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quigonejinnA while back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
randomalia and I got to talking about the ways in which Hornblower/Bush is a good bit like Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan, and I got to blathering about why they remind me of each other. And that led me to be thinking about why I have the OTP's that I do.
Yes, there's a certain pattern of crazy motherfucker/anal-retentive leader-type, but what it really boils down to is this, at least for canon relationships: it's the work, stupid.
In order for me to really sign onto a relationship, it's got to be about more than the romance or even the friendship. For me, there absolutely has to be an element of A and B sharing in the same life's task. It can't even be something like "raising a family" or "living a married life together" -- it's got to be something that has nothing to do, inherently, with the way that the way they relate to each other and that is, preferably, grander than either of them. With Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, it's the Jedi; with Hornblower and Bush, it's being an officer and a man during the age of Napoleon.
Work is the reason they get together, and more than any sentiment, it's the reason they stay linked to each other. Their relationship transcends work, sure, but it's based on work. If work dictated, they'd go their separate ways. They live and fight and suffer and so forth, but it's always through the prism of the Jedi Order or how Bush dies at Caudebec, and it's the best way for him to have gone.
This is why, I think, I can't get into Anakin/Obi-Wan or Kennedy/Hornblower. Sure, I like them OK, and I'll read fic about them bumping uglies if it's up to my standards otherwise, but it doesn't work for me on the same emotional level.
Part of it is that I just don't intuitively grasp Anakin and Kennedy the same way that I "get" Hornblower and Qui-Gon. I channel those two fuckers. I project myself, in true Gary Stu fashion, and decide that if somebody were as devoted to me as Obi-Wan or Bush, I'd love the hell out of them even if I could never properly express it or frame it.
The bigger part of it, though, is that neither Anakin or Kennedy end up sharing that work, that duty in the same way. Kennedy isn't Hornblower's first lieutenant for the two decades; they're on the Justinian together and they rot in prison for a long-ass time together, but it's not the same as the Renown and the Hotspur and the Lydia and the Sutherland and Rosas Bay and Gracay and the Witch of Endor and Smallbridge being 30 miles from Sheerness and Nonsuch and Havre de Grace with Hornblower, skeptic about psychics, nevertheless having a premonition of how he'll be lonely for the rest of his goddamn life. And last two movies of the prequel trilogy are all about how Anakin breaks away from Obi-Wan and the Order. The whole point of the prequel is that Anakin ain't having nothing of the very thing that Obi-Wan embodies the best of.
So why, nobody is asking, can't I get into Sam/Dean? They're certainly sharing the work of their lives with each other. Sam ain't ever going back to school, no matter how he pretends.
I think that I think it's devotion beyond what you'd expect in that kind of situation. I have a pretty high standard of sibling devotion -- Sam and Dean, in my view, are totally within the standard deviation. It's kind of creepy, I know, given how a lot of people see major sexual vibes between them, but I just don't see them. I love my sister. I would go to similar ragetastic extremes to protect her. We hold hands and sleep in the same bed and give each other long, soulful looks and I drive and yell at her when she tries to fast forward through my music, and I'm pretty sure there ain't much gay between the two of us. Granted, I haven't seen that many episodes of Supernatural, but let's just say that I would cut some bitches for my sister. And I expect family to do that. For me, it's normal to be like Sam and Dean.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, having a total mini-freak every time he thinks that Qui-Gon is going off into something more dangerous than a hangnail? Bush thinking about enduring more thirst and more exhaustion on that Spanish fort because he can bear it and Hornblower can't? The utter joy that HH and WB feel when they see each other on that street in Portsmouth?
Man. That gets me. It suggests to me that there's something going on besides the work. And next thing you know, I am in ur fandom, raping ur canonz.
(PS, for the record, yes, I know, this suggests, just a little, that I am a total fucking workaholic. I assure you that I am not and refer you, in fact, to my GPA.)
randomalia and I got to talking about the ways in which Hornblower/Bush is a good bit like Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan, and I got to blathering about why they remind me of each other. And that led me to be thinking about why I have the OTP's that I do. Yes, there's a certain pattern of crazy motherfucker/anal-retentive leader-type, but what it really boils down to is this, at least for canon relationships: it's the work, stupid.
In order for me to really sign onto a relationship, it's got to be about more than the romance or even the friendship. For me, there absolutely has to be an element of A and B sharing in the same life's task. It can't even be something like "raising a family" or "living a married life together" -- it's got to be something that has nothing to do, inherently, with the way that the way they relate to each other and that is, preferably, grander than either of them. With Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, it's the Jedi; with Hornblower and Bush, it's being an officer and a man during the age of Napoleon.
