Spot of Monday-morning analysis
Feb. 7th, 2005 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaTwo more pairing essays to go: TezuFuji and... Charmian, what I make of this is that you want to know about my Atobe pairings, right? ^^;
Third time in a week someone's asked me about quote unbalanced relationships unquote. Thus I take a moment out to talk about it. ...By observation I think this is a matter of the reader's self intersecting with the text. Tania, for instance, absolutely adores Yuki x Shuuichi because she identifies with Shuuichi the sparkly fluffy silly uncritical unthinking rushes-off-in-all-directions uke who gets his guy through application of sheer dumb determination and genkilove. Said guy being cool and urbane and manly and in control and all that. (This is not at all how I see Yuki but it's how Tania sees Yuki; I don't know if it's how Yuki is meant to be seen.) I find this horrific, both the identifying-with-Shindou-Shuuichi part and the sparkling-over-assholes-because-they're-kewl-and-controlling part, but it's what pushes her buttons as a fantasy. Sure enough when T draws up her own original BL manga (she does this) they are full of wide-eyed fluffy utterly-useless ukes of the kind one finds in 50% of the stuff that's out there, and that doesn't do it for me at all. However, given that it's 50% of what's out there, I have to conclude that T is with the majority and I am not. It wouldn't be the first time.
Moving on. Then you have what I call Kristin-pairings eheh: Gingetsu x Ran, GyouTai, SanaYuki and (prevalent fannish interpretation diverging from my own, but let's go with fanon for the moment) HijiOki and JuuKazu. SanaYuki is the most immediately obvious example of why I don't even see these as unbalanced pairings: how is it not obvious that the person who holds the upper hand in the relationship is not at all the person who tops in bed or looks/acts more intimidating? All that's irrelevant. The person who holds the upper hand is the person who's better at dealing with his emotions, just like in real life.[1] It's the person to whom love is most solid. I grok the semes much more in these; I attribute to them the same bewildered attraction I would feel, faced with someone who plays by a whole other rulebook from the one to which I'm used. In fact, I think it's why they're always the seme. IMO all the physical strength and age and leadership skill0rz and, I dunno, intelligence? earning power? just about make up for the power imbalance of affairs-of-the-heart being the uke's playing field. (Also applies to a number of pairings that aren't really Kristin-pairings, such as Ban x Ginji or even Crawford x Schuldich. Although with the latter it's more like barely premeditated acts of insanity are Schuldich's playing field, and any putative relationship between the two certainly qualifies as one from Crawford's POV.)
An important consideration that ensues from the above, given how many of these pairings are edged with tragedy: characters like Okita and Ran are better at coping with the inevitable. It's the characters like Gingetsu and Hijikata who're going to be completely shipwrecked.
Somewhat relatedly, I resonate rather embarrassingly to the adoption-of-small-fuzzy-thing-found-on-street trope that sometimes comes up (Reiji x Naoya, Gingetsu x Ran), once again from the seme POV. That is unbalanced. Or perhaps not as unbalanced as it looks; I've never met a cat owner who wasn't completely whipped by his/her pet (insofar as I'm concerned, if you allow something to mark you as territory by getting its hair/scent all over you and walk out the door like that, you're pwnz0red). It's also a fairly new development in my readerly reaction. A couple of years old at best, corresponding to my getting a real job, which is indicative. I'm not financially independant enough that I could keep a real cat in wet catfood let alone support a human being offhand, but I can imagine it, which when I was in college I simply couldn't. Apparently part of me thinks like the kind of guy who likes it if his marriage partner doesn't work a day job. ^^; (Memory says Aoe Kiichi says something in the manga that pins it down quite well, but fails to provide the actual quote.)
By virtue of elimination, then, the people who are most bothered by a perceived lack of power balance should be the ones who go for crabby ukes and/or sasoi ukes and/or outright manipulative ukes, where all of the above goes to make up for the "inherent disadvantage" of their uke-ness. I used to; still kind of do. But as I get older I get more seme (?!?!?), or maybe I've stopped seeinguke-ness stereotypical femininity, let's stop mincing words - as an inherent disadvantage, for the reasons given in the second paragraph. Oh, that and the people who're primarily into guy buddies + sex pairings like Wolfwood x Vash or a lot of sports manga BL or what you have in Saiyuki, where the playing field is completely equalized from the start and thus sidesteps the feminine-principle issue altogether. Which... I do too! I guess the point of this essay is I Like Everything.
...Except the stories in which the seme is cruel and unfeeling and the uke is all weepy and spineless and obsessed with Whether He Loves Me. There's unbalance for you, and it annoys me to bits (except it also obviously pushes a lot of people's buttons because it comprises another 40% of what's out there). Thank Yamane that Asami x Takaba isn't like that. Takaba strikes back! He's never more than half-successful but the show of defiance is critical in sustaining my interest.[2] Also Asami is not so much unfeeling as he has a really warped value system. But uh, whole 'nother essay.
[1] Taiki isn't, to begin with, and the peripateia of GyouTai pretty much has to do with that - at least until one starts hitting COUPS D'ETAT okay I'm okay I'm calm.
[2] People start edging away when I say this on MSN. Worry not, I find it sufficiently disturbing that Asami's feelings make sense to me thx.
Unrelated #1: you know you're not getting enough vegetables when you start craving things like spinach and Greek salad for breakfast. Now someone talk me out of drinking the super-acidic tomato-cucumber juice/balsamic vinegar liquid left in the bottom of the takeout container.
