yubsie | The Aragorn and Legolas of Firefly

So, I've been thinking WAY too much about why not many people ship Mal/Zoe. Especially when you consider that I DON'T EVEN LIKE THE PAIRING. :p

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there should be all sorts of fic about them making me go "ACK!". The fact that the pairing that weirds me out the most is a het pairing between two characters that interact a lot in canon is another story entirely, of course. That's the thing thought... they interact a LOT in canon. Usually that's an invitation to lots of pairingfic. So while talking to Tess, we came to a realization.

All the interaction they have isn't shippy, it's slashy. In other words... if Zoe were a guy, the fans would be all OVER the Zoe/Mal pairing. They're warbuddies, brothers in arms. That's one of the CLASSIC relationships that slashers keep going back to time and again. Probably the ultimate slashy moment for them is in the Serenity comic. When Mal is talking about how his gun saw him through the war, and it's one of only two things that did and stuck with him after. He gives Zoe one of those "significant looks" that slashers are always going on about. (WHY AM I SAYING THIS? I DON'T EVEN LIKE THIS PAIRING!)

Now, obviously there are some obstacles to the pairing. Not the least of which is the fact that Zoe is, y'know, married. I've never seen a canonical marriage stop anyone from pairing up two characters though. Especially not two male characters, that just gets the in denial argument. (WHY AM I WRITING THIS? ZOE/WASH OTP!) I figure the bigger obstacle is probably the attempted kiss in War Stories. It's easy to write off a canonical marriage, but when there IS an attempt at a kiss that screams "OMG, WHO AM I KISSING? NO WRONG CAN'T!", that's a little harder. Still, I've never seen a little problem like that stop determined shippers though. :p

So I figure the reason there aren't more Mal/Zoe shippers (a state I'm actually VERY okay with :p) is that they're slashy. The het fans are used to looking for the more convential shippy interactions, rather than the patterns that slash fans latch onto. As for the slash fans, well, Mal is a man and Zoe is a woman. They're not going to be looking either.

Y'know, I do two things in this ramble that I hate. I'm trying to rationalize Mal/Zoe which I DON'T EVEN LIKE, and I'm treating slashing like it's inherently different from het shipping. Still, I'm pretty sure that if Zoe were a guy, Zoe/Mal would probably be the most popular non-canon pairing in the fandom. And I'd be getting more poor brain exploded much more frequently, because that pairing WEIRDS ME OUT. :p

Wow, that was an awful lot about a pairing I hate. :p