What sort of relationships between characters do you like? Handsome male buddies with lots and lots of slashy subtext? Romantic relationships that depart from societal norms? "Opposites attract"-style banter between a couple dying to jump into each other's arms? The True Minds scenario between two people worthy of each other? Close relationships between women that don't involve a man?

Is there a particular type of relationship you gravitate towards in more than one fandom? Particular character types you identify with more than others? Spill here, preferably mentioning Ace.

What kind of relationships I like to see really depends entirely on the fandom.

In Ace, for example, I'm more drawn to het, though it does have one of my favourife femslash pairing possibilities. I'm just usually drawn in the other direction. When it comes to Star Trek I'm open either way (because Star Trek is annoying low on equality in that department for such a supposedly open minded century and has never had a single gay pairing in canon... an androgynous one, yes, but never homosexual. And Data and Geordi are cuteness combined :P But in there one of my fave pairings is het. (Everyone loves Imzadi, right?) Then there's comic books - very drawn towards the prudy guys there, particuarly in Slash. Dick.Tim being my fave. And femslash there is always intruiging. Heck, Kory's... pretty much anyone's gift to that department. For an alien with big hair.

And again, the type of pairing depends on the situation. I prefer romances to fit the theme of the show - for exmaple if it's comedy, I like fluff and humourous pairings. If the show is serious and gritty, I stick to serious and gritty style pairing fics. hat kind of thing.

I'm pretty flexible when it comes to fiction relationship, basically.

Agreed.

Personally though, I think my favourite couples are opposite attracting couples. They are just soooo cute! :P

My fav kind of opposite attracting couples are the ones where the fem is evil and male good. Eg. Ace and LI or Carmen Sandiego and Chase Devineax(In case u didn't know they're from this cartoon and computer games, used to love them when I was younger)

They're something about those relationships that just gets me, I find them so interesting and cute. I have absolutely no idea why! :D

I think pairings are cute when they involve adorable characters :P Hence why Ace /Li is sweet, and they ARE opposites attract, as you say. It's a very curious dynamic, which doesnt nessecarily apply to real life, but works very well for fiction.

Then again, there's no saying that like doesn't attract like.

It's one of the standard cliches. :P Almost everyone likes at least one.

I'm rather fond of the "opposites attract" trope too; I find it exciting and interesting as a dynamic, though I have to admit that in some cases the opposites may be just too far apart. There needs to be some sort of obstacle and/or spark for a pairing to be interesting, so the opposites attract scenario works very well for that. Sometimes quieter pairings strike me as quite boring, though I know for other people pairings like "close friends gradually become lovers after a few trivial misunderstandings get in the way of a deepened relationship" work better than "two different people realise an attraction despite obstacles and/or strongly expressed differences of opinion". And of course people need to have *something* in common for the relationship to work in the first place. (Ex. Ace/LI: both professionals involved in their careers to such an extent neither of them seem to have had a serious emotional romantic relationship previously, both strong-minded, both intelligent.)

I really like to see relationships which trample on patriarchal norms. For example, Ace/LI does that for me, virgin hero paired with experienced distressing damsel, which I reckon is pretty cool. I also love strong and developed female characters, like LI. And a lot of femslash is based on women's agency and strength, so I like that aspect of it very much.

I tend to 'ship the canon relationships, especially if I actually like the canon, and also enjoy virtually any femslash pairing. What I'm not keen on is the het pairings that seem to have deliberately been passed over (ex. male and female character interact a lot in canon but are both attracted to other people and canon has never acknowledged the possibility of a long-lasting romance--that feels to me somehow 'uncanonical', like the writers deliberately chose Not To Go There; it's just not my thing), relationships with a power imbalance unless they're actually written as dysfunctional (and I prefer such dysfunctional relationships to be het with a dominant male figure, probably to Feel The Oppression that echoes RL misogyny), and relationships which seem to me to be utterly uncanonical. I'll only anti-'ship a canon relationship in rare cases, like if one of the characters is a Sue and I can really see that it could have gone otherwise. I think it's always important to *respect* that the canon relationships exist, no matter what we 'ship.

In general terms, I tend to prefer femslash to het to slash. I'm generally attracted to women, so femslash and het are the pairing possibilities with characters I can identify with/crush on. Nothing against slash, and a lot of slash pairings are indeed extremely well-written and involve interesting and well-developed characters. Harry/Draco is my favourite slash pairing, I think; it involves the "opposites attract" scenario, often involves deconstruction of textual biases (ie. "Slytherins aren't always evil"), and uses two quite complex characters who have a lot of canon history between them that could arguably lead towards a relationship.

Myself? I don't like the "close friends gradually become lovers after a few trivial misunderstandings get in the way of a deepened relationship", though occaisonally I see it work.

