My evil plans, frustrated...

[graculus]

Bah. I had planned to heckle przed's Man from UNCLE panel at MediaWest this year, but I found out today that one of my panels has been moved to clash with it so my evil plans will come to naught! :(

Yep, I'm running two panels - one on Wild Wild West (Would the 1960s show work on TV today? Too sexist, too macho, or too gay?) and one on writing the less popular pairings in your slash fandom. I'm co-modding the latter, having run something similar to that a few years back and I find the whole subject interesting.

After all, what is it about some of us that we seek out (or have thrust upon us) the pairings that other people ignore or just plain don't appreciate? I'm hoping my espousal of Daniel/Teal'c and Ezra/Nathan can't just be put down to a simply-described kink which any viewer of the show might point out, but is about the characters and not just their physical characteristics.

I'm going from the OTC standpoint here as well - the One True Character who I find the most appealing and can happily slash with more than one other. Some might even say that any Ez-slash comes under the 'less popular pairing' label, considering the strength of the Chris/Vin side of the fandom.

Any thoughts, as always, appreciated as I try to formulate my thoughts for the end of the month... ;)

Comments

[ngaio]

Dinozzo/McGee (no-one writes this! Why not?! And incidentally, what's with the abundance of BDSM fic in the NCIS fandom?!)
Gibbs/Fournell
Xander/Giles
Jonas/Daniel (I know you're going to disagree with me on that one!)
Jack/Teal'c (occasionally Hammond/Jack!)
McKay/Zelenka
Vecchio/Fraser
Lupin/Harry
Harry/Ron (or in fact, any of the male Weasleys!)
Jack/Will
Dan/Jeremy

I think a lot of it for me is to do with how I perceive the characters and how I think they'd work together. Don't get me wrong, I used to love reading Xander/Spike but really, taking a step back, I think you've got to do a heck of a lot to get them there rationally. Also Jack/Norrington.

Also I'm not keen on power imbalances. Gibbs/Dinozzo doesn't work for me on *many* levels but my initial reaction is that boss/subordinate is not a healthy relationship.

I like friendship as a foundation to any relationship. Angry sex may be *sexy* but I doubt it's healthy. (Xander/Spike again, also Angel/Spike, or indeed Angel/Xander which takes even more work than Xander/Spike! Plus Jack/Norrington) Which is also why I don't take too well to Snape/Harry unless it's got good establishing plot, although it's not too bad because there's an element of having fought side by side forming a bond.

--

Which turned into more about why the usual pairings don't work for me rather than why the less usual pairings do. Sorry!

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I think it's much easier to talk about why things don't work than why they do - clearly it's something less than tangible about those pairings which works better than other pairings involving those characters.

Let's take Jack/Teal'c as a relatively uncontroversial example. ;) For me, I've not read much in that pairing which isn't just fuckbuddy fic, or which doesn't go down the 'two warriors bonding' route, and I like a little more substance to my pairing than that. Also the fact that it excludes my favourite character doesn't help either.

[ankh-lj.livejournal.com]

My OTC is Daniel Jackson. I'll read him being slashed with others besides Jack, despite J/D being my OTP. However, I do have one or two requirements. I have to fancy the bloke Daniel's being slashed with and/or I have to see chemistry. So I'll happily read Daniel/Tony DiNozzo but Daniel/Fornell would leave me cold. I'm shallow, I have no interest in pairings with characters I have no attraction to no matter how quirky and omigod-their-love-is-so-canon their relationship is, so I'm not going to read Gibbs/Ducky no matter how fond I am of them both. I wouldn't want to watch them having sex, ergo forty pages of them boinking is not going to butter my crumpets.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I think the whole OTC thing works, with some reservations - like you, I couldn't just pick a male character at random and be convinced just because they were involved with my OTC. For example, while I'm quite happy with J/D or D/T, that's really the extent of it for me where Daniel is concerned.

As far as NCIS is concerned, I like Ducky but that's as much because he's got a lot of Illya characteristics and that's what's attractive to me more than anything else. Also, I would want to beat Gibbs around the head with a frying pan if I was involved with him, so that kind of precludes liking any fic with him involved. Ditto for pretty much all the characters, really, and I've now stopped watching the show so I'll tail off here...

