Female Characters, Endings, and 'Shipping

[butterfly]

As I try to do often, I've been trying to make sense of my fannish loves. Why do I instinctively like Lois Lane? You know, I think a big part of it is because she annoyed Martha Kent. Lois' brand of... directness is not appealing to everyone, and when you have a sympathetic character recognize a flaw in another character, it cements it as real for the fictional world as well as the real one. Lana annoys me often and never seems to annoy people on Smallville (certainly no sympathetic main characters), so though she has flaws by real world standards, they don't exist according to the way people treat her in show.

So, I don't like 'a free ride', as it were. Which is actually why I maintained a dislike of Willow for the first six years of Buffy -- she got away with all manner of shit without getting as in as much trouble as other people who did the exact same thing. Whereas the only person who gave Buffy slack was Giles and he's... incredibly biased, enough that I found it believeable. Everyone else calls her on things when it bugs them, and sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong. So, while Lana and Willow are completely different archetypes, they really do both annoy me for the same reason.

One of the lines that I adore most about Fred is season five, after she's died -- "I think I hate her a little for that." The honest, anguished anger that often comes in the midst of grief, that reminds me of the reality of Fred and not an ideal. But I enjoyed her all throughout the season and in retrospect, through all of her appearances. When I rewatch, she jumps out off the screen at me, a scared woman who just keeps fighting for normal and for life. She fights so very hard. She has a violent streak and she has a crazy one. And, of course, a sympathetic character disliked her (Lilah), which always makes a character more real to me. With Cordy, I always saw the ego, but with Fred, I see determination. Darla, of course, was disliked by most of the main characters, so that was okay.

All this may be part of why I preferred Ezri to Jadzia.

And I've been slowly pinning down why Aeryn bugs me (I already know why I adore Chiana), despite the fact that she does not get let off the hook the way that Willow and Lana do. And I think that it's the 'special' card. Oh, Aeryn was conceived in love. Aeryn was told by her mom that she was a love-child. Aeryn was told by Valorek that she could be more. Aeryn was told the same thing by John. I was okay with John saying it. Once. But (as shown by my mini-rant for The Way We Weren't) I got annoyed when I found out that some other guy said the exact same thing first. Seriously, either I buy that she's special or I don't (for the record, since we've seen several other PKs with the same capacity to care, I would say that she's not... at least not as special as the show makes her out to be).


I've never watched a show and been displeased by the ending. Of course, I don't watch all that many shows through to the end. And I've often been displeased that a show is ending (AtS, Firefly). But if I trust the journey, I'll trust the ending. If I like a show enough to watch it consistently, then that generally means that I buy into the story that the writers are selling.

I bought into Buffy, which was always about her. I've gone on and on about how perfect the ending feels to me. Open road, hint of a smile. Good times. I bought into the journey of Angel, though not until late in the game -- I didn't care about the main character until the very end of season four, but once I did, I was invested in seeing him get an appropriate ending. due South was about a man, exile, and working through issues. In the end, he got to go home. Everything else (like RayK) is icing (quality icing, not that crap standard stuff) onto that one thing -- Fraser got to go home. After all the pain and everything that he learned, he was able to take that back home with him. In Dawson's Creek, the couple with actual chemistry got together and I sighed with relief.

With DS9, I revelled in the long good-byes. We'd known these guys for seven years. It was nice to take our time to see them leave. In LotR, I felt the same way, where each bit of closure was like another soft step out of a fairyland. I didn't want to say good-bye, so it helped to see the good-byes, to make it all feel real.


My approach to 'ship depends greatly on the fandom. I don't read Farscape fic nearly at all, because it's so hard to avoid the John/Aeryn vibes. Even non-J/A fics have the vibes, because J/A is The Canon Relationship. I 'ship John/Chiana and I've found less than a handful of good stories (and I mean that as in less than five).

Fanfic-wise, I read my pairings. In most fandoms, I only read my pairings. I've found myself reading a lot of gen in Stargate, but that's pretty rare. I find it very hard to read a fic that's about a pairing that is inimical to my pairings of choice, but am quite capable of 'shipping multiple pairings with one character if I feel that they don't conflict (In the Buffyverse, I 'ship Tara/Willow, Buffy/Xander, Buffy/Angel, Darla/Angel, Angel/Wesley, Wesley/Gunn, Gunn/Gwen, Wesley/Fred, Wesley/Illyria, Angel/Spike, Angel/Lindsey, Doyle/Cordelia, and Doyle/Angel, plus I'm willing to read most pairings, with the exception of Buffy/Spike. which I used to be able to read, back before season four started). I 'ship what I see. In BtVS and AtS, I can see many pairings (Firefly, too, actually. Part of me wants the movie to end with a big space orgy.).

