labingi

I’ve been compiling a mental list of favorite pairings for years, and I thought I’d write some of it out. We can also make it a “meme”: I’d love to see your list linked in the comments!

What I mean by a “love pairing”: two people who come to love each other so deeply that this relationship is pivotal to their lives. I’m a friendship bonder, and I’m not distinguishing between sexual and non-sexual love. I am leaving out literal and metaphorical close family relationships (parent-child, siblings). Expect big spoilers (like character death & ending) for any story mentioned. Below the cut are some favorite picks, some ranked, some unranked, with explanations.

1. Kagetora and Naoe in Mirage of Blaze
They have been my number 1 for years; any story that dethrones them I’ll bow down to till I die. Short summary: Two samurai spirit warrior exorcists spend 400 years tearing each other apart and putting each other back together with their savage, epic love.

They’re my number one because their story is ultimately about what it means to be alive, to be human. It’s an exploration of Buddhist philosophy, encapsulated in the title, “The Blazing Mirage”: that mirage is their love and also most of the other stuff that happens in the story (and in our lives). The genius of this story is how it executes both the “blaze” and the “mirage.” Their love is written to the hilt: it’s crazy, sick, abusive, passionate, self-sacrificial, committed, courageous, tender, comforting, fiercely judgmental and radically accepting, life transforming, scarring, healing, and unconditional. And it will end. I don’t mean just their lives will end; I mean that love ends. Like all things except the Dharma, in Buddhism, it is ultimately impermanent. And somehow, this 40-volume+ saga handles both that love and its ending with complete respect, empathy, and compassion. This story loves their love and sees beyond it. It also helps that they are both spectacularly drawn characters, perhaps the most psychologically deep and realistic I have ever read and that the story of their love is inextricable from the story of their own respective lives and profound journeys.

Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun, mostly the manga
Short summary: Two gunslingers on a Wild West future deep space gun action planet fall in together and find a partner and a philosophical challenge to become a better person.

A chief reasons that Mirage edges out Trigun for me is that Mirage is a lot longer and, thus, more developed. For what can be done in their shorter story, Vash and Wolfwood are written to perfection. Yasuhiro Nightow is a structural genius, and with Vash and Wolfwood, he’s created two characters who are both deep, nuanced, realistic people and part of a complex, supremely elegant set of interlocking symbols. Vash is a somewhat Christlike, 150 year old paragon of love and peace who refuses to kill; Wolfwood is a psychologically messed up, prematurely aged teenage priest assassin, who keeps trying to do the right thing by killing, and hating himself for it. They challenge each other; they uphold each other; they transform each other for the better, and have amusing hijinks on the way. My only complaint about the manga is that it lacks the 1998 anime’s breathing room to let their relationship develop. If I could transplant a couple scenes and a smidge of timeline from the anime into the manga, I would be the happiest of campers.

3. Ash and Eiji from Banana Fish, the manga
Short summary: An American teen gang leader and a Japanese apprentice photojournalist team up to foil the mafia’s plan to infect Congress with a dangerous drug in 1980s New York. And find a soulmate along the way.

I was surprised the day I found Banana Fish near the top of my list. The setting, the plot: they’re is not my usual fare. Why Ash and Eiji? Because their love for each other is so strong and true and touching. I’ve heard many call it “pure.” Sometimes this leads to accusations of prudery, as if “pure” means they don’t have sex, which they don’t. But that’s not it. It’s pure in the sense that they both always deeply want what is best for the other person; they profoundly care for each other’s welfare and are willing to put themselves at immense risk to keep each other safe. Plus, in the light moments, they are very cute, funny as heck, and clearly enjoy each other’s company. It works because, on a deep level, Ash and Eiji are psychologically realistic. That may not be evident at first with Ash because he’s right on the cusp of being a Mary Sue, and, yes, in real life, someone who’s suffered as much trauma with as little support as he has probably wouldn’t be so psychologically high functioning. Yet I’ve also heard abuse survivors say that they see their experience in him. I’m not an abuse survivor, but I see it in myself. Somewhere under all the fantasy, it’s real, and their unconditional commitment to each other is very moving.

3 (tie). Frodo and Sam from The Lord of the Rings
Short Summary: Two short people bond as they try to destroy an evil Ring.

