Fannish Friday

[phantomtomato]

1. Marking the end of Succession this week! I've been watching live since the start and it's very sad to realize that we've finally come to an end. The high point of this season for me was Logan's death episode, which hit as hard as I could have ever hoped. I appreciated that the back half of the season was generally an emotional comedown from that—not without its crises and revelations and striking moments, of course, but with nothing else so all-encompassing as the death. This season did not feel crowded. We had a resolution to every major plot thread that I can think of, including the succession question, but none overshadowed the loss of Logan for me. Everything which takes place in the wake of that is still so strongly shaped by his presence/absence. I was extremely pleased by how this came out and I couldn't be happier with the show.
   Strong recommendation for anyone who can stomach television about miserable, unlikeable people. It's incredibly (and darkly) funny and has devastating emotional moments in addition to being one of the best-acted things I've seen in a while.


2. Also the end of Ted Lasso. I've had a rocky relationship with this show since season two, and while three worked better for me, I think it's primarily because my expectations had been lowered. I'd been really bothered by some of the choices around the characters of color (Sam, Nate, and Dr. Sharon) in s2. S3 showed they learned no lessons around sensitively handling minoritized characters (Shandy, Jack). The pacing was a mess. But, freed from thinking that this show was going to be great, I could have fun with the parts that were good, like Roy and Jamie becoming friends, or Rebecca's romance with the Dutch boat guy and total rejection of Rupert.
   I'm glad to have stuck it out to the end, but I struggle to recommend it. I feel like this is a show I won't ever think about having watched in another year.


3. There's this phenomenon that nearly always gets me to love a ship, when present, and that I always add to the ships I make up: The Gap, or the period of time in which parties in some pre-existing relationship are separated and undergo their own development experiences. Elsewhere on Dreamwidth there's been a revival of interest in a completed webcomic, Check Please!, which I haven't read—but the specific ship being talked about most is one wherein two characters who were friends and sexual partners as teens reunite as adults, one of them well underway in his career and the other getting a late start to it thanks to his struggle with addiction and mental health. It is fascinating. Not only have I enjoyed a great deal of this fic fandom-blind, but it's really helped me codify this trend. I reflected on parts of this a month ago when I posted about how I see Tom Riddle's life path over on tumblr, but that was really focused on a single character's journey. The Gap is about two of them together.
   
   It's in so many canon couples that I ship:
   
   • David Blaize and Frank Maddox spend time apart at the end of each of their two books together. The first gap gives David time to explore other friendships and the possibility of romance with a girl, but it's Frank's return to his side for a sweet bedside vigil which reaffirms their commitment to one another. The second gap gives David time to think about what he wants out of their lifelong commitment and decide on an asexual but romantic love, which he then gets up the strength to propose to Frank. This is personally unsatisfying to me, but I love the structure of the story and think the gaps work well to highlight the importance of the relationship, even if I think the asexuality bit should be retconned in fic!
   
   
   • Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt in In Memoriam are first separated when Henry leaves to serve in WWI, and their first reunion allows the commencement of their sexual relationship. The second separation, due to the circumstances of that war, allows Henry to emphasize his romantic commitment to Sidney when they come back together, something which had been uncertain during their first reunion.
   
   
   • Ralph Lanyon and Laurie Odell in The Charioteer have the very briefest moment of intimacy before Ralph is sent down from their school, and thus begins seven years of separation, with a delightfully tragic little fake-death at the start of their reunion. The Gap gives Laurie time to accept his homosexuality and start to ask himself what sort of partner he wants in life, and gives Ralph a chance to explore new sexual experiences with supportive/enthusiastic partners in safer circumstances. They don't have an easy time of coming back together, but their desire to learn about one another again helps them overcome those difficulties.
   
   There's so many more non-canon ships that I would explore this way: Oliver and Edward from The Fifth Form, Scaife and Verney in The Hill; I have written so many fics around this idea for all of my favorite pairings. The central division between the halves of my Tom Riddle and Edmund Pevensie WIP is a one-year gap—I can't help inserting them even in circumstances where I get to define the relationship!
   
   I love how The Gap gives characters an opportunity to be intimate strangers. They know parts of one another so dearly that they fall into unconscious patterns, making a meal that someone loves or cracking a joke that always used to land, and at the same time they're also uncomfortably aware that things have changed: the joke doesn't land, the friend suggests eating somewhere new and unfamiliar. They are forced to talk with one another and relearn what is appropriate and true, but the existing baseline of familiarity seeps in to shape and color those conversations. I crave the intimacy of asking awkward questions about how one's family is doing while lying naked in bed after sex, and the fear of being too physically comfortable with one another that pushes characters to wrap around to the other end and keep a distance that feels artificial for casual friends.
   
   I've known that I love this construct for a while, but I suppose I'm newly high on it again and thinking about the specific mechanisms which make it work for me. Now to determine how to highlight this in an exchange letter, mm?


4. I am dying for RMSE to open sign-ups. <3

Comments

[myhaus_spaeter]

I’m also looking forward to RMSE!!! I love how you describe the paradoxical sense of (comforting, scary) intimacy and (exciting, awkward) unfamiliarity between characters after The Gap! I also enjoy watching two characters sniff each other out in a little dance of being too close for the time they’ve spent apart but too distant for who they are to each other ❤️
It’s always so interesting to read your thoughts on narratives and storytelling. Thanks for sharing!
And re:succession: it’s a weird feeling to have no new episode to look forward to now that it’s over. For me, this has been a show that I really enjoy while I’m watching it, but not something I think about when I’m not.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Ahhh, I love the way you write about reunions, and it definitely inspires me to consider this concept more in the context of my own fandoms! I'm pretty enamoured with the idea of Guy and Fowler meeting again later in life-- perhaps at an old boys' reunion at their school or something similar. It's interesting to contemplate what sort of person Fowler might have become in the post-WWII years, given that he's so strongly tied to a specific era and culture. How would he cope with Britain's decline as a world power?

Another fandom that I can definitely recommend for reunion situations (and general period vibes) is Brideshead Revisited. The original book is a complicated fave of mine (briefly summarised, I adore the first half and am pretty meh about the second), but there are lots of utterly beautiful reunion fics on Ao3 which fix my issues with the ending!