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elspethdixon Aug. 24th, 2013 12:15 am)
elspethdixon Aug. 24th, 2013 12:15 am)I originally typed all this ridiculously long meta in response to a post I was reblogging on tumblr, but then in retrospect going on and on in someone else’s reblog thread seemed kind of obnoxious, so here are My Thoughts On Yaoi OTPs as a stand-alone.
I’ve had OTPs since I first joined fandom nine years ago. I suspect I always will. It’s a part of how I am fannish, as integral to the way I interact with characters and source texts as my hurt/comfort kink (back when I was nine, I had the pages in Sword of Shanara where people got hurt memorized, and could tell you whether a given scene was printed on the left-hand page or the right). The OTPing goes back almost as far, too — I OTPed Gambit/Rogue back when I was a wee eleven-year-old who didn’t know fanfiction existed.
When I have an OTP, a true, hardcore, honest OTP rather than just a ship I like a lot, I ship only that pairing for those characters, to the exclusion of all others. OTP technically stands for “One True Pairing,” and for me, in the handful of cases where I have one, that’s pretty much literally what it is. “ I don’t always OTP when I ship - sometimes I just like the idea of a relationship between A/B and/or find A/B’s relationship interesting, something that’s sometimes accompanied by wanting to read or write fic for the pairing, and sometimes not. When I do OTP, though, A/B is a permanent, immutable part of my headcanon, something that is not up for negotiation. Character A and Character B love each other. Forever and ever, world without end, amen. I might be able to read gen about them, or other ship fic that doesn’t negate the OTP, like A/B/C threesome fic, or fic about C and D’s epic love where A and B are minor background characters and we never hear anything about their love lives/sex lives at all, but fic that negates A/B (either by stressing repeatedly how they’re just platonic friends, or by having them in love with other people) is a major DO NOT WANT.
And now, because I’ve typed up half-finished meta posts about this every time a discussion of OTPs vs. multishipping has gone around for the past five years, I’m going to share my unified field theory of OTPing.
(Yes, I know; you’re all super eager to read it)
My theory is that there are three parts to the sort of “this pairing is the only valid one for me!/this pairing above all others!” OTP that people who don’t OTP seem so baffled by:
1) Canon interpretation
Shipping itself, which is a much broader category of behavior, is often a characterization choice and comes down to your personal interpretation of canon, and for many people, certain pairings just fit better into their views of canon than others. This will get me accused of being delusional, but when I OTP, my reading of canon is that these two characters have something there between them - attraction, love, mutual obsession, some kind of non-platonic connection - in canon, and fic won’t ring true to me if it doesn’t reflect that. Even when I don’t OTP, I tend not to seriously ship characters unless I can see the pairing as at least vaguely plausible/not-wildly-implausible according to my reading of canon. It’s a suspension of disbelief thing - I have to work harder to suspend my disbelief over some pairings than others, and the less work required from an author to sell me on a pairing, the easier it is to do. With pairings I ship, I’m already sold before I start reading the fic. With OTPs, it goes further than thinking characters can be in love without being OOC; My OTPs need to be in love (with each other) in order to be in character.
When I OTP, I’m operating from a “these people are in love” place when reading/watching the canon, and so a writer writing a different pairing would have to justify and explain the absence of that love before they could even get around to the business on selling me on an alternate pairing - except I *like* that relationship, so I’m not that interested in being sold an alternative interpretation of canon where those feelings doesn’t exist.
Which brings me to point #2: Emotional investment in the pairing
In order for me to seriously OTP, not only does the pairing have to have subtext I can perceive in canon, it needs to be the right kind of pairing, the right kind of subtext. There are plenty of pairings I’m convinced are supported by canon that I have no real interest in, even in the absence of a competing ship, because they just don’t ping with me for whatever reason.
A ship has to fit my character kinks — I can’t OTP unless I like both halves of the pairing — and it has to fit my relationship dynamic kinks, and in order to earn the seal of die-hard “They must be together or it is blasphemy! Blasphemy, I say!” OTP-age instead of just “Oooh, I think I ship it,” or “Well, obviously their love is canon and cannot be denied, but I would also like to see fic where he/she slept with that other person he/she has major chemistry with,” I need to have a personal emotional investment in the pairing, which means it has to either come along at just the right time in my life (ex: Rogue/Gambit is my first OTP, and you never forget your First), or needs to resonate with me in some personal way.
