Best Friends For... a rather limited time-span? (Spoilers for West Wing, BtVS, AtS and DS9)

[selenak]

Recently I rewatched some West Wing episodes (from early s3, and the one where the Republicans call a tax for millionaires "the death tax" to lobby against it made me go "zomg, Sorkin and friends really were prescient sometimes!"), and aside from revelling in dialogue, character affection etc., it reminded me of a suspension of disbelief problem of

Comments

[wee_warrior]

What do you do, oh flist? When characters are portrayed as good friends in canon (doesn't matter whether or not you also ship them in a romantic sense or see the relationship as platonic or the family type of bond; there just has to be an on screen closeness that awoke your interest), and then these characters cease to have scenes together, and don't reference each other in dialogue anymore, either. Do you go the denial route - "they're still friends, we just don't see a lot of scenes"/"they're still friends, I reject on screen canon" - or do you accomodate for the changed on screen circumstances in your perception of the relationship(s)?I very rarely use Watsonian reasons to explain what happens on a TV show in the first place. It's probably a weird way to watch, because I still get reasonably emotionally invested - and I still can disagree with a decision, even if there is a meta reason for it. (For example, while I knew that Billy would die on BSG because the actor had another gig, and there was really no other believable way for

[selenak]

while I knew that Billy would die on BSG because the actor had another gig, and there was really no other believable way for him to leave permanently, I still think his departure was written horribly.

Oh, no kidding. Your avoidance of Watsonian reasons sounds like an emotionally safer way to watch, but in most cases, I can't help but wonder whether I could come up with something that makes sense, especially if I've been bitten by the fanfic bug.

I'm now smiling at the thought of birds following Tony Stark around everywhere.

*makes bad pun*

You mean they aren't already?

[watervole]

Thanks for the link! Really enjoyed it.

[selenak]

You're welcome!

[nomadicwriter]

Oddly enough, I've been thinking about this sort of thing recently. I've been catching up on the detective show Lewis, the spin-off to the long-running Inspector Morse, and I'm really struck by how present Morse is all the time, how much he gets mentioned, how much Lewis remembers him. I suppose that's a less tangled situation than most cast losses, since they wrote Morse's death in as the appropriate way to end the show (and John Thaw who played him died not long after) and he was the iconic lead character, but still, I'm constantly amazed by how much he's remembered within the show's universe, in a way that other TV shows just don't do with absent characters

[selenak]

So yeah, while it does bug me a little when people suddenly try to portray characters as BFFs who do everything together when they haven't been like that in a long time, it actually bugs me a lot more when fic-writers try to 'explain' the split with epic angsty off-screen backstory.

Interesting. What about using on screen events to deduce that such and such might have caused character A to keep more of a distance?n

[nomadicwriter]

That doesn't bother me quite so much, as long as it's not over-dramatised. I guess my aversion to that subgenre of fic is down to how often it's used to launch a melodramatic angstfest of how Designated Fandom Woobie has been cruelly, horribly mistreated by his former friend/boyfriend (who is almost inevitably my favourite character of the pair). Dissolution of a relationship is probably an interesting topic if it's treated in a way that goes into the issues on both sides, but I've been burned too many times by seeing it segue into the dreaded, "Character A must apologise for everything he's ever done in order to be worthy of regaining affection," fic.

West Wing season three is a case in point, where I saw many, many Poor Mistreated Woobie Sam fics launched off the fact that he and Josh had slightly fewer scenes focused on their friendship that in earlier years, and also sometimes stood further apart in meetings. (I wish I was kidding about that last part.) And Stargate fandom is even worse for it.

[selenak]

Oh, I hate grovelfic as well, but that wasn't what I had in mind at all.

Your example: zomg, and here I had assumed Sam and Josh were both the Designated Fandom Woobies. (Based on fannish osmosis over the years and the way the crack van recs talk about them.) Though given nobody beats Richard Schiff when it comes to sad eyes, I'd be surprised if Toby wasn't also a Designated Fandom Woobie.

[lilacsigil]

I think it depends on how the characters are handled otherwise, and what else is happening in canon. The Garak and Bashir friendship would have been under so much pressure from external events that it makes no sense to think it's just continuing on as normal in the background. Spike and Dawn didn't bother me so much because the events surrounding them (mostly) wouldn't have had such a direct impact on their perceptions of each other.

[kalypso_v]

I do like the fact that a lot of the missing West Wing characters appear at Leo's funeral, which works on so many levels - the actors' farewell to their real-life colleague, as well as to the show about to end. I didn't take it in the first time round, but when I was watching the rerun recently I played the scene several times so I could take in all the faces.