Nice Couple in Manga

The nicest, most ordinary couple in manga is Shiro-Kenji in What Did You Eat Yesterday?

What makes them so nice is that they aren't super-perfect nice. They don't bring flowers and puppies into every encounter. They are, in fact, incredibly normal. Shiro is a tad self-centered and stuffy. Kenji is a little flaky.

Consequently, the sweet moments are sweet without being saccharine: Shiro gets peaches for Kenji; he worries when Kenji doesn't pick up the phone immediately; he decides to spend all his New Years with Kenji.

Kenji naturally and pleasantly does housework. He compliments Shiro's cooking without pause. He knows when not to tease Shiro too far.

Regarding other manga: many of Yugi Yamada's characters are also simply and normally nice--she creates full worlds of friends and family members and relations.

Good versus Bad Relationships in the Scriptures: The True Message of Sodom & Gomorrah

The story of Sodom & Gomorrah is an exploration of what makes a good relationship versus what makes a bad one.

Some Clarifications

First, the Old Testament (I am using Christian terminology) is a mix of documents. When the first ancient scholars pulled these documents together, they knew exactly what they were doing. The narratives themselves may be incomplete in places and sometimes even contradict each other but the order/presentation of them is no mistake.

Genesis Chapter 18 and Genesis Chapter 19 are set next to each other for a reason.

Second, the story of Sodom has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation. That is a later interpretation which does not make sense in the context of ancient societies. Sodom is a dangerous city (think Gotham City), so dangerous that staying out at night in the town square is ill-advised. Sex is about rape, dominance. Sex between men would have exactly the same connotation as it did in many (not all) ancient societies. And the same connotation that it often has in modern-day prisons.

Think of Sodom as a brutal prison with no guards or deeply corrupt ones.

The story of Sodom (Chapter 19) is set in direct contrast to Chapter 18, the visit by the Heavenly Visitors to Abraham. The two chapters cannot be separated.

Basically, this is a narrative of contrasts: Abraham versus Lot. Unfortunately, once again, Lot comes out looking fairly shabby.

1. What do both Abraham and Lot do when they met the Visitors?

They both offer sanctuary and food. So far, so good.

2. What do the brothers bargain for? 

Lot bargains to go to a nearby city, Zoar.

The guy lives in an extremely dangerous urban environment, which is about to be blasted to literal kingdom come. And he wants to hang around the area for his own convenience.

Abraham bargains for lives.

3. What happens to the wives? Why the difference?

In the family's scramble to leave Sodom, Lot's wife looks back and turns to salt. Again, it is necessary to look at the narrative in context. A modern audience might feel a little bad that Lot's wife was punished (or suffered the outcome of a natural disaster) simply because she was curious.

But in ancient literature, looking back carries a stronger motive of distrust (as opposed to re-examination). Consider the Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice--he doesn't trust she is behind him and looks back at the final moment. Eurydice retreats into the Underworld (in the Cynthia Voigt book Orfe, the roles are reversed).

What or whom doesn't Lot's wife trust? If you were Lot's wife, would you trust Lot?

On the other hand, Sarah laughs at a Visitor's statement that she will bear a son. She is questioned for her laughter but not punished. Her laugh is natural, normal, even kinda cute. This is a pleasant, civilized party. Why would anybody get punished?

4. Do Isaac and Ishmael ever demonstrate any rage, disrespect, or direct disobedience against Abraham? 

Isaac & Ishmael come together

to bury Abraham.

No.

Lot's daughters get their father drunk and sleep with him in order to get pregnant.

The Lesson

The Bible editors did not make a mistake. The contrasts between Abraham and Lot are deliberate and not hard to spot. The overall message is clear and rather remarkable:

A good relationship--including a good relationship with deity--involves questions, compromise, kindliness, hospitality, and consent.

Abraham is encouraged to ask questions. He bravely pursues certain issues. He asks for help. He thinks about others.

Lot asks few questions. He tries to bully the Visitors. He never asks for help for others, not even for his daughters. He bargains for his own convenience.

