Sheppard/Teyla - a rare pairing

[tielan]

You know, I'm beginning to think that Sheppard/Teyla should get rare-pairing status, canonically-inclined or not.

God knows that it's less-popular than both Sheppard/Weir and Teyla/Ronon, harder to find fic, icons, or photomanips for, and impossible to encourage anyone towards. There's no middle ground for the pairing: people either like it, or loathe it and won't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

And I'm getting tired of not being allowed to write or post it in ficathons and LJ comms because it's apparently 'popular'.

Popular, my ass.

If it's so popular, then someone point me to the fic. I've found two authors I trust to write it well in all circumstances and maybe three or four others who are reasonable. And then there's the cliched, badly spelled, grammatically incorrect, unbeta'd, labouriously-written stories by authors too 'precious' about their fics to entrust them to a beta reader or to take constructive criticism about their spelling and grammar, let alone their characterisation.

No, good fic is not the same as all fic, but the fact that there are only two really good, regular writers for Shep/Teyla is a simple mathematical indicator that the overall selection pool is pretty small.

If it's popular, then someone explain to me why the SGA newsletter regularly features Shep/Weir and Teyla/Ronon but very little Shep/Teyla.

If it's popular, then someone tell me why a het ship canon vs. fanon pairing poll turned up 183 people who wanted to see Teyla/Ronon in canon (against 111 people who wanted to see Shep/Weir) and 20 people who wanted to see Shep/Teyla in canon.

Shep/Teyla a popular pairing? Bloody well do the math, use Earth logic to compute rather than fan logic[*], and gimme a break.

And seriously reconsider the automatic exclusion of Shep/Teyla any time someone does something involving the phrase, 'we don't want the popular pairings.' Because Shep/Teyla is so very not popular.

[*]But I don't like Shep/Teyla! We can't let it into the pairing communities for rare pairings because I don't want to read that stuff! EW!

Comments

[amalthia]

I don't see too much Teyla/Sheppard hate but that's probably because most of the people I friends list are rather laid back people and are kind of open to all sorts of pairings. I haven't really been tempted to write Teyla/Sheppard myself, mostly because I didn't care for how Teyla was written season 1 but I really enjoyed what the writers gave her in season 2 and I'm really beginning to like Teyla as a character. I'm not much of a het writer but I could see Teyla and Sheppard now, where as last year I had a harder time with it, but not in a way where I just had to tell people to please stop or anything. (which I think is completely wrong for fans ask, with maybe the exception of the TomParis/Neelix fics from Voyager)

I agree that Teyla/Sheppard isn't common or easy to find and I would not call it popular.

I think you're more likely to find well written threesome fics with Teyla/Sheppard/McKay (I did find a fourseome with Ronon that was pretty hot too) Strangely I haven't seen any Weir/Teyla/Sheppard or McKay.

Basically there are few authors that can write het I'd be willing to read and you're one of them. If you ever write Teyla/Sheppard I'd read it. (btw, your story Sensetivity you had some really intense moments between Sheppard/Teyla, and I loved it)

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

angely I haven't seen any Weir/Teyla/Sheppard

Nope and I keep looking in vain for it (even though I have a tiny possible ficlet for that)

[tielan]

Basically there are few authors that can write het I'd be willing to read and you're one of them.

Thanks. I consider that a high compliment.

I think a large part of the S/T hate or dislike comes across because I'm playing actively in that section of the fandom, and when people discover my preferences, they're all "You actually like that?" Usually in the kind of tones reserved for child-molesters and psychotic killers: "You kill people for fun?"

[amalthia]

I think i've been fortunate to avoid forums or people who take an active dislike of characters I like or even the ones I'm meh about, but I think it has more to do with mostly reading slash. I also haven't seen too much character bashing in the slash stories. I've read that was a big deal in SG-1 where Sam got everything dumped on her because she's a woman and possible "threat" to Jack/Daniel? I think it's sloppy or lazy writing or people are getting way too into the characters or something.