labels and pairings and B5
In case anyone (who cares) missed it, yesterday I finally posted "Eschatos", the BSG fic I've been working on for the past month and a half or so.
This fic has got me thinking once again about questions of fic labeling: how to label fics (particularly in terms of gen/pairings) and how labels affect what fics we read. "Eschatos" is really a fic about Laura Roslin, time, death, prophecy, and revelation. It is, I think, at heart a gen fic. Yet it also includes an Adama/Roslin pairing that is fairly blatant and not at all insignificant to the story. It's a gen story that not only includes reference to a pairing but is also in part about that pairing (and how the relationship interacts with the rest of the story's themes). So what does one label a story like that?
I went with "contains Adama/Roslin," and I cross-posted to both the A/R community and a general community. If someone wanders over from adama_roslin expecting a really shippy story, she may be disappointed. On the other hand, someone who might otherwise enjoy the story but doesn't like Roslin with Adama might also be disappointed (or might not even read it because of the pairing label).
I find the whole thing frustrating, frankly. I don't like having to cram fics into particular categories that aren't really right for them. Yet--I totally use labels to screen my own reading, especially in a fandom like BSG where there are lots and lots of writers I don't know (I use labels to some extent in SG-1, but mostly I just stick with writers and recs I trust and within that group will read pretty much any story despite pairing or lack thereof). There are lots of BSG fics that dance across the communities I watch every week that I don't read because I'm not in the mood for Kara/Anders today, or whatever. I'm sure I'm missing great stuff that way, stuff that I would enjoy, yet I'm not sure what the solution to the label problem would be.
Among the many reasons that Farscape is the best ever, of course, is the fact that pairing labels on fics are largely unnecessary. But that's just the way that canon works, I think, and it would never work for something like BSG or SG-1 where the whole question of pairings is so much more fraught and complicated.
***
Meanwhile, I've somewhat slowly been going forward with B5. Is it possible that my squee is inversely proportional to the amount of shippiness in an episode??? The whole agonizingly drawn-out John/Delenn courtship thing is getting a little old. I get that some of the awkwardness of the whole thing is meant to convey the cultural difficulties of an inter-species relationship between two people from rather xenophobic societies. And it's good for some laughs, too. (Though I really thought Delenn was messing with John with the whole "and here are all the Minbari who will stand outside the bedroom while we have sex" thing, and then it became clear that she was actually serious, and yes, I kept laughing, but it would have been so much better if she'd just been pulling his leg.) Mostly, though, I'm sort of tired of John/Delenn being a Big Plot Thing. I want them to just get together and be cute and do that thing where they stand there with their arms around each other because I love the way they fit, but let's have the show be about other things, okay?
gabolange and I have been discussing Delenn's emotions--her tendency to make rather rash decisions based almost solely on her own feelings and impulses. "Atonement" seems designed to show us that these emotions are not just a product of part-human Delenn, or Delenn-in-love, but rather that they're part of her fundamental makeup: she started the Earth/Minbari war in the first place in a moment of rage and grief. And I don't know that I can really make anything like an actual statement about this because I'd need to rewatch the early seasons with this in mind, but it feels a little like retconning. I don't remember emotional!Delenn from the earlier seasons. Not that she wasn't emotional--we saw her grief and her joy and her anger and her fear--but I don't remember her being ruled by emotions in the same way. To flash us back 15+ years to say, "oh, but she's been that way all along" doesn't quite sit right. But I may be completely misremembering the earlier seasons.
Among the other plotlines, G'Kar's prosthetic eye rocks rather a lot. I love that he can take it out and leave it places and still see what's going on. What do you want to bet that at some point he'll have occasion to leave it in Londo's quarters to spy on him?
Stephen/Marcus also rocks a lot, whether in jest or not. What is it about this show that makes me love the slash pairings more than the het ones? That's just a bit odd for me!
