darkluna | I guess it was the good crack

I had a cracktastic crossover dream last night! It featured House and Wilson on the Black Pearl. House and Jack got into a loud and lengthy discussion in which House said they could get the Pearl to lie closer to the wind by restowing her hold, and Jack offered to throw House's cane overboard if he so much as looked at the rigging funny. Meanwhile, Wilson and Will were discreetly shagging each other senseless, which Elizabeth and I enjoyed for a bit. But then she became annoyed that she couldn't join in, so we hatched a plan to force them to shag less discreetly, make House and Jack jealous, and eventually restore everyone to their proper partner(s). Someone (not me) could probably actually make that work, if they gave in to the crack and ran with it.

I've had my little fingers in a lot of fandoms lately, what with rereading the Aubrey & Maturin books and finally getting around to watching the Firefly DVD commentary.

I have a terror of even checking to see if there's a Patrick O'Brian section at the Pit because you just know it would be full of horrible slash, even assuming that those fans are slightly more sophisticated than, say, your garden-variety Harry Potter suethor. I could never buy Jack and Stephen as a couple. The idea makes me want to open up the Manifesto Against Badfic, flip to the chapter entitled "Close Friendship Plus Proximity Does Not Equal Teh Buttsecks," and rant away. Sure, they're both aware homosexuality exists, as a concept, but I think that's all it is to them. (OK, to Stephen it could be an interesting piece of a puzzle in a case of mental disturbance.) I feel sure that the idea of sex as an expression of love between normal men would never even occur to them. And sure, they do love each other, but it's in no way a physical or romantic love, and for the rest just open up your own copy of the aforementioned chapter. :-)

The funny thing is that even though Pirates of the Caribbean is set even earlier, I have no trouble imagining Jack Sparrow shagging anything that's pretty just because it's fun. It's a different world.

I'll read crazy pairings, but it has to be done believably. I'll even read Crazy Space Incest if written by an author I trust. (I draw the line at Elricest, however, because 1. unlike Ed with anyone else, it does hit my "both too young... icky!" nerve, and anyway: 2. in the anime timeline... um, how would that even work?[1]) Firefly is an odd one because I don't know if I have an OTP[2]. Mal/Kaylee is nice, though (see "overidentifying" in previous post). It kind of seems like you could mix 'n' match the whole post-movie crew for short-term fun and be able to sell just about any pairing you get. Selling a given pairing for the long term, though, would be hard. I think both budding movie ships are destined to end badly. Indeed, I think the only characters who would never leave each other are Mal and Serenity and Simon and River.

Harry Potter is kind of the same way in that I'm not too attached to any ship, canonical or not, except Remus/Sirius, and I still believe Remus is allowed to move on. I also think that almost any mix of same-generation characters could work out, and even that restriction isn't too stringent, because I have read some very fine stories that leap the generation gap. It's all a matter of who's writing it. Some people could write Hermione/Moaning Myrtle well, and some people could make Harry/Ginny seem inexplicable. I'm bent for Harry/Draco because it has kind of the same dynamic as the first slash ship I ever loved (that would be Mulder/Krycek) - that whole thing where hating somebody takes the form of being extremely attentive to their motions and opinions and beating them up with your own hands as often as possible.

I think that's the key to what makes a ship work for me. There has to be an underlying tension of some kind. Firefly is so well-written that every possible pairing has at least a little justification in canon because the relationship every single character has with each person around him/her seems deep enough to support that tension. For any given pair, there's an angle that would make it work.

In my non-fanfic writing, I'm finding I'm great with the angle, but not so much with the making it work.

[1] I would like to say, in the strongest possible terms, that I am not inviting anyone to tell me how it would work.

[2] Well, Jayne/Vera, but duh!

In other news, Anya does not grok that when I throw something, I don't have it anymore.