varadia | (no subject)

Nynaeve/Lan, as I am reading WoT still.

Nynaeve/Lan is, for me, the only romantic pairing that really works in WoT. Their courtship is long and protracted and occasionally actually shows up ON SCREEN. I KNOW. HOW WEIRD. They talk, and they respect each other's opinions (even if Nynaeve will say Lan is only a man, so of course he's actually an idiot. In his case she does NOT MEAN IT). And they know exactly how much each values the other. And the audience knows it. They may not be all hugs and kisses and snuggling in front of people, and even behind closed doors they are oddly restrained in a lot of ways, but it WORKS for them, and it's real, and I adore it for that.

And honestly my favorite thing about them is that they are so content to be reasonably silent when alone, and just enjoy being together, even if he is reading books on politics and she is darning socks, or vice versa. Well, in Lan's case it would probably be repairing his leather and armor and stuff, and Nynaeve would be reading about surgery techniques and Power weaves, but same principle.

I second all of this. :D

I feel rather like asking Mary/Galadan would be cheating, since we talk about it so much anyways . . .

So: do me Coyote-Raven!

(Alternately, if we can do Wasteland - can we do Wasteland? - do me Anna-Daniel. :D)

I will do you both! Starting with Anna-Daniel.

Anna was--totally surprised by Daniel, and so was I. At the time she was used to humans being all 'back, evil vampire. Do not eat us.' And this one--she saved him from zombies, and he asked her to live with him. He was worried! And he was not creepy about it. So, like an alley cat, she eventually showed up one day in early winter and just .. .never left!

And then there was the point at which she thought he'd kick her out, because she is violent sometimes, and angry, and very very ruthless in odd ways. Nicky showing up really threw her, because that was such a hard time for her, and she did so many messed up things. But Daniel was--he was not upset about her being a bad person, he was upset because she LEFT. And that was kind of a revelation. So she came back, and she stayed.

And if anybody tries to make her leave, or hurt him, she will rip their arms off.

*solemn*

Oh, and the thing I like about them, above all others?

They are so sweetly domestic (but platonic! so far.) one minute, and then bickering like nobody's business the next. And it is OKAY.

I never quite thought Anna would go for that.

That's one of the things I like best, too!

Tell me the others!

Yes?

Well...Daniel is opening up to her some. He's not a secretive person, but he is a private one. Sociable, yeah. But he doesn't talk about himself very much. But hey, that's fine with Anna. But it isn't fine to never really say what you're feeling past the superficial, and they have been getting past that! It's cool.

Also I think they have a lot to learn from each other, just 'cause they're so different. Not just skills, but interpersonal interaction and friendship and all that stuff.

Daniel is also willing to sacrifice stuff for her. It's not an obvious pattern, because Daniel is a pretty nice guy. But most of the things he has done in the game were to his advantage. Even making friends and helping people out will help him. But Anna has snuck past that. So now he's flailing around trying to figure out where to go from here! It is awesome.

Coyote and Raven. Hmm.

*thinks*

They have a long and involved backstory that sort of explains the way they interact, but Jo and I will not share it with anyone and TORMENT YOU ALL. Er.

*kidding* *ish*

I cannot quite say Raven loves Coyote, because they are too entwined for that. I have said before and I repeat here that he regards her as his other self, though even that fails to describe it. He needs her to exist, to be his counterpart, to pull all the tricks that need pulling, to keep life interesting. To remind him who he was and who he will be and to call him stupid when he is and when he is not. He needs her to fight with, and to torment, and to punch him in the face when she needs it or he needs it or when they are both bored.

She is real in a way that few people are, and it's grounding for him. And he is crazy, so grounding is nice sometimes. And she is--her people are not quite his people, but sometimes it is almost enough for them both to remember the same people, and have visited the same places.

And she never left.

Sometimes he hates her for that, because he did.

So!

Raven and Moiraine.

So. Raven and Moiraine. What to say about them. *thinks*

Raven and Moiraine's first meeting kind of sets the pattern (oh irony) of the entire run of their relationships to date. They spoke of patterns, and Patterns, and how one might control the way a world goes. Ha ha ha.

And then they didn't talk for a while. The next thing to draw Moiraine's attention was Wash's resurrection, in which Moiraine was like 'AHA, a cure for DEATH. SWEET.' Only it wasn't. And then things kept going.

