Enemies with Benefits

[rynling]

Some lovely and wonderful person left a comment on one of my Powser fics saying that the bickering between Peach and Bowser reminds her of the dialog on Archer. I was like, What the fuck is Archer. Five hours later, the Netflix app on my PS4 was telling me that prolonged periods of physical inactivity may be accompanied by health risks.

What I've been trying to capture in the Peach/Bowser dynamic is a theme I'm going to call "adults being shitty to one another." I'm not into sexy kidnapping or any sort of Beauty and the Beast redemption nonsense; I'm into the idea that both characters have terrible personalities. Bowser is thoughtlessly obnoxious, Peach is cloyingly passive-aggressive, and they're both extremely narcissistic.

I thought I'd made good progress in how I write the characters, but watching Archer has taught me just how much of a novice I am at adults being shitty to one another. I need to step up my game, and I want to get started by writing flashfic. Here are some scenarios I came up with:

* Peach shits on Bowser for buying ridiculous things
* Bowser taunts Peach for not having children
* Peach cuts Bowser down for complaining about villainy and double standards
* Bowser mocks Peach for being obsessed with beauty products
* Peach gets up in Bowser's business for eating nothing but garbage
* Bowser tries to bully Peach into admitting she has a problem with alcohol
* Peach and Bowser bring on the snark as they speculate about who Mario and Luigi are dating
* Peach and Bowser accuse each other of being an unpopular character in Super Smash Bros
* Peach and Bowser get nasty and jealous about Zelda and Ganondorf
* Bowser gets sloppy drunk and calls Peach
* Peach watches Bridget Jones and calls Bowser

The romance, such as it is, needs to come from the sense that these two garbage people have somehow managed to find an equally garbage partner; and that, underneath their spiteful pettiness, they care about one another because of their flaws, not in spite of them. A lot of shipfic I read tries to normalize characters with difficult personalities through romance, but honestly bros, that sort of thing stopped being interesting to me a long time ago.

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

The early seasons of Archer in particular are a gift.

Also, I started cackling on #2.

Also, please please please. *grabby hands* This gives me flashbacks of the Carver thing.

I have trouble keeping up with the intricacies of Zelda lore for whatever reason (simple minds, simple minds) but I will gd inhale passive-aggressive Powser v. Zeldorf.

[rynling]

I have trouble keeping up with the intricacies of Zelda lore

You and me both. I basically just make stuff up and hope that no one calls me out on my bullshit. So far no one has, so I'm just going to keep going?

This is going to sound borderline disgusting, but Chris Hemsworth's character in Ghostbusters (in case you haven't seen it, WHICH YOU SHOULD, he's basically a clueless and entitled shithead) recently made me remember how much I enjoy characters who are not "strong." This is especially the case when they appear in games. Like, I appreciate that Peach repeatedly becomes a damsel in distress because she's almost unimaginably selfish. She canonically gives zero fucks about
the trouble she causes, and I dig that about her. Is there really any difference between her and Jessica Walter?

I sometimes feel bad that the people who follow me on Tumblr are subjected to these interludes of crack shipping, but not bad enough to stop.