Just Thoughts - Male Relationships
Sep. 14th, 2010 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiammettaI was watching some clips from the Black Butler musical, and I thought about some things - specifically, the relationship between Ciel and Sebastian.
The thing is, I don't ship those two as a romantic pairing. However, when I see bits with them together, like the last song in the musical (On My Way), or that last part if the season 2 opening when Sebastian is kneeling before Ciel and then they both burst into rose petals, I get a feeling similar to what I feel when I see (or think about) a cute moment between a romantic couple that I ship (for example, the story "Give Me a Smile", in the Code Geass: Queen anthology).
Then I thought about it in a different way - there are different types of relationships, in life and in fiction, and maybe romantic ones aren't the only ones that can give that kind of feeling. I think as a fangirl (for lack of a better term) I was just so used to seeing shipping as such an important thing that I kind of got blind to that.
There is something special about the type of relationship Ciel and Sebastian have... a character who has devoted himself fully to a mission, and an extremely loyal servant (in this case, an older man). The more I think about it, the more places I realize I have seen it before. Lelouch and Jeremiah could have become like that were it not for the tragic events later on in that very episode causing Lelouch to withdraw from connections to others. Also, (almost) no one would see anything romantic between Kougaiji and Yaone (or Lirin or Dokugakuji, but especially Yaone) in Saiyuki. I haven't watched Naruto in forever, but from what I remember, Zabuza and Haku were like that, too. I feel now like I've seen it so many times, the servile character telling someone (the heroes, the audience, or whoever) how the one they follow saved their life or something and now they want nothing more than to help that person.
There are two main things that make Black Butler different, though. One is the added facet of the reason for the relationship. Sebastian doesn't start to follow Ciel because Ciel did something nice for him, or because of who Ciel is, or something like that. He follows him because Ciel signed a contract to give Sebastian his soul once his mission is complete. This gets complicated later on, but the way it starts is like that.
The other is the prominence of this relationship in the story. For the other examples above, the characters I mentioned aren't (both) main characters, and their relationship isn't the focal point of the story. In Black Butler, it is the focal point. This is why I think a lot of fangirls ship this pairing. They're used to having the "loyal-servant" relationships in the back, where they can pull them out every once in a while and go, "aww, that's cute", put them away, and channel their focus back to the romantic relationship between the main characters, whether that ship is canon or in their heads. But when it's with the main character, and you can't really ignore it, I guess instinctively, people started to interpret it romantically. That's what's thrown to the front most often, and the series overall doesn't seem to require much thought, so it goes that way.
So that's one popular yaoi pairing I can look at and go, "Well, I don't agree but I can see why you think that." I have yet to come up with any sort of rational explanation for Shizaya. That one remains in the zone of "...No. Just No."
Also on the topic of pairings, I thought of an interesting one. I'm not sure how much sexual discussion I'm allowed to go into with no Adult Content warning on it, so I'll just end this entry here and talk about that in another one. This one is getting long, anyway.
The thing is, I don't ship those two as a romantic pairing. However, when I see bits with them together, like the last song in the musical (On My Way), or that last part if the season 2 opening when Sebastian is kneeling before Ciel and then they both burst into rose petals, I get a feeling similar to what I feel when I see (or think about) a cute moment between a romantic couple that I ship (for example, the story "Give Me a Smile", in the Code Geass: Queen anthology).
Then I thought about it in a different way - there are different types of relationships, in life and in fiction, and maybe romantic ones aren't the only ones that can give that kind of feeling. I think as a fangirl (for lack of a better term) I was just so used to seeing shipping as such an important thing that I kind of got blind to that.
There is something special about the type of relationship Ciel and Sebastian have... a character who has devoted himself fully to a mission, and an extremely loyal servant (in this case, an older man). The more I think about it, the more places I realize I have seen it before. Lelouch and Jeremiah could have become like that were it not for the tragic events later on in that very episode causing Lelouch to withdraw from connections to others. Also, (almost) no one would see anything romantic between Kougaiji and Yaone (or Lirin or Dokugakuji, but especially Yaone) in Saiyuki. I haven't watched Naruto in forever, but from what I remember, Zabuza and Haku were like that, too. I feel now like I've seen it so many times, the servile character telling someone (the heroes, the audience, or whoever) how the one they follow saved their life or something and now they want nothing more than to help that person.
There are two main things that make Black Butler different, though. One is the added facet of the reason for the relationship. Sebastian doesn't start to follow Ciel because Ciel did something nice for him, or because of who Ciel is, or something like that. He follows him because Ciel signed a contract to give Sebastian his soul once his mission is complete. This gets complicated later on, but the way it starts is like that.
The other is the prominence of this relationship in the story. For the other examples above, the characters I mentioned aren't (both) main characters, and their relationship isn't the focal point of the story. In Black Butler, it is the focal point. This is why I think a lot of fangirls ship this pairing. They're used to having the "loyal-servant" relationships in the back, where they can pull them out every once in a while and go, "aww, that's cute", put them away, and channel their focus back to the romantic relationship between the main characters, whether that ship is canon or in their heads. But when it's with the main character, and you can't really ignore it, I guess instinctively, people started to interpret it romantically. That's what's thrown to the front most often, and the series overall doesn't seem to require much thought, so it goes that way.
So that's one popular yaoi pairing I can look at and go, "Well, I don't agree but I can see why you think that." I have yet to come up with any sort of rational explanation for Shizaya. That one remains in the zone of "...No. Just No."
Also on the topic of pairings, I thought of an interesting one. I'm not sure how much sexual discussion I'm allowed to go into with no Adult Content warning on it, so I'll just end this entry here and talk about that in another one. This one is getting long, anyway.
