Fannish 50: is this weird?

[tellshannon815]

Yeah, so I dropped the ball on Fannish 50 ramble after getting into a bit of a funk back in the spring (but having had some holiday since and plans to see family again - think most of you know this but my family is largely scattered across the UK - have got me out of it a bit). But having just finished my latest drabble for drabble_zone made me think of something to ramble about.

Is it weird that I have this one particular pairing who I find give me lots of material to work with when it comes to fic (even for graphics at the old lands_of_magic community, and yet even as I write them as a pairing, I have to admit that I don't ship them in the slightest and if anything find them toxic as a couple? But much as I never rooted for this pairing I can't help but write them (it probably accounts for about a fifth of my Dark writing, but if you've known me a long time you will know that I try to write a variety of characters rather than concentrate on anyone specific).

(For context: it's Hannah and Ulrich from Dark. The whole history is very complex to explain, including lots of time travel and people being related in ways they have no idea about - this is a show you can't watch and piss about on your phone at the same time if you want to know what's going on, you do need to pay attention. It's one of my ultimate top five fandoms, but I can see why others might find it a lot. In a spoiler-lite version, Hannah's obsession with Ulrich from her schooldays and realisation that he's not going to end his marriage to her best friend to be with her leads her to do a lot of shitty things, she's not well liked among fans. We only get about five minutes glimpse of Hannah in a timeline where Ulrich was never in her life, so it's hard to judge what she's like without any of that history).

Comments

[pauraque]

I don't think it's weird to write a couple together when you don't think the relationship is a good idea. I'll definitely write pairings to explore the conflicts or the toxic aspects when if these were real people I would be advising them to stay far away from each other. :P

[tellshannon815]

There are definitely a lot of toxic aspects with this ship, but this does generate so much material.

Another example I have (different show - Alice and Ocean from Batwoman, my ultimate NoTP) is one where I tried to fix the sloppy, sloppy writing in the original show (short version: Ocean does something so shitty that it never made any sense to me for Alice to be as forgiving of him as she was).

[profiterole_reads]

I don't remember much about Dark, but in general, I don't think it's weird. I guess you write more for the characterisation than for the shipping. Different people write for different reasons.

[tellshannon815]

Yeah, that's true, I've probably always been more about the characterisation. In Hannah's case, a lot of her actions have been influenced by her feelings for Ulrich, and I wish we'd seen a bit more of the version of her where he was never in her life, to see who she could have been.