It's said that slash rose from smarm - that fen got thoroughly sick of Spock and Kirk not consumating what was pretty evidently love, and decided to hell with social conventions, these guys needed to be together. And I can understand where they're coming from. Constant UST can annoy the hell out of me. I can't watch Smallville; I scream at Lex and Clark to just KISS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD (well, and Smallville is just not a very good show and is tremendously irritating on a lot of levels, but the clexy stuff is rather nice is frustrating)
Character relationships are both my bread & butter and my greatest addiction, and like you, I go to fanfic for more of the interaction I love in canon, and to see chars & relationships progress further (actually, this might explain why I'm not into fic for arc shows, especially those centering on char development, since the canon scratches that itch for me). The problem I run into is that for me, a romantic relationship is not necessarily the highest progression of a relationship.
And here's why I'm a bad yaoi fangirl - because there's quite a few pairings that I *love* as friendship, that I do not see as sexual, that I do see turning into a sexual relationship, and that I have no interest in seeing any sex or romance, because the love there is, to my mind, of a different nature entirely.
A lot of this is subjective. For canon pairings it's one thing; I'm not going to deny Shuuichi and Yuki's love, and a fic about their relationship where they didn't get physical would frustrate. I don't care much for YnM, and part of the reason might because Hisoka & Tsuzuki pretty obviously are a couple but aren't doing anything about it. You mentioned post-romance fic, stories with couples already established - I love those myself, that sure, certain sort of love (I am *such* a sucker for stories about married couples.)
But then you get into something like GetBackers, in which I adore Ban & Ginji's friendship and am absolutely totally 150% in favor of BanxGinjixBan. And yet I've written little genuine yaoi for them, because for me, at least, that's not really what it's about. If there's attraction there, it mostly stems from the fact that they just love and need each other so much that their bond is physical as well as everything else. Consumation of that physical part just doesn't interest me as much as the complexities of the emotions that tie them together.
And then there's, say, One Piece, in which I love so many of the char dynamics, but don't see nearly any of them as sexual. Luffy & Zoro's relationship is probably my favorite if I had to choose, but their bond is one of friendship, to my mind. I think they love each other; I don't think they're in love with each other (and Luffy+sex breaks my brain). At the same time, I desperately want to read fic about them, because the canon doesn't quite totally fulfill me; they show they care for each other, but I want just that little bit more, the realization from Zoro of just how much his idiot captain does mean to him...
What it comes down to, I suppose, is a matter of expectations, what you're looking to get out of a fic, and what tensions are resolved. Stories are more stirring when they do affect something, when at the end something is different from what it was before. Romance is an obvious way to manage this - char A & char B always loved each other, now they sleep together, obviously they're at a new level in their relationship. But for me, at least, there's something just as powerful, or even more powerful, about a subtler change. I love h/c stories because--in the well-written ones, at least--the chars come out of it with new understandings about each other..."I didn't know he cared about me so much to do *that*"; "I didn't know I cared about him so much that I *would* do *that*." In pairing stories, this realization usually is 'sealed with a kiss', so to speak, but for me, it's not the kiss that satisfies, it's the realization, and I don't mind when the kiss isn't there.
I gotta say, thank you so much for that comment. Not sure if this reply makes much sense, but it's clarified in my mind some things I've been wondering about...
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Character relationships are both my bread & butter and my greatest addiction, and like you, I go to fanfic for more of the interaction I love in canon, and to see chars & relationships progress further (actually, this might explain why I'm not into fic for arc shows, especially those centering on char development, since the canon scratches that itch for me). The problem I run into is that for me, a romantic relationship is not necessarily the highest progression of a relationship.
And here's why I'm a bad yaoi fangirl - because there's quite a few pairings that I *love* as friendship, that I do not see as sexual, that I do see turning into a sexual relationship, and that I have no interest in seeing any sex or romance, because the love there is, to my mind, of a different nature entirely.
A lot of this is subjective. For canon pairings it's one thing; I'm not going to deny Shuuichi and Yuki's love, and a fic about their relationship where they didn't get physical would frustrate. I don't care much for YnM, and part of the reason might because Hisoka & Tsuzuki pretty obviously are a couple but aren't doing anything about it. You mentioned post-romance fic, stories with couples already established - I love those myself, that sure, certain sort of love (I am *such* a sucker for stories about married couples.)
But then you get into something like GetBackers, in which I adore Ban & Ginji's friendship and am absolutely totally 150% in favor of BanxGinjixBan. And yet I've written little genuine yaoi for them, because for me, at least, that's not really what it's about. If there's attraction there, it mostly stems from the fact that they just love and need each other so much that their bond is physical as well as everything else. Consumation of that physical part just doesn't interest me as much as the complexities of the emotions that tie them together.
And then there's, say, One Piece, in which I love so many of the char dynamics, but don't see nearly any of them as sexual. Luffy & Zoro's relationship is probably my favorite if I had to choose, but their bond is one of friendship, to my mind. I think they love each other; I don't think they're in love with each other (and Luffy+sex breaks my brain). At the same time, I desperately want to read fic about them, because the canon doesn't quite totally fulfill me; they show they care for each other, but I want just that little bit more, the realization from Zoro of just how much his idiot captain does mean to him...
What it comes down to, I suppose, is a matter of expectations, what you're looking to get out of a fic, and what tensions are resolved. Stories are more stirring when they do affect something, when at the end something is different from what it was before. Romance is an obvious way to manage this - char A & char B always loved each other, now they sleep together, obviously they're at a new level in their relationship. But for me, at least, there's something just as powerful, or even more powerful, about a subtler change. I love h/c stories because--in the well-written ones, at least--the chars come out of it with new understandings about each other..."I didn't know he cared about me so much to do *that*"; "I didn't know I cared about him so much that I *would* do *that*." In pairing stories, this realization usually is 'sealed with a kiss', so to speak, but for me, it's not the kiss that satisfies, it's the realization, and I don't mind when the kiss isn't there.
I gotta say, thank you so much for that comment. Not sure if this reply makes much sense, but it's clarified in my mind some things I've been wondering about...