...as Tezuka is to Ryouma

[branchandroot]

Some musings on the relationship between Tezuka and Ryouma, because Lynn got me thinking.

See, one of the things I find rather obnoxious about the Pillar Pair frenzy is that way too many of those stories take it for granted that Tezuka and Ryouma are already together or, at least, in love.

And I think that's totally unrealistic.

Aside from the fact that Ryouma gives no indications whatsoever of being romatically cognizant of anyone at all, yet, his relationship to Tezuka is not inflected romantically. At all.

He's obsessed with Tezuka. Tezuka is his lifeline, his living example that there's another way to be strong than Nanjirou's. His avatar of possibility--both his own possibilities for real growth and the possibilities of meeting other strong and interesting players if he progresses in tennis.

As for Tezuka, I think Hal got it in one. Tezuka also sees Ryouma as an avatar--Tennis Incarnate. And Tezuka is suffuciently obsessed with the game itself that he will do anything it takes to let/make Ryouma advance and fulfill his potential. If there's love, it's an utterly aesthetic thing, not romantic at all.

Tezuka and Ryouma are not in love. It would be (and, in fact, was for me) extremely difficult to get them to be in love. Their absolute focus on each other is a wonderful thing to play with, but it IS NOT ROMANCE.

Comments

[prillalar]

I would agree that there isn't likely to be any hearts and flowers romance between them; it doesn't fit the way they are with each other. Though I think that they could each have that with someone else, someone who could coax them into it.

But I don't know how much more likely it is for their mutual obsession to become sexual. That's how I prefer to write them, when I write them at all. (This is the oddest OTP I have ever had -- I rarely write them, I almost never read them, I just think about them all the time and occasionally regurgitate LJ essays where I complain about not being able to understand Tezuka.) But is it supportable from the canon either?

As a genre, slash requires us to interpret the canon in a way that's usually canonically unsupportable. So we overlay some assumptions to start off -- "assuming that Harry and Draco are attracted to men..." So I'm less bothered by interpretations like this than I used to be.

I guess what I'm trying to say is while I agree with you that a romantic/in love/dating type relationship between them is unlikely, I don't find it obnoxious that other people interpret them that way.

It's a bit odd to me, but people often want to romanticize/domesticate their favoured pairings, even when it's frankly bizarre. Mulder/Krycek curtain fic and all.

And you know, I wrote some romantical TezuRyo once too, just because I couldn't help myself, I wanted them to be together like that. And then I published it on ff.n under an assumed name. There was no curtain shopping, though. *g*

[branchandroot]

I don't object to the assumption until it becomes so entrenched that people forget it's an assumption and start talking/writing as if all the getting-them-together work has already been done in canon. Then I start getting annoyed and counter-reacting.

With Ryouma and Tezuka, especially, it seems like seriously short-changing the characters' existing relationship. I actually mind less when we're inscribing romance/sex onto a blank space or even simple hostility. Things are so amazingly tangled and intimate, in a weird way, between these two, the blithe leap straight into undying hearts and flowers offends my story-sensibilities.

*wry* Nothing but nothing puts my hackles up faster than people claiming that some pairing or other is "canon, omg it's so canon!". I mean, honestly. Can't these things stand on their own merits as shameless over-reading? ^_^

[prillalar]

I don't object to the assumption until it becomes so entrenched that people forget it's an assumption and start talking/writing as if all the getting-them-together work has already been done in canon.

Okay, yeah, I totally get that. :) And as well about the simplification of their relationship -- it seems to miss the point of exploring their connection in the first place. Which is so much more complex than a sports series has any right to be.