Needless to say, this means I’m pretty much the exact opposite of objective when it comes to my OTPs, and I doubt I’m alone. The whole reason a lot of us are in fandom in the first place (whether we’re shippers or not) is because we get intensely invested in fictional things.
And then there’s #3, which I suspect is what separates the die-hard OTPers (like me) from people who really love particular ships but don’t mind if those ships are broken up: Epic monogamy and destined True Love as a narrative kink
OTPing, True Love, the epic “this person above all others” element to it, I think is a narrative kink just like mpreg or “marriage of (in)convenience” or hurt/comfort or “everybody has terribly misjudged character X.”
I have what I sort of think of as a True Love/Epic Monogamy kink - where what I kink on the idea of a relationship being so fundamental to the two (or three, or more) people involved and so important that nothing can supplant it or replace it. Where the characters belong together in every universe and ever version of canon. Where their love is destiny, two halves of the same whole, soulmates, drift-compatible, etc. Maybe I imprinted on The Princess Bride as a child (“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while,”) or maybe I watched too many CLAMP anime in my formative years in fandom, I don’t know. (That trope CLAMP likes so much where an OTP are reincarnated together again and again across time and space and in multiple universes - it’s pretty much my Id distilled and turned into an anime about people with disproportionately long-and-thin limbs.)
There’s a point in Xena (also with canon “reincarnated together forever!”) where Xena tells Gabby that every person has that one exception, a person so important to them that they’ll break their personal moral code for their sake.
That’s part of what an OTP is for me. Each half of the OTP is the other character’s One Exception. Or they’re not the one exception, but the fact that the character couldn’t make said exception for them is not a sign of the character’s strong principles, but an epic tragedy (“It wasn’t worth it,” etc.).
Yes, it’s unrealistic, but I can at least protest that I’m not the only person who feels this way. CLAMP basically built Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles on the backbone of this kink, a lot of romance novels run on it (No relationship the hero/heroine has had before has been like this one!), and there’s an old meta post by Seperis here that’s pretty much a discussion of exactly this kink.
And like a lot of narrative kinks, the OTP/True Love kink often reads as inherently clichéd and stupid to people who don’t share it, and consequently gets little respect from some of them, because while people can understand the ability of sexual kinks to trump canon or realism (“Okay, so there’s not really any logical reason for Dr. House to be a rentboy in this fic or, in fact, ever, but who cares because it’s HOT!”), people often seem to have a harder time grasping that the same can apply for emotional kinks.
I can only protest that it does apply, though, because this is my kink. My lens I see canon through. My way of being fannish. And when I OTP, I OTP forever. When Wesley tells Buttercup, “As you wish,” it still means “I love you,” even nearly 30 years later. When Tony Stark sits crying over Steve Rogers’ body and says, “It wasn’t worth it,” it still means “I love you.” When Starsky and Hutch say, “Me and thee,” it still means “I love you.” When Spike tells Buffy that, “Every night, I save you,” it still means, “I love you.” When Han Solo says, “I know,” it still means “I love you.” When Spock tells Kirk, “I have been, and will always be, your friend,” it still means, “I love you,” and no matter how many other characters either of them is canonically paired with in TOS, in the movies, in Reboot verse, it always will. Spike loves Buffy. Gambit and Rogue love each other. Kirk and Spock are soulmates. Steve Rogers is Tony Stark’s rudder. Percy Blakeney loves Marguerite. Legolas and Gimli got married at the end of LotR. Xena and Gabrielle love each other enough to be reincarnated together again and again. Those things are facts of the universe, like gravity. Like the Enterprise being able to go back in time if you slingshot her around the sun. Like the Tardis being bigger on the inside than the outside. Like time running differently in Narnia.
I’ve had OTPs since I first joined fandom nine years ago. I suspect I always will. It’s a part of how I am fannish, as integral to the way I interact with characters and source texts as my hurt/comfort kink (back when I was nine, I had the pages in Sword of Shanara where people got hurt memorized, and could tell you whether a given scene was printed on the left-hand page or the right). The OTPing goes back almost as far, too — I OTPed Gambit/Rogue back when I was a wee eleven-year-old who didn’t know fanfiction existed.
