Will Stanton and Barney Drew: Possible Couple

I mention in my review of the Dark is Rising series that I would get Will and Barney together in the future. (In the world of romance, I also think Jane and Bran from the same series would make an interesting couple.) 

The reason isn't only because I think the current ending--Will as the only remaining Old One and character who knows the truth--is rather sad and pointless... 

I also consider it dull.  

Barney is the youngest of the Drews. He is also an artist (like his mother). In the books, he is portrayed as possibly ten or younger. That is, he doesn't appear to age between the first summer and the final denouement. In character, he is entirely insouciant, being one of the few people on the train at the end who is entirely caught up in the moment. He is also, going back further, fascinated by King Arthur and makes some of the earliest, valid connections between clues and quest. 

Possible Barney

I decided that Barney grows up to be a tall, insouciant, happy artist. He never loses his interest in King Arthur. He may even end up on a couple of archaeological digs, and he would, of course, admire the show Time Team. 

Subsequently, he has always wondered if more was going on in Wales than what he and his sister and brother technically remember. And he has always wondered if there is more to Will Stanton than meets the eye. 

(In the books, he is initially the most reluctant to accept Will into their group. He is later, however, the most willing to follow Will's lead.) 

Grown-up Barney does some research in Cambridge or Oxford (a la Gandalf doing research in Minis Tirith), connects Will to the Old Ones, and tracks him down. 

Possible Will

In the books, Will's father is a jeweler/trader in unique antiques. Since I am not a fan of "I have all this knowledge--oh, the angst" personalities (one reason I like Elementary so much is that neither Sherlock nor Joan give Sherlock a pass because of his "special" burdens). I think Will would adjust to everyday life. He would use a background in antiquities to locate interesting pieces for his dad. 

So when Barney finds Will, he finds him at an estate, hunting up a rare item. He informs Will of what he has figured out and then sticks with him. 

The positive here is that as art/antiquity experts, Barney and Will could have their own series as they figure out historical mysteries and/or fraud-theft mysteries! Their differences--Barney is impulsive, artistic, and extroverted while Will is reserved, supposedly Mr. Ordinary, and ironic--would make for a more than decent and interesting partnership, romantic or otherwise. 

Who Does Colin End Up With?

Fans of The Secret Garden are rather obsessed with Mary and Colin and Dickon's potential romantic partners. I first encountered this obsession with an adult romance. Mary thinks she is going to end up with Colin, but it turns out he prefers men. So she ends up with Dickon. It's a kind of Lady Chatterley's Lover. 

The 1987 Hallmark movie makes Mary and Colin NOT cousins and she ends up with him (the older him is played by Colin Firth). Dickon is rather unnecessarily killed off. 

And the 1993 movie implies a crush between Mary and Dickon that makes Colin jealous. The issue is never addressed in the movie. I suspect it was there to remind the reader of Mary's part in the story. 

Me? I put Colin and Dickon together! 

Mellors of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Scudder of Forester's Maurice were  based on a working-class man, George Merrill, who lived (without anyone going to jail) with Edward Carpenter (Carpenter was capable of supporting a household where people didn't end up in jail). Merrill was ostensibly his servant--the intimate relationship was acknowledged by friends and they were buried side-by-side. 

In sum, Carpenter embodied the kind of utopian philosophy that 10-year-old Colin spouts off while Merrill embodied the (literally) down-to-earth  behavior that Dickon practices. They are decent representations of Carpenter and Merrill. (Both Mary and Colin are enamored of Dickon; in the book, it never crosses the line out of childish hero worship.) 

Two snags: Colin is not really the sit still type. I can't picture him voluntarily moving back to Misselthwaite Manor in his later years. He strikes me as a city-university lad. Or an explorer. Or an anthropologist. 

And Dickon loves Yorkshire. He is the Andy Griffin of his home soil. He wouldn't want to leave.  

In addition, for all Lawrence's praise of men of the soil (Forester was somewhat more insightful), people of Dickon's class could be far more conservative than people of Colin's class. Colin might find the Bohemians kind of staid (seriously--he's waaay out there). But he would get to know them. Dickon, on the other hand, has a large loving family that he wouldn't want to embarrass. 

I have Dickon and Colin find a way to stay together in my Thatcher-Damien heaven or heavens: in my Thatcher-Damien fan-fiction's afterlife, there are all kinds of heavens for all kinds of people. Dickon-Colin's heaven is a kind of Victorian/Edwardian steampunk city that sits next door to a Yorkshire-type countryside. 

As for Mary, I don't see why she needs to get together with anyone. I see her as a kind of Nellie Bly, heading out to explore the world and collect seeds from different countries. Why not?!  

Borrower Romances

I comment on Votaries that Mary Norton seems to have abandoned Arrietty's core personality in The Borrowers Avenged. I write, 

On the one hand, I can understand Norton wanting to give Arrietty more dating options than the exceedingly uncommunicative Spiller. And people, especially teens, do change as they mature. [Arrietty previously stated that she was going to marry Spiller.] 

Personally, I always liked Spiller. As I also write, 

Arrietty would travel up and down the river with Spiller and their borderline wild kids. 

Despite liking Spiller, I do agree with Norton's desire to give Arrietty options. Yet I don't agree with Norton so fundamentally altering Arrietty's interests. So I decided, Why not bring back Stainless?

