timepiececlock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timepiececlock) wrote2003-06-17 03:20 pm
timepiececlock) wrote2003-06-17 03:20 pm
Faye/Spike analysis, for Cowboy Bebop fanfic
"If wishes were fishes we'd all have a nice fry."
*
So not long ago I was emailing Unknown Mercenary about his/her Bebop fanfic 'Fallen Searphim', which I had enjoyed reading. We chatted about the possibilities Faye/Spike versus Faye/Julia, and what works in fanfic and what doesn't.
I realized I could take a good part of my last email and put it up here as a general analysis of Faye & Spike as a possible pairing. I also make some comparisons to Spuffy pairing, how FxS is similar and different.
Who knows, might interest some of you.
(some of this seems to begin out of context, because its taken from the email; dash&italics are Unknown Mercenary's words)
I've been navigating an insane amount of people's 'favorites' lists on ff.net this week looking for good F/S fic, and I found a lot of crap (where I look at their portrayal of Faye and go "Who is this person? Where's the casino-addicted ballsy bitch with a nasty tongue and a wicked smile?"), several decent and enjoyable ones, and one really cool ass one by 'sidewalk serfer girl'. If you want to know how to do Spike/Faye, her fic "She Wanted To Die" is a good portrayal of the fucked-up nihilistic version of F/S, but that's not the only way you can look at those two. I also discovered Agent Orange fanfic, which sent me giggling into stitches and smiling till my face hurt, but sadly is not romantic.
-The tough thing about explaining the Spike/Faye relationship is that it doesn't follow any standard rules (i.e. the hero saving the day and the heroine falling for the hero...in Bebop, they fight over being the winner instead of the hero), but I think I've strayed from my original intent.
Well, since becoming addicted to Buffy The Vampire Slayer last year, especially the fandom surrounding the Spike/Buffy pairing, I've gotten pretty used to reading about and writing about nonstandard relationships. They're addictive. Who wants a princess in distress and a knight on a horse? Give me a chick with a gun or a hard left look and put her with a man with emotional problems and a pretty mouth. Traditional is boring.
(If you know anything about BTVS, which you might or might not, the comparison is rather backward because Faye would definitely be the (btvs)Spike of the relationship and suffering mostly-unrequited love, whereas (CB)Spike would be more like Buffy-- yearning for the lost tragic fairy tale first love. However, Faye is definitely more like Buffy in regards to feminine rules of behavior and attitude-- but this is off-topic.)
Unfortunately, the problem with the "traditional is boring" approach is that Spike's only other major relationship in his life that we know about very much followed the traditional rules.
Julia was the woman torn between two men stronger than her-- Viscious wanted to possess her and Spike wanted to protect her. She was killed in their fight, while running away from the situation (and doing her best to convince Spike to run with her). Over the show's course we saw Julia do very mundane "womanly" things-- she nursed Spike, she cooked, her image was symbolically associated with flowers (especially roses), she slept with whichever of the two men was controlling her life at the time, when they ran in Real Folk Blues, she let Spike plan their escape. Sure she drove the car fast and bantered with Faye, but she still conformed to tradition. Faye even said she was "normal"/"ordinary" for a woman, depending on whether you watch dubbed or subbed. She even brought the protagonist to his death, fulfilling the traditional role that women are either to be protected by men or are there to doom men.
Now, I like Julia's well enough, and I felt totally bad for Spike when she died. But mostly, her character purpose was to reflect back on Spike. She wasn't a person on the show so much as "the woman Spike loves," the embodiment of all the reasons for his angst and tragedy.
Faye, on the other hand, is the opposite of the the Julia-type traditional woman. In some ways she shows more emotional co-dependency issues than Julia does (because of her lack of defined self from amnesia), and certainly uses the costume of temptress/deceiver, but in most ways she doesn't resemble older society's idea of a woman as just an extention of the man in her life (the way Julia was either an extension of Spike or an extension of Viscious, or even an extension of the mob group as a whole). If Faye were to be in a relationship, she wouldn't make it easy but she'd probably make it worth it.
I guess one way to look at it is this: Julia/Spike is Spike being attracted to someone different from him-- someone who represents the possibility of "the good life" of peace and harmony outside the violence of his world.
Spike/Faye is like Spike being attracted to someone just like him. Faye is not going to save him from himself or his world, because its her world too. However she might make him enjoy that world a hell of a lot more, and she might give him a piece of that violent/turbulent world which is in fact very stable.
Which is better? "Opposites attract,"... or "like calls to like"?
We were given a hell of a lot more characterization of Faye than Julia, so I'm biased and have had the time to like her more. I'm more of a Spike/Faye fan myself too, just because I think in the end best friends make the best the lovers. And Faye is Spike's equal in personality where Julia was not-- but the question is if Spike would really want a relationship with a woman who is his equal? Like you said, it'd be a constant competition.