I think what cemented Ravens' affection for her, beyond the fact that she is a mischievous little scamp, but also very intelligent and clever and capable, is that she kept seeing him at his worst. Over and over and over and over. And then he kept seeing her at HER worst. And it was kind of like 'well, shit, we should band together over here'. So he tried to help her--which lead to the first teaching thing--about how to hold her world together using thread.

And it would have ended there but for Blodwen--wherein Raven saw Moiraine balefire a chair when she was crazy, and he went 'oh'. So then he told her that balefire could hurt him, and he's kind of crazy, so if Blodwen drives him entirely mad, plz kill him. And she said 'okay'. So now that her hand was on the killswitch, he could kind of relax. Around her, around other people--it was nice.

And he realized she needed to have fun, and so he'd torment her, and try to get her to eat, and pulled her hair and teased her, and eventually *gasp* she teased back! And now they have their own running joke, which is 'The Wheel weaves', and then Raven makes funny noises, or is like 'yeah, whatever, crazypants'. And it's kind of cute. And he cuddles with her when she's a kid. ANYWAY.

Next step in the inevitable downward spiral was--I think a big leap was when Raven made way for Great Raven for a while (Thanks Nyarlathotep!), and Moiraine actually said called him her friend, out loud. And she was sad that he was different, even as she was not planning on giving up on him. (Thank Ace for that kind of thing too--really this post should be about all three of them, in varying permutations). And then she held him to himself for long enough for him to promise to come back. Which he needed to do, if he could, and which he was grateful for, even as hurting him made her feel like shit.

So that was a major milestone--Moiraine calling him 'friend', and you can bet after he came back to himself he appreciated it. Which leads to the next thing.

The two (two?) times Raven has made her cry. One of them was in the wake of--I think of Lan coming back, and the confusion of all the time-stuff, and just her being so tired of losing things and people and always needing to be 'on'. Anyway, she cried on him, and he promised not to use it against her, and he hasn't. So that paved the way for her to trust him more, even as he is Raven the trickster and maybe not always the best person to be trusting. So. And that let him see her in ways he hadn't before, and that kind of crystallized that he has a personal stake in her doing well and being happy, above and beyond his general affection for people and wanting to teach them things. He wants to teach her things that do NOT hurt.

And then of course he and Ace both watched her kind of wearing herself down, and they kind of, without talking about it, were like 'she needs a support network that is not all stiff-necked and whatever. And we like her. Let's give her lots of hugs and never let her be stupid again'. So they kind of dragged her in when Raven came back to himself. And that was where, I think, for them, it became a family thing.

Then there was Maggie, which was something like Raven's gift to her, because boy does she need to let go every so often. And then she cried again *invests in handkerchief for Moiraine*, and some bits of the family thing clicked into place. But it wasn't until very recently that she actually admitted it out loud, and I am not entirely sure why she chose to now. It's been a while. But ever since all that. They--trust each other with odd things, and with secrets, and with a lot of the truth behind the public face, and I think it's both cool and surprising. Because on the surface, they do not have anything in common at all. But underneath they are both always working toward a goal, and wearing masks to one degree or another, and they like people, and they protect the people they love, and they are silly and hilarious. And cuddly.

And god help anyone that gets in their way.

(Because Ace has a TARDIS, and she is not afraid to use it).

And do not get me started about the muppets. *solemn*

Dean Winchester and ME.

Uh.

Sorry.

For real this time? Dean and Carmen. I just rewatched "WIAWSNB" today and continue to be intrigued by how he knows she's the one.

Dean and Carmen. Oh how I wish she was real.

She is down to earth, from what we see. She has taste, but she's not prissy about it, or demanding that he be something that he is not. She lets him be who he is, if that's a scuzzbucket who's a jackass to his brother, who would rather have a greasy diner burger and a beer than spend an evening eating really good steak and lobster and wine with his family, she is all for that. She's smart, and she's capable, and she doesn't seem to demand that he take care of her, but they take care of each other. I think that--that kind of thing is what does him in. And she's hot.

Dean has such a weakness for capable, competent women. For long-term stuff especially, but in short-term, too. (see: Cassie, and more recently Lisa. And his impressions of Starla--from Tall Tales).

And Carmen--her profession and her attitude--there are reasons Dean is crushing hard on Kim in Milliways. Many of them, and a lot of them stem from that episode, and from what we know of Cassie, too. Hee?

