Sonichu Episode 2 continues to set up the world of CWCVille, and while it's still relatively benign in its content, it predicts the relationship dynamics that would help make Sonichu an ironic favorite. What's unfortunate is that the " chemistry " between Sonichu and Rosechu is NOT a problem exclusive to Christian Weston Chandler's personal problems.
Like most Sonichu stories, the plot of episode 2 is about as deep as a wet piece of paper. While looking for food for his new, larger body, Sonichu realizes that he's lonely and needs a mate. At that exact moment, Rosechu walks by and Sonichu is immediately smitten. Later, Rosechu is talking with her Pokemon trainer Kel about how she needs a mate; they are conveniently interrupted by Sonichu arriving at the door. Not in the least bit perturbed by Sonichu having followed her home, Rosechu invites Sonichu in for dinner. A few days later, Sonichu and Rosechu look at the night sky together, exchange some truly awkward confessions of love, and kiss.
There is no conflict in Sonichu and Rosechu's relationship, even when they first meet. Their personalities complement each other and their goals are identical. The entire basis for the coupling is because Chandler considers them the One True Pairing. After all, Chandler is as much fan as creator, so if he wants to live vicariously through Sonichu, he'll make sure that the character has what Chandler considers an ideal relationship-- one based on " true love " and not any shared interests or experience.
Almost everything in Sonichu is lifted from other sources, and Rosechu is no different-- she is based on Amy Rose, the pink female hedgehog from the Sonic series. However, while Amy is smitten with Sonic, Sonic has never returned Amy's affections-- in canon, at least. Their dynamic is very much like a gender-flipped Pepe Le Pew cartoon, and Sonic's only kindness towards Amy is being willing to save her life when her stalkerish activities put her in danger. In other words, the canon Sonic/Amy dynamic is a relationship meant for comedy. But Chandler is just one of several fans who see an actual relationship between the two, with Sonic eventually returning the affections. In Chandler's " adaptation ", the variants of Sonic and Amy do not have any dramatic tension interfering with their romance. That they have romance is enough.
Any fandom will have readers who view the stories in context of the relationships, and wether or not they fit the reader's individual tastes a la a bingo game. They need not even have any basis in canon, and often don't; Sonic has the aforementioned Sonic/Amy, Avatar: The Last Airbender has Kitara/Zuko*, and Metal Gear Solid has Snake/Otacon**. The most egregious example may be Harry Potter, where Harry/Hermione 'shippers even threatened to boycott the books if Harry ended up with Ginny. It's worth noting that regardless of the pairings, NONE OF THESE SERIES ARE BASED EXCLUSIVELY ON ROMANCE. The interest in shipping comes from the personal baggage the fans collectively bring to the forums.
This is an odd phenomenon, and unfortunately, it's one that threatens to derail drama and creativity-- instead of reading stories because they're curious where the characters will end up, fans have strong preconceived notions of what they want to see, and won't accept anything else. It doesn't matter for Chandler that nobody cares about Sonichu and Rosechu's true love but him, because this world is his escapist paradise. Unfortunately, the phenomenon isn't restricted to the mass of neuroses and perversions that is Christian Weston Chandler-- just take a glance at the majority of fan fiction.***
One of the most interesting relationships that I've read in a mainstream comic is the X-Men pairing of Scott Summers and Emma Frost. This is because it's an active deconstruction of the nature of the OTP. While Scott and Jean Grey were the official pairing of the X-Men****, Grant Morrison had Scott come to realize that after all the hardship he'd been through in his life, he didn't want a perfect relationship. He found himself more comfortable with tempestuous ex-villainess Emma Frost, whose sins made her more relatable. The relationship began with an affair and was cemented with a kiss over Jean Grey's corpse, but so what? These are mutant pariahs whose profession has a high mortality rate. They aren't part of the culture that sets the terms for what acceptable love is, they aren't necessarily going to be drawn to conventional notions of relationships, and they're going to seize any chance at happiness they can get. Of course, this is antithetical to fandom logic, but it allows for more story options.
* Of course, because Aang/Kitara was an Official Coupling done with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and logic of a fanfic parody, I can understand this.
** And Hideo Kojima has all but made this canon, since MGS4 ends with Snake living out his final days with Otacon and their adopted daughter Sunny. I can't even call Metal Gear a homoerotic series anymore, because between this, Ocelot being a secret hero motivated by his gay love for Big Boss, and the Big Boss/Miller slashfic missions in Peace Walker, Kojima is basically pre-empting the fandom with homosexual pairings.
*** There are many great fan fics, mind you. I want to make clear that just because the medium is used by terrible writers doesn't mean it has exclusively terrible writers. Some are even more inventive than the canon creators.
**** I often think of the main 'ship in my own comic as a reconstruction of the Scott/Jean dynamic, with genuine devotion and love being constantly challenged by the fact that Ruby and Jiro are two outcasts with troubled histories and no other real options.
Nice post!
ReplyDeleteYour postmodern approach to Sonichu has been really interesting, and I love what you have to say about "One True Relationship" syndrome.
