Fannish Friday

1. Marking the end of Succession this week! ( Show Spoilers )
   
   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. ( Show Spoilers )
   
   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