pondering on pairings

[xparrot]

How can you like a pairing when you hate one character in the pairing? Do any of you do this? I often have my favorite characters in a pairing (sometimes to the point that I'll stray from my OTP to see my favorite with others - for all I am obsessively McSheppist, I will on occasion indulge in Rodney/various-others, because it's fun to see Rodney getting love.) But even when I have a favorite, I'll still like the other character, else I wouldn't be able to understand what they see in each other. I don't think I've ever had a preferred pairing (not just romantic, friendship, either) that I actively disliked one member. How do you manage it, if you do? How do you explain your favorite char's tastes, if you can't see the appeal yourself? I'm genuinely curious; I can't figure out how it would satisfy me to read or write something like that (break-up fics aside. And I only like writing break-up fics, I don't like reading them...)

(...Brought on by a discussion with another SGA fan who detests Rodney but apparently reads McShep.)

(...while I'm at it, did anyone see The Scene in "Miller's Crossing" as Rodney selfishly and deliberately dumping the problem of feeding Todd onto John? I'd never encountered that interpretation before, and it kind of boggles me. What with Rodney begging John to let him sacrifice himself, and then trying to sneak around John's back later anyway. Yes, Rodney can be an arrogant ass, it's part of his charm. But there's more to him than that. I always saw John as the selfish one in "Miller's Crossing", not allowing his teammate to give up his own life - and I love John for that crazy selfishness, even if it was Rodney's choice; I love that John couldn't. But I didn't suspect that Rodney expected that - I thought he went to John partly to get his affairs in order, but mostly because he needed John's help to do it. Without John's orders, the Marines would've shot Todd the moment he laid a hand on Rodney, and that wouldn't have helped anyone. Rodney went to John prepared for an argument - but not for John's flat refusal. And I think he probably struggled to come to terms with what John did, but in the end forgave John, because John needed his acceptance, and Rodney understood why John did it, even if he couldn't have done the same. It never crossed my mind that he was actually manipulating John to kill for him. I wonder how arrogantly selfish that makes him in "The Shrine," then, taking up John's valuable time demanding comfort and beer, just because he's losing his mind...)

Comments

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

How can you like a pairing when you hate one character in the pairing?

This happens a lot, actually, though I fight against it.

Here's how it goes:

1. Character A is my (or whomever's) One True Character for this source.

2. I want A to be happy! I want to see A getting love, as you say.

3. Looking at canon, I think A loves Character B. A/B is what A wants! That will make A happy!

4. But I hate B! I think he's a jerk! And yet, I see A pining for him.

5. If B (the loser) doesn't love A, B is an ungrateful cad who deserves punishment. Suffer, B, suffer!

6. But A tells me that he wants B, so the story ends up as A/B, because that's what A wants.

What's fascinating to me is that I saw this a lot in SGA fandom during the first 2 seasons, but with Rodney as A, pining for John. During S4 and into S5, pining!John has looked more and more canonical for a lot of fans, so the set of John fans who don't personally care for Rodney are going through the above process.

And that's what is going on in the discussion you cite. She doesn't like Rodney, but she can see that John really, really does. So either she tries to look at Rodney from John's POV, to see what he loves, or she gets all bitter and imagines Rodney as being without any noble motives, a person who is twisting John's obvious devotion. The cad! John deserves so much better, and yet he throws away his love on that jerk!

So, IMHO this is something that happens when *canon* is showing one's OTC loving someone you just can't stand. Next stop: grovelfic.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...it sounds like a painful process! ^^; Laid out like that, it does make sense - thank you, you've made it a lot clearer to me!

I think the reason I have trouble understanding it myself is because pairings aren't my default setting for fanning. If my preferred char is in a canon romance (or canon subtext, as with McShep) with a char I dislike, then I'll just avoid it in favor of gen relationships I do like. (It's also the case that it's pretty unusual for me to dislike a char - I'm often neutral about some chars, but that only rarely devolves into character hate. It's more often true for me that I'll detest a pairing while not actually disliking either char in it, in which case I tend to just avoid the pairing-fic and go for gen readings of the relationship as much as possible.)

But you're right, I have read earlier-season McShep stories where the author pretty clearly didn't like John (a lot of the post-Trinity stuff.) They're uncomfortable for me to read, because I do love John, too, and get upset when he's portrayed in such a negative light...grovelfic just isn't my cup of tea; I prefer relationship strife to be a mutual thing, with neither/both parties at fault.

Out of curiosity, when this happens - do you make an attempt to like the hated character, try to re-evaluate how you see them or reform their characterizations in your fic? Or do you just grit your teeth and bear it?

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I always try to see what A (let's call him "Spock") might see in that jerk B (whom you can think of as "Kirk"). I generally come around to being able to see B from A's POV -- or else I kind of drift away from the fandom, because it hurts me to see my darling A throw his/her heart away on someone who really annoys me. This is basically what happened for me with SV, also because they totally butchered Lex's characterization in the process.

[sholio]

Ha, it's funny that your example is Kirk/Spock in the context of this discussion, because I'm pretty sure that's *exactly* why I always preferred Spock/McCoy -- I really don't like Kirk and, even though I certainly can't deny how important he is to Spock in canon, I just couldn't get past my dislike of the character.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I wonder if my non-dislike of Kirk comes in part from reading fic (well, Star Trek novels) before really watching the show - I'd seen a couple eps and a couple movies when I saw the show (and I still haven't seen the whole thing, I don't think, though I read novelizations of all the eps...) Much of the fic were written by Spock-fans, and, while gen, was awfully K/S subtexty, so I got to know Kirk "through Spock's eyes" as it were. The same thing happened with Clark, actually. So when I did watch the show, I was primed to like the char already, and could easily reject the parts I didn't care for.

