What's Not to Love About Love?

As a little preface to my FAKE posting, I wanted to talk about a subject very near and dear to my heart: love. I've always been a bit of a romantic from a young age. My favorite genre of film has always been romantic comedies, and while all my friends were watching gross-out films and action blockbusters, I was checking out period pieces based on Jane Austen novels where the heroine found love with the kind of gentlemen dreams are made of. My first experience with 'shipping' and fanfiction came with my obsession with Rogue and Gambit from the X-Men animated series on FOX, and grew all the more intense when I discovered my favorite game series Fire Emblem and fell in love with the knight-and-his-liege-lady pairing of Eirika and Seth. Any game with a romance option found its way on my to-play list, and my notebooks filled with story after story where couples journeyed down the twisted road of affection to reach their happy ending. 

I still remember the first time I unlocked the Eirika/Seth support. Squeeeee!

 As I mentioned in my first post, it took me quite a bit of time to get into shounen-ai and shoujo-ai pairings, mainly because I undeniably grew up in a sheltered setting. I come from a very traditionally Catholic family, and went to Catholic School for every grade level up until I applied to my current university. Of course, Catholic School is hardly as innocent as it's supposed to be, but my home life certainly was, and I wasn't the type of person to ask difficult questions or wonder about things I thought might not be age appropriate for me to know. I don't even remember hearing the word 'gay' for the first time until around fourth grade, and when I looked it up in the dictionary and discovered its meaning, I didn't even believe it was real. I had never knowingly met a gay or lesbian person, and I had never heard the subject discussed openly. It wasn't until I thought about it and really considered the idea seriously that I actually realized it was a valid possibility.

 I didn't actively ship same-sex couples at first, because as someone who didn't even know such relationships existed until a late age, I didn't really understand anything about them. In high school, the boy who had a locker next to me was gay and one of my close friends was a lesbian, but I had never bothered to think of what it felt like for them. I understood they felt love very much in the way I felt it at its core, but I couldn't find a way to interpret my understanding of my love to theirs in a way that made sense.

And then Fire Emblem happened... again. The first game I played for the Wii was Radiant Dawn, the sequel to Game Cube's Path of Radiance. I wasn't aware at the time that the Wii was back compatible and could play GC games, so I went ahead and gave Radiant Dawn a playthrough without really understanding the background of the game or the previous history of the characters. I knew I wanted to give the main character Ike the most epic relationship of the game, so I waited until I had recruited the majority of the female characters before deciding on his perfect mate. Usually the most canon pairing for the main lords is obvious (such as how Blazing Sword gears you toward Eliwood/Ninian and Hector/Lyn), and since I generally go the canon route, I was waiting patiently for his match made in heaven to make her appearance.

Surely such paragons of manliness require an appropriate damsel. Or so I thought.

It never happened. And believe me I waited. And waited. I considered a few characters for a moment or two-- Mia, a fellow blue haired sword user, and Elincia, the resident sweet and gentle queen, seemed to be the most likely, but he and Mia rarely interacted, and Elincia already seemed quite in love with her knight and childhood friend Geoffrey. About three-fourths into the game I threw up my hands and gave the gruff and ungentlemanly Ike a support bond with the one person he seemed to interact frequently and kindly with: his best friend Soren.

I got romantic vibes from their friendship, but I didn't really consider it whole-heartedly as a romantic relationship at first. Because, as I said, I just didn't understand that kind of love yet, and was prone to second guessing myself in circumstances regarding it. In America, we tend to dance around the issue of homosexuality in young pop culture, so I wasn't sure if the Japanese would go so far as to put a gay option in a game young teens would be playing. I thought maybe I was looking too much into things, and that they were just good friends and Ike happened to be a celibate hero who wasn't meant to click sexually with anyone in the game.

But then I started thinking, as is my habit, and realized something about Soren's side of the relationship. Ike was the only person he'd ever trusted, and the foundation for his reason of existing in the world. Soren had been hated and abused all of his life, and wouldn't have been even able to function as a sane or humane individual if Ike had never reached out a hand and accepted him, flaws and bad blood in all. If Ike had some sort of blissful relationship with one of the girls, where on earth would that leave Soren? Soren isn't the kind of character who can have lightning strike him twice and feel the sort of deep trust and emotional stability he feels with Ike with anyone else. Ike is the person who completes him and grounds him in reality, and makes him strong enough to carry on in spite of his past and own feelings of bitterness. And then I thought to myself, You know, if that isn't love, what the hell is? If the person who makes you the happiest and gives you all the knowledge and fulfillment you can't achieve on your own can't become your most important person, then who possibly can?

Ike and Soren: The men behind my Ah-ha moment.

And so I finally understood. What it means and feels like to be in love can differ from case to case, but the sentiments that exist at the core are actually incredibly universal. Even with such a sheltered past, I am so glad I took to the time to step outside of my comfort zone and consider things from a point of view different from my own. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that a good portion of the fanfiction I write is slash because I like the challenge of writing about people different from me and my own life. But whatever form love comes in, I love it and will happily support it. It's a bit odd that I learned this lesson from Fire Emblem (especially since the first lesbian couple I shipped, Nephenee and Heather, is also from that series), but I am just happy that I learned it to begin with.