fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #494 ]

[ SECRET POST #494 ]

⌈ Secret Post #494 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 10 pages, 250 secrets from Secret Submission Post #071.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

16. 8 pages of comments, and no one has disagreed with this secret yet? I was all set to post my big rebuttal, but now... um... I've lost the nerve. I'll just enjoy my OTP alone, I guess.

23. D'awww, love them.

43. But you can't control what you dream about! Even if you were dreaming about his friend, he had no right to get angry at you for it. What an asshat. Many others have said it already, but oh well. You're better off without him.

60. <3 Kenny. I know what you mean about the fangirls - they rant and rave over their own version of him and it's very offputting. All of the main guys seem to get bastardized by fandom on a regular basis. I'm just about set to rant on bad characterization and disregard for canon events the next time I see a fic that states Kyle's never been good at sports.

76. I'm alarmed by people that stop reading things when they encounter one jarring choice of word or one bad typo. Missing the forest for the trees, much?

Post your big rebuttal please? :D; I disagree with the secret too, but I'm too tired to really think of anything. XD;

I'm game. I'm pretty much on the fence about the pairing, anyway. CONVINCE ME. I LIKE IT.

76: I once encountered a fic in which, during sex, a character "moaned like a cow giving birth."

I laughed my ass off, but I finished reading anyway.

Do you believe in unicorns and people never dying, too?

So. Summoning mythical beasts is REALISTIC AND AOKAY in your book

A TIME TRAVELING WITCH. THING. Shoving an ICICLE THROUGH A GUY'S CHEST--WHO LIVES also AOKAY AND REALISTIC.

Hooking up with your first love. PREPOSTEROUS, I SAY. I'LL HAVE NONE OF THIS TOMFOOLERY.

I didn't say I think hooking up with your first love is unrealistic. Just when it happens in a matter of...what...like a week? And then people think they're going to be together ~*~*~*~*FOREVER*~*~*~*~? Please.

Er. The happiest damn couple I know was like that. They've been married coming on...thirty years? Doesn't happen for everybody, but when it does, it's nice. Maybe that's why I think these sorts of stories appeal to me. It may not happen to me--but it might happen to someone!

I'm not the other anon, but I think what makes the pairing unrealistic was how it was handled. We are supposed to accept things like time-traveling witches and magic because that's how the rules of the FFVIII world works. However, we are supposed to identify with the human characters, but what makes it difficult is when the characters we are supposed to relate to have emotional reactions that are so...unrealistic, for lack of a better word.

It's not the "first love" deal that makes the pairing incompatable, IMO, but their attitudes towards one another. Squall is apathetic towards Rinoa with little affection towards her in the beginning of the game. However, when her life is in danger he goes through unbelievable lengths to make sure she is safe, such as making her safety the main priority (even above the rest of the Garden!). She's constantly thrown in the damsel-in-distress role to make her seem like Squall's "princess" in need of rescuing, but what is meant to seem endearing only suceeds in being irritating to many.

Also what is equally annoying is the rest of the party's opinion on the relationship. They all act like matchmakers and feel that the only way to get through to Squall would be for him and Rinoa to hook up. Forget just becoming his friend; when there's romance involved, who needs friendship?

...Hi, stop being anonymous so we can be friends. D: Because I agree, like, 300 percent!

No no, please post your rebuttal. ♥ I got to this f!s post when it already had 10 pages of comments, or I'd have posted my own rebuttal.

It makes me sad how it's so totally acceptable to bash on not just Rinoa and Squall/Rinoa in fandom, but also Rinoa and Squall/Rinoa fans.

Could be because they're too blinded by sugarcoated shit to rationalize the psychological aspects and realism (or lack thereof) of Rinoa and Squall's so-called "relationship".

My boyfriend and I were like Squall and Rinoa personified -- even had the same astrological signs! And we ended up flat-out hating each other before too long. Who knows, maybe that's why I can't stand the pairing at all. But we're proof enough that opposites don't always attract. And I couldn't change him to save my life.

Really, their relationship sends the wrong message. "Yeah, end up with the first person you fall in love with!" and "You can always change them!" It's a load of crap.

Oh, charming.

