Of Rivalship and RivalSlash
Jun. 30th, 2005 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotThe thing is, I love the rivalry relationship in fiction. But for the most part I don't go for slashing rivals. And I'm trying to figure out why.
I have a long-standing affection for rivalship. For the most part I'm not talking about the villain/hero dynamic (though that's closely related, and also fascinates me) but rivals. "Best enemies," who might have started out as actual foes, even trying to kill one another, but somewhere along the way they've become neutral, or allies, sometimes even two members of a team. But they don't get along, due to fundamental differences (or similarities) of personality, or philosophy, or sometimes just because one or both of them is an ass. And they're constantly trying to prove themselves over the other, always snarking, always, competing, always driving one another to new levels.
They're especially common in fight shounen, fighting face to face as much as back to back, and their chosen expression of affection is "Don't die and deny me the chance of killing you first!" To varying degrees, this is Goku and Vegeta. Ranma and Ryouga. Kenshin and Saitou. Sanzo and Gojyo. Ban and Shido. Yuusuke and Kuwabara. Zoro and Sanji. My latest crush, Yugi and Kaiba. They're countless, and I don't get tired of them.
All these pairs have two things in common: they're one of my favorite relationships of the series in question, often my absolute favorite relationship; for many of them one of the chars (most often the rival) is my favorite character of the series.
And, while slash exists for pretty much all of them, I don't have that much interest in reading or writing it for any of them.
It's a conundrum that's puzzled me for a while, ever since I figured out that yeah, I like slash. It would be pretty damn hot in a lot of these cases. And I can certainly see where it comes from: these chars all have chemistry. They're incredibly deeply bonded--some of them I even call soulmates, not in the romantic sense, but in that they're virtually tied together by fate, absolutely unable to ignore the existence one another, no matter how much it stings. They exist to play off each other.
If you convert that heated intensity to sexual passion, there's pretty much three ways it can go. The first is an unconsummated relationship. Either the attraction is one-sided, an unrequited love--but that's depressing, while not being the kind of high tragedy fangirls like me like to write or read; or it's all UST, which gets frustrating after a while. Sooner or later one craves resolution.
So the two rivals end up engaging in casual, meaningless, extremely sexy sex. Often repeatedly. But a few problems arise with this. For whatever reasons, in many such rivalships, one or both of the two are canonically involved with someone else (often romantically, though it can be an intense friendship or sibling love). While not universally true, I tend to be a canon whore, and don't care to see canon couples broken up, even for the sake of hot boysex, especially when it would be OOC for someone to abandon a loved one for the hated rival. Especially when those couples are OTPs, which a lot of them are for me. More on that later.
Even if both of the rivals are unattached, however, it's hard to maintain casual sex for very long. It's fine for a PWP, but in longer stories, only certain characters have the sort of mindset and life situation that could make a pair believably be fucking, while not having it affect their interactions outside of the sack. If it doesn't turn to something more, it's liable to start breeding resentment, changing the relationship dynamic. One of my favorite aspects of rivalries is the certain definite respect between the rivals; they may despise each other, but they acknowledge one another as equals (or close to); the competition doesn't have the same bite if they're not closely matched. Casual sex, using one another, can too easily damage that mutual respect. There's also the issue of the seme-uke dichotomy, difficult to avoid in animanga fic, in which a relationship requires a dominant and a submissive partner; if those roles are fixed in a story, they introduce an innate power imbalance.
Moreover, in its way, sex without romance, without caring, is even more frustrating than UST. It's almost getting there, but not quite. Because what much rivalslash is driving to in the end is the admission of mutual love between the rivals. Not necessarily verbally; that's pretty much impossible with some of the characters. But in deeds if not in words, the rivals manage to put aside their differences and become lovers.