When I have an OTP, a true, hardcore, honest OTP rather than just a ship I like a lot, I ship only that pairing for those characters, to the exclusion of all others. OTP technically stands for “One True Pairing,” and for me, in the handful of cases where I have one, that’s pretty much literally what it is. “ I don’t always OTP when I ship - sometimes I just like the idea of a relationship between A/B and/or find A/B’s relationship interesting, something that’s sometimes accompanied by wanting to read or write fic for the pairing, and sometimes not. When I do OTP, though, A/B is a permanent, immutable part of my headcanon, something that is not up for negotiation. Character A and Character B love each other. Forever and ever, world without end, amen. I might be able to read gen about them, or other ship fic that doesn’t negate the OTP, like A/B/C threesome fic, or fic about C and D’s epic love where A and B are minor background characters and we never hear anything about their love lives/sex lives at all, but fic that negates A/B (either by stressing repeatedly how they’re just platonic friends, or by having them in love with other people) is a major DO NOT WANT.
And now, because I’ve typed up half-finished meta posts about this every time a discussion of OTPs vs. multishipping has gone around for the past five years, I’m going to share my unified field theory of OTPing.
(Yes, I know; you’re all super eager to read it)
My theory is that there are three parts to the sort of “this pairing is the only valid one for me!/this pairing above all others!” OTP that people who don’t OTP seem so baffled by:
1) Canon interpretation
Shipping itself, which is a much broader category of behavior, is often a characterization choice and comes down to your personal interpretation of canon, and for many people, certain pairings just fit better into their views of canon than others. This will get me accused of being delusional, but when I OTP, my reading of canon is that these two characters have something there between them - attraction, love, mutual obsession, some kind of non-platonic connection - in canon, and fic won’t ring true to me if it doesn’t reflect that. Even when I don’t OTP, I tend not to seriously ship characters unless I can see the pairing as at least vaguely plausible/not-wildly-implausible according to my reading of canon. It’s a suspension of disbelief thing - I have to work harder to suspend my disbelief over some pairings than others, and the less work required from an author to sell me on a pairing, the easier it is to do. With pairings I ship, I’m already sold before I start reading the fic. With OTPs, it goes further than thinking characters can be in love without being OOC; My OTPs need to be in love (with each other) in order to be in character.
When I OTP, I’m operating from a “these people are in love” place when reading/watching the canon, and so a writer writing a different pairing would have to justify and explain the absence of that love before they could even get around to the business on selling me on an alternate pairing - except I *like* that relationship, so I’m not that interested in being sold an alternative interpretation of canon where those feelings doesn’t exist.
Which brings me to point #2: Emotional investment in the pairing
In order for me to seriously OTP, not only does the pairing have to have subtext I can perceive in canon, it needs to be the right kind of pairing, the right kind of subtext. There are plenty of pairings I’m convinced are supported by canon that I have no real interest in, even in the absence of a competing ship, because they just don’t ping with me for whatever reason.
A ship has to fit my character kinks — I can’t OTP unless I like both halves of the pairing — and it has to fit my relationship dynamic kinks, and in order to earn the seal of die-hard “They must be together or it is blasphemy! Blasphemy, I say!” OTP-age instead of just “Oooh, I think I ship it,” or “Well, obviously their love is canon and cannot be denied, but I would also like to see fic where he/she slept with that other person he/she has major chemistry with,” I need to have a personal emotional investment in the pairing, which means it has to either come along at just the right time in my life (ex: Rogue/Gambit is my first OTP, and you never forget your First), or needs to resonate with me in some personal way.
Needless to say, this means I’m pretty much the exact opposite of objective when it comes to my OTPs, and I doubt I’m alone. The whole reason a lot of us are in fandom in the first place (whether we’re shippers or not) is because we get intensely invested in fictional things.
And then there’s #3, which I suspect is what separates the die-hard OTPers (like me) from people who really love particular ships but don’t mind if those ships are broken up: Epic monogamy and destined True Love as a narrative kink
OTPing, True Love, the epic “this person above all others” element to it, I think is a narrative kink just like mpreg or “marriage of (in)convenience” or hurt/comfort or “everybody has terribly misjudged character X.”
