendency to have all villain characters have sparkly redemptions a la the power of friendship and children's trading card games since I was using it to explore the concept of "evil". (Which is pretty camp in Yu-Gi-Oh's dub at least...)
It probably comes as little surprise that the characters who weren't redeemed were general favorites, because they lent a more interesting feel to the whole series for me.
DOGS / DOGS: Bullets and Carnage
From the start, and from book zero (The original book "DOGS" that is), I had an irrational affection for Magato, and for Badou.
In Magato's case, I thought this was probably the villainy thing again. He's just made to look so MONSTROUS in the start with Naoto. Like a creepy borderline rapist and brutal assassin rolled into one. And then there's his funny habit of dropping information, and his strange, genuine joy over Naoto's landing a hit on him. From the start he seems to have a few cogs running loose and whirly under the surface, but you don't see him again for so long. He's literally set up in such a way that you're meant to despise him. Which was pretty much enough to catch my attention. A character like that...is designed for a reason.
I literally cheered in my head when he showed back up again with his marvleous speech about not being able to help himself when it comes to killing dogs. His funny roundabout creepy speech about the importance of death days...
Magato is still probably my favorite character in DOGS because unlike most, he really is nasty, and he'd slit your throat as soon as look at you, but it's in the category of absolute absence of any moral standard as opposed to some ideal of immorality. So he's actually as likely to give you what you want (if you entertain him with a knife fight) as he is to try to take a swipe at you. (Actually, he reminds me of nobody so much as Ryuk from DeathNote. And Ryuk's my favorite character there, too.)
There's nothing quite so interestingly dangerous as complete and utter lack of moral compass.
Also? The sudden inexplicable humor of him coming up, referring to himself as "Onii-chan" to Naoto, pointing at Heine and shouting "Onii-chan does not approve of this no-brows guy!"
I just really like Magato. Trying to explain why is just...difficult, though. It's the "potential", I'm sure.
On the main cast, my favorite's always been Badou. Let's face it: Badou has everything. A really bizarre sense of humor, a profound sense of self-deprecating melodrama that would shriek like he's been shot if he papercut himself just to see everyone else tell him to stop whining and consequentially complain about them. In addition, he has a "water off a duck's back" attitude towards all the weirdness around him which makes him invaluable in a series where weirdness is the norm like DOGS.
It's Badou's weirdness-ambivalence, and accepting nature that actually probably makes Heine (who's notoriously shifty with straight answers) spill to him when he actually asks. They're such a wonderfully superficially vitriolic duo in an all-banter way. And the explainations Badou gives to Naoto are classic. Badou's representative of the "normal" human within DOGS (though his cigarettes thing seems to make him pretty borderline at times) and he and Mihai both end up being surprisingly nurturing influences on some of the crazier, more disassociative characters. They are, essentially, likeable. Purely likeable.
Little bits of Badou have snuck into other characters I deal with. And his mercenary attitude's a lot softer than it might be for all his complaining. (He takes some pretty pathetic jobs throughout the series along with the cool, adventurous ones he spends all his time complaining about during their occurances.)
I've grown to warm to Heine lately and all, but...Badou's that character I always keep wanting to really work on, but never have. For YEARS, I never have. There's always something in the way. (Like Tracer. Or Yuuko. I never like having more than one mercenary or proprietary character in my head at once just in case they rub off on one another and become "diluted".)
Someday, I'll do Badou the justice he deserves. It's rare I feel the sort of outside-of-story genuine affection for a character's personality that I do for Badou's. It's easy to say "I like this character because of this writing technique beauty reason, and THIS lovely plot nuance", but it's quite another thing entirely to look at a character and think wistfully, "Ah. See. There are people like this in the world. Good people. If I were to meet one, they would be exactly the sort of person I'd want for a friend. Exactly the sort of person I'd admire."
Because when it comes down to it, Badou does remind me of people I've known, and I've literally lost portions of my DOGS collection bringing my copies to them, thinking that that's a special thing indeed, and maybe there's the slightest chance they might see themselves in it a little bit and smile.
Badou's not a character I get excited about analyzing or babble about greatly, but he feels comfortable to me, and as if I know him without a great deal of deep analysis. That makes him unusual and special enough. A definite sort of favorite, if not one that's as brightly gushing as some of the others I might mention here. Someday, I'd very much like to play him.
