Hated Pairing : Subaru~Kamui of [X]

WARNING: I've been moved to write this for ages, and allow me to start this by saying I may piss off a lot of people who stumble upon this page either by accident or otherwise. If so, you always know where the "ctrl+w" button is.

Thank you to my friends on the BFS_ML for their insight and support in a time when Great Stupidity seems to be in vogue. Some of your comments may have been reproduced here verbatim.

Flying in the Face of the Great Fangirl Juggernaut: The Post That Triggered It All

This was originally posted on my LJ. Edited in parts for clarity.

Attention: public rant on the ugly side of fandom

ATTEND. This announcement is brought to you by the Hostile Zed Productions and we will not be held responsible for any mental/emotional/sexual distress caused by it.

Yes, I like Subaru~Kamui as a couple or them just being together. They may not be my favourite canon characters; that dubious honour goes to Fuuma Manou (frankly, Fuuma in his Dark Kamui persona is one of the most awe-inspiring villain in anime-dom ever, and I am totally awed by his drive). But as far as pairing goes, Subaru~Kamui is my favourite.

However.

Last November, when I made a private comment to an acquaintance about a certain pairing that I like, I did not expect people to react goddamn violently over it. Seemed that my comment, made in someone's LJ fricking upset a lot of folks from the seixsub community and that's why right at this moment there are at least two stalkers with obviously fake LJs 'observing' my LJ. It is my LJ and I maintain my right to say what's on my mind. If you can't take it, fuck the hell off. Yes, I am enraged.

The comment that started the race to oblivion was this. It's an opinion of mine, I do not force it upon others but as with any opinion, I am goddamn entitled to my own thoughts. God gave me a brain and the free will, so I am exercising it here.

Original post by zed on cutepear's LJ reproduced here:

Cutepear commented:

Though, I'm still indecisive about whether been a Seishirou/Subaru or Subaru/Kamui shipper (Fuuma's a little bit too creepy for me...ummm, nevermind Seishirou).

I responded in good faith:

I'm a sucker for hope and happy possibilities, so I go for Subaru/Kamui. I used to like S/S but as you correctly observed, the majority of S/S fics are way too dark and everyone were desperate to justify the pairing by getting Subaru mentally and sexually abused by the dark onmyouji. And yeah, long boring sex does not make up for a lousy relationship no matter how many times your "magical spot" get probed!

If I really want to be a bitchy asshead, I'd say the possibility of happy S/S and F/K is as remote as natural snow in the tropics! My half arsed reasoning:

Sei/Subaru.

1. in Tokyo Babylon, Subaru was awkward and he always flinched when Sei tried to touch him or tease him about him (Sei) being in love with Subaru! Therefore, I cannot see any 'willing and natural' sex between these two during the year per TB.
2. just before the end of the Bet, Sei killed Hokuto and broke Subaru's arm and told the traumatised 16 yr old Subaru that he's nothing more than an object (some crap like that @_@). Don’t forget the beating that Sei gave the poor boy. The boy spit blood, dammit, after being kicked repeatedly in the torso by someone who supposedly loved him. Ye God, spare me from an abusive relationship.
3. Subaru and Sei did not meet each other during the 7 or 8 years between the events in TB and X.
4. When they met at Nakano Plaza, they fought and Sei once again injured Subaru (deep gash on the chest).
5. Sei got himself killed by Subaru in X. I'm not into necro-fics, and the idea of zombie! Sei/Subaru scares me.

Fuuma/Kamui.

1. Fuuma met Kamui first time when Kamui was about 5 or 6.
2. Kamui moved away from Tokyo at age 9. They did not meet up till 6 years later in 1999.
3. Fuuma turned into Dark Kamui within days of meeting Kamui. Infact, Fuuma has the Dark Kamui persona ingrained in him the moment of his mother’s death. It went downhill from there.

Subaru/Kamui.