(I really loved what Grant Morrison did with having Scott fall in love with Emma, while never exactly falling *out* of love with Jean --- it's just that Emma was there for him in a way that Jean really hadn't been since she became the Phoenix. Of course, Scott has had other love interests before --- Colleen Wing and Madelyne Pryor come to mind --- but those relationships were more "filling in the gaps while Jean is (temporarily) dead" things, whereas Emma came along while Jean was still alive. I think Emma has pushed Scott's character to evolve in ways that it hasn't for a very long time; not since the *first* time Jean died or the time Scott fell out with Professor X over his proper role as leader of the X-Men).
With Harry Potter, I wasn't crazy about Harry/Ginny (at their young ages, an age gap of a few years can translate into seriously creepy power-dynamic issues, when the same gap would be a nonissue once both characters were out of their teens), but I like Hermione/Ron. It works, even though you totally don't expect it to.
I'd always thought that the reason Mary Jane Watson became a more interesting interest for Peter Parker as opposed to Gwen Stacy boiled down to Gwen being conceived as The Girlfriend, and not being given much else to do aside from that. MJ became Peter's partner through an organic and inelegant series of events that, while often handled poorly, felt more like a real relationship in its turmoil.
ReplyDeleteHistory repeats itself: the most bland media incarnation of MJ is in the films, where she's considered The Girlfriend from the start. The most bland member of the new supporting cast following OMD is Carlie Cooper, who's had The Girlfriend label on her head since day one.
And the bigger personal irony is that I've never cared about romantic subplots all that much, and while I find some pairings more attractive than others, the soap-opera element has never been what I follow the media for. In my own work, I don't even bother to introduce a romantic subplot among primary characters, because I already know that I'm bad at writing relationships, and it bores me besides.
Good point re: Gwen, modern MJ, and Carlie, E. Wilson. I didn't know you were a writer as well; is any of your work available online?
ReplyDeleteAlso good point from Lindsay re: Scott's feelings for Jean. I liked how Whedon presented Jean, as leaving a permanent impact on Scott's life but not preventing him from living his life.
Nothing I'm especially proud of at the moment. ^^; I have an epic in my head that I've been trying to get out onto paper for about five years, but Life keeps happening and I keep re-starting the project after a year of inactivity. I'm starting again this week, having (hopefully) found and fixed all the problems in execution from prior attempts.
ReplyDeleteI also still have a webcomic up from a project a collaborator and I started in my senior year of high school: www.azale.org. It's not particularly polished, and I'd have probably approached it completely differently today.
Doesn't your interest in the Summers/Frost pairing have more to do with your personal baggage - your dislike of "shipping" - than any particular chemistry between the duo? What shared interests do Summers & Frost have, beyond organizing death squads and laying guilt trips on their subordinates?
ReplyDeleteYou say "organizing death squads" like it's a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteMH-- Partially yes, and in the modern books, I would break them up amongst many other things needed for a change of pace. But Morrison's story was more about Cyclops finding a life outside of his redhead fixation and boy scout demeanor, and Whedon handled the fallout of Scott's decision quite well. When they were portrayed as dysfunctional, repressed, and private individuals who treated the relationship as their one safe place ( but had their own lives ), it worked. It was once the pair settled into Scott/Jean - All Ethics that it stagnated, with Emma too often written as a more flirtatious version of Jean Grey.
ReplyDeleteI've never cared about romantic subplots all that much, and while I find some pairings more attractive than others, the soap-opera element has never been what I follow the media for.
ReplyDelete> The relationship began with an affair and was cemented with a kiss over Jean Grey's corpse, but so what? These are mutant pariahs whose profession has a high mortality rate. They aren't part of the culture that sets the terms for what acceptable love is, they aren't necessarily going to be drawn to conventional notions of relationships, and they're going to seize any chance at happiness they can get. Of course, this is antithetical to fandom logic, but it allows for more story options.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the "these aren't normal people, why should they be bound by normal morality" argument raised to justify superhero pairings like that, but it tends to miss the fact that until they became mutant-seperatists and a bargain-basement version of the Brotherhood, the whole point of the X-Men was that they fight to be accepted as part of human society, and thus surely, being subject to normal human morality is part of that, so making out with your mistress on your wife's grave is as bad an idea as organising death-squads.
And having seen the "make one half of an 'OTP' couple be increasingly distant, then kill them off or otherwise get rid of them, while forcing the other together with someone new, who's been there for them all along" too many times in comics, I'd find it hard to credit NXM for being any more of a "deconstruction of the OTP" than any of the other times someone did it just because they wanted to split up a couple they found boring, and the recurring "marriage is bad for you, having an affair will make you a happier person" theme these comics make for is really rather worrying.
Also, having largely stopped following the Sonic games after the 3rd one, it's strange seeing how that series just kept on adding more and more superfluous characters no-one really cares about.
Just to nitpick, but her name is "Katara", thank you. Sorry; my obsession for doing things "right" got in the way.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I never quite understand shippers. Why so serious? The way I see it, characters end up with who they end up with. Is it because I'm male that I don't understand them?
Oh, and finally, I discovered your blog recently and I like it. Especially the Sonichu analyses, it tells exactly what makes a bad work bad.