*runs away*

Galadan plz

So. Galadan. Wolflord of the andain, former left hand of darkness and ultimate evil, and secretly a three-year-old at heart. Don't ever tell him I said that. Galadan is a complicated guy, and man, I could write an essay on just what being an andain, half-god and half-mortal, has made of him, not to mention everything else. Anyway. Andain grow up fast--Darien goes from being two or three to being ten or twelve in an eyeblink, and he could have chosen to be older if he wanted. So how long did Galadan stay a kid? We don't know. I guess not very long, given the way he loves. It's possessive, like a three-year-old's, and all-in. I think it's why Lisen throwing him over for Amairgen, and Cernan (his dad) saying 'nope, son, I cannot kill him for you, sorry' hit him so hard, and resulted in him being a moron and running off to evil going 'I WANT TO KILL THE WORLD'.

And of course now, in Milliways, I am playing out the aftermath of his 'redeemination', as I like to call it. The hardest thing about him is that though he acknowledges the hurtful choices he made, he does not regret them. This is, of course, in large part due to the fact that these shitty choices resulted in the birth of Darien and the destruction of Rakoth Maugrim, and who could regret that? But Galadan is now largely about personal responsibility, and that is why he is not big on apologies, particularly for his evil deeds, because you cannot apologize for that. The scope of them is too much, too heavy, and all you can do, really, is not do anything like that again.

What I find interesting about him is how strange and difficult it is to get his respect, let alone his friendship. At the moment he has three people he genuinely cares about full-stop--Gabriel Tam, River Tam, and Mary Lennox. Mary Anne will probably be the fourth person added to this list, if anyone ever is. A lot of this is timing, really. All three of these people he manipulated in some way, when he was evil, but he would have liked them if he were capable of it. And after Paul and Cernan and the end of the trilogy--he could. And so he went to them and he pretty much confessed what he did--Mary first, because she had been actively harmed by him. This, I feel, is telling about his sense of honor, and how it works, and what honor means to him. He is incredibly pragmatic, so you know how much he cares about Mary based on the fact that a) he told her, and b) she ordered him around and he took it. And still liked her.

Ditto with Gabriel, in some ways. There are similarities between Galadan and all these people. I imagine he was much like Mary as a kid (for however long that was), and he can see some of his own faults in her, which is interesting. Gabriel is a lot like him as he is now, in terms of politico-speak and issues, and making amends (as well as being a leader of his people, and stuff) And River, as I have said to Gen very often, has many characteristics of the andain, which is one reason Galadan is capable of treating her as a functioning adult, even though she is clearly often buckets o' crazy.

And do not get me started on Galadan-Raguel. There is a lot going on there, and I enjoy playing it a lot. There are a lot of different layers of plotting and planning and strategy going on there, and I cannot wait to see how we keep on handling that. Maybe Galadan and Mary Anne can team up to kick some ass someday. I think that would be fun.

So what I like most about Galadan, I guess, is that you have this analytical, brilliant, ruthless pragmatism living side-by-side with this very absolute kind of love/affection, and there is a lot of conflict in that, and it is--that dichotomy is, I think, really what drives him.

Plus he's kind of leaning toward being a sociopath. Whee?

Asyr and Gavin :)

Asyr and Gavin. They should not work, and I think if they were two other people of their relative age and experience, they would not. But Gavin is smart, and responsible, and learns like a SPONGE. And he's mature for his age (or for any age, and I really do wonder where that comes from). And Asyr, when they meet--she's tired of being dirty, and sneaking around, and lying and hiding and backstabbing, and all of that. And Gavin, who is straightforward to a fault, and friendly and open and a competent fighter and whatever, is this great opportunity to really move decisively away from that. And she does. And they get to know each other, and even though she's a tiny sophisticated Bothan and he is a giant backwoods boy from Tatooine--they have similar opinions on warfare, it seems, and on how the Rebellion/Republic should go, and what they want out of life, and just--it is lovely.

And then Asyr is rumored to be dead, and she leaves him, and I can understand it, I can. Because he IS so young, and choosing to give up your life to another people, another species, and a planet so far from anything you know--you can do it, but I think she was afraid that he would grow to regret it and be too stubborn to give it up. And she could not--deal with that. And he IS honorable, and she would have to do some things that would not match up with his sense of honor, and she would not be swayed from that, and just--better not to have those fights at all. Better to let him remember her as a good person and not the Bothan Intelligence officer who was a lot more like her people (the best AND the worst of them) than most of her friends would want to believe.

