Spontaneous Musings

Sometimes I wonder if it is safer to ship in private? To love a specific romantic relationship between two decidedly fictional characters without a soul knowing. Used to be that way up until...roughly 2001/2002. And I wonder sometimes if that makes more sense. Over time, I've found that it is easier somehow to defend explain why I love the fictional characters that I do without too much sturm and drang, but discussing fictional relationships specifically "romantic" ones is another matter entirely. One thing is clear, it's best if you do not care what others think or can shrug off their opinions - something I've found is a lot easier said than done.

And people do have such strong opinions on fictional character's romantic relationships (short-hand? Ships) particularly regarding thos romantic relationships that make them see "red" or that they despise, although often they usually aren't that straightforward regarding it. It's usually a barrage of moral out-rage or turpitude that anyone could possibly think XYZ and ABC could be happy together.

"What are you? INSANE? You must be a REALLY sick person to even begin to like THAT relationship."

Have you read these comments? Most likely not in that form - usually they are disguised in phrases like:

XYZ and ABC remind me of the stalker/rapist relationship seen in TCY show. Or XYZ raped ABC and yet, people don't mind watching them cuddle...they must have a thing for rapmance. Or XYZ clearly is a pedofile and was into pigtail lollipop sucking ABC, while lurking in the shadows.

Judgmental? Fans? Of Each other? NAH.

So it is difficult to do posts like this. Mainly because I do like and respect the people who blatantly and vocally HATE my ships. And it is admittedly difficult to read their posts where they continue to blast them as the WORST THING EVER! Worse than well Hitler. Although, I don't think anyone has actually ever said that. The words rapist, abusive relationship, rapemance, and misogynist, however, are often thrown about in this context. Which makes it even harder to discuss. Harder to respect a pov that is not only counter to your own, but violently so - looking at it feels akin to putting one's head inside a proverbial lion's mouth waiting for the jaws to descend.

Nothing pushes buttons or triggers people more than discussing romantic relationships in fiction for some reason. Friendships? No problem. Parental? Not an issue. But romance...dicey. I've seen friends online rip fellow friends to shreds over a difference of opinion regarding a "fictional romance". In some respects the violence of the confrontation, if there is such a thing as violent interactions in words, reminds me of discussing politics or different ideologies.

It's so deeply personal why a specific romantic relationship turns you on or off as the case may be, and what you see is most likely not what someone else does. As crazy as it sounds, we do not perceive the world through the same set of eyes, the same veil, our life-experiences whatever they may be taint every frame. One person's demon is another's hero, one person's bad romance is another's ideal - and it is impossible, I think, to ever know who is right. To use authorial intent as backup doesn't work, because authors often don't even know or remember what they wrote or what their motivations were when they did, besides once a story is out there...it changes, it interacts with minds outside of the creators and swirls with new meanings.

Being an adult is incredibly confusing, or so I think. More so than being a child. At least as a child - you have guidelines. As an adult...it's an ever-changing landscape, and sometimes black is white and white is purple. Morality...is not as simple as people want to make it. At least that is what I've found lately. I find myself questioning everything at times...and overwhelmed with no answers. The uncertainty is painful. But certainty can be worse.


Why do I like the fictional romantic relationships that I do? I'm not sure I know or that it is necessarily important that I do. Some things are unknowable after all or should be. I know that my tastes change like the wind.

But I do know... that there is a pattern in the "fictional" relationships that appeal to me...and the is the gender power-play. Two people struggling to come to a common place. Equals. In power. In view. The push-pull. The banter. But mostly? It's the feeling of two people who are equally matched. They've met their match, their equal. No not soul mate. Not that. More someone who gets you, who understands your values, not your interests, but what means the most to you, what you would die for, what is the most important thing to you. Who knows your weaknesses, your triggers, and what
makes you tick...yet is your shadow self, the other side. The complement. The yang to your ying. I look for those relationships in fiction. The other bits whatever they might be are just gravy, sometimes lumpy and unappetizing, and sometimes perfect and rich.

Favorite Romantic Ships include.