SGA, on the other hand, I watched 3 seasons without reading any fic, so while certain of my tastes have definitely been influenced by the fic, my basic opinions were shaped on my own...

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I have read earlier-season McShep stories where the author pretty clearly didn't like John (a lot of the post-Trinity stuff.)

Yeah, what's kind of fascinating is how there aren't so many of those any more, that McShep fandom has been persuaded that John is really lovable and he really loves Rodney. Personally, I credit 98% of it to Joe Flanigan -- I think he made John into someone the fangirls could whole-heartedly love, who's not just the All-American do-no-wrong Hero.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I actually liked Sheppard from the beginning (I tend to be low-key fond of the Square-Jawed Hero Types), but I didn't become interested in him as a character until it started becoming clear how deeply, deeply weird he really was. And yeah, JFlan gets a lot of credit for that. Also the writers, for making him into a fanboy dork (some of the Sheppard fangirls confuse me in part because they seem to love him for his Square-Jawed-Lone-Ranger-Heroness and ignore his more immature and dorktastic sides, which are the parts I love best about him...)

...but aww, I always kind of liked Kirk. I mean, he's no Spock, but who is? (Is char A usually the sidekick/char B the hero, I wonder? Because part of the problem might be, too, that the sidekick's Most Important Person is usually the hero, while the Hero will have multiple loves vying for attention, and then you feel sorry for sidekick-A, who loves B so deeply but B doesn't completely return it. I wonder if that's kinda what happened with the McShep - Rodney became more a hero later, with John behaving as the love-sick sidekick, so sympathies switched? --no idea if this means anything, just wondering! I may have too much fun analyzing fannish behavior... ^^;)

[sholio]

some of the Sheppard fangirls confuse me in part because they seem to love him for his Square-Jawed-Lone-Ranger-Heroness and ignore his more immature and dorktastic sides, which are the parts I love best about him...

*hee* I brought up this exact point in the email I just sent you ... XD Great minds and all of that!

I actually disliked Sheppard in the first few episodes precisely because I *don't* like the Square-Jawed Hero type much at all. (See Kirk comment above. XD) Reflecting on my emailed comments, though, I suppose it probably has something to do with why a person fans on the show. For me, the characters are hugely appealing as Red Dwarf-esque lovable dorks, saving the universe in spite of their absolutely awful plans and occasional incompetence. But, of course, we all play up the aspects of the show that we like the most in our fic, and downplay the ones we don't; I can see why someone who prefers the characters in their more heroic moments would prefer to write about those.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I don't *dislike* the Hero cliche; I'm not terribly interested in such a char, but I don't mind them, either. I do tend to have a thing for chars who are larger-than-life, but with flaws to match; the hero-chars attract me when their flaws show.

Though I think when it comes to fanning - at least when it comes to reading/writing fic - it's not the chars but the relationships that draw me in; I might like to watch a favorite character, but what I want to read is almost always a focus on a particular relationship. So the fans who are in it entirely for their favorite character sort of baffle me; I can't quite get where they're coming from.

[sholio]

*jumps up and down, waving hand* Me too, me too! It's so integral to my own fannish enjoyment that it's really somewhat alien to me to think of only watching/reading/fanning on one character, not two or more at once. I seem to recall talking about this with reference to the Dresden Files books -- I really don't enjoy the "lone hero" archetype much at all, and it took several of the books for me to really get into them, as Harry's relationships with the other characters were developed and deepened.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is, for me, that I can have a favorite character to watch - I'll often have a particular favorite that I'll like their relationships with a whole bunch of other characters, and will also want to see building new relationships (the Doctor comes to mind). Often for me that favoritism gets bound up in a crush on the actor, so that I'll want to see them in everything, playing opposite anyone (as with DH now).

But when it comes to reading and writing, it's the relationships that grab me; I rarely want to read the character on their own. And it works in reverse - I'll have a favorite character, but when I start reading fic about them, I'll start to gravitate to particular relationships, until when I watch the show I'll prefer those relationships above any others (such as with SGA; originally I just liked Rodney, period; now I have a definite preference for Rodney-John and Rodney-team, over anything else.)

[sholio]

See, for me, the impermanence of relationships on Doctor Who is preventing me from fanning on it. I have the same problem with Joss Whedon shows, and with Lost -- I just need more stability than that. I can definitely enjoy a show without being fannish about it (and there are lots of examples) but in order to make the jump to fanning, I need those relationships to be at least somewhat stable -- they can change over time, but I just can't invest myself fannishly when they're always coming and going.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the case for me - I love watching the Doctor, but I don't read or write fic. In the case of Doctor Who I'm in limbo between enjoying and true fanning - Type A adoration, really - but for all I love the char, I don't engage with him and the show the same way I do with SGA.

Though interestingly, most of the fans I know who do fan on Who tend to focus on particular relationships - the Rose/Ten shippers, or Doctor/Jack, or going back to old Who, I know of fans who were Fourth Doctor/Sara Jane Smith fans, pretty much exclusively. The one person hardcore into Who on my flist now writes Doctor/Master, which is one of the few permanent relationships running through the entire show (she does it permanent, too - I think she's written four different incarnations of the Doctor with the associate Masters!)

[argosy.livejournal.com]

eta: Oops, sorry, I put my reply in the wrong place.

But I also wanted to tell you that I love how you lay things out with A and B here. hee hee hee.