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Rivers of London: shipping in canon and fanon (the role of fan favorites)
This fandom seems like a perfect example to me of that situation where people like the woman in a f/m relationship - I'd bet that probably everybody who ships the protagonist with Nightingale instead (or in addition but not in OT3, as in... will read both/either) likes her - but are more interested in the other ship because of (1) interest in the other character (and a desire to put that character in a pairing) and (2) screentime and story weight devoted to the relationship.
The narrator Peter's partner Beverley is cool, well-written, significant to the story in various ways; but the focus of the stories is learning magic and solving crimes and the teacher-coworker character necessarily has a more important role in that. Because everything about Nightingale as a character is pretty much cool and mysterious (which doesn't even cover all of his appeal), the protagonist's positive relationship with him is also very interesting.
There has been a certain impulse in fanon to pair Nightingale up elsewhere, which I think is a reflection of how fascinating he is. But it's much easier to be interested in a relationship between two well-known characters, and the series doesn't have many characters left over that he could be paired with. The pool of secondary characters is limited and the amount we know about them is already enough lower to make them substantially less appealing (and for many people less easy) to write about.
In short, I... kind of think this is a character people are dying to pair up - often referred to as a Fan Favorite - Draco in HP, Dean in Supernatural, Fraser in Due South, etc. Fan favorites are sometimes main characters, sometimes not.
The introducton of Castiel to SPN and of Ray Kowalski to DS are both examples where the new (and seemingly more optimized for slashy storyline) character paired with the fan favorite took over as the dominant ship in the fandom relatively quickly after their introduction.
Loki, like Nightingale, is an example of a fan favorite who is paired with the only character with whom they have a complicated, interesting, important canon relationship with a lot of data to sink your teeth into.
Basically, if a new character was introduced to the series canon who was unattached, male, and, er, seemingly more optimized for a slashy storyline with him, I bet such a ship for Nightingale could really take off.
It wouldn't divert all the shipping interest from Nightingale and Peter, because their friendship does already have a lot to interest (and also, Always Slash Mentor and Pupil Pairs is one of the iron laws of slash); and part of the attraction of the ship is the mystique of Nightingale seen through Peter's eyes: the reader identifies with Peter, the newcomer to Nightingale's magical world, and through him admires both the magical world itself and Nightingale's character, his power and expert knowledge of magic, etc. A pairing that didn't capture that frisson of danger and excitement and the underlying poignancy and pathos - in other words, a character from Nightingale's world or more his equal - wouldn't be as compelling a pairing prospect.
The narrator Peter's partner Beverley is cool, well-written, significant to the story in various ways; but the focus of the stories is learning magic and solving crimes and the teacher-coworker character necessarily has a more important role in that. Because everything about Nightingale as a character is pretty much cool and mysterious (which doesn't even cover all of his appeal), the protagonist's positive relationship with him is also very interesting.
There has been a certain impulse in fanon to pair Nightingale up elsewhere, which I think is a reflection of how fascinating he is. But it's much easier to be interested in a relationship between two well-known characters, and the series doesn't have many characters left over that he could be paired with. The pool of secondary characters is limited and the amount we know about them is already enough lower to make them substantially less appealing (and for many people less easy) to write about.
In short, I... kind of think this is a character people are dying to pair up - often referred to as a Fan Favorite - Draco in HP, Dean in Supernatural, Fraser in Due South, etc. Fan favorites are sometimes main characters, sometimes not.
- In Supernatural, for example, it's often remarked that a portion of the interest in the original Sam/Dean incest ship was likely due to all the attention the relationship got and its being foregrounded in a show that lacked other emotionally compelling relationships - and that the season 4 introduction of Castiel had all the appearance of being specifically designed to draw shipping focus to Dean/Castiel instead.
- In the case of Loki, there are significant bodies of fanfiction and fanon pairing him with several other MCU characters (aside from the obvious, Thor) with whom he has had minimal interaction (and his status as a fan favorite character, and Hiddleston's as a fan favorite actor, are certainly undeniable...).
The introducton of Castiel to SPN and of Ray Kowalski to DS are both examples where the new (and seemingly more optimized for slashy storyline) character paired with the fan favorite took over as the dominant ship in the fandom relatively quickly after their introduction.
Loki, like Nightingale, is an example of a fan favorite who is paired with the only character with whom they have a complicated, interesting, important canon relationship with a lot of data to sink your teeth into.
Basically, if a new character was introduced to the series canon who was unattached, male, and, er, seemingly more optimized for a slashy storyline with him, I bet such a ship for Nightingale could really take off.
It wouldn't divert all the shipping interest from Nightingale and Peter, because their friendship does already have a lot to interest (and also, Always Slash Mentor and Pupil Pairs is one of the iron laws of slash); and part of the attraction of the ship is the mystique of Nightingale seen through Peter's eyes: the reader identifies with Peter, the newcomer to Nightingale's magical world, and through him admires both the magical world itself and Nightingale's character, his power and expert knowledge of magic, etc. A pairing that didn't capture that frisson of danger and excitement and the underlying poignancy and pathos - in other words, a character from Nightingale's world or more his equal - wouldn't be as compelling a pairing prospect.
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Yeah! I mean, there's something about Beverley - she's kind of unusual (although all other things are not equal - the fandom demographics, and then you could argue that hating the girlfriends has become less popular in fandom overall in recent years too).
