Who comes first?

[campylobacter]

When you read or write fan fiction, does the order of the people listed in the pairing mean anything?

If it's "Mulder/Skinner", does that mean Mulder's topping?

If it's Gandalf/Theoden, does that mean the King of Rohan's the last to come?

If it's "Dubya/Jacko", does it mean the President outranks the King of Pop?

Does it have anything to do with alphabetical order?

Or gender?

Comments

[prillalar]

It doesn't have anything to do with who's topping, at least not in non-anime fandoms. Nor with alphabetical order. But I think it's more about who is more important to the show/book/movie. Or perhaps who has a stronger personality (which is not the same as topping).

So, M/Sk, but Sk/K and K/P.

But it's not always the same for everyone. It's always Harry/Draco but it can be Draco/Ron or Ron/Draco.

And as to gender: Ron/Hermione, but Hermione/George.

Of course, in my theory, this is how these pairings get standardized in the first place -- once that happens, it's just convention to keep using it that way.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there's no true logic to convention. I feel like such a maverick when I say "Scully/Mulder" or "Frohike/CSM".

[cschick.livejournal.com]

On Gossamer, it's (supposed to be*) weighed so that it's always in the same order. That's for search engine purposes.

Order:
Mulder
Scully
Doggett
Reyes
Skinner
Krycek
. . . and I don't remember the rest off the top of my head (or really, they don't tend to need to be formalized to the degree of the first six--for example, it's always Langly/Byers because the small community that writes it always uses Langly/Byers).

So it's Mulder/Scully, Mulder/Doggett, Mulder/Reyes, Scully/Doggett, Scully/Skinner, Scully/Krycek, etc. That's pretty obviously an "importance"-based system (well, it's Mulder then Scully because it was *always* MSR rather than SMR).

* In reality, since the weighing check has never been implemented in the scripts we use to database, accuracy varies according to level of brain functioning while databasing. I know there's currently about 50-75 entries with mis-ordered relationships right now. Out of ~33,000 entries that's not too bad.

Re:

[cschick.livejournal.com]

I guess the other thing to note is that outside the archive system, it's more commonly gender-based than importance-based. For DSR (Doggett/Scully romance==Scully/Doggett romance) the community's directly counter to the way we do it. Scully/Skinner varies from author to author, while Scully/Krycek authors seem to lean more towards our order.

I doff my hat to you

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Being a Gossamer archivist would be a punishment in Hell for me. I admire the dedication and the attention to detail you volunteers do to organize more stories than we fans could ever read in a lifetime.e