(no subject)

[nny]

I'm reading a fic on someone's journal right now, and it's got a header with Jack/Ennis, and the text says a love that will/never grow old. And I'm like... heh, you may be right, but it will grow a poorly judged mustache...

I dunno. Where do you stand on Happily Ever Afters? What's your ultimate one? Argument's sake, the greatest love story ever told is Romeo and Juliet, even though I hate hate hate that designation, purely because there was never time for the bloom to fade from the rose, as the clichés'd have it.

Me? I like Happily Ever Afters, so long as there's snarking. I'm a romantic of a queer sort. I like happy endings where no one admits that there're feelings involved, where there is much huffing and talk of putting up with each other, where people gravitate towards each other even if only so they can bitch. I like equality and co-dependence, I like a little uncertainty on both sides, I like bull-dozing with a layer of trepidation carefully hidden.

(Mostly, at the moment, I like John/Rodney. *grins* Also? Red wine.)

How 'bout you?

Comments

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

I believe in Happily Ever After, sure. Wait, wait. No ....

Okay, no. I believe in True Love, which is very different.

I don't believe in Happily Ever After, because then there wouldn't really be any interaction and growth and learning about each other. Just happy.

But True Love? That is just SO much with the believing. Love and partnership and mutual support and getting through the bad times together and everything ...

(Mostly, at the moment, I believe in the True Love of Azi & Crowley. And I'm drinking white.) %]

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeee. A/C is completely snarkily ever after.

(This is going to be declared as my preference from here on in, you realise. XD)

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

... snarkily ever after.

I like it ...!

[ashen_key]

I like happily ever afters...but yeah, a bit like the kind you have mentioned. Of course it depends on the couple involved. But one where they still talk and argue and snark and be stupid and be serious, but just that they are at least fairly certain that they have somewhere to return - fairly certain, or KNOW, it depends on the characters.

So far the best happy ever after I've recently read isn't even one that's described all the way in the books. Asterion-Weyland Orr/Corneila-Caela-Noah Banks. They've been married for centuries by the last book, and though they have drifted apart slightly, they go back together because they SUIT each other so damn well. They LIKE each other, and respect each other, and the love came from that rather then just sheer lust or passion. I guess that is what I like, a happy ever after where for all the arguing and snarking and passion, there is like and respect as well.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds sweet! What's that from?

[ashen_key]

The Troy Game, by Sara Douglass. I've actually kinda spoilered a large part of the third and fourth books with what I've just said, but they are my OTP right now. And. Will be for a while, actually. They are...okay, it's the best series I've read for a long time. The characters are getting reincarnated, and while the first book is a bit of a drag, oh my the others. The characters GROW UP. And MATURE. It's wonderful. It starts in Ancient Greece, with the Minotaur (who is Asterion-Weyland Orr) and his half-sister Ariadne plotting to destroy the world. Asterion spends the first two and a half books being the villain.

And. Weyland Orr/Noah Banks. For example, I can't find the exact quote but this is it paraphrased.

Noah: You know, you are the first man I've lived with to give me even the tinest bit of respect.
Weyland: Well, you are the first woman I have actually liked.
Noah: Oh, what a wicked witch I am...I have made Asterion 'like'.

[ashen_key]

Also, this?

I like happy endings where no one admits that there're feelings involved, where there is much huffing and talk of putting up with each other, where people gravitate towards each other even if only so they can bitch. I like equality and co-dependence, I like a little uncertainty on both sides, I like bull-dozing with a layer of trepidation carefully hidden.

Actually sounds like Ajedrez/Sands, in the AU that Susan and I are threading whenever our pups in bar make us go 'ow, ow, ow' too much. They spend so much time arguing and snarking, but in the end of the day they'd much rather be fighting with one and other then apart. And given that they both play things close to their chest, I think that there'll always be uncertainity there.

[skygiants]

"I think we ought to live happily ever after. It should be hair-raising."

"And you'll exploit me."

"And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me."

Howl's Moving Castle. Happily Ever After = snark + bitching over who gets the last muffin + equality + partnership, in the end, balancing out each other's weak points, and that's the kind that works for me, really.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I neeeed to read that book. The end of the film was way too schmaltzy for DWJ, excellent fun as it was. I really need to read more of her output in general, actually, since Archer's Goon is totally one of my favourite books of all time.

[skygiants]

That was my biggest beef with the film, was the schmalzty ending - that and the way they turned Howl into a paragon. And no, they can't do that, because Howl is selfish and vain and cowardly, and Sophie is insecure and judgmental and also kind of self-centered, and that's the point, it works because of the flaws. Not because of the lack thereof.

(And yes. More DWJ in general. Because she rocks.)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

YES. I was casting around trying to think of a Happily Ever After that I liked, and Howl & Sophie's is perfect.

[jezrana.livejournal.com]

I like realistically happy endings. Like, "happily ever after" may not be realistic, but "okay, we're still gonna have bad shit to deal with sometimes, but we'll deal with it, together, and the good's gonna outweigh the bad" might be.

Princess Bride the movie vs. Princess Bride the book is striking me as a good example, now that I'm thinking of it. Because the way the movie ends makes me grin and feel all romantic and girly, but the way the book ends rings more true , without feeling too pessimistic.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I don't think I like happily ever afters. I like awkwardly ever afters and realistically ever afters, though. And Ever Afters which aren't forever, because sometimes relationships don't last. But I think having a tragic mutual death is a young person's game, and I have somehow become old.

