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Don't judge the rest of the YYH fanbase by my history alone, but I just wanted to point something out:

I was eleven when I started watching YYH - and believe me, I wasn't the awesome intelligent person I am now. I'd been spoiled by what little shallow American cartoons I'd watched [no, seriously - looking back, so many shows I watched back then had 2D characters [and I'm not talking about their being animated]]. Which meant that I couldn't fully grasp Kurama's character and truly appreciate it for what it was.

Fast-forward to age thirteen, when I started writing fanfiction [and so did most other people, from what I can tell]. Having had no person to discuss YYH with [I was the first person to like anime among my group of friends], my understanding of Kurama was still limited to the anime.

It was only after reading the manga and having some serious discussions about Kurama [and a few years to wisen up and deepen my understanding of the world] that I truly came to begin to see him for the person he was. To come to the conclusions we've drawn about Kurama, there needs to be, first, a true understanding of him, reflection and discussion, if you will. Just like with a person in RL, it takes time to look past the surface and into the soul. [...UGH THAT REEKED OF CLICHÉ.] Sure, it seems obvious to us now, but it's probably not that clear to a prepubescent fan who's following the anime and fanfiction only.

First off, using the rest of the team as a gauge against whether Kurama is cruel or not isn't a convincing argument because the rest of the team really isn't all that cruel; it's like saying he has the greenest eyes of any guy on the team--doesn't mean he has exceptionally green eyes, just that they're greener than those belonging to the people you're comparing him to.

Second, while Kurama does state that he doesn't believe in mercy, his actions do not always support this. His willingness to sacrifice himself for Shiori is one of his defining moments and contradicts this picture of him. Havi makes another good point; Kurama treats Touya mercifully and refuses to kill him. Kurama also intends to treat Ura Urishima well and save him from the supposed wrath of his teammates (although that turned out to be pathetically dimwitted on Kurama's part.)

I guess my point isn't that Kurama is a goodie-two-shoes or that he can't be a magnificent b*****d occasionally, but that he is a ridiculously complex character--quick labels can't do him service.

Kurama appears to have the capacity to be the cruelest, most ruthless member of the team. This capacity does not negate the other examples given of times when he has displayed mercy and compassion (and hesitation in taking the most pragmatic route).

I'm with InkMistress on this one.

(Sorry to jump back a ways.)

I've had Kurama argue with himself in fanfiction . . . but he was actually arguing with himself, as opposed to having two separate personalities. More like two separate thought processes/trains of logic/approaches to a problem that run at occasional cross-purposes.

Fanfiction writers seem like they tend to conflate soul with personality, and thus conflate multiple souls with multiple personalities, despite that there aren't multiple souls in the first place and why they often end up with three personalities on the assumed basis of two souls is generally mysterious. It isn't made very clear in the anime that this is the case, particularly in the dub; even leaving aside the moment in the Dark Tournament when 'Youko' talks to 'Shuuichi,' in the third episode Kurama just states that he "became the child of" human parents, and later when he talks about his state of being as "a merger, not a possession," he's referring specifically at the time to being unable to separate himself from his current body, which lets the viewer know only one distinct fact: that he can't dispossess the form. That could be interpreted as several different things, and allows for the possibility that he merged with an existing soul during the process (before I had access to anything beyond the dub, this is one of hypotheses I considered based on that line). In the manga, however, as has already been stated, it's made absolutely plain that there was no existing soul. The dub goes on to muddy the issue even further in the Sensui arc, when Kurama says he hasn't actually transformed into the Youko even though his body has changed, suggesting that there's something other than body changes going on when he does but not providing any further elucidation. (I have no clear recollection of what the sub says at any of these points, and thus don't know whether it's more clear, less, or about the same on the issue. I kind of want to haul out my DVDs this weekend and check.)

I note, though, that while there is no support whatsoever for in canon for the theory that Kurama is separate from Shuuichi is separate from Youko (psychologically speaking), and while it does follow logically that the explicit description of his origin makes this vastly unlikely, it's also not impossible that it could have ended up that way. Having a single soul doesn't preclude the possibility of multiple personalities, and his behavior in canon can be construed as at least allowing for it (particularly because [as I understand, with my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject] YYH already doesn't quite represent DID accurately in any case). If Kurama were to be a plural system, you could make a case for those three as base personalities, and it might make for a really interesting fanfiction premise.

All of that said . . . it's still vastly unlikely, and it would take an enormously well-articulated fic to make me buy it.

Ditto. Especially since it would help explain (or could be justified) by the earlier discussion on this page--Kurama is often both merciful and merciless; one fight he'll spare a fighter's life and the next he'll murder a child. (Although I would like to point out that in Gamemaster's case, Kurama had virtually no other choice and was sacrificing one child for the entire human world. Probably he's the only person on the YYH team who could have done that, true, but he wasn't acting out of malice.)