that post about how Bones and Danno are kind of the same.

[jlh]

iberiandoctor and I were talking yesterday about how ships can be the same, that what drew you into one ship can draw you into some other one because it pings the same little place in your heart, and that reminded me that I hadn't written that Danno-is-sort-of-Bones thing. It's become more than that in the thinking about it!

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of classic movies. Old movies are pretty much what I consumed as a child--big colorful MGM musicals and little snarky RKO ones; noir films where you can never trust a dame and cynical Billy Wilder movies where you shouldn't but you do anyway and sometimes it actually turns out okay; and lots, and lots, and lots of romantic comedies. When I was eight, my two favorite movies were An American in Paris and His Girl Friday.



I really wanted to be Hildy.

What I realize now about these movies and how they shaped what I look for in romances and romantic pairings is: I love dialogue. I love movies where most of what happens is that people talk to each other. I love romances where the sex is just an extention of a really good conversation. And I also love a real equality, two people trying not so much for the upper hand but to keep the see-saw in balance, for whom the back and forth is part of the larger dance they're doing.

It shouldn't be surprising that, given this background, I love Ryan/Simon because all they do is banter and get under each others skin and then laugh because doing that is the best thing ever. And the het couples that I love--most of which are canon, so I don't often get into fic/fandom for them because I have the canon--are also pretty talkative, like Castle and Beckett on Castle or Peter and Harriet from the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries or Laura and Mr. Steele on Remington Steele or Chandler and Monica on Friends.

I love characters that can't stop talking, that can't quite make themselves shut up even though they really should, and I love when they get involved with someone else who either talks as much as they do, or talks back in the right moments but mostly loves listening to them blither on. I love characters that make themselves known through conversation, which is something I see in the canon moments of Harry and Hermione. Hermione talks a LOT, and while Harry sometimes wishes she'd stop he rarely actually says anything or does anything about it. Her criticisms roll off his back. And yet he always has his eye on her--their coded conversation after the Quidditch tryouts in HBP, when Harry makes it clear that he knows how Hermione helped Ron, is one of my favorite of their interactions.

Jim and Bones are banterers and talkers too, both in the reboot and in the original series. They have nicknames for each other and almost never call each other anything else, and there's a sense you get in the show (and in the shuttle scene in the movie) that when Bones really gets going on a tear, it's music to Jim's ears, like there's little he'd rather listen to than Bones going off on some thing or another.

Seamus and Dean are kind of like that too, in that Seamus has a great deal to say and Dean lets him talk, and Seamus is a bit more hyper than Dean, and Dean watches him flying around and is more than happy to do so. And coming back to canon, there's the Peter/El/Neal thing happening on White Collar--what I love about them, or really about the entire show, is that it's mostly about the dialogue, about what people say to each other.

Which brings me back around to Steve and Danny from Hawaii Five-O. There are many things I could say about this fandom, and might at some point, and I wouldn't say that this is a post to try to get folks into Steve/Danny because honestly, there are a lot of those, and they usually have more pictures. One of those things I could say is that the place has recently become kind of flooded by the folks who were shipping McShep back in SGA days, which is vaguely interesting though I don't find these characters to be particularly similar, mostly because McKay is that ever-popular slash fandom type, the Misanthropic Genius, where Danny Williams decidedly is not.

No, Danny Williams is emotionally volitile, incredibly ethical, dedicated to helping other people, and when pushed by people who take a few too many risks for his comfort, will give chapter and verse as to how and when risks should and should not be taken, Steven. And Steve will stand there, nodding, ask him if he's finished, and then do whatever he was probably going to do anyway. Oh, and did I mention that Danny's a divorced father of a little girl, who moved from New Jersey to Hawaii so he could still be in her daily life, and who isn't shy about telling people that he doesn't much like living in Hawaii?

Sound like anyone we know? Oh, plus? It's exec produced by our friends O&K. So there's that.

tl;dr: I've realized that I'm drawn to hyper verbal emotionally volitile characters, over and over again, and it doesn't matter all that much what they look like or what gender they are. It's much more about how they are able to put words together to describe exactly how they are feeling at that moment, because they have MANY FEELINGS, and how the people around them react either by talking right back to them, or by letting their words flow over them like a comforting rain. Give me that, and you'll get a shipper.

(I've attempted to talk about my personal tastes and preferences without apologizing for them or defending them against disparaging remarks that are often made, and instead presented them as something that is actually awesome because you know? They totally are! But that doesn't mean that other tastes aren't actually awesome, too.)

Comments

[trinaest]

ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO!!

Nearly every detail of this rings true for me. (Which also explains why nearly every time you do post a "this is going to be unpopular..." sort of post I read it and go, "That's unpopular? Huh. Guess I'm unpopular." LOL)

Also, have you ever checked out Sports Night? Dan and Casey will push those same buttons. :D

[jlh]

I really need to. On the one hand, I love Keith and Dan. On the other hand, I have massive Sorkin Issues--I was never a fan of West Wing and by the end of Studio 60 I was hatewatching it. But I do love the leads. I should just Netflix it.

re the unpopular, ngl, I find it really really deeply weird to be in the middle of the apparent Slash Pairing of the Nanosecond and see all the BNFs doing their BNF thing that they do. I don't think I've actually ever done this; as big and popular as K/Mc is, it can never be the Slash Pairing of the Nanosecond because, K/S. It's also weird that they're all McShep people as I don't think they're very similar at all.

