pairings "rant" meme
Aug. 6th, 2011 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI'm not sure how ranty these rants are, but I tried.
Spoilers are possible for any of the listed fandoms, although I've made huge/not ubiquitously known spoilers highlight-to-read.
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brewsternorth asked about Raffles/Bunny, from E. W. Hornung's Raffles stories.
Thinking about this pairing hurts a bit, because Bunny loves Raffles so devotedly, so utterly selflessly and helplessly, and I'm not sure Raffles loves him back in the same way. Book!Raffles uses Bunny quite a lot for his own convenience, and often seems to tolerate him (and only just) rather than love him. TV!Raffles is more loving, and also is played by Anthony Valentine, so I like him better even though TV!Bunny is wrongly portrayed as stupid, like Dr. Watson used to be. In some ways I wish Bunny would leave this abusive-ish relationship and find someone who'll be good to him, but the terrible thing is that Raffles makes him happy, and (spoilers) (skip) when Raffles dies, the first time falsely and the second time for real, Bunny is shattered. There's nothing left for him--apart from an unconvincing het romance that Hornung pulled out of his ass for the last book of short stories--so in the end I find myself wishing the boys had stayed out of imperialist wars, Raffles had lived to a disreputable old age, and they'd set up quietly in the country as a pair of full-time Uranian bachelors and part-time sneak thieves.
Bunny and Raffles are also a bit brain-breaking in the sense that they're so homoerotic that I genuinely think Hornung did it on purpose, and I want to know what the hell his intentions were. I generally try not to label writers as queer on the basis of their writing, especially non-contemporary writers, but Hornung's stories really ping me that way (unlike the Holmes stories, whose homoeroticism may well have been deliberate but isn't a matter of . . . fascination? . . . for Doyle).
(Okay, you want the list of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers (not out or known/generally assumed to be queer, so this excludes people like Melville) whose work makes me think they're at least a little bit queer? E. W. Hornung, Raymond Chandler, John Le Carré, Reginald Hill. Additions to this list welcomed.)
biichan asked about Charles/Erik in the first three X-Men movies.
They've known each other since they were seventeen. They were still together well into middle age, as we know from the Jean Grey flashback scene in X3, despite passionately held political and ethical beliefs that must always have been sharply different. That is love, people. And after they've split up, for reasons we don't precisely know but can guess, they still love each other. It's obvious from their very first scene together, with all its unspoken longing. It's obvious as hell in X3 (which is why I still hold that film in affection despite the many things that are wrong with it) when Erik cries out Charles's name as Charles is dying, and when he turns on Pyro for saying disparaging things about Charles.
I don't think Erik is someone who loves easily--nor is he easy to love--so I find the strength and duration of Charles and Erik's feelings for one another rather beautiful. There's a lot of tragedy and pain between them as well, and I feel a bit sorry for those two boys ca. 1950, terribly young, desperately in love, already quarrelling about ends and means but sure that they'll convince each other eventually, and with no idea what's coming. But they survive it, and I like to believe that after X3 they find their way back to one another, somehow.
lilacsigil asked about Charles/Erik, X-Men: First Class.
When I first saw XMFC I said I didn't think it was as slashy as everyone was saying. I've sort of changed my mind on rewatching (*coughthreetimescough*), in the sense that the thing that frustrated me--how little time Charles and Erik have together in this canon--has now become a reason to read the relationship as romantic and erotic. Where X1-3 Charles and Erik are long-term love, XMFC Charles and Erik are love at first sight. Or even before first sight; Charles jumps into the sea to save Erik when all he knows of Erik is what he's read in his mind. (It's possible Charles might have done that for anyone, but I'm not entirely convinced.) They're practically declaring their love for each other in their first conversation: "I thought I was alone." "You're not alone." That's about more than being a mutant.