Work is the reason they get together, and more than any sentiment, it's the reason they stay linked to each other. Their relationship transcends work, sure, but it's based on work. If work dictated, they'd go their separate ways. They live and fight and suffer and so forth, but it's always through the prism of the Jedi Order or how Bush dies at Caudebec, and it's the best way for him to have gone.
This is why, I think, I can't get into Anakin/Obi-Wan or Kennedy/Hornblower. Sure, I like them OK, and I'll read fic about them bumping uglies if it's up to my standards otherwise, but it doesn't work for me on the same emotional level.
Part of it is that I just don't intuitively grasp Anakin and Kennedy the same way that I "get" Hornblower and Qui-Gon. I channel those two fuckers. I project myself, in true Gary Stu fashion, and decide that if somebody were as devoted to me as Obi-Wan or Bush, I'd love the hell out of them even if I could never properly express it or frame it.
The bigger part of it, though, is that neither Anakin or Kennedy end up sharing that work, that duty in the same way. Kennedy isn't Hornblower's first lieutenant for the two decades; they're on the Justinian together and they rot in prison for a long-ass time together, but it's not the same as the Renown and the Hotspur and the Lydia and the Sutherland and Rosas Bay and Gracay and the Witch of Endor and Smallbridge being 30 miles from Sheerness and Nonsuch and Havre de Grace with Hornblower, skeptic about psychics, nevertheless having a premonition of how he'll be lonely for the rest of his goddamn life. And last two movies of the prequel trilogy are all about how Anakin breaks away from Obi-Wan and the Order. The whole point of the prequel is that Anakin ain't having nothing of the very thing that Obi-Wan embodies the best of.
So why, nobody is asking, can't I get into Sam/Dean? They're certainly sharing the work of their lives with each other. Sam ain't ever going back to school, no matter how he pretends.
I think that I think it's devotion beyond what you'd expect in that kind of situation. I have a pretty high standard of sibling devotion -- Sam and Dean, in my view, are totally within the standard deviation. It's kind of creepy, I know, given how a lot of people see major sexual vibes between them, but I just don't see them. I love my sister. I would go to similar ragetastic extremes to protect her. We hold hands and sleep in the same bed and give each other long, soulful looks and I drive and yell at her when she tries to fast forward through my music, and I'm pretty sure there ain't much gay between the two of us. Granted, I haven't seen that many episodes of Supernatural, but let's just say that I would cut some bitches for my sister. And I expect family to do that. For me, it's normal to be like Sam and Dean.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, having a total mini-freak every time he thinks that Qui-Gon is going off into something more dangerous than a hangnail? Bush thinking about enduring more thirst and more exhaustion on that Spanish fort because he can bear it and Hornblower can't? The utter joy that HH and WB feel when they see each other on that street in Portsmouth?
Man. That gets me. It suggests to me that there's something going on besides the work. And next thing you know, I am in ur fandom, raping ur canonz.
(PS, for the record, yes, I know, this suggests, just a little, that I am a total fucking workaholic. I assure you that I am not and refer you, in fact, to my GPA.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 02:34 pm (UTC)24 SPOILERS UPCOMING. :O HOW SHOCKING.
How about: He's a former terrorist who wants to end the violence and has an ax to grind. He's a single dad counter-terrorism agent who just spent two years in a Chinese prison and doesn't think he can do the dirty work anymore. Despite all of this, THEY FIGHT CRIME! Together! With gratuitous gazing and prolonged hand-holding!
...What? Seriously, you should see all the I-trust-you-even-though-I-shouldn't gazes. ALSO? YOU SHOULD BE ON AIM, BECAUSE I MISS YOU. WAH.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 01:24 am (UTC)And wait. Does that mean I'm Assad, and you're Bauer? Or that you're Bauer, and I'm Assad? Get your fucking priorities straight :O
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 01:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 04:26 pm (UTC)<333333
expanding on shit. at length.
Date: 2007-01-19 04:43 pm (UTC)I don't buy into the fairy-boy, golden child Shakespeare-quoting theater creature that most of fandom does, partially because Shakespeare is too smart for me, and partially because I still giggle at TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE moments during Life-Saving Spanish and Retribution because Jamie Bamber is built like a brick shithouse and ahHAAH::DKJDF YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE THAT IS SICK AHAHAHAHAHA OH MAN GUY EATS A DOZEN KIPPERS WITH A LOAF OF BREAD AND TWO TINS OF TOMATO SAUCE FOR SNACK AND IS HUNGRY AGAIN IN TIME FOR LUNCH etc.
