Fandom Snowflake Challenge #11

[axael]

Fandom Snowflake Challenge — January 19th

❄ Challenge #11 on snowflake_challenge.

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Favorite Trope

Oh, man. Let me tell you about my favorite-upon-most-favorite trope...

Where You Go, I Go

Definition: the trope where one character is dedicated to another to extremity, and has no conflict within themself in doing so. Their loyalty to their chosen is a core character trait and is founded on (usually) some flavor of love or (sometimes) some flavor of duty or other ideal. Many of their goals and actions are driven by this dedication. Adversity doesn't matter, because they have chosen to give their loyalty (and/or love), irrevocably, sometimes after having realized they made the wrong choice prior and rectifying their mistake. The trope does not require romantic love; platonic and familial love can back this kind of loyalty just as strongly. Sometimes called and/or associated with Loyalty Kink, especially in fic tags.

I've actually done a whole write-up of this before, over here on fandomentanglement, where I called this concept 'The Steadfast' and described it as a character archetype. The bones of this post are a remix of that original tumblr post, since that one was written a while back and focused on explaining what I was talking about. This remix is intended to be more personal, as befits a DW journal.



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To begin, then, the "Where You Go, I Go," trope/archetype is everywhere in all of my favorite media. The no-chill loyalty dynamic is just so delicious, and I love seeing how it manifests with different characters in their various worlds. To help explain why, I'd like to start with some of my deep lore. These are my first encounters with this loyal and steadfast companion trope, and the ones that shaped my love for this character dynamic as I chewed my way through the fantasy section of my local library:

Joscelin Verreuil (The Kushiel books by Jacqueline Carey) — Joscelin is, first and foremost, my ideal for this trope/archetype. He's the OG and his characterizations shaped the standard to which I hold other characters. Within the Kushiel books, Joscelin forsakes his entire order of warrior-monks for the sake of the sacred prostitute Phedre, becoming her consort and protector. He “will … stand at the crossroads and choose, choose again and again…” to stay with her. The core of these characters' culture also wraps around the thematic words of "Love as Thou Wilt," and epic, steadfast love and loyalty permeates the narrative in many different flavors beyond Joscelin, as well. (And the books are quite good. I'd recommend the original trilogy.)

Achmed (Symphony of the Ages by Elizabeth Hayden) — Achmed was one half of my very first OTP before I knew what an OTP was. He is not the series' romantic lead—though he wouldn't mind shifting that dynamic (and neither would I, the actual romantic lead made me wrinkle my nose)—and he is specifically described as considering it more important for him to be at the lead's side, supporting her, than it is for them to be romantically entangled. The books use imagery as him being the other side of the main character's coin, the dark to her light. The books are essentially what would today be called "romantasy power fantasies," but I was in precisely right teen-girl demographic when I read them to fixate hard upon the unconditional loyalty of it all.

Daemon Saetan SaDiablo (The Black Jewels by Anne Bishop) — These were my favorite books for a long time, but please do not read them. They are very dark fantasy with a laundry list of content warnings. Good and evil magic cockrings are, no shit, major plot elements. ACOTAR's sex-slavery sections are fanfic of the Black Jewels. So. With that disclaimer in mind, see Daemon, the embodiment of steadfast loyalty and dedicated service. He would carve his heart out upon request, without hesitation, if required of the person he's chosen to dedicate himself to. And he...basically does during the course of the books, offering the life and the family he's built with full knowledge of what he's sacrificing. This unconditional loyalty shows up in more than just him, though. These books are wrapped around this trope with every character, and it's baked into the worldbuilding—and it's then subsequently taken to a very fanfic-esque biological extremes, as you do. These books are. Intensely problematic, but you have to understand that if they were to be tagged, Ao3 style, they are very much idfic and/or Dead Dove. I honestly have no idea how they got published.



