sholio | Seen a few places ...

Ty Lee

Mozzie

Ronon Dex!

Oh, this one is easy. :D

Ronon has an artist's soul in a warrior's body. He was a quiet, bookish child, and (in a different time, a different place) would have been very happy as a sculptor or a poet.

But he was drafted fairly young into a war he didn't choose. And he turned out to be good at it. And then there was nothing but survival, for so many years that he almost forgot the child who used to spend hours being enthralled by the subtle play of light and shade above a courtyard pool.

Almost. But not quite.

Eee, yay for shared head canon :D And oh, what a lovely mental image. Oh Ronon.

There aren't very many characters that I have such firm headcanon for as I do for Ronon. I don't know why, but that's been my take on his character since early season three. I was absolutely delighted when we got a little deleted scene (in season four, I think?) that basically confirmed at least part of this. :D

She's smarter than people think she is. People assume that she's kind of dumb, because she's friendly and cheerful and gets along with most people. But she realized a long time ago that life is easier if you get along with people, don't stress the small stuff and focus on what's fun rather than the high ideals that people like Zuko and Azula worry about. Ty Lee could be a terrifying, ruthless social climber if she wanted to be; she just doesn't want to be. In that, she is very much like Mai, which is one reason why they're friends -- but they take a different path to the same result.

Parts of this are similar to my headcanon. I always thought she had to be pretty damn smart to handle Azula, but since I have experience being the "best friend" of a girl a heck of a lot like Azula, I think Ty Lee gets what Azula is better than Mai, and is utterly terrified, and her happy face is in large part an appeasment tool.

Oh, this fascinates me, because it's not my original take on Ty Lee, but it fits so perfectly with the amount of power that Azula has over her. That's one thing that canon never really touched -- that Azula, as the princess, basically has the power of life or death over her "friends". In canon, they always seemed to interact more or less as equals ... but they weren't, and I had never really thought about that before.

Sara

The fact that Azula resorted to threatening everyone at the circus, not to mention Ty Lee herself to get her to come with her says a lot about their relationship.

He's impossibly jaded and cynical, but he loves more deeply than he'll admit. In some ways he's too smart for his own good -- Mozzie's paranoia and cynicism is, in part, a reaction to knowing a little too much about how the world works, and being able to envision all the things that can go wrong in a given situation. He has a bolt-hole for every situation and a contingency plan for every possible contingency. His backups have backups.

He grew up always believing that he had to be able to let go of anything (money, people, things) at a moment's notice. He envisions himself as a ninja slipping around the boundaries of society, footloose and fancy-free, capable of dropping out of sight instantly if he has to. In reality, though, he's a lot more tied down than he wants to admit.

Ursa.

Oh, heavens, Ursa is hard. I think she's hard because I have no clearly established headcanon for her; I can go with any one of a number of very different options.

I think my favorite Ursa headcanon is that she's living on a little farm in some part of the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom so rural and remote that no one will ever find her, and she has a husband and kids, and she's happy.

But I'm also intrigued by the idea of an Ursa who is far darker and more like Azula than anyone ever writes her -- an Ursa who exists as the ever-supportive mother figure through Zuko's idealistic, rose-colored memory glasses, but is actually a very ruthless, frightening person. She's not actually evil -- she loves her children, and misses them -- but she hasn't come back because she doesn't want to, and she doesn't feel terribly guilty about it.

Sara has a danger-junkie streak bordering on self-destructive. But she's too rational to indulge it most of the time, for one thing because she knows, on some level, that if she allows herself to push the boundaries too far, she could easily keep pushing them until she dies.

This is the impulse that draws her to Neal. The unexpected thing isn't that she's attracted to him, because even she could have predicted that, if she'd looked back over her history of dating volatile, dangerous, sometimes abusive men. No, the unexpected thing is that she really likes him as a person, and they make very good friends. As lovers, however, they are terrifyingly combustible -- the sort of relationship that burns very bright and hot for a short period of time, and ends up with both people getting burned. But the underlying warmth of friendship is still there, which is something she hasn't had in her past relationships. Intellectually, she knows full well that she and Neal don't have a future together -- that it's a casual, fast-burning love affair. But she has this genuine warmth for him, and vice versa, and when they stop trying to be Boyfriend and Girlfriend and just relax, they get along really well (sort of like Neal and Peter get along whenever they forget they're supposed to be on opposite sides). And this is what keeps her from either severing things completely, or very firmly stuffing Neal into the Friend box and leaving him there: because she hasn't had that warmth and mutual affection with past boyfriends. It's just not the sort of affection that leads to a marriage and a house in the suburbs. As soon as they start wanting things from each other, it disintegrates. And yet, she would totally trust him at her back in a gunfight, and if something really devastating happened, like, say, her mom died, Neal is probably the first person she'd call for a sympathetic shoulder to cry on (possibly followed by a 2 a.m. tryst with underwear flung all over the room ... possibly followed after that by a giant catastrophic fight and not talking to each other for a month). It's precisely that kind of weird relationship.

I love this.

Sara has a danger-junkie streak bordering on self-destructive.

From "Burke's Seven"

Peter: Could be dangerous.
Sara: Could be fun.

Definitely a character defining moment.

I ship Neal/Sara like burning, and I'm rarity among Sara fans in that I think that the two of them could work long term. (They'd both need to shift and change a little, but that would be true of Neal and anyone he settled down with--including Kate, had she lived.) However, I love what you say here. As I said, I'm a shipper, so I won't complain if the writers hook Neal and Sara back up. But what I'd really like is for the relationship to continue in the vein of 3x15 and 4x04. It's really wonderful to see how much intimate and honest they are with each other now. Romantic love is great, but friendship gets short changed far too often. I like that Neal and Sara are closer as friends.

