pairings meme answers

[kindkit]

Here are my responses to the "what are your favorite pairings in X fandom" meme.

lilacsigil asked about Doctor Who, any era, so I've picked the Third Doctor because I have the most varied pairings then.

My M/M FP: Three/Delgado!Master
My F/F FP: Can't think of one. The Third Doctor era actually had a reasonable number of great female characters, but seldom more than one at a time. Hmm. Liz Shaw and Sarah Jane Smith never met in canon, but they'd be cool together.
My Het FP: Three/Jo
FP I actually believe in based on canon: Three/Delgado!Master
My original FP: Three/Delgado!Master
My crack FP: Three/Mike Yates (It totally works! Three is exiled from his people and stuck on earth; Yates is a closeted gay man in a military environment. Together, they fight crime talk about the ridiculous narrowness of 1970s British morality and the appeal of velvet jackets.
My guilty pleasure FP: Mike Yates/Brigadier; it's guilty because I think they'd both get hurt.
My anti-FP I don't hate it, but I don't see the appeal of Brigadier/Liz Shaw.



lemposoi asked about Doug Anthony All Stars RPF:

My M/M FP: Paul/Tim, because their onstage dynamic was so intense, and now their current offstage relationship seems to be very warm and affectionate
My F/F FP: Although the boys occasionally claimed to be women, I doubt they were, and it's hard to find a f/f pairing in a three-man group.
My Het FP: Don't really have one, but Richard and his wife seem to have a stable and happy relationship.
FP I actually believe in based on canon: It would surprise me greatly if Paul and Tim never had sex.
My original FP: Paul/Tim
My crack FP: Paul/Flacco. Except it's not all that cracky because I believe it may have happened. And yes, I'd read fic about it.
My guilty pleasure FP: Paul/Tim/Richard. It's only guilty because I think the thing between Paul and Tim is so strong that Richard wouldn't really have been treated like an equal partner. On the other hand, Richard and Paul do seem to have had a strong offstage friendship.
My anti-FP Well, I wouldn't care to read fic about Paul and real-life partner, partly because het isn't my thing and partly because I am irrationally disappointed that someone who'd always said he didn't want to settle down and have kids, settled down and had a kid.



maggie33 asked about Spaced.

My M/M FP: Tim/Mike
My F/F FP: Again, not a lot of choices here. Twist is too mean to Daisy for that to work. I'd love for Marcia to meet a great woman.
My Het FP: I like Tim and Daisy best as friends for a variety of reasons (not limited to my het aversion and my fondness for Tim/Mike). I do actually quite like Tim/Sophie, and one of things I admire about the show is that Sophie, who's an obstacle character in many ways, is written as a really cool person and not an evil bitch.
FP I actually believe in based on canon: Mike's attraction to Tim is canonical.
My original FP: Tim/Mike; I'm a huge fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and one of the reasons I watched the show in the first place was that they were both in it.
My crack FP: Tim/the Irish bicycle messenger and clubbing fanatic whose name I can't remember
My guilty pleasure FP: Brian/Vulva. I want to hear about the love affair between two straight men, one of whom is a magnificent woman!
My anti-FP Marcia/Mike. I'm pretty sure I've seen fic for this (probably at the Pit) and words do not express the wrongness.



flo_nelja asked about X-Men. I'll stick to movieverse here.

My M/M FP: Charles/Erik. I'm a sucker for lost love and exes who can't quite forget, or forgive, each other.
My F/F FP: I suppose Ororo/Jean by default, simply because they're the only two adult women in the films.
My Het FP: Jean/Scott.
FP I actually believe in based on canon: Charles/Erik pretty much is canon, isn't it?
My original FP: Charles/Erik. The slashiness of X3 (one of its few virtues) was what got me into X-Men.
My crack FP: Jean/Scott/Logan. It's only crack because there's no time for it to happen in canon, but I find it very plausible otherwise. And this is one threesome that really would solve a lot of problems (I don't subscribe to the "threesomes solve everything" school of fanfic.) Slightly more crackily, there's Charles/Logan, which I wish there was more fic for. Logan needs a home, and Charles is very good at making homes for people. Charles, meanwhile, needs companionship from someone who's strong, independent, and didn't used to be his student.
My guilty pleasure FP: Erik/John (Pyro). I don't even like Pyro, but there've been some good fics about this pairing and I enjoy the wrongness.
My anti-FP Erik/Mystique. I know it's hinted at in canon, but I very very very much like the fact that it's only ever implied, leaving me free to ignore it and read Erik as gay. It's incredibly rare in mainstream media that that's even possible.



