'shipping ambivalently
The TV Meme got me thinking a bit about X-Files again, and yesterday I went poking on youtube for old XF clips. I didn't necessarily find what I was looking for, but at one point I noticed that one of the fanvids in the sidebar had had over 45,000 hits. What kind of vid, I thought, gets THAT many hits??? (It could go either way, you know...) A
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That show, I started watching it when I was 11, and pretty much watched until I was 20. It was my first experience of fandom, really, of the internet, of fanfic, of shipping. When I started watching I was still a child (I still remember my mom asking if it wasn't too scary for me to be watching, and I said it was fine, but she could watch with me if she wanted; no, she said, it was too scary for her, and I was a little disappointed because really...it was too scary for me too, not that I'd admit it). I think at the start I shipped them the way you don't want your parents to break up. Then I was a teenager and a hopeless romantic and convinced that they just had to get together. And then, by the end, when the show was off the rails and the relationship had become surreal, I could never quite quit it, but everything about it felt tinged with sorrow, and I was never sure, even at the time, if that was because I ( ... )
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I love Odo/Kira to death, separate or together; but the whole 'moment of clarity' bit irks me because it kind of washes away, without explanation, all the reasons why Kira should be running from the relationship. I know they had their whole closet talk, but like you mentioned, a few episodes earlier she was regretting not killing her mother.
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But yes, all told it's a pretty cop-out way of getting them together. The closet scene was such a ridiculous cop-out way of "resolving" what had been a marvelous conflict arc between them, and as long as we don't know what they actually said and the terms on which they parted, it's hard to see how they move from there to here. The "moment of clarity" seems like a lesser cop-out but a cop-out nonetheless: surely it wasn't just the effect of dinner and dancing? What made her suddenly see Odo in that way (she's known for months at this point how he feels about her), what made her decide to put aside any reservations she might have had, etc.?
Overall, I think DS9 does a better job with characterization than any of the other Treks, but there are so many moments when I wish they'd dig a little deeper.
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I will say this, though, shows do have a bad tendency of trying to answer the question 'Is it worth it?' for you. Like 4.5 Laura, where the show spends a whole half of a season pimping A/R in the context of Bill rather than of Laura. It was no longer a ship about two individuals trying to make it work, but about one side becoming immersed in the other.
I don't mind unhealthy relationships because they do exist and sometimes it is kind of fun to play with the icky sides. I just, have a problem with the whole 'loving a man is validation for your life,' trope.
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The problem is not just that shows try to answer the question but that the answer is almost always so unimaginatively "yes." It's like writers realize that in exploring "is it worth it?" they come to a point where the answer could very well turn out to be "no," and they can't deal with that, so there's a sharp break with previous characterization, and a recourse to stereotype instead. Farscape did this with Aeryn, and oh, how BSG did it with Laura. (I'm still, more than a year later, completely unable to be anything other than apoplectic with rage about 4.5 Laura. For a summary of my feelings, in chaila43's [profanity-filled] words, I'd point you hereOne thing I have to give the X-Files writers at least a little bit of credit for is that they've never quite gone that route with Scully (though I suspect it's less out of consideration for her character and more because will-they-or-won't-they is, they feel, the bread and butter of the show). But in the latest film, Scully rather concludes that perhaps it's not been ( ... )
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even though they wave at obstacles along the way, which are often false and/or external. I like internal obstacles to relationshipsPart of the problem with the way this so often gets dramatized on television, especially in the cop partner trope, is that the obstacles become so cliched, so even when they're legitimate and not wholly external, they lose a lot of their force. The whole "we're afraid of ruining our awesome platonic friendship" thing comes to mind: this is almost always trotted out as an excuse for partners-with-UST to delay getting together. And the thing is, it can be quite a relevant point, but it's lost all of its power through mindless repetition ( ... )
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By the end, they'd both given up nearly everything, as their world became more and more claustrophobic. I guess what with the ending we were given, I wanted them to be together because (1.) they clearly loved one another (2.) if they weren't together, I couldn't see them being happy with anyone else, and I thought by that point they deserved some happiness. Hell, they were owed some happiness.I absolutely agree with you here. The thing, though, that I find both compelling and devastatingly sad about them, is that I don't see any space for that happiness--and not just because the writers are stupid (though that too). They' ( ... )
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