Except--this undermines the whole rivalry. They might still snap at each other, might still fight and compete, but what's important is the way they truly feel. The intensity of their clashing is supplanted by the intensity of their devotion, and their aggression becomes a sham, a game, just a cover. The snarking still is funny, the peculiar ways of showing grudging affection still is cute. But the edge, the fire is gone. Any doubts about whether they really care, how important they are to one another, are erased.
Now, wait just a minute. I've thrown Gojyo into a freezing river just to make Sanzo take care of his hypothermic ass. I write fifty thousand words just to get Zoro to say "I hate you" to Sanji and have it unequivocally mean "I love you." Obviously I like admissions of caring between rivals as much as the next fangirl! So why the anti-slash, even when it's not interfering with my chosen OTPs?
The difference is the nature of the connection. Friends of a certain type can still be rivals, still compete all-out. Romantic lovers should be more supportive of one another, depend on each other in different ways. This is why in so many rival pairings, the rivals do have close relationships with other people--they need others they can rely on, absolutely and unconditionally, without the stress of the rivalry. I love that kind of relationship, too, the total, trusting partnership, such as Ban and Ginji have. But it's a completely different dynamic from rivalship. I enjoy both, and don't especially want to see one transmuted in the other. Especially when I can often have both.
Which leads back to my OTPs. In certain cases I'll be fond of one pairing partly because it allows for exploration of another relationship, without the need to make the latter romantic, since the romance is already present. In Dragonball Z, I loved reading Buma/Vegeta - but while I found them a fun pairing, even more I liked Vegeta and Goku's incredibly intense connection. And it was a rare B/V story that didn't have at least a bit of that, because it's pretty much impossible to write an IC Vegeta without mentioning Goku sooner or later. Vegeta defines himself by how he measures up to Kakarrot.
--Incidentally, you'll note that while my OTPs will vary between het and slash, not a single rivalship I've referenced is male-female. This could be because men and women compete in fundamentally different ways, and therefore don't have that nearly perfectly matched, competitive championship drive that is essential to rivalry. It could also be that in the great general tradition of romance trumps all, it's pretty much impossible to find a male-female love-hate relationship that doesn't canonically become love-love eventually.
There are varying degrees to rivalry, obviously. It tends to be that the less intense the conflict, the easier I am about slashing it. I've developed a taste for Zoro and Sanji, partly because while they have rivalry tendencies, they're not so dependent on it as most (they aren't really evenly matched competitors; Zoro lives for the fight, and Sanji doesn't) and what they have is pretty clearly friendship anyway, albeit of an abusive and argumentative sort. ZoSan also is one of the few pairings that I could see as completely casual sex without it messing up their dynamic, just mutual pleasure between comrades, and that's how I like to write and read it. The moment it crosses the line into a love story, I lose interest.
What it comes down to, in the end, is that while I love the dependency of rivalship, and enjoy seeing the relationship acknowledged, I don't really want more than is already there. The complex relationship that draws me to rivals is that idea of needing someone else, not because you want their body or enjoy their presence, but because that other, striving against you, challenging you, defines who you are. In the end, I don't want rivals to admit, "You're important to me in spite of our differences," but, "You're important because of them, because our rivalry makes me who I am." Which I find as involving and affecting a bond as any true love affair.
I have a long-standing affection for rivalship. For the most part I'm not talking about the villain/hero dynamic (though that's closely related, and also fascinates me) but rivals. "Best enemies," who might have started out as actual foes, even trying to kill one another, but somewhere along the way they've become neutral, or allies, sometimes even two members of a team. But they don't get along, due to fundamental differences (or similarities) of personality, or philosophy, or sometimes just because one or both of them is an ass. And they're constantly trying to prove themselves over the other, always snarking, always, competing, always driving one another to new levels.
They're especially common in fight shounen, fighting face to face as much as back to back, and their chosen expression of affection is "Don't die and deny me the chance of killing you first!" To varying degrees, this is Goku and Vegeta. Ranma and Ryouga. Kenshin and Saitou. Sanzo and Gojyo. Ban and Shido. Yuusuke and Kuwabara. Zoro and Sanji. My latest crush, Yugi and Kaiba. They're countless, and I don't get tired of them.