vandonovan asked about Doctor Who, 1-4, 5-9, or 9-11. Since I'm incredibly OTPish about Two and Jamie, have already written about the Third Doctor era, and haven't seen much of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, I'll go for Nine through Eleven.

My M/M FP: Ten/Simm!Master, and yes, it's bad and wrong, but my god do Tennant and Simm have chemistry.
My F/F FP: Amy/River
My Het FP: Amy/Rory
FP I actually believe in based on canon: Well, I believe the Doctor and the Master have history and still love each other (a lot of what the Master--in various incarnations--does is attributable to a twisted kind of love).
My original FP: Probably Nine/Jack, since it was the first slashy thing I saw on Doctor Who.
My crack FP: I dunno. Ten/random boy he offers to kiss in that awful "Daleks in New York" episode?
My guilty pleasure FP: Nine or Ten/Jack; Jack's love for the Doctor is canonically unrequited, but that annoys me a bit and I like to consider other possibilities
My anti-FP Doctor/Rose. Nine and Rose had great chemistry as pals, Ten and Rose had none at all in my opinion, and I got really tired of Davies shoving the pairing down everyone's throats as TRUE LOVE FOREVER.



halotolerant asked about Top Gear.

My M/M FP: James/Richard; that's where I see the deepest connection onscreen, and I think they'd be more compatible than they might seem at first.
My F/F FP: This one's completely unanswerable for Top Gear.
My Het FP: Richard's marriage to Mindy seems to be very strong and loving. I don't necessarily want to read fic about it, but I admire it (while occasionally wishing it wasn't such an obstacle to slashing Richard, and that is not the same thing as wishing the real life marriage would break up, so don't yell at me)
FP I actually believe in based on canon: Well, this depends on what you mean by "believe." I'm half convinced that James has a thing for Richard and so, in a much more repressed/unacknowledged way, does Jeremy.
My original FP: I'm new to the fandom, so "original" is now.
My crack FP: James/Richard/Jeremy; it works for me in every way except the James/Jeremy leg of the triangle, so I find it a bit cracky as a "we all love each other equally" thing. It's much more plausible to me as a less equal threesome, with Richard as the center and a sort of conduit for James and Jeremy to express their complicated, uneasy affection for each other. I also like James/Oz Clark, which isn't all that cracky but doesn't fit into any other category, and James/Paul McDermott, which is utter crack and which only halotolerant will read when I finally get around to writing it, but James plays the piano and Paul sings and so obviously they'd make a great pairing! James could teach Paul to drive, too.
My guilty pleasure FP: I wouldn't call it a guilty pleasure so much as a frustrating pleasure, but: most of the good Top Gear fics seem to be James/Jeremy, which is the pairing I find least plausible. I read the stories and enjoy them and wish they made more emotional sense to me.
My anti-FP Stig/anyone. I prefer to think of the Stig as a weird alien being, thanks.



be_goddess_like asked about Sherlock Holmes and Renault's Alexander novels.

There's not a lot I can say about the Holmes canon: I ship Holmes/Watson like crazy. I think Mary Morstan is an interesting and likeable character in The Sign of Four, but I can't ship her with Watson because (a) the relationship canonically breaks Holmes's heart, and (b) she disappears as a character after TSoF. Finally, Holmes did not feel any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.