I think ,the issue with me is that I like to see close, loving, but platonic relationships. If Random/Ace was canon? it's be very itneresting and kinda cool, but I really do like them as friends without bringing romance into the equation. IT's cute to see friends "experiment" (who better than your best friend?) But I like the platonic side of thigns. It's an example, to me, that love is not just about physical attarction - and doens't have to be about physical attraction at all for it to be just as deep and meaningful. I especially like it between male and female because they always say physical attarction gets in the way and "a man casn't be friends with a woman if they're both straight" - so not true.

It's the same with, say Doctor who - he's never been in a romantic relationship with a companion, but you know he lvoed them all, with all of both his hearts. :heart:

I agree; there are all sorts of love, and Sparx' value as a character is not about who she's in bed with but who she is. And I like it when female characters have relationships and conversations that are *not* centred on men. While Mark is the main character and so Sam and Heather's screentime is often about him, their friendship seems to be much older than him, and remains in spite of their different opinions and even competition over him (it seems to be more important to them that they remain friends than which of them is currently dating Mark, which I think is great). And I also think that the LI/Sparx rivalry is about a lot more than Ace. But yeah, Ace isn't particularly good on the "female characters who aren't all about men" aspect, though certainly the female characters are strong and neither Sparx nor LI gets a narrow role of Love Interest.

Close frienships are important, and life is about a lot more than romance--genfic can be really fun and interesting without the characters needing to get it on.

As well as opposite attracts relationships I like OT3s and Love triangles.

OT3s- Normally I only really like 2 males and 1 fem (Iv got absolutely nothing about femslash just prefer slash) For example I like Random/Ace/LI. I think that OT3s are very funny, although sometimes get a little out of hand and wacked out.

Love Triangles- I am very particular with my love triangles. As per usual I like 2 males and 1 fem. (Don't really care if its 1 male and 1 fem in love with 1 male or 2 males in love with one fem, i prefer the latter, but only by a little bit) For me to like love triangles they can't be full of angst. U know, those ones that seem like they go on for ever with absolutely no action. I need a fight, and a resolution.

The Ace Show IS ripe for OT3's ain't it? Ace/Random/Li sounding like one in particular. Also, Ace has been constantly assumed to be a pivot point between Random and Sparx - a star with two others circling. (Something simiar could be said for Random and Li, though they don't get much interaction in the show. It would've been nice to see some.)

Plus the girls can just dump Mark :P

Eh, I don't *seriously* see many as plausible. :P But the girls should definitely dump Mark.

A Love Triangle I really dislike is the one where the 'fulcrum' has to choose between the Complete Arsehole and the Wonderful Angel. I'm not talking about Fear/LI/Ace-type situations, that involved an 'external' set of problems, but situations like the stereotypical 'bashing' fic (ex. making LI into a bitch so that Ace chooses Sparx). It's boringly predictable, and it doesn't say a lot nice about the character choosing if they're actually feeling torn between the obvious psycho and the True Love. And it's shallow characterisation, and when it's fanfic it seems to betray a certain insecurity--do you really think A would only choose B over C if C was completely evil?

I do come across a lot of fanfic stories like this. For example, in Batman comic books, in some continuities he had a child with Talia Al' Ghul, an Evil Overlord's Daughter he's shared a mutual attraction with, though he's also had this love/rivalry thing going on with Catwoman for ages. I read a horrific Talia-bashing story recently, good in other respects but needing to turn her into an incompetent whiny shrew just so the writer could make the Bat and the Cat get it on. (Which he shouldn't even have needed to do.) And some Harry/Hermione stories like to bash Ginny. It doesn't just happen in fanfic, though; originalfic authors often pull off the trick of creating a shallow evil character to stand as contrast to their oh-so-glorious heroes. It usually doesn't work.

In other words. the Mark/Sam/Heather triangle :P

I wouldn't define it like that, not in first season (and in second he didn't choose between her and anyone). It was shown they weren't exactly right for each other--she was just that bit too assertive for his relative passivity--but she was hardly demonised. It was also pretty civilised, with the Heather/Sam interplay and the apparent agreement to let the other pursue the boy they weren't taking up with at the time. Mark wasn't being stupid by choosing to date Heather, and their relationship never seemed to be anything more than a temporary blip between the Mark/Sam moments (and the planned ultimate Heather/Brett, I suspect; they actually seemed like a good match in 26 and it was a rather neat matching-off). I don't even think it technically counted as a "love triangle"; first Sam liked Mark, then Heather liked Mark but held back due to friendly courtesy, Sam gave up, Heather jumped in, and finally Heather gave up and Sam returned. All quite reasonable. Annoying (teenagers!) but not badly done in terms of characterisation. Sam/Mark/Kat in second season is what I'd define as a true triangle, though it does turn out that Sam didn't still like him.

