Dysfunctional Shipping Awareness Month, Days 8
So, admitting to liking Wes/Fred is like, a half a dozen stamps on your wrong!shipper card. Fortunately, I don't care.
I'm filing them under this day because I'm really not wild about the romantic relationship as it was executed - surprise!happy relationship because obviously the only way Fred could be properly fridged was if she had a man to weep over her. The get-together was saccharine and forced, and if that was meant to be a commentary on the creepiness of Angel's Eternal-Sunshining the team, it didn't come through satisfactorily. Just generally ugh.
But that's a shame, because it's a ship that really works for me, on both the entertaining surface interaction level as well as the darker subtext of it all. I completely love Fred, and of course Wes is Wes. And that's half the battle, is to have two engaging characters. But mostly it's that I think their interactions had so much potential, as we see when they go all renegade together in the fourth episode of S4.
As much as BtVS wins in my heart, I have to admit the contrast here makes me chuckle. At this point in canon, the action in Sunnydale is Willow's guilt eating her alive over omg I gave a painless, instantaneous death to that douchebag rapist serial killer Buffy has spent all year not being able to stop AND THAT'S TERRIBLE, blah blah blah. (Yes yes. Moral outrage. Very satisfying. #YAWN.) Cut to Supersymmetry, wherein the flaying option is disposed of as follows:
FRED: Flaying is too quick for this motherfucker. How about we rip this dimension a new one so I can be sure he's suffering in hell for all eternity?
WES: K SOUNDS GOOD.
My heart expands.
Everyone at AI is tough as hell, but Fred and Wesley are the characters that have that steel core. Razors. Fred is the one who acknowledges and understands Wesley's perspective in S3, and she's totally honest with him and herself that she needs to stick with the group. I think a lot of the criticisms of the ship - which mostly I agree with, but, whatever - are about this very traditional dynamic with the female half the couple representing all that is right and good, and treated by the narrative as both motivation and reward for the male character's redemption. Ugh, vomit. But I think that kind of leaves out the other half of it, which is that Wes does the idealization not because he thinks Fred needs him to be the big man and protect her, so much as, he identifies with that part of her. She's this unspoiled self to him. And Wes is this dark, fallen self that lets Fred feel more secure in her place on the team. (ICU, Delena shippers.) Wrong? Yes. Fascinating? You bet.
So yeah. re: this whole triangle, I right!ship Fred and Gunn (and for that matter Wes and Gunn) but Fred/Wes for the wrong!ship win.
[whole meme below]
Day 1: The ship you don't want to be endgame.
Day 2: The ship you love because it really never will happen.
Day 3: "They are the worst possible thing to happen to each other" ship.
Day 4: The ship that would ruin/assassinate the characters if it happened.
Day 5: The ship where your favourite scene is the most dysfunctional one.
Day 6: The ship where the rest of its fandom is DOING IT WRONG.
Day 7: The ship where the writers are DOING IT WRONG.
Day 8: The ship you want to break up so you can stan the hell out of them.
Day 9: The ship you want to see being a trainwreck tragedy because they're too alike.
Day 10: The ship you want to see being a trainwreck tragedy because they're too different.
Day 11: The ship you love for its creepiness.
Day 12: The ship you love for the power difference.
Day 13: The ship you love for the way they hurt each other.
Day 14: The ship you love for the angst, banishing all joy and sunlight.
Day 15: The couple that are at their moral worst when around each other.
Day 16: Most creatively homicidal ship.
Day 17: The ship that looked like a fairytale but isn't or never was.
Day 18: The ship with the most transference issues.
Day 19: The starcrossed ship where the obvious reason they're starcrossed is the least interesting aspect to you.
Day 20: The couple you only ship in an "in another lifetime" sort of way.
Day 21: A couple you ship for the wrong reasons that fits none of these criteria.
Day 22: A couple you ship for the wrong reasons that fits too many of these criteria.
Day 23: A ship you wanted to include but couldn't find the space for.
Day 24: Anything you want.
Day 25: Fanfic and meta that say what you want, but so much more eloquently.
Day 26: Fanvids and fanmixes that say what you want, but so much more eloquently.
Day 27: Picspams, GIFS, and other fandom things that say what you want, so eloquently you feel redundant.
Day 28: The "exception that proves the rule of the rest of the meme" ship.