Stainless is a boy of Homily's generation, which means that he is anywhere between 32-40 at the time of The Borrowers Avenged. As a boy, he caught a ride in a basket to the local sweet shop. When he came back, he was completely insouciant about the chaos he caused (everyone was looking for him) but had lost his beautiful complexion due to all the sweets he ate. 

It's a very funny short story. 

I decided that Stainless never loses that tendency to catch rides to places. He ends up in the luggage or coat pocket of a human who goes to a distant town, distant enough that Stainless might as well have gone to Antarctica. When he returns to his home turf many years later, he is older, wiser, quite adept at survival, and still restless. Borrowers get together to hear his reports of his travels. And he brings back objects to trade. 

Arrietty would admire him! Maybe she marries him. Maybe he married and had a son, and she marries the son. Maybe, because I like to consider all possibilities, he forms a relationship with Spiller, platonic or romantic. Maybe he and Peregrine get together--he writes a book and Peregrine illustrates it. 

I like the idea of a larger borrowers' culture beyond the Clocks. And I also want  Arrietty to have lots of possibilities, including, of course, Spiller.  

I should end by stating that Homily and Pod are one of the best compatible-with-distinct-personalities couples in all literature. Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton (who were a couple at the time) capture them perfectly. 

Lathen Fan Fiction & Slice of Life Moments

Another of my fan fiction projects is related to Emma Lathen's Thatcher mysteries. In my fan fiction, Thatcher is a banker with a male lover who also works at the bank and helps him solve the various mysteries that show up in the books.  

In line with classics romance, I have my couple break up once. But generally speaking, the revolving door relationship bores me. So after the required single break up, I had to find other sources for relationship growth. I took the slice-of-life approach, what Bones actually did (despite the tiresome Pelant arc) with Brennan and Booth. Relationship events focus on Booth's charity, Brennan's birthday memories, whether or not Brennan should run for president, Booth's father's bones (a big topic but handled in a very family, everyday way). 

In connection with one of my favorite Lathen's, Sweet & Low, I have Thatcher and Damien deal with the issue of presents. If you ever want to get people heated up about a topic that you think no one could possibly get heated up about, try presents! There's the issue of presents not being what people really want; there's the issue of presents representing emotional needs; there's the issue of power (the burden of a too expensive present); there's the issue of timing (when to give a present). 

For Thatcher and Damien the issue is the relationship's status. Thatcher is still accustoming himself (in the 1970s) to the idea that his and Damien's relationship is not some que-sera-sera arrangement that will fall apart at any second. Damien is still adjusting to finding a lover who wants the same type of monogamous-picket-fence-in-the-city relationship as he does. They aren't sure WHAT their gifts mean.

* * *

Thatcher: My relationship with Damien was under some strain. Damien moved in at the end of ’74. I didn’t spend that Christmas with him but rather with my family in the Hamptons. And then there was the issue of our gifts.

[Damien: Not so much an issue. It was more amusing than anything.]

Damien got me tickets to the Statue of Liberty. I got my subway-train-bus-rider lover a $6,000 car. Damien was less than enthused. And uncomfortable. When I suggested we use the tickets a few months later, he tried to shrug them off. I insisted. We New Yorkers have a tendency to avoid our own icons. It was an enjoyable outing.

On the way back on the ferry, I said, “The car was a mistake, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Damien said. “Sorry.”

He didn’t need to apologize. Damien is adept at gift-giving. I couldn’t match him. Remember, Miss Corsa often arranged for the gifts I purchased.

Damien assured me that he also enjoyed our day together.

I said, with only partial self-mockery. “That’s the kind of thing a young man says when he takes an older man on an outing.”

And then my impish lover said airily, “A car is the kind of thing an old man gives to pacify a young lover.”

I had to agree, but I felt it necessary to point out that I didn’t think of Damien as a “boy.” Or gigolo. Whatever the current term was.

I sold the car and bought Damien a first-edition Sherlock Holmes. [A Harper’s American first edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes currently sells for approximately $2,500; in 1976, Thatcher got one for about $50-$200.]

[Damien: That’s about the time we started reading Ellery Queen together.]

Yes. Things got better. 

More Heyer Fanfiction: Aubrey & Oswald

Oswald behaves rather like Scott Baio

on Love Boat, who acts like Igor

when embarrassed.

As I mention elsewhere, I find it easiest to create Heyer fan-fiction if I keep the rules of a social order in mind. I also find it easier if I try to stick to the rules/plot of the original text. 

With Venetia, I kept Venetia and Dameral, one of my favorite couples in Heyer's fiction, as they are.

For a male/male relationship, I turned instead to Oswald. Oswald is one of Heyer's most delightful characters. A young man from a neighboring estate to Venetia and Aubrey's, he has convinced himself that he is some kind of Bryonic hero and pursues Venetia in that way...until a true Bryonic male, Dameral, shows up in the area. Oswald immediately recognizes that in terms of broodiness and a dark past, he is seriously out-classed, mostly because he has the most prosaic, ordinary, non-dark past of any male of Venetia's acquaintance. 

Edward Yardley, the pompous guy who also pursues Venetia, tries to scold Oswald. But Venetia is more understanding.

In my fan-fiction, Oswald is actually interested in caustic, scholarly Aubrey, Venetia's brother However, Oswald's family's estate is one of the few that has passed through a bloodline (rather than through adoption). He pursues Venetia, and does so badly, because he is doesn't know what else to do. When his parents decide he is making a pest of himself and send him away, he goes to see Aubrey and confesses his feelings. 