They click so spectacularly, become the most important person in each other's lives so quickly, that the force of it carries them right over things that might have given them pause if this were actually a friendship and not a whirlwind romance. Erik's need for revenge goes against Charles's deep (if shaped, I think, by privilege) beliefs; Charles's desire to heal Erik is in many ways an impossible and arrogant desire to make him someone else, to turn him into the person he might have been if he hadn't spent his childhood in ghettoes and concentration camps. And neither one can stop trying to bring the other over to his side; each wants the other absolutely.
Of course it ends badly, although in different circumstances they might have been together much longer and learned to accommodate one another more (which I think is what happened with X1-3 Erik and Charles). There's something operatic about their relationship, something grand and terrible, faintly ridiculous, heartwrenching, and glorious.
I don't think they stay split up. They're too wrapped up in desire for one another; they keep coming back to each other again and again, and it never lasts long but they can never stay away. They keep feeling first love over and over again. Poor bastards.
executrix asked about Avon/Tarrant, from Blake's 7.
ARRRRRRRRRRGH NO OMG KILL IT WITH FIRE!
*coughs* Not a ship I much care for. Tarrant's not a character I much care for--he's arrogant without (unlike Blake and Avon) much justification for it. And Avon, whose own arrogance is so colossal that he can't tolerate it in others, never seems to feel more than a distant and rather lofty tolerance for Tarrant; his more usual emotion is acid and succinctly expressed dislike. And not the way he dislikes Blake, although it might sound the same; Avon's body language was utterly different towards Blake, and so was his behavior when it counted. (spoilers follow) (skip) Yes, even when he was shooting Blake in a fit of passionate betrayal and despair. Not that that did Blake much good; he would probably have been better off if Avon had loved him less.
I don't believe Avon would fuck Tarrant even as a Blake substitute. He doesn't want a Blake substitute, because he doesn't want to want Blake. Not that Tarrant's much like Blake in anything more important than having curly hair. And if Avon's just scratching an itch, I think he'd scratch it with someone he dislikes less.
silver_sandals asked about Dax and Sisko, DS9.
I'm assuming from the ampersand thatsilver_sandals wanted to hear about friendship; I do think Dax and Sisko have a profound friendship that literally spans lifetimes, but a part of me also thinks they're a little bit in love with each other. I doubt it was ever physically expressed (if it was, my vote goes for Curzon and Sisko's visit to the Spring Break Planet--I can't remember the canon name--together). But there's a spark of passion there, as there sometimes is at the root of profound friendships.
Nevertheless, I do think it's mostly friendship, and it makes me happy to see a depiction of male-female friendship that's real and not primarily about sublimated or unrequited desire, and a male-male friendship (in the Curzon years) that's emotional and tender.
vandonovan asked about Spock/Uhura, any version.
Actually Van asked about either Doctor/Rose or Spock/Uhura, but I've already ranted my fair share of rants about Doctor/Rose.
I don't see Spock/Uhura. It doesn't make sense to me. In TOS, I've seen the bits in the early episodes where Uhura flirts with Spock, but I don't see Spock responding except with a kind of amused "oh, humans" attitude. And to the extent that Spock lets himself have emotions, they're virtually all directed towards Kirk.
In the reboot . . . well, I accept it as canon, and unlike in TOS I don't think the Spock-Kirk relationship is an obstacle, because there isn't really a Spock-Kirk relationship. But it doesn't make sense to me. Where the hell does this Spock come from, the one who can behave and feel in ways that are sufficiently close to human norms that he can have a human-style romantic relationship? Spock Prime suffered terrible guilt and shame just over his friendship with Kirk, and didn't come to terms with his feelings until The Wrath of Khan; since the reboot implies that reboot!Spock and Spock Prime had the same life until Vulcan went kablooey, I just can't see the relationship happening.
Unfortunately, in the reboot fandom discussion of this stuff got taken over by ugly racism and misogyny from certain Kirk/Spock shippers, and a degree of vindictive heterosexist glee from certain Spock/Uhura shippers. Even if I'd been a fan of the reboot, which I never was, I'd have wanted to stay out of that mess.
ansketil_rose asked about Vetinari/Drumknott, Discworld.
