(no subject)
Something writerly has been provoking me for a while now, which is funny because I've not felt arsed to write anything--original or otherwise--for some time. It's a specific thematic element, and a fire of irritation over it has been stoked by--of all things--the miniseries Tin Man, which I watched recently.
I've said before that I have this habit of checking out fanfic after I watch/read a work, even for things I didn't especially like (some times because I didn't like them and the fanfic is either sure to make me laugh or fix problems I had with the original work). I went ahead with this habit even though I didn't love the miniseries, and I had some success with it. I found stories that eventually led to smut for the Callum Keith Rennie fangirls I know. I even enjoyed a few stories just for myself, wonder of wonders.
Then I ran into this thematic bugaboo: Age-gap romances.
They've popped up in a few places recently besides Tin Man which is why I think I have it on the brain. I think they are effective and dramatic in fiction, but I feel that so few people address the issues and complications of a May-December romance. Which, actually, is a euphemism I dislike severely; I prefer the term “inter-generational romance” because there is no implicit reference to blossoming youth paired with age-on-the-verge-of-death. Not all inter-generational romances are about last flings with hot young things. The best ones are about people making a connection that lasts and lasts longer than the influx of hormones from ephemeral lust.
There are complications with inter-generational romances that happen onscreen, more so than in printed, picture-less fiction, that are the fault of both writing and casting. There are two major problems in realizing credible, enjoyable inter-generational romances that I see happening all the time in filmed media. The first is that no one ever seems to act their age. This is a fault of Hollywood having some kind of blind spot for people in their 40s. No film or TV show knows what to do with people who aren’t married with small children during that decade of their life. So you get 40-year-olds playing down to be in their 30s or else playing up to be much older. As far as this affects inter-generational romance, it means that the age-gap with the younger partner is ignored or overblown, respectively. Your 40-year-old romantic interest is supposed to be of comparable age to the 20-something opposite (but really, really isn’t, not even with Hollywood makeup) or else they are OMG 50 MILLION YEARS OLDER and all that follows is angst, angst, angst about that.
The second problem is that because certain actors/actresses remain quite attractive well into their senior decades (hello, Sigourney Weaver, you stone fox), the temptation to “forgive” them for being old and justifying a romance based on the fact that they’re still attractive or simply powerful and famous (hello, Jack Nicholson) is pressing. Sean Connery started playing a romantic lead when he was already in his mid-to-late-30s; he kept it up for thirty more years. I’m not saying he’s not very good looking, only that it doesn’t make the issue of his age when he’s romancing Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment just go away. When it comes to Hollywood actors, I've got an Elektra complex, but even I am not that forgiving. Nor should I be expected to be.
Both those problems seem to be solely the fault of the casting, but it’s not so. Casting will put a different spin on something already written, but that doesn’t mean that what’s on the page should stay rigid when an inter-generational relationship is introduced by coincidence of the actors involved. What’s written needs to match. If the writers of the original, canon work chose to take the characters fully in a romantic direction, the issue of age needs to be raised. If not, then it should be the obligation of anyone writing fanfic after the fact that does to address the issue.
And issues there are many when it comes to pairing two people who are ten or more years apart in age. The psychological profiles of both potential partners can start off any potential relationship far from the ideal, balanced one that is essential for a successful, fulfilling partnership. An older partner is liable to have more experience and will usually be more used to getting his/her way, and the younger person will be challenged to match the older partner and push for that equality of respect he/she is due as a worthy lover (without which, there is no relationship at all). The flip side of this, a younger person with a more worldly personality catching the attention of an older but more innocent/frivolous person, is great drama fodder. With age often comes pride, and it would be a real sore spot for he/she for whom age did not consequently also bring wisdom alongside of pride. It boils down to the older partner having simply lived more, which, wisdom or not, has made them more firmly who they are and will always be than the younger partner is yet. Such experience might engender more parental love towards the younger partner because the older has passed the point in his/her life where he/she is used to thinking of his/herself as the co-possessor of romantic interest, which is yet another complication.
