Random Saiyuki pondering

[meganbmoore]

*no, I haven't read the new volume yet, don't spoil me*

Are there any female characters in this series who are all of the following:

1)  Alive.

2) Not evil.

3) Not a hermaphrodite.

4) Not fixated on Kougaiji (Lirin: bickeringly adoring younger sister with mutual but understandable complex, Yaone:  devoted apothecary, Pippi: fangirl.)

5)  Around for more than a chapter or two.

Yes, this randomly popped into my head a little while ago and won't go away. 

(And...ahm...kinda spamming, sorry.) 

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, I have nothing whatsoever that resembles a complaint about the 3 ladies, I just suddenly realized that they were all fixated on Kougaiji.

[droiche.livejournal.com]

Doku needs more fangirls. Oh yes he does.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Why is why I'm starting to think Pippi should have been fangirling him. I mean, isn't it typical fangirl behavior to fixate on the secondary guy who's always around the main hero, and build him up to pure and godlike proportions?

(Not that I can claim innocence of that from time to time myself...)

[droiche.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Most fangirls I know fixate on the leader and forget the other team members even exist. Hmmmm. I suppose if I had to choose between Kougaiji and Doku, I would choose Doku.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's which series? Saiyuki fandom is fixated on the main 4, but except for extremely massive things like Bleach or Naruto, I've mostly noticed fixating on a main supporting character, and then building up their relationship with the male or female lead to make them more central and crucial in their personal fanon canon.

[droiche.livejournal.com]

With Saiyuki there's such a huge cast of hot guys to choose from that I guess it's easier to spread the love around. Even Chin Yisou has his fair share of fan crushes. I was thinking more along the lines of music groups where it's usually the lead singer who gets the most attention or movies where there's clearly one male romantic lead who's always in the spotlight. You're right that many fans do rewrite the script to make the supporting cast more visible.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yeah. I stay completely out of any sort of RP fandom (bandom or otherwise) aside from my opinions on acting/singing/whatever ability and maybe looks.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I suspect Kougaiji keeps his assistants in the background. If they started getting 'famous' they might become targets of Stepma or Nii.

[droiche.livejournal.com]

Heh. I suspect they've always been targets of the ever resourceful Dr Nii. Or, more accurately, his playthings. ^_~

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Have you read the latest? "Experiments" might be the word. :D

[droiche.livejournal.com]

I'm up to volume 8 of Reload. I haven't got around to scanlations of the chapters that will be in vol 9 yet. Experiments is certainly something our beloved mad scientist would use Kou's gang for. =-P

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Well, I fangirl Doku like crazy because I can't resist those big-hearted adorable Sha boys, and I find his character type more...approachable, I suppose, than Kou? It's not that I dislike Kou, not by a long shot, but he's so wrapped up in the conflicts around his varying responsibilities as a prince, as a son, as a leader of his small group, etc. that it's harder to get a feel for who he is outside of his various roles; whereas Doku is just more of an everyday guy who's sort of inadvertently wound up mixed up in affairs far beyond his original station.

I can sort of see Pippi fixating on Kou in that setting, though, because he seems like he'd be the most famous one. Their podunk little desert village seems like it's a looooong way from Houtou so they'd not likely have very much direct contact with the prince and his crew, and while propaganda and/or gossip might touch on his talented, good-looking sidekicks, it wouldn't surprise me if the prince was the primary focus. He would have been a famous name from birth onwards, after all, while Yaone and Doku would be relative nobodies outside of their recent association with Kou.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I adore Doku.

Interestingly, though, what you list off is part of why I tend to fixate of Kou a lot of the time. That said, though, the rest...

I'm not sure how to put it, really. It's not a case of my liking characters ok but not understanding why everyone fangirls them(Yukimura is a good example of this...I like him, but I've never understood the mass love. Byakuya in Bleach is another. Then again, both have certain aspects I can easily point to as part of why I'm not crazy about them.) It's more like they're so messed up and have so many issues that I can't really touch it, just kind of admire from afar.

