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

[tielan]

People hate it venomously and beat it down wherever they can but seem to swear that it's way too prevalent.

Best summary of the situation I've yet seen.

Maybe people consider something a 'popular' pairing if it involves two of the main credited cast.

Then I would have to direct them to a dictionary definition of the word 'popular'. I'm pretty sure that 'involving two of the main credited cast' doesn't qualify a pairing as popular. (And what about Rodney/Ronon, or Ronon/Elizabeth, Ronon/Teyla, Teyla/Rodney...?)

[natacup82.livejournal.com]

If there is one thing season 2 has taught me it's that logic is overrated and brains are those squishy things we sit on. But seriously, I think people are inclined to call it 'popular' so that they are somewhat justified when they vilify the ship. You don't look very good raining on a small ship's parade, but it's apparently a-okay to hate a big ship, so even if the 'competition' is small you make it seem big so you have something that you can fight and beat. It's insane but that is the nature of the beast. People need to learn that it's okay for us all to like different things and want to see different things in the fandom.

I will say that my main reason for not at least trying to contribute something to this pairing is that at the moment I really, truly do not like John Sheppard. At all. And all my creative endeavors would find ways to make Teyla stomp all over his slutty, stupid heart.