(no subject)

[quigonejinn]

In the question meme thingy, randomalia gave me license to blather about

I've got two types -- first, canon BFF work-and-life-but-notnecessarily-sex partners brought together by work.

This is the kind I write about 99.99999999% of the time. With the exception of the Doctor(s) and Rose, it's all m/m because very few pro media writers do M-F friendship this way. Maybe it's because they have a hard time thinking of women being That Into Their Work? I don't know, but my love of the What These People Get Paid to Do a huge, huge part in why I love each pairing so much. I love the world. I love the details. I love how my pairing fits so very neatly into the world; I love what their interactions tell me about their world just as much as I love those interactions in and of themselves, and I love seeing how they interact with each other in the course of dealing with the world. Figuring out further iterations leads me to fic.

And then, I've got the "emotionally damaged partner in crazypants brother of a different mother" species, which is almost exclusively het. I don't write about because to me, it's all there in the canon. I love them almost independent of their canon, so I ain't got anything to add once it's over on-screen.

Even if I could think of something, though, writing these kinds of fic will be about executing the characters in the right style, not the ideas. That's always been my weak point with writing, and really, how could I possibly improve on how the Rome writers did Antony and Cleopatra, you know? With Cleopatra squeakily crying and curling up in Antony's lap?

(In contrast, while Antony and Atia get a lot of love, they're not OTP-status in the same way. Antony and Atia are both power-hungry Roman aristocrats from the same mold, but the crazypants is missing. They're not emotionally damaged and their relationship is pretty close, I think, to passing for normal in the crazy, crazy world of HBO-Rome. This distinction is, I think, also why I get more mental traction from the Barbara and Hornblower that CSF hints at in Commodore than, say, I do in The Happy Return.)

So, in short, randomalia, I shall answer your question by blogging mostly about canon that you don't know and don't care to know. :D

Comments

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! This is really, really interesting. I like knowing what makes people love things, and I guess on reflection I might have picked the work thing being important to you but not to such a degree. I can see how neatly that fits into Star Wars and Hornblower - those fandoms are completely centred around the work, and the pairings wouldn't exist without it, because it's what brings them together (at least in terms of being work partners for life or something, like you said).

In that type of pairing is it more interesting to you if the two characters are really similar in personality/approach to work or really different?

*continues blather*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

My first instinct is to say that they kinda have to be radically different (Hornblower and Bush! Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan! Holmes and Watson!), but on thinking about it, I don't know whether that's an actual requirement (I get more about the universe! YEY!) or whether it's because that's what mainstream media writers need in order to write lifelong work partners.

The Doctor(s) and Rose don't fit the pattern , though, the eight bajillion year age difference aside. Watching their brains mesh is one of the big <3's of DW for me. And Dean and Sam have grown to be more like each other, but I still love them with a deep, slightly irrational passion.

Re: *continues blather*

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like there to be - or I like to find somewhere where they overlap or they can meet. Hornblower and Bush are so different and approach the world in such different ways but they're friends, you know? And so they still manage to meet in the middle somewhere. It fascinates me to figure out how that happens.

I think with tv especially writers tend to start out making characters really different, to make it accessible. People want to know what's going on within like 3 seconds of the show starting. Like with Sam and Dean who started out completely at odds and still have a hugely different way of seeing things but they've learnt, I think, how to be flexible with each other. And I guess the other things is that if you spend 24/7 with the same person you tend to pick up their habits and ideas. Have you been watching any of season 3?

I'm having a slight obsession with Jared and Jensen at the moment where it's almost the opposite: they get along so well, they have all this stuff in common, and it's making me want to find the ways they're different and can still connect. OR SOMETHING. Then they do sex.

Watching their brains mesh is one of the big <3's of DW for me.

I've never thought of it like that before. And yes. <3333333

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

I actually find things like this fascinating, myself. I love knowing what people's "things" are, and Sailor Cosmos only knows how much I talk about what I love. XD

I actually really love the sort of pairings you describe myself, though I tend to reverse them in status of sexuality, and you're right, it's crazy hard to find canons where the work thing is het. For het, I just like kick ass girls and their cuddly, salty boyfriends--like Leia/Han (we all know who wears the pants, and who wears the metal bikini, and don't let RotJ fool you, because Leia ain't the one wearing the metal bikini).

But the "emotionally damaged partner in crazypants" things is totally my slash OTP type. *protectionates Anakin/Obi-Wan from all the haters*

However, I can do them just as you said, with the work one in slash and the other in het. These are great pairing types. Though, there are plenty of pairings I don't naturally "get" (as in, I don't understand them, even if I see the potential) that good writers make me love. Like say, Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and you. The pool of Q/O writers who make it work are terribly small for me. But then, so are the pool of A/O writers, so I'm not hating.

But now I'm rambling about myself (as always). I just wish Rome had been able to spend more time with Antony/Cleopatra. I loved Rome and all its crazy pairings (though there should have been angry Antony/Octavian dubcon), but I Antony/Cleopatra needed more lead-up. Damn HBO and their cutting off of fundings. :'(

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Antony/Cleopatra didn't really work for me in the diehard, OMFG UNTIL DEATH DO YOU AND I PART, PAIRING way that it does until the last episode. It's a character flaw of mine, I suspect, that I put less importance on canon showing me the chronological development than the one, single moment where the actors sell me on it -- I'll take that in total lieu of, uh, rational explanation, so in a weird, weird way, the whole debacle of Cleo trying to sell Antony out is what did it. You see how desperate she is to survive, and at the same time, you see how bad selling Antony out cost her. She really does love him, y'know? <3

I was so weirded out by it, in fact, that I didn't understand why until Dilly pointed out that Cleo was so strong up to then. And all of sudden she melts down, and omg, I was crying already when Antony killed himself, but when Cleo brought the kids to see him, I started crying so hard I almost choked. XD

<3 True crazy love. Doomed by a little pale-haired monster. <3

*blathers on and on and on and on and on* It's interesting, in a masturbatory and totally speculative way, to think about why I've ended up with these kinds of pairings.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Apropos of nothing but the fact that I am replying to you at roughly at the same time I'm re-reading the thread, oh my God, it's what happens when you mix HBO-Rome with the 1979 Guccione production.