None of this, so far, has even touched on sex, which muddles things up even more. The very physical differences between young and old partners are but part of that. There’s also the prurient outside-looking-in gaze from the community that does not bother about investigating whether two people have really formed a committed pair when it can laugh at one old fool and one young one instead. This is where we get the less than complementary terms “cougar,” “sugar-daddy,” “cradle-robber,” “boy-toy,” “trophy wife,” etc. There is an assumption that sex and money (a stand-in for stability) are at the center of an otherwise indifferent union. For successful inter-generational romances in life and in fiction, the truth is quite the reverse.
But sex can’t be entirely overlooked. There are too many inter-generational romances centered on both the powerful and powerless in sex games to ignore the sex drive of two inter-generational lovers completely. Because we do not yet live in a gender-neutral society, women turn out, more than not, are villified in these relationships. The older woman is a predator who takes down a young man (who looks for older women because he does not have to play the virgin-or-whore game with them). The younger woman is a Lolita, using the power of a nubile body and nymphette attitude to turn her lover mad and control him. The men in question fare little better, since often the older lover of a younger woman ends up being outed as pervert or pedophile; however, older men are often “rewarded” with the hot, young thing which is totally fine and raises no eyebrows whatsoever because it is clear that he is a noble, wonderful guy and totally deserves young ass. More fiction is coming out to debunk the simplistic stud-muffin younger-guy, older-woman stereotype, thank god. Still, we live with the legacy of Mrs. Robinson: she got boned, but her daughter got married while she got dumped. The inequality of the sexes exacerbates the issue of inter-generational romance.
A lot of powerful emotional connections are boiled down to sexual drives in the end, too, that confuse the already confused matter of what intentions drive sexual encounters. Intense passion for an artist’s work is the initiation into many an inter-generational romance. It’s not unbelievable, per se; we live in a world where people who believe they’re experiencing religious rapture are actually having an orgasm (take that, tantra!). It’s just usually used to cover a romance that might, otherwise, outside of the excuse of artistic appreciation, be “icky.”
Yes, sometimes inter-generational romance is icky. We don’t want to think of “old” people still wanting love, let alone sex. But when it happens, the lovers involved face the sorts of obstacles that lazy writers don’t address. They must stand up to people who think one or the other is nuts for settling for the old partner when the younger has “his/her whole life ahead of him/her.” There’s a question of what ultimate goal the relationship has-is procreation still on the table (since the older partner may have already fulfilled that need/desire), or do they just desire mutual comfort unto death? All the things that intra-generational couples face, and then some, accounting for the difference of experience between old and young partner and how they will deal with the social stigma of being together despite the years between them.
Fiction that takes the fallacies of casting at face-value (you say he’s not too old for her? I believe you!) or that say there is an age difference without addressing it in the behavior of the partners involved is just hollow. I don’t want to read about a character I like who is older, and whom I’ve gotten to know as older, suddenly being some spring-chicken. Love makes you feel younger, sure, but I don’t like characters who let love fool them totally into thinking and behaving like they are (which usually translates to them behaving like jackasses).
From my general peeves to my specific ones in fanfic especially. Guess which one is the example of a positive, well-rounded inter-generational romance!
A few years ago, I discovered the wonderful minisinoo and her X-Men movie-verse fanfiction. She was basically the only one who even addressed the fact that James Marsden was about ten years younger than Famke Janssen. The film didn’t even try to take advantage of that fact while setting up a romantic complication between their characters in the form of the more “age-appropriate” rival for Famke: Hugh Jackman. The age difference is important not only because it makes the relationship between their characters “different from normal,” but also because it greatly alters the preexisting relationship between those characters as it has been worked out in the comics.
The weakness of the movie’s interpretation led to a similar dearth of acknowledgment concerning the inter-generational romance among the fans. Since Marsden is closer to the young hero ideal in an adventure series, a mature, beautiful Janssen is de-aged to match him in most fanfiction. The fact that she could not possibly be both an established doctor, a trained mutant freedom-fighter, and a teacher inside of the age of thirty is treated as an irrelevant nit-pick. But it is not. When you take liberties with an Earth that is still supposed to be, in every way but one, the same as the one in which we all live, your story works better if it obeys the norms of the normal world as much as possible. Else, it’s hard to relate to anyone in your version.