* Buffy and Spike aka Spuffy.

I've lost count of the number of times people have accused me of being a rape sympathizer or a sick deluded female for loving this relationship. Or the number of times they've blithely torn my favorite ship apart in oh so condescending tones, isolating each bit, and lacerating the characters actions with razor sharp analysis and wit. But truth to tell? I never saw it the way they did. And the lacerations however well intentioned fell on death ears. Like listening to someone translate your sentences to another language then back again to your own, and you realize something got horribly mangled in the translation. Different viel, different eyes, different minds.

For me, the characters pushed and pulled at each other and played increasingly dangerous power games. I suppose if Buffy had been a normal, ordinary girl and not a vampire slayer, and Spike had been a normal ordinary guy like Xander and not a soulless vampire, with a chip that worked on everyone but Buffy - the scene, which fandom has entitled the AR (attempted rape), in Seeing Red might have turned me off of the relationship completely. But that was simply not the case. This was a relationship between a soulless vampire who set out to kill a slayer and against all odds, fell for her, against his own nature, against his own sense, his own logic. And has repeatedly tried to kill her. The slayer of slayers falls for a slayer. How ironic. And she hates him for all the right reasons. He gets her, but doesn't. He is the perfect metaphor for the female fear of the male animal. I wonder sometimes if men realize that? Maybe they do? So deeply Jungian it's not even funny. When she finally lets him - it's an act of suicide, a way of punishing himself, but grapples at it like a man starving for water. A vampire for blood. And Marsters plays it beautifully...so raw, so yearning, so starving, he's practically skin and bones, rail thin. And Buffy, poor Buffy...she's so torn. He's sacrificed for her, more than once and she knows it, she'd be a fool not to. He goes against everything she's been taught about vampires, everything she knows. Yet she knows deep down, deeper than skin, than bone than flesh..inside, where it counts, that he is dangerous, that he is hanging by a thread, that anything could set him off. But she hopes he's not. Hope's so hard it hurts. He's her dark self. The part she rails against. He's what she hates about men and loves at the same time, and the duality of that scares and confuses her. He is everything about men that makes no sense and she stakes in her dreams...while yearning at the same time. He's her equal physically, mentally, and emotionally - and that scares her more than anything else.

When they fight - it is a dance of sorts, a brilliant ballet. And for a while that's all they do. It's always either kill or fuck, one or the other. Hate and love entwined. When he forces himself on her - it is a desperate and humiliating act, the combination of kill and fuck all entwined going back back to the beginning of their relationship...the threat that always lingered that she feared - but his act is not a victorious or powerful one, rather it is one filled with white-hot blistering and lacerating panic and pain, and not at all what we think in our heads and hearts that rape actually is. He's not Angelus, arrogant, or Pack-Xander, clever, or even Spike when he first entered the scene all sexual predator, sliding around the Bronze like a white panther in heat...or for that matter Franklin stalking poor Tara in Trueblood, tying her up and threatening to turn her into a vamp...instead he is just a desperate wrung out yearning addict...insane with desires he can't name, and uncertain, and scared, and scarey as hell. A primal nightmare - but whose? Her's? Or His? Or both?

The scene is impossible to watch because it is so real, so painful, no winners, both in pain. When he realizes what he was doing was rape or perceived as rape by everyone but him, you watch his face melt and dissolve, his confidence disappear into wide-eyed horror and torment. Collasp inwards. And Spike goes quietly insane. It's as if something deep inside has cracked, broken, and the character goes reeling off the proverbial cliff, broken into fragments...like a fragile humpty dumpty on a wall...not all the kings horses not all the kings men can ever put him together again. If Xander were to come with a stake, Spike would have driven his chest on top of it, committed suicide right then and there, dust to dust. And suddenly we, the audience, are confused. White is black and black is white, and up is down. It makes no sense. The fans scream on the boards. Rip chunks out of each other, as words become barbed claws. Accusations are flung. To this day...they continue to scream, to this day they continue to rage...because it does not make sense. The guy forces himself on the gal, in a desperate act to re-enact a relationship that they both know could never work...and falls car-reeling off a cliff, insane, broken, and hunts a soul - which fragments him even more and makes the whole thing even worse. A soulless demon almost commits rape and goes insane, because he almost did it? Not because he didn't do it, but because he did? The man rails against the monster. And for a moment, just a moment, I smile. I think yay team. For in that moment, we see a glimmer of the true dilemma of what lies at the core of this horrible thing and...that it is not black and white. It's crimson red ink.