Aubrey is too self-protective to take Oswald seriously since he knows what Oswald's parents expect from him.

However, when Venetia marries Dameral, Edward ends up marrying one of Oswald's sisters. It turns out, Oswald's genial father doesn't much like Edward either. Oswald's father would rather work with rakish Damerel and competent, straight-forward Venetia than condescending Edward. If Aubrey and Oswald marry, then Venetia can stand as "doyenne" to the estate, and one of her and Damerel's clever sons could inherit after Oswald. 

Consequently, the estate passes from a bloodline inheritance to an adoption inheritance. 

Estate matters settled, Oswald goes to Greece to find Aubrey, who is carrying out his beloved research. After they marry, they spend 1/2 a year in Undershaw and 1/2 a year abroad. 

What amuses me about my solution is that in Heyer's Venetia, Venetia and Dameral do in fact remain well-liked by the locals, despite Edward's tut-tutting. My solution takes advantage of the book's wrap-up.

A-Z Romance! Harrington & Heyer Fan Fiction

The Lords of the Armory books by Anna Harrington brought home three truths (for me) about romances: (1) A problem or plot is always better than a bunch of "meet-cutes"--Harrington supplies the former; (2) a conspiracy or Big Bad makes my brain go numb; (3) yaoi/M-M romance is attractive for a reason. 

In truth, I so admire stories that have actual problems/conflicts that must be solved, I might have kept reading Harrington's novel if the main romantic couple had been male-male. 

But conspiracies don't interest me--and romantic heroes who badger romantic heroines for information while the romantic heroines stalwartly refuse...interest me almost as little. 

I much prefer to watch the hero and heroine work together. There are traditional romances that accomplish this end. In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory presents a dour hero and a cheerful heroine who nevertheless work together to salvage her father's business. Imagine if Eliot from Leverage got together with a female version of Hardison...

And therein lies the attraction of yaoi/M-M because both would simply use Eliot and Hardison. 

The Anne Harrington book A Relentless Rake starts with a brother and half-brother (father's bastard) receiving instructions on their assignment. And I immediately found the brothers' relationship more interesting than the possible romance. Granted, they are brothers, but that biological tie is easily kept or tweaked; the "working" partnership could be explored in terms of friendship and/or romance. 

I've discovered the same with my Georgette Heyer fan fiction. In some cases, keeping the original pairings is more effective. But in some cases, a male/male pairing become infinitely more interesting.

So, for instance, with The Unknown Ajax, I kept the original pairing--Hugo and Althea--but concentrated on Richmond and Vincent in my fanfiction. In the book, Richmond is a wild young man who wants to go into the army. His doting grandfather refuses. Richmond appears to become quiescent but in fact is busy running a smuggling ring. Vincent is a sardonic man who doesn't appear to care about anything. Even though Richmond looks up to him, Vincent keeps his distance until matters reach a crisis. Then all the cousins have to pull together. 

Richmond and Vincent coming to terms struck me as far more interesting than the warring supposed opposites, Hugo and Althea. Hugo and Althea are a decent couple but so much "oh, no, I'm not REALLY attracted to you" bantering does get a tad tiring after awhile.

That is, I prefer Nick and Nora--already boon companions who banter--working on a separate problem than what my mother (in a different context) once referred to as "revolving door" relationships. Richmond and Vincent are already friends. The issue isn't one of "yes, but do I really like you?" The issues are Richmond's tendency to hero-worship and Vincent's tendency to cynicism while, on the action side, the issues are Richmond's desire to get a commission and Vincent's willingness to drop his pose for at least one other person. 

Great Sci-Fi Couple: Sarek and Amanda

On Votaries, I am writing about characters: good characters, bad characters...

I have reached "D" and must mention that Diane Duane does a fantastic job with Sarek and Amanda in her Star Trek novels, especially Spock's World.

For all Sarek's gruffness, he belongs in the ranks of notable romantic males because he is drawn to strong, outspoken, direct women. His second wife, Perrin, who appears in Star Trek: The Next Generation, carries herself with the same impressive confidence as Amanda.

His wives are also quite unapologetically friendly and human, precluding the idea that like must fall in love with like. They don't attempt to turn themselves into Vulcans, simply because their husband is rather quintessentially Vulcan.

The actresses are Jane Wyatt and Joanna Miles. Sarek, of course, is played by Mark Lenard, whom I consider the definitive version.  (I am aware that James Frain plays the younger Sarek, which casting choice I considered a vast improvement on Ben Cross. However, I haven't seen any James Frain episodes.)

In Spock's World, Diane Duane goes back before the series to give us readers Sarek and Amanda's courtship. Amanda is a translator and comes in contact with Sarek over the translation of the word that could mean "no emotion" or "restrained emotion." She can get him to laugh! She later becomes head of his House--a large extended family--on Vulcan.

In the Star Trek mystery novel The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, a woman tries to kill off Amanda because she is smitten with Sarek and thinks she will only have a chance if Amanda is out of the way. 

I so admired Duane and Lorrah's expansion of Sarek and Amanda's relationship, in my own fan fiction (about a different couple) I evoke Sarek and Amanda: a crazy human woman moves to Vulcan, thinking that moving to Vulcan is all she has to do to become another Amanda. Since the crazy woman is otherwise culturally "deaf," she keeps offending people as she tries to snag herself a high-powered Vulcan man.