Hmm. I think I've already said most of what I have to say about this one. I'll just add that this pairing has the potential for incredibly complicated, rich emotional dynamics, and I wish more people wrote it that way instead of reducing it to one cliché or another from the Big Book of Slash. What does it mean, for instance, for Vetinari to genuinely care for Drumknott while nevertheless unhesitatingly and unapologetically putting the city first? Conversely, how does Drumknott cope with being both Vetinari's lover and Vetinari's (and hence the city's) servant? What about the necessary secrecy and the risk that their relationship might be used against them? There are all kinds of good fic possibilities in there, still mostly unexplored.
mcicioni asked about Robbie Lewis/Laura Hobson, from Lewis.
I will perhaps surprise some of you by saying that in principle I like this ship. Hobson is a well-rounded character, about as far as can be from a "girl of the week," and she and Lewis had good chemistry from the start.
However. The way the show has actually handled the relationship leaves me cold. As soon as Hobson became a romantic interest, she began being written weirdly . . . either as the damsel in distress or as a fickle, difficult, "oh women are so strange!" sort of character. And the relationship itself has been incoherently developed; one episode they seemed to be dating, the next episode it seemed as though the romance had been dropped entirely, and in the next there was juvenile jealousy!drama.
The show's quality has been faltering for two seasons, in my view, so this may be just one symptom of a general decline. I'm actually not sure I'm going to keep watching Lewis.
halotolerant asked about Tim Ferguson/Paul McDermott, Australian comedy RPS.
It's fascinating to compare their old stuff with their recent interactions (e.g. on Good News Week); where they used to have a kind of burning hot, angry/lustful UST, now (and of course it makes a difference that they're out of character now) there's something much gentler and more affectionate between them. As well as massive UST. Tim just about killed me a few months ago by doing two interviews in a row in which he kept fanboying Paul madly, calling Paul the person he most admires and joking about stalking him. And then there was the whole "wanna see us kiss?" moment on GNW.
What grabs me about them is what I find irresistible in FPS pairings too--the sense of people who've loved each other, been estranged and angry and even hated each other, but who've come through and love each other still. And beyond that, I think they'd be a good match, a good balance for each other. Tim's calmer and less neurotic than Paul and better at dealing with offstage life; Paul has the intellect and creative passion to keep Tim from coasting on pure charm.
If nothing else, I'd love to see them work together again, but I suspect that the very idea of it (with the inevitable gossip/headlines about a possible DAAS reunion) is enough to freak Paul out.
Damn, someday I should really finish that long Tim/Paul story.
lady_twatterby asked about Holmes/Watson.
The word that comes to mind is "codependent." Which from my POV is all good; I like codependence in a (fictional) relationship. (And I'm actually skeptical of pop-psych concepts like "codependency," but it's a useful shorthand for a relationship of intense mutual need that can be painful for the couple and for everyone around them.)
Holmes's need is more obvious, since he broadcasts it with little passive-aggressive remarks like "for me [without Watson] there remains the cocaine bottle" and "Watson had abandoned me for a wife." Watson's his connection to emotions, his relief from the isolation of his remarkable but limited intellectual brilliance. Watson keeps Holmes human.
Watson can seem less needy, and perhaps he is in some ways, but he always comes back to Holmes in the end, and he's perfectly willing to leave everything (even his wife!) behind at the slightest hint that Holmes needs him. Unlike Holmes, Watson is capable of loving more than one person (not necessarily simultaneously--although I think Watson's marriage may prove that too--but more than one person at all; Holmes can only love Watson). But Holmes is the constant in, and to a great extent the center of, Watson's life.
This is a relationship where I don't think it makes much difference whether they ever have sex. Although I don't necessarily read Holmes as asexual, I can read him that way, but it doesn't change the emotional tie at all. Their relationship doesn't fit neatly into categories such as "romance" or "friendship," and really they mark the end of the historical era in which that kind of relationship was possible for men in the west. By the end of the first world war there seems to have been a lot more definitional rigidity, a loss of fluidity in how friendship and love (and homosexuality and "unnatural vice") were understood. "His Last Bow," when Holmes and Watson are separated by the war, has more finality about it than Doyle probably intended.
