Seamus/Dean: Common? Rare? Anyone care?

[jlh]

Before I say more, I will say: I know, I need to write my fanfic100 stuffs.

starrysummer is looking for common HP pairings to disallow from a rarepair list and there was a bit of discussion about Dean/Seamus (legomymalfoy put it on her list of common pairings).

I just want to note that Dean and Seamus:
1. Have not been Potter-puff'd.
2. Aren't on a recent spate of 50 pairing icons which, by the way, included Neville/Ron. ETA: Thanks to light_music, nimori added Seamus/Dean to her roster. Hurrah!

Now, I'm not trying to be a Sensitive Negro™ here, but what is up with that? I hate to be the person who always comments on posts like that with "Where is so-and-so?"; I have enough artist friends to know how irritating that can be. But is that the way to get these two roommates of Harry on some goddamned icons, when folks are making mass icons? And surely being consistently left off these kids of things means that good old deamus is far from a common pairing.

Is this the tragic mulatto of pairings—too common to be rare, to rare to get any love? Is it the bridesmaid of pairings—in the background so often that people think it's common, but never in the spotlight? Or is the tragic mulatto moniker more directly parallel because they're an interracial couple? (And you know, I hate playing that race card.)

ETA: musesfool, writing about James/Lily on starrrysummer's aforementioned post about rarepairs, makes a great point about frequent background pairings like James/Lily.

Thoughts?

Comments

[dejaspirit.livejournal.com]

I agree. Deamus is definitely not common.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Thanks for getting me the icon! You are super sweet! ^_^

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I wonder if part of the problem is that while it's rare in that you don't see it often enough, because the characters aren't an odd match people don't consider it rare. Like, Dean and Seamus are friends in canon, they're in the same house and the same year, they're even both half-bloods. So people act like people have written it or focused on it more than they have. It's just that it doesn't have the WTF? factor of Filch/Moody.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see the difference. In this post she specifically said that she wanted super-popular pairings to exclude for hpspringsmut because she wanted it to focus on pairings that aren't written enough. I wouldn't say that Deamus is a rarepair, but I certainly wouldn't say it's popular. Ron/Padma, though, I'd put on the rarepair list.

[ceilidh]

I think sometimes people use rarepair to describe a pairing that makes you go WTF or eww, rather than 'not popular'. I would definitely not consider Dean/Seamus to be common. It's neither bizarre nor common, but in that grey area of 'ships that aren't weird but yet don't have as huge a following as Harry/Draco'.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I hate grey areas sometimes! But yeah, totally agree with you. I think they fall into the "don't get enough love" but they certainly aren't SS Have We Met.

[legomymalfoy.livejournal.com]

Eh, I deleted my comment. I guess I misunderstood the whole thing.

[weatherby.livejournal.com]

I think that you're on with the bridesmaid comparison - people feel like Seamus/Dean is common, but really, a great deal of the people writing it are people inserting it into the background of other slash fics because they feel like having someone (Seamus) be gay apart from Harry, and Dean is the natural selection of partners. It isn't that the people who write it in that situation ship Seamus/Dean, of course, which is why it's deceiving.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

And there aren't real rivals for either of them unless you're doing slut!Seamus, so it just exists out there in some sort of "natural" unexamined state.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

The reason I don't read or write Dean/Seamus (unless asked ;) is because I don't find either of them particularly interesting as characters. So, for me, the pairing is just meh. I think the problem a lot of people have is that it's falls between two stools: the OMGSOSUBTEXT canonically unlikely pairings (like H/D or, say, Lucius/Harry or Hermione/Draco) and the canonical or considered-near-canonical pairings of James/Lily, Cho/Cedric, Remus/Sirius et al. There's less to grab onto, you know?

I don't so much see the race thing, if only because characters like Cho, Parvati, Padma and Lee (and now Blaise!) get plenty of love. I just think it's a popular "background" pairing (particularly in the fics in which There's Something In The Water because EVERYONE at Hogwarts is gay) but people don't see enough there to hang an entire fic on. I'm not saying that's right - particularly after the Muggle-wizard tension inherent there, and all the backstory on JKR's website - but it may be what's happening.

And meh, I am incoherent.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

No, you're totally coherent. It was less the "why doesn't anyone write them" than "why would people think they're a common pair but then not do things for them" quandry. Hey, they're minor characters; I don't really expect there to be tons and tons of stories about them. I think the drama that they do have just doesn't spark your average fangirl's imagination as a writer or a reader and I'm really fine with that.

I keep meaning to ask, is that really Trent Reznor and Claire from Six Feet Under in your icon?

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

From that perspective, I think the thing is that they're such a background pairing for the fandom that people forget about them. It's like every Marauders story must BY LAW have James/Lily in there somewhere, even if it's only hinted at, but it's one of the most forgotten het pairings in the world. Same with Narcissa/Lucius. It's just not the first thing that springs to mind when you think "mature adult pairings", same as Seamus/Dean doesn't leap into my head when I think "Hogwarts-era friends pairings", but I know it's there in the background of a whole lot of fics.

I have absolutely no idea. I stole it from somewhere to use as my Snape/Lily icon, and then just really liked it.

here via hogwarts_today

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I agree with the people who said it's in a grey area/feels like it should be fairly common, whether it actually is or not. The very first HP fic I read was Percy/Neville with Dean/Seamus as a secondary pairing (in fact, I think they even had some fics of their own in the same series), and certainly it seems to me a much more obvious pairing than Percy/Neville! So yeah, I think it's probably one of those where it's an obvious choice from canon, so people assume there's more of it being written than there actually is. Sad place to be. :(

[yeats.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know if this was your intention, but you've certainly made me want to go out and write some Seamus/Dean!

[taffetablue.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

yay!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

yay!

here via hogwarts_today

[pourtant.livejournal.com]

Seamus/Dean is one of my favourite pairings, and yes, it is in a sort of weird shadowy place in fandom, neither rare or popular.
First of all, to really like a pairing, you have to have a special interest in at least one of the two characters, and all in all, even if Dean and Seamus are likeable characters, I'm not sure the way they appear in the books works to their advantage. For instance, in HBP, Harry is jealous of him for a while and then he gets dumped by Ginny. I don't know, I'm not sure about my own theory, lol.
I think what is very true is that they are percieved as a background pairing, and perhaps people don't feel 'challenged' by that, hence the lack of interest.