Sick Boy/Renton (Trainspotting)
Title: Cracked out junkie love
Author: duckgirlie
Spoilers: Just the film.
Trainspotting is one of my five desert-island films. I have loved it since the moment I first saw it, and re-watch it on average about once a month. Sick Boy has always been my favourite character (possibly because I’ve been embarrassingly in love with Jonny Lee Miller since Hackers), but I love Renton as well, and as a pairing, they just work.
The Source
I love Trainspotting because it's so raw... The emotions the actors portray are right up there on the screen, and you can feel them seeping out of them, they're so powerful. The never-ending monotony of life under that kind of external control is shown so perfectly.
The plot is largely irrelevant, culled from the very plot-less novel, but it revolves around a group of Scottish junkies as they get high, get clean, get high again, and eventually, as it always must, various tragedies ensue.
When the film came out, some people thought it glamourised drug use. There is no way these people could have seen the film, they must have just thought film+portrayal of drug use=glamour, because this film is the one of least glamorous portrayals of drug use I've ever seen. It's uniqueness lies in being unafraid to present the highs of drug abuse, whilst tempering that with the inescapable lows. Anyone who's seen Renton swimming through sewage to get back his fix, or Sick Boy and Allison's reaction to the baby's death could not possibly call this film glamorous. It shows you that drugs can be wonderful, but in the end, they're never worth it.
The Players
Sick Boy and Renton are the two most complex characters in the film. Sick Boy's an amoral asshole, who uses people and abandons them with equal verve. He's never afraid to ask his friends for help, whilst simultaneously being unwilling to offer any himself. He's also unusual in that it's implied he never has a problem going without drugs when he decides to, making him the only member of the group who can use and still maintain a level of self-actualisation. For Sick Boy, drugs -and everything else- are just things he does, not things he needs. Because of this, he’s a very dangerous person for Renton to be involved with.
Renton is very different. He's an addict, pure and simple. He makes reference in the film to how while heroin is his main thing, he’ll do anything and everything he can get his hands on. Renton is a man at a precipice, only just managing to keep to the edge, and he spends the entire film grasping for a way out, even when he doesn't even think himself he wants it. He constantly finds himself pulled back into his life by his friends, and even when he finally manages to pull himself out, they follow him for one last grand scheme. He can only become free at the end with total abandonment of the old life.
The Couple
Sick Boy and Renton work for me as a couple because they're never going to have a happy ending. They may think they love each other - hell, they may actually love each other, but there's nothing to hold them together once you strip away the drugs and criminality. Because even if they're clean, Renton will always be an addict, and if he can't have heroin, Sick Boy will fill the gap. And Sick Boy will always be 'lacking in moral fibre.' They're a couple that can't work in the long term, ever. Not even in an 'I-hate-you-but-I'll-fuck-you-anyway' kind of way. Renton's the kind of person who can't be around people like Sick Boy without destroying himself, and Sick Boy's the kind of person who (subconsciously, at least I hope) likes seeing people destroyed.
The essential ying/yang of the relationship lies in a constant struggle, in Renton's need to be free, and Sick Boy's need to be in control of everything. (Even their clothes speak to this divide, Renton always in dirty jeans and t-shirt, whereas Sick Boy spends most of his time in a suit.)
In fic, they're two people who can't be around each other without disaster happening. And they're two people who can't not be around each other. That obsessiveness permeates everything they do.
The Canon
As far as canon support goes, it’s all very subtextual. Whilst both are members of the same general group of friends, Renton has more one-on-one scenes with Sick Boy then anyone else. There is a familiar closeness between them whenever they’re together that shows how familiar they are together. And Sick Boy spends most of his time on screen trying his absolute best to irritate the tits off Renton, even going so far as to go clean whenever Renton does, just to tease him with his superiority. While both characters are identified as sleeping with women over the course of the film, their easy-going reaction to another character’s accidental homosexual experience, and the knowledge that in the circles they associate with, such behaviour, enthusiastic or not, was common, is enough to stick these two under the ‘definitely possible’ non-canon shelf. But even if there was not a single iota of canon to suggest the merest possibility, I'd still ship them, because the characters mesh together so well, and give me everything I love about slash in the one go.
The Fic
This is a teeny-tiny fandom. So far, all the (decent) fic I’ve been able to find on livejournal is on trainficcing. Everything before I started the community is linked to in this post. I feel guilty recc’ing them, because most of them are mine, but anything that gets readers is a good thing. Most fic after the community’s creation is also posted.
Specifically, check out lilka's two stories ( Side Effects and Shift). These two fics manage to get the power-play and subtly hostile dynamic of the pair perfectly.