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~Aromantic Interlude~

Tangentially relevant: I'm aromantic. For me, romantic love is very much "sounds fake, but okay." In its stead, I present to you the concept of 'Where You Go, I Go,' based on a love that could be of any flavor at its base. So you start there, building this love and loyalty from the ground up, choosing again and again. Every choice then takes you deeper into a kind of essential faith, leaving love everything but helpless and hopeless because it's wrapped around your own agency. There are roots and foundations, tested even before they had sunken deep enough to be unassailable, so once they are that deep? Well. There's a reason it's called unconditional, after all. And, if it's a choice, and you choose to flavor this kind of unconditional as romantic? Well, there's no such thing as falling out of love, because your feet have always been right there on the ground every step of the way.

So yeah! If you can show me a romance narrative that's based in this? I'm sold on it, forever. I'll also believe it, where I honestly do not buy two random assholes 'falling in love' because they were in vague proximity. What nonsense (lol).



Service Kink Interlude

I really can't consider myself to have given a full overview of this trope without touching on the concept of the service kink. This is the idea of service to another, but as an end in and of itself. And not necessarily a sexual one, either, since the service may be literal (as in 'acts of service,' like the love language) or more metaphorical in the sense of support, obedience, or subordinancy. With this in mind, 'Where You Go, I Go,' as a trope, can very easily become a power exchange dynamic. While there can be mutual loyalty, and there often is, it's not a requirement, so you end up with an 'offering up' of loyalty. The loyal person is willing to do anything for the one they've chosen to be loyal to, whether at their request or not. This exchange dynamic can range from very vanilla to heavy BDSM D/s—and the 'service' aspect can be on either side of the slash, too. You can just as easily have the one with the dom-vibes offering their loyalty in acts of service as you can have the one having sub-vibes acting in support. Daemon Sadi (above) is illustrated as a submissive service top and Hanguang-jun's mission in life (below) is to spoil the shit out of his resurrected husband.



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Where my early favorites are all book characters, my perennial favorite unconditionally loyal characters come from (mostly) TV and movies, since my tastes have shifted as I've grown older. That, and I plunged into fandom, where visual media is easier to rapidly share and has unified visuals, which suited tumblr's format. For some fandoms, too, I was drawn to them because I saw this 'Where You Go, I Go' trope being played with in fanworks.

Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun (The Untamed & Mo Dao Zu Shi) — Hanguang-jun is the character that made me realize that I had a favorite trope at all, and that trope was this. He dedicates himself to the main character, his future husband, with his whole heart and soul, finally reunited after the other's death and resurrection. (This...isn't a spoiler. The MC's resurrection kicks off both the book and the show.) He offers what is very much a 'you and me against the world' declaration, and this loyalty comes after Hanguang-jun fuckin' up, making a series of grievous mistakes, and realizing that the only thing he wants is to be steadfast, both soon enough and earnestly enough, to keep the one he loves safe. After over a decade of grieving his mistakes and growing some maturity, sure, but he does get there in the end. The Untamed (TV show) goes for epic high romance, while the book (MDZS) goes for the two leads being puzzle pieces fitting together, but both iterations offer this type of unconditional dynamic and it's delightful.

James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes (Marvel Cinematic Universe) — Of course, Bucky loves Steve, regardless if you ship them. Their relationship is defined by Bucky's unconditional loyalty with their whole, "Till the end of the line," thing. In his faith, Bucky sticks around in a war that's visibly eating him alive and ends up in what is essentially Hell on Earth as he follows his best friend right off a cliff. It's deeply compelling, and the way they wrap the narrative of that first movie he's in around this emotional core gives it an emotional heft and weight that the superhero genre of movies struggles to reach naturally otherwise.

Merlin (BBC Merlin) — Merlin and Arthur are paired as counterparts by the dragon in the basement from the very first episode, and they grow to be epic companions. The show repeatedly offers that this is Destiny for them, that they're two sides of the same coin, etc. and so on. Merlin, very early, drinks poison for Arthur and never gets any less ride-or-die, despite the trauma and his fatalistic love-hate relationship with Destiny. Merlin's fatal flaw is that he loves too well and to exclusion, and many of his many mistakes in the show are because he's doing everything he can for Arthur with absolutely zero trust and communication with anyone at all, let alone Arthur himself. It's an unconditional loyalty that drives the show and causes about half of the problems that then need to be solved, as the consequences compound upon themselves over the course of the show's various seasons, leaving this trope a positive trait with often very negative outcomes. (Fascinating!)

