the stars like dust

Pairings, the joy and bane of a slash (gen sometimes, het a bit) fan's fannish experience.

Why don't I conform to liking the ones that I should?

Why do I cling desperately to the ones I should let go?

How can I bribe people to write the ones that I want? Heh.

Seriously, I don't always understand my own mind. I should technically love Rodney/Carson stories, but I just don't. I love Rodney, so much, and Carson is his pal and also? They kissed! But Carson's insanity doesn't explain my complete inability to read him in anything sexual at all. There is no reason, but he will forever be that uncle-like  sort of sweet yet scary mad scientist, and it doesn't even help that I usually find mad scientists uber-hot. Some writers can get me to read, but even then I kind of blank out the Carson sex.  No clue here, he must just remind me of someone, though I don't know who. And considering how many people I'll pair Rodney up with happily, this is very odd.

I can easily pair Sheppard, technically, with anyone in the show. It's like in AtS where the hero gets so much contact with everyone in the cast that any shippers using Angel could make a case with no effort. But I don't *like* him with anyone unless it's Rodney, or Hth is writing it. It's not that I'm against him with anyone else (please! more the merrier, say I, so pair him with anyone you like and joy to you), it's that I'm gone. I'm just wandering off and finding the one where he and Rodney blow up another planet by accident and get thrown in the brig together, but then Atlantis is captured by aliens and they are forgotten, left to certain death and have to have sex. or whatnot. There are exceptions, of course, but they never feel quite right to me. If Rodney is with Teyla, or Ronon? I'm a brute, I think, because I love Sheppard to pieces when he pines. So much love. And it isn't that he's loving Rodney, it's the way Sheppard himself feels to me when he loves Rodney, because of who he is and who Rodney is.

I should *not* like Weir/Dex, especially NC17, because I usually find Elizabeth strangely off-putting sexually. And it should ping too many Fabio/random heroine buttons. But I do! They are perfect in my head.

Ronon/Teyla should knock me out, because I love Teyla and she's smoking hot and so is Ronon, who makes me wibble on a regular basis. But, though I find them wholly believable as a pairing, and am all for them, nothing. Now, if someone can direct me to the story that will correct this, please do. Ronon/Teyla is... everything beautiful and wise and. That's the problem, isn't it?

I think I'm starting to get it.

So people, enough about me. How about you? Tell me about the pairings you love that you ought to hate, or the ones you hate that you ought to love.

ETA: and by 'hate' I mean, not want to read at the moment. I'm operating under the "more fan fiction of any pairing for my show is good" theory of other people's pairings.