As for the 'omg it's canon', well I don't like to be told what to think. Thus the chance of me ever liking any het relationship being pushed onscreen is significantly less than zero. I have eyes, I can make my own mind up, thanks very much - no need for spoonfeeding and tinkly Pavlov music here!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Thinking about the pairings I like, most of which tend to be the less popular ones, I think what they all share is that there is *something* solid to base a partnership on. Even when there's no canon interaction at all I can find more reasons for the guys to get along than not. Antagonism can be fun to write, but it can get in the way of plot far too easily.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I'm something of a plot and angst junkie, so I don't mind too much if there are barriers to be overcome before the hot man-on-man action starts but it has to not be too much of a stretch!

I'm not sure I can stretch too easily to characters who've never actually met in canon, though, that seems one suspension of disbelief too far for me and feels like you're ranging into two-hot-guys as a reason for writing, which isn't for me.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Considering my OTP consists of one guy who was at his prettiest in the early seventies (but does evil very well), and one who is green and has horns, I don't think you can count it as two-hot-guys ;-). I write Ethan/Lorne because I see them as very much coded queer, and because we don't know what happened to them following their last appearance on screen. I like giving my favourite characters nice things, and I think they'd like each other. Also their on-screen chronology doesn't overlap at all, although we can guess that they were in the same state at the very least for some of that time. Lorne has a bar, Ethan has plenty of reasons to need somewhere safe to drink and/or meet people, so no reason why they couldn't have met during canon.

Plus I come from B7 fandom, where it's always been a fun game to suggest ways in which major and minor characters could have met before or after their on-screen interactions.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

Count me in on the odd-OTP panel. I totally get the frustration (if not your espoused pairings per se). My biggest bugaboo are the people from the 'main slash franchise' who think that by jumping up and down and yelling, 'But they are SOOOOOOO doing it!' that you'll immediately smack yourself on the forehead and go, "Of course, why didn't I see that before?" Or the ones who go "there's no canon for that" as if their favorite pairing are on screen making out every other scene.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid the more I get told that I have to think or believe anything, the more I tend to reject that line of thought.

In some cases, there really is no alternative to the OTP because the chemistry is just so overwhelming that you have to work really hard to find another pairing to slash and some people then just end up doing something different for perversity's sake (or because they dislike one of the characters or indeed the fans of that character - see Jonas Quinn as the Not-Daniel for an example of this behaviour!).

For me, if characters have been onscreen together, there may well be enough of a hook for someone to write it but I would remain to be convinced in a lot of cases that there's anything of substance there. But then a good writer can convince me of all sorts of things!

[kageygirl.livejournal.com]

Ooh--me, I'm one of those irritating inconvenient people who don't fit into a single category. My OTP/OTC-ness pretty much varies by show and character, so there are some shows where I'm right in line with the most common/popular slash pairing (SGA: McKay/Sheppard, Enterprise: Tucker/Reed), some shows where my pairing is less popular (DS9: Bashir/O'Brien) or practically nonexistent (though that's sometimes because the fandom is nearly nonexistent, too--Jeremiah/Marcus in Jeremiah, or Brisco/Socrates in Brisco County, Jr.). Some shows I'm OTC (Ezra!) and can pair them with multiple people, some shows I'm fond of a het pairing (I know, blasphemy!), some shows I love but have no real pairing at all.

I think that, for me, it's really about whether or where I see pleasing tension or subtext, though the pairings I like tend to have certain similarities--friends, or a certain simpatico, rather than enemies, for instance, often coworkers/teammates/somehow on the same side of--whatever. And the characters I tend to like are generally smart, snarky, tough in some way, not the types to advertise their pain...

Which doesn't help you at all, most likely. *g* Statistical outlier is me!

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Oh, Brisco/Socrates so doing it! :P

I'm not sure you're that much of a statistical outlier after all, since your description of your character likings seems pretty close to mine in a lot of ways (even though our actual fandoms don't overlap too much). I agree, there needs to be some way in which the characters 'click' together and of course when they work together it's much easier to find convenient excuses! ;)

For myself, I'm interested in the motivations behind some people's espousal of particular pairings. Like, when certain characters who've had almost no screen time suddenly start popping up in stories as protagonists where they're effectively really just a name tagged to an OC to make it more legitimate to write the OTC with someone who isn't one of the mainstream partners for him. I've seen this happen in at least one fandom, in my opinion, where there's really very little canon for this character's interaction with anyone and suddenly he's a fully-fleshed protagonist. We wonders, oh yes we wonders...