Hey, Sarek is hot and only has eyes for Amanda. And Amanda is something of a powerhouse!

Instant plot fodder.

Learning from Fan Fiction: Every World Needs Rules, even Heaven

My Emma Lathen fan fiction is based around Damien Smith (a new character) and John Thatcher (Lathen's detective). The fan fiction starts in heaven: Damien's recent arrival requires that he and John give testimony about their relationship--namely why they should be together. 

Damien, John, and their advocate review each of the cases they worked together to explain how they came to fall in love and then live together despite "lying" to a great many people (in the 1970s) about their relationship. (Neither of them cheated on anyone; Thatcher's wife died five years earlier.) 

That's Part I. 

Part II is Damien and John solving cases in heaven (or, rather, multiple heavens). The cases they solve have to do with people they met during the original cases. 

The premise here is based on my belief that death doesn't actually solve anything (which is one reason killing off a character is a writing cop-out). I get exceedingly tired of the idea that dead people get all noble and sweet-tempered the moment they die. 

Thatcher is younger in heaven.

The aura is the same.

I also don't buy into the idea that once a case is solved on Earth, the dead would be satisfied with the resolution and whisk themselves off to strum harps on clouds. Why wouldn't they take revenge in heaven on people who forced them to "shuffle off the mortal coil" too early? ("I had so many plans! You ruined everything!")

But that position immediately raises the issue: Would heaven let that happen?

I realized that I needed to make up rules in order for Part II to work. 

The Rules

1. New arrivals end up in the heaven/town/region that fits their moral code. They can change heavens. But no matter what heaven they want to settle in, they must go through a "confession" for that heaven (become citizens).

2. The "confession" is not about admitting sin but rather about giving the council (of angels) and the human individual a chance to assess, "Am I in the right place?" 

3. If the confession remains incomplete, the new arrival is at the mercy of other members of that heaven/town/region. The angels cannot protect them.

4. Angels also have agency. Some of them believe in the Mike-Baxter-do-it-yourself-and-learn-the-hard-way approach to moral self-understanding. Some believe more in the social-work model. Some demand that humans earn money to take trains between heavens. Some give out free passes. Some, like Castiel, may even focus entirely on one human or set of humans.

5. The cases that Thatcher and Damien handle in multiple heavens (as consulting detectives) mostly deal with people switching heavens for a variety of reasons. Because these non-citizens have not yet completed their "confessions," they are open to assault by thugs and others. They can't be killed. But they can be kidnapped, stalked, attacked, stolen from, locked up, accused falsely, and otherwise inconvenienced.   

Continuing Story

So Thatcher's now-dead wife, who married him until "death we do part" and always saw herself as somewhat above the whole soulmates' cliche, has discovered that (a) the angels don't care how advanced/down-to-earth she is in her thinking, in part because she no longer is on Earth; (2) soulmates have cache in the heaven she has selected. 

In other words, the reputation that she had on Earth as a smart, practical, "sure I'm faithful but he is only a man, and marriage is about compromise, ladies" wife of a powerful banker--a reputation that was honestly acquired--no longer carries the same weight. 

She consequently detests Damien and doesn't understand Thatcher's consistent low-key refusal to go "back" to what worked on Earth. 

So she hires thugs to take Damien into a different heaven before he finishes his confession. 

Damien was rather sick of the heaven he was in anyway. He wants to be with Thatcher. But he is far happier in Victorian Steampunk with Modern Attitudes heaven than Thatcher's heaven. (His boarding house in Victorian Steampunk heaven is run by a woman who doesn't mind him having a boyfriend but does insist on "no shenanigans before marriage!").

Thatcher tracks him down. Damien finally agrees to complete his "confession," after which he and Thatcher move into the heaven Damien prefers (Thatcher has the easygoing moral code of a guy who can basically end up anywhere). Steampunk heaven is their home base though they are often asked by angels to investigate disappearances and problems elsewhere. 

* * *

Why Rules Matter

Both Part I and Part II are a fun way to explore the books and various characterizations. In Lathen's first Thatcher book, Banking on Death, the victim is a completely self-absorbed man who is always looking for an angle. He doesn't bother to revenge himself on anyone when he gets to heaven--nobody ever mattered to him that much. (In fact, in my fan fiction, he keeps ending up in heavens that petition to have him thrown out. Eventually, he goes to work for the Borgias and wheedles his way into the good graces of each relative in turn.) 

However, the original book includes his bitter, shrewd, selfish and hysterical mistress, who loathes the man's estranged wife for no very good reason. 

That mistress WOULD try to take out her grief on someone in heaven, such as the estranged wife. Thatcher and Damien would have to figure out who is spreading false rumors about the estranged wife, then track down the culprit and get her removed to another heaven. 

But if everything in these heavens was all sweetness & light--or if everything was "yeah, whatever, it's just anarchy with angels"--then, well, my detectives wouldn't have much to do. 

People have to be able to behave badly for my detectives to have something to investigate. And the problems have to be repairable for my detectives to have long-range goals.

Fan Fiction Solution to Frederica: Alverstoke & Jessamy

Alverstoke's sense of humor!

In a prior post, I debate whether Alverstoke and Frederica would really make a believable couple. 

In my fan fiction, I get Alverstoke and Jessamy together. 

