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

[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...