Funnily enough, I haven’t usually put Frodo and Sam on the list, just because they’ve been with me so long, they predate my list. But they belong here, so here they are. I tied them with Ash and Eiji because I’m moved by their love for similar reasons. It’s “pure,” one could say. It’s always healthy (not all their interactions are, but the basic love is). They like, esteem, and care for each other, are devoted to each other, and while their intense partnership only lasts a short time, it defines the course of the rest of their lives, up to Sam going West at end of his life. The quiet evolution of their love is also handled beautifully organically. There’s no turning point, no epiphany. They’re close at the start; they already have a long history together, trust and caring, a sort of friendship, but they are fundamentally master and servant. By the end, they are still master and servant but explicitly also dearest friends and, in some sense, life mates, even though they’ll spend most of their lives apart. Their dynamic is unique among my fav’s in being fundamentally a master/servant dynamic. Kagetora and Naoe are too, but not as fundamentally: for them, it changes by the end. For Frodo and Sam, it’s not a point of contention and it will never change. Fan ficcers can do whatever they like, but I say Frodo and Sam will never be in love and will never have an egalitarian relationship, and that’s okay. Let them do them.

***

Beyond this point, it’s hard to do an absolute ranking, so I’m going to give some special prizes instead.

Best Female/Male Pairing: Eve and Adam from Only Lovers Left Alive
Short summary: A married vampire couple navigate life in the early stages of climate and civilizational breakdown (i.e. 2013).

It is rare to see a story centered on the marriage of a healthy couple with few-to-no internal conflicts. “What’s the story conflict?” The main conflict here is that Adam is depressed by the modern world. There’s also some plotty vampire problems about finding unpolluted blood and body disposal. We watch them address these problems and also just live their lives. It works because of two factors: 1) the writers knew what a healthy relationship looks like, and they show it well: the comfort, enjoyment of each other, the trust, the self-sufficiency and lack of need to constantly be together, a degree of putting up with annoyances, and the ability to problem solve and address conflicts straightforwardly when needed. It is so clear that these people love each other and are good friends. 2) They very wisely made Eve older and wiser (and played by Tilda Swinton). This move balanced out the fact that this is a movie made in a patriarchy about people in a patriarchy who have (probably) lived their whole, long lives under patriarchy. It equalized them, and it reminded me that I can adore female characters who are well written. Eve is amazing; I love her. She is a testament to hope and resilience and delight in life.

Runner-up for Best Male/Female Pairing: Mulder and Scully from The X-Files
Short summary: Two FBI agents investigate aliens and become life partners.

Thirty-ish years of Mulder and Scully get edged out by a two-hour movie (above) because that movie is pitch perfect and The X-Files has some issues. As far as Mulder and Scully go, the show made a mistake in trying to sell the idea of Mulder as William’s father, and while it ultimately got some good storytelling out of that plotline, it’s hard to ignore the flaming trash can that was the very last episode (season 11). That out of the way, the rest is brilliant. The characters are both beautifully developed over many years, as is their relationship. It runs the gamut from heartbreaking to hilarious, with just about everything in between. They are always friends first and foremost, and their love is the love of friends who have seen each other through many harrowing and horrible situations, as well as many average days and quirky moments. Their sexual relationship is layered on top of that and—bar the William BS—it works well; I believe they’d find an attraction for each other and that, once found, it would stick across the years. If I had to sum them up in just one scene, it would be when Scully’s mother is in the hospital unconscious and dying, and Mulder and Scully are sitting on opposite sides of her bed, just talking: that, my friends, is love.

Tie for Runner-up Female/Male Pairing: Zhaan and Stark from Farscape
Short summary: Two priestly types bond in the short time allotted.