*
For Deb, the attraction is Lundy’s steadiness and the aura of calm control he exudes. She’s jittery and self-conscious, more so than she’s ever been because of what almost happened to her, and Lundy does not attempt to ignore that she’s wounded or wait her out until she just miraculously gets better the way her co-workers and brother do. He understands that she’s uneasy and will be for a long while but that she’s still capable of doing good work and working through her issues at the same time. The trust and confidence he has in her have been missing her whole life, and she loves that he can make her feel her own worth (which is a good part of why love is so great). The fact that loving a man who is superior to her plays into her issues with her father is no small part of it either.
Lundy, though, he really acknowledges what Deb will not. He’s drawn to Deb for her courage-she did survive what happened to her and is making a stab at normality-but he’s not fooled into thinking that they are a forever kind of thing. He’s still wounded by the loss of his wife, and his demurring to jump into a relationship with Deb is a touching nod of respect to the woman he loved before without being melodramatic.
*
Too often, in fiction, the bereft/widowed party is “fixed” by a new love’s persistent attention when, emotionally, pursuing someone who has lost their love is about as vile as you get. Giving the grieving person space to make peace with the loss and then seeing if something else is possible makes for better, if less grandly operatic, romance. That is a big part of why inter-generational romances end up rubbing me the wrong way: they do not acknowledge what came first and how that might keep an object of affection from completely returning a lover’s interest for a long, long time. I’d say the problem is patience-most fanfic writers don’t have it. They don’t want to wait for the wounded partner to have an appropriate amount of time to get better; they want to fix that one by pairing him/her with the love interest of the series.
Most of the stories centering on het-romance in the fanfiction I’ve perused for this miniseries make this grating mistake, regardless of which fangirl favorite a fanfic author chooses to pair with the heroine of the story: Cain or Glitch. Both characters are played by actors who are at about fifteen years older than the actress playing the heroine, DG. Again, the casting-itis has exaggerated the problem by having both men play to their age and older (depending on how you read the passage of time within the story, which isn’t easy to follow anyway), while the actress is playing seven-eight years younger than her actual age.
This is a terrific cock-up of inter-generational romances because there is no way that Alan Cumming (Glitch) or Neal McDonough (Cain) are twenty-plus years older than Zooey Daschanel (DG). Both men play their characters throughout the entire miniseries, which means they play the roles both in the present and up to fifteen years in the past. DG, on the other hand, is played by two actresses, one who’s meant to be about five (but looks easily seven-eight-nine) and the other who’s given to be twenty (here, there is some license to assume that when she was referred to as being “a girl of twenty” they might have meant she was in her twenties, not that she was twenty).
Alan Cumming’s character occupies a position of such importance and rank in fifteen-year-old flashbacks that he cannot be, even were he a prodigy who rose rapidly through the ranks, all that when the heroine was a child. Fanwank will not make Alan Cumming twenty-one when he is forty-odd years old. I know he’s boyishly charming, but he is a man and there’s no way to hide it (unless they used that scary X-Men 3 makeup like they used on Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan-but they didn’t, thank the Lord). The point is that he was, even when the heroine was a child, a full-grown man. Cumming is stuck in this no-man’s-land of not being old enough in the present time-frame of the story relative to the heroine nor being young enough in the past. Didn’t I say being forty was problematic?
Likewise, Neal McDonough plays his character in a hologram of the past and in the present. He’s less squidgy about the eyes (yes, “squidgy” is the technical term) in the present and the flashbacks to his past are vague enough that his physical appearance is less an indicator of his age. Instead, the story relies on a maturity that you can see; his character’s son is a boy younger than ten in the flashbacks but a man of at least eighteen or so in the present. Which puts a reasonable estimate of the character of Cain’s age to anywhere north thirty-five, thirty-eight. Even if Cain and his wife met, married, and had a child by the time they were themselves eighteen, he would still be fifteen-plus years older than the heroine.