Spoilers are possible for any of the listed fandoms, although I've made huge/not ubiquitously known spoilers highlight-to-read.
brewsternorth asked about Raffles/Bunny, from E. W. Hornung's Raffles stories.Thinking about this pairing hurts a bit, because Bunny loves Raffles so devotedly, so utterly selflessly and helplessly, and I'm not sure Raffles loves him back in the same way. Book!Raffles uses Bunny quite a lot for his own convenience, and often seems to tolerate him (and only just) rather than love him. TV!Raffles is more loving, and also is played by Anthony Valentine, so I like him better even though TV!Bunny is wrongly portrayed as stupid, like Dr. Watson used to be. In some ways I wish Bunny would leave this abusive-ish relationship and find someone who'll be good to him, but the terrible thing is that Raffles makes him happy, and (spoilers) (skip) when Raffles dies, the first time falsely and the second time for real, Bunny is shattered. There's nothing left for him--apart from an unconvincing het romance that Hornung pulled out of his ass for the last book of short stories--so in the end I find myself wishing the boys had stayed out of imperialist wars, Raffles had lived to a disreputable old age, and they'd set up quietly in the country as a pair of full-time Uranian bachelors and part-time sneak thieves.
Bunny and Raffles are also a bit brain-breaking in the sense that they're so homoerotic that I genuinely think Hornung did it on purpose, and I want to know what the hell his intentions were. I generally try not to label writers as queer on the basis of their writing, especially non-contemporary writers, but Hornung's stories really ping me that way (unlike the Holmes stories, whose homoeroticism may well have been deliberate but isn't a matter of . . . fascination? . . . for Doyle).
(Okay, you want the list of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers (not out or known/generally assumed to be queer, so this excludes people like Melville) whose work makes me think they're at least a little bit queer? E. W. Hornung, Raymond Chandler, John Le Carré, Reginald Hill. Additions to this list welcomed.)
biichan asked about Charles/Erik in the first three X-Men movies.They've known each other since they were seventeen. They were still together well into middle age, as we know from the Jean Grey flashback scene in X3, despite passionately held political and ethical beliefs that must always have been sharply different. That is love, people. And after they've split up, for reasons we don't precisely know but can guess, they still love each other. It's obvious from their very first scene together, with all its unspoken longing. It's obvious as hell in X3 (which is why I still hold that film in affection despite the many things that are wrong with it) when Erik cries out Charles's name as Charles is dying, and when he turns on Pyro for saying disparaging things about Charles.
I don't think Erik is someone who loves easily--nor is he easy to love--so I find the strength and duration of Charles and Erik's feelings for one another rather beautiful. There's a lot of tragedy and pain between them as well, and I feel a bit sorry for those two boys ca. 1950, terribly young, desperately in love, already quarrelling about ends and means but sure that they'll convince each other eventually, and with no idea what's coming. But they survive it, and I like to believe that after X3 they find their way back to one another, somehow.
lilacsigil asked about Charles/Erik, X-Men: First Class.When I first saw XMFC I said I didn't think it was as slashy as everyone was saying. I've sort of changed my mind on rewatching (*coughthreetimescough*), in the sense that the thing that frustrated me--how little time Charles and Erik have together in this canon--has now become a reason to read the relationship as romantic and erotic. Where X1-3 Charles and Erik are long-term love, XMFC Charles and Erik are love at first sight. Or even before first sight; Charles jumps into the sea to save Erik when all he knows of Erik is what he's read in his mind. (It's possible Charles might have done that for anyone, but I'm not entirely convinced.) They're practically declaring their love for each other in their first conversation: "I thought I was alone." "You're not alone." That's about more than being a mutant.
They click so spectacularly, become the most important person in each other's lives so quickly, that the force of it carries them right over things that might have given them pause if this were actually a friendship and not a whirlwind romance. Erik's need for revenge goes against Charles's deep (if shaped, I think, by privilege) beliefs; Charles's desire to heal Erik is in many ways an impossible and arrogant desire to make him someone else, to turn him into the person he might have been if he hadn't spent his childhood in ghettoes and concentration camps. And neither one can stop trying to bring the other over to his side; each wants the other absolutely.