I could make a case that Zhaan and Stark should be my number one f/m pair; they are amazing. I’m bumping them down, I guess, because of the poor way Farscape handled Stark’s grief over Zhaan’s death: nearly skipping it and then writing him out. Ben Browder did his damnedest to correct that in “John Quixote,” which is an inspired episode, but it was too little too late. That said, when they are alive and together, they’re perfect. As with Eve and Adam above, they’re helped by the decision to make the woman the older/wiser one, for the same basic reason: in our patriarchy, it’s balancing. Things that are lovely about Zhaan and Stark: they weren’t originally invented to be together and it shows. They’re affinity feels naturally discovered, as I think it was by the writers. They are both priestly types, but they come from different traditions with different vantage points, which means they have a lot in common and also a lot of difference, which resonates really well. They convincingly exist outside our own society’s gender and sexuality norms; that’s hard to do. Farscape does it reasonably well overall, and never better than with Zhaan and Stark. They both feel like people who don’t come from patriarchies. Their major relationship arc is how Zhaan’s presence and teaching stabilize Stark, and that feels touching and real. (NB: old Farscape fans from the LJ days may say, “Wait, weren’t you a ScorpSik fan? Yes, and I still like them, but they aren’t right at the top.)

Honorable Mention: Schmendrick and Molly from the Unicorn Universe
Short summary: Two jaded people find new purpose thanks to a unicorn and then just sort of keep on hanging out together because they like each other.

Schmendrick and Molly are a great example of midlife love: two people who find each other after they’ve made their youthful mistakes and when they’re not looking for a relationship. Thus, when they truly get to know each other, they know what they’re seeing, how to appreciate its worth, and how to behave to make a relationship work. No wonder they basically do seem happy for the rest of her long life (he lives longer). They’re not higher because Molly—though a good character—is not very deeply developed.

Best Female/Female Pairing: Xena and Gabrielle from Xena
Short summary: A warrior princess and her sidekick discover they are eternal soulmates.

F/F is a hard sell for me because I’m not attracted to women, so my attention is harder to grab, and I’m sure I’m missing some gems, but nothing tops Xena and Gabrielle. They are archetypally an Achilles and Patroclus pair and are inextricable in much the same way. I think the series benefits from being early enough that they couldn’t be very explicitly lesbian because it required showing their love (mostly) without the shortcuts of sex and romance. It shows in their absolute commitment to each other whether it means risking their lives or emotionally being there in ugly, traumatic times. It shows in their friendly banter and in their willingness to tell each other hard truths when needed. I like that their relationship doesn’t preclude their both having serious romantic relationships with men; it doesn’t threaten what they have. I love how they support each other as mothers, even when it’s really hard, as it is for Gabrielle after losing her own daughter and grandson (long story).

(I have racked my brains—for years—to come up with a second entry, and I can’t. If people have f/f (f&f) recs, rec away. I like Cece and Hillary from Beaches, but I don’t lose sleep over their relationship. Willow and Tara are nicely written (mostly), but I’m not that into them, probably because I just don’t vibe with Willow. Not Buffy and Faith because I think Faith is a bit underdeveloped.)

Best Example of What Love Is: Nanachi and Mitty from Made in Abyss
Short Summary: Two children get horribly tortured and trapped in an inescapable hellscape but build a life together nonetheless. (Seriously, skip if you don’t like dark stories.)

I’ll try not to be too grisly, but this is dark: in the course of their being tortured by a mad scientist, Nanachi is transformed into a sort-of rabbit-looking person, but Mitty is reduced almost to a pile of goo who can barely drag herself around. She can no longer speak and, I think, can no longer clearly understand language because, if she could, I think she would have found some ways to express it, even given her physical debility. She seems to have emerged with something akin to the intelligence and emotion of a dog. Nanachi saves her and they spend decades (?) carving out a life together in as nice a cottage as Nanachi can manage within the inescapable dangers of the Abyss. Mitty, though very debilitated, is also nigh indestructible, so Nanachi makes it part of their life’s work to find a way to kill her so that she won’t suffer on/be further tortured after Nanachi dies. Their love for each other is truly unconditional. It doesn’t rely on happiness or physical attraction or being kindred spirits or Romantic sympathy or having a purpose or staving off loneliness or anything. They are simply committed to being together and helping each other live as comforted a life as possible. And I do think of them sometimes when I think about what it really means to love someone.

Best Frenemies: Charles and Erik from The X-Men, mostly movieverse
Short summary: We may periodically try to kill each other’s friends and associates but there will still be time for chess.

The thing that makes Charles and Erik plausible is that Charles is a telepath, and for all that Erik often blocks him out, he also often doesn’t, so Charles really gets where he’s coming from. And to know someone is to forgive them, at least more or less. Erik does some truly horrific things that Charles will never excuse, but he knows why. He also knows that Erik loves him, and that allows him to love Erik. I think I’ll just stop there.

