It's great to read your perspective on Jack and pairings-with-Jack, and it all makes tons of sense to me. Obviously my favorite thing to do in fic is to pair him with Daniel, and I think it can work with emotionally guarded Jack, but I also like to imagine a Jack who's willing and able to open up more when he's away from work, a between-the-lines Jack that we don't see onscreen ... and I also totally get how that kind of Jack could push past the OOC boundaries. That Jack wouldn't be your Jack, at all. And I do love your Jack too.
The destabilizing effect on team dynamics of any within-the-team pairing niggles at me too, no matter who it is. And it strikes me as a pretty hard sell for onscreen!Jack to have a romance with anyone on his team while they're serving together. But fics are fantasies and what-ifs and creations of whole other worlds between the lines, and while the intra-team romance issues are always considerations, they don't kill my enjoyment of fic. I think the boundaries of plausibility and ICness are different for different people, and dependent on the set-up of any given piece of fic. I think it's awesome that you're flexible in reading and writing while maintaining your core conception of the Jack character.
I am so, so, so noromo as far as onscreen team member/team member romance goes. And I love Jack/Sara too, as you probably know. I'm so happy that there are people who are into her as more than ancient-history backstory for Jack.
I really liked some Jack/Janet I read, but there wasn't much of it, and I haven't seen anything new in an age and a half. My own sense of them would be two grown-up, experienced people enjoying each other's company in private, a lot of sparkage there and a mature, relaxed, easygoing appreciation that makes it worth the hassle of keeping a relationship under the radar (I don't think either would be comfortable, professionally, with anyone at work knowing they were seeing each other). Lots of humor and affection, and no feeling at all that they were just using each other for convenience, but not a strong in-loveness between them either -- I don't see it as a lifelong pairing. Eventually they'd decide to call it a day, and move on to be old-friends-who-used-to-be-lovers, with all the old, warm affection as an extra layer of bond underneath the continuing bond of loyalty and respect and caring at work. Kind of poignant, really. That's my vague conception, anyway.
What do you think about Jack/Kerry? I liked her so much, and I've always been intrigued by that brief thing they had, wanted to read more about what was going on there beