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Wednesday, October 16th, 2002 02:25 pm
pairings and what they say
Use the LJ. Become one with the LJ. Get used to the LJ. This is far harder than I expected. But very cool.
First up.
Review of Red here and at my diary.
Red Porn, See Everything, because it was irresistible.
And lo, inspiration is seriously wandering the net.
Take by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
grrleloquence, totally rocks my world. And she wrote that sucker FAST. OHhhh yeah. Red coda, Clark, Lex, and TAKE.
snippet bybasingstoke, and wow, wow, WOW. Fabulous.
Of course you read these already. Just let me second and third and fourth the YES DAMMIT YES!
Anyway.
Thamiris discusses Red from a completely different perspective. I've read it twice now and am trying to think of something intelligent to say that isn't a pretty much 'whoa', but hey, I'm still recovering from well-dressed Clark. So work with me here. Anyway, amazing essay.
Taken frommusesfool, who got it from Torch, asking the question what do the pairings you write/have written have in common/say about your preferences?
Huh.
I'm--not sure.
To hearken to the Old Days, in which I discovered Voyager fanfic, Paris/Torres, and Paris/Torres porn all in the same twenty-four hour period....
First pairing was Paris/Torres, canon-couple, Star Trek Voyager. Had less scenes and less text/subtext per season than Clark/Lex in one episode. Second in the fandom was Paris/Seven, where I actually found my feet really fast and enjoyed writing immensely. Also flirted with Janeway/Seven and Chakotay/Paris as a writer. A couple of other one shots for fun. Thirty one stories total in that fandom.
New fandom.
Next was Wolverine/Rogue, X-Men Movieverse, definitely NOT canon, picked up from Diebin during a really bored search of the net for something to do. Played lightly with Logan/Jean on and off, fell in lust with the impossibly uncanonical St. John/Bobby, and experimented with Scott/Rogue, Magneto/Toad, and Logan/Ororo.
New fandom.
Clark/Lex, Clark/Lex, Clark/Lex. Flirted with Lex/Lana and Lex/Chloe, but pretty much this is as monogamous as I've ever been. Not even seriously tempted to any other pairing, and though I've read in most of the pairings in Smallville, none really have clicked like Clark/Lex did.
So there's a pattern here somewhere, and hell if I know what it is.
On glass_onion, right around the time I started in Smallville, there was a discussion on fandoms you've left behind and I offered this little bit of thought on the subject of my character choices.
*****
Verbatim from email to glass_onion, 11/13/2001:
I have a serious thing for morally ambiguous male characters.
Voyager, I fell for Tom Paris, he of the Bad Past Yet Still a Good Guy at
Heart, and Paris/Torres was the pairing in canon and the one with the most
interesting stories, so I went with it happily, since I like canon usually.
Stayed relatively monogamous at that, with a brief flirtation with
Paris/Janeway and Paris/Chakotay and a long affair with Paris/Seven. Tom
is pretty, granted, but so is Harry Kim and Chakotay, and I never fell for
their characters like I fell for Tom. Anything I wrote, with some sideline
exceptions, was Tom-centric, with a lean toward angst and moral dilemmas.
Which, granted, isn't that unusual, except in Paris/Torres subgenre, the
focus seemed to BE the pairing more than one or other of the characters.
Movieverse, Logan. Even more morally ambiguous AND with a bodycount to
prove it, though still more or less a good guy. Again, went into
Logan/Rogue monogamy, which was the pairing there was most interesting and
had the greatest variety of authors, styles, and so forth, with a soft spot
for Logan/Jean and Logan/Scott. St.John/Bobby was an anomaly, granted, but
since there was so little useful canon on St. John, it can be argued he's
more or less an OC and it gave me the chance to explore what being an
adolescent was like when coupled with mutantness.
Smallville, Lex Luthor. Not just morally ambiguous, but actual
future-villain material, with a eye toward active evil in coming
episodes/seasons. Which actually made me sit down and think about the fact
that all my primaries are always at very minimum leaning toward the dark
side with an option to jump ship. I like Lex/Clark because, YMMV, they
have chemistry. But truth is, if Lex showed chemistry with a tree, I'd
probably be writing Lex/tree, because Lex is the one that's holding me.
Oddly enough, Lex DOES have chemistry with his pool table, but let's not go
there.
I'm wondering if I should spend any time actually thinking about what this
tells me about myself as a person and writer or stay in blissful ignorance.