Unrelated #2: someone also talk me out of 1) compiling a mix by matching a song to each of the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
30_kisses topics, 2) signing up for Draco/Fuji and 3) writing thirty drabbles about Draco and Fuji skipping class to sit around in the latter's cramped McGill Ghetto one-and-half listening to the record I chose for said topic while cleverly working kisses in there somehow. (I haven't because it's very obviously one of those projects whose awesomeness is in no way matched by my ability to see it to actual fruition.)
Third time in a week someone's asked me about quote unbalanced relationships unquote. Thus I take a moment out to talk about it. ...By observation I think this is a matter of the reader's self intersecting with the text. Tania, for instance, absolutely adores Yuki x Shuuichi because she identifies with Shuuichi the sparkly fluffy silly uncritical unthinking rushes-off-in-all-directions uke who gets his guy through application of sheer dumb determination and genkilove. Said guy being cool and urbane and manly and in control and all that. (This is not at all how I see Yuki but it's how Tania sees Yuki; I don't know if it's how Yuki is meant to be seen.) I find this horrific, both the identifying-with-Shindou-Shuuichi part and the sparkling-over-assholes-because-they're-kewl-and-controlling part, but it's what pushes her buttons as a fantasy. Sure enough when T draws up her own original BL manga (she does this) they are full of wide-eyed fluffy utterly-useless ukes of the kind one finds in 50% of the stuff that's out there, and that doesn't do it for me at all. However, given that it's 50% of what's out there, I have to conclude that T is with the majority and I am not. It wouldn't be the first time.
Moving on. Then you have what I call Kristin-pairings eheh: Gingetsu x Ran, GyouTai, SanaYuki and (prevalent fannish interpretation diverging from my own, but let's go with fanon for the moment) HijiOki and JuuKazu. SanaYuki is the most immediately obvious example of why I don't even see these as unbalanced pairings: how is it not obvious that the person who holds the upper hand in the relationship is not at all the person who tops in bed or looks/acts more intimidating? All that's irrelevant. The person who holds the upper hand is the person who's better at dealing with his emotions, just like in real life.[1] It's the person to whom love is most solid. I grok the semes much more in these; I attribute to them the same bewildered attraction I would feel, faced with someone who plays by a whole other rulebook from the one to which I'm used. In fact, I think it's why they're always the seme. IMO all the physical strength and age and leadership skill0rz and, I dunno, intelligence? earning power? just about make up for the power imbalance of affairs-of-the-heart being the uke's playing field. (Also applies to a number of pairings that aren't really Kristin-pairings, such as Ban x Ginji or even Crawford x Schuldich. Although with the latter it's more like barely premeditated acts of insanity are Schuldich's playing field, and any putative relationship between the two certainly qualifies as one from Crawford's POV.)
An important consideration that ensues from the above, given how many of these pairings are edged with tragedy: characters like Okita and Ran are better at coping with the inevitable. It's the characters like Gingetsu and Hijikata who're going to be completely shipwrecked.
Somewhat relatedly, I resonate rather embarrassingly to the adoption-of-small-fuzzy-thing-found-on-street trope that sometimes comes up (Reiji x Naoya, Gingetsu x Ran), once again from the seme POV. That is unbalanced. Or perhaps not as unbalanced as it looks; I've never met a cat owner who wasn't completely whipped by his/her pet (insofar as I'm concerned, if you allow something to mark you as territory by getting its hair/scent all over you and walk out the door like that, you're pwnz0red). It's also a fairly new development in my readerly reaction. A couple of years old at best, corresponding to my getting a real job, which is indicative. I'm not financially independant enough that I could keep a real cat in wet catfood let alone support a human being offhand, but I can imagine it, which when I was in college I simply couldn't. Apparently part of me thinks like the kind of guy who likes it if his marriage partner doesn't work a day job. ^^; (Memory says Aoe Kiichi says something in the manga that pins it down quite well, but fails to provide the actual quote.)
By virtue of elimination, then, the people who are most bothered by a perceived lack of power balance should be the ones who go for crabby ukes and/or sasoi ukes and/or outright manipulative ukes, where all of the above goes to make up for the "inherent disadvantage" of their uke-ness. I used to; still kind of do. But as I get older I get more seme (?!?!?), or maybe I've stopped seeing
...Except the stories in which the seme is cruel and unfeeling and the uke is all weepy and spineless and obsessed with Whether He Loves Me. There's unbalance for you, and it annoys me to bits (except it also obviously pushes a lot of people's buttons because it comprises another 40% of what's out there). Thank Yamane that Asami x Takaba isn't like that. Takaba strikes back! He's never more than half-successful but the show of defiance is critical in sustaining my interest.[2] Also Asami is not so much unfeeling as he has a really warped value system. But uh, whole 'nother essay.
[1] Taiki isn't, to begin with, and the peripateia of GyouTai pretty much has to do with that - at least until one starts hitting COUPS D'ETAT okay I'm okay I'm calm.
[2] People start edging away when I say this on MSN. Worry not, I find it sufficiently disturbing that Asami's feelings make sense to me thx.
Unrelated #1: you know you're not getting enough vegetables when you start craving things like spinach and Greek salad for breakfast. Now someone talk me out of drinking the super-acidic tomato-cucumber juice/balsamic vinegar liquid left in the bottom of the takeout container.
Unrelated #2: someone also talk me out of 1) compiling a mix by matching a song to each of the
30_kisses topics, 2) signing up for Draco/Fuji and 3) writing thirty drabbles about Draco and Fuji skipping class to sit around in the latter's cramped McGill Ghetto one-and-half listening to the record I chose for said topic while cleverly working kisses in there somehow. (I haven't because it's very obviously one of those projects whose awesomeness is in no way matched by my ability to see it to actual fruition.)