The situation I despise is one where the main character is shown as somehow seriously torn between someone who's very, very obviously evil/psychotic/stupid/a rapist and someone who seems to have been created as their cookie-cutter perfect match by the authors. One of Louise Cooper's series just managed something like this, I think (though I never actually read all the books in the series); the hero (Tarod) originally fell for an attractive woman who was very interested in his social position. When he lost that, she proceeded to turn against him to improve her own standings. I think he was a bit stupid about her once more, but then he wised up and later fell for a nicer girl (who I quite liked). It wasn't a triangle per se, and it wasn't too obviously contrived. And Tarod's original poor taste was pretty understandable under the circumstances. (The Evil Woman was a bit too evil in the end, though, IMO; just that shade out of 'thoroughly nasty person' into 'caricature', with no sign of actual mental dysfunction that might've explained her a little better.)

And of cours ein the instance involving the "evul bitch" it's usually the physical traits of the character the main character is attracted by, rather than anything to do with their personality and natural behaviour. On the one hand it's an interesting moral message, but sicne the other girl is rarely LESS attractive than the evil coutnerpart, the appearace of the character still seems to be a dependant factoer in the eventual descision - so he/she goes for the "nice AND pretty" person in the end (unless they're not nice themselves) big deal! I'd personally like to see the UNATTRACTIVE characters get the girl/boy.

Usually the other girl is "more" attractive than the evil one, especially since she's usually a beautiful innocent maiden (*puke*) and the evil one is the older, stutty type. "Nice and pretty" versus "evil and pretty". Duh!

It is nice when the guy goes for the less attractive girl purely because he happens to like her personality. That doesn't happen nearly often enough; too often writers mistake "silver hair and purple eyes" for "characterisation". Male characters are permitted to be "rugged" or "scarred with the markings of many battles", but female characters are supposed to have flawless skin and model figures. *sigh*

Personally I don't think purple eyes and sivler hair are that attarctive... mysterious, yes, attraciuve no, though they may appear as such in fiction or anime. I hate the compariosn and Imaintin my perference of gen over most things.

Romantic relatinsips are great to explore and develop, even bizzarre ones, and for fanficcers can be a test of writing skill, but that doesn't mean the platonic doesn't have it's values

Amen to that. Go genfic! :)

It's also good in that so many female characters end up being shoehorned into becoming someone's Love Interest, when really they're more important than that; their central role shouldn't always be about who they're shagging. That's one of the reasons why I like Sparx: she's a female character whose role isn't as someone's date but as an important part of the plot.

Sparx is joy. She's both incredibly UNORIGINAL, as works with the plot, but she also has her original factors in the way those stereotypes are treated - we say she has a crush on Ace, but seriously, where's the proof? if anything we've seen that the opposite is true (though maybe in her childhood she found him very cute in a weird kinda way :P) I like the way Sparx was sued in the story, though I wish we'd gotten to see her in action in the final battle. In fact there's a lot I wish we'd seen in the final battle. Kilobyte seemed like such a real threat and then it was over, just like that. if only the seriews had conmtinued.

But back on topic - aceis short on good female characters, IMo, sparx is good, LI is intriguing, sam is "nice" heather is "spunky" and that's us - but it works that way.

She's..honestly treated. To compare, there's a similar character in DB called Kitt, who's also meant to be a spunky and talented sidekick. But all she gets are a couple of Grrl Powah lines (usually just before she's taken out by a guy), and there's this particular scene where a character who really was spunky and loyal and impulsive would rush in to help their friend/love interest, and Kitt just...stands there being generally useless. (Which she does a lot.) Sparx gets herself and Ace into trouble sometimes, but it's obvious she does help, and her characterisation ends up with actual negative consequences for herself and others (even getting blasted back to the 6D!). Her qualities are cliche, but how they're treated ends up as good characterisation because it's done so consistently. Give her something of a past to explain all that and you've got a really well-developed character.

The series so needed to be concluded. :( At least we have imaginations.

There were few female characters, and the CGI cliches were sexist cliches in origin, and Sam and Heather were from our sexist world--but (in the first season) they were all well-developed and well-written characters. Heather was strong and wasn't the right person for Mark (and vice versa), but she did end up with a guy who seemed more compatible; Sam was a genuinely nice person not without a bit of spunk (btw, does anyone recall the text of her 'aliens' speech? That's way more impressive than anything coming out of Kitt's mouth); Sparx wasn't there-only-as-love-interest and turned out to be a damn' cool character; LI got a great character arc--and, though the consequences for her actions did hurt her (as they had to, for the sake of Chekhov's gun), got to choose when and how she went out. (Her concocting an actual plan was much better than Fear just taking her down.) I'm also impressed that Ace really does seem to be a truly 'nice guy'; it's not a matter of obsessed-female-who-conveniently-dies-so-hero-can-shag-maiden or LI going from overlord's sidekick to hero's pet, but a strong female character making a valid choice.

