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8th Jan - reoccurring themes in your shipping patterns, besides the above. Requested by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
redbrunja
Three themes that seem to come up in my shipping apart from yesterday's comment about emotionally reserved/restrained women and emotionally open men:
het
So, if I wasn't hiding behind the door back when they were handing slash goggles out, I either got a seriously defective pair, or promptly lost them.
When it comes to shipping patterns, I always fall for a het pairing.
I love writing Women Being Friends and Women Working Together but I don't write femmeslash unless it's a challenge that's laid out to me, and while there are a few maleslash pairings I can see, I don't tend to focus on them (not enough women).
Generally, I tend to stick comfortably in het pairings, and just switch up the 'gender' roles a little – Domme/sub, emotionally open males with emotionally contained female, female character agency, emotional subversion of the traditional concepts of alpha masculinity…
I hardly consider myself a pioneer. I just try to help in rewriting the standard heternormative romance narratives to be...a little off-centre. Create a variation off a theme...then change the key. Or adjust the melody. Add new harmonies, Put in a counterpoint. Basically, make options beyond the Harlequin romances I read growing up – all of which featured exactly the same male and female characters, roles, and scenarios. Cookie-cutter romance at it's best. Storytelling at it's laziest.
No, thank you.
partnerships
My favourite female characters tend to be the traditional Competent Action Girls; and I almost always pair them up with Competent Action Guys.
They're usually colleagues, or if not, they're capable of a working partnership – not necessarily as fighters together, but certainly their professional lives will overlap.
Sam/Jack (SG1), John/Teyla (SGA), Steve/Maria (Avengers), Tony/Ziva (NCIS), Will/Kate (Sanctuary), Batman/WonderWoman (Justice League), and Mako/Raleigh (Pacific Rim) are all clear examples of this. A couple who work together and frequently form a working partnership – usually in the context of a larger team, but certainly with that commonality of activity/focus.
Those that aren't in obvious working partnerships tend to form non-romantic partnerships in other ways: for instance, Arthur/Gwen from BBC's Merlin isn't really working partnership in spite of their associations with Merlin and Morgana in the early seasons of the show, but when I wrote them (mostly in future-fic) I put down Gwen as responsible for the home front, keeping things managed internally while Arthur kept things managed externally as High King.
So, yeah, couples who work together, who dovetail nicely in the functional department.
non-romantic
I like my pairings non-romantic – by which I mean not the cookie-cutter romance that I mentioned up the top. To be sure, cookie-cutter romance has its place...just not anywhere near my pairings.
You know what I mean by 'cookie cutter romance'? All the 'traditional' things that are sold to us as romantic: red roses, candlelit dinners, satin sheets, serenades by moonlight...
This is a function of the pairings I like, admittedly. The kind of characters I write aren't 'romantic' and don't want 'romance' - not the traditional way.
I was recently given a prompt to write a fic where Raleigh Becket surprise-proposes to Mako Mori, complete with ring.
While I can see Raleigh proposing to Mako, I don't think it would be a surprise to her, and it wouldn't be a 'complete with ring' deal. It would be a conversation that might have its roots in something else, or might just come up one night when they're lying in bed – no sex even, just cuddling. And they wouldn't go ring-hunting or anything. In fact, it's entirely possible that they wouldn't even plan a wedding at all – one day when they're in town, Raleigh sees a courthouse and says, "Hey, let's do this." And Mako goes, "Okay." And an hour later (or however long it takes them to rustle up the paperwork and things they need to be wed) they're legally married. And they walk out into the street in their casual clothes, with their marriage certificate firmly held by Raleigh, and they celebrate by going off and having dinner out and going home and maybe having sex, or maybe just lying quiet and falling asleep, just touching.
And the rest of the world finds out when the clerk who did the paperwork is all HOLY SHIT DO YOU SEE THIS PIECE OF PAPER? RALEIGH BECKET AND MAKO MORI JUST GOT MARRIED! and puts it up on social media and all the Shatterdome personnel they know are you didn't invite us to the wedding!!11eleventy!
Tendo is really pissed off because he was going to have a ball of a time organising Raleigh's bucks' night. They get a wedding card from Herc that has all of three hundred bucks and three words in it: About bloody time! And Newt and Hermann and Vanessa call up over speakerphone to congratulate them, only Vanessa has to put the other two in time-out because they start arguing, and then wants to know if there's anything they want from Europe.
Hm. I should probably write that fic, shouldn't I? Maybe it could be anodyne to the PR story where a bunch of male characters sit around and comment on Mako-the-bridezilla, because you never can tell with women!
Anyway. *coughs* I like 'love in the little gestures' rather than the big romantic drama. And I pick characters who allow me to do that.
Plus, as I've previously mentioned, most of the relationship development I write (the ones with actual plot) tend to happen in the midst of other things happening all around them, so it's not a case of 'romantic' (ie. soppy) so much as 'sweet'.
