Give a Reason for Life - A Lina/Gourry manifesto

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

Title: "Give a Reason for Life" - A Lina/Gourry manifesto
Pairing Lina Inverse/Gourry Gabriev
Fandom: Slayers
Spoilers: The entire Slayers franchise to date. There's quite a bit of it! The big spoilers for those not familiar with the parts of the series not released in English are novels 7-15 and Slayers: Knight of Aqualord.
Note: As done by previous posters, parts of this manifesto will be linked back to my LiveJournal due to the breaking of the character-limit count for posts and because this manifesto went way over 5,000 words and I couldn't get it trimmed down.


Part I. Introduction and Acknowledgements
I: Much appreciation!
I'm starting off my essay with this because I couldn't had done this essay this throughly without a bunch of people pitching in with pictures, novel snippets, canon correcting and being dragged into World of Warcraft to work off some steam. Thanks goes to theslayers and the people on my friends list who answered the survey I put out for them. Many images used here are provided through Eterno Poder, True Slayers and the scanning efforts of ichiban_victory and gigabahamut666. the_flowergirl and gigabahamut666 saw early versions of this manifesto and helped me refine my thoughts.

Formatting credits for this essay go to heronite and her awesome manifesto on Naruto/Sakura from the series Naruto. While I'm not a fan of that series or pairing, her attention to detail and her organization method greatly influenced how I handed my own manifesto.

Finally, the biggest thanks goes to kitesareevil and snowstorm_tm, both who were instrumental in getting me addicted to Slayers. I'll get you for this, Stef!

II. Why Slayers? A Bunneh comes very late to the fandom!
There are some of you not familiar with Slayers that might be reading this. Most, I assume, have at least a basic knowledge of who the characters are and how the series works. beccastareyes did a fantastic manifesto back in 2004 that covered the anime and the movies. It is a good article that covers the big events in the anime between this pairing.

There are two other aspects to this franchise. The first is the novels, which ran from 1989-2000 in Gekkan Dragon Magazine and is the original source for everything else in the franchise. Then there are several manga series that relate directly to Lina and Gourry. I decided to write this essay because I wanted to show the Lina/Gourry relationship from the novel and manga side of the story and show different facets of this pairing.

I am a latecomer to the Slayers fandom. It was one of those series I'd always meant to watch. I got the first novel in English, always intending to read it but never did. I saw the first eight episodes of the anime back in 2001, but was too focused on college homework to really pay attention. It wasn't until four years after I first saw those episodes that I decided it was time to continue. Thus the wonders of Netflix provided me with almost the entire first season at once.

I did not enter Slayers as a Lina/Gourry fan. I never even really paid attention to Gourry, to be honest. Lina captivated me from the get-go with her sheer attitude. She's everything you wouldn't expect in a heroine. She's greedy, selfish, a glutton, and all sorts of things that you wouldn't assign to a series heroine like Kamiya Kaoru from Rurouni Kenshin or Higurashi Kagome from Inuyasha. Lina isn't afraid of anything and isn't exactly the easiest person to be around. Sweet and pleasant don't really describe her. I laughed my head off at her antics and stuck with the series to see what Lina would do next.

When the character of Zelgadiss Greywords was introduced, I found myself liking that pairing instead. Thanks to a couple of close friends, I had been spoiled to the ending of Slayers NEXT, the second season, and wondered what kick in the head it took to make Lina like Gourry in that way. When the first arc of the anime was complete, Zelgadiss exited the scene. When he came back after Amelia's introduction, I could see immediately see the Amelia/Zelgadiss pairing, but not Lina/Gourry. It wasn't until the Copy Rezo fight, when Gourry completely loses it on the battlefield when Lina was mortally wounded, that the little lightbulb went on in my head and the pairing suddenly worked. I suddenly picked up the first volume of the novels, the one gathering dust on my shelf, and read it. Then I ran out and grabbed the second and third, the only other ones out at the time. I was completely sold on the pairing.

From here, the manifesto is broken up into parts. Each part of the manifesto has a clickable index at the beginning so it's easier to read if you need to take a break and go beat up critters in WoW.

Part II: Character Introduction and Story Summary
Introduction of the characters and how their relationship has grown throughout the novels and manga.

Part III: Pairing Analysis and Fandom Resources
Discussing the arguments against Lina/Gourry, why the pairing works so well and fandom resources.

To keep everything organized, I ask people to post their comments to this post, please. Comments to the supporting posts are disabled. As always, flames are not allowed!

Comments

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

I really need to update this to reflect the new material that's come out since this was written. So much good stuff for the Lina/Gourry ship has come out!!

I remember the quote, and I do agree with you that it could be taken that way. I think once I get settled after the move, I'm going to sit down with this and start retooling it.