Hmmm.
*****
Hmm.
First and foremost, I am a romantic. The kind that really, really, honestly to God believes in soulmates, idealistic running through fields of flowers, let them be happy together for fucking *ever*. Always and forever. And when I write, no matter how dark I tend to go, circumstances whatever they are, this is what I want, and it's always, always going to be there. It's not that I couldn't get beyond that, but that I don't want to. And with my primary pairings--Paris/Torres, Wolverine/Rogue, St. John/Bobby, and Clark/Lex--I'm never going to even want to get away from that.
Except for Paris/Torres, however, all of them have been uncanonical, but almost always in the main or OTP of the fandom. I'm attracted to what I see on screen, but more than that, I'm attracted to the other writers of the pairing.
There we go.
I knew from the first episode of Smallville that I'd be writing Clark/Lex. I just didn't know if it would be me flirting with another fandom (like I did with Sare Liz for Witchblade), or if it would be--well, more. Around Metamorphosis, I gave into temptation and went searching for the archive, and lost myself completely in the first thirty-forty stories released in the fandom. Fell totally, completely, head-over-heels in love with the writers, the stories, the pairing, the lists. And the biggest roadblock for me--a slash-intensive fandom, where I'd be surrounded by writers that I recognized from God knows how many fandoms, GOOD writers, amazing writers, where I knew I'd be out of my depth from day one--was pretty much gone. Witchblade didn't have that for me--not the sheer number of stories and incredible authors in one place to make it an addiction. That first obsession just fed for hours and hours of reading, devouring everything.
I can chalk up my pairings to a lot of things--that I'm always attracted to one of the male leads, the ambiguous morals, the dark edges, etc--and it's all true. But the real moment of click only comes IN fandom, with the people in it, with the stories and the ideas and the social structure itself. It's people--people to talk to about the episodes, to write with, to discuss fanfic, to mull the pairing, to encourage and be encouraged, exchange ideas, interaction, pure and simple. As a reader, I like and need it. As a writer, I require it as much as I require my computer.
So there we go. I--don't think this is as complete an evaluation as I'd like. Other factors are definitely involved, but...this is as close as I can get right now. Possibly why even now, after almost a year, I'm still not really bored yet, feeling uninspired, looking with any kind of seriousness at other pairings/fandoms/etc.
It's nice.
First up.
Review of Red here and at my diary.
Red Porn, See Everything, because it was irresistible.
And lo, inspiration is seriously wandering the net.
Take by
grrleloquence, totally rocks my world. And she wrote that sucker FAST. OHhhh yeah. Red coda, Clark, Lex, and TAKE.snippet by
basingstoke, and wow, wow, WOW. Fabulous.Of course you read these already. Just let me second and third and fourth the YES DAMMIT YES!
Anyway.
Thamiris discusses Red from a completely different perspective. I've read it twice now and am trying to think of something intelligent to say that isn't a pretty much 'whoa', but hey, I'm still recovering from well-dressed Clark. So work with me here. Anyway, amazing essay.
Taken from
musesfool, who got it from Torch, asking the question what do the pairings you write/have written have in common/say about your preferences?Huh.
I'm--not sure.
To hearken to the Old Days, in which I discovered Voyager fanfic, Paris/Torres, and Paris/Torres porn all in the same twenty-four hour period....
First pairing was Paris/Torres, canon-couple, Star Trek Voyager. Had less scenes and less text/subtext per season than Clark/Lex in one episode. Second in the fandom was Paris/Seven, where I actually found my feet really fast and enjoyed writing immensely. Also flirted with Janeway/Seven and Chakotay/Paris as a writer. A couple of other one shots for fun. Thirty one stories total in that fandom.
New fandom.
Next was Wolverine/Rogue, X-Men Movieverse, definitely NOT canon, picked up from Diebin during a really bored search of the net for something to do. Played lightly with Logan/Jean on and off, fell in lust with the impossibly uncanonical St. John/Bobby, and experimented with Scott/Rogue, Magneto/Toad, and Logan/Ororo.
New fandom.
Clark/Lex, Clark/Lex, Clark/Lex. Flirted with Lex/Lana and Lex/Chloe, but pretty much this is as monogamous as I've ever been. Not even seriously tempted to any other pairing, and though I've read in most of the pairings in Smallville, none really have clicked like Clark/Lex did.
So there's a pattern here somewhere, and hell if I know what it is.
