Fannish ponderings...

[agilebrit]

The lovely and effulgent liz_marcs asks: Who are your Top 5 OTPs? And that got me to thinking, and I shall reproduce my reply to that post here.

My number-one, cast-iron OTP is Spike/Fred, and I will never forgive the writers for having Spike go to Harmony after he got solid again instead of running to the lab and giving Fred a big ol' bearhug. However, when he knocked Pavayne into the circle that was supposed to make him corporeal in "Hellbound," in order to save Fred--that was the moment for me. She thought he was worth saving, and he sacrificed what he thought was his only chance to be a "real boy" for her...yeah. *dreamy sigh* Spike and Fred don't have the baggage that Spike and Buffy do--she wasn't even around for the Ring of Amarra incident. So she sees him as he is rather than as what he was, which is everyone else's handicap.

I'm not sure I have any other OTP's, by the strict definition. I have pairings I enjoy, and pairings I write to the exclusion of others. But at the same time, I don't see any contradiction in shipping Spike with both Fred and Illyria--because my Spike/Fred ship is an AR, and the Spike/Illyria ship is dependent on canon. Had the Spike/Fred ship happened on the show, I couldn't ship Spike/Illyria. If that makes any sense.

Then there's Firefly. Wash/Zoe is the obvious OTP there, for all the reasons that everyone else has ever mentioned. However, Jayne is the Little Black Dress in that fandom, and in a post-BDM world, I could see him and Zoe coming to an ... understanding. And I can't really see her with anyone else on the crew. Had Wash lived, then I never would have conceived of Jayne/Zoe as a pairing, but it works for me in an odd way after what happened. They've bantered back and forth ("I can hurt you." "Zoe could get nekkid."), so Jayne's attraction to her has always been there, and I think the argument could be made that she rather likes him too. If he made an effort, who knows what could happen?

And then there is my favorite crossover pairing: Jayne/Illyria. *facepalm* Jayne sees the world very simply, and I think that would appeal to a God-King who's had a drooling fanboy and a broken genius as her Qwa-ha Zahns. And I'm fair certain that Jayne would be attracted to her--I mean, look at her.

*ponders some more* You know...this whole thing may be a function of just sticking my favorite characters together. Shallow? Moi?

Comments

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with sticking your favorites together. If you read my response to that post you'll note that's the whole reason for my writing of Spander.

I posted over there before I read the other responses and I now realize I left off John Crighton/Aeryn Sun, which is a pretty big one. Showing my age, so was Remington Steele/Laura Holt. I didn't watch Farscape for the ship but I sure watched Remington Steele for it.

Interesting point about Jayne's simplicity drawing Illyria.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Buffy/Spike, Gomez/Morticia, Lois/Clark (in every version), Bones/Brennan, David/Keith....

I could go one. I'm a shippin' fool.

I would have said Angel/Cordy, but I was really getting to like Nina.

[bullet4fob.livejournal.com]

were you really upset when Fred got together with Wes?

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I wasn't upset that she got together with Wes so much as disappointed that she didn't get together with Spike, if that makes sense. I mean, I get where the writers were going with the whole Wes/Fred thing, and I understand why they did it...but I was still disappointed that they did it the way they did. Of course, had Spike/Fred happened, and then Illyria...OW. I mean, poor Wes can't ever catch a break, but neither can Spike, and Spike is my favorite, so it's this whole mix of emotions when I think about S5 in relation to whether they actually should have gone with Spike/Fred. I would have preferred that Lilah came back for S5 instead of that horrid bitch Eve, and then it could have been more Wes/Lilah and Spike/Fred, but this is why we have AR's, I guess.