Nabari no Ou
Nabari's my most recent fan addiction, so it should be remarked that my taste in characters has adjusted slightly. Starting off, I like most people was very fond of Yoite. To be honest, he drives so much of the protagonist's actions and personality evolution it's impossible to come into the book and not at least take an interest in Yoite, and note his construction as a character.
But along came a sneaking, slant-eyed little loud-mouth...
And. Well.
My first REAL favorite from his lead-in a bit later than Yoite was actually Gau. (Which will surprise nobody who's RP'd with me in the past year or so, since at one time I think I was actually playing him in three places at once.)
Gau's such a minor character he only really has relevance to Raikou, and in the fleshing out of Raikou's character through him as a foil. He's "the ordinary guy", naturally. He's the classic pre-superpowers justice!geek, and the greatest thing is the fact he never develops any powers. Well. Not unless you count serious organization and implied ability to stalk down information. He's at once ustterly comic, but he has an unexpectedly serious undertone to him, and he's really the only character in the whole of the series who's relatively unchanged by the end.
Granted, there's a lot of physical change that occurs to Gau for certain plot-relevant things, but his inner core's unchanged throughout. He still believes in making the world a better place when he's done. He'd still follow Raikou anywhere and believe he's part of that force of good (a belief Raikou quite frankly needs or who knows what he'd fall into), he'd still pick his friends and their lives and their honor over even the society he pledges to, and he'd still run right into danger screaming and throwing his notebook knowing full well the first punch that hits him will probably take him out but beleiving it's worth it.
Gau's masochistically loyal, seriously anal retentive, utterly hot-tempered, and really...a lot of fun. And it's interesting to see the dichotomy between him and Raikou as characters, and the subtleties of their relationship. (Despite instances of fanservice and their "ambiguously gay duo" act from the start...) Gau's interesting points as a character are brought to life by Raikou's explainations, by Raikou's focus and value of him when he's physically the msot worthless character in the series. (Seriously. A not just average, but actually, weak kid in a show full of samurai and ninjas? Enough said.)
It shouldn't be any surprise that Gau and Raikou now tie for my favorite character spot in Nabari. It's hard to find a pair of characters so matched, mirrored, and perfectly foiled. I can't think of another pair of characters more complimentary, really. Oh, it's easy to find characters who find another character's "the same as them" and make a pairing out of it, or see possible points of attraction. Gau and Raikou on the other hand work as a matched set, with their weaknesses perfectly compensated for by the other. It's a little different. It's what happens when you have the sort of familiarity and reliance that you get with a good pairing after a few years. The "old married couple" if you will.
And there's the repressed kinkiness feel, too. The implications of Raikou's Sadism, and Gau's Masochism. (The words are even acutally used.) Gau as a redemptive force for Raikou, and as Raikou's beacon of hope in his layered and rather fractured little view of the world and his past, is irreplaceable.
And...of course I mentioned I adore Raikou, too. His is a more obviously layered and less straightforward character. (He and little sis Raimei both, actually, since even Raimei's implied to get locked up in her own thoughts enough to mistake people for other people no matter how "stupid" she shouts she must be.)
But I won't digress on Raikou since his sheer amount of awesome is built up so beautifully over the course of the work, and isn't implied or revealed by other characters like Gau's is. (Raikou's a main character after all, and starts out as such a lovely, sadistic-looking villain...)
Point is, I love Raikou and Gau as characterized in Nabari, and I could wax poetic on them for pages and pages, and HAVE in private. "The Shimizu Clan" trio in general have a fantastic dynamic and as we speak I'm attempting to literarily dissect it with great enthusiasm.
Also: YUKIMI. That is all.
Well...almost all. I feel bad about liking Yukimi because I mostly just like him because if he and I sat in a room together, we'd end up having the exact same reactions, except he's a little more reliable than me. We even talk the same way when I'm not a nervous wreck. Crazy "big brother" figure characters...
Black Butler / Black Butler II
First off, YES, I know Black Butler. I'm behind, but I read it. The reason I don't often mention it is because I don't particularly like what the fandom's done with it, or some of the shortsighted kinkiness that takes up a large part of the fiction I've seen. Also, it's a large fandom, and generally those don't interest me as much. (I also know DeathNote, for example, but I never really explored it much because of the overwhelming, crushing popularity of it, squeezing most of the life out of the discussions and the possibility of connecting with the others who knew of it. Please pardon the frankness of this opinion. It isn't designed to be offenseive or point fingers. It's a general statement rather like a sigh.)