I increased Jessamy's age (from 16 to 19) but kept his essential personality. I thought Jessamy's gravity made a nice "complement" to Alverstoke's somewhat quizzical above-it-all view of the universe.

I used my Regency fan-fiction world's "marriage mart lad" background to emphasize that Frederica has misread the situation with Jessamy as she did with Charis: due to their father's misuse of money, Jessamy has passed the point where he can be a marriage-mart-lad. To be presented so "late" would imply that he was looking for a lover, not a husband, and Jessamy is conservative enough to want a husband (a realistic character trait that many M/M writers utterly miss, assuming that "gay"="clubbing"). He is also deeply rational and realizes that he has more opportunities than Charis re: getting on with life, so he sets out to become a parson, a job with which he has a true interest. 

Alverstoke has numerous encounters with Jessamy in the original book. He takes Jessamy driving and lets Jessamy handle his horses. At one point, Alverstoke is forced to deal with damages caused by Jessamy's huge dog, Lufra. After inadvertently destroying a Pedestrian Curricle, Jessamy goes to Alverstoke for help. He and Frederica both encourage Alverstoke to follow Felix when non-stop Felix ends up in a hot air balloon. Jessamy turns to Alverstoke for help with his studies. And he ends up moving with Alverstoke, Felix, and Frederica to Alverstoke's estate. 

Jessamy

As mentioned, I increased Jessamy's age. I additionally allow for a longer time span while Alverstoke and Jessamy sort out their feelings. I do have Frederica marry (not the lecturing Buxted!) and become Alverstoke-Jessamy's "doyenne"--that is, she will supply them with a heir since Endymion and Charis's offspring would not be the best choice to manage a huge estate, unless that offspring is completely unlike his parents. 

In sum, I frankly thought Jessamy and Alverstoke had more in common than Alverstoke and Frederica, especially since Alverstoke doesn't impose his version of Jessamy's life all over Jessamy's experiences. In fact, Alverstoke and Jessamy at one point in the original text discuss how making mistakes as a youth makes one a better parson in the future. Alverstoke has no more interest in religion than Frederica but he does have the capacity to see the world in more than one way. 

But then, as mentioned in numerous previous posts, I prefer Beauty and the Beast to Cinderella. Show me a couple operating together rather than a couple coming together after many, many hardships and misunderstandings.

Learning from Fan Fiction: Minor Characters Work Best

In an earlier post, I mention that my Georgette Heyer fan-fiction only works if I pair the couple's problems to the world's expectations. 

I have also discovered that the most satisfying stories are usually about minor characters. That is, in Venetia (one of my favorite Heyers), I kept the main characters' story but expanded on a story of Venetia's younger acerbic brother, Aubrey, and Venetia's erstwhile suitor, Oswald, who keeps forgetting to maintain his pose of a brooding Byron. 

The satisfaction of the minor characters' story arises not just from creating an hitherto absent pairing but also from using the minor couple to mirror the larger action.

In Heyer's text, Oswald is amusing because he immediately realizes that Damerel, the true Beast of the tale and Venetia's soulmate, is the "real thing" when it comes to Heathcliffian angst. Oswald cannot possibly compete. Aubrey is interesting because his acerbity masks a deep irritation at people who condescendingly pity him for his limp. Venetia never does. Venetia's expectations regarding a relationship--a soulmate who will take her statements seriously--begins with Aubrey. 

Taking Aubrey and Oswald forward, so Aubrey admits that he still desires companionship after Venetia marries and Oswald grows out of his Gothic-phase and accepts himself as a non-disillusioned romantic, was an interesting process. Venetia and Damerel's resolution dovetailed with Aubrey and Oswald's forward momentum.

Many viewers' favorite couple from Joan of Arcadia

I think potential and mirroring is one reason minor couples work so well on television shows and sitcoms. Not only do viewers still get a romance, they also get to see why the main characters work or don't work. Bones was quite happy to marry off the people who surround Bones and Booth, before and after their marriage. Those other relationships highlight that Bones and Booth are one type of marriage, not the only type of marriage. They are quintessential Bones and Booth, not a generic couple. 

The important (and often missed) point is that the minor characters' romances cannot substitute for the main characters' romance (though Chandler and Monica got awfully close, especially for those of us who think that Ross and Rachel are too awful separately and together to really work). The minor characters work because they occur in reflection; they operate as foils.

They do become many people's favorite couples!

Lessons from Fan Fiction: Why Disengagement Ultimately Doesn't Appeal

Disengagement--hiding oneself in a monastery, taking vows that absent one from the daily grind, giving up the difficulty of paying bills and interacting with people--does appeal. Of course, it does! Simon & Garfunkel's "I am a rock/I am an island" wouldn't attract otherwise. (Even if the verses are meant ironically or tragically or maybe just grumpily.)

And as the final act of a story, disengagement might work. But for an engaging, ongoing narrative arc, it doesn't much. 

For my Emma Lathen fan fiction, in which I make her detective, John Thatcher, ten years younger and gay, the issue of disengagement arises around Come to Dust, the 8th Thatcher novel.

My fan fiction combines material from the books with my own interpretation: a fiftyish, gay banker previously married and fathered three children; the time period is the 70s. (I picked the mid-range since, like many detectives, Thatcher's books cover a thirty year period yet Thatcher never ages). A widower at the beginning of Book 1, he forms a relationship with a male lawyer at his bank.  

