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There is no moment where Rose realises she isn't dying. There are a bunch of little ones instead.
Moment one: Twenty-five, five years on from a windswept beach in Norway and something like a life weathered ever since. Family, a few boyfriends, a job with danger and running and saving the world from inconsiderate invading seals - yes, it makes a life. And seeing her face in the mirror one day, feeling a hundred and looking twenty still. Just a fleeting moment of something feeling wrong, but mirrors do lie. Not as good as humans, but they do lie.
Polar bears bring penguin friends and life goes on. Aging does not.
Moment two: Night before turning thirty, getting drunk in a bar with Mickey and Jake, both looking older and not one bit wiser, and Mickey grinning to her over a beer. "You never change, Rose," he says, slurring the words in ways that make Jake giggle and look young. "You never change..."
Rose does change. Her body just doesn't pay attention.
Moment three: Running into traffic at thirty-three, and feeling a hand on her arm yank her out of the way of a speeding car at the last moment. "You could've been killed," her rescuer tells her, his smile white and his hair smelling of rain, "without me here.". A knight in shining raincoat, who she dates until smiles aren't enough to bridge an abyss of differences. Gratitude doesn't keep her around either.
After all, she isn't all that sure she would've been killed without him there.
Moment four: Fourty and looking into a different mirror. Emily Tyler, half Rose's age and not even looking one day younger. Getting confused for twins by strangers and giving up correcting it after a while. After all, they are sisters. Just with twenty years apart that isn't showing.
Something's very, very off with her reflection, so Rose stops looking.
Moment five: Fourty-seven, watching Jackie in a hospital bed, fading away. Pete isn't crying, but Rose cries for them both, at least until she feels her mum's hand in hers, bony and skin like a funeral drape. "I'm so tried of fighting, love," Jackie Tyler says. "You'll understand. Look at you, not even a grey hair yet. You'll understand when you've got a head full."
There isn't any hair product to get grey hairs rather than hiding them. Rose looks.
Moment six: Sixty-two, sitting in a park with Pete after he's told her he's got three months left to live. Feeling a wind in her hair and watching pigeons peck for food amongst the fallen leaves, another autumn leaving its mark on London. "It's time, Rose," he says. "It's just my time. Do you understand?"
Rose doesn't. Nothing feels like her time anymore.
Moment seven: Seventy-five, and holding for the first time Jonathan Tyler Creddick, son of Emily Tyler and Henry Creddick come screaming into the world. "Hey," she says, feeling a hand clutch her one finger, "I'm your aunt, even if I'm old enough to be your grandmother..."
When she gets home, she sits in the dark a long time, feeling for wrinkles and only ending up with sore fingertips and a smaller eletricity bill.
Moment eight: Eighty-one, getting clawed in a dark alley by an angry polar bear and watching her own blood make patterns across a grafittied brick wall. So much pain, too much pain. No darkness, no silence, just her own ragged breath after the polar bear leaves her to die. Only she doesn't, and ten minutes later her body looks as if nothing's happened to it at all. Since twenty.
Only the blood on brick remains, and Rose can't deny something's very, very wrong anymore.
I need someone to remind me to actually write on this thingand not bugger off to play WoW and beta. Needn't be the same people. Volunteers?
So that aside, been thinking of love and romance and OTP and fanfic and what-not of late, particulary with some of the discussions on T&C. And it's no surprise that these show how many different ideas of love seem to be at work in a group of people. So what forms these ideas? Here's three I would certainly name.
1. Own experiences - not just relationships you've had, but your parents' as well, I'm thinking. I know my parents have influenced me. Over thirty years they've been together, and I've seen ups and downs, but I've never doubted they love each other. In a very Norwegian way, it has to be said. I think the exchange I've heard from my parents that most have shaped some of my ideas is the simple one they seem to every other month or so. "You know I love you, right?" my dad will say. "Yes," my mother will say. And that's it, really. They do know.
2. Fiction. Hereunder books, soaps, films, all that jazz. Maybe even fanfic too. Many do seem to sell a sort of romantic ideal. I mean, I read romance novels (yes, I do. Yes, I know), I watch soaps (well, sometimes), I cheer on people I think should be together. Part of me obviously really enjoys the romantic ideal. But not all of me, which brings me to...
3. Human inate cynicism/mild nastiness. Okay, this is just a pet theory, but I really do believe we have something not too nice with us as well. That part of us that can actually enjoy seeing people hurt or hurting them ourselves. Not a nice side, now. But it is there, and I do think that influences how we see love too.