I think a strong reference for that would be to look at the movie, especially the flirtation between Spike and Electra. Electra was pretty much a molding of Jet and Faye-- take a strong, unconventional woman who is Spike's equal (Faye), and give her a sense of duty, honesty, and intense devotion (Jet & Spike), and then the willingness to break the rules (Faye & Spike). However, I think Spike would have eventually found Electra to be too much like himself. Faye, while also very like Spike, is different enough from him --her ways of handing (or not) problems, her desire to be super!alive where Spike desires death-- that they'd compliment each other.
- I myself am somewhat a Spike/Faye fan, but despite my own prejudices, I've tried to keep this fic as realistic as I possibly could...meaning I don't want to start out with Spike and Faye all lovey dovey and Spike willing to do anything for Faye and vice versa.
Well, any fic where Spike's alive has jotted past the line of reality. ;) But yeah, I get what you're saying. And that desire of yours to be realistic is one of the things that's made their interaction so far in the fic seem believable for them.
You want to know how to carry that realism over into the romance... I don't know how that should be done. I guess, my only advice would be to make sure that they still behave like Faye and Spike. Whatever single tiny thing they say or do, it must be something that you could imagine the Faye or Spike of the original series saying or doing. Try to picture it in your head as the anime-- can you actually see it?
I think the show definitely built up the attraction between the two, so that the problem is not them being interested in each other in the first place, but how they'd get over themselves and their pre-established walls enough to go anywhere.
By the end of the series Faye had certainly seemed to have done that; we know that it was never an option for Spike though because he was to tightly wrapt in his death wish and the romantic tragedy of his past. In the show, Faye was the perpetual possibility-- possible friend, possible lover, possible everything. But it was doomed to remain a possibility because Spike didn't yet have closure with Julia and Viscious. In the show, achieving that closure cost him his life. If he had survived-- then suddenly Faye wouldn't be not only a possibility, but a possibility that Spike would now be in a postion to actually consider.
Now, Spike seeing Julia again before the end was a pretty significant thing. I think in many ways she was already dead to Spike, and if he had not found her, but only been told of her death remotely, then assuming he survied, his mourning period would be much shorter. However, if you follow the course of the series and the only change is that he wasn't mortally wounded in the end, then I think it'd be a much longer time between Julia's death and considering starting something with Faye. It's the difference between fighing Viscious for the memory of a dead woman, and fighting him over that woman's actual death. It'd be a large factor in his willingness to start over with Faye.
*
So not long ago I was emailing Unknown Mercenary about his/her Bebop fanfic 'Fallen Searphim', which I had enjoyed reading. We chatted about the possibilities Faye/Spike versus Faye/Julia, and what works in fanfic and what doesn't.
I realized I could take a good part of my last email and put it up here as a general analysis of Faye & Spike as a possible pairing. I also make some comparisons to Spuffy pairing, how FxS is similar and different.
Who knows, might interest some of you.
(some of this seems to begin out of context, because its taken from the email; dash&italics are Unknown Mercenary's words)
I've been navigating an insane amount of people's 'favorites' lists on ff.net this week looking for good F/S fic, and I found a lot of crap (where I look at their portrayal of Faye and go "Who is this person? Where's the casino-addicted ballsy bitch with a nasty tongue and a wicked smile?"), several decent and enjoyable ones, and one really cool ass one by 'sidewalk serfer girl'. If you want to know how to do Spike/Faye, her fic "She Wanted To Die" is a good portrayal of the fucked-up nihilistic version of F/S, but that's not the only way you can look at those two. I also discovered Agent Orange fanfic, which sent me giggling into stitches and smiling till my face hurt, but sadly is not romantic.
-The tough thing about explaining the Spike/Faye relationship is that it doesn't follow any standard rules (i.e. the hero saving the day and the heroine falling for the hero...in Bebop, they fight over being the winner instead of the hero), but I think I've strayed from my original intent.
Well, since becoming addicted to Buffy The Vampire Slayer last year, especially the fandom surrounding the Spike/Buffy pairing, I've gotten pretty used to reading about and writing about nonstandard relationships. They're addictive. Who wants a princess in distress and a knight on a horse? Give me a chick with a gun or a hard left look and put her with a man with emotional problems and a pretty mouth. Traditional is boring.
(If you know anything about BTVS, which you might or might not, the comparison is rather backward because Faye would definitely be the (btvs)Spike of the relationship and suffering mostly-unrequited love, whereas (CB)Spike would be more like Buffy-- yearning for the lost tragic fairy tale first love. However, Faye is definitely more like Buffy in regards to feminine rules of behavior and attitude-- but this is off-topic.)
Unfortunately, the problem with the "traditional is boring" approach is that Spike's only other major relationship in his life that we know about very much followed the traditional rules.