I personally find it fascinating that the idea of consent, discussion, and agreement to terms would be so old--and would include not just other people (spouse, parent, child) but the relationship between humanity & God as well.

Remarkable.

Soulmates: It's About the Future

On Valentine's Day I read two M/M romances. One was cute but lacking. The other was fun and quite believable.

At first, I thought the issue might be the setting. Although neither was especially historically accurate, the first was entirely unclear in its setting. I kept getting confused, thinking it was set in New York City, then being forcibly reminded by a passing comment that it was actually set in London. The second had a clear setting: pirates! I'm not sure any real pirate ever had a heart of gold (I'm afraid I think Robert Louis Stevenson had the right of it when he presented his charismatic Long John Silver as utterly amoral), but I never lost track of where I was supposed to be.

Still, I can ignore a non-historical setting or ahistorical setting or even vague setting if I like the characters. In this case, I was supposed to believe that the main characters had each found their soulmates.

I believed it with the second book, not the first.

Was it the lack of philosophical discussions? My favorite M/M couple, Dom and Silas from KJ Charles' Seditious Affair, are prone to discuss politics, religion, the poet Blake, and anything else that pops into their heads. They love arguing but never in a way that implies that they are trying to beat the other person down; what they love is the challenge of pitting their ideas against an equal partner. Their sexual compatibility is fueled by their conversational compatibility and likewise.

But not all decent couples, M/M and otherwise, have philosophical arguments. I entirely believe that Bingley will make a good mate to Jane without either of them spouting off a word of Kant or Adam Smith. And Tom and Barbara Good of Good Neighbors spend very little time contemplating any of the supposed philosophers that would defend their lifestyle.

The difference lies not in momentary philosophical compatibility but in the ability of the couple to discuss or imagine the future.

It isn't so much that they lay plans whenever they meet; rather, they have an idea about what they would like a marriage/relationship to be like. Even if that isn't what happens.

Although we never hear Bingley and Jane wonder about their future, other people wonder for them. Darcy and Elizabeth converse on how far a couple should live from their parents. Tom and Barbara Good create an entire lifestyle based not such much on a future goal (they live crop to crop) but on a common idea of what makes a "good" life. As do their neighbors, Margo and Jerry. Margo wants to be the wife of a managing director; she and Jerry work for the kudos and amenities of life.

In the two books I read, the less believable couple never seemed to have the slightest idea what a "good" future would look like other than that the one character wanted to own a shoe store and the other wanted to travel (kudos to the author; some writers never get this far). But there was no sense, beyond these vague desires, of what those futures would create. It wasn't so much that the characters hadn't set out their 5-year-plans (most people don't and most 5-year-plans fail). It was that they never seemed to even wonder what life with another person might actually look like other than amorphously nice and amorphously loving.

The second couple had definite ideas about what type of life they each wanted to create and how those visions might overlap: a place to rest, a place to run, a place to clear one's head, a place to finally stop fighting the world. A small homestead. A future of using one's hands rather than being forced to pretend to have a knowledge of books.

It isn't that successful literary couples share a common political cause. Rather, it is that the successful couples share a common idea--some idea--about what constitutes successful "togetherness," an idea which is unique to them. Dom and Silas, for instance, could easily be transported into the modern world, where they would become a kind of low-key power couple; Dom would work for a bureaucratic government office while Silas preached libertarianism out of his bookstore. They would agree about some things and disagree about others. The world of small-highclass-apartment-with-books-shared-by-two-men-obsessed-with-their-jobs would work for them because that's a way of living that both men see as plausible and fulfilling.

It wouldn't work for another couple, which is, of course, the point. Bones and Booth despite their supposedly differing approaches to life and despite Bones' supposed aversion to marriage, share a common (anthropological in one case; experiential and commonsensical in the other) reliance on the family unit as a good place to find one's bliss.

What matters isn't so much a shared philosophy but a shared vision (or, rather, a shared philosophy that creates a shared vision).

Whether this is true for soulmates in real life, I'll leave up to individual contemplation.