and here are my thought on yaoi- er...shipping

[ivy_chan]

I feel much better today. I was honestly worried it would get much worse and I'd spend today puking my guts out instead of just being nauseous, so I am glad to be proven very wrong. Still don't really feel up to eating, not out of nausea but because my digestive system has that delicate, post-flu feeling. Perhaps crackers

Comments

[hungrytiger11]

So much yes to many of these! Especially about mutual respect and the two people in the relationship having the same maturity (possible exception for me might be with the Ophelia trope, but I rarely seen it well done anyway...)

One thing I've noticed it I love it when the characters have a past- like childhood friend types. Which is weird, because I grew up in a small town and everyone I went to high school with I pretty much also went to kindergarten with. And all those years and memories would get superimposed onto most interactions. I never really dated any people I went to high school with because of that and in real life am usually a little dubious about people marrying the high school sweetheart right out of school. (This happens a lot around here, as does people who literally know each other for less than a month and get married. I don't know why.) But with characters... I love it. Strange.

Anyway, rambly comment was actually to ask...do you have some examples of such couples as you described, especially the Queen to Knight?

[ivy_chan]

Past-childhood friends are cute, too, especially when they have fuzzy memories and don't actually realize it at first.

Queen to Knight pairing: Integra/Alucard, Relena/Heero, Prince Ling/Lan Fan, and Black Jewels Trilogy tried real hard for this angle as well.

[hungrytiger11]

What is the Black Jewel Triology about? I never heard of it before joining lj and haven't seen these books around...

[ivy_chan]

I can't believe I haven't replied to this! Black Jewels Trilogy is a- well, it's about sex and gender. And lots of sex. And twisting Christian themes, I think, because it's about a race called the Blood who use magic through the use of things called Jewels and worship something called The Darkness. (Then there is a character called Saetan, and a Lucivar, and a Daemon, and these are all on the side of the Good.)

They are all waiting for someone called Witch, or Dreams Made Flesh, to come and make their dreams come true, because the Blood have been corrupted and everyone in the realm lives under the tyrannical rule of Dorothea SaDiablo, who is fucking up the Blood's strict hierarchy.

The Blood have a strict, STRICT hierarchy, btw. Matriarchal, but power and inborn caste come into it, too.

This book series contains lots of rape, torture and some pedophilia, just to warn you. That said, it is by no means the darkest book series I have ever read and I even consider it to be relatively fluffy. Of course, I am fucked in the head.