Julia was the woman torn between two men stronger than her-- Viscious wanted to possess her and Spike wanted to protect her. She was killed in their fight, while running away from the situation (and doing her best to convince Spike to run with her). Over the show's course we saw Julia do very mundane "womanly" things-- she nursed Spike, she cooked, her image was symbolically associated with flowers (especially roses), she slept with whichever of the two men was controlling her life at the time, when they ran in Real Folk Blues, she let Spike plan their escape. Sure she drove the car fast and bantered with Faye, but she still conformed to tradition. Faye even said she was "normal"/"ordinary" for a woman, depending on whether you watch dubbed or subbed. She even brought the protagonist to his death, fulfilling the traditional role that women are either to be protected by men or are there to doom men.
Now, I like Julia's well enough, and I felt totally bad for Spike when she died. But mostly, her character purpose was to reflect back on Spike. She wasn't a person on the show so much as "the woman Spike loves," the embodiment of all the reasons for his angst and tragedy.
Faye, on the other hand, is the opposite of the the Julia-type traditional woman. In some ways she shows more emotional co-dependency issues than Julia does (because of her lack of defined self from amnesia), and certainly uses the costume of temptress/deceiver, but in most ways she doesn't resemble older society's idea of a woman as just an extention of the man in her life (the way Julia was either an extension of Spike or an extension of Viscious, or even an extension of the mob group as a whole). If Faye were to be in a relationship, she wouldn't make it easy but she'd probably make it worth it.
I guess one way to look at it is this: Julia/Spike is Spike being attracted to someone different from him-- someone who represents the possibility of "the good life" of peace and harmony outside the violence of his world.
Spike/Faye is like Spike being attracted to someone just like him. Faye is not going to save him from himself or his world, because its her world too. However she might make him enjoy that world a hell of a lot more, and she might give him a piece of that violent/turbulent world which is in fact very stable.
Which is better? "Opposites attract,"... or "like calls to like"?
We were given a hell of a lot more characterization of Faye than Julia, so I'm biased and have had the time to like her more. I'm more of a Spike/Faye fan myself too, just because I think in the end best friends make the best the lovers. And Faye is Spike's equal in personality where Julia was not-- but the question is if Spike would really want a relationship with a woman who is his equal? Like you said, it'd be a constant competition.
I think a strong reference for that would be to look at the movie, especially the flirtation between Spike and Electra. Electra was pretty much a molding of Jet and Faye-- take a strong, unconventional woman who is Spike's equal (Faye), and give her a sense of duty, honesty, and intense devotion (Jet & Spike), and then the willingness to break the rules (Faye & Spike). However, I think Spike would have eventually found Electra to be too much like himself. Faye, while also very like Spike, is different enough from him --her ways of handing (or not) problems, her desire to be super!alive where Spike desires death-- that they'd compliment each other.
- I myself am somewhat a Spike/Faye fan, but despite my own prejudices, I've tried to keep this fic as realistic as I possibly could...meaning I don't want to start out with Spike and Faye all lovey dovey and Spike willing to do anything for Faye and vice versa.
Well, any fic where Spike's alive has jotted past the line of reality. ;) But yeah, I get what you're saying. And that desire of yours to be realistic is one of the things that's made their interaction so far in the fic seem believable for them.
You want to know how to carry that realism over into the romance... I don't know how that should be done. I guess, my only advice would be to make sure that they still behave like Faye and Spike. Whatever single tiny thing they say or do, it must be something that you could imagine the Faye or Spike of the original series saying or doing. Try to picture it in your head as the anime-- can you actually see it?
I think the show definitely built up the attraction between the two, so that the problem is not them being interested in each other in the first place, but how they'd get over themselves and their pre-established walls enough to go anywhere.
By the end of the series Faye had certainly seemed to have done that; we know that it was never an option for Spike though because he was to tightly wrapt in his death wish and the romantic tragedy of his past. In the show, Faye was the perpetual possibility-- possible friend, possible lover, possible everything. But it was doomed to remain a possibility because Spike didn't yet have closure with Julia and Viscious. In the show, achieving that closure cost him his life. If he had survived-- then suddenly Faye wouldn't be not only a possibility, but a possibility that Spike would now be in a postion to actually consider.
Now, Spike seeing Julia again before the end was a pretty significant thing. I think in many ways she was already dead to Spike, and if he had not found her, but only been told of her death remotely, then assuming he survied, his mourning period would be much shorter. However, if you follow the course of the series and the only change is that he wasn't mortally wounded in the end, then I think it'd be a much longer time between Julia's death and considering starting something with Faye. It's the difference between fighing Viscious for the memory of a dead woman, and fighting him over that woman's actual death. It'd be a large factor in his willingness to start over with Faye.
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