I see this bullshit all the goddamn time. "This fictional relationship reminds me of a real relationship I had...so not only am I personally going to be squicked by it, I'm going to insist that everyone else should be, and if they don't they're idiots, because THE RELATIONSHIP SENDS THE WRONG MESSAGE!"

Newsflash: the fact that you had a bad relationship that reminds you of Squall/Rinoa (or vice versa), or Sasuke/Sakura, or Ichigo/Orihime, or whatever else it's trendy to hate on today...does not mean the pairing itself is your bad relationship. It's a fictional pairing that, in fact, probably has very little to do with your bad relationship. Your personal issues mean that a fictional pairing squicks you out? A-okay. That happens. But they shouldn't mean that you mock and demean other people who don't see the pairing through that lens.

A-fucking-men. I mean, sheesh, I had a relationship with heavy fandom-related overtones (we met through cosplay! I shipped the couple! So did he!), but when it tanked I didn't...take it out on the fandom. No two relationships are the same, anyway. Especially not REAL WORLD ONES and FICTIONAL ONES.

orz

you mean that as a Laguna/Raine shipper I'm not going to run off and leave my pregnant wife to die? I WAS ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT THAT D:

LOL...THAT'S WHY I SAID IT. Because it's not true for me, but I find it so fun to get you Squinoa fans all up in a tizzy. You're so sensitive. <3

Awww, you said something fucking stupid, but clearly the people who reacted by calling you idiots are the stupid oversensitive ones. Troll logic is so adorable.

I have a question, though.

What do you think about them as friends?

Because when you take away the possibility of — urk I'm gonna toss my burger mentioning this in the context of Squall and Rinoa, but — sex and a future as a couple, they have one hell of a good basis/compatibility for a great friendship. Late night talks when Squall feels overwhelmed, a pat on the shoulder, whatever!

The way you go on about it makes it sound like you don't even want them to even just be friends. :|

As a hater of the Squall/Rinoa ship, I am interested in hearing your reasons. I don't have anything against the people who ship it (like the OP apparently does) but I can't see the appeal for the life of me. Maybe someone from the opposite side can shed some light on it?

Oh, please post your rebuttal. Here, I will break the ice for you.

Ways Squall/Rinoa Works:

1) Their extremes dovetail and balance out. Squall, left to his own devices, fixates on evaluating the past and planning for the future to the exclusion of paying attention to the present; Rinoa, left to hers, lives in the now to the exclusion of planning more than a few steps ahead - when they're together, Rinoa keeps Squall connected to the now and Squall makes sure that Rinoa doesn't go off half-cocked. Rinoa provides a positive perspective which breaks up Squall's negativity; Squall grounds Rinoa's naivete with realism. Squall has skill and ability but absolutely no drive; Rinoa has passion and motivation but lacks the level of ability needed to follow through on her goals without getting herself into a world of trouble. Rinoa has a knee-jerk drive to fix things; Squall needs fixing and, let's face it, possibly always will to some degree.

2) They share some key traits in common. Specifically, they both have a sense of obligation to other people which dictates a lot of their actions. For Rinoa it's that previously mentioned drive to fix things; it's why she's in Timber, it's why she latches onto Squall, it's why she goes along with plans like getting herself sealed away or allowing Ultimecia to possess her even though these things scare her: she needs to help people. For Squall, it's a sense of duty and responsibility that's probably rooted in his own insecurity: repeatedly throughout the game, whenever someone says to Squall "do this thing," he may bitch about it, but he always does it. And both characters, when they set their minds on a goal, pursue it tenaciously and do not give up. God help the person who stands in the way when both of them set themselves to the same mutual goal.

3) Rinoa is the first person in Squall's life since he was four years old to express interest in and unconditional affection for him for his own sake. He responds to her efforts to get him to open up because she's not just looking for him to support her *coughQuistiscough* but because she actually cares about him, and she wants to help fix his damage because, as I've mentioned, Rinoa has this thing about fixing things. As far as we can tell from the game, Rinoa is the first person since Ellone to tell Squall "I care about you" in terms that he can actually understand. Given that Squall has been locked in his four-year-old self's abandonment issues for thirteen years, I don't know why anyone is surprised when, after spending the first two discs frozen in indecision and then finding himself once again faced with the prospect of losing the only person in the world who cares about him, he gloms onto her and gloms hard.