They break up at the end of Stitch in Time. The two men, Thatcher and Damien, are fundamentally conservative (a reality that activists often miss, believing that "gayness" is somehow the same as "interests," which is a weird conflation all by itself). Thatcher was faithful during his marriage though not out of romantic or religious inclinations. Rather, he has a deep distaste for the complications of affairs: all that lying and prevaricating and fibbing and hiding and so on and so forth. That attitude continues into his new relationship.

Damien is more willing to compromise but understands where Thatcher is coming from. He isn't the type to get angry and put his and Thatcher's jobs at risk. So they have a non-angry breakup.

Of course, then I had to get them back together. 

Enter one of the most interesting of Lathen's novels, Come to Dust. 

*Spoilers Follow*

In Come to Dust, a prim, remote, aloof man, Elliot Patterson, decides to leave his wife of many years and his two little daughters and become a monk. He supposedly tries to tell her his plans (a later character believes that he did try but the wife simply couldn't hear what he was saying, she was so devoted to the "I and my perfect husband in perfect simpatico in our perfect marriage" story). So he simply leaves. 

But he leaves in such a way--and with certain documents--that immediately cause problems for those around him. An unconnected accident with the car he sold complicates matter. However, the real complication is that another character takes advantage of his disappearance to steal a donation (believing the theft will be blamed on Patterson) and then commits murder. 

In the end, Thatcher figures out where Patterson has gone. At the very end of the book, he visits the man, who took a classmate's name to enter the monastery. That goal is now naturally on-hold. Yet the man himself remains clueless about the fall-out of his actions.

Thatcher thinks the following:

[Patterson] was the slow, careful driver entering a speedway at a thoughtful twenty-five miles an hour. Behind him, brakes are jammed on and seventeen cars pile up in a chain collision. Or, as in this case, he leaves in his wake a murdered boy, a middle-aged man sitting in a jail cell, a wife and mother suddenly staring at her daughters in wild incomprehension. (251)

Whenever I read praises of Leo Tolstoy pursuing radical beliefs for the sake of a noble end while treating his wife with near contempt, I think of this paragraph. 

In my fan fiction, his encounter with Patterson is Thatcher's wake-up call. Throughout the book, after the breakup, Thatcher acts as "the unattached friend of the family" to fellow alumnus, George Lancer and his wife. He attends shin-dings and dinner parties and acts the part. And he's mostly bored. 

Sure, having an ongoing relationship with a male lawyer from the Sloan will be difficult, complicated, and potentially messy. But abandoning a strong relationship with a decent human being, who is certainly not going to make life more difficult, for the sake of orderliness doesn't accomplish anything. 

He and Damien are clever. Why not apply that cleverness to a bit of subterfuge that doesn't actually cross ethical lines? 

I don't have them split up again since revolving door romantic fiction bores me. But hey, it had to happen once!  

And it raised the interesting issue of disengagement versus engagement, how far it goes, and when either should occur.  

In this case, no re-engagement, no more stories to create! (Imagine if Scully said, mid-Season 1, "You know what, I think I will just go back to medicine. Visit me sometime.")

Learning from Fan Fiction: Tie the Relationship to the World

My Georgette Heyer fan fiction is based on a premise that shows up in other M/M historical romance--namely, that in this Regency England, M/M relationships are accepted. The very funny and Restoration comedy-like novels by J.A. Rock and Lisa Henry present this premise up-front:

In 1783, the Marriage Act Amendment was introduced in England to allow marriages between same-sex couples. This was done to strengthen the law of primogeniture and to encourage childless unions in younger sons and daughters of the peerage, as an excess of lesser heirs might prove burdensome to a thinly spread inheritance. 

In newly written stories that start with such a premise, the romances justify themselves. However, in fan fiction, the writer should try to capture the original feel or plot of the stories. 

Heyer wrote romances with Restoration comedy twists and turns. Her books are far less acerbic than Restoration comedies but just as reliant on disguises and witty villains and chase scenes and mistaken motivations and so on.

I discovered that simply replacing female characters with male resulted in exceptionally bland summaries (not that I minded, since summaries are always good practice...but bland). In order to make the fan fiction work, I needed to tie the new male characters to the world's rules. 

In my Regency England, men can marry each other but if they do, they must either designate an heir from among living relatives or arrange for a doyenne to produce an heir. Some estates still require heirs based on a bloodline but many estates do not. On the latter estates, an adopted heir has all the legal power and rights of an heir by blood. Male debutantes (referred to as marriage mart lads) still have more freedoms than their female counterparts but are more closely supervised than other men.

From The Foundling

With world rules in mind, when I married Gervase from The Quiet Gentleman off to Drew Morville with Martin as their heir, I used the circumstances to pay-off Martin's supposed motive in the possible murder attempt. In The Foundling, when I brought Gideon and Gilly together, I used the relationship to create consternation in Gilly's uncle, who doesn't want anyone to imagine that he is trying to promote his own son, Gideon, to the estate. And I gave Aaron from Arabella (which novel would have to be renamed) an additional motive in his attempt to bamboozle Mr. Beaumaris. He is not only exasperated at Mr. Beaumaris's coolly superior air but frustrated at being designated a "marriage mart lad" in the first place. 

