Day Nine: Lilah/Fred Day
Mm, Lilah/Fred. It has a truly fabulous site, Madonna/Whore Complex, which is beautiful (and needs volunteers!), as run by roseveare. The Notorious fic section is hereI'd love to see discussion on Lilah/Fred without Wesley being overly involved...or hey, shiny Lilah/Fred porn where they pretty much tell Broody Junior to step off. Or not
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The reason I like these two so much is totally the 'opposites' deal. There is that one broad similarity - both strong women and born survivors with a ruthless streak. But beyond that, in the details of how they're painted, these two complement each other perfectly in almost every way, and that's completely the draw of why these two should be 'shipped. Often, and with great relish. :)
Maybe it's because I write action/adventure plotlines that I have so much fun with this, but when I've written them I've found that for every situation where one of them flounders, the other will have the skills required to handle it. And that's just so interesting a dynamic to bring. They're strong, and they're brilliant, and they're passionate - all in very different ways - and they're just two perfect opposing halves so far as strengths, viewpoint, yadda yadda yadda.
What's more, these two are never going to agree with each other. They are going to argue and snipe at each other for every line of dialogue you let them have, because they are so different, and even if they actually like each other in the story, they'll always be as different because that's how they're wired, so there's a great potential for friction. As I've mentioned in a reply above, there are a lot of m/m slash 'ships that have sprung up wholly from the fact two characters appear to hate each other and argue all the time, and so must secretly be lusting furiously because that much passion must have an ulterior reason, right? And it baffles me why this is still such a rare 'ship, given that enemies/opposites dynamic which has proved such a rich source for fic elsewhere.
Maybe that all doesn't show up so much on the more straight 'shipper stories and PWPs, but see, it's not just character-wise and psychologically. The other thing that's kind of a turn-on with this 'ship, I have to admit, is the totally opposing physiques they have. They're both gorgeous, obviously, but Lilah's a big girl, lots of curves, and Fred's this little skinny thing, all hard edges and bones, and that's part of the dynamic set up in the show as well with the (sorry, bad word coming up) Wesley triangle and the whole 'Twig' nickname. The visuals of that in writing them together are the pretty. I love imagining them *physically* interacting. And perhaps I am shallow. But I actually don't just mean the sex. They're a nice contrast. They look great together... they're a visually interesting couple in more than the fact that they're both individually attractive.
And it's interesting in setting them up for a relationship, because it's canon that they're always going at each other (albeit usually to somebody else) about the kind of woman they are physically - Fred's distaste for Lilah because of her lush sexuality and lush figure, and Lilah for Fred because of her apparent lack of anything of the sort. (And I mean, on that note, they're clearly *looking* at each other a whole lot, right?) On the surface, the madonna/whore thing really works, and that's huge fun to play with.
Emotionally, there's a surprising thing, because Lilah is much more emotionally whole and accessible than Fred, who's a very brittle person, and the way that parallels their physiques and the symbolism in that is something else that's incredibly appealing. What can I say? It just works. Why aren't more people writing them?
So. This is kind of fragmented and scrappy, but it is late. Perhaps I'll tidy it up sometime and actually put an essay on why I'm shipping Fred/Lilah on my F/L site.
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