In the original, it must be noted that I'm fond of the circus arc characters, and I also have a special fondness for the bumbling house servants of phantomhive manor. This is consistant since usually there's misconstruction and misconstruing of any of the other characters I might have a fondness for to the point I lose interest in them. (Like the demon characters.) Black Butler is something that very much disillusions me as a fandom, I'm sorry to say. It's...difficult enough for me to maintain interest in a fandom that gives itself over like that, but the shota themes in addition rather clinch it for me. (Shota is...something I continue to have especial difficulty with for various personal reasons relating to my own childhood and sundries thereof.)
Somehow, though, I've seen all of Black Butler II despite that, and though the subtlety of the first series seems rather lost and thrown to the dogs (The overt sexual overtones, I mean. And in addition Sebastian's outright flirting with Grell. I'm not a fan of Grell in particular because he gets used as an excuse for shipping with everything that moves, and seems to suffer the most from fan misuse. Sparingly seen, he's hilarious, but over a period of time, he can become grating and absolutely unrestrained.)
Despite all that, I still enjoyed the dynamics between the demons in Black Butler II. I still am rather interested in Claude and Hannah as characters, even if I'm utterly repulsed by the usual shipping frenzies. Because as characters in an otherwise debauched and increasingly gritty story, they're almost disdainful in their way of preying on the weaknesses of humanity to sate their various hungers. I also particularly like Hannah's growing role as a "demon redeemed in part by altruism" in juxtoposition to her almost masochistic overtones. I also am interested in Claude due to a theory I have on how each of the demons in Black Butler exemplifies a particular one of the seven deadly sins.
(Where Sebastian is clearly wrapped into his goal of Pride, Claude is rampant Gluttony, and Hannah is the rather Sub. side of Lust according to my theory. Also, Claude and Alois are interesting if they follow through with their canon one-sidedness. When I see Claudes who don't follow through with this and give into sex because of the unwritten assumption everything in the universe is driven by sex, it drives me nuts. Claude's so clearly driven by "feasting" within the series it's ridiculous. And actually the misunderstandings betwetten characters where Alois seems to interpret this as sexual when Claude apparently means stomach is pretty plain. In fact, Claude probably wouldn't be as repulsed by Alois if it weren't so clear how much sex drives Alois.)
If it weren't for that theory, and for friends who play characters within this universe in RP with me, I might abandon even reading on in the series for sheer disgust with it's fandom. It's nto that I haven't seen people overcome this general trend and play the characters beautifully, but the majority do not.
The demons themselves are interesting. And the Faustian story elements. And I get tired of that, too: the number of people who go in, faced with Claude's last name even, who take the soul element out of the series and turn the series into blatant sexualization. While the hints of sex can be used to hint at the state of the soul and the idea of corruption, the fandom takes this grossly out of proportion to a stomach-turning extent. Used sparingly, it spices the Victorian dish. Used the way it's typically used, it's like eating a plate of nothing but peppercorns.
While it is a set Christian notion for the body and the soul to be interrelated--ie: that toll on the soul takes toll on the body, for the fandom to so weakly use that to prop up the sheer amount of mind-numbing kink that goes on there is wearying to me, and isn't somethign I have a great deal of stomach for from the start.
Still, I can't deny that the interplay between the three demons in Black Butler II was worth seeing the series FOR. And it highlights beautifully the differences between Sebastian and other demons of his kind. (Claude for one seems almost ravenous next to him, and for all his spider themes, more clumsy and overt in his manipulations. Less clever.) Hannah does a wonderful job of providing the confusion point for other demons: why a being of her supposed power and ability would willingly put herself under without a soul contract for a soul that isn't even as "desirable" as Ciel's: Alois's. The romanticization of that that you can add in there: of a demon choosing their victim, and relating to them. It's the triangular working and back-and-forth between them and their "meals" that makes the second series, and I did enjoy it for all that.
But though I might write an essay on the relationships between those three demons, I can't see myself writing anything more playful with them. There isn't enough joy in the series for me for me to put it into fiction. (Should anyone else want to, though, I might read it.)
So for that reason, even the characters I like in Black Butler aren't generally enough for me to stay in the series with the level of joy I do with others. People just don't take it seriously, and it's a series that can be taken seriously, and thought about. The thought behind it is fascinating, and wonderful, but until people can think about it clearly, and not just turn the thing into a mess of fantasies, it's not something I can stay in even with its possibilities and ideas.
EDIT: I forgot Ronnie. How could I forget Ronnie?
Shinigami with a lawnmower. Enough said. Though I'm not a fan of either the Holmes arc, or this one with zombies.