I need another happy meme

[holdouttrout]

It's one of those days again, where nothing is actually wrong with the world, and yet I feel slightly down. So here are some things that are causing me joy despite myself:



1) I am not actually very sick. I have a slight sore throat and tiredness, but that's it. I should, as long as I get a good night's sleep tonight, be fine. I think.

2) I FINISHED A ROUGH DRAFT OF THE APOCAFIC OF DOOM LAST NIGHT! AND MY BETA SAID IT DIDN'T SUCK!

EDIT: My beta informs me, correctly, that I misrepresented her. Read the comments for more information.

Approximate words: 10,000 (Ten. Thousand. Me. Ack!)
Beta: DONE (although I haven't looked at the revisions yet)
Ending: THERE
Tone: "Desolate but not hopeless."
Still left: fleshing out death scene/other things not yet known as I haven't looked through the doc Annerb sent back yet.
Estimated post date: January 31.

3) There was a slight covering of snow this morning. Which--not enough to keep me home from work, but enough to look pretty for a few minutes.

4) Had a fabulous chat with people last night about Dragon*Con, how many rooms we did/didn't have between us, how excited we all were, and the possibility of hosting fannish panels (gen and femslash FTW!). Just in case anyone is wondering, I think people are plotting to start D*Con filters any day now, and I'm going to post a poll Feb 1st if no one has done so before then. Then we can figure out who is a definite yes, no, and maybe, and then move on to sorting out rooms.



Moving on, I have a short meta about .

Or, why I'd be very, very upset if no ships ever made it on-screen.

Because I like them. Okay, okay. That's not all I'm going to write. But this should be fairly short. Maybe.

So I'm cruising around the internets yesterday, and I'm on youtube, and I am also chatting with S, talking about House and House/Cameron and how I've only seen a little bit but want So Much More (sorry, KR, I'm falling again), and she sends me the--ah...clip. Which makes me so very happy, because it's just my favorite kind of thing of two screwed-up-people who are opposites but so lovely and I'm shutting up here, really.

Anyway, it got me in the mood for some good angsty romance, and because I was too lazy to get up and put in my season two Farscape DVDs, I hunted for the Princess Kiss, which is one of my favorite kisses of all time. Delicious, with tons of subtext, vulnerability, and OMG SO HOT.

But then it hit me--what if said kiss did not exist because all shipping was kept off the show!? A TRAVESTY! (Not to mention, no Farscape character could talk to another ever again, as innuendo makes up 80-90% of all conversation on said show).

So, while I definitely sypathize with people who always tend toward unconventional ships, and how the "real" ships mess up their canon (bitches), I have to say that I hope canon romances never disappear entirely. Because those are some of the moments I LOVE in canon. I don't love all of them, and I am meh about plenty, but canon romance does something to me that even fanfic romance cannot.

And it mostly doesn't bother me that "unrealistic" pairings happen on the shows, or that things like employee regulations are ignored--as long as the show doesn't contradict itself as far as its own canon is concerned. I mean, we deal with a lot more unreality than who's sleeping with whom, whether we're watching science fiction or a medical drama (also known as science fiction).



And now I'm going to talk just a little itty bit about het, slash, and gen, and why slash is artistically superior.

Just kidding.

Comments

[pepper-field.livejournal.com]

I FINISHED A ROUGH DRAFT OF THE APOCAFIC OF DOOM LAST NIGHT!

*does dance of Finishing Apocafic, which involves much flailing of arms and waving of feet, in your honour*

Yes, DragonCon filter. Must get on to that.

I am very much with you on the canon ships. I love those moments. They have always - when it's a ship I care about - given me much glee, and I'm not ashamed of that fact. Of course, when it's a ship I don't care about, I tend to roll my eyes and groan... :)

I do prefer that they're in amongst other stuff, though - which is why I get my romantic glee from scifi, medical drama, etc. I want there to be shooting-of-aliens-and-then-omg-a-kiss!

*icon of Jack's ass to cheer you up*

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Of course, when it's a ship I don't care about, I tend to roll my eyes and groan... :)

True. But I groan about lots of things, and still watch the show...And I'm totally with you on not liking just straight romance. I prefer for my kissing to be interspersed with aliens and/or needles.

*is cheered by icon*

[beanpot.livejournal.com]

GAH!! I missed talk about Dragon Con after I signed off! GAH!!

(What did I miss and am I sleeping in a hallway?)

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Really, you just missed talking about how excited we all were, and how we needed to figure stuff out.

And there was a mention of maybe submitting ideas for/running panels.

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

I think so much depends on how well a ship is written into canon--I'd hate to come down permanently one way or the other on the question (ie, either "there should be no canon ships ever!" or "there should always be canon ships!").

For instance, I LOOOOOOVE what Farscape does with John/Aeryn (well, except for some of that season 4 stuff, but let's not talk about that, shall we?). The ship is integral to the plot of the show, and it's so awesome. On the other hand, I also really like the way there aren't really any canon ships on SG-1. Canon tensions, yes, but no real ships. I think if they'd actually really had any of the potential pairings go there, it would have disrupted that nice teamy balance. (Who knows, maybe it would have been better, but I doubt it. I don't trust the Stargate PTB to write romance.)

Ironically enough, I've been watching some of my favorite shippy X-Files episodes the past few days while doing the elliptical machine, and that's one where I can't ever quite make up my mind. On one hand, I'll be a Mulder/Scully shipper till the day I die, I'm pretty sure, but we really did lose something when all that tension finally got requited. (And maybe it had more to do with the overall writing getting tired and less to do with the MSR, but I think most people tended to see them as connected.)

