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Sep. 19th, 2005 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Somehow, in addition to the panel on 'Fictive Disasters' that I've been press-ganged into co-modding with
cycnus39 at the upcoming Connotations slash convention the weekend after next, I seem to have also volunteered myself for another one.
So any comments on the subject at hand ('In a league of their own: riding counter to the new shiny show, pairing, trend...') would be very much appreciated as at the moment my thoughts are somewhat limited... particularly any comments from
atdelphi, fellow queen of the underdog pairing! :P
I've never been someone who likes very much being told what to think - heaven knows this has got me into trouble more than once - so the chances of me jumping happily onto the latest shiny fannish bandwagon are close to zero. However, I can usually summon up a reason why I haven't that doesn't just boil down to 'awkward obstreperous cowbag'. Usually.
Let's take Firefly as a prime example. There are people on my lj friendslist who love the show in question, who would crawl over broken glass to get a ticket for the new movie and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Me, I wasn't all that enamoured of sliced bread either! :P The more I'm told something is wonderful, the less I believe it, I think. I have to see it for myself, I can't follow and be swept along in the fannish wake of something. Now sometimes this means I might miss out, sometimes it means I might get into something relatively late in the day, but more often than not it just means I actually get to act like a human being and not a sheep. ;)
I'm a great believer in IDIC and I just don't see it being exercised in fandom as much as it ought to be. Fandom is too full of OTP-ness, where variety of any kind is frowned upon because everyone should conform - the pairing is the pairing is the fandom. Pffft. Now there are a couple of shows I write for (UNCLE and WWW, in case people were wondering) where I just can't see any other pairing than the one I write but that doesn't mean if people want to write other pairings they shouldn't. It just means I'd like them well-labelled so I don't stumble across them by accident, thankee kindly. But people don't, on the whole, do they?
Makes me wonder what drives people to write particular pairings - sometimes it's the pretty, sometimes it's the obvious. I can't imagine writing a canon-sanctioned pairing (unless you count the aforementioned UNCLE and WWW and then it depends on who you're talking to...) and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, so why aren't there more people who don't write the fandom-sanctioned OTP? Particularly when (as with SG, for example) the show seems determined to mess with your pairing of choice?
I've always had a tendency to fall for a particular character in a show and then I can quite happily write about them with someone else (if that person just has chemistry with them) without needing fannish permission to do so. In fact, even in the face of outright embargo (yes, Mag7 fandom awards people, I'm looking at you!) I can't help wanting to write about the pairings nobody else seems interested in, as well as the somewhat more accepted ones. As long as Ezra is in there, it's mostly all good. I guess I must just be wired up that way...
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
So any comments on the subject at hand ('In a league of their own: riding counter to the new shiny show, pairing, trend...') would be very much appreciated as at the moment my thoughts are somewhat limited... particularly any comments from
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
I've never been someone who likes very much being told what to think - heaven knows this has got me into trouble more than once - so the chances of me jumping happily onto the latest shiny fannish bandwagon are close to zero. However, I can usually summon up a reason why I haven't that doesn't just boil down to 'awkward obstreperous cowbag'. Usually.
Let's take Firefly as a prime example. There are people on my lj friendslist who love the show in question, who would crawl over broken glass to get a ticket for the new movie and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Me, I wasn't all that enamoured of sliced bread either! :P The more I'm told something is wonderful, the less I believe it, I think. I have to see it for myself, I can't follow and be swept along in the fannish wake of something. Now sometimes this means I might miss out, sometimes it means I might get into something relatively late in the day, but more often than not it just means I actually get to act like a human being and not a sheep. ;)
I'm a great believer in IDIC and I just don't see it being exercised in fandom as much as it ought to be. Fandom is too full of OTP-ness, where variety of any kind is frowned upon because everyone should conform - the pairing is the pairing is the fandom. Pffft. Now there are a couple of shows I write for (UNCLE and WWW, in case people were wondering) where I just can't see any other pairing than the one I write but that doesn't mean if people want to write other pairings they shouldn't. It just means I'd like them well-labelled so I don't stumble across them by accident, thankee kindly. But people don't, on the whole, do they?
Makes me wonder what drives people to write particular pairings - sometimes it's the pretty, sometimes it's the obvious. I can't imagine writing a canon-sanctioned pairing (unless you count the aforementioned UNCLE and WWW and then it depends on who you're talking to...) and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, so why aren't there more people who don't write the fandom-sanctioned OTP? Particularly when (as with SG, for example) the show seems determined to mess with your pairing of choice?
I've always had a tendency to fall for a particular character in a show and then I can quite happily write about them with someone else (if that person just has chemistry with them) without needing fannish permission to do so. In fact, even in the face of outright embargo (yes, Mag7 fandom awards people, I'm looking at you!) I can't help wanting to write about the pairings nobody else seems interested in, as well as the somewhat more accepted ones. As long as Ezra is in there, it's mostly all good. I guess I must just be wired up that way...
no subject
Date: 2005-09-21 10:24 am (UTC)The friend of mine who's heavily into it is most certainly not a 'oooh, they look so hot together', girl, she too doesn't understand people who slash because of that, and she doesn't go looking for slash, so clearly she genuinely sees it.
I see a different kind of connection with Larry and Charlie, just really another father figure, so slash in that pairing surprises me - well, having said that it doesn't surprise/surprise, but I don't see it. But each to their own.