Where he gets me, though, on a fannish level, are those moments when you see him start to face up to the duty of being a man. Like in F&L, when he gets shaken out of his freakout and has to take charge of Hornblower afterwards. Or when he's struggling with "Navy" discipline in Mutiny.
Being a man seems to come comparatively easy to Hornblower, the hero; Bush is aleady a man IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD HEE. He arrives fully formed and full of the "Get Your Bitch in Line." It's Kennedy and, later, Hammond, who struggle with what it means to be an officer in His Majesty's Royal Navy.
That, to me, is vitally interesting stuff.
But alas. It's not the stuff of which OTP's are made.
Re: expanding on shit. at length.
Date: 2007-01-19 05:34 pm (UTC)Seriously. It's that hard school philosophy that CSF puts out. His characters are brilliantly cast in that period appropriate mold. Tough bastards.
And the problem I have with the whole Kennedy business, is that the A&E jabronies basically gave us a bunch of Kennedy *woe* instead of CSF's vision of men in the naval service in the 18th century. Which begat fannish single crystalline tears and woobie fic out the fucking wazoo.
And yes, the interesting bits are the struggles to be a proper officer in the RN.
I really like randomalia's whole idea of just taking Kennedy right out of the slipstream of the A&E movies, and rewriting him as he would have appeared in the canon if CSF had continued on with the character.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 01:42 am (UTC)And I'll make it a point to show up outside yoru door someday with a box of chocolates and a bouquet made from the pages of one of them Hornblower books that's particularly full of the HH/WB gay.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 04:00 am (UTC)Dude. Do you like the Tragically Hip? >://
hee fraser daddy.
Date: 2007-01-19 04:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 08:55 pm (UTC)*just nods*
And I can't keep that line of
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 04:50 pm (UTC)Random point: today, I read about French raids on the British slave trade off the western coast of Africa, and there's this one description of a town as being "famed among sailors for its sweat, squalor, and syphilis." I pretty much howled with laughter and drew mental hearts around the fourth s, Skank, for Gerard.
Also, I can't remember if we've talked about this before, but I read about the incident that was the Real Life basis of Mutiny/Retribution - Lieutenant Hornblower. Like, the stuff with Captain Pigot? And how the re-captured ship was, briefly, by a certain cranky Admiral, re-named the RETRIBUTION.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 05:17 pm (UTC)In that book I have? Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? omg, the shit about the slave trade and the crews and captains that participated. It's totally required reading for any Gerard slaving fic. In fact, that whole book should be on the "A" list of background reading for writing AoS ANYTHING.
And yes, the stuff about the Hermione mutiny had to be what was in CSF's talented head when he wrote LtH. It's just too close to not have had any influence. What I particularly love is that the HMS Surprise was involved in the tale. XD CROSSOVER FIC ANYONE?
:>
Date: 2007-01-18 10:53 pm (UTC)And I see your point about hh/wb as compared to hh/ak. I don't like to compare them in terms of what they're about because they are very different, but as you say, the time frame is staggering with HH and Bush. That's a whole life shared, and that can't be compared to anything. It's more than just a sense of devotion. But I do think if you put everything else aside, the feeling Bush and Kennedy have for Hornblower is the same. At least the essence of it. Kennedy was putting himself in the position of Hornblower's liuetenant before it was necessary. AT the end he was going to die anyway, so he didn't really give up his life for Hornblower, but he did give up whatever would remain of him after he was gone. And that's not so different than a life of service, either.
<3333333333333333
Date: 2007-01-19 01:20 am (UTC)The Gay of Kennedy/Hornblower is absolutely staggering. What's missing, for me, is the time, both in terms of the canon and in what I figure about Kennedy -- for me, I guess it's a two-level inquiry. There's got to be devotion, and there's got to be time.
And the time for HH/AK is pretty short. Even if Archie hadn't died in Kingston, to me, Kennedy would have gone on and become a fine captain in his own right and gotten a command in his early thirties and had a sloop and then gotten a frigate and become post and so on and so forth, in painful detail inside my crack-ridden brain. To me, Kennedy is always his own man in a way that Bush isn't. His devotion to Hornblower is important, but it's not a defining trait of him.
Which probably says a lot about the retardation of my Bush characterization, but.
I hope this made sense. And yeah. A/O tends not to make sense to me because the Obi-Wan characterizations in the stories strike me as being off. He's too weak, or he's not smart enough, or something like that. Which would bug me more about Q/O, too, if only I read more of it. XD
Re: <3333333333333333
Date: 2007-01-19 10:41 pm (UTC)Which is exactly what drew me to Star Wars in the first place, I think, because you don't get much more devoted than Obi-Wan, and I still flail at the idea of he and Qui-Gon spending YEARS together. Somehow that just really gets me. And more than that, even when Qui-Gon dies, it doesn't change Obi-Wan's sense of, or way he lives out, that devotion. So it's a lifelong thing.