Sweet? Yes, please. Soppy? No, thank you.
LJ | DW
redbrunjaThree themes that seem to come up in my shipping apart from yesterday's comment about emotionally reserved/restrained women and emotionally open men:
het
So, if I wasn't hiding behind the door back when they were handing slash goggles out, I either got a seriously defective pair, or promptly lost them.
When it comes to shipping patterns, I always fall for a het pairing.
I love writing Women Being Friends and Women Working Together but I don't write femmeslash unless it's a challenge that's laid out to me, and while there are a few maleslash pairings I can see, I don't tend to focus on them (not enough women).
Generally, I tend to stick comfortably in het pairings, and just switch up the 'gender' roles a little – Domme/sub, emotionally open males with emotionally contained female, female character agency, emotional subversion of the traditional concepts of alpha masculinity…
I hardly consider myself a pioneer. I just try to help in rewriting the standard heternormative romance narratives to be...a little off-centre. Create a variation off a theme...then change the key. Or adjust the melody. Add new harmonies, Put in a counterpoint. Basically, make options beyond the Harlequin romances I read growing up – all of which featured exactly the same male and female characters, roles, and scenarios. Cookie-cutter romance at it's best. Storytelling at it's laziest.
No, thank you.
partnerships
My favourite female characters tend to be the traditional Competent Action Girls; and I almost always pair them up with Competent Action Guys.
They're usually colleagues, or if not, they're capable of a working partnership – not necessarily as fighters together, but certainly their professional lives will overlap.
Sam/Jack (SG1), John/Teyla (SGA), Steve/Maria (Avengers), Tony/Ziva (NCIS), Will/Kate (Sanctuary), Batman/WonderWoman (Justice League), and Mako/Raleigh (Pacific Rim) are all clear examples of this. A couple who work together and frequently form a working partnership – usually in the context of a larger team, but certainly with that commonality of activity/focus.
Those that aren't in obvious working partnerships tend to form non-romantic partnerships in other ways: for instance, Arthur/Gwen from BBC's Merlin isn't really working partnership in spite of their associations with Merlin and Morgana in the early seasons of the show, but when I wrote them (mostly in future-fic) I put down Gwen as responsible for the home front, keeping things managed internally while Arthur kept things managed externally as High King.
So, yeah, couples who work together, who dovetail nicely in the functional department.
non-romantic
I like my pairings non-romantic – by which I mean not the cookie-cutter romance that I mentioned up the top. To be sure, cookie-cutter romance has its place...just not anywhere near my pairings.
You know what I mean by 'cookie cutter romance'? All the 'traditional' things that are sold to us as romantic: red roses, candlelit dinners, satin sheets, serenades by moonlight...
This is a function of the pairings I like, admittedly. The kind of characters I write aren't 'romantic' and don't want 'romance' - not the traditional way.
I was recently given a prompt to write a fic where Raleigh Becket surprise-proposes to Mako Mori, complete with ring.
While I can see Raleigh proposing to Mako, I don't think it would be a surprise to her, and it wouldn't be a 'complete with ring' deal. It would be a conversation that might have its roots in something else, or might just come up one night when they're lying in bed – no sex even, just cuddling. And they wouldn't go ring-hunting or anything. In fact, it's entirely possible that they wouldn't even plan a wedding at all – one day when they're in town, Raleigh sees a courthouse and says, "Hey, let's do this." And Mako goes, "Okay." And an hour later (or however long it takes them to rustle up the paperwork and things they need to be wed) they're legally married. And they walk out into the street in their casual clothes, with their marriage certificate firmly held by Raleigh, and they celebrate by going off and having dinner out and going home and maybe having sex, or maybe just lying quiet and falling asleep, just touching.
And the rest of the world finds out when the clerk who did the paperwork is all HOLY SHIT DO YOU SEE THIS PIECE OF PAPER? RALEIGH BECKET AND MAKO MORI JUST GOT MARRIED! and puts it up on social media and all the Shatterdome personnel they know are you didn't invite us to the wedding!!11eleventy!
Tendo is really pissed off because he was going to have a ball of a time organising Raleigh's bucks' night. They get a wedding card from Herc that has all of three hundred bucks and three words in it: About bloody time! And Newt and Hermann and Vanessa call up over speakerphone to congratulate them, only Vanessa has to put the other two in time-out because they start arguing, and then wants to know if there's anything they want from Europe.
Hm. I should probably write that fic, shouldn't I? Maybe it could be anodyne to the PR story where a bunch of male characters sit around and comment on Mako-the-bridezilla, because you never can tell with women!
Anyway. *coughs* I like 'love in the little gestures' rather than the big romantic drama. And I pick characters who allow me to do that.
Plus, as I've previously mentioned, most of the relationship development I write (the ones with actual plot) tend to happen in the midst of other things happening all around them, so it's not a case of 'romantic' (ie. soppy) so much as 'sweet'.
Sweet? Yes, please. Soppy? No, thank you.