All these pairs have two things in common: they're one of my favorite relationships of the series in question, often my absolute favorite relationship; for many of them one of the chars (most often the rival) is my favorite character of the series.
And, while slash exists for pretty much all of them, I don't have that much interest in reading or writing it for any of them.
It's a conundrum that's puzzled me for a while, ever since I figured out that yeah, I like slash. It would be pretty damn hot in a lot of these cases. And I can certainly see where it comes from: these chars all have chemistry. They're incredibly deeply bonded--some of them I even call soulmates, not in the romantic sense, but in that they're virtually tied together by fate, absolutely unable to ignore the existence one another, no matter how much it stings. They exist to play off each other.
If you convert that heated intensity to sexual passion, there's pretty much three ways it can go. The first is an unconsummated relationship. Either the attraction is one-sided, an unrequited love--but that's depressing, while not being the kind of high tragedy fangirls like me like to write or read; or it's all UST, which gets frustrating after a while. Sooner or later one craves resolution.
So the two rivals end up engaging in casual, meaningless, extremely sexy sex. Often repeatedly. But a few problems arise with this. For whatever reasons, in many such rivalships, one or both of the two are canonically involved with someone else (often romantically, though it can be an intense friendship or sibling love). While not universally true, I tend to be a canon whore, and don't care to see canon couples broken up, even for the sake of hot boysex, especially when it would be OOC for someone to abandon a loved one for the hated rival. Especially when those couples are OTPs, which a lot of them are for me. More on that later.
Even if both of the rivals are unattached, however, it's hard to maintain casual sex for very long. It's fine for a PWP, but in longer stories, only certain characters have the sort of mindset and life situation that could make a pair believably be fucking, while not having it affect their interactions outside of the sack. If it doesn't turn to something more, it's liable to start breeding resentment, changing the relationship dynamic. One of my favorite aspects of rivalries is the certain definite respect between the rivals; they may despise each other, but they acknowledge one another as equals (or close to); the competition doesn't have the same bite if they're not closely matched. Casual sex, using one another, can too easily damage that mutual respect. There's also the issue of the seme-uke dichotomy, difficult to avoid in animanga fic, in which a relationship requires a dominant and a submissive partner; if those roles are fixed in a story, they introduce an innate power imbalance.
Moreover, in its way, sex without romance, without caring, is even more frustrating than UST. It's almost getting there, but not quite. Because what much rivalslash is driving to in the end is the admission of mutual love between the rivals. Not necessarily verbally; that's pretty much impossible with some of the characters. But in deeds if not in words, the rivals manage to put aside their differences and become lovers.
Except--this undermines the whole rivalry. They might still snap at each other, might still fight and compete, but what's important is the way they truly feel. The intensity of their clashing is supplanted by the intensity of their devotion, and their aggression becomes a sham, a game, just a cover. The snarking still is funny, the peculiar ways of showing grudging affection still is cute. But the edge, the fire is gone. Any doubts about whether they really care, how important they are to one another, are erased.
Now, wait just a minute. I've thrown Gojyo into a freezing river just to make Sanzo take care of his hypothermic ass. I write fifty thousand words just to get Zoro to say "I hate you" to Sanji and have it unequivocally mean "I love you." Obviously I like admissions of caring between rivals as much as the next fangirl! So why the anti-slash, even when it's not interfering with my chosen OTPs?
The difference is the nature of the connection. Friends of a certain type can still be rivals, still compete all-out. Romantic lovers should be more supportive of one another, depend on each other in different ways. This is why in so many rival pairings, the rivals do have close relationships with other people--they need others they can rely on, absolutely and unconditionally, without the stress of the rivalry. I love that kind of relationship, too, the total, trusting partnership, such as Ban and Ginji have. But it's a completely different dynamic from rivalship. I enjoy both, and don't especially want to see one transmuted in the other. Especially when I can often have both.