And I really do and always will love their interaction when she took him to the Bothan party given by her friend. Forever <3.

So, tell me about Raven and Coyote while I am making dinner. I reserve the right to ask you another one after I answer your second one.

Unless you are doing that for Becca still. In which case, give me the Winchesters and Coyote from his view.

I have answered Raven and Coyote above.

So on to Dean and Coyote!

Dean--Dean has a real affinity for Tricksters, for many obvious reasons. He is promiscuous and funny and he fucks with people and he's a jackass and he gambles and drinks and carouses and has a dirty mind. Of COURSE he gets on with people who have many similar characteristics.

Plus Coyote is hot. Which always helps. Er.

Dean likes her, which makes him uncomfortable when he thinks about it, because she is supernatural and not human and she is kind of nasty sometimes. But he kind of gets her in a way, sometimes. And she kind of gets him. And he appreciates people not always taking him too seriously, and she's damn good at banter.

And in-bar--in-bar he doesn't really think about her as That Coyote, and when he's not at Milliways that unnerves him too.

But it's fun, and it's not hurting anybody, and so he's gonna keep on talking to her and not being respectful, and stuff.

And Sam'll just have to deal.

Okay, as we have demanded from each other: Coyote-Jordan from Coyote's POV.

Poor kid. Poor, poor kid. Most kids with gifts that crazy used to die before anyone figured out what the hell was wrong with them. It's often puberty or some sort of trauma that would activate it, but Jordan is pretty well adjusted.

Coyote tries to stay away from people with that 'marked for a Great Destiny' stuff. But Jordan looked up at her with huge eyes and said 'You can see them too?' Annnnd that was it. She is still intrinsically a parent in some ways, and that pushed all her mommy buttons. So, she had to do something.

Then Jordan had to be all brave and thank her and hug her. People don't throw themselves at Coyote in glee very often. It tends to win her over when it happens. So, despite eyeing herself and going 'WTF', Coyote will continue to tell Jordan the truth and help her in what ways she can.

Mocking her mercilessly about this will result in punching you in the face.

For Jordan--of all the people she knows with the gift (see, her Dad at this point), or who know she has it (HI MOM)--

One of them can do nothing other than be there for her at the moment, and the other kind of denies that it exists.

So having someone that was like 'oh. Yes. You too?' and who offered HELP that they promised was real help, and there was MAGIC, TOO, well--

Coyote has won the awesomeness of the year award. And Jordan is now a little less afraid than she used to be. Because now the scary bad ones cannot find her. Just the scary helpful ones. So.

That's something.

And maybe she kind of wants to sit on Coyote's lap and listen to her stories. Because Jordan likes stories.

So.

There!

Raven! Singular!

Okay! This one took a while! Because HOMG RAVEN. *g*

Raven in-bar is bags full of crazy, which comes out a little in his speech patterns, and also the ways he reacts in moments of extreme stress. HI MAD LAUGHTER. What I wanted to do with him was imagine what happens to a mythic creature when they world they inhabited is gone, and how they cope. Which, I think, explains where I was starting off with right there, and may go some lengths to explaining how all the bar-stuff actually went, and why.

Anyway, I digress.

Raven is a very difficult thing to get close to, in large part because he DOES love everybody--it's just not an immediately personal love, except for a rare few people. Ace, for one. Moiraine for another. Coyote too. And Adam (and kind of Alanna by proxy, they're working on it). He is not safe, not really, though there are ways in which he is utterly trustworthy. Like I say in the one part of backstory I have in his LJ, early on--Raven always helps. It's just usually in the long-term, or in demonstrating by BAD EXAMPLE what it is stupid to do.

He speaks in weird English because he has traveled so much that he gets languages confused, and so the grammatical structure bears no resemblence to any actual grammar structure that I know of. I hope no one wants to kill me for that. It's also a side-effect of his buckets o'crazy, in some ways.

He's very empathetic, he just hides it very well behind the jokey careless exterior, though he does, indeed, often think misfortune is funny. Because people get so ridiculous in how they cope with it, a lot of the time.