Rape destroys both, leaving a ragged tear on all it touches. Just as all violence does. After-wards, they are both broken, him with his broken soul, her with her broken conscience, and together, bit by painful bit they struggle to put the pieces together again and in the process build an achingly painful yet fragile trust. It's a relationship that plays with my head to this day. So beautifully complex, yet so beautifully simple. Like a mirror shattering from both ends and then painstakingly being put together again. I touch the fire, they sing, but it burns ...and they want the burn. Relationships are like that - they can burn, people are like shards of glass, they can cut and break...but yet they aren't like glass at all...the Spike and Buffy relationship too often over-simplified by fans, I loved for its aching complexity and honesty. A relationship that felt like watching two people dive inside their mirror and wrestle with the demons inside themselves and each other.

* Starbuck and Apollo: If there was a more controversial relationship than Spike and Buffy online or a more hated one, this was it. Admit to liking Starbuck and Apollo and just watch the claws come out. Like Spuffy, it was a complicated friendship and romance, but from the opposite end. Starbuck was the Spike character, brash, outspoken, a fighter pilot, wild and untamed. Half the audience hated her, the other half loved her. A fascinating concept - switch the male cliche - rogue pilot with a heart of gold - and make him female, with all the same cliche attributes, the womanizing now becomes manizing if such a word exists, still smokes cigars, mouths off, is sarcastic and snarky...and filled with pain. Starbuck from beginning to end of the revised version of BattleStar Galatica is a walking wound, desperate to believe in something beyond herself, yet afraid to admit it, desperate to succeed in a male occupation, to leave her parental issues behind, and also deseparately in love with someone she cannot be with because it is all so wrong so incestuous...the brother, the friend, the love, the other side of herself. And Lee Adama, her counter-part, and equal, the fighter with the lawyer's mind, who boxes with her, and loves her, and fights her to a standstill. They embrace, they punch, they dance, equals to the end. Male vs. Female, upside down, inside out, genders switched, and switched again...of all the matchings theirs was by far the queerest yet also in some respects the most insanely traditional...it felt like looking at two people staring across at each other through the broken shards of a mirror, dancing in bare feet on its glass. Raw, yet brilliant, and haunting all at the same time. Their ending is quiet...and so distant...a whimper of quiet applause after a brutal stormy rain-dance.

* Aeryn Sun and John Crichton: The least controversial of the three ships. Most people like them, but then the Farscape fandom tends to be a small one and somewhat insular, do to the weirdness of the show...so many things to turn off a viewer, and yet ironically they are all the ones that turned this one on. Equals at the start. He's brain, she appears to be brawn. And then they shift. He's about peace and science, she's about guns and flying. Then they switch. He becomes a terrorist and a walking wound, half insane, she becomes a peacemaker. He goes crazy, she becomes sane. She dies, then comes back, only to see him die, then come back again. Around and around and around they go, where they'll stop, no one knows. Watching their dance is an emotional whirlwind. And within that whirlwind multiple gender cliches and tropes are examined and squashed. Their relationship is the one I dream of. It's the star-crossed lovers that Romeo and Juliet never truly were. Their differences are not external ones but internal. Their conflicts inside themselves. They are their own worst enemies. It is a relationship that sticks in the brain and the spleen long after the tv grows silent...long after the series is done. Burned into the retina of memory...due in part to the fact that it is the battle of the sexes fought in a way of equals. It's never quite clear who would win. And it stretches beyond even that...to deeper questions about war, peace, and what we are willing to do to achieve our own deepest darkest dreams.

