it's a nice day to start again

[laeria]

Flist o flist!

I have a question for you! Which may or may not be born from my vague Balkanic annoyance with the Willian/Kate craze (not the actual people, but the craze, it has infected my television in a way that keeps baffling).

What makes a good fictional wedding?
I can think of some weddings I've read/watched, but generally they ended with

Comments

[laeria]

Yes. I. The thing with Amy Pond's wedding is, like, in the pro column, we have ACCIO TOP HAT ELEVEN HOW DARE YOU BE LATE YOU PILLOCK and also HELLO PONDS and Eleven/River getting a twinge of chemistry for once. In the con column, we have the fact that we have no actual idea who Amy and Rory are for a lot of the wedding. Their whole storylines (and, inevitably, their love story) got uprooted, and then it all gets sorta meshed, and you really wanna know more about their new lives but you just don't.

Ooooh, Grey's Anatomy. THAT's a thing I definitely know I shan't watch - it sounds cool, but I am very skeeved out by medical drama. (Well, except Scrubs, but even Scrubs gets a bit too much sometimes.) But I do love the idea of forfeiting a wedding to someone who really needs it. I think I adore the idea of - people who just aren't romantic enough to WANT to have a white wedding and are clever and self-aware enough to not go through with one just because society expects them to.

It's kinda annoying, yes. I imagine it's way more horrible in Britain though. I think everyone's just attracted to the would-be-romanticity of it, which, honestly, is way more constructed than I'd like. (I mean, I like Kate and William! They seem like really cool people! But it ain't hardly a fairy tale come true, and I'm pretty sure she's neither Rapunzel nor Cinderfuckingella.)

I dunno about GoT. I'm pretty happy with it (except one scene of doooom). They followed the book closely enough. Plus it's VERY PRETTY. Definitely best enjoyed in company, as long as the company's prepared for graphic sex and rape and beheadings.

[thornyrose42]

Exactly the wedding, thematically, just really wasn't about Amy Pond and Rory. It was much more about Amy and her Raggedy Doctor and everything finally fitting together. And the moment when everything fits together is not when her and Rory get married its when Amy stands up remembers her childhood imaginary friend back into existence. Which I do love. Because its all about her believing no matter what the people around her say and bringing back the good childhood things and making the world work to her will. But its not about her and Rory.

But then I still don't quite get her and Rory as a couple. I have this thing about people in relationships talking to one another. But hey lets hope the next season works me through some of those issues.

I love the fact that you just described Derrick and Meredith without even having seen any of the show. Which yes if you are skeeved by the medical stuff you really should never watch. It gets graphic. Quite a bit actually.

What I love even more about them though is that to them their post it marriage was utterly and completely the real deal. So when every so often another character goes 'But now you should really get married' they just kind of go "No we're married." Which is what marriage should be really. A lifelong commitment between two people. End of.

Exactly. What does get me is all the people going: 'Oh its so romantic. All across the classes and rags to riches and fairytale.' Cause it really isn't. Kate is from a pretty rich upper class family and true she isn't aristocracy but that is about as far as the divide goes. She isn't really one of the great unwashed. They did what is pretty normal really. Went to uni, fell in love, waited until they knew they were right for each other and then decided to get hitched. It happens all the time. And actually, I'm glad for them that its not a fairytale. Cause even I, child of the nineties as I am, can remember how the last royal fairy tale wedding ended and I bet that William can too. So the more normal it is the better for them.

The company I'm waiting for has already seen it once. But they want to watch it again so that they can pick up on who the hell everyone is. But yeah, I think that we are prepared for the gore.

[laeria]

Yes yes, it was about friendship and about growing up not having to mean leaving wonder behind. It was brilliant in a way. (Although I am also squicked by the I-really-hope-that-was-accidental-Moffat Donna comparison, because AMY IS NOT A DONNA FIX-IT THERE IS NOTHING TO FIX GODDAMN YOU.) But, yes, not in a shippy way. I am totally with you on Amy/Rory - they confuse me. I like the THEORY of the ship, very much, love that he's okay with being her sidekick/beta, love that he's okay with defying convention for her although they matter for him. I love that she's kinky and sexually confidant and okay with letting him know it. It's great. But I don't actually - feel it in action? Like, I constantly feel we're being told, not shown, what their relationship is like. Ish. Something. But that's the crux of my Moff issues anyway, and I'm getting fairly good at watching around it.

(Besides, everyone knows Amy's doomed to have a time-travelling menage a trois with Gunn and Dawn. Which is my newest ship, and I'm not even joking here. I'm not sure where to put Rory though. Ship him with Annie Sawyer or something, d'you reckon?)

Mm, yes. My ideal marriage is the kind where they don't even know where it began and find the idea of a wedding quaint and amusing.

OH GOD YES KATE IS NOT ACTUALLY CINDERELLA, SHUT THE HELL UP. I get that people need the ~romance~, but goddammit, go read Drastically Redefining Protocol (seriously, pru should EARN MILLIONS by making use of the current emotional climate), don't force real people into your fantasies, ESPECIALLY, as you say, considering the Diana thing.

[thornyrose42]

I really don't think it was a Donna fix it. Or at least I hope not. I'd say that any parallels can probably be explained by the whole: its a wedding and they are both red heads. End of. What I would say is that Amy and Rory staying in the TARDIS probably does function as a 'fix-it' in the loosest possible sense of the word, for the old trope that one of the main ways female companions left the TARDIS was to get married.

Telling not showing was my really big problem with their relationship. Especially since I feel that if it had been done right they would have hit all of my relationship kinks. I mean they grew up together! She made him dress up as the Raggedy Doctor and they ran around driving everyone in Ledworth crazy. But I never got that sense of a shared set of memories with them. Not one moment when they had an in joke that neither the Doctor or the audience understood. Now maybe that can be explained by the cracks. Little memories that had been eaten up etc. Or maybe its just the Moff's style. Good a the plots not so much with the people. I just can't help thinking about all the little things that Rusty put in to his relationships and conversations to make them specific to that person. Even without words the Rose/Mickey relationship had that sense of shared history to it. Right from the very first. I just don't get that with Amy and Rory.

Actually I just really don't get the Rory love. To me he spent a lot of the season being the Nice Guy TM and not in a good way. I mean the whole Centurion thing kind of made me feel a bit better but still...

I just don't get the feeling that Amy is really in to monogamy and since its a kids TV show oogling herself is about as far as they can go really.

Anyway, I'm still sort of at the stage when I think that both Amy and Annie deserve better. And Amy should just have lots of space sex.

Also, I'd completely forgotten about Drastically Redefining Protocol and OMG it is so good to read it again. You do know that you have scuppered any essay writing I was going to do today.