It was an interesting lesson in pay-offs. If a story requires twists and turns, those twists and turns need to arise out of the world's expectations. If, for instance, social standing and parental approval are not part of a world's culture, nobody needs to run off to Gretna Green. Part A needs to be in place for Part B to work. 

It was also a good reminder that characters need something more than luuuv or despair to get by. Deciding that one's environment is entirely corrupt and worthless might be an interesting epiphany (it isn't really) but it is an epiphany that is entirely useless plot-wise. Characters need a stake in their world, a reason to change circumstances or themselves.

Learning From Fan Fiction: More and More and More Couples!

While working on Stargate SG-1 fan-fiction, I realized--all over again--that the writers and producers of Stargate SG-1 were rather brilliant. There's a reason it lasted so very, very long with so very many spin-offs. 

The brilliance? It pays off arcs. 

In my efforts to keep my fan-fiction romances going, I began to add in characters: a Victorian guy who was kidnapped by Loki, placed in status by Thor, and returned to Earth with Jack. How does he cope? A grumpy citizen from Pelops, who is greatly tired of all the happy people. A gruff, embittered FBI agent encountered during the run-in with Set/Seth. 

Whenever I felt that one relationship had reached completion, I brought in a new one. 

And I realized that the writers did something similar. They paid off Daniel's arc with his wife. They had Jack meet the Asgard. They paid off Apophis (finally). They paid off Anubis (finally). They paid off the replicators, which interested me not a whit. But the point is, they kept re-imagining the team's mandate without ever losing the team's cohesion. They even moved Jaffa culture forward in various ways. 

This is not quite the same thing as throwing in extra characters. Seven-of-Nine worked but Ro Laren didn't much. But since my focus is romance, it worked for me!

And I realized that many romance manga series--yaoi and shojo--do the same thing. The main couple isn't constantly put through the wringer. Instead, other couples enter the picture, get their own story, and then step back for yet another couple to have its time in the sun. 

As a writing solution, keeping the core stable while altering the "big bad" or the current relationship trouble is quite intelligent. That SG-1 producers/writers did it with action/adventure is impressive, especially since they found (more or less) the best line between drawing the viewer in with the most important element (the team) while changing out the bigger plot elements.  

It also explains why something like Quantum Leap doesn't fall to pieces: as long as Sam & Al are our guides...

Learning from Fan Fiction: The "Twin" Couple

When creating fan fiction for Georgette Heyer characters, I ran into a problem.

I wanted to get together two characters: Kenneth from Death in the Stocks and Gavin from Detection Unlimited (which ending I altered). 

Problem? They are very, very similar. 

Kenneth is an artist with a caustic wit and pen. Gavin is a mystery writer with a still more caustic tongue and pen. 

Could they truly survive a relationship without, well, shooting each other or having massive fights every three minutes? (Princess Margaret and David Armstrong-Jones's relationship was rather like this.)

The text provided me with two saving graces: (1) Although both are caustic about the human race, Kenneth is devoted to his sister. He has family feeling. (2) Gavin is willing to be amused. 

Still, I couldn't help but consider that the couple might suffer what I deem "married to a comic" syndrome. Some comics can stop being comics when the camera shuts off. But some comics are always on-stage. Being married to someone like that would be exhausting (and likely explains why so many comics of this type have terrible relationship histories, e.g. Jim Carrey, Robin Williams). 

Being with someone who is constantly delivering caustic bon mots about human fallibility would have much the same effect. 

The solution? I had just about given up when I realized that one solution would be if Gavin and Kenneth decided that the other was an "insider." Kenneth treats insiders, such as his sister, with warmth and affection. Gavin would need to make the leap, not because he had a good home-life but out of a desire to have someone on his side. Once Kenneth's witty comments became "inside jokes," he and Gavin could indulge in wink-winks against the world. 

It wouldn't endear them to their neighbors. But it would save the relationship.  

Interestingly enough, in the Lords of the Underworld series, Showalter solves Strider's problem in a similar way. Strider is host to Defeat and constantly, unrelentingly competitive. But he ends up linking his girlfriend into the equation. A win for her is a win for him. 

However, generally speaking, there may be a reason that "opposites attract."

Learning From Fan Fiction: Difference is Not the Same as Revolutionary

My choice for Ben and Simon

On Votaries, I reference my Voyager fan fiction. I present a confrontation in the Mess Hall between one of my fan fiction characters, Ben, and my fan fiction villains, Crewmembers Piyus and Malyce, the bullies of Voyagers. 

I also use Ben and his husband Simon to spoof intellectual academics in the episode "Living Witness," a fascinating episode about how people retell history for ideological ends. 

Ben and Simon are from Gemine. On Gemine, twins marry. Ben and Simon's relationship conflict is mostly based on Ben being raised human since he was approximately six years old. Consequently, he has human mores. Outside of Cleopatra's Egypt and some Japanese manga, the taboo against incest is a given among humans. And likely would be for most Star Trek species. 

In other words, Ben and Simon are a perfect case study of "diversity" or "fighting the system" or whatever people tell themselves to justify throwing temper tantrums. And they highlight a huge mistake made by leftist academics and even, it appears, by folks on the supposed right, namely: 

Difference = avant-garde, challenging, progressive, revolutionary, edgy. 