I have what I sort of think of as a True Love/Epic Monogamy kink - where what I kink on the idea of a relationship being so fundamental to the two (or three, or more) people involved and so important that nothing can supplant it or replace it. Where the characters belong together in every universe and ever version of canon. Where their love is destiny, two halves of the same whole, soulmates, drift-compatible, etc. Maybe I imprinted on The Princess Bride as a child (“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while,”) or maybe I watched too many CLAMP anime in my formative years in fandom, I don’t know. (That trope CLAMP likes so much where an OTP are reincarnated together again and again across time and space and in multiple universes - it’s pretty much my Id distilled and turned into an anime about people with disproportionately long-and-thin limbs.)
There’s a point in Xena (also with canon “reincarnated together forever!”) where Xena tells Gabby that every person has that one exception, a person so important to them that they’ll break their personal moral code for their sake.
That’s part of what an OTP is for me. Each half of the OTP is the other character’s One Exception. Or they’re not the one exception, but the fact that the character couldn’t make said exception for them is not a sign of the character’s strong principles, but an epic tragedy (“It wasn’t worth it,” etc.).
Yes, it’s unrealistic, but I can at least protest that I’m not the only person who feels this way. CLAMP basically built Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles on the backbone of this kink, a lot of romance novels run on it (No relationship the hero/heroine has had before has been like this one!), and there’s an old meta post by Seperis here that’s pretty much a discussion of exactly this kink.
And like a lot of narrative kinks, the OTP/True Love kink often reads as inherently clichéd and stupid to people who don’t share it, and consequently gets little respect from some of them, because while people can understand the ability of sexual kinks to trump canon or realism (“Okay, so there’s not really any logical reason for Dr. House to be a rentboy in this fic or, in fact, ever, but who cares because it’s HOT!”), people often seem to have a harder time grasping that the same can apply for emotional kinks.
I can only protest that it does apply, though, because this is my kink. My lens I see canon through. My way of being fannish. And when I OTP, I OTP forever. When Wesley tells Buttercup, “As you wish,” it still means “I love you,” even nearly 30 years later. When Tony Stark sits crying over Steve Rogers’ body and says, “It wasn’t worth it,” it still means “I love you.” When Starsky and Hutch say, “Me and thee,” it still means “I love you.” When Spike tells Buffy that, “Every night, I save you,” it still means, “I love you.” When Han Solo says, “I know,” it still means “I love you.” When Spock tells Kirk, “I have been, and will always be, your friend,” it still means, “I love you,” and no matter how many other characters either of them is canonically paired with in TOS, in the movies, in Reboot verse, it always will. Spike loves Buffy. Gambit and Rogue love each other. Kirk and Spock are soulmates. Steve Rogers is Tony Stark’s rudder. Percy Blakeney loves Marguerite. Legolas and Gimli got married at the end of LotR. Xena and Gabrielle love each other enough to be reincarnated together again and again. Those things are facts of the universe, like gravity. Like the Enterprise being able to go back in time if you slingshot her around the sun. Like the Tardis being bigger on the inside than the outside. Like time running differently in Narnia.
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I miss having an active OTP. There are old ones I hold in my heart forever and ever, but not something I'm writing for at the moment.
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Can you ever read something without the OTP as a kind of AU, or is that just something with no interest for you?
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No, when I have an OTP it extends across all versions of canon (if I OTP it in 616 then I also OTP it in movieverse, for example) and that includes AUs. If there's a version of character A, they have to be in love with their version of character B. In fandoms where there's a lot of gen and long slash fic is hard to find, I'll read gen fic about them by non-shippers as long as it lets me maintain the interpretation that the characters still feel romantic love for one another but haven't yet acknowledged it, but often the narration or the characters will make some comment at some point about the platonic nature of their relationship and that will ruin things, or the author will make a point of deliberately shutting down slashy interpretations with a comment in their author's notes or header and ruin things. (Most of my het OTPs are canon pairings, so gen isn't really an issue - gen writers usually keep canon het pairings in place). I don't know if I'd react negatively to gen where they're not in love so strongly if I hadn't spent a dozen years listening to non-slashers insist that non-LGB people's platonic friendships >>>> my relationships, but I have, and it's made me intensely dislike seeing any relationship that's important to me and that I read as romantic reduced to platonicness. Ex: There's someone on my flist who really likes the idea of aromantic-ace!Enjolras, and I seethe in visceral loathing of the concept every time I see her post about it (Grantaire pining after an unattainable Enjolras who's capable of romantic love but just doesn't feel it for him is okay, because it leaves that slim, wistful, if-only-their lives-had-gone-differently-it-could-have-happened chance, but an Enjolras who is categorically unable to ever feel that way kills what made their death scene so meaningful to me - that when he agrees that he will permit it, he's acknowledging what Grantaire feels for him and realizing too late and only when he's about to die what they could have potentially been to one another - and is DO NOT WANT).