Of course it ends badly, although in different circumstances they might have been together much longer and learned to accommodate one another more (which I think is what happened with X1-3 Erik and Charles). There's something operatic about their relationship, something grand and terrible, faintly ridiculous, heartwrenching, and glorious.
I don't think they stay split up. They're too wrapped up in desire for one another; they keep coming back to each other again and again, and it never lasts long but they can never stay away. They keep feeling first love over and over again. Poor bastards.
executrix asked about Avon/Tarrant, from Blake's 7.ARRRRRRRRRRGH NO OMG KILL IT WITH FIRE!
*coughs* Not a ship I much care for. Tarrant's not a character I much care for--he's arrogant without (unlike Blake and Avon) much justification for it. And Avon, whose own arrogance is so colossal that he can't tolerate it in others, never seems to feel more than a distant and rather lofty tolerance for Tarrant; his more usual emotion is acid and succinctly expressed dislike. And not the way he dislikes Blake, although it might sound the same; Avon's body language was utterly different towards Blake, and so was his behavior when it counted. (spoilers follow) (skip) Yes, even when he was shooting Blake in a fit of passionate betrayal and despair. Not that that did Blake much good; he would probably have been better off if Avon had loved him less.
I don't believe Avon would fuck Tarrant even as a Blake substitute. He doesn't want a Blake substitute, because he doesn't want to want Blake. Not that Tarrant's much like Blake in anything more important than having curly hair. And if Avon's just scratching an itch, I think he'd scratch it with someone he dislikes less.
silver_sandals asked about Dax and Sisko, DS9.I'm assuming from the ampersand that
silver_sandals wanted to hear about friendship; I do think Dax and Sisko have a profound friendship that literally spans lifetimes, but a part of me also thinks they're a little bit in love with each other. I doubt it was ever physically expressed (if it was, my vote goes for Curzon and Sisko's visit to the Spring Break Planet--I can't remember the canon name--together). But there's a spark of passion there, as there sometimes is at the root of profound friendships. Nevertheless, I do think it's mostly friendship, and it makes me happy to see a depiction of male-female friendship that's real and not primarily about sublimated or unrequited desire, and a male-male friendship (in the Curzon years) that's emotional and tender.
vandonovan asked about Spock/Uhura, any version.Actually Van asked about either Doctor/Rose or Spock/Uhura, but I've already ranted my fair share of rants about Doctor/Rose.
I don't see Spock/Uhura. It doesn't make sense to me. In TOS, I've seen the bits in the early episodes where Uhura flirts with Spock, but I don't see Spock responding except with a kind of amused "oh, humans" attitude. And to the extent that Spock lets himself have emotions, they're virtually all directed towards Kirk.
In the reboot . . . well, I accept it as canon, and unlike in TOS I don't think the Spock-Kirk relationship is an obstacle, because there isn't really a Spock-Kirk relationship. But it doesn't make sense to me. Where the hell does this Spock come from, the one who can behave and feel in ways that are sufficiently close to human norms that he can have a human-style romantic relationship? Spock Prime suffered terrible guilt and shame just over his friendship with Kirk, and didn't come to terms with his feelings until The Wrath of Khan; since the reboot implies that reboot!Spock and Spock Prime had the same life until Vulcan went kablooey, I just can't see the relationship happening.