[trinaest]

I'm always so on the fringes of fandom that all that stuff just kind of washes over me. I was never involved in SGA (have never even seen the show!), and I have NO IDEA who the McSheppers even are (aside from a few friends who I know were). Couldn't tell you who was or was not a BNF. I don't know where all these H50 people are coming from! None of them know where I came from either, so. *shrug*

Frankly, I really don't care who they are or where they came from, as long as I have friends to play with and there are good stories out there to read. :D

(I like meeting and getting to know new people--I'm not a hermit!--but I am a little insular. I have my little group and as long as I have them, I'm happy.)

Re: Sports Night--it's only two seasons! Some of Sorkin's best, too, IMO. (Caveat: have barely watched any West Wing, but loved Studio 60, for the most part.)

[jlh]

You know, I'm going to sort of address this in a locked post? Because it's like, a bunch of stuff that's kind of weird, though not particularly secret, and I've said it other places in other ways. But the whole H50 thing has me confronting it in a way I haven't had to in a really long time.

I agree with you, though, about having your little group! I feel like I wander through fandoms and pick up people as I go, and then--well, this was part of what iberiandoctor and I were talking about, that you go into a new fandom and see people you knew two fandoms back, or you get into something and there are other people on your flist that are into it too. I think I'm naturally more of a small ship person, probably.

I think Sorkin has a real problem with the ladies. I found Harry to be all over the place and often underwritten and weirdly naive about the business for someone who'd worked in it as long as she had. And the Jordin thing, it started out cute, then got sort of creepy, and came back around a little at the end but not enough. And in WW and The American President and A Few Good Men he has a tendency to speechify, which isn't something I really like. I find that dedicated Sorkin fans really like those big speeches, though. But I've heard that these problems aren't really problems that arise on Sports Night so it's definitely on the list!

[melodiousb]

We like a lot of the same pairings, and now I'm thinking that the old movie thing maybe explains why. Characters snarking at each other and enjoying it and each other...there's really not much that's more fun than that. And I don't think I've ever come across a pairing in fandom that's as much about that as Ryan and Simon, which is why I fell for them so hard.

I also want to second the Sports Night recommendation. I feel like Sorkin's issues come more and more to the forefront as he goes from show to show, so the moralizing and stuff was worse on WW than on SN, and worse on S60 than on WW. Also, because Sports Night is a half hour comedy rather than an hourlong drama, it tries to be lighter and...well, it doesn't necessarily succeed, but it hits a nice middle ground.

[jlh]

I think we're in a much more visual culture now, and dialogue doesn't count for much. Now it's all about looks and touches and anime blushing. I've been made to feel badly--or at least, feel less than cultured somehow, less subtle--that I don't fall for those silent ships. I don't need my ships to overtly declare their great love for each other? But I do need them to talk.

This I have heard, that it gets worse with each show, so I'm going to put Sports Night on the queue! I certainly know a lot of folks who really liked it. It comes up.

[iberiandoctor]

(In Idol - and Glee - folks fall in love while singing, which must be even less subtle!)

[jlh]

haha, true! Actually I took a class on the movie musical and we were talking about what makes a musical a musical, and so I took a look at movies that had been made into musicals—I did The Philadelphia Story and High Society—and movies that are very similar—I did I think Bringing Up Baby and a Fred & Ginger. And what I found was that everyone was very straightforward about what they were feeling in a musical, even with Fred and Ginger who otherwise are in a 30s movie and mostly wisecracking. Partly this is because they're singing, and partly this is because since they're singing they don't have a lot of time to obfuscate. So in the romcoms there's a lot of hiding of feelings, but in the musicals there really isn't, though there might be some misdirection.

[iberiandoctor]

I love romances where the sex is just an extention of a really good conversation. And I also love a real equality, two people trying not so much for the upper hand but to keep the see-saw in balance, for whom the back and forth is part of the larger dance they're doing.

IMO this makes for a recipe for a good RL relationship :) My specific relationship kink (=re-ngotiating/redressing a specific power balance) doesn't stop me loving and appreciating the dynamic you describe (and from celebrating its awesome - because, it is totally awesome! ♥). And it does sound like Steve/Danny has that dynamic going for them in spades - as well as the bantering/verbal-and-volatile thing :)

I like Jim/Leonard because, er, Karl Urban is explosively hot. No, I'm not shallow.

[jlh]

Why didn't I reply to this sooner?

It is true that I'm an equality junkie, but what do you mean by re-negotiating/redressing a specific power balance? It sounds interesting!

I like Chris and Karl fine, but neither of them are really my type. If you took Scott Cahn and made him a brunet with a beard and glasses, that would be my type.

