Stuff I love challenge #4: Relationships

Challenge 4:

Make a Top Ten list for your favourite relationships in media and tell everyone what you love about them. This covers all kinds of relationships - romantic, sexual, platonic, professional, rivals, acrimonious, family, found family, something else not mentioned here. So, bring out your friends, lovers or enemies, whether canon or fanon. If it involves two or more people interacting in some way, it counts, so go wild!

1. The first one that comes to mind is Rush and Young from Stargate Universe. One of the joys of SG1 is the relationship between Jack and Daniel (the military leader and the scientist,) and SGU posits 'what if this central and vital relationship was instead between two people who couldn't trust or rely on each other at all? Wouldn't that be fun?' And yes, yes it was. The show does a fantastic job at making the audience nearly... so nearly throw our sympathies completely behind one of them, only to pull the rug out from under us and start feeling that maybe the other one is right after all. I love it.

2. In one of those love triangles that are completely calling out for polyamory, I love the relationship between Roy Kent, Jamie Tartt and Keeley Jones on Ted Lasso. Roy and Jamie go from being mortal enemies to best friends, while Keeley goes from going out with Jamie to going out with Roy, to going out with neither of them but also being in the best friend triad. Seriously, they should all date each other.

3. Lan XiChen and Jin GuangYao from The Untamed. My goodness, talk about love at first sight! And then JGY saves LXC's life and nurses him back to health and wins the war for him and makes sure he has enough help to rebuild his sacked sect... and then the guy who broke his little brother's heart tells him that JGY is evil? Does not compute. To me the special thing about LXC is that you can see how he would have given JGY a fair hearing even after everything came to light, had he not been tricked into acting rashly. Those Lans do love well, even if not always wisely.

4. I should say 'the relationship between Celeborn and Galadriel' because I have written about it a lot. The thing about it is that I had to think about it a lot if I wanted to write Celeborn at all, because it's a huge deal for him. I personally don't really care about it, except in the sense that I care about him. I think it says good things about him, though, that he's at least not the sort of insecure, weak minded little man who is intimidated by a strong woman. So I tend to write him as having the kind of self-assurance that is indistinguishable from humility - he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody.

5. Qui-Gon Jinn + the Jedi Council. This is another case of what I think of as humility, and many other people see as inflexible stubbornness and pride. I see Qui-Gon as someone who follows the will of the Force wherever he thinks it guides him. Given that the Jedi are called a religion, I think this can be seen as having a strong faith and therefore praiseworthy, even if it means that some people blame him for unleashing Vader on the universe. An interesting case study on how an established religion tries to contain one of their troublesome saints.

6. Loki + the gods/the Avengers/basically everyone. Like most queer kids I felt an immediate kinship with Loki the mythological figure, who was outcast and blamed for everything, even things he clearly hadn't done. Initially therefore I was very keen to get him forgiven and accepted into a less judgemental group. However, as time went on I started to appreciate why a group might have problems with a character who can't see a boundary without wanting to cross it. Now I'm like 'I still hope he gets redeemed but I think it's going to take someone a lot stronger than me to handle it.'

7. Khan/Joachim (from Star Trek, the Wrath of Khan) and Ra/Anubis (Stargate the movie.) Possibly even Jin GuangYao/Su MinShan. I'm putting these together because I do love the homoerotic tension of a villain with his chief henchman who is slavishly devoted to him. Not much else to say, just... the love! From terrible people to terrible people! There's something really poignant about it.

8. General Hux + his father. Hux's father was a child brainwasher who invented the brainwashing techniques that were done on First Order troopers. And he hated his son, while Hux both returned that hatred but also secretly yearned for his father's approval. How much was Hux brainwashed by his father too? No one knows. A toxic relationship but very interesting if you're trying to assign blame to Hux for being such a piece of shit. How much is he responsible for what he is? Can he be saved or is he too far gone? These are the questions the very tiny Hux fandom is asking itself.

9. Colonel Young + David Telford from SGU. What the heck is going on there? These two are apparently the best of friends while Telford is doing his level best to sabotage Young at nearly every occasion. Things get better after Telford is discovered to be brainwashed and working for the baddies, but he still tries to blow up an allied civilian planet at one point. And yet Young forgives him again and again, even for breaking up his (failing) marriage and making a move on his wife. I think 'what the heck is going on there?' sums it up entirely.

10. Jack/Ianto. I almost forgot this one but I was so obsessed with it at the time. What a trailblazer of a TV relationship it was! You know, Ianto's shrine is still there in Cardiff. People still visit and bring flowers. I thought Ianto was a very interesting character - he is probably the original of the fandom ghost, that sharply dressed but surprisingly lethal twink that turns up in every fandom given time. Or maybe he just hit that archetype by accident. Jack was less interesting imo, but also a trailblazer for his time.