And rare is the fic that acknowledges the difference, no matter whether it ships DG/Glitch or DG/Cain. Glitch worked for DG’s mother as her close advisor; how likely is it that no one would bat an eyelash if he pursued a romantic involvement with her daughter? Did Aladdin teach us nothing!? Cain’s shown to be at least old enough to be DG’s father, and a lot of his dedication to helping her reeks of desperation to reconnect to a child he lost (in addition to his being a man of his word who gave it that he would protect her). That does not bode especially well of a romantic interlude (despite commonplace attractions to people who are older, no one really wants to fuck mommy or daddy; only sick people do).
On top of that, there’s the fixing-the-wounded-bird approach to solving the horrible losses experienced by both men (Glitch had his brain removed so someone else could use it to create a doom machine; Cain was imprisoned, his wife died, and he missed his son’s growing up) that permeates almost all shipper-bent stories. “Fixing” Glitch would mean giving him back his brain, which would bring along with it memories of his knowing DG as a child. If Cain had a potential to bring on the daddying, I’m sure a restored Glitch would be just as bad. “Fixing” Cain is just not possible while he is still in mourning for his family. He spent ten years (or thereabouts) assuming they were dead and plotting revenge only to get out, think they were alive, and then have to start the grieving process all over again when he discovered his wife was dead and his son was a stranger to him. I’m sorry, you just don’t fix that by having any princess come and kiss and make it better.
This is not to say that I don’t get why DG might fall for either one of them. She was in a traumatic, confusing situation that those two helped her to sort out. They were good friends and she’s grateful for their help. That sort of gratitude can morph into love, particularly when one is cast adrift and helpless in a strange place. She anchors herself by them and it leads to a possessiveness like love. I get why she would be attracted (beyond the physical, although that ain’t so bad neither). I just find it ridiculous that either of them would return the affection in a romantic way when both have a very paternal protective relationship with her. If the inter-generational romance is to happen, something needs to change, first; the complications of the past relationships would have be reconciled with the new romantic angle, second; and the reception of that romance needs to be addressed, third. DG’s obligations to her new-found family and responsibilities as princess would complicate any romance for at least a few years, I would think.
I guess I just don’t think like a fan-ficcer any more. That, and if anyone in Tin Man had any sexual chemistry going, it was Alan Cumming and Neal McDonough. After rewatching the miniseries, I'm not convinced that McDonough is any more decidedly straight than Alan Cumming. Maybe he'll get married to a guy after ten years of being married to a woman, too.
I've said before that I have this habit of checking out fanfic after I watch/read a work, even for things I didn't especially like (some times because I didn't like them and the fanfic is either sure to make me laugh or fix problems I had with the original work). I went ahead with this habit even though I didn't love the miniseries, and I had some success with it. I found stories that eventually led to smut for the Callum Keith Rennie fangirls I know. I even enjoyed a few stories just for myself, wonder of wonders.
Then I ran into this thematic bugaboo: Age-gap romances.
They've popped up in a few places recently besides Tin Man which is why I think I have it on the brain. I think they are effective and dramatic in fiction, but I feel that so few people address the issues and complications of a May-December romance. Which, actually, is a euphemism I dislike severely; I prefer the term “inter-generational romance” because there is no implicit reference to blossoming youth paired with age-on-the-verge-of-death. Not all inter-generational romances are about last flings with hot young things. The best ones are about people making a connection that lasts and lasts longer than the influx of hormones from ephemeral lust.
There are complications with inter-generational romances that happen onscreen, more so than in printed, picture-less fiction, that are the fault of both writing and casting. There are two major problems in realizing credible, enjoyable inter-generational romances that I see happening all the time in filmed media. The first is that no one ever seems to act their age. This is a fault of Hollywood having some kind of blind spot for people in their 40s. No film or TV show knows what to do with people who aren’t married with small children during that decade of their life. So you get 40-year-olds playing down to be in their 30s or else playing up to be much older. As far as this affects inter-generational romance, it means that the age-gap with the younger partner is ignored or overblown, respectively. Your 40-year-old romantic interest is supposed to be of comparable age to the 20-something opposite (but really, really isn’t, not even with Hollywood makeup) or else they are OMG 50 MILLION YEARS OLDER and all that follows is angst, angst, angst about that.