And getting rid of the Shadows just to replace them with the Goa'uld these parasite thingies is not really working for me. Or at least they haven't sold me on the idea yet. Hmmm.
This fic has got me thinking once again about questions of fic labeling: how to label fics (particularly in terms of gen/pairings) and how labels affect what fics we read. "Eschatos" is really a fic about Laura Roslin, time, death, prophecy, and revelation. It is, I think, at heart a gen fic. Yet it also includes an Adama/Roslin pairing that is fairly blatant and not at all insignificant to the story. It's a gen story that not only includes reference to a pairing but is also in part about that pairing (and how the relationship interacts with the rest of the story's themes). So what does one label a story like that?
I went with "contains Adama/Roslin," and I cross-posted to both the A/R community and a general community. If someone wanders over from adama_roslin expecting a really shippy story, she may be disappointed. On the other hand, someone who might otherwise enjoy the story but doesn't like Roslin with Adama might also be disappointed (or might not even read it because of the pairing label).
I find the whole thing frustrating, frankly. I don't like having to cram fics into particular categories that aren't really right for them. Yet--I totally use labels to screen my own reading, especially in a fandom like BSG where there are lots and lots of writers I don't know (I use labels to some extent in SG-1, but mostly I just stick with writers and recs I trust and within that group will read pretty much any story despite pairing or lack thereof). There are lots of BSG fics that dance across the communities I watch every week that I don't read because I'm not in the mood for Kara/Anders today, or whatever. I'm sure I'm missing great stuff that way, stuff that I would enjoy, yet I'm not sure what the solution to the label problem would be.
Among the many reasons that Farscape is the best ever, of course, is the fact that pairing labels on fics are largely unnecessary. But that's just the way that canon works, I think, and it would never work for something like BSG or SG-1 where the whole question of pairings is so much more fraught and complicated.
***
Meanwhile, I've somewhat slowly been going forward with B5. Is it possible that my squee is inversely proportional to the amount of shippiness in an episode??? The whole agonizingly drawn-out John/Delenn courtship thing is getting a little old. I get that some of the awkwardness of the whole thing is meant to convey the cultural difficulties of an inter-species relationship between two people from rather xenophobic societies. And it's good for some laughs, too. (Though I really thought Delenn was messing with John with the whole "and here are all the Minbari who will stand outside the bedroom while we have sex" thing, and then it became clear that she was actually serious, and yes, I kept laughing, but it would have been so much better if she'd just been pulling his leg.) Mostly, though, I'm sort of tired of John/Delenn being a Big Plot Thing. I want them to just get together and be cute and do that thing where they stand there with their arms around each other because I love the way they fit, but let's have the show be about other things, okay?
gabolange and I have been discussing Delenn's emotions--her tendency to make rather rash decisions based almost solely on her own feelings and impulses. "Atonement" seems designed to show us that these emotions are not just a product of part-human Delenn, or Delenn-in-love, but rather that they're part of her fundamental makeup: she started the Earth/Minbari war in the first place in a moment of rage and grief. And I don't know that I can really make anything like an actual statement about this because I'd need to rewatch the early seasons with this in mind, but it feels a little like retconning. I don't remember emotional!Delenn from the earlier seasons. Not that she wasn't emotional--we saw her grief and her joy and her anger and her fear--but I don't remember her being ruled by emotions in the same way. To flash us back 15+ years to say, "oh, but she's been that way all along" doesn't quite sit right. But I may be completely misremembering the earlier seasons.
Among the other plotlines, G'Kar's prosthetic eye rocks rather a lot. I love that he can take it out and leave it places and still see what's going on. What do you want to bet that at some point he'll have occasion to leave it in Londo's quarters to spy on him?
Stephen/Marcus also rocks a lot, whether in jest or not. What is it about this show that makes me love the slash pairings more than the het ones? That's just a bit odd for me!
And getting rid of the Shadows just to replace them with the Goa'uld these parasite thingies is not really working for me. Or at least they haven't sold me on the idea yet. Hmmm.