Comments | labingi: Boston Partnership: A Defense of Primary Friendship

labingi

Boston Partnership: A Defense of Primary Friendship

May 31, 2011 21:24

"Boston Partnership: A Defense of Primary Friendship""The only thing lacking in Izzy's life was a romantic relationship, but even that wasn't enough to spoil the sense of peace that had settled over her. So many of her friends were single that it didn't seem odd for her to be that way as well. They filled up the holes in each other's lives and ( Read more... )

commentary on life, boston partnership, rl

Comments 25

kernezelda June 1 2011, 05:00:48 UTC

I agree with this utterly ( ... )

labingi June 2 2011, 03:47:57 UTC

Interesting ex's! Thanks for your thoughts:) I agree that Kirk-Spock-McCoy are a significant triad. And Legolas and Gimli definitely belong on the list:)

I'm on the fence about John and D'Argo: dear friends, definitely, and deeply enmeshed in each other's lives, sometimes at great personal risk, for years. Personally, I would probably not say BPs because, for all their closeness, they don't seem to include each other in primary planning. Ex. when D'Argo's pondering going off and living on a farm with Chiana, he's not pondering how John will fit in. Still, in interpreting the lives of fictional characters, we're all pretty free to make up our own readings:)

meganinhiding June 1 2011, 05:28:25 UTC

For some reason this made me think of the old Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schultz; Snoopy called Woodstock his "friend of friends".

Lovely post that I just can't think of anything to add.

labingi June 2 2011, 03:49:19 UTC

Snoopy was channeling Frodo, it sounds like:)

You know, I've thought of you betimes as I've been developing these ideas and thinking that you were likely someone they'd resonate with. I'm glad that seems true:)

vilakins June 1 2011, 05:34:22 UTC

I've argued that friendship is as powerful as romantic / sexual love many times. It's what I write about.

labingi June 2 2011, 03:51:48 UTC

Go you! It needs to be written about more. As I revisit a lot of my life in terms of these issues, I find that I've always been attracted to stories that work along these friendship-oriented lines (and nervous around stories that work along the more traditional fairytale/courtly romance plot). I think part of why I find it so difficult to find stories I really love is that the romance plots so vastly outnumber the friendship plots.

vilakins June 2 2011, 03:58:17 UTC

And yet it's what people seem to want to read, with the huge emphasis on pairings and shipping and sexual content. I always feel I have a limited audience with my friendship stories (one was even called "The Hand of Friendship") but that's what I'm interested in too and what I'll continue to write.

labingi June 2 2011, 04:32:02 UTC

Very true. Ships are most of what I write. Obviously, sex drive is involved in the emphasis on shipping, but I think a lot of this is culturally constructed. There have been interesting discussions about this in asexual fandom, with many fans noting that they naturally write sex fic and/or feel that they must write sex fic and/or have to/naturally do create sexual pairings/ships. And this, by definition for this population, is not much based on sex drive.

Now, that's different from "romance." One can be an asexual romantic, but I think it is, nonetheless, a telling example of how deeply powerful the social expectations are.

By analogy, how many women in Jane Austen's society would rather marry Mr. Collins than be old maids? It doesn't mean Mr. Collins is a force girls are naturally driven towards; it means that when you aren't given a choice, you usually don't perceive a choice.

Thread 11

i_bookwyrme June 1 2011, 22:01:44 UTC

Hear hear!

We cheat ourselves so much and so deeply by cutting out oal non-romantic forms of love.

labingi June 2 2011, 03:52:35 UTC

This is very true!

skinintheway June 1 2011, 23:24:38 UTC

Lol, you know, last night I finally sat down to comment on Love in a Finite Place, only to realize that I had no words to describe Ash and Eiji and needed to make some definitions first. You've just done the job for me. XP ( ... )

labingi June 2 2011, 04:23:55 UTC

I can't even tell you how tired I used to be from repeating these sentences over and over.

Boy, dear God, do I know the feeling!

Thanks for your thoughtful response (and for reading "Love in a Finite Place"!). Your response calls for an essay in itself, but for now I'll reply as I can here.

But language lives through people, and if there's no demand, there won't be a suply, so I'm inclined to believe that the lack of terminology means there simply aren't enough people who would be interested in friendship-based life commitment, or in calling it that way.This is an insightful point that brings up many complex issues. My most (over)simplified response is that I disagree. And I think the fact that you think this is the case is an illustration of why I'm writing this essay ( ... )

labingi June 2 2011, 04:24:59 UTC

(continued)

...we really are hardwired to base our primary life partnership on eros...

Again, I don't think this true; I think the belief that it is true is an artifact of Freud and, more so, the allegory of love, as well as some real, biological drives. Human beings (with a small minority of exceptions) do have a drive to have sex and do have a drive to strongly bond with one or a few people they have sex with. That helps support raising children; it makes sense ( ... )