*sits firmly on fence*

[yakalskovich]

1) Sometimes there is something like a politicla reason for a happy ending, especially for a gay character or any other story about a 'forbidden' love - it doesn't always have to be tragic. That would give people the wrong message - do not attempt.

2) Sometimes, there is a dramatic and narrative reason for an unhappy ending - readers do like to bawl over books, viewers over films.

3) Some fic only exists to give charries the writers and readers care about their happy ending after all - see my icon, those two are a good if recent example.

4) In RPGs, though, too much of a happy ending kills the ongoing relationship. We need to go on writing after the 'happily ever after', and only ever smut or schmoop gets earfully boring after a rather short time. If we do let people get together, keeping up some sort of ongoing tension or plot is of the essence.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I'm always torn. There's my cynical side, which is all "well, yeah, people can love and support each other, but it is unlikely to last forever since at some point one of the people concerned will die, and also, long-term relationships of any sort take a hell of a lot of work - not that that work can't be worth it". But I do think love exists, caring and friendship and support and all those other good things can exist, and I do tend to want that for my favourite characters. (I think it's why I like angst - then I can feel that the characters earned that happy ending, on a level beyond 'I love them so therefore everything must be nice'.) I like stories where the happy - or maybe 'positive', because I don't expect them to be happy all the time, just... in a good place, mentally and emotionally and if needs be ecumenically - is tempered a bit, with snark and realistic details.

So, er, basically I agree with you? Not that this is much of a surprise...

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

I suppose part of the real-life difficulty of Happily Ever After is that it's...well, not ever. Both partners being mortal, and all (at least, presumably). This idea, that even in the best-case scenario, living in a peaceful time and place and raising a happy family with no one getting horrible diseases or suffering violence or not having enough to eat or etc. etc. etc., you still only get about 60 years together, tops, and not all of that time is going to be happy, stems from a few years ago when my grandfather had a stroke. He and my grandmother had always been sort of a...a real world OTP, happily married according to the above description; watching all the built-up habits and rituals and deep-seated bits of co-dependency disintegrate as they both found themselves no longer able to take care of each other alone was pretty painful, and it definitely made an impression on the way I write and read love stories. It's a bit like what I think someone or other said about Arthurian myth, and why it's appropriate that Mallory's version is titled "The Death of Arthur" - the end of the hero's journey defines them almost as well as their more famous adventures.

So I guess I've started mentally categorizing favorite pairings with that in mind.

1. It'll never, ever work out but oh god we'll never get over it - in which go many of the OMGWRONG or enemy-shipping pairings I get addicted to, and also those pairings where the canons have a strong thread of pessimism (Veronica Mars comes to mind); this may bleed in to one or the other of the following:

2. It's not going to be easy and everyone dies alone, but loving you is still going to be the most important thing I did with my life; maybe we can build something together that will last, even if it's only a story. (Jeeves and Wooster for the former; also The Princess Bride, Cyrano de Bergerac, and most of Discworld.)

3. We really will live forever and we'll always be together in some sense or another. And we'll be squabbling the whole time. (Good Omens and anything which involves an immortal falling in love with a mortal - Q/Picard and David/Luke from DWJ's Eight Days of Luke come to mind.)

A movie I've always adored for being conscious of all the drawbacks and sillinesses, but still being madly in love with love is Steve Martin's L.A. Story.

Forget for this moment the smog and the cars and the restaurant and the skating and remember only this. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102250/)

[florahart]

I am now stuck on "will/never" and trying to work out how will and never are going to get it on.

/weirdo.

will/never

[villainny.livejournal.com]

He admits that the determination is attractive. Annoying, yes, but there's something flattering about being pursued quite so singlemindedly.

"Never," he says, like it'll make a difference, like that isn't a hot palm (larger than he'd thought) skimming up his side. Like calluses aren't catching at his skin, making him bite down on his lip.

"Don't believe in it." A flash of blue eyes - almost black - and white teeth in a freckled face. Red hair curling a little, darkened with sweat at the temples.

" - it?" Monosyllables are all he can manage.

"Never." A thumb slips across his nipple almost carelessly, almost like it hadn't been planned, but he's being watched too closely for that. "Nothing lasts forever, not even 'no'."

He lets his eyes slide shut, believes it safer, but it just means he has no defences when breath followed by lips ghost softly across his mouth. It's harder to deny when you can't speak.

But he twists his head away, contrary to the last, tone of voice almost begging to be proved wrong.

"Won't," he manages.

Another flash of teeth, presumably, closing too tightly on his earlobe. Making him suck in a breath and arch his head back, a little.

"Believe me. You will."

Re: will/never

[florahart]

♥!

Re: will/never

[genarti]

...And this is why you're the best.

[tropes.livejournal.com]

Darcy and Elizabeth. :>

[ashen_key]

Ooh, yes. I had forgotten about them.

I lose.

[flyakate]

I'm totally with you on Snarkily Ever After. That... explains so much about the fics I like to read, actually.

And why I still think that Laurie/Jo from Little Women would have worked out in all its Snarktastic glory. *just spent the day reading Little Women fanfic* *might be slightly biased*

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I like happy endings that aren't too neat. You don't know what's going to happen afterwards, but for now, things are okay.