Shipping poll

[salinea]

[Poll #1266990]

Also, what exactly would you put behind "unhealthy"? Is there some kinds of unhealthy which you are willing to ship and others which you draw the lines at (which ones, and why)? Don't hesitate to give some examples!

ETA: this is mostly due to the fact that some of the comments on this post by meganbmoore made me wonder if I was the only one.

Comments

[puella-nerdii.livejournal.com]

Pff, I write Kara/Leoben and Sei/Sub. What are these "healthy relationships" of which you speak?

To elaborate: I (not-so-)jokingly refer to myself as "wrongsexual," and as a general rule of thumb, the more twisted a particular pairing is, the more I find it appealing. See, the big thread running through almost everything I write is perversion -- not necessarily sexual, but I love taking the normal and making it, well, ab-. Unhealthy relationships, I think, are ones where characters are unable or unwilling to articulate their desires and solve their differences, and that's the stuff of which conflict is made. And I can't write fic without conflict.

The only unhealthy relationships I don't like are ones that are not textually acknowledged as such and are instead presented as Twoo Wub or something equally nauseating. This is my problem with the Twilight series, in a nutshell. (Well, my main problem.) Codependent behavior and stalking and warped/imbalanced power dynamics? There's a lot of potential for dark and sexy fun there, but not when it's presented as the ideal model of a loving relationship and any creepiness is handwaved away on the grounds that "they loooooooove each other." Maybe, but love in and of itself isn't enough to make a relationship work. Plus, love =/= codependency. This is also why I can't read a lot of romances -- or a lot of older ones, at least. And why I give lots of yaoi manga a wide berth. And why I'm so nitpicky about any work of fiction where relationships are the central focus.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

yes, yes, yes, me too to everything you said :D

Love as conflict is one of my biggest narrative drive, in what I like to read and what I like to write (when I was writing, that is), whether it's done in the bickering comedy style or the dark melodramatic one. The role and negotiation for power is another of the thing I love to explore.