Thanks for listening.
Author: duckgirlie
Spoilers: Just the film.
Trainspotting is one of my five desert-island films. I have loved it since the moment I first saw it, and re-watch it on average about once a month. Sick Boy has always been my favourite character (possibly because I’ve been embarrassingly in love with Jonny Lee Miller since Hackers), but I love Renton as well, and as a pairing, they just work.
The Source
I love Trainspotting because it's so raw... The emotions the actors portray are right up there on the screen, and you can feel them seeping out of them, they're so powerful. The never-ending monotony of life under that kind of external control is shown so perfectly.
The plot is largely irrelevant, culled from the very plot-less novel, but it revolves around a group of Scottish junkies as they get high, get clean, get high again, and eventually, as it always must, various tragedies ensue.
When the film came out, some people thought it glamourised drug use. There is no way these people could have seen the film, they must have just thought film+portrayal of drug use=glamour, because this film is the one of least glamorous portrayals of drug use I've ever seen. It's uniqueness lies in being unafraid to present the highs of drug abuse, whilst tempering that with the inescapable lows. Anyone who's seen Renton swimming through sewage to get back his fix, or Sick Boy and Allison's reaction to the baby's death could not possibly call this film glamorous. It shows you that drugs can be wonderful, but in the end, they're never worth it.
The Players
Sick Boy and Renton are the two most complex characters in the film. Sick Boy's an amoral asshole, who uses people and abandons them with equal verve. He's never afraid to ask his friends for help, whilst simultaneously being unwilling to offer any himself. He's also unusual in that it's implied he never has a problem going without drugs when he decides to, making him the only member of the group who can use and still maintain a level of self-actualisation. For Sick Boy, drugs -and everything else- are just things he does, not things he needs. Because of this, he’s a very dangerous person for Renton to be involved with.
Renton is very different. He's an addict, pure and simple. He makes reference in the film to how while heroin is his main thing, he’ll do anything and everything he can get his hands on. Renton is a man at a precipice, only just managing to keep to the edge, and he spends the entire film grasping for a way out, even when he doesn't even think himself he wants it. He constantly finds himself pulled back into his life by his friends, and even when he finally manages to pull himself out, they follow him for one last grand scheme. He can only become free at the end with total abandonment of the old life.
The Couple
Sick Boy and Renton work for me as a couple because they're never going to have a happy ending. They may think they love each other - hell, they may actually love each other, but there's nothing to hold them together once you strip away the drugs and criminality. Because even if they're clean, Renton will always be an addict, and if he can't have heroin, Sick Boy will fill the gap. And Sick Boy will always be 'lacking in moral fibre.' They're a couple that can't work in the long term, ever. Not even in an 'I-hate-you-but-I'll-fuck-you-anyway' kind of way. Renton's the kind of person who can't be around people like Sick Boy without destroying himself, and Sick Boy's the kind of person who (subconsciously, at least I hope) likes seeing people destroyed.
The essential ying/yang of the relationship lies in a constant struggle, in Renton's need to be free, and Sick Boy's need to be in control of everything. (Even their clothes speak to this divide, Renton always in dirty jeans and t-shirt, whereas Sick Boy spends most of his time in a suit.)
In fic, they're two people who can't be around each other without disaster happening. And they're two people who can't not be around each other. That obsessiveness permeates everything they do.
The Canon
As far as canon support goes, it’s all very subtextual. Whilst both are members of the same general group of friends, Renton has more one-on-one scenes with Sick Boy then anyone else. There is a familiar closeness between them whenever they’re together that shows how familiar they are together. And Sick Boy spends most of his time on screen trying his absolute best to irritate the tits off Renton, even going so far as to go clean whenever Renton does, just to tease him with his superiority. While both characters are identified as sleeping with women over the course of the film, their easy-going reaction to another character’s accidental homosexual experience, and the knowledge that in the circles they associate with, such behaviour, enthusiastic or not, was common, is enough to stick these two under the ‘definitely possible’ non-canon shelf. But even if there was not a single iota of canon to suggest the merest possibility, I'd still ship them, because the characters mesh together so well, and give me everything I love about slash in the one go.
The Fic
This is a teeny-tiny fandom. So far, all the (decent) fic I’ve been able to find on livejournal is on trainficcing. Everything before I started the community is linked to in this post. I feel guilty recc’ing them, because most of them are mine, but anything that gets readers is a good thing. Most fic after the community’s creation is also posted.
Specifically, check out lilka's two stories ( Side Effects and Shift). These two fics manage to get the power-play and subtly hostile dynamic of the pair perfectly.
Thanks for listening.