On glass_onion, right around the time I started in Smallville, there was a discussion on fandoms you've left behind and I offered this little bit of thought on the subject of my character choices.
*****
Verbatim from email to glass_onion, 11/13/2001:
I have a serious thing for morally ambiguous male characters.
Voyager, I fell for Tom Paris, he of the Bad Past Yet Still a Good Guy at
Heart, and Paris/Torres was the pairing in canon and the one with the most
interesting stories, so I went with it happily, since I like canon usually.
Stayed relatively monogamous at that, with a brief flirtation with
Paris/Janeway and Paris/Chakotay and a long affair with Paris/Seven. Tom
is pretty, granted, but so is Harry Kim and Chakotay, and I never fell for
their characters like I fell for Tom. Anything I wrote, with some sideline
exceptions, was Tom-centric, with a lean toward angst and moral dilemmas.
Which, granted, isn't that unusual, except in Paris/Torres subgenre, the
focus seemed to BE the pairing more than one or other of the characters.
Movieverse, Logan. Even more morally ambiguous AND with a bodycount to
prove it, though still more or less a good guy. Again, went into
Logan/Rogue monogamy, which was the pairing there was most interesting and
had the greatest variety of authors, styles, and so forth, with a soft spot
for Logan/Jean and Logan/Scott. St.John/Bobby was an anomaly, granted, but
since there was so little useful canon on St. John, it can be argued he's
more or less an OC and it gave me the chance to explore what being an
adolescent was like when coupled with mutantness.
Smallville, Lex Luthor. Not just morally ambiguous, but actual
future-villain material, with a eye toward active evil in coming
episodes/seasons. Which actually made me sit down and think about the fact
that all my primaries are always at very minimum leaning toward the dark
side with an option to jump ship. I like Lex/Clark because, YMMV, they
have chemistry. But truth is, if Lex showed chemistry with a tree, I'd
probably be writing Lex/tree, because Lex is the one that's holding me.
Oddly enough, Lex DOES have chemistry with his pool table, but let's not go
there.
I'm wondering if I should spend any time actually thinking about what this
tells me about myself as a person and writer or stay in blissful ignorance.
Hmmm.
*****
Hmm.
First and foremost, I am a romantic. The kind that really, really, honestly to God believes in soulmates, idealistic running through fields of flowers, let them be happy together for fucking *ever*. Always and forever. And when I write, no matter how dark I tend to go, circumstances whatever they are, this is what I want, and it's always, always going to be there. It's not that I couldn't get beyond that, but that I don't want to. And with my primary pairings--Paris/Torres, Wolverine/Rogue, St. John/Bobby, and Clark/Lex--I'm never going to even want to get away from that.
Except for Paris/Torres, however, all of them have been uncanonical, but almost always in the main or OTP of the fandom. I'm attracted to what I see on screen, but more than that, I'm attracted to the other writers of the pairing.
There we go.
I knew from the first episode of Smallville that I'd be writing Clark/Lex. I just didn't know if it would be me flirting with another fandom (like I did with Sare Liz for Witchblade), or if it would be--well, more. Around Metamorphosis, I gave into temptation and went searching for the archive, and lost myself completely in the first thirty-forty stories released in the fandom. Fell totally, completely, head-over-heels in love with the writers, the stories, the pairing, the lists. And the biggest roadblock for me--a slash-intensive fandom, where I'd be surrounded by writers that I recognized from God knows how many fandoms, GOOD writers, amazing writers, where I knew I'd be out of my depth from day one--was pretty much gone. Witchblade didn't have that for me--not the sheer number of stories and incredible authors in one place to make it an addiction. That first obsession just fed for hours and hours of reading, devouring everything.
I can chalk up my pairings to a lot of things--that I'm always attracted to one of the male leads, the ambiguous morals, the dark edges, etc--and it's all true. But the real moment of click only comes IN fandom, with the people in it, with the stories and the ideas and the social structure itself. It's people--people to talk to about the episodes, to write with, to discuss fanfic, to mull the pairing, to encourage and be encouraged, exchange ideas, interaction, pure and simple. As a reader, I like and need it. As a writer, I require it as much as I require my computer.
So there we go. I--don't think this is as complete an evaluation as I'd like. Other factors are definitely involved, but...this is as close as I can get right now. Possibly why even now, after almost a year, I'm still not really bored yet, feeling uninspired, looking with any kind of seriousness at other pairings/fandoms/etc.
It's nice.