Which leads back to my OTPs. In certain cases I'll be fond of one pairing partly because it allows for exploration of another relationship, without the need to make the latter romantic, since the romance is already present. In Dragonball Z, I loved reading Buma/Vegeta - but while I found them a fun pairing, even more I liked Vegeta and Goku's incredibly intense connection. And it was a rare B/V story that didn't have at least a bit of that, because it's pretty much impossible to write an IC Vegeta without mentioning Goku sooner or later. Vegeta defines himself by how he measures up to Kakarrot.
--Incidentally, you'll note that while my OTPs will vary between het and slash, not a single rivalship I've referenced is male-female. This could be because men and women compete in fundamentally different ways, and therefore don't have that nearly perfectly matched, competitive championship drive that is essential to rivalry. It could also be that in the great general tradition of romance trumps all, it's pretty much impossible to find a male-female love-hate relationship that doesn't canonically become love-love eventually.
There are varying degrees to rivalry, obviously. It tends to be that the less intense the conflict, the easier I am about slashing it. I've developed a taste for Zoro and Sanji, partly because while they have rivalry tendencies, they're not so dependent on it as most (they aren't really evenly matched competitors; Zoro lives for the fight, and Sanji doesn't) and what they have is pretty clearly friendship anyway, albeit of an abusive and argumentative sort. ZoSan also is one of the few pairings that I could see as completely casual sex without it messing up their dynamic, just mutual pleasure between comrades, and that's how I like to write and read it. The moment it crosses the line into a love story, I lose interest.
What it comes down to, in the end, is that while I love the dependency of rivalship, and enjoy seeing the relationship acknowledged, I don't really want more than is already there. The complex relationship that draws me to rivals is that idea of needing someone else, not because you want their body or enjoy their presence, but because that other, striving against you, challenging you, defines who you are. In the end, I don't want rivals to admit, "You're important to me in spite of our differences," but, "You're important because of them, because our rivalry makes me who I am." Which I find as involving and affecting a bond as any true love affair.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-01 03:35 pm (UTC)The difference between Sanji and Zoro is that for Sanji, fighting is a means to an end - protecting loved ones, proving himself, etc. While as for Zoro, fighting *is* the end, the battle, and being victorious in battle, is the goal of his entire life. Zoro's role on the ship is fighter, as Sanji's is cook, according to the char blurbs at the beginning of the manga (and there is no official first mate, despite fanon traditionally assigning Zoro the role.)
And oh damn, yes, seme Sanji = teh pure sex. I can't stand him getting girlified, either personality-wise in fiction or visually in doujinshi. If it weren't One Piece he'd so be topping anyone. It's just that in OP, compared to his crewmates, he's the closest you get to a limp-wristed prettyboy bishounen! And his drive to serve, yes, it would be fascinating to see that play out in the bedroom setting. (Also, totally right that bottom =/= submissive =/= uke. But that's a topic for another discussion. A looong one.) If I put Zoro on top, it's mostly because I find the idea of super!sex!god!Zoro to be...hysterically funny. Of course he doesn't care about sex! He's so good at it that there's no challenge!
I actually have seen Slayers (1st 2 seasons, anyway), but I'm afraid I didn't go for Xellos/Zelgadis...and Xellos didn't seem to consider Zel as a rival, being Mazoku (...umm, if that was the word? it's been a few years) he was a bit out of Zel's league? Though that was just my impression, I'm not familiar enough with it for a full analysis. In all honesty Slayers is another of those team series that I'd prolly prefer gen friendshipping to anything else, because they were a cute gang. (...okay, and I liked Lina/Gourry. Though trying to read *romance* with them would likely cause my brain to explode)
38 is only truly depressing to Gojyo fans, I think. To us, however, it's about the worst thing you can do, because Gojyo would seriously just die. It's the only way to make it work. ;_;
Yuki & Kyou...hmm. I need to read the FB manga. In the anime they seemed very rival-ry, coming to an understanding at the end, and I ended up totally OT3ing them. But I've heard several folks argue otherwise...
