just another variation of that pairings meme

[annwyd]

Select a fandom of choice, and you, that is the commenter, get to ask me to ramble/rant/squee about your pairing of choice.

Or you could pick two pairings, preferably conflicting ones though not necessary, and ask me to pick one of them and argue for why the pick.

My fandoms: Naruto, Bleach, Gundam SEED, Fullmetal Alchemist, D.Gray-man, Final

Comments

whee spam

[annwyd]

Oh, this is a complicated one. *cracks knuckles, dives in* :D

Team 7, these days, is why I read Naruto. I love the three of them and how they've made each other grow. Ultimately I prefer them as I see them in canon:
Naru+Sasu (mostly platonic) rivalry-friendship with a lot of fanservicey NaruSasu (not so platonic) hints
&
Naru+Saku (platonic) having evolved into a strong, reliable friendship from Naru->Saku (not so platonic)
&
SasuSaku (romantic) having evolved into an almost unfathomably deep connection from what was once shallow Saku->Sasu

When I'm reading the manga, that's what I expect to see (and in fact what I do see), and when I'm writing something set in an 'ideal ending' continuity, that's what I write.

But that's the canon, and Team 7 is just so intense and complex that they beg for unusual treatment in fanfiction. More than any single pairing among them I love the interaction of the team as a whole. I'd much rather see a fic where all of them were fucking than one where the three of them had nothing but neat, orderly platonic feelings for each other. Ugh, purely platonic Team 7. No thanks.

As for the individual pairings:
NaruSasu: I like this one. Sure, the fandom (especially the SasuNaru side) gets wanky at times, and the Sakura-bashing is annoying, and the insisting that the series will end with NaruSasu being a Canon Couple, but the pairing itself is hard to deny. It is the single most intense and driving relationship in the whole series. Kishimoto loves writing about these two, and it really shows. That said, fluff for these two is virtually impossible to make work except as part of the threesome. Give me violent sex instead any day.
NaruSaku: This one bothers me. Part of it is the fandom--much more so than the NaruSasu fandom, the NaruSaku fandom is dead set on calling their pairing canon and almost always bashing Sasuke (and sometimes poor Hinata) along the way. They leap on the stupidest evidence (omg, a guy who knew Sakura for a week tried to comfort her, but Naruto cut him off! OBVIOUSLY HE WAS GOING TO TELL HER THAT SHE IS IN LOVE WITH NARUTO! HE KNOWS HER BETTER THAN SHE KNOWS HERSELF!) and dismiss everything about Sakura's feelings for Sasuke. The pairing itself doesn't really bother me--as a part of the threesome it's fine, and as a result of Sasuke dying or going permanently evil (not that he would), it's almost inevitable, although then it's angsty. But I like them just fine as they are: friends who trust and rely on each other deeply. Naruto has what he wants from Sakura--her friendship. The relationship doesn't need to progress into romance.
SasuSaku: This is my favorite of the three separate pairings, but that's less because OMG SQUEE TEEHEE KAWAII ROMANCE and more because it just seems like it's become such a part of their characters. Honestly, at first I wasn't really interested. "Oh," I thought, "nice angst, I could do some dramatic tragic fic on that, I guess." Then I got into Sasuke as a character and became more interested in his relationship with Sakura. Then, after the timeskip, I finally really saw how complex Sakura's character was and how much she'd grown and changed, and then I started to look at how import her feelings for Sasuke were to her development, and I saw how well Kishimoto had built them. It really shouldn't be such a well-written pairing; it's a terrible concept. But there's something incredibly touching about the understated way she brings out the humanity in him, how the way he acts around her is closer to gentleness than the way he acts around anyone else. While Naruto and Sasuke have an amazing connection in violence and bitter need for each other, Sasuke and Sakura have a bond that's almost eerie in its silent understanding.

But there's also the point of how each pairing figures into Team 7 as a whole. I've thought about this a lot.

(continued)