Shipper tendencies
Aug. 22nd, 2005 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gategrrlCan someone explain to me why there's such a compelling need to sexualize and Romantic-ize characters? I've been there myself, but I seem to have gone past that as a "serious" endeavor. I'll *play* with characters and their sexuality -- but the *need* to pair them up romantically just isn't a priority, and it seems so unnecessary, and somewhat Mary Sueish, especially if it's certain types of het and slash writing.
It's not so much the sexualizing -- that I get, it's fun to imagine your favorite characters whupping it up with the whipped cream and cherries, and get down and dirty and sweaty. But at the same time, what I'm puzzled more about is the need to Harlequinnize decent characters who already have complex, nonsexual relationships with each other, that get totally boring when they DO get together.
Anyone?
It's not so much the sexualizing -- that I get, it's fun to imagine your favorite characters whupping it up with the whipped cream and cherries, and get down and dirty and sweaty. But at the same time, what I'm puzzled more about is the need to Harlequinnize decent characters who already have complex, nonsexual relationships with each other, that get totally boring when they DO get together.
Anyone?
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Date: 2005-08-22 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 09:27 pm (UTC)I remember one Jack/Sam fic in particular, at GW (have I mentioned this one before?) that I can't shake out of my mind. It was posted shortly before Xmas time two years ago. It detailed Sam going about her day, getting their two sons ready for church(!), and how beautifully decorated with a tree and ornaments their house was...and how happy she was with Jack, cuz he was going to go to church with them, and they'd light some candles....
It was decently written, as in, the grammar, etc was fine. But it barfed dog cakes, mostly because the characters weren't really the Stargate characters -- it was the writer and her husband, and she wrote a coy little afterward saying, "Well, now you know what my family is doing for the holidays!"
I will have to wash my brain, now that I've thought of that fic again. can't seem to get rid of it, for some reason. It was appalling.
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Date: 2005-08-22 10:18 pm (UTC)I've long held the suspicion that many many SamJack shippers use Carter as their MarySue fuckpuppet so they can shag Jack/RDA and that is their sole interest in the whole thing. Thank you for providing me with evidence at last! :P
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Date: 2005-08-22 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 11:06 pm (UTC)Could it be that current Daniel/Vala shippers, even those who weren't shippy before, esp with Jack/Sam -- are suddenly shipping because Sam was not a worthy object of projection? That Vala is sooooo much more interesting, so much more derring-do and morally gray, that this pairing has taken off, even with those who wouldn't give Sam/Jack the time of day?
Note: I am a NOROMO to the hilt.
Grac? What do you think? What's good for the goose/gander thing?
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Date: 2005-08-22 11:20 pm (UTC)I don't think so. Because some people do project through Sam. You still have the Daniel/Sam shippers hanging on through think and thin. I know a lot of people that can identify with Sam, more so the old Sam, but still.
I do think ship in and of itself tends to have a projection issue, though.
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Date: 2005-08-23 07:14 am (UTC)I don't know about that. Certainly some shippers are into projection but I don't know how commonplace it is - there's got to be room to argue that this is a case of people projecting into a woman who has some sparkage with Daniel...
Or could it just be that there's more *onscreen* chemistry between Daniel and Vala than there ever was between Carter and Sir and people are reacting to that?
Or that they're more attracted by the roguish element of Vala's personality rather than two forty year old pluses within a military framework? It could be argued that the Daniel/Vala thing is just the traditional 'bad boy' and 'good girl' dynamic turned on its head, which in itself again is quite unusual and therefore could be appealing just because it's not that common.
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Date: 2005-08-22 10:38 pm (UTC)*hands over some bleach*
I don't mind shipping and slashing. I'm willing to read nearly any type of combination of pairings in Stargate (though I do avoid Jack/Sam). I guess in my mind I'm interested in all possibilities. However, the characters must be believable and interesting (and here's why I avoid most Jack/Sam fics). Its not that Jack/Sam won't be interesting to dabble with for a while, but in my mind you have to deal with the fact that 1. it is against the regs, 2. while it may be fun for both at first, let's face it, they don't have enough common interests and 3. I've seen enough ship on screen (unfortunately), so you really have to do something different to interest me here.
There's the Jack/Daniel fics I categorize as "Jack must be Daniel's care giver because Daniel can't even tie his shoe laces on his own, but is oh so important to the Stargate program/Jack/Jack's penis." Now I love Jack/Daniel pairings, but these fics make me cringe. Daniel's an orphan that's lived in an alien culture and more and has been fighting the Gou'ald for something like 10 years. Ugh! It is way to out of character for Daniel for me to follow.
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Date: 2005-08-22 10:48 pm (UTC)To me, that view of the Jack/Daniel dynamic says equally bad things about both characters: Jack wants to have someone who will utterly rely on him and Daniel is incapable of independent thought. The vibes are more incestuous than anything else. *shudders*
For me, the attraction for Jack/Daniel (or Daniel/Teal'c) is how you get two canonically strong independent and intelligent (well, Jack *was* intelligent till the DOED got to him) individuals and get them together. If you don't see them as independent and intelligent people, then why on earth would you care what they got up to?
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Date: 2005-08-22 11:08 pm (UTC)The funny thing is that for slashers (and even gen) what brings us to love Jack and Daniel so much is that spark that is between them. That spark is dependent on their individual and independent personalities.
Then, there are some you take what made us see slash in the first place and bastardize it.
Bleh.
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Date: 2005-08-23 02:08 am (UTC)Sometimes, when I'm reading a fic, I wonder if the reader of the fic and I are watching the same show. Maybe there's some other show out there called Stargate and it has characters with the same names and different personalities. I'll make a point to not look for it in the TV guide.
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Date: 2005-08-23 07:32 am (UTC)You'd think that, but sometimes I read stuff and wonder if people have actually ever seen the show when they have Daniel crying because he ran out of coffee and Jack treating him like a three-year-old. And then sometimes they have sex. *shudder*
People who're writing (myself included) are doing it because they need something from the end result. It could be strokes from other people, it could be the creation of a 'perfect' environment in which they wish they lived, it could be the resolution of something about the show or the characters that vexes them. Or a dozen other things. That's not restricted to any genre, because I've seen the same things popping up all over the place.
Sometimes 'Jack' and 'Daniel' are just convenient names to hang onto two male characters who happen to be doing something that might loosely be linked in some way to this long-running tv show...
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Date: 2005-08-23 11:31 am (UTC)I am getting that squishy feeling again. Ugh.
I will not go into the various pop psyche on this ;)
Double Ugh.
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Date: 2005-08-22 11:04 pm (UTC)Amen to that!