They'll take any wrong direction, it's in their blood, you know

[valarltd]

Let's talk about bad boys. Not villains, that's another subject. But bad boys. James Dean, Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, Starbuck, Spike, Jack Sparrow...you know the archtype.

Tell me why you love the one with a twinkle in his eye, a quip on his lips and a heart of gold under the callous exterior.

Tell me who your favorites are: any media, or in your own writing.


ETA: I'm an idiot. This was supposed to go to torquere_social

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Tyrone Slothrop. Because. He's Slothrop and he's a bad, promiscuous, fragmented man out to save the world. (Thomas Pynchon)

Jerry Cornelius. The anarchic, fratricidal, incestuous antihero of my youth. I adore him. (Michael Moorcock)

Random of Amber. Bastardy little ratfink, absent father, gambler, sneak, and devil. Still ridiculously sexy. (Roger Zelazny)

Corwin of Amber. Amnesiac rebel and would-be usurper of his brother's throne. Silver gloves, steel fists, magical sword, and a poet/bard on top of it all. A scoundrel and a killer and a hero. (Roger Zelazny)

In my own writing:
Significant Washington. She's a bad boy, but she's a girl... for some value of it. A shotgun-toting cab driver who moonlights as a pimp. Sarcastic, ruthless, but with her own sense of justice.


Why, because I love moral relativity. Law breakers can be on the side of justice, terrible fathers and children can be heroes. People who do what others look down on and scrap in the gutters are the ones with what it takes to come across and set the world right, usually so they can go back to what they were doing when someone else buggered it up.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Corwin always struck me as more anti-hero than bad boy, but I think the categories definitely overlap.