The reason Piyus and Malyce detest Ben and Simon so much is that Ben and Simon don't perceive themselves as needing a defense. They don't want to be a token diversity/outsider couple. Philosophically and behaviorally, they are the most orthodox, down-to-earth, non-edgy couple on Voyager. By a huge margin. Ben works in languages. Simon works in security. If they lived on Earth today, they'd have a house with a picket fence. Dogs. A cat. A kid. They'd attend PTA meetings, go on family vacations, support middle-of-the-road politicians, pay their taxes, back the rule-of-law, play sports on the weekends. They would strive for "average, normal, everyday." 

In the episode "Living Witness," a copy of the Doctor attempts to correct an inaccurate historical record of an event in which Voyager got caught hundreds of years earlier. The mafia-alternate version of Voyager is actually a lot of fun. The Doctor's efforts to tone down not just extremist positions regarding Voyager but the extremist/conspiracy rhetoric regarding various crewmembers is well-rendered. 

In my fan-fiction, Ben and Simon appear in the recreation of evil Voyager as fellow brother-warriors. Even the angry people who hate Voyager can't imagine that Ben and Simon were lovers. The Doctor corrects the record, much to the consternation of multiple academics who find the thesis/premise of their dissertations demolished. 

Ben and Simon's relationship is not included in the new recreation (don't want to offend the children! or cause riots!) but academics can obtain permission to go into the archives and learn more about them. Various historians write dissertations on the Alpha Quadrant’s “aberrant” sexual practices. 

However, these dissertations are naturally debated by historians who claim that within their own culture/evolutionary biology, Simon and Ben were “natural,” even orthodox, and shouldn’t be perceived as outliers or rebels or progressive/revolutionary symbols. 

Yup! Their creator concurs!

And I couldn't help but reflect, again, on feminism, and how many current "acceptable" sponsors of the political face of feminism present themselves as rebellious and edgy despite being quite reactionary. In the meantime, true outside-the-box thinkers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are treated with contempt. 

The difference: the so-called "acceptable" sponsors look the part of "not like us!" Ayaan Hirsi Ali has embraced Western culture. 

It is, unfortunately, yet another example of how high-school and appearance-based a lot of current political doctrine turns out to be.

Learning From Fan Fiction: Crime-Solving Couples Need Their Privacy

My choice for John Thatcher

On Votaries, I reference the changes to John Thatcher's character in the later Emma Lathen mystery novels.

The changes created a problem in my fan fiction and elucidated for me an archetypal need in detective fiction. 

My fan fiction for Thatcher is an attempt to solve the Bones problem from a M/M standpoint: outside of Boston Legal and romance books, is it possible to have an ongoing "slow burn" gay romance alongside murder mysteries?  

Which brings one to--what are the components of the successful "slow burn" romance with television murder mysteries? 

Damien

The most important is that every mystery ends with the couple alone, together, discussing the case as well as their lives, the world, philosophy, art... 

Think Alan and Denny from Boston Legal.

Bones and Booth have friends (a scooby-gang), but they eventually, always, cycle back to each other, even before they marry. This is, in fact, part of what makes them so entirely satisfying to viewers. They are a variation on the couple on an island, where I also place Scully and Mulder. Although they are not literally on an island, their complementary personalities place them on a metaphorical island. 

Elementary impressively does this with Sherlock and Joan, despite not taking them down the intimacy path. Nearly every episode comes back to a conversation between the two friends at the Brownstone.

Many Castle episodes revolve around Castle sitting at Kate's desk to shoot the breeze. Miss Fisher episodes often end with Phryne and Jack reflecting on the case. And as mentioned above, Boston Legal uses this approach with Alan and Denny, which I will discuss in another post. 

In my Emma Lathen fan-fiction, John is a closeted gay banker who married and successfully conceived three children. He also never strayed since he has a deep personal distaste for such shenanigans (which attitude influences some of his decisions with his new lover). His wife died approximately 10 years before the books begin when Thatcher was 50ish, a detail I kept although I shortened the time frame between her death and the first case/book. 

Thatcher forms a relationship with Damien Smith, a Sloan lawyer, 23 years Thatcher's junior, who helps him solve crimes and eventually moves into his apartment. I (mostly) kept the time period (1970s) so gay marriage--and for relatively conservative men, an open gay relationship--is off the table, but the most important people know (Thatcher's daughter, Charlie Trinkam, other colleagues at the bank, Miss Corsa who pretends she doesn't know). In the meantime, they solve crimes! 

Not a bad book--but

Thatcher's personality is subtly altered.

However, I discovered that the qualities of exclusivity, privacy, and total reliance that I'd given the relationship--and that appear with Bones and Booth/Holmes and Watson--didn't entirely work if Thatcher lost his wry self-aloofness. 

The bon vivant personality that appears in the later Lathen books gives him a more man-of-the-world anything-goes attitude. Instead of going off on his own--with one other person--to contemplate the answer to a riddle, that Thatcher works alongside a crowd, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in the outcome. He is just going along. 

In Going for the Gold, where Thatcher is still Thatcher, Thatcher reflects that "[it] would be impossible to convince Withers [bonhomous man-of-the-world] that anyone standing alone, however briefly, did not yearn for integration into the nearest group."

The Thatcher of the later books, in which he loses much of his fundamental personality, is very much a guy who never stands alone.

The group approach might in fact be more common to true criminal investigations (as numerous police procedurals indicate). But literary crime-solving couples need that "us versus the world" island for the relationship, and the crime-solving, to work. 

There's a reason Holmes and Watson are the forever-together prototypes.