The obvious problem here is that, hypothetically, Squall's damage might eventually be healed enough that he would no longer need Rinoa the way he does in the game, and the need to fix him may no longer be there to draw Rinoa to him. I kind of doubt it, because Squall is really, really broken, but even assuming that happens, it's going to take a long while (because Squall is really broken, and Rinoa's not a paragon of emotional maturity herself), and that gives them plenty of time to develop a more balanced partnership.

Or not. I'm hardly claiming it's an omg perfect healthy everlasting true love, or that there aren't ways it could go wrong, I just think that a) there's plenty of grounds for it to work, so people who enjoy shipping it are hardly delusional and b) it's silly to beat the "your first relationship as a teenager is obviously not going to be a lasting one" drum as much as it gets beaten when Squall in particular does not have the emotional makeup of the average teenager and probably never will.

/soapbox

...Why was it necessary to throw in a snide comment about the Squall/Quistis relationship? You want tolerance for your ship, I don't see what the difference is in me wanting tolerance for mine.

But hey, if we're soapboxing now, count me in!

You said yourself that Rinoa's immature, and I think that's where the problem lies. She's also incredibly fickle, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for someone like Squall who need someone who is, and will stay devoted to him? Rinoa dumps Seifer as soon as she finds out he might be executed; even though there aren't any more major power player evil sorceresses out there, Squall's job is still dangerous, and if rumor gets around that he was killed, comes back to Rinoa, and a hotter guy comes along?

People say that Rinoa wasn't in love with Seifer because she says that she "thinks" she's in love with him; that's just how Rinoa is. She's not the type for a hard commitment. If someone asked her how she felt about Squall? She'd say she thought she was in love with him, not that she was. It doesn't mean that she's not, just like it doesn't mean she didn't have feelings for Seifer. Even in the Timber Owls, where Rinoa is considered the leader in some ways, she doesn't do most of the hard work. She'll likely grow out of it, but at this point? That's a major problem.

Quistis, on the other hand, hasn't shown anything but commitment to Squall. She understands him better than anyone, and even though she passes her feelings off as sisterly affection, there's a high chance that she just said that because she saw him falling for Rinoa, and wanted him to be happy. She makes a few, "I wonder," and "if only," remarks after that, which to me, shows that she's not quite over him yet. While she might just exist as a beacon of support now, you said yourself that he needs someone to heal him; how could support not do that? What Rinoa has over Quistis is the fact that she pushes Squall, and if Quistis would learn to, things would be a lot different.

I don't agree that the secret insulted the fans, but man, jump off your high horse. There's plenty in FFVIII that's up for interpretation and exploration, whether the ending was as open as VII's or not. You're not going to change my mind, and I know I'm not going to change yours. Not to mention, uh, it's a game. :| No rebuttals are going to do anything but stroke egos and cause wank, mine included. They're fictional characters, of course people are going to disagree on what to do with them. Life goes on.

My comment about Quistis wasn't meant as a snide dig, although I realize in hindsight that phrasing it the way I did turned it into one, and I apologize for that. I mentioned it because it seems clear to me that the reason Squall opened up to Rinoa and not to Quistis is because Quistis was pushing Squall to open up to her not solely out of concern for him but because she very obviously wanted him to support her emotionally in ways he wasn't remotely capable of doing.

That's my interpretation of the text of the game. You clearly have a very different one, and I really don't care either way. If other people like to ship Squall/Quistis it is no skin off me...

...which is, frankly, my problem with the secret and a lot of the arguments people make against Squall/Rinoa: they insist that anyone who thinks Squall/Rinoa works is "100% delusional" and that nobody should ship it, ever. In my arguments for the pairing I never claimed that it is the only pairing possible for either character and that there were no potential problems with it. I don't care if people prefer other ships or just plain don't like the pairing. But when people are telling me that I'm delusional for thinking it works? I am not the one on a high horse.

Or, to put it another way: I am not telling anyone they can't ship or not ship what they like. When people start doing me the same courtesy instead of telling me that I'm delusional for shipping what I like, then I'll shut up about my reasons for shipping it, and then maybe everyone can be happy!

Oh, wait, it's fandom.

Never mind.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #494 ]

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