Best Romeo and Juliet Pairing: Nic and Worick from Gangsta
Short summary: What if Romeo and Juliet were two boys who became platonic best friends and then lived together in a ghetto for twenty-two more years?

This is my favorite star-crossed lovers story, even though the manga is not complete and may never be. That’s frustrating, but what we’ve got as a setup is so good. I love the “what if” of such a couple actually making a life together, not dying as young ’un’s, and Nic and Worick work hard against a lot of social barriers to build a fairly happy life. Impoverished, in a ghetto run by organized crime, routinely risking their lives, in a society that tells them a normal human and Twilight can’t really be friends, in a system that requires Nic to be legally very close to Worick’s slave, with both of them knowing that Nic (like all Twilights) will die young, when things aren’t actively in crisis, they are, in fact, pretty happy. They have a nice couch and nice friends and grumble at each other’s foibles. Yet they still have problems, not only external but internal. Worick resents Nic for taking cavalier risks with his own life, which Nic does (partly) out of resentment against Worick’s once commanding him not to kill himself. They love each other, they like each other, and they both have an undercurrent of enduring anger at each other. It’s a smart look at inequity and oppression, as well as living with chronic illness (which the author does), a lovely portrayal of the sacrifices and rewards of committing to a life partner against the odds.

Best Biologically Destined Pairing: Vincent and Real from Ergo Proxy
Short summary: If two clones are genetically designed to be a couple, is their connection to each other authentic? Are they authentic? Is the robot kid? Is anything?

Vincent and Real are both clones of types that, if I understand correctly—which is an “if”—were designed to be a sexual pairing. In fact, Vincent, in an earlier stage of his life was in a relationship with the being Real was cloned from. (He doesn’t remember that though.) It’s pretty clear they both have what I’d call a “chemical” attraction: they’re drawn to each other, focused on each other, can’t stop thinking about each other, even though—especially for Real—it’s hard to reason out why: she does not initially find Vincent an impressive specimen. Over the course of the story, however, they go on an adventure together and get to know each other as people. They become friends; they are never an explicit couple, though I think the series ends near a point where they could become one. But they become committed, almost family; I’d say they love each other. But how free is that choice? The story doesn’t answer that, which is intriguing, with obvious analogs to real life eros.

Best YA Pairing: Kaz and Inej from the Six of Crows books
Short summary: Two implausibly young criminals fall for each other through a mix of mutual respect and complementary trauma.

YA is a hard sell for me. I didn’t generally like works about teens even when I was a teen, so I was surprised by how thoroughly this pair won me over. It may be partly that they do usually behave older, not lots older but maybe 19-20 instead of 16-17. I should note that Kaz and Inej don’t get together in the books, which are messaging that she shouldn’t orient her life around a man, which is totally valid. But this means my adoration of them depends a bit on extrapolation. Literarily, this pair works for two reasons. The first is mutual respect. They see each other’s worth, and they usually treat each other with decency and good boundaries, which is a high bar in their capitalist hell-nation. The second is that they have complementary traumas, which makes them not just sympathetic but intriguing. They’re in the atypical situation of being physically attracted to each other yet also having strong internal (not external) barriers to having a physical relationship. Lots of stories have pairings who are prevented from sleeping together, but usually they are physically or socially kept apart or have internalized that they can't be together for some noble reason (chastity, not spreading illness, fidelity to someone else, etc.). These two would have trouble getting together sexually because of raw psycho-physical trauma. Kaz has a phobia of physical touch, owing to childhood trauma, and Inej was a sex-trafficked adolescent whose only sexual experience has been rape. The story does not explore her trauma much, which is a weak spot, in my opinion. But I have to assume it’s there, and that if they ever got past Kaz’s issues enough to consider having sex, they’d have to get past her issues. If they were to become a couple, they would love each other and want each other, but find fulfilling that desire very difficult, and not, I think, only in terms of needing to take it slow, but in a deep, sustained way that would follow them for years. That’s painful, touching, a bit exhausting, and fascinating to consider. (It’s also good representation for people—asexual or not—who don’t find sex fun and easy, which is damn rare to see.)