Hardison & Eliot (Leverage) — These two are two-thirds of the OT3 of my heart. Hardison, because he will wait for goddamned ever for their third, Parker. He gives her space to be herself, offers to go at her pace in their developing relationship, and makes sure to embody patience and support. Eliot because he basically marries them both at the end with ‘until my dying day,' and up until that point is always watching their backs, making sure they're happy, healthy, and fed, and going above and beyond as they all shift from teammates into found family. They all go through so much for each other, but these two especially are just there in the background, doing their thing and holding each other and Parker up.



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Over the last few years, I've also added several fandom, some of which I drifted into because of reading fic canonblind. Either a crossover caught my fancy, or I found a time travel fixit that was too intriguing to pass up. Here are a couple of the characters from those that I've started to follow around even though my canon experience is...limited, for various reasons:

Cody | CC-2224 (Star Wars: Clone Wars) - So. So this is primarily because of fanon, I'm not gonna lie. I haven't ever been able to actually get through the Clone Wars show, for as much as I enjoy Star Wars. (I have tried!) But there are a lot of fics that focus on Cody's dedication to Obi-wan Kenobi, and they're solid and coherent enough that I am less concerned with how true to canon they are and more about how much I enjoy reading them. Beyond just Cody, however, there's also a very strong loyalty dynamic between the Jedi General and their Clones within all the fic. And the deeper that dynamic goes into unconditional loyalty, the more fucked up the ending to the Clone Wars is. It's the kind of incredible narrative angst that has spawned an entire subgenre of fic that I will eat with a spoon if given half a chance. And with so many examples of Jedi-and-Clone, the relationships between them span all kinds of familial, platonic, and romantic. It's like this fic genre was made specifically for me.

The Batfam (Batman. Sort of.) - Honestly? The Batfam in any kind of cohesive sense is almost entirely fanon, but it's also a very large genre of fanon. I've read enough canon to know that it does have roots in canon, partially and in pieces, and each of those examples has been carefully hoarded and then tucked into the greater fabric of what could have been, would would have been, might have been, and what is in this version, specifically. Shared between a lot of this genre's works is a frankencanon cobbled-together out of necessity, because DC's actual comics canon physically can't agree with itself, and that foundation of near-canon is predicated on the idea that these characters are all unholy amounts of dysfunctional but will go above-and-beyond for each other when the chips are down. Which is. Wow! I want to hoard that like a dragon. The Batfam ranges from suitably grimdark ala some of the more recent comic issues to very much Wayne Family Adventures (a webcomic criticized from 'being too fanficcy' in that the characters actually interact and seem to like one another, lol). But the high stakes, anything-for-my-family kind of loyalty really drew me in—and keeps drawing me into new corners of the fic genre as I find new fics to enjoy.



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There are many more characters that I'm very fond of that illustrate some aspect of the 'Where You Go, I Go' trope, but that haven't taken over my entire brain. If I were to start listing those and trying to take canon apart to illustrate to you where this trope comes into play for each of them, we'd be here all day. But each canon and character have something to them: a bit of narrative, a snippet of dialogue, an arc word or two. Something shared and repeated and doubled-down on. This love, loyalty, and dedication is meant. It's deliberate and an intrinsic part of these characters canons, for better or worse.

At the end of the day, it's the unconditional part that really gets me, I think. The refusal to break faith. I realized some time ago that this is my version of the soulbond trope. There is someone out there (found family, a partner, something else) who either you can choose or who chooses you. It's not fate, it's choice. It's being stubborn to the nth degree, but as a virtue, where it would be so much easier to simply...not be dedicated. It's actions speaking louder than words. It's being there, always.

And that's why 'Where You Go, I Go' is my favorite trope.

Comments

[musyc]

Ahaha, the moment I read "where you go I go" my brain said JOSCELIN VERREUIL KING OF THIS. He is indeed the perfect example of the trope; no others come close.

[axael]

He is!! Ah. Ahha, I'm so glad that you got it immediately.