(And yeah, Ace/LI is to some extent the rather bad "love at first sight" cliche, depending on their previous knowledge of each other in the 6D, but what it really consists of is various choices to not let each other die following explicable physical attraction, that the characters call 'love' in the sense of caring-for-another-person and that could develop into a consistent relationship with a bit more interaction.)

With Li/Ace we can at least speculate on their having a past (soarx's "it's always been perosnal between you and Ace, hasdn't it?" for example) they obviously knew each other beforehand. I have mental images of them being in some disaster together, possibly in a town square, and ending up working togethr to survive (Li in morph, perhaps) without knowing of each other's identity

On an interesting angle... is it a certainty that Li was always an evil which might increase the likelihood oif her and Ace having a past together... and, if not, what did she begin as?

LI looks like an evil (well, stereotype, anyway: Evil Women usually get to be better looking). She is prettier than the others, but she certainly doesn't look like a Knight either; her appearance would probably translate to 'mixed race' as a human. I don't know that the Knights would ever have accepted someone like her, or she them; Ace is fairly open-minded, but Sparx seems to regard all the evils as 'freaks', which is probably the attitude of the civilian-on-the-streets of the Knight domains. But she could morph, and I bet she's got some alternate aliases for the Knight areas.

I had a plotbunny like that too. :P A floor in the Haunted House kind of collapsed during a battle, leaving them trapped in the midst of the ancient magical ruins the House was built on.

You're right; that line does imply something between them, even if it is just some sort of professional rivalry (after all, she seems to be the one out of her and Fear to actually fight Ace, though he's orchestrating it all). She and Ace are certainly a more even match abilities-wise than her and Sparx.

Yeah, I remember hearing that including the dime store insults between L.I and Sparx in that episode. Yes I am back, and I am going with the excuse Lord Fear abducted me and took me to the sixth dimesion but Ace helped me escape so I'm back now. Hey that's a good excuse, must save it for a later occasion.

Relationships in Ace Lightning, straight hetrosexual, relationship style- don't really care as long as it is not necrophelia(did I spell that right?).
Favourite Couple Ace Lightning and Lady Illusion- I swear these two give Max and Logan (from James Cameron's Dark Angel) a run for most ignorant, I-don't-love-you, confused, whatever relationship of all time.

But even though you spent your time yelling at the screen' will you two just get together already, you loved every minute of it. Which is very twisted in a way I know but we want relationships to be hard on the shows we watch.

Very glad to see you back. :D :heart: :bunny: squee

An apt description; they both really have no idea about relationships, for different reasons. Of course that's all part of learning to become real, I guess...

And yes, relationships do need to be hard come by. Perfectly happy is perfectly boring, for the most part. ;)

*has just realised she hasn't yet commented on this*

I'm not a huge shipper, but I can enjoy anything that's done/written well. Happy working perfect relationships I find boring, I suppose I like stuff with tension. ;) I like when they have two guys that are able to actually interact or even be huggy etc. without being stand-off ish. Possibly to the point where people inclined that way are thinking slash, but I like the fact they can write that without going 'no, we can't do that! Someone might think it means something!' if that makes sense. Probably cus I have male friends who always hug each other. :P Looks stupid if they try too hard to avoid it. Guys can actually hug each other! :rolleyes: Again... tension... the first 'ship I'm officially all out for is full of it. :D And I like when people have actual meaningful conversations. Use relationship to drive character development people!

On a note to my post, I prefer stories/fanfiction/anything when the main point is not the romantic relationships. Family relationships, friendships they I prefer. Personally I prefer the whole evil father/ good kid relations in a story like Luke and Vader Fanfiction. Now that is good.

And I don't see many guys hug each other.

(Could not resist :lol: )

One of the greatest moments in cinema history...followed by Luke's hilarious and rather overreactive cry of NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! :P

Heh, I just compared HLA Hart and LL Fuller to Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in a seminar. :P (They were legal theorists with different ideas who had a bit of a knock-down debate about it in the Harvard Law Review, but they got on really. ;) )

and of course the number of times it's been parodied is rediculous. If I ever feel like disarming whatever meagre respect anyone on this board has for me (which isn't much, I admit), I'd tell you each of those cases.

I know :D I swear I have never seen many movies moments I like more.

And the parody I wrote of Star Wars had Luke crying because he wanted to be a ballerina and Vader throwing him off the edge.

I never said I was not weird.