I also think there's less room to bitch about canon ships if they're really well done. There are Farscape fans who are not big John/Aeryn fans, to be sure, but I'm not sure it would be possible to be a Farscape fan and believe that really and truly in his heart of hearts John was in love with D'Argo. (Which is not to say that you couldn't write practically canonical John/D'Argo. I suspect Farscape may sort of be one of those untranslatable examples.) Another (and possibly better, since not every possible ship is also sort of canonical) example, perhaps, would be Babylon 5, which I'm watching now: large parts of the plot are all about how John and Delenn are Destined For Each Other in a very OTP kind of way. If you think that John and Susan should really get together, you're sort of not watching the same show, I think.

It's the ones that start out with no pairings and then try to fit them in but not really make the romances part of the plot that get into trouble. And that's just bad writing, I think.

Er, that was rather long-winded! I'm procrastinating.

Also, yay Dragon*Con!!! I'm not sure whether I'm going or not, and once again I'm in that somewhat weird position where multiple separate but slightly overlapping groups from my flist are planning to go, so I'm not sure how to fit myself in with various negotiating about rooms and such. But people are starting to talk about it, so I suppose I should start thinking.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Not *all* shows ought to have canonical pairings. Just...it's not a universal truth that they should all be done away with.

On one hand, I'll be a Mulder/Scully shipper till the day I die, I'm pretty sure, but we really did lose something when all that tension finally got requited.

I think because it was a Thing for X-Files, that they always danced around it. Even the kisses, or almost-kisses, between them pre-season 8 were part of the Thing. The "we love each other and we may or may not be/end up together" thing.

Which I love in its own way.

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do love the X-Files Thing very much. That tension and dancing around the attraction is just golden--though the problem, as XF and other shows afterwards discovered, is that you can only sustain it for so long. I think if you're going to try to do the Mulder/Scully tension Thing, you've got to put a cap on your show--draw it out for maybe 4-5 seasons, then requite and end before it all jumps the shark.

[vickyocean.livejournal.com]

I generally lean toward canon ship, though not to all canon ship. It doesn't mean I dislike that canon ship (though sometimes I do), but not all of it really inspires me. For instance Zoe and Wash on Firefly. I though they were awesome together, but I didn't get really excited over their onscreen shippy moments or go looking for Zoe/Wash centered fanfic. Mal/Inara fascinates me and gets me excited. Kaylee/Simon, on the other end of the spectrum, makes me cringe.

I seem to have to have at least some canonical evidence that they're attracted to each other for me to really ship them. I think that's why I can never really seem to get into slash because, though some may argue with me, in most of my shows there doesn't seem to be any canonical evidence for a slashy relationship. *shrugs* To each his own.

Re: DagonCon

I don't have any roommates yet, so if some needs some space, let me know. I'm at the Marriott. : )

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I don't have any roommates yet, so if some needs some space, let me know. I'm at the Marriott. : )

We'll do more dragonconning in a few days, I think.

I can sometimes read fanfic about non-canon pairings if I've had a basis for their relationship established SOMEHOW. But I'm kind of a canon whore myself.

[annerbhp.livejournal.com]

How can you be down after our great triumphs last night?! The end is nigh! (And I didn't say it didn't suck, silly goose. I said it is AWESOME.)

Teh ship is good. I had a House/Cameron thing for a while during the first season...but later...I guess I realized how fucked up the whole thing is. Not that that's ever stopped me before. lol

Go watch The Movie and get some sleep. Beta's orders.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I added a disclaimer to the entry. *grins*

Go watch The Movie and get some sleep. Beta's orders.

That sounds lovely. I'll watch The Movie, read through the beta, and go to bed early.

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

You mean the taste-test kiss? Not the one with Rygel, one would hope ;)

I'm in a mood too. I hate everything for no good reason, feel mopey and down on myself, and I think it's just from lack of sleep. Hope you feel better, and me too.

Farscape = cheap therapy

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

No, I meants the one with Rygel. *snickers*

Yeah. the taste-test kiss is one of my favorite television moments of all time.

I'm in a mood too. I hate everything for no good reason, feel mopey and down on myself, and I think it's just from lack of sleep.

It probably is the lack of sleep! Excellent diagnosis. I hope you feel much, much better, very quickly.

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Me too!

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

Farscape = cheap therapy

Oh god yes! I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that! "Meltdown" when I need mindless shippy goo, "DWTB" when I need to cry my eyes out, "Family Ties" when I just need to melt into how much I love this show.

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

Absolutely not... mine is more of a generalized "let's watch a happy episode" after a hard day at work, or "let's watch a sad episode" when I feel mopey.

It is pretty awesome, with its extremely high leather content and rampant subtext ;)

[peri81.livejournal.com]

I'm not felling great today so I watched an episode of season 1 SGA in French.

Dragon*Con is a fabulous thing as is knowing where you are going to sleep.

I agree there need to be cannon ships most of the time. I am usually not a cannon shipper I can see the value of the cannon, doesn't mean I have to like it. It gives something to the series even if it is not your cuppa. I was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I strongly disliked the cannon relationship of Buffy/Angel, however it added to the show most of the time so I could live with it.

Sadly I do not know of which Farscape kiss you talk of I never had a chance to see it past the first few episodes.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

You will need to see more Farscape. It is delightfully cracky.

[knightedrogue.livejournal.com]

So Disappointed.

Yes, House is fun.

Yes, H/C is squicky and hilarious and great.

Also, yes, I hate you and Sticksy and you both deserve to be shunned from the H/L community.

Well, okay. Never that. :)

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should just join use in House-love?