Raven can be ruthless, especially when it comes to teaching. He is not a 'soft' teacher, and hands on rubbing your face in it lessons are something he's very good at. Mostly because that is how HE learns, himself. He has absolutely no shame. None. He also has no sexuality whatsoever, in large part because he is made of clay and biology is annoying. That and he tends to get possessive, so not getting attached to someone in that regard is probably safer for a whole boatload of people, not least being him.

He's sort of adopted Milliways as 'home' by default, in large part because the people he likes/loves are there a lot, and in part because he is . . . from the end of the world himself. That's how he got there, and that's why his door opens on to what is really outside Milliways.

It's also why Raven's timeline is non-linear, because he still has a lot to do and a lot of people to meet/help/terrify/annoy. But that's why he is tired a lot of the time, and why he has a deathwish, and why he is so fond of Death herself.

Also--re: Nyarla plot. Dream has the keeping of all the memories Raven does not remember having. And he relives them in dreams when he does sleep, which he does not need to do all that often. But he does it because he likes it, he likes reliving those things he does not remember on awakening. And that is why Nyarla had the memory-pearl thing, and why Bad Things happened after. Not for Raven so much, as for the people that love him as Raven and not as the spirit that he was way back in the early days.

For that one I went off the Raven creation story that has his 'mother' swallow a red hot stone, and give birth to Raven nine months later. Thing.

And I think I have rambled enough on Raven's origins and sort of the stuff I put into making up his personality! Whee?

If you can remember, Raven and Morgan! If not, uh. *blanks. completely*

Ohhhh Raven and Morgan. How I miss their dynamic.

She was kind of crazy, but there were things he could teach her, and he did. He couldn't save her, though--he's not in the saving people game. And there were ways in which they understood each other very well. VERY well. And even when they were not talking about stuff, they were aware of it, as I remember, and ultimately he just wanted her to be happy.

And to stick it to fate.

Hard.

Multiple times.

*wry*

And there was flying. Wasn't there? Or maybe I only dreamt it.

X-23 and Logan.

NICE ICON.

*g*

Um. X-23 and Lan. Well, for one thing, I love the way they are both A-okay with not talking. And it seems to me that Lan realizes (or is starting to realize) that it's not that X-23 does not like to talk (though she doesn't, on many topics), but it's that she has no idea how to begin. She cannot make the first move socially for ANY MONEY.

And I like the way they are aware of each other's capabilities (at least to some extent), but wary about the motivations behind them, because they really do NOT know each other well.

And--I wouldn't describe either of them as idealistic, even Lan with his 'Light vs Shadow' thing (which is based in solid reality, because HI DARK ONE)--but they do have a markedly different worldview that hasn't come into play yet, and I cannot wait to see how things develop when it does.

Not to mention what she'll think of the Warder bond and what that means.

La!

*cracks up* That is not actually what I asked. But I asked what I did partly so as to not be utterly predictable and ask this one, so -- whee, answers!

And YES to all of that. Yes yes yes and I will be so very interested to see how things go.

Only you asked for X-23 and Logan.

SO CONSIDER THE PREVIOUS ANSWER A BONUS.

X-23 and Logan is both simpler and more complicated than X-23-Lan.

Largely this is because X-23 is his clone, and she's aware of that. She respects him, and is maybe a little in awe of him, and he's the only one she'll talk to about some stuff because he was there, or as good as--but she hates him, too. Because by being what he is, what he couldn't fail to be--he's the one that opened the door for what happened to her. Because the Facility is crazy.

And he seems to feel protective of her--probably a little because he has managed to feel at least a little responsible for her situation. Again, this is because Weapon X and the Facility--those programs are buckets o'crazy, too.

I do not think they've seen each other much, really. Logan knows as much as he does not because X talked to him about her past, but because Sarah Kinney sent him a letter. The same letter she gave to Laura (or would have if Laura hadn't killed her, oops).

But both X and Logan are prepared to do what has to be done--there are ways in which they are tougher than the other X-men, harder. Also more brittle (esp in X's case, some days). And their individual dynamic is a lot different. Logan forgot his past, forgot not being a violent SOB--X always has been one. She has no lingering memories of childhood, no suppressed instincts toward kindness and compassion and understanding, or even simple playing. She's a weapon that was never a girl. It's really no wonder she's having a hard time learning.

She's come to it years too late.

It is a delightful bonus!

And yes. *hugs X so much* Yeah.

Poor messed up kid. All that makes lots of sense.

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AND PART II (oops I exceeded the comment length, whee?)

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