But is she missing something that would make her more compelling? I mean, you can always make something more compelling by adding something else to it, but if you examine her as she is, I don't think she is thinner, or has less story potential, than many highly popular female characters. Being a secondary character isn't a barrier to being popular for male or female characters overall, either.
I do think that she could get cooler on the page, though, with some tweaks to essentially the same story. (I don't mean that this is a flaw: more an unrealized potential?)
The answer could simply be in the nature of her and Peter's relationship - even at the beginning, when there was UST, it wasn't extremely suspenseful; it's been pretty much wholesome, and their dynamic pleasantly comfortable, which is of course just the sort of thing mediocre television shows never want to do and is why tv couples tend to get stuck in a will-they-won't-they timeloop or then a will-this-destroy-them? conflict-resolution loop every time they face anything at all. This tv model of relationships is obviously bad, but there's no denying that there's more fizz in an unresolved anything. Of course, in theory a character could be maximum badass regardless of whether they were in an established relationship or not, but since Peter is the POV character, their dynamic colors the way the reader sees people. Where his relationship with Nightingale has that tasty Master-Pupil vibe, and the excitement Peter feels to learn more about him - mixed with a little awe, his attitude in describing Bev's river magic (which is also fairly mysterious and not a little awesome, or could be!) quickly became much more matter-of-fact. I don't say this is unrealistic or even incompatible with being really romantic, but it seems to bring her a little more down to earth; he never really feels overawed... there's not a distance between them that they'd like to bridge and can't for some reason, and that's the essence of why UST works so easily.
Or the idea that walls aren't coming down (even if you just meant it as an example): she isn't particularly vulnerable (at least, not so the reader can see: there's been more and more non-job-related stuff that is behind fades to black...) and we don't see them vulnerable at each other very often (I mean even Foxglove Summer, in a situation that could have gotten more anxious and/or h/c, didn't really go there).
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I guess I want some of that story potential poked at a little more? Her character as it's set up is great, but I want her brought forward more - I guess I feel like she gets more heft than Jaget, but Guleed is probably right there equal with her. (Is Peter ok with Maxim? Is Maxim just a worshipper, who has found his purpose in life and chooses to do this, or is he a guy with a susceptible brain who's now enslaved? Have Peter and Beverly actually ever had a talk about it? Also, was Peter actually ok with fathering a river?) Like you say, it's just as mysterious as anything Nightingale does but Peter seems a lot more relaxed about it than he does when Nightingale does something weird. Beverly tells him to take a lot of stuff on trust.
Maybe it's just that we see so much of Beverly filtered through Peter's reflexive snarky approach to the world that I can't get more of a sense of her. I think that's why I feel like the scene with Ty and Peter helped flesh out Ty's character and the world that the Rivers inhabit so wonderfully and I want something like that to happen with Beverly.
I suspect a lot of my thoughts have to do with how BA has decided to tell the story and how he's crafted Peter's voice. It's similar to how he only obliquely hints about how Peter must feel after finding Simone's body.
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That's a good point, because I often find myself falling out of the story a little bit at the point where the focus shifts away from (or skips over elaborating) part of the story with Beverley: speculating about what the author was trying to do.
Like, the fact that she isn't more present in the story doesn't mean she isn't as important to Peter, because in reality when we tell a story that isn't about our partner we don't necessarily stop to go into detail about them when they briefly make a side appearance. But wanting to see more of her in the story because she's cool and we want her to have the opportunity to be even cooler is also reasonable for the reader.
isn't implausible for a goddess to do, and I can see how it could work for Peter to do that, but the rivers' deity-powers often seem like Peter himself takes their coolness too much for granted in that he just... doesn't seem as curious about them? Like okay maybe if you, say, live with a tiger you get blase about the things that big cats can do so you're not as excited if you run into, like, a mountain lion and get a demonstration of some of its skills and behaviors, fine, but Peter has a lot of excitement about explaining how other magic works both when he does sort of understand it and when he doesn't, and he's perfectly willing to explain in detail about other stuff that he knows plenty about (like history or architecture) under the assumption that the reader doesn't. So I definitely think there is space for more about river magic and also just more awe at how... awesome it is. (And I don't think that would mess up the portrayal of a pretty solid and comfortable established relationship, necessarily.)
I've just agreed with all of your comment, but longer, I guess.
I do sometimes get an inkling of a suspicion that the author, while satisfied with the relationship he's portraying and how he wants it to be, just isn't as interested in it and in her as he is in the other side of the books.
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I do sometimes get an inkling of a suspicion that the author, while satisfied with the relationship he's portraying and how he wants it to be, just isn't as interested in it and in her as he is in the other side of the books.
BA has said that Beverley was not part of his original plan for the series and it's fairly obvious to me that in her first appearance she was intended to be a Girl of the Book and then grew into something more.
My big frustration with Bev is firstly that we get very little insight into what SHE wants at any given time (with no spoilers, there's a thing in Lies Sleeping that we should absolutely know whether it was a goal of hers and...nothing) and secondly that Peter rarely if ever has to do any emotional labour on the page for her. She comforts him in his times of need; he never does the same. I'd like to see some reciprocity.
But it's also pretty obvious at this point that we're not going to get that in the series, her role is very much Peter's Girlfriend, so - fic!
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(tbh all the other runs range from 'not bad' to 'ehhhh' to 'actually terrible' but those two are worth it.)