One difference here to HH/WB is that if you take Qui-Gon out of the picture, Obi-Wan's world doesn't change too dramatically. There's a sense of continuance there because Obi-Wan was always going to be carrying on Qui-Gon's work anyway, because of the Master-Padawan thing. The thing about quantity time over quality is that, for Hornblower, having Bush in his life for that long means Bush becomes part of the framework for the way he sees the world. Like, sky/ships/Bush. So when Bush dies it's like a completely different world, which I guess is partly why Hornblower says he doesn't want to see a world without him. It's not the one he's always known.
That was a whole lot of blather. XD
in painful detail inside my crack-ridden brain.
*wants omg*
To me, Kennedy is always his own man in a way that Bush isn't.
Yeah. He kind of takes his lessons and acts on them, and so he isn't (or shouldn't be) a passive character. Neither is Bush, but I can more easily see Kennedy moving forward on his own. Part of that might be that we get to see Kennedy as already established in the movies, and so he seems more independent of HH, whereas Bush in movies and books is already connected to HH, or at least coming in to Hornblower's sphere. I really like Loyalty as an episode because we get to see him acting more independently, actually.
Re: <3333333333333333
Date: 2007-01-23 08:33 am (UTC)Oh man. I think you'e put your finger on the biggest reasons for why I love Obi-Wan -- I love how what Obi-Wan says and does and thinks runs all the way down to the bottom of him. It doesn't make much sense when I type it out, but yeah. I think what I'm trying to say is that death doesn't seem to change what he does or what he believes. At the end of TPM, Obi-Wan is sadder and maybe wiser than he was at the start, but he's still the same Obi-Wan. And I read the end of ROTS as epic and all that, but it feels tragic to me because Obi-Wan is still struggling to do the right thing, to be a Jedi.
I can more easily see Kennedy moving forward on his own. Part of that might be that we get to see Kennedy as already established in the movies, and so he seems more independent of HH
I think a really good illustration of this is at the end of Life-Saving Spanish, where Kennedy makes that decision to go back with Hornblower. Hornblower has kept on doing what he's always doing, but you (or at least I) get this sense of change. While in plain view of the camera, Kennedy has flipped over something in his mind, made a choice, and came to a decision. He's the one who changes his mind about deciding to live. He's the one who chooses to go back with Hornblower.
To return to the original post, though -- part of my problem with HH/AK may just be the fic that I'm finding for it. Most of it tends to be of the emo sap crystalline tears variety, which makes me go BLARRRGH in the deepest way.
It may also be that I just haven't watched the movies recently enough. XD Oh, Bamber. *_*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-19 02:01 am (UTC)So, yes, just thought you should know.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 07:07 am (UTC)I can't talk about Hornblower because while I saw the first three or four movies and appreciated the pretty, I've never read any fanfic there or even made the time to see the rest of the movies yet, despite owning them. I agree with you about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan going together much better than Obi-Wan and Anakin, though. I've never really thought about the work thing before and now that I do think about it, I see that that's really not one of my own key elements. It helps but it's not really necessary in order for me to appreciate and buy into a relationship.
I still don't see Obi-Wan and Anakin working, though, because the whole point of the prequel trilogy was about how Obi-Wan and Anakin don't work, about how they don't mesh, they don't understand one another and they barely get along at times. And it's not even a "good" kind of not-getting-along, the sort that could conceivably turn into hot sex if it goes far enough.
Anakin turned to the dark side right under Obi-Wan's nose, without his master, who was supposed to be focused on his training and development and character and all that sort of thing, even noticing there was anything serious wrong with his padawan until there were a bunch of dead kidlets littering the temple. This is not a functional relationship and although I suppose I could buy a story where they had sex (assuming I were into the pairing at all, which I'm really not) a writer would have to do an absolutely fantastically stellar job to convince me that they were Devotedly In Love, you know? Because I just don't see it, so far as canon goes.
The only TPM pairing I read with any regularity is Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon, not because I'm an OTP kind of person (which I definitely am not) but rather because outside of the occasional Qui-Gon/Mace, the only pairing that makes me believe it is Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. It's lack of attractive alternatives rather than any philosophical furor which makes me stick mainly with the one pairing.
That and the fact that Qui-Gon is just sex on legs, of course. :D
Angie