Sam/Maya

[hmpf]

I notice that all the recs so far in the het category of this year's recommendations week at lifein1973 are Sam/Maya. Now, that does please me. However, I also notice that all the recced fics (I've browsed them, not read them properly, because I'm in a bit of a hurry right now - shouldn't be posting here, either, really) are about them separating/about how the relationship really never worked properly. And, yeah, I've been having one hell of a difficult time writing my own Sam/Maya fic, myself.

I wonder: is it possible at all to write a *working* Sam/Maya relationship? Or does it always have to be broken from the start/broken beyond repair? Of course, with slash goggles firmly in place the obvious answer would be something like "it never worked and never will because Sam's actually gay, even if he doesn't realise it." But I sort of want to believe that what was wrong with the relationship was something *other* than just repressed homosexuality - something even more complicated, perhaps - that was wrong with Sam; something that may be fixed.

But is this me being too pollyanna to see reality?

Comments

I should be working... dum dee dum dee dum....

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>There is always, too, the rather deterministic viewpoint that if a relationship fails, then it MUST have been doomed from the start, because relationships between two people who are perfect for each other and who love each other NEVER FAIL.

*snerk* Yeah.

Maybe I'm beginning to be affected a bit by all the slash I've been reading/browsing, and am now subconsciously beginning to read Sam as incapable of ever being happy with anyone who isn't Gene?

Though, really, the tiny glimpses we've had of the Maya relationship have *always* struck me as somehow deeply fucked up, and I think that's one reason why I struggle so much with trying to write the two of them in a more or less functional relationship. Even though I really do believe that there is love between them.

>I generally wipe Maya off the map with a "it was good while it lasted, too bad things didn't work out" kind of handwaving (which is really my read of Sam in 2.06). She seemed like a good person and a decent cop, and I would like to think that she would not have fallen in love with the type of cold hearted bastard that Sam is often portrayed as pre-coma. But thatis simply not a story that interests me enough to write. *shrugs*

I'm not so very interested in the pre-coma relationship, either. I'm mostly interested in potential post-coma relationships. Because, yeah, change and all that.

'course, all of those potential relationships are now by definition even more AU than any Gene/Sam slash could ever be...

(The letting go moment in 2.06 did not strike me as the kind of shoulder-shrugging 'oh well' sorta thing you see it as, though: rather, I saw it - at the time - as Sam beginning, wistfully but also calmly and peacefully, to let go of his life. Basically, beginning to accept that he wouldn't wake up, and that he would eventually die. Which, at the time, I found pretty exciting, because I was rooting for it all to end in some kind of very zen, peaceful acceptance of inevitable death. 2.03 also seemed to point in that direction, what with the TCG's 'you're dead, Sam', and the halo moment in the church and so on.)

Re: I should be working... dum dee dum dee dum....

[loz]

I'm a hardcore slasher and ultimately I can't even see Sam being happy with Gene, in the long-term.

:(

Sam's fucked up.

True, true.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

That's probably at the heart of it, yes.

(Dammit, what is it with me and this obsession with happy endings. Can't I just accept that he's broken irreparably, and move on? *sigh*)