Second Favourite Pairings / Fic Tagging

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

Recent discussions on Tumblr set me thinking about these topics and as it's easier to discuss things on here and not everyone is on Tumblr anyway, I was wondering what the most popular pairings are after Lister / Rimmer.

If anyone disagrees with my assumption that male Lister / Rimmer is everyone's favourite pairing, please say so.  I'd say my second favourite is Lister / Ace - I just love their easy camaraderie, especially in "Dimension Jump".  Or if you want a pairing that isn't a variation on Lister / Rimmer, maybe Mellie / Ace.  I wanted to see a lot more of her than we got - kudos to Hattie for making the most of her role.

Also, how do people feel about tagging rarer pairings in fics if they're not the main focus of the story?  Would you feel cheated if they're restricted to the background or only have one brief scene or would you be so pleased to read them that it doesn't matter?

I ask because I've noticed in some larger fandoms some people refuse to read anything that doesn't end in requited happiness for their OTP.  I don't think anyone here is quite that choosy though.  We don't have that luxury. ;)

Comments

[rosecathy1.livejournal.com]

Does Lister/Nano-Rimmer count as a separate pairing? :p I have a soft spot for Kryten/Lister, although I don't think I could write it.

I have seen a little bit of what you described about other fandoms, complete with accusations of bashing. :/ I've thought a lot about the tagging issue and I still don't know. The Pairings categories on AO3 do provide some wiggle room -- for example, I have a few stories tagged Kochanski/Lister because there are brief moments or references, but they're all labelled "M/M", not "Multi". Hopefully that indicates to people that the story is L/R?

(I'm not sure what ship-bashing in a fic means, anyway. Is it bashing to write [just as an example] Ace saying "I've realised that Bongo and I are too dysfunctional; Mellie is the love of my life"? Surely you need to give some sort of explanation for why not Person X, but person Y in a plot-heavy story?)

Also, how do you tag for requited happiness? What if you don't want to spoil whether the story is sad or not?


...sorry, that's a lot of question marks and rambling.

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

I think you could count Lister / Nano-Rimmer as a separate pairing, especially in some fics I've read where Holo!Rimmer turns up too.

I don't think the example you give is bashing at all. An example I could think of, ironically, isn't from fanfic but an official tie-in "Buffy" novel set after the series ends. Willow discovers Kennedy is cheating on her and is reunited with the ghost of her murdered lover Tara. I love Willow / Tara but I did feel that Kennedy got short shrift and that the author disliked her.

And the question of spoiling the story is a big one for me. Sometimes a surprise pairing is the main point of a story and revealing it beforehand would be stupid e.g. my own most recent story. :)

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

I pretty much do what you do; tag all (or most) pairings, but label the fic M/M (or whatever) to reflect the focus pairing. That said, if I consider a fic gen, I don't tag pairings at all. I tend to look more at summaries than tags anyway...

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Bashing in this sense is when you get two characters, X and Y, together by villainizing or otherwise OOCing a third character, Z, to render them undesirable - generally by assigning Z behavior they wouldn't exhibit in canon. The idea often is to try to invalidate the YZ pairing AND annoy Z fans, over and above writing a good XY story (which IMO is what ship fic SHOULD be - don't tell me why Z drives Y to X, show me why Y chooses to be with X; that's why I read that pair). For example, if Z is a feminist-friendly personality in canon and Y is female, an XY writer might have Z trying to control her or abuse her so she can leave or X can rescue her. Bashing is not Y thinking "well, Z just doesn't do it for me anymore, I like X better." Unless you've labeled the fic only YZ, for the purpose of breaking them up for XY.

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

What Vero said. Or to take another example, Gingertime's excellent Kochanski-as-Ace fic, which I hope gets finished. I felt it was a good example of explaining why Kochanski had to leave without character bashing Lister. It was painful to me as a Lister fan to read her perspective of him taking her for granted, but I could believe it and it really was high time we had a story from her POV.

OTOH, if he'd - for example - tried to rape her, I hope we can all agree that would be completely OOC and definitely character bashing.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in answer to your question - I'd say that was Lister/Kochanski? I know it has to be the most featured pairing other than R/L, fer sure, by simple virtue of being canon, and thus having to be mentioned in many canon-compliant fics...

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

Definitely no argument that it's L/K in terms of the most featured pairing after L/R. I suppose what I was getting at was whether it was the one people most want to read after L/R.

Sometimes people find a minor character compelling precisely because we don't see much of them - I think Kms_726 would agree that that's part of the fascination she has with Jim and Bexley. Perhaps there's someone here who'd like to read - off the top of my head - Kochanski / Catering Officer Tim or Cat / Aura (the female Cat from "Identity Within"). ;)

[felineranger.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any Lister/Cat fics for a while and they can be quite fun. If anyone's seen the Identity Within storyboard then that had a lot of potential for Lister/Cat slash.

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

I don't mind reading Lister / Cat but it's hard to imagine it going any other way than the following - they get together for physical relief, Lister starts developing deeper feelings and Cat doesn't want to know.

Not that there's anything wrong with that; it would just be interesting to explore Cat's character more and see if he's evolved enough to be capable of love or at least affection. As you mention, the aftermath of "Identity Within" could be a springboard for that as it has Cat showing the most emotion I can remember, even if it's mostly anger at Lister.

I'm not trying to bash the ship, just giving my opinion, if any Lister / Cat shippers are reading. :)