1. by the time Subaru appeared in X, he met Kamui and from the moment he laid his eyes/hands on the pretty boy, they appeared to spend a fair bit of time in each other's company (yeah, the first day they met, Subaru 'entered Kamui's unconscious mind and ended up lying on him with Kamui hugging him tightly!! Willingly and naturally I must add!)
2. Subaru and Kamui seemed to hang around each other (the cute bonding at the school grounds, at the mansion, the hospital, bedside etc). These two couldn't get their hands off each other ... they are always touching each other's faces and hands and knees O_O !!! From my reading, they were not really sociable or touchy feely with anyone else in the manga.
3. the possibilities are there as they obviously have natural attraction towards each other!
4. almost all their bonding scenes were near or on a bed. CLAMP certainly has an odd sense of humour.

Sei/Fuuma.

1. Oh hell yes! They flirted, shared food (ice cream cone!! how much phallic can you get?!), went on lunch dates and try to out-evil each other while being polite to each other. I love Sei/Fuu pairing. HOT!!!

[fans face]
<== end of zed's post.

And that was inadvertently linked to the seixsub community and Manure Flew is a mild way of saying it.

FUCKING HELL!

That torn it. In case you are really low on batteries today, yes, I am a Subaru/Kamui shipper. The 20-something ying/yang magician and the 15-year old hero of the manga. The general consensus is that this pairing will never happen, and if at all, Subaru would use Kamui as a convenient lay.

While I am the type who is tolerant of any pairing (hey, I even wrote Ron/Winky and I have read Voldemort/Pikachu), I am afraid that a lot of the X fandom folks are very protective of their one true pairing and will write essays on why a particular pairing will or won't work.

The day the majority of the Sei/Sub shippers will open up to the Subaru/Kamui pairing will be the day the Israelis calls for a permanent truce with the Palestinians.

In my opinion, they are intolerant at best of the SxK shippers. But SxK is not seen kindly by most self-declared purist. And X fandom is one of the most close minded I have come across. Everyone there think they are the CLAMP quartet.

Look, I have nothing against Seishirou. Yeah, I like him. I'll even dismiss the fact that he's fricking dead. But I like him with Hokuto (Subaru's twin sister) as a couple. Or Tooru, Kamui’s mother. That would be just evil.

I wrote two SxK fics and it raised some hackles for my supposedly plastic characterisation of Subaru. And someone, who has connections with the best fanfic writers out there kindly told me that I can't write and should consider taking some fricking writing course in some high school. I am, in short, guilty of character (read: Subaru) bastardisation. So what? Who's to judge? If the reader have a problem with the characterisation, then my advise, use your goddamn brain, arsehole, don't read. Skip it. Remember, Ctrl+W is your friend!

Click on that second link and read through the post and the resulting comments. Alas, I must say that the communication is like the Harry/Draco shippers fighting with the Harry/Ginny shippers at Gryffindor Tower some time back. Juvenile at best. Fucking idiotic at worst.

I am entitled to my SxK pairing, no matter how unlikely it is to happen in canon. Whether I do it as a reader or a writer remains to be seen. [Okay, did Fuuma/Kamui or Sei/Sub happen in canon? Really?].

The whole Sei/Sub comm can tear me to pieces, but they CANNOT take my faith in my pairing away. It's not as goddamn likely going to happen as my converting to another religion. APOSTATE.

I will respect them as long as they respect my free will. Cross the line and you will see the ugly side of me.

Thank you for showing me the ugly side of X Fandom. And you can be sure I'm there for good now.

End of Post.

Thoughts Stemming From The Wankfest That Followed

Sometime towards end Jan/Feb 2004 one of the lurkers started a whole fandom wank over the issue just to ‘teach Zed Adams a lesson’. Now, that fandom wank episode really made me ponder seriously if the majority of the X Fandom people were nothing but a bunch of annoying IQ-challenged youngsters who have too much time on their hands and no life outside Fandom and Cosplay.

My sin? I defended a newbie writer’s fic on the alternate S/K community after a flyby attacker criticised it. Come on people, how immature can you get? And I know who you are… tsk tsk.

