galadhir

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.

I followed a link over to dreamersdare who has created a February 'Stuff I love' challenge to remind us--in this darkest part of the year--that there are still things to enjoy.

And how does this challenge work?

Each week in February, you are challenged to write a themed top ten list, with a focus on different aspects of media.

Week 1 (February 1st-7th): Standalone media (e.g. films, novels, short stories, plays) Week 2 (February 8th-14th): Series (e.g. TV shows, webtoons, comics, web serials) Week 3 (February 15th-21st): Music picks (e.g. bands, artists, songs, music videos) Week 4 (February 22nd-28th): Relationships in our media (e.g. platonic, shippy, familial, canon, fannish)

As it's the 5th of February today, I have a list of standalone media, not listed in order of importance because largely they are all equal in my estimation:

1. Bladerunner (the original and best.) So atmospheric and dreamy. Went into it expecting to love Harrison Ford's character (because Han Solo was the best,) came out of it with a new blorbo in the shape of Roy Batty, and a new background for the next five years of my life in the shape of that Vangelis music.

2. Oh blimey, speaking of plays, there was one play that became a hyperfixation for me before I knew the term hyperfixation, and that was an adaptation of Riddley Walker which was on at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester when I was a student there. I absolutely adored the made-up futuristic dialog of the play--which is set in a post-apocalyptic England that has reverted to savagery. Just gorgeous language - I mean choppy, brutalist, but so new and vital. I would love to see it again some time.

3. Speaking of old, pre-fandom blorbos, I loved Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence largely because in those days (1980s and before) it was vanishingly rare to get any queer content, and MCML was about the obsessive/destructive attraction between a captive in a Japanese POW camp (played by David Bowie) and his captor (played by Riuichi Sakamoto.) There was lots of yearning! But there was also an amazing soundtrack by Riuichi Sakamoto's band the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and that was another big part of the soundscape of my youth.

4. Murderbot--All Systems Red. Enough said. Actually no, I do have something to say. I didn't know there was a word for what I was (asexual/agender/aromantic) until I was in my mid 40s. I had never seen or even conceived of anyone like myself, and I fixated hard on robots and also on other queer people. I recognized my community without knowing why I belonged there. Murderbot combines my love of robots with a character who actually gets what it's like to prefer to be what you are. It is the ace representation I didn't know I needed.

5. Stargate (the movie.) Ancient Egyptians in space? What more do you need. I have a strong love for things that are alien to my own experience, so obviously I was primed to love the villains in this, and that was only cemented by the fact that Ra was so beautiful, Anubis was so handsome, and they had that (Hollywood thinks it's villainous) homoerotic tension between them. Chef's kiss.

6. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. I'm sure I've talked about this one before. Gorgeous language. Representation of a whole planet where the people are asexual like 90% of the time. Obviously the narrator thinks this is weird, but Genly Ai is a moron, and Therem Harth Rem ir Estraven was a childhood blorbo who I still hug to my heart today.

7. Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie only.) The movie that launched a thousand fics, and accidentally also launched my professional writing career. I deeply loved Commodore Norrington and as a result I began to research the Age of Sail in 18th Century England. And as a result of that I wrote my first book and got it published. The later movies spoiled this franchise for me but I owe it so much.

8. Lord of the Rings (the book.) Shaped my life. Taught me my morality. Formed my writerly voice and taught me how to describe things. I can't over-emphasise how much this is a load bearing pillar of my personality.

9. The Time Bandits. Another one from my youth. Some of God's dwarven helpers steal the map to all the holes in creation and use them to travel in time stealing valuable things. By accident they also drag a young boy from his bedroom and drag him through time and mythology in a series of whacky adventures. Apart from the truly amazing best giant ever, the thing that stuck with me with this one was the depiction of ancient Greece, which turned it back into a proper ancient culture to me, as opposed to the usual Hollywood depictions.

10. Forerunner Foray by Andre Norton I mentioned my enchantment with things that are alien to me, and this is so alien. It was formative in shaping what I hope for from science fiction, even though what it actually deals with is being possessed by ancient things and cultures. I just love the weird things.

Minor characters, my beloveds!

I chose to do this one with icons:

Three from the Murderbot Diaries - probably my favourite character including SecUnit itself. James Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean - he was a minor character in the movies themselves - who died half way through - but became a fandom favourite. Which meant that he became a bit too popular for me and I gravitated to his Lieutenant, Andrew Gillette instead, who died toward the end of the last movie.

It seems weird to me to think of Celeborn as a minor character, but he has 5 minutes in The Lord of the Rings, and is Sir Not Appearing in Amazon's Rings of Power, even if it is set during the time when he was Lord of Eregion where all this was canonically going on. So yeah, to me he's a major character, but not to the rest of the world.

Then we have One-Eye from the Elfquest comics, who I liked because he looked cool and died half way through. And Marcus Cole from Babylon 5, who was funny and quirky and also died half way through. Dying half way through is a common trait of all my blorbos.

makamu did an amazing vid rec post here and challenged me to do one too. So here it is :)

I will also start with a multifandom one. I watch almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy canons, and I come back to this one often for the sheer high adrenaline white knuckle joy that it provides.

Multifandom

Starships - a multifandom space vid by bironic

and having said that I watch mostly SF/F, I do have an occasional foray into Jane Austen, and I couldn't leave this video out. A multifandom costume drama vid set to 'It's Raining Men'

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