beccastareyes

It's weird how Slayers fandom divides into camps. And, for all that I ship in the Slayers fandom, I sometimes wonder if I'm more in the 'mostly gen that loves the story and characters' aspect.

I look around at all the 'next gen' fic and 'L&G (or Z&A) fic that involves the story of how they stopped being traveling adventurers and started being Responsible Adults with Families' and I think to myself that I don't care about those stories. Some of it is because I still see the cast as being young people and not ready for settling down. I mean, geez, I'm not settled and I'm at least 4-5 years older than Lina is.

Some of it is that I don't think that the cast will ever truly settle down -- that Lina and Gourry and Amelia and Zel are characters who are most happy being active hero-types. For some reason, I see Amelia as the type of ruler who would be very hands-on, just as her father was/is, especially if she has a second parent around to make sure someone stays with the kids. And... well, part of me would be amused if Lina decided that her idea of stability would be ' traveling trader in magical goods and general-purpose investigator of weird stuff' rather than 'adventuring bandit-stomper and general-purpose investigator of weird stuff' -- it's slightly more stable in that she would be less likely to pick fights, and we know that she's a fairly good business-person. Zel... I can't picture much for him, since he can't picture much for himself, besides 'wandering mercenary, working for information to fix himself'. I know that won't last, or he's going to join Severus Snape in my head as 'characters who need to get over their past before they end up taking out grudges on unrelated people'. (All right, technically canon-Snape passed that point in Book 1 of Harry Potter.)

Gourry is perhaps the only character that I see willing to settle down, and then only because I see him as much more person-oriented than the rest. Lina loves her friends, but she loves novelty just as much. Amelia seems caught between her duties as a government official and her goals of being a Champion of Justice -- I can't see her giving up either. Zel is... Zel and completely putting the rest of his life on hold for his cure.

I guess because my favorite examples of couples in fiction are people like Hawk and Fisher or Wash and Zoe*, who are married and still lead interesting lives. If one could pull it off, I still like couples like Cordelia and Aral, or Dag and Fawn, or Izumi and Seig who end up more settled (and with kids or attempts at kids**, for that matter, unlike the previous two), but still have stories to tell, other than 'the time Miles or Nattie did something cute'. Or.. and I'm looking at my bookshelf now, Fee Carmichael or Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres or John Perry and Jane Sagan, or Sir Gerard and Lady Eleanor, or Miles and Ekaterin or...

* Okay, perhaps too interesting, in the case of Wash and Zoe. Curse you, Joss Whedon, and your desire to do nasty things to any established relationship you write.

** Okay, I'd argue that the Elric boys are Izumi's kids in all but biology, and that she's kind of shown as a teacher-figure to the town's kids.

... cutting myself off here. And I seem to have gotten onto a tangent expressing my love for 'married couples' and 'couples with kids that still have interesting adventures'. (There's an observation by Ekaterin in A Civil Campaign about how all fairy tales end with the princess happily married and that the only role for married women in these stories is dead mother or evil stepmother.)

On a tangent, can someone help me find more series/books with 'partner' characters adventuring that doesn't immediately let the UST take over. Another thing I like about Slayers is that nine times out of ten, it doesn't go into 'will they or won't they'? Most of the stories are about Lina and Gourry having adventures and being partners and not as much about hitting the reader over the head with possible romance -- it just lets the relationship develop. I don't care if it's gen stuff or shippy, I just want a story about two fantasy characters adventuring that doesn't involve the characters asking like high schoolers with crushes every other page.

(At this rate, I might have to dig out my Vows and Honor duology and see if I can still handle Mercedes Lackey's prose enough to read about Tarma and Kethry.)