The second problem is that because certain actors/actresses remain quite attractive well into their senior decades (hello, Sigourney Weaver, you stone fox), the temptation to “forgive” them for being old and justifying a romance based on the fact that they’re still attractive or simply powerful and famous (hello, Jack Nicholson) is pressing. Sean Connery started playing a romantic lead when he was already in his mid-to-late-30s; he kept it up for thirty more years. I’m not saying he’s not very good looking, only that it doesn’t make the issue of his age when he’s romancing Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment just go away. When it comes to Hollywood actors, I've got an Elektra complex, but even I am not that forgiving. Nor should I be expected to be.
Both those problems seem to be solely the fault of the casting, but it’s not so. Casting will put a different spin on something already written, but that doesn’t mean that what’s on the page should stay rigid when an inter-generational relationship is introduced by coincidence of the actors involved. What’s written needs to match. If the writers of the original, canon work chose to take the characters fully in a romantic direction, the issue of age needs to be raised. If not, then it should be the obligation of anyone writing fanfic after the fact that does to address the issue.
And issues there are many when it comes to pairing two people who are ten or more years apart in age. The psychological profiles of both potential partners can start off any potential relationship far from the ideal, balanced one that is essential for a successful, fulfilling partnership. An older partner is liable to have more experience and will usually be more used to getting his/her way, and the younger person will be challenged to match the older partner and push for that equality of respect he/she is due as a worthy lover (without which, there is no relationship at all). The flip side of this, a younger person with a more worldly personality catching the attention of an older but more innocent/frivolous person, is great drama fodder. With age often comes pride, and it would be a real sore spot for he/she for whom age did not consequently also bring wisdom alongside of pride. It boils down to the older partner having simply lived more, which, wisdom or not, has made them more firmly who they are and will always be than the younger partner is yet. Such experience might engender more parental love towards the younger partner because the older has passed the point in his/her life where he/she is used to thinking of his/herself as the co-possessor of romantic interest, which is yet another complication.
None of this, so far, has even touched on sex, which muddles things up even more. The very physical differences between young and old partners are but part of that. There’s also the prurient outside-looking-in gaze from the community that does not bother about investigating whether two people have really formed a committed pair when it can laugh at one old fool and one young one instead. This is where we get the less than complementary terms “cougar,” “sugar-daddy,” “cradle-robber,” “boy-toy,” “trophy wife,” etc. There is an assumption that sex and money (a stand-in for stability) are at the center of an otherwise indifferent union. For successful inter-generational romances in life and in fiction, the truth is quite the reverse.
But sex can’t be entirely overlooked. There are too many inter-generational romances centered on both the powerful and powerless in sex games to ignore the sex drive of two inter-generational lovers completely. Because we do not yet live in a gender-neutral society, women turn out, more than not, are villified in these relationships. The older woman is a predator who takes down a young man (who looks for older women because he does not have to play the virgin-or-whore game with them). The younger woman is a Lolita, using the power of a nubile body and nymphette attitude to turn her lover mad and control him. The men in question fare little better, since often the older lover of a younger woman ends up being outed as pervert or pedophile; however, older men are often “rewarded” with the hot, young thing which is totally fine and raises no eyebrows whatsoever because it is clear that he is a noble, wonderful guy and totally deserves young ass. More fiction is coming out to debunk the simplistic stud-muffin younger-guy, older-woman stereotype, thank god. Still, we live with the legacy of Mrs. Robinson: she got boned, but her daughter got married while she got dumped. The inequality of the sexes exacerbates the issue of inter-generational romance.
A lot of powerful emotional connections are boiled down to sexual drives in the end, too, that confuse the already confused matter of what intentions drive sexual encounters. Intense passion for an artist’s work is the initiation into many an inter-generational romance. It’s not unbelievable, per se; we live in a world where people who believe they’re experiencing religious rapture are actually having an orgasm (take that, tantra!). It’s just usually used to cover a romance that might, otherwise, outside of the excuse of artistic appreciation, be “icky.”
Yes, sometimes inter-generational romance is icky. We don’t want to think of “old” people still wanting love, let alone sex. But when it happens, the lovers involved face the sorts of obstacles that lazy writers don’t address. They must stand up to people who think one or the other is nuts for settling for the old partner when the younger has “his/her whole life ahead of him/her.” There’s a question of what ultimate goal the relationship has-is procreation still on the table (since the older partner may have already fulfilled that need/desire), or do they just desire mutual comfort unto death? All the things that intra-generational couples face, and then some, accounting for the difference of experience between old and young partner and how they will deal with the social stigma of being together despite the years between them.
