love and the objective correlative
Aug. 2nd, 2022 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliBeing noticing some patterns in fannish shipping of characters -- including of characters who are canonically married to someone else. And is in love. And may even have kids.
It really helps if you put the someone else on stage a lot. With the kids if they exist.
This doesn't always help, witness a lot of fannish shipping of characters whose love triangles are canonically resolved the other way, even though all three characters were onstage all the time, but if you don't have an objective correlative as T.S. Eliot put it -- an actual onstage manifestation of someone to inspire the emotions -- the emotions seem unreal.
Unless, of course, you can pull it off. But photos, phone calls, or talk -- a lady's favor in the right setting -- at least, will be needed to remind us that there really is someone there.
It really helps if you put the someone else on stage a lot. With the kids if they exist.
This doesn't always help, witness a lot of fannish shipping of characters whose love triangles are canonically resolved the other way, even though all three characters were onstage all the time, but if you don't have an objective correlative as T.S. Eliot put it -- an actual onstage manifestation of someone to inspire the emotions -- the emotions seem unreal.
Unless, of course, you can pull it off. But photos, phone calls, or talk -- a lady's favor in the right setting -- at least, will be needed to remind us that there really is someone there.