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selenakLet me make the entirely unoriginal observation (for the third or fourth time, I know) that if you're not into the big 'ships of any given fandom, you feel weirdly dissasociated from much of the fandom in terms of fannish attention. I'm not talking about actively disliking or even hating the 'ships in question - which only happened to me a very few times - , just benign indifference. Which happens to me a lot. Babylon 5's John/Delenn? Eh. Torchwood's Jack/Ianto? Meh. Alias' Sydney/Vaughn? Blah. Farscape's John/Aeryn? *shrugs* Except for s4, which is when I actively dislike the 'ship, but ONLY in s4 - before and after it's a good part of the narrative, I'm just more interested on every other relationship the characters have than the one they have with each other. And that's also the case with Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop in Fringe - as I said to kangeiko, I like both characters, actually I love Olivia, but their relationship with each other is easily the least interesting aspect of the show to me. Guess what fanfiction seems to focus on?
Now, while it happens more rarely, I do have the occasional canon pairing I'm not just okay with but am actively rooting for. (I do, too!jesuswasbatman watching BSG these recent weeks reminded me how fond I was of Saul/Ellen in their Edward Albee-esque glory, comics-wise I love Beast/Brand, and while the recent Merlin season as always had its ups and downs, I'm really glad how they handled Arthur/Gwen throughout.) And in theory, there are some neat gender cliché reversals with the Olivia and Peter combination I could be intrigued by. She is the action hero, he's the damsel, also the Mad Scientist's Daughter, err, son, AND the stolen princess, er, prince. He's also an improvement on Vaughn; I always thought Alias' struggle to find a role for Vaughn once SD-6 was finished and he wasn't Sydney's handler anymore were a problem for the show because all the things they came up with were unconvincing and/or annoying. (Suddenly desk-bound Vaughn was Sydney's partner in the field, replacing Dixon; then there was the ever changing backstory with his father in order to tie him to the Rambaldi storyline; with one revelation contradicting the next; and the less said about what happened with Lauren, the better.) By contrast, Peter because of Walter has a role in the show's narrative that doesn't actually need to be justified by making him a love interest (I rather liked the pseudo siblings thing he and Olivia had going in relation to Walter for a while, which is why I found myself regretting s2 finally making that step), and it's not like I'm rooting to see Olivia rather with character X instead. So I could have become yay instead of meh about the pairing, but I didn't. Alas.
Unrelated: Vanity Fair and authorial correspondance: great post about Thackeray's novel. The discussion in the comments is good as well.
kangeiko, I like both characters, actually I love Olivia, but their relationship with each other is easily the least interesting aspect of the show to me. Guess what fanfiction seems to focus on? Now, while it happens more rarely, I do have the occasional canon pairing I'm not just okay with but am actively rooting for. (I do, too!
jesuswasbatman watching BSG these recent weeks reminded me how fond I was of Saul/Ellen in their Edward Albee-esque glory, comics-wise I love Beast/Brand, and while the recent Merlin season as always had its ups and downs, I'm really glad how they handled Arthur/Gwen throughout.) And in theory, there are some neat gender cliché reversals with the Olivia and Peter combination I could be intrigued by. She is the action hero, he's the damsel, also the Mad Scientist's Daughter, err, son, AND the stolen princess, er, prince. He's also an improvement on Vaughn; I always thought Alias' struggle to find a role for Vaughn once SD-6 was finished and he wasn't Sydney's handler anymore were a problem for the show because all the things they came up with were unconvincing and/or annoying. (Suddenly desk-bound Vaughn was Sydney's partner in the field, replacing Dixon; then there was the ever changing backstory with his father in order to tie him to the Rambaldi storyline; with one revelation contradicting the next; and the less said about what happened with Lauren, the better.) By contrast, Peter because of Walter has a role in the show's narrative that doesn't actually need to be justified by making him a love interest (I rather liked the pseudo siblings thing he and Olivia had going in relation to Walter for a while, which is why I found myself regretting s2 finally making that step), and it's not like I'm rooting to see Olivia rather with character X instead. So I could have become yay instead of meh about the pairing, but I didn't. Alas. Unrelated: Vanity Fair and authorial correspondance: great post about Thackeray's novel. The discussion in the comments is good as well.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 08:44 pm (UTC)When Peter in s2 said that the "odd little family" he, Olivia and Walter had formed meant more than a potential affair could I simultanously thought, yes, exactly, and damn, they're going to do the Peter/Olivia ship, won't they?
Mind you, SCC still remains the only show I can think of where the leading female character did not end up romantically paired by the show with the male regular of her own age group. I kept fearing the Sarah/Derek but they never went there. And we didn't need it.