Fiction that takes the fallacies of casting at face-value (you say he’s not too old for her? I believe you!) or that say there is an age difference without addressing it in the behavior of the partners involved is just hollow. I don’t want to read about a character I like who is older, and whom I’ve gotten to know as older, suddenly being some spring-chicken. Love makes you feel younger, sure, but I don’t like characters who let love fool them totally into thinking and behaving like they are (which usually translates to them behaving like jackasses).
From my general peeves to my specific ones in fanfic especially. Guess which one is the example of a positive, well-rounded inter-generational romance!
A few years ago, I discovered the wonderful minisinoo and her X-Men movie-verse fanfiction. She was basically the only one who even addressed the fact that James Marsden was about ten years younger than Famke Janssen. The film didn’t even try to take advantage of that fact while setting up a romantic complication between their characters in the form of the more “age-appropriate” rival for Famke: Hugh Jackman. The age difference is important not only because it makes the relationship between their characters “different from normal,” but also because it greatly alters the preexisting relationship between those characters as it has been worked out in the comics.
The weakness of the movie’s interpretation led to a similar dearth of acknowledgment concerning the inter-generational romance among the fans. Since Marsden is closer to the young hero ideal in an adventure series, a mature, beautiful Janssen is de-aged to match him in most fanfiction. The fact that she could not possibly be both an established doctor, a trained mutant freedom-fighter, and a teacher inside of the age of thirty is treated as an irrelevant nit-pick. But it is not. When you take liberties with an Earth that is still supposed to be, in every way but one, the same as the one in which we all live, your story works better if it obeys the norms of the normal world as much as possible. Else, it’s hard to relate to anyone in your version.
*
For Deb, the attraction is Lundy’s steadiness and the aura of calm control he exudes. She’s jittery and self-conscious, more so than she’s ever been because of what almost happened to her, and Lundy does not attempt to ignore that she’s wounded or wait her out until she just miraculously gets better the way her co-workers and brother do. He understands that she’s uneasy and will be for a long while but that she’s still capable of doing good work and working through her issues at the same time. The trust and confidence he has in her have been missing her whole life, and she loves that he can make her feel her own worth (which is a good part of why love is so great). The fact that loving a man who is superior to her plays into her issues with her father is no small part of it either.
Lundy, though, he really acknowledges what Deb will not. He’s drawn to Deb for her courage-she did survive what happened to her and is making a stab at normality-but he’s not fooled into thinking that they are a forever kind of thing. He’s still wounded by the loss of his wife, and his demurring to jump into a relationship with Deb is a touching nod of respect to the woman he loved before without being melodramatic.
*
Too often, in fiction, the bereft/widowed party is “fixed” by a new love’s persistent attention when, emotionally, pursuing someone who has lost their love is about as vile as you get. Giving the grieving person space to make peace with the loss and then seeing if something else is possible makes for better, if less grandly operatic, romance. That is a big part of why inter-generational romances end up rubbing me the wrong way: they do not acknowledge what came first and how that might keep an object of affection from completely returning a lover’s interest for a long, long time. I’d say the problem is patience-most fanfic writers don’t have it. They don’t want to wait for the wounded partner to have an appropriate amount of time to get better; they want to fix that one by pairing him/her with the love interest of the series.
Most of the stories centering on het-romance in the fanfiction I’ve perused for this miniseries make this grating mistake, regardless of which fangirl favorite a fanfic author chooses to pair with the heroine of the story: Cain or Glitch. Both characters are played by actors who are at about fifteen years older than the actress playing the heroine, DG. Again, the casting-itis has exaggerated the problem by having both men play to their age and older (depending on how you read the passage of time within the story, which isn’t easy to follow anyway), while the actress is playing seven-eight years younger than her actual age.