Unfortunately, in the reboot fandom discussion of this stuff got taken over by ugly racism and misogyny from certain Kirk/Spock shippers, and a degree of vindictive heterosexist glee from certain Spock/Uhura shippers. Even if I'd been a fan of the reboot, which I never was, I'd have wanted to stay out of that mess.
ansketil_rose asked about Vetinari/Drumknott, Discworld.Hmm. I think I've already said most of what I have to say about this one. I'll just add that this pairing has the potential for incredibly complicated, rich emotional dynamics, and I wish more people wrote it that way instead of reducing it to one cliché or another from the Big Book of Slash. What does it mean, for instance, for Vetinari to genuinely care for Drumknott while nevertheless unhesitatingly and unapologetically putting the city first? Conversely, how does Drumknott cope with being both Vetinari's lover and Vetinari's (and hence the city's) servant? What about the necessary secrecy and the risk that their relationship might be used against them? There are all kinds of good fic possibilities in there, still mostly unexplored.
mcicioni asked about Robbie Lewis/Laura Hobson, from Lewis.I will perhaps surprise some of you by saying that in principle I like this ship. Hobson is a well-rounded character, about as far as can be from a "girl of the week," and she and Lewis had good chemistry from the start.
However. The way the show has actually handled the relationship leaves me cold. As soon as Hobson became a romantic interest, she began being written weirdly . . . either as the damsel in distress or as a fickle, difficult, "oh women are so strange!" sort of character. And the relationship itself has been incoherently developed; one episode they seemed to be dating, the next episode it seemed as though the romance had been dropped entirely, and in the next there was juvenile jealousy!drama.
The show's quality has been faltering for two seasons, in my view, so this may be just one symptom of a general decline. I'm actually not sure I'm going to keep watching Lewis.
halotolerant asked about Tim Ferguson/Paul McDermott, Australian comedy RPS.It's fascinating to compare their old stuff with their recent interactions (e.g. on Good News Week); where they used to have a kind of burning hot, angry/lustful UST, now (and of course it makes a difference that they're out of character now) there's something much gentler and more affectionate between them. As well as massive UST. Tim just about killed me a few months ago by doing two interviews in a row in which he kept fanboying Paul madly, calling Paul the person he most admires and joking about stalking him. And then there was the whole "wanna see us kiss?" moment on GNW.
What grabs me about them is what I find irresistible in FPS pairings too--the sense of people who've loved each other, been estranged and angry and even hated each other, but who've come through and love each other still. And beyond that, I think they'd be a good match, a good balance for each other. Tim's calmer and less neurotic than Paul and better at dealing with offstage life; Paul has the intellect and creative passion to keep Tim from coasting on pure charm.
If nothing else, I'd love to see them work together again, but I suspect that the very idea of it (with the inevitable gossip/headlines about a possible DAAS reunion) is enough to freak Paul out.
Damn, someday I should really finish that long Tim/Paul story.
lady_twatterby asked about Holmes/Watson.The word that comes to mind is "codependent." Which from my POV is all good; I like codependence in a (fictional) relationship. (And I'm actually skeptical of pop-psych concepts like "codependency," but it's a useful shorthand for a relationship of intense mutual need that can be painful for the couple and for everyone around them.)
Holmes's need is more obvious, since he broadcasts it with little passive-aggressive remarks like "for me [without Watson] there remains the cocaine bottle" and "Watson had abandoned me for a wife." Watson's his connection to emotions, his relief from the isolation of his remarkable but limited intellectual brilliance. Watson keeps Holmes human.
Watson can seem less needy, and perhaps he is in some ways, but he always comes back to Holmes in the end, and he's perfectly willing to leave everything (even his wife!) behind at the slightest hint that Holmes needs him. Unlike Holmes, Watson is capable of loving more than one person (not necessarily simultaneously--although I think Watson's marriage may prove that too--but more than one person at all; Holmes can only love Watson). But Holmes is the constant in, and to a great extent the center of, Watson's life.
This is a relationship where I don't think it makes much difference whether they ever have sex. Although I don't necessarily read Holmes as asexual, I can read him that way, but it doesn't change the emotional tie at all. Their relationship doesn't fit neatly into categories such as "romance" or "friendship," and really they mark the end of the historical era in which that kind of relationship was possible for men in the west. By the end of the first world war there seems to have been a lot more definitional rigidity, a loss of fluidity in how friendship and love (and homosexuality and "unnatural vice") were understood. "His Last Bow," when Holmes and Watson are separated by the war, has more finality about it than Doyle probably intended.