What annoyed me most was the scathing remarks made by said flyby attacker to the newbie writer on behalf of her distressed friend. The cause? The newbie’s characterisation of Kamui was akin to that of a battered housewife, Subaru was wooden and the fic was so cookie-cutter that anyone could swap the characters with any Yami No Matsuei character and viola, you get a generic YnM fic. And to round it off, the flyby attacker went on to say, she was simply giving a free tip if the newbie writer was interested in becoming a good writer, rather than just a writer.

Oh, please.

I’m sure our cup fairly runneth over with joy because you care! *Snort*. Perhaps the flyby attacker and friend should consider some people write fics for fun? It’s no point getting all upset and tantrumish. And it’s downright rude to force your opinion down other people’s throat. If you don’t like a fic, don’t read it. Go read what you like. As an analogy, I don’t like pork; won’t touch it, won’t eat it, won’t buy it. But I have no problem if other people cook it, eat it or live solely on pig-based product, yanno?

Which brings me to the question: what gives a person, especially an established writer the right to shoot down first timers like this? Frankly, IMNSHO, none whatsoever. Everyone has to start somewhere. We weren’t born as BNFs or whatever. Admit it, go read your first fic. You’d probably left it languishing in your hard drive because you were too shy to post. Remember the first criticism you got. That didn’t give you the jollies, did it?

Talking of criticism, there are constructive criticism and there are destructive criticism. Most critics will defend that their criticism was constructive albeit mean sounding. Hello?  English may not be my first language but even I know the difference between the two.

Mean words, and destructive words thoughtfully chosen to hit a person’s ego should never be confused with constructive criticism. To paraphrase my BFS_ML friends, positive, constructive criticism IS acceptable behaviour. There are ways of criticising a story that aren't hurtful to the writer in question and that are helpful rather than destructive.

Criticism, heavily laden with mean words can never help the writer in question to better their skill. Usually, when I see these sorts of things said to first time writers, who are usually VERY shy about sharing their work, that writer disappears off into the ether never to be seen again. It's a terrible shame, because encouragement should be the thing, not shooting people down. Sometimes, it could be a simple case of jealousy on the part of the established fanfic writer, but that's still not really an excuse.

How can ONE person, or a clique of self-appointed hardcore rival pairing shippers set the parameters for a fanfic or characterisation in any given fandom? Everyone sees things differently, have their own signature style, their own character interpretation, their own outtake of what could be especially in an unfinished series. Unless the creators of the series explicitly made the pairing exchange marriage vows any pairing is open to the reader’s interpretation. You see what you want to see.

Another factor that may come into play is Egotism. It’s not a right, but it justifies the flyby attacker’s behaviour, especially if there are people snarking along with her to make her feel validated. The conversation will quickly spiral down to primary school level, and leave the victim feeling humiliated. Usually people like the commenter will whip out the old 'If it's on the internet, we can insult, er, critique it' theory, but remarks like that, phrased in that bitchy a manner does no one any good.

Apart from egotism, a bizarre obsession with pairing love often is the reason behind all these crap. Some people just CANNOT accept that it really is possible for more than one pairing to come from a series. They can only see it one way, all the time, no matter what, and everybody else is WRONG and deserves to be appropriately punished and humiliated. Which still makes the idiot doing it a total jackass, only they don't see it that way. And, if you're in just the RIGHT fandom, the people snarking along with that person are probably just the same person from multiple email addresses. Fear those. More than any of the others.

Rival pairing bashing, thinly veiled as criticism are not only annoying but it’s not welcome. This trend has been growing alarmingly in the last couple of months and wherever I looked, I saw acquaintances dealing with similar crap in anime, RPS, LOTR, RPGs etc. However, the intolerance exhibited by the fangirls in the X fandom was unique. Perhaps they should consider that there is more to life than RPGs, Cosplay and fanfics.

Well, that sums it up, pretty much.