*Doctor Who and Doctor Song: Another romance that splits fandoms, people either love or hate Doctor Song...much as they either loved or hated Spike. Not flowery this. Or really physical. This is a romance of the mind. Two clever people bantering and speaking a language only they know. In riddles and rhymes. He saves her, knowing always knowing she is doomed to sacrifice herself for him. He knows her future, she knows his. They meet betwixt and between and out of time. Meeting backwards. He first meets her...when she is about to die. She falls for him when she is doomed to kill him. They both attempt to free the other, save the other from their fate...yet can't for fate has other planes, the author in the sky writes the verse after all. Unlike the dances above, River and her Doctor...play the dance of words. Of mind. And it suddenly all makes sense...for the Doctor is of the mind not the flesh...regenerating each round, but his mind...his mind is intact, the knowledge remains. Mental sex on screen. A love affair in verse. What fun. It's a bit like watching a Noel Coward play in reverse.

* - Pride and Prejudice the most popular of Jane Austen's novels...and the only one that doesn't go overboard regarding the wonders of the British navel fleet. Got a bit tiresome in Persuasion. Darcy...is all about pride, yet he is also all about prejudice. This is the class war meets gender war on the estates and fields of merry England. Talking civily, their tongues are sharp. Elizabeth hold her own against Mr. Darcy's class prejudices, her pride bristling. As he holds his own against her's. Much like the people mentioned above, they are each other' mirror, perfect to a fault. Their pride, their prejudice, their fears, and their courage. They both swing to each other's sibling's defense. Her to his sister, Him to her's. What brings them together is to a degree what brings all the others that I've mentioned above, a sense of honor, shared. A duty to loved ones. A moral code that swings deeper than superficial concerns...one about family, about trying to do the right thing...even when we fall. Of the relationships mentioned, theirs is oddly the only one that is not doomed to fail. But then it was the only relationship of the five written by a single woman not a married man. Which I guess begs pondering.

* Much like Elizabeth and Darcy, Lymond and Phillipa are equals, who met in hate and fall in love. They banter, and flirt, and fight. She fights to win his heart. And he fights for hers. They argue. He wants to protect her. She saves his honor at the risk and eventual sacrifice of her own. Their battle is of wits and mind, the sex suggested. And like Austen before her, Dunnett permits her star-crossed lovers a happy ending. What is it with women and happy endings, and men without? One ponders. Their dance is in words. The sex is rhyme. We see them fight and play and finish each others sentences. She is his match and he is hers..equals. And it is perhaps here that it is made clear what turns me on, and why I like the banter, because to me it is like watching the tango.

Romantic relationships...are in the eye of the beholder I think. For me...they are brilliant dances either in words or bodies across the screen or page. Carey Grant forever bickering with Rosalind Russell and Kate Hepburn, or John Wayne fighting with Maureen O'Hara...or the frenetic dancing of Bernado and Anita in their playful song America. Filled with color and contrast, not simple, not clear, and always surprising. The conflicts more internal than externalized, no Romeo and Juliets...more Helena's and Demetrios or better yet? The lovely lead in Twelth Night who dresses as a boy and romances her erstwhile Lord, while wooing his lady-love. Or Benedict to his Beatrice.
The words matter. The ability to converse. To speak. To banter. To talk forever and a day. I can't imagine a relationship lasting longer than a few moments without the ability to talk and converse. To meld minds. As Spock might say. The physical after all is fleeting, we all grow old, our bodies all wither, vampires we aren't, gods nor zombies neither...just frail bits of flesh and bone..and if we can't speak, banter, converse, meet on the mental level and the level of the heart...where are we?

For me...it's always about the words. The dance of quips. Spike and Buffy who start their relationship exchanging quips and insults. Dancing with words, then dancing with bodies. Aeryn and John who argue philosophy. Eliza Doolittle says don't speak, show me, yet...if she didn't love words, she'd love Freddy not Henry Higgins, ass that he is. Even Starbuck and Lee with all their physicality, are about their words...their hearts on their sleeves as they scream them to the universe.