Best Pair I Don’t Want to Slash Even Though Everyone Else Does: Blake and Avon from Blake’s 7
Short summary: “Remember to think before you shoot.”

I’m surprised I find it so hard to explain why Blake and Avon are amazing. On paper, the pitch is clear: idealistic rebel and reluctant cynical rebel spar. That’s a decent TV pitch, and it’s exactly what you get, yet it doesn’t capture them. It helps that Gareth Thomas and Paul Darrow had such on-screen chemistry and are such good actors. (Yes, Paul Darrow was a good actor.) It helps that the writing is often excellent: witty, sharp, in character. It even helps that the series had to roll with the punch of Thomas leaving and managed to do so, with some hiccups, by constructing a beautifully structured tragic fall for Avon. But the thing that elevates Blake and Avon from sparring partners to I guess I’ll loosely call it “love” is the need they develop for each other. Blake needs Avon to keep his head level, to challenge his fanaticism and recklessness. And Avon needs Blake to give his life a purpose. He says his purpose is money and safety, but that’s not an end; it’s a means. His end was life with Anna, and once Anna is gone, it becomes life with Blake, and once Blake is gone, he tries to make it the rebellion, but he kind of falls apart. It’s part accident and part good writing, but, man, did it ever work.

Best “Is This the Ship That Launched a Thousand Archetypes?” Achilles and Patroclus from the Iliad
Short summary: Having your best friend die when it’s kind of your fault really sucks.

The Iliad is a masterful story about the weight of grief and nature of vengeance—or about the cost of rage. It pivots around Achilles losing Patroclus, which means it’s predicated on their love. Their love is hugely present in the story: from their backstory as lads to their discussion of sending Patroclus into battle to Achilles’ epic grief/rage to their ghostly meeting in Book 23. Why do I not put them higher on the list? Probably because, as people, they’re not as developed as some of the newer, novelistic entries. For example, Vash and Wolfwood have a version of an Achilles/Patroclus arc, but it’s much more psychologically complex. Still, there’s a reason people have been shipping this ship for 2700 years and probably will for another 2700 more if human civilization survives.

Best Archetypal Descendant: Harry and Brandon from Gungrave, the anime
Short summary: Having your best friend die and it’s totally your fault may or may not suck, depending on the circumstances.

I sometimes call Gungrave, “the Friendship Tragedy.” Harry and Brandon are an Achilles and Patroclus pairing in that Harry is the leader and Brandon the follower, but while Achilles and Patroclus are always pretty much on good terms, Harry and Brandon crash and burn because Harry has epic insecurities that prime him to feel betrayed and Brandon has a fixation on loyalty that is so intense it prevents him from making some timely and reasonable decisions. (To be clear, it’s mostly Harry’s fault. To also be clear, I love you, Harry. You’re totally me.) One of the most magnificent things about Gungrave is that it sticks the ending. It's a good anime throughout, but the ending is perfection. It is a classic tragedy in that Harry (and Brandon) must meet tragic ends but also in that, by the end, the “right” order of things is restored. Watching them come back together as best friends, even though they won’t survive, is profoundly beautiful.

Most Byronic Archetypal Descendant: Cathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights
Short summary: Having your best friend die and tell you it’s kind of your fault sucks.

Cathy and Heathcliff are kind of in the Iliad archetype in that they are an inseparable pairing and Cathy is nominally the leader, Heathcliff the follower. Beyond that, the resemblance is strained, I own. They are amazing in their own right though. They are the quintessential pairing that defies all social norms—not only theirs but ours. They have a passionate relationship that clearly involves some sexual desire, yet they are not a sexual couple and, I would argue not really “in love,” not in the usual sense. They grow up together and are as close as siblings, yet their relationship does not read as fraternal unless you want to read it as kind of incestuous. Within their own society, they violate class lines and race lines and gender role lines. They violate all the typical social lines: they’re not married, yet they love each other more than they do their spouses. They each have kids with their spouses (not each other), yet they are the ones plainly meant to be as one (as Cathy explicitly says). They are sick, selfish, and unsympathetic and loyal, committed, and entirely sympathetic. And they must be very hard to explain because something like ten adaptations and counting have failed utterly to capture them.