This is a terrific cock-up of inter-generational romances because there is no way that Alan Cumming (Glitch) or Neal McDonough (Cain) are twenty-plus years older than Zooey Daschanel (DG). Both men play their characters throughout the entire miniseries, which means they play the roles both in the present and up to fifteen years in the past. DG, on the other hand, is played by two actresses, one who’s meant to be about five (but looks easily seven-eight-nine) and the other who’s given to be twenty (here, there is some license to assume that when she was referred to as being “a girl of twenty” they might have meant she was in her twenties, not that she was twenty).
Alan Cumming’s character occupies a position of such importance and rank in fifteen-year-old flashbacks that he cannot be, even were he a prodigy who rose rapidly through the ranks, all that when the heroine was a child. Fanwank will not make Alan Cumming twenty-one when he is forty-odd years old. I know he’s boyishly charming, but he is a man and there’s no way to hide it (unless they used that scary X-Men 3 makeup like they used on Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan-but they didn’t, thank the Lord). The point is that he was, even when the heroine was a child, a full-grown man. Cumming is stuck in this no-man’s-land of not being old enough in the present time-frame of the story relative to the heroine nor being young enough in the past. Didn’t I say being forty was problematic?
Likewise, Neal McDonough plays his character in a hologram of the past and in the present. He’s less squidgy about the eyes (yes, “squidgy” is the technical term) in the present and the flashbacks to his past are vague enough that his physical appearance is less an indicator of his age. Instead, the story relies on a maturity that you can see; his character’s son is a boy younger than ten in the flashbacks but a man of at least eighteen or so in the present. Which puts a reasonable estimate of the character of Cain’s age to anywhere north thirty-five, thirty-eight. Even if Cain and his wife met, married, and had a child by the time they were themselves eighteen, he would still be fifteen-plus years older than the heroine.
And rare is the fic that acknowledges the difference, no matter whether it ships DG/Glitch or DG/Cain. Glitch worked for DG’s mother as her close advisor; how likely is it that no one would bat an eyelash if he pursued a romantic involvement with her daughter? Did Aladdin teach us nothing!? Cain’s shown to be at least old enough to be DG’s father, and a lot of his dedication to helping her reeks of desperation to reconnect to a child he lost (in addition to his being a man of his word who gave it that he would protect her). That does not bode especially well of a romantic interlude (despite commonplace attractions to people who are older, no one really wants to fuck mommy or daddy; only sick people do).
On top of that, there’s the fixing-the-wounded-bird approach to solving the horrible losses experienced by both men (Glitch had his brain removed so someone else could use it to create a doom machine; Cain was imprisoned, his wife died, and he missed his son’s growing up) that permeates almost all shipper-bent stories. “Fixing” Glitch would mean giving him back his brain, which would bring along with it memories of his knowing DG as a child. If Cain had a potential to bring on the daddying, I’m sure a restored Glitch would be just as bad. “Fixing” Cain is just not possible while he is still in mourning for his family. He spent ten years (or thereabouts) assuming they were dead and plotting revenge only to get out, think they were alive, and then have to start the grieving process all over again when he discovered his wife was dead and his son was a stranger to him. I’m sorry, you just don’t fix that by having any princess come and kiss and make it better.
This is not to say that I don’t get why DG might fall for either one of them. She was in a traumatic, confusing situation that those two helped her to sort out. They were good friends and she’s grateful for their help. That sort of gratitude can morph into love, particularly when one is cast adrift and helpless in a strange place. She anchors herself by them and it leads to a possessiveness like love. I get why she would be attracted (beyond the physical, although that ain’t so bad neither). I just find it ridiculous that either of them would return the affection in a romantic way when both have a very paternal protective relationship with her. If the inter-generational romance is to happen, something needs to change, first; the complications of the past relationships would have be reconciled with the new romantic angle, second; and the reception of that romance needs to be addressed, third. DG’s obligations to her new-found family and responsibilities as princess would complicate any romance for at least a few years, I would think.
I guess I just don’t think like a fan-ficcer any more. That, and if anyone in Tin Man had any sexual chemistry going, it was Alan Cumming and Neal McDonough. After rewatching the miniseries, I'm not convinced that McDonough is any more decidedly straight than Alan Cumming. Maybe he'll get married to a guy after ten years of being married to a woman, too.