[iberiandoctor]

Scott Cahn! ♥ Actually, while we are discussing this, my type is very much the refined, older man - Sting, David Tennant, Andy Lau. Karl Urban actually does fall within type, just about - especially if we put glasses on him! Which is why the stupid pash I have for DCook is uncharacteristic :)

Ah, my love for the re-negotiating the power balance arc! It's where the power in a relationship traditionally resides with one party (who is older, more experienced, physically larger, has a more important job/or is higher earning), and that power gets reversed in the course of the story: the less powerful party steps up and redresses that imbalance by taking control in the relationship, including the sexual relationship. The interesting thing in slash is that you can do that via sexual position, which then becomes a metaphor for the power balance. I've also seen it done particularly well in the context of BDSM where partners explicitly negotiate the rules of engagement.

So this may actually be your equality thing, but seen from the other end, via the process of how partners get there from a position of inequality?

I see this a lot in Idol, esp with Archie, who obviously holds less power in most pairings (younger, not physically large, nonwhite). The stories I want to read about and to tell don't ignore that imbalance, but allow for it to be addressed, and redressed. Similarly when I write DCook/Carrie, I actually see their relationship as weighted (against type) in Carrie's favour - she's the much more established artist, she's prettier, she's in an established relationship, he feels he doesn't match up - and stories that work for me are those in which they work through that and reach a balance of power.

You'd think Rymon falls into this category - after all Simon Cowell would generally win most, if not all, power games - but I don't think many people would consider Ryan substantially less powerful (plus, he is prettier!). I see them as fairly equal, and I know you do too - that said, the age difference does provide an interesting finesse (and frisson!) on their relationship, at least for me :)

Perhaps in my enjoyment of the power redressing process comes from some deep-seated emotional thing - I know a large part of my own romantic experience has been in the "less empowered" role, and I've spent a large part of my relationships (successfully, I think!) renegotiating the power balance.

Ah, far too much id too early in the morning, and much more than you'd signed on for! Back to affidavits with me.

[jlh]

That makes a HUGE amount of sense for Cookleta. It's a sort of my-how-you've-grown scenario. Emma.

Ryan and Simon are weird mostly because no, you wouldn't think that they are actually equals, and they aren't in terms of earnings, etc. But Simon treats Ryan like he's a equal, and Ryan is more successful than Simon was at his age, so that might be part of it. But I find it a key part of their relationship that Simon respects Ryan's power enough to give him shit and treat him like a peer. And of course the whole Hollywood/pop music youth obsession thing falls in Ryan's favor, too. So Ryan is younger, but that's sort of where his power comes from.

Thanks for elaborating on this! Very interesting!

[edithmorningstar]

The bit about relationships built on conversation - YES. So very much. And the balancing each other. Those are the kind of things that drew me to H/D initially, actually. The snark and engagement, even though canon didn't progress to conversation, and the potential to balance each other.

Here is why I, as a McShepper, see some correspondence. I say it as someone who hasn't yet watched a H5-0 ep yet so I'm going by description and fic.

Rodney is Misanthropic Genius, yes, but he is also often shown doing surprising endearing things or whatever. Misanthrope With a Heart of Gold, kinda. I think people are taking the talkativeness, the calling out of risks, and something of the dynamic between the leads more than the core similarities of character. Also, John Sheppard is very Steve-like in the risk-raking after being told not to, and I'm getting the idea Steve is also a bit of a "clam" fandom type too - the military guy who doesn't talk about his emotions but is often physically affectionate.

I think the things people are looking at are the banter, the one oversharer and one undersharer, the living in each others' pockets codependence of their crazy jobs and lack of much outside social life, and the physical affection. Danny is much less extreme and not charicatured the way Rodney can be (and definitely started out as). Danny isn't socially clueless like Rodney. But he does have some of that same wonder/joy/enthusiasm for neat things that Rodney has, and that is often cited as what John loves most about him.

So, I may be totally off-base on this because I've been reading fic and discussion that's been filtered through the fandom viewpoint that these pairings are comparable. But those are the things I'm seeing that explain where that's coming from to me. Personally I think there are some aspects to any buddy-cop type of setup, which McShep totally also is, that are near-universal. McShep just happens to be the most recent buddy-cop-verse the new H5-0 folks have in their heads for comparison.

[jlh]

I guess, in my head, McShep was more like K/S and Steve/Danno is more like K/Mc. I don't know enough about John Sheppard to say, but Steve isn't all that silent, he's just silent compared to Danny. Chin Ho is probably more silent than Steve. Steve lets all of his emotions show on his face; that's why Danny keeps telling him that he gets "a look."

But I agree that some of it is just a buddy cop type of set up. You could say a lot of these things about Starsky and Hutch I suppose. Feeling like they're really just another in a long line of "Us" slash ships kind of takes the specialness out of them, I guess, for me? I don't know; it all makes me feel incredibly conflicted, like suddenly because of this parallel that other people see I end up being a thing that I've spent a certain amount of my fannish experience defining myself against.