What I like to read/write

[branchandroot]

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Favorite pairing/character archetypes? :D Are you more fond of rival!slash or best friends turn lovers or master/servant or....?

The easy answer is: yes, please, all of the above!

I certainly do have a major kink for captain/lieutenant pairs, especially the ones where the "captain" is delicate looking and apparently sweet and the "lieutenant" is the brawny and/or stolid type. Yukimura/Sanada, Byakuya/Renji, Kazuki/Juubei, Tsuna/Xanxus. This set up only works for me, of course, when the "captain" is actually a galactic grade badass; otherwise there wouldn't be nearly such tasty tension and chemistry. If the "lieutenant" is secretly a total squish, this is a bonus, but I'm also entirely good with the trope of a "lieutenant" who feels a deep and abiding need to compete with and strive to equal his "captain".

For broadly similar reasons, I love me some rival!slash. I like the intensity with which rivals focus on each other, especially in sports manga. ES21 was a very good series for this. Roy and Ed, my gateway pairing as it were, were kind of six of captain!kink, half a dozen of rival!slash.

Of course, I'm also very fond of best-friend relationships, like Roy and Hughes. I'll write those both ways, turning sexual and not. Again, it's the intensity of the relationship that matters.


This leads pretty naturally into my taste for a particular variety of sib-cest. I'm all over the Seiran/Ryuuki dynamic, or the Yuuta/Fuji, or the Ryousuke/Keisuke. In all cases the siblings have a very intense, almost exclusive, focus on each other. I like that a lot, as long as it's written in the happy-fluffy way, and not in the hideously dysfuctional way. This is, to be sure, a fine line to walk because it would be very, very easy for the dominant sibling to take terrible advantage of the other. For this reason I am very cautious about reading fic written for these.


At bottom, I write a whole lot of "how does this relationship work?" fic. When I set out to write about Roy and Hawkeye, it was driven on the one hand by "what would the politics actually look like next" and on the other by "how would these two actually go about becoming something other than a working relationship?". When Em and I started brainstorming how to subvert and recuperate the women of KHR, a lot of my focus was on "what choices would Kyouko and Haru make when precipitated into this new world, what compromises would they reach with the people they love?". When I went to write about the AU where Seien inherits the throne, the framework was family as much as politics, and it wouldn't have been nearly as powerful is Shouka weren't more Seien's father than the Emperor ever was.

And what I like to read are stories that will give me fodder for that kind of thing.

Comments

[chronolith]

Have you seen Ouran Kouko? I don't think it is your usual thing, but I think you would be very interested in a lot of the relationship dynamics. Also, Haruhi is made of awesome.

[annotated_em]

Mmm, yes. "How does this relationship work?" is the key. If you can sell me on a relationship dynamic that's going somewhere, I'll read just about anything.

[theodosia21]

Oh, yes. It's the relationship dynamics rather than the plot that tend to make or break a story for me. Not that a good plot isn't awesome, too, but it's the relationships that hook me. ^_^

[anehan]

I almost said I'm not fond of best friends turned lovers, but then I remembered Eiji/Oishi, and that pretty much ruined that theory. But let's say that usually I'm not too fond of this kind of relationship dynamic.

Weirdly enough, though, I love sibcest. Fuji and Yuuta, Bill and Charlie Weasley, Bill and Tom Kaulitz. Heck, if I watched Supernatural, I'd be all over Wincest. There's just something about that dynamic that appeals to me. Don't ask me what. I don't know the answer. I need someone else to psychoanalyse that.

[kemis]

Mhh, you raise a difficult point. Personally, I like the rival thing better - rivals, master/servant, etc etc, because it focuses, IMO, more on the differences between the characters and how and why they end up together. The best friend thing, I like that too (I read almost anything) but it's usually always the same thing with (slightly, if at all) different flavors.

And, ohhh! *raises hand, jumping up and down* I love sib-cest too! In fact, I could say that one of the things that often has me starting to follow a series. Well, that and the fics I find about it. If I have ever mentioned that your Seien/Ryuuki fics are what got me into SaiMono, this is a good moment to repeat it again.

I, thought, know precisely what's the reason why I like sibcest. Imprinting!^_^

[alas]

I know exactly what delicious dynamic you're talking about regarding captain and lieutenants, but when I read this:

where the "captain" is delicate looking and apparently sweet

followed by Byakuya, it's lucky I wasn't drinking anything XD.

[chronolith]

Have you read Yuki Kaori's Count Cain-GodChild series? It is about as cracktastic as Angel Sanctuary

[mitsuhachi]

Thank you! Captain/lieutenant is exactly the way to describe a particular D/s dynamic I've been trying to talk about, and no really knowing how. Seconding on how crazy hot it is, too. <3

[chronolith]

Okay, one more rec/question and then I will shut up and go away. But Code Geass might be interesting to you. Though Lelouch is a great big bastard to trump all bastards.

I keep throwing these anime at you because I think that they have relationships that you would find interesting. Only it appears our tastes are, like, wildly divergent. I should be used to this by now, given that I am the hardcore outlier in fandom