What do you think? And how does this influence fanfic and shipping? I know on my part, I certainly do believe in love, but I'm not sure I believe in the romantic ideal. I just maybe find it a nice fantasy. Maybe I write like that too. I'm not sure.
Discussions be welcome, in general or of own experiences - for now, I gotta bugger off to bed and dream of tall, dark strangers and snogging on the moors. Or something like that.
There is no moment where Rose realises she isn't dying. There are a bunch of little ones instead.
Moment one: Twenty-five, five years on from a windswept beach in Norway and something like a life weathered ever since. Family, a few boyfriends, a job with danger and running and saving the world from inconsiderate invading seals - yes, it makes a life. And seeing her face in the mirror one day, feeling a hundred and looking twenty still. Just a fleeting moment of something feeling wrong, but mirrors do lie. Not as good as humans, but they do lie.
Polar bears bring penguin friends and life goes on. Aging does not.
Moment two: Night before turning thirty, getting drunk in a bar with Mickey and Jake, both looking older and not one bit wiser, and Mickey grinning to her over a beer. "You never change, Rose," he says, slurring the words in ways that make Jake giggle and look young. "You never change..."
Rose does change. Her body just doesn't pay attention.
Moment three: Running into traffic at thirty-three, and feeling a hand on her arm yank her out of the way of a speeding car at the last moment. "You could've been killed," her rescuer tells her, his smile white and his hair smelling of rain, "without me here.". A knight in shining raincoat, who she dates until smiles aren't enough to bridge an abyss of differences. Gratitude doesn't keep her around either.
After all, she isn't all that sure she would've been killed without him there.
Moment four: Fourty and looking into a different mirror. Emily Tyler, half Rose's age and not even looking one day younger. Getting confused for twins by strangers and giving up correcting it after a while. After all, they are sisters. Just with twenty years apart that isn't showing.
Something's very, very off with her reflection, so Rose stops looking.
Moment five: Fourty-seven, watching Jackie in a hospital bed, fading away. Pete isn't crying, but Rose cries for them both, at least until she feels her mum's hand in hers, bony and skin like a funeral drape. "I'm so tried of fighting, love," Jackie Tyler says. "You'll understand. Look at you, not even a grey hair yet. You'll understand when you've got a head full."
There isn't any hair product to get grey hairs rather than hiding them. Rose looks.
Moment six: Sixty-two, sitting in a park with Pete after he's told her he's got three months left to live. Feeling a wind in her hair and watching pigeons peck for food amongst the fallen leaves, another autumn leaving its mark on London. "It's time, Rose," he says. "It's just my time. Do you understand?"
Rose doesn't. Nothing feels like her time anymore.
Moment seven: Seventy-five, and holding for the first time Jonathan Tyler Creddick, son of Emily Tyler and Henry Creddick come screaming into the world. "Hey," she says, feeling a hand clutch her one finger, "I'm your aunt, even if I'm old enough to be your grandmother..."
When she gets home, she sits in the dark a long time, feeling for wrinkles and only ending up with sore fingertips and a smaller eletricity bill.
Moment eight: Eighty-one, getting clawed in a dark alley by an angry polar bear and watching her own blood make patterns across a grafittied brick wall. So much pain, too much pain. No darkness, no silence, just her own ragged breath after the polar bear leaves her to die. Only she doesn't, and ten minutes later her body looks as if nothing's happened to it at all. Since twenty.
Only the blood on brick remains, and Rose can't deny something's very, very wrong anymore.
I need someone to remind me to actually write on this thing
So that aside, been thinking of love and romance and OTP and fanfic and what-not of late, particulary with some of the discussions on T&C. And it's no surprise that these show how many different ideas of love seem to be at work in a group of people. So what forms these ideas? Here's three I would certainly name.
1. Own experiences - not just relationships you've had, but your parents' as well, I'm thinking. I know my parents have influenced me. Over thirty years they've been together, and I've seen ups and downs, but I've never doubted they love each other. In a very Norwegian way, it has to be said. I think the exchange I've heard from my parents that most have shaped some of my ideas is the simple one they seem to every other month or so. "You know I love you, right?" my dad will say. "Yes," my mother will say. And that's it, really. They do know.
2. Fiction. Hereunder books, soaps, films, all that jazz. Maybe even fanfic too. Many do seem to sell a sort of romantic ideal. I mean, I read romance novels (yes, I do. Yes, I know), I watch soaps (well, sometimes), I cheer on people I think should be together. Part of me obviously really enjoys the romantic ideal. But not all of me, which brings me to...