In Stargate, I really really see Jack/Daniel. I can see Daniel/Sha're easily enough (actually, Daniel has chemistry with pretty much anyone he's onscreen with ever, even more so than Michael Rosenbaum's Lex does, as I can't think of anyone that Daniel doesn't make more interesting). I can see Jack/Sara in the past, though I can't see them ever working things out post-Charlie (mostly because, well, they didn't). I can't see Jack/Sam. Since the idea of the relationship bothers me (it's the 'sir' thing), I don't really try to see it. I see a connection between Daniel and Teal'c that doesn't strike me as 'shippy. I like Sam with most of her doomed love interests.

In Smallville, I saw a lot of Clark/Lex for the first three years. Now, of course, my L&C background, coupled with the fact that they did not screw up Lois Lane, has turned me into a Lois/Clark 'shipper. I can't actually, um, read Clark/Lex anymore. I went onto Smallville Slash the night after Crusade aired and couldn't get into the idea of reading Clark and Lex as more than friends. I was 'shipping Lois and Clark long before Smallville went on the air, so once Lois was there, my 'OTP' thing kicked in. Like Fraser/Kowalski for due South, I see Lois and Clark as inherently more suited for each other than anyone else, ever. And now that they've been on my screen and connected, I want to see more of that.

Comments

[bluecove.livejournal.com]

(actually, Daniel has chemistry with pretty much anyone he's onscreen with ever, even more so than Michael Rosenbaum's Lex does, as I can't think of anyone that Daniel doesn't make more interesting).

A friend and I were discussing this, and we've come to the conclusion that Shanks is one of those rare actors who helps everyone give a better performance, simply by being there. He seems to radiate an energy that other actors get caught up in. He literally does have chemistry, on some level, with just about everyone.

Wow, this ended up long.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

He's an inspirational actor, yeah, I can definitely agree with that. And not just for other actors -- it's interesting that his character is the only one who consistently gets the high-level story and character arcs. Chris Judge is the only person who writes quality stuff for Teal'c nowadays, but it's almost as if they can't help writing good stuff for Daniel. Even at his most misused, he may have underrepresented but he still usually got the more interesting storyline, even if we didn't get to see most of it.

Daniel's a really good character with inherent mythic qualities, but without Michael Shanks, they might have screwed with his character the way they did with the others. Because Michael did stand up for his character's place in the main story, even if it may have been incidental to standing up for his place as second lead (and I don't really care what his motivation was -- it had a good result in the end). He was willing to walk away from Daniel Jackson and SG-1 if Daniel got sidelined. And he did, and we saw Jack got almost inert for a year, Sam's character slipped further into unredeemable territory (I just recently saw Paradise Lost and the fuck? (was that Doctor Lee as in the one with Daniel in Evolution) She was highly emotional to the point of being unprofessional and that doctor definitely noticed, which is not a good thing. And poor Jonas got almost no actual character. Now that I've seen more episode, I've seen the moments when they did, indeed, write Jonas as if they were still writing Daniel. And it was utterly bizarre. Ethicist. Archaeologist. They don't even sound alike.

And I'm normally good at not noticing these things. Stargate may be the first fandom wherein the things that bother the average slash-inclined fan bug me too. But the Sam/Jack 'shippiness is intrusive and out of place. The writers did try to slot Jonas into Daniel's place and did, in fact, do a horrible job.

And yeah, Daniel Jackson is the reason that I'm watching the show. I cretainly feel no need to apologize for that, any more than I would if I said, honestly, that until Season Five, I was watching Angel for Wesley and then for Connor.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of amused that you listed so very many ships from the Buffyverse -- and I agree on almost none of them. ;-) I'll read quite a few of them, but T/W is the only one I'd say I really ship.

The only time I've really hated a series ending was for a book series -- the Animorphs, which was about a bunch of young teens fighting a war with aliens. Basically, in addition to some things ending very inconclusively, they lost one of the main series-long struggles I desperately wanted them to win -- in a way, I felt they needed to win that battle more than the war. There were also problems I had with the "epilogue" aspect of the story. Unfortunately, I had a hard enough time with the ending that I now really can't go back and read them anymore.

A quick addition to liking characters who are disliked by another character -- you can get a similar effect going the opposite direction. I remember that Kate's popularity on Angel went up after she didn't like Angel or his crew any more. I really liked Kate for her tumultuous (non-shippy) relationship with the AI crew.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of amused that you listed so very many ships from the Buffyverse -- and I agree on almost none of them. ;-) I'll read quite a few of them, but T/W is the only one I'd say I really ship.

I could probably think of more that I whole-heartly support, but that was a good starting list.

A quick addition to liking characters who are disliked by another character -- you can get a similar effect going the opposite direction. I remember that Kate's popularity on Angel went up after she didn't like Angel or his crew any more. I really liked Kate for her tumultuous (non-shippy) relationship with the AI crew.

Kate kicked ass. I totally wish that she'd stayed on after Epiphany. I loved that she had a negative reaction to finding out the truth, because it was such a great counter to the blase reactions we tended to see in Sunnydale.