I mean, in complete honesty, if it weren't for the sheer levels of angst and issues, I'd probably be all over 585(the only number pairing I've learned...) but they're both so screwed up that the very idea makes me flee in terror.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the admire-from-afar is pretty much me with Kou. There's a ton of potential to explore interesting things with all those conflicts of reponsibility tearing him in multiple directions, but I don't feel like we've seen enough of who he is outside of his roles to ever write it myself. (Tho' I'll happily read someone else who feels more comfortable extrapolating from what little we've got.) Zuko would be another character who's hitting a lot of the same notes for me in terms of sort of being forced into a villain role that he doesn't want and being torn by responsibilities, but we get to see enough of his more vulnerable aspects outside of the duty-torn prince thing that I don't get the same sense of distancing that I do currently with Kou. I've written Zuko and would be comfortable doing so again, but I don't feel like I know Kou well enough to write comortably.

And funnily enough, to continue with the reversals, the angst and issues (or to be more precise, some of the specific flavors of angst and issues) are precisely why I am so obsessive about the 585, and less so about other ships -- Sanzo has tons of angst and issues as well, but his particular set don't resonate with me the way Gojyo's or Hakkai's do. If they were relatively issue-free or had a whole different set, I'd probably just sort of give them a virtual pat on the head, awww you boys are cute, and move along to the next subject. But it's the particular ways in which they're each screwed up, and how those issues sort of balance each other out, that really gets my imagination going.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think it's just that i worry the angst might be contagious. I mean,there's so much of it that it sssccccaaaarrrreeeeesssss me. Until Tsubasa, I never would have believed anyone could have as much angst as Hakkai. (I have been proved wrong.) Then again, my terror of Fai's angst is the only thing that keeps me from being into Fai and his life partner boyfriend husband companion Kurogane. (Except that, until Clamp kills them both and makes it impossible, I'm assuming they both go back to Kurogane's homeworld and Kurogane turns Fai over to Tomoyo. She managed to rein in Kurogane's overwhelming angst and make him a mostly functional human being, she can do the same for Fai. Granted, it gave Kurogane a massive princess complex, but there's nothing wrong with that...)

I think the main difference between Zuko and Kou (in terms of development) is that Zuko's a central character, while Kou is a supporting character and (to me) has always seemed to be there to show that more conventional ideas of heroism have no place in that world. In many ways, he's a traditional hero who's been trapped in the role of the villain. If he were able to dump the honor constraints and act like Sanzo and Co. most of his problems would go away (he has to know that there's no way she'll ever free his mother, he just can't let go of the hope) but he can't take that step.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nods* It's kind of telling that Kou is literally a character out of his own time in some ways, isn't he? I need to go poke through the earlier volumes again, but my memory (blurred by time and lots of cold medication at the moment) wants to say that the rest of the Houtou-jo royals were sealed away somehow at the same time Gyuma-oh was defeated 500 years ago, and have only fairly recently been unsealed/revived/etc. themselves?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Stepmama From Heck woke Kou up to be her flunky, but she and Lirin hadn't been imprisoned. (I remember this because of an author's note saying not to take Lirin lightly because even though she's little and cute and spunky and hyper and childlike, she was awake those 500 years, and Kou wasn't. Which has always made me wonder if the Lirin we see is Lirin trying to be the sister he remembers, or if she's trying to be someone she used to be because she was happier then.)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

But Lirin doesn't remember Kou's mom-- I always assumed she and Kou were sealed at the same time.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I always took that as the wife and mistress kept apart. I should try to remember what manga that was, and exactly what she said. Maybe Lirin just woke up earlier? In all honesty, I mostly remember it because it made me wonder if she had plans for a Big Reveal about Lirin.

Course, the only authors notes things I remember is that, and a comment in I think the first volume where she said Gojyo was looking for the right person, but it might not be a girl.