If it's just a pairing I like instead of an OTP, though, I can read fic that pairs them with other people or that doesn't ship them just fine. Whether or not I can stand the idea of reading about them being in love with other people/about a version of one of them who can never and will never love the other is the acid test for whether I really OTP something; if I can, then I just ship it rather than OTPing it.
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Then again, this was vastly worse in the 90s in the days of smarm, I think: extremely intense emotional manly friendships with a big NOT GAY sign over scenes of them naked cuddling for warmth.
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*nods* It annoys me even when it's a pairing I don't ship - thank you, author, for simultaneously telling me how I am and am not allowed to interpret your fic* and implying that gay people have cooties.
*I'm not the only reader who ends up wanting to mentally slash the characters out of spite despite the fact that I don't even ship them, right?
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I especially like the part where you discuss how the relationship is such a part of your headcanon that the show makes less sense without it. That is exactly how I feel about Jack/Daniel in Stargate SG-1.
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For a long time I thought I just didn't get OTPs at all; it's not my usual style of engagement with fandom. I tend to attach to specific characters rather than ships, and to be willing to pair them with anyone who sparks in an interesting way. (I also attach strongly to TEAMS, and will happily ship them platonically or in a giant poly pile.)
During one of fandom's rounds of meta on shipping, it occurred to me that I actually do have a couple of full-blown OTPs: Makoto/Ifurita from the El Hazard anime, and Cordelia/Aral from the Vorkosigan novels.
I ship Makoto and Ifurita so hard, I cannot imagine either of them or their worlds without their relationship. The idea of pairing either of them with someone else Does Not Compute; these are two people who repeatedly do impossible things for the sake of their love for each other, and it is basically canon that nothing in the multiverse can permanently separate them. So this is a pairing that passes all three of your criteria, for me: their love fits canon (and is canonically epic and world-saving), I am super invested in the romance of the sweet clever Japanese boy and the ancient weapon of mass destruction who loves him, and unlike with most pairings I have enjoyed, the idea of separating them feels fundamentally Wrong and Bad. When I figured out that this is how many people feel about their OTPs, it was a revelation. I get it now! (I didn't think it was a bad way to be fannish before, I was just befuddled by it.)
In regard to Cordelia and Aral, I am extremely invested in their marriage and teamwork, but apparently I don't require monogamy for them.
It's interesting to me that both of my hardcore OTPs are canon couples whose romance is central to their narrative. (I was about to say "canon het couples" and then realized that Ifurita is actually an alien machine who looks like a human woman, but whose gender and sexuality almost certainly don't map to any human norms. So "het" would be a misnomer.) I suppose I have a very high OTP threshold, and it takes being hit over the head very hard with an epic world-changing love that is pivotal to the story for me to invest in it as The Way Things Must Be, Forever and Ever, Amen. While I ship quite a few f/f, f/m, and m/m couples (and triads, etc.) in a variety of fandoms, those ships don't generally solidify into unalterable OTPs.
(Whoops, suddenly thought of another, from an obscure fantasy duology. Mira/Eliana from Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful/Turning the Storm. Canon epic world-changing f/f, and absolutely an OTP for me. I only wish it had a fandom.)
I think I do have a strong True Love narrative kink, but rather than being each other's One Exception, it's more about being the catalyst for each other's empowerment/redemption/heroism. I love great deeds done for love's sake, people becoming more than they ever thought they could be because of their beloved's influence, mutual lifesaving, love conquering the unconquerable. All the evils of the world come crashing up against these lovers, and True Love wins, because they're not only better together, they're unstoppable together. *happy sigh*
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I can take more of the platonic explanation than works for you, I think. I'll happily take an Epic Friendship for the ages, as long as it doesn't lose the closeness, it doesn't have to be romantic, though it's great if it is. But the part about the closeness of their relationship being part of my interpretation of canon, and them being OOC without it - absolutely.
I also like the point that it's a emotional kink - and I've grown to realise that while there are sexual kinks that work for me, and one's that don't, I can take or leave them, whereas my emotional kinks are pretty much vital to being fannish about something.