I love how mature they can be with each other. Sure, not always, but sometimes. Their breakup scene was incredible for that. Sara, not acting betrayed or demanding that Neal change or choose, just making it clear that he had gone beyond where she could follow, and firmly, gently breaking it off. And Neal not making excuses or trying to change her mind, but accepting what she had to do. 4x04 was that all over again without the pain. (Well, a little pain.) Sara not blaming Neal, but making it clear that he hurt her and explaining why. And Neal acknowledging that.

And now I want all the Neal and Sara friendship fic in the world.

This. All this. I seriously doubt that Ursa was all sweetness and light the way Zuko portrayed her. This IS the woman who killed her father in-law after all. And I believe that since she didn't show up after the season finale, she's either dead or very happy wherever she is (though I doubt she's in the Fire Nation). That and the fact that she DID kill a Fire Lord after all. The Fire Nation probably has a very harsh execution for such high treason.

Their general maturity with each other (especially hers with him) is one of the things I love most about them -- and one of the reasons why I absolutely hate the way the fandom (a lot of it, anyway) deals with Sara. She never shouts at Neal, never tries to make him be something he isn't; at the same time, she's always been very good about articulating her boundaries and stepping away when the relationship starts to cross them. They communicate and adjust the relationship accordingly, with no histrionics or tears. A lot of TV couples could learn from them.

I think the main thing I adore about Sara/Neal, though, is that it's one of the least heteronormative m/f relationships I've seen on TV, at least in the cop/action/scifi genre. (Though Fiona/Michael on Burn Notice also comes close, which is probably one of the reasons why I like them too.) They simply do not follow the general pattern for TV m/f relationships (a long period of UST followed by dating and/or sex with an eye to a long-term relationship leading to marriage and kids). And I wonder if that's one reason why fandom reacted badly to them, because a lot of the criticism that I've seen leveled against the relationship basically boils down to "not standard enough": they moved too fast, they did things in the wrong order, they don't act like a dating boyfriend/girlfriend pair are "supposed" to.

But I love that about them. I've said this elsewhere, but Sara/Neal are one of the most real-feeling couples that I've seen on TV for their general ages and lifestyles -- it really feels like a relationship between 20something/30something professionals in the city.

I'm not gonna say it's impossible for them to have a stable, long-term relationship. I think my view of their prospects is less rosy than yours, but on the other hand, I think they have a really solid grounding for it: they genuinely like and appreciate each other, and they communicate well, and both of them obviously feel that the sex is hot like burning. So who knows? Lots of couples go far on much less than that. Most of the Sara/Neal futurefic I've encountered feels OOC to me, especially for Sara (mostly because it embraces a far more wifely role for her than I think Sara herself would ever embrace, or Neal would want for her), but that just means the field is wide open for Sara/Neal fic that puts a slightly different spin on it. (Which now I kinda want to write ...)

And I've always had a thing for relationships that are highly nonstandard/atypical, and mildly incomprehensible to everyone around the couple, but work really well for the couple themselves.

Edited 2012-08-04 20:04 (UTC)

Screed, from third-season Forever Knight. (Or, if you've got nothing on Screed, Natalie.)

I find Neal's maturity with Sara to be really fascinating. While he's obviously an adult capable of making his own decisions, in a lot of ways he's emotionally seven years old. So, the moments with Sara, like their breakup or the the end of 4x04, where he really pulls himself together to act like a grownup, are interesting and impressive to me. Peter (for all that his relationship with Neal is equitable) is a mentor and authority figure. Mozzie is a playmate who used to be a mentor. But while Neal and Sara have an enormous amount of fun together, they really relate to each other like two adults. (I don't want it to sound like I'm devaluing Neal&Peter or Neal&Mozzie. I love both friendships too much to do that. They have their own aspects that make them unique and fantastic.)

one of the reasons why I absolutely hate the way the fandom (a lot of it, anyway) deals with Sara

Oh my lord, you are preaching to the choir on this one. The Sara hate on lj/dw really makes me feel alienated from the fandom, and keeps me from participating as much as I'd like. It's not just that they hate a character I love. So much of the hate is gender based (calling her a bitch, deriding her for her sexuality, holding her up to ridiculous double standards) that I think it's part of a much larger problem, and I just can't feel comfortable.

I totally agree about Neal/Sara not being very heteronormative. It helps that neither character is particularly heteronormative to start with. I've talked about this before, but I love what White Collar does with gender. I love that Neal is not traditionally masculine, and that those traits are presented as cool. It's cool that Neal knows fashion and can cook a gourmet meal. I love that Sara is aggressive, ambitious, occasionally abrasive, and willing to speak her mind, and the show itself never portrays her as a shrew for it. A male character would get away with behaving this way, so why shouldn't Sara?

So yeah, I think their relationship challenges what's "supposed" to be on a number of levels. (Sara should be nicer, she should pine more, they shouldn't be so sexual, they shouldn't be so eager not to define their relationship.)

Which now I kinda want to write ...

I will only encourage this.

Toph

Elizabeth Weir?

Alfred from Death Gate?

Or Haplo if you prefer. ^_^;;

...I know this is like a week later so apologies~

*slinks back into the shadows*

Seen a few places ...

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Screed (or Natalie)

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