As for Renault's Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy:

My M/M FP: This is tough, because I really like both Alexander/Hephaistion and Alexander/Bagoas. (Please don't comment about why one relationship is better, or one of Alexander's partners is a better person than the other, or I shall be cross.) If I had to pick one, I'd pick Alexander/Bagoas, because I think Bagoas is a more-nuanced character in the books.
My F/F FP: Um, can I say Axiothea/Lasthenia from The Mask of Apollo? The book's only tangentially connected to the Alexander novels, but it contains some of Renault's relatively few likeable women characters and (I think) her only positive female/female relationship.
My Het FP: Not many choices here. Ptolemy/Thais is okay, I guess.
FP I actually believe in based on canon: The same-sex relationships are canon, yay!!!
My original FP: I think I read The Persian Boy before Fire From Heaven, so probably Alexander/Bagoas.
My crack FP: These are deeply uncracky books.
My guilty pleasure FP: It's a guilty pleasure in the sense that it directly contradicts canon, but I like to think of Bagoas finding love again after Alexander's death, preferably with someone of more or less his own rank. (Bagoas's presence in Jo Graham's Stealing Fire was a main reason I read the book, and oh how I wish that Bagoas's relationship with the main character wasn't made secondary, at the very end of the book and out of the blue, to a heterosexual marriage and children for the m.c.)
My anti-FP Alexander/Roxane, because Roxane is a nasty piece of work.

Comments

[soupytwist]

TIRES! I love Tires. (Or possibly Tyres?) He's awesome. And I laugh a lot at Mike and Marsha cleaning guns and watching the A-Team, but I definitely don't want that to be euphemistic, omg.

I also 100% agree re Holmes and the Alexander novels. Though I read Fire From Heaven first so I am sliiightly more leaned towards Hephaistion. XD

And I still don't really get why the whole Rose/Doctor thing had to be quite so, er, unremitting. I liked Rose, and I like the Doctor, and I have no problems with people shipping them if they want to although I reallyreally don't, but the way it was portrayed as something that was A Fact: They Are TWoo Love (the sticker book I saw in a shop once refers to them as soulmates unironically!) just really put me off.

[kindkit]

Tyres, that's it! And yay, you don't hate Bagoas! (Renault fandom has quite a lot of people who do.)

And "unremitting" is a good word for the way the Doctor/Rose relationship was handled even in canon. After Rose left I got very sick of being told that she was the bestest companion ever and the Doctor's special soulmate whom no one else could ever measure up to. I didn't really mind the pairing until then.

[sunspot67]

I really like Bagoas as well. Have had no exposure to the fandom, just read The Persian Boy in my impressionable youth and really liked him as a character.

And I ship 9/10. I know, it's both impossible and wrong. Yet, there it is . . .

[lilacsigil]

Liz Shaw was my first TV heroine! I had an (in retrospect, unfair) grudge against Jo Grant for replacing her for many, many years. She and Sarah Jane would make a great team! And Three/Delgado!Master is the OTP of swirly velvet.

[kindkit]

Jo is my favorite, I have to admit, but Liz Shaw is a great character. With great boots.

[lemposoi]

Interesting!

Always kind of throws me when I hear someone has an aversion to any specific kind of pairing, unless we're talking about homophobic aversion, but I guess that's just because I live in my own little every-which-way fandom bubble.

Marcia/female would be interesting, I agree. I could totally see that in canon, too, maybe like an old girlfriend showing up back on the scene. Also, wholly agreeing with you here about Brian/Vulva.

[kindkit]

Well, "aversion" is perhaps a slightly strong term. I don't go around saying "eww het" or get annoyed at other people for writing it. I've even written it myself! But I'm in fandom for the slash. Which is to say, I'm in fandom for the kinds of stories that seldom get told in the mainstream media (especially in the US, where I live). Het relationships are represented everywhere on TV, in films and books, etc., whereas same-sex relationships are underrepresented. So I don't generally read het fanfic and I'm completely unapologetic about that.

[lemposoi]

There's nothing wrong with having tastes, either; it's not immoral to have preferences! I am totally with you about being in fandom for subversive stories too, absolutely, which is probably why almost all the het I write has dominant women and submissive men. I had to sort of go through slash and femslash to find a place where I can write and read het romances/smut fics that actually speak to me, instead of being the same trite obligatory-heteronormative-boring-romance type you generally get in media. My stuff's still 90% slash or femslash... *checks* Current lineup actually 33 m/m, 2o f/f, 15 het and 8 mixed moresomes, apparently, so okay, I overstated that, haha. 82.62%, and that's not counting the same-sex stuff in those mixed moresomes.