The Ultimate Guide to Relationships.

I spend an considerable amount of my spare time in fandom, and have drawn many insights.  Below are the Soulmates specific mini-essays I've written....consider them ramblings of a devoted fan.  Enjoy.

NEW!  Romantic Triangles - The agony that shippers must endure

NEW!  Bad Boys and Kick Ass Girls

Soulmates Statistics - just how many make it?

The wonder that is Mulder and Scully

The evils of Star Trek romance

The Fan Fiction Thing

Fandom Swinging

Tragedies

More essays on Fan Fiction writing and reading are available here.

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Now, a lot of dedicated fans have a poor opinion of swingers.  It's claimed that we "betray" the fandom by moving on to something else, but if something new catches my interest of course I have to join a mailing list for it, and that means that some of my old ones have to go.  It's always hard to leave a mailing list, because of the great people you meet there (and I still miss MA).  But when you have over a hundred unread digests because you're too busy reading fic from the new show, you realise that it's time to move on.

Maybe I'll swing back into the fandom someday.  Maybe not.  I love each and every fandom with a piece of my heart, and they will all be special to me.  There are a few that go on my "all time greats" list (such as STAR WARS, B5, E2, Buffy, and perhaps Farscape) and some which I sadly watched go down the drain (Sliders, anyone?)  As my moods and interests change, I may be suddenly writing fic for something I haven't thought about in years.

Right now I'm swinging through the "buddy-buddy" aka "slash" fandoms.  They all contain a dynamic that fascinates me.  I long for more of the "traditional" science-fiction that I've loved, because everything new (The Others, Lexx, Dark Angel, Farscape) seems so dark and cold.  I need to care about all of the characters (not just the 'ship) and that's what I'm getting from my new interests - characters I care about.

I admire people who can stay in the same fandom for years and years.  I've only managed to accomplish that with 2, and that's because I know and love the people (and have met them IRL), and the volume of mail has significantly dropped.  They were also some of my first online mailing lists, so perhaps that's also why I've stayed.  But am I still writing in these fandoms?  Rarely.  I think I've said all I need to say, and written every possibility that's come to me.

I still can't understand how buddy/hc/slash authors manage to write so much on the same theme.  I love to read it (the 'deep' relationship pieces - I am a dialogue junkie!) but writing this sort of thing myself: I can do it once, and that's it.  Yet authors manage to write several huge pieces on similar themes, each story impressively individualistic, and I'm so impressed.

So back to fandom swinging - it takes a lot of time and dedication, but it's fun.  And even more fun is discovering all the new couples and relationships out there, to make the romance junkie even happier.
 

Look at some of my favourite couples.  John and Delenn, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Catherine and Vincent.  To me, these epitomise what Soulmates is about.  Either they have known each other throughout time, or they have an unbreakable mind/heart bond.  And all three of these pairs was parted by death.

Does that mean I am drawn to the tragic relationships?  Let's examine some more couples.  Susan and Marcus.  Jack and Rose.  Lynda and Spike.  Devon and Danziger.  Xena and Ares.  More pairs in which one of them is dead, or very near death so that they cannot be together.  And even Buffy and Angel or Janeway and Chakotay have been ripped apart.  One thing I have for the last two couples, though, is hope.  Hope that they will be reunited when their respective adventures on our screens end.  (On that note, Mulder and Scully had better get together at the end or there'll be hell to pay!)

All of this reminds me why I am annoyed that television often dictates the relationship.  For without the UST the show cannot go on.  And when an actor decides to leave, the relationship is destroyed.  Or sometimes they're just killed for emotional impact - and what an impact it makes.

So what's the point of this mini-analysis?  I don't know.  I just want to reaffirm my belief that somewhere, somehow, in some person's mind (the realm of fantasy where we all live for a while!) all of the above couples are together and happy forever.

For each of my favourites, I seem to go through stages.

1. Watch the show for every vaguely shippy moment
2. Begin to write fanfic about them.  Write either short stories or begin epics which are never finished.
3. Read every single piece of fanfic about them I can get my hands on (time permitting.)  (However, the more fic I read, the more discerning I become.  There are some things I just will not read because it disturbs me too much, and there's plenty of Happy!Fic out there to make up for it.)
4. Write fanfic about them, but this is different to last time because by now I have a much better understanding of the characters and of what has already been done.  (I like to write things that are different!)  Often, I write Death!Fics here because the majority of authors avoid them.  Yes, it's hard to kill characters you like, and I don't know why I do it.
5. Join a mailing list about the characters
6. Go back and watch the "Shippy" moments that fans rave about.

• The X-Files
• Earth 2 (Devon and Danziger plus all other fic!)
• Star Wars (TPM)
• The Sentinel (where it's either smarm or slash)
• Stargate: SG1 (particularly Daniel!Angst and torture, post-ep fics)
• due South (only RayK, sorry!)

• Star Trek: Voyager (Janeway&Chakotay)
• JAG
• Babylon 5 (John&Delenn - pre Season 4)
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Buffy
• Xena (Xena/Ares AND Xena/Gabrielle)