3. Human inate cynicism/mild nastiness. Okay, this is just a pet theory, but I really do believe we have something not too nice with us as well. That part of us that can actually enjoy seeing people hurt or hurting them ourselves. Not a nice side, now. But it is there, and I do think that influences how we see love too.
What do you think? And how does this influence fanfic and shipping? I know on my part, I certainly do believe in love, but I'm not sure I believe in the romantic ideal. I just maybe find it a nice fantasy. Maybe I write like that too. I'm not sure.
Discussions be welcome, in general or of own experiences - for now, I gotta bugger off to bed and dream of tall, dark strangers and snogging on the moors. Or something like that.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 11:12 pm (UTC)But I will freely admit that "my" pairings (in LOTR and Harry Potter so far) have been of the kind that takes time to be built and work to be preserved. I guess I am more or less influenced by experience and the wish that "my" lovers might succeed where I - sometimes - fail.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 11:47 pm (UTC)i will friens You if you please, that's not a common thing to discuss love two times a day in LJ - in Russian and in English
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 01:01 am (UTC)I don't know why people ship the way they do. I do know that I'm endlessly fascinated by all the possibilities of human interaction. So I really tend not to do the whole OTP thing, cause I find it too limiting personally. But I think that's probably an unusual way of looking at it, so who knows?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 09:14 am (UTC)Hmm.. my shipping tendencies.. well it varies when I was younger I was into the whole 'sweet, lovey dovey' romance thing and the first fanfics I wrote --which, thankfully were never posted on the net-- were cringeworthy things that were so toothachingly ROMANCE and or doom and gloom ANGST I wince whenever I come across any of my earlier works.
These days I find myself drawn to either:
a) a bantery-romance where one character is practical and the other a drama queen, where the practical one constantly has to roll her eyes at the OMG drama of the drama queen hero.
b) intense relationship with legitimate reasons for angst but not so much that it would be crippling for their jobs or people around them. sort of repressed angsting where it's not really noticed except when they're together and they have this intense moment between them. (i.e. Jack/Irina).
I suppose I got fed-up with all the needless OMG drama I've read in some romance novels and seen in shows where I just want to bop the lead's heads together.
Possibly, it's the reason why I love Nine/Rose so much is because they fall into both category A and B.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:25 pm (UTC)The concept of agape in a Christian sense (and perhaps a a bit on the C.S. Lewis interpretation also--I'm aware that agape has several philosophies attached to it) informs a lot of my ideas on love. As it pertains to 'ships and romances and whatnot, I find myself more drawn to those that have at least one person in it that is as capable of agape as a mere human can be. Not that they're perfect in selfless love, or that agape must also include eros, but I find it very appealing. I've found it in nearly every fic I've written that addresses love (although not necessarily romance, but many of those also).
I suppose my parents have also influenced my sense of love...they're not very demonstrative at all (at least not publicly), but I catch them every now and again very quietly holding hands or touching. I know that according to things said that they have only once gotten in a fight that was marriage-threatening, and that before I was born. So a romance doesn't have to be obvious at all for it to still be there. They do far more than they say, so I guess I would see a romance as something that is made up more of actions than words.
I have no experience of my own to draw on, but if my reaction to romance in fiction is any indication, I'm rather turned away from those that involve miscommunications that could so easily be resolved before they spiral out of control if the morons in the story would just be HONEST about things and talk about them.
So how that pertains to 'ships...those that appeal most are those that have one character in them that has an agape sort of love for the other ('S reason why I have Greg/Sara as a fantasy 'ship--when it comes to Sara, Greg seems quite capable of a form of agape...not only in words, 'A real man wouldn't mind' if his love smelled like death, but he'd jump at the chance to go to bat for her or just be her friend if that's all she needed or wanted from him), and where the characters are more toward acting out their love as opposed to speaking it. Seems I am also drawn to 'ships that have one person in it that needs some honesty smacked into them.
I suppose that's all rather idealistic, but that's how it goes.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 08:26 pm (UTC)My parents have been married for close to 40 years, and their relationship is very much as you've described, so that's probably influenced my view on love/romance in the same way.
Of course, mainlining Casablanca several hundred times at age 11 or 12 and just eating up the nobility of that speech about two little people not mattering a hill of beans in this crazy world probably has quite a lot to do with how I 'ship too...
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 09:58 pm (UTC)I'm not that far along in my Dr. Who obsession to understand everything and some names are new to me but I would be very curious to re-read this once I watch season 2.
*perks up* Beta? Offering?