Scryed I need to see. The bro told me I'd like it, he's usually right about these things.
And Robin/Nami!! Much with the squee ^__^ no rivals there, because Nami fully knows Robin pwns all. Just mmmmm. (...I should sue Oda for making me gay. Robin has no right being that hot.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-01 09:28 pm (UTC)What I love about you is that instead of complaining that there's no good gen and doing nothing about it, you PRODUCE it. Augh. My HERO. And you will always be my hero for getting me into OP. I had always read your Saiyuki fiction like it was crack, and one day I saw a new series on my X-parrot alerts: One Piece. Hmmmm. I'll have you know that I read Seven Deaths in its entirety without knowing who ANY of the characters were and then immediately spent three solid days reading from OP chapter one to the most recently released that week. That is how deeply I was entranced by your characterization. Just thought you should know.
Girlified Sanji = whoah I am barfing. Coincidentally, he's only stupid and girly around GIRLS... but seriously, he's such a man. Rawr. I completely agree that if it were any cast other than the OP cast (or Gojyo, AKA The Seme) Sanji would be topping like whipped cream and sprinkles. Such a man.
And his drive to serve, yes, it would be fascinating to see that play out in the bedroom setting.
Perhaps I'll have to write that for you. ^_~ I also happen to think that a similar submissive role would feel natural to Zoro when it comes to Luffy. Verrrrry interesting. However, Sanji slips so easily for me into a worshipful, servile, sensual and erotic lover that I really may have to be writing some of that soon.
Awww, Xel/Zel was my first yaoi OTP. XD Xelloss is quite an enigma... and I can't see him being truly friends with any of the Slayers aside from Zelgadis, because the rest of them lack a darker side that can lend itself to attempting to understand the nature of a higher-level mazoku. Zelgadis amuses Xelloss as much as Lina does, but in a different way. The feel between them is unique, and the Zelgadis-torture possibilities are endless. Xelloss's entirely exotic love for sadomasochism has made him one of my all-time favorite characters, and even when not connected to Zelgadis or any other main character (or any other character at all), it is just an amazing facet to explore. You really get to see Xelloss's sadistic side come out hardcore in SlayersTRY, when he becomes entirely gleeful, firey, expressive, and excited as he tortures the dragon-mazoku Valgaav. What can one say, a higher-level mazoku adores pain in every form.
38 is the pits. If it happened, Gojyo would just waste away, and that would be the end of it. He would just die. I am a Gojyo fan more than ANYTHING, and I just can't stand the total sacrifice of him that 38 requires. It's a pairing that is selfish and doesn't take the whole team into consideration. Even Goku would be heartbroken. Not like Gojyo would be, though.... especially losing to Sanzo like that.
The Furuba anime is SO fucking sugarcoated. The manga is about three times as long as that already, too. I think the anime ended (with a false ending) sometime during book 5. The manga is on something like book 16 now. I dislike Tohru enough to stick her with Yuki any day. The way I see it, Yuki needs specifically Tohru to make him feel like a good person, while Kyo, in my opinion, does not. I'm not a big fan of that particular OT3. THE MABUDACHI TRIO, ON THE OTHER HAND..... *drools* My Aya~~~
Scryed is a work of art.
If I hadn't been gay before One Piece, Nami and Robin would have made me that way. DAMN. I'm still going to give respect to Nami in this relationship, because I think she deserves it, and it's one of the issues that Robin is going to have to confront: I'm admiring an EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD. Yes, Robin, live with it. You're 28 and you're jaded and you're "alone" and you're doomed and blah blah blah and a gorgeous 18-year old woman is in love with you, and she is not stupid. WHAT NOW.