is it about marriage, devotion or rivalry?

[leeseokmin]

i’ve missed casual longform writing without purpose, i’ve realized. it’s fun to just throw some darts at a board and win some points and drag some people down with you. i posted a venn diagram of ship requirements (attached below) and tried to keep it evenly matched which is why certain ships snuck it’s way there (lewis hamilton/nico rosberg, altan trengsin/chaghan suren) but the rest of them are either fundamental to me (seokhao, dannymax, baeksoo) or becoming fundamental (thanzag, megzag, iwaoi, ushisaku, oikage, you get the picture). i’m bad at explaining the vibes in longform, but as abigail said, “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was putting you & rsiken on the earth at the same time” which influenced the decision to unpack some of these ships with quotes that represent the core of my personal manifestos for them.

 

i. RIVALRY implies actual rivalries, lovers->exes->lovers again or ambigous, convoluted relationships, where both parties are playing 5d chess games
ii. MARRIAGE implies an actual endgame of marriage or domestic long-term partnership
iii. DEVOTION implies that even if the parties in the relationship split or were never together to begin with, there is a part of them always tied to each other 

 

RIVALRY:

seokgyu

“your love is too thick,” he said…

“too thick?” she said…

“love is or it ain’t. thin love ain’t love at all.”

—  beloved, toni morrison

 

oikage

a truth should exist,

it should not be used

like this. if i love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

— we are hard, margaret atwood

 

kagetsukki

of course i’ll hurt you. of course you’ll hurt me. of course we will hurt each other. but this is the very condition of existence. to become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. to become presence, means accepting the risk of absence
— manon, ballerina - antoine de saint-exupery

 

MARRIAGE:

jeongcheol

what am i, if not yours?
what do i do with my hands when they are just hands?

— the lover as a cult, olivia gatwood

 

atsuhina

if there is anything left to say it is this:

i would have found you anywhere.

i will find you anywhere

— orbitals, venetta octavia 

 

kurotsukki

...the idea of love as a violent act—not to the person that you love, but against the world. to say to somebody, "i love you; by extension, i hate all other things."

— hozier

 

osaaka

sometimes i’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. the way it stops and starts
— terrified heart, poe 

 

DEVOTION:

seokhan

the thought that you exist is so divinely blissful in itself that it is ridiculous to talk about the everyday sadness of separation — a week’s, ten days’ — what does it matter? since my whole life belongs to you.

—  letters to véra, vladimir nabokov

 

bokuaka

you are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and i will tell you that i am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.

—  everything is illuminated, jonathan safran foer

 

atsukita

i think of all the things he has been to me…love. lodestone. my true north. i turn always to him.

— the tenderness of wolves, stef penney
 

 

DEVOTION + RIVALRY

baeksoo

we were arguing. you want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade.

— written on the body, jeanette winterson

dannymax

the gaze, human or animal, is a powerful thing. when we look at something, we decide to fill our entire existence, however briefly, with that very thing. to fill your whole world with a person, if only for a few seconds, is a potent act. and it can be a dangerous one. sometimes we are not seen enough, and other times we are seen too thoroughly, we can be exposed, seen through, even devoured. hunters examine their prey obsessively in order to kill it. the line between desire and elimination, to me, can be so small. but that is who we are. there must be some beauty—and if not beauty, meaning—in that brutal power. i am still trying, and mostly failing, to find it.

— survival as a creative force, ocean vuong

 
 

RIVALRY + MARRIAGE

megzag

i love you with a love that reaches you on the other shore. that dark, unknown shore where, in order to follow you, my love stumbles forth blindly, bleeding, but always holding you tight.

— poem xci, dulce maría loynaz 

 

ushisaku

the unknowness of my needs frightens me. i do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, i only know that they are not being met.

— oranges are not the only fruit, jeanette winterson
 

 

MARRIAGE + DEVOTION

thanzag

but everyone had this patina

of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of

i think i knew you when we were children,

this look of i’ve loved you ever since you

were born

and probably longer than that

― everyone was beautiful, paul hostovsky

seokhao

‘love’, this english word: like other english words it has tense. ‘loved’ or 'will love’ or 'have loved’. all these specific tenses mean love is time-limited thing. not infinite. it only exist in particular period of time. in chinese, love is '爱’ (ai). it has no tense. no past and future. love in chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. love is existence, holding past and future.

if our love existed in chinese tense, then it will last for ever. it will be infinite.

— a concise chinese-english dictionary for lovers, xiaolu guo, 

 

 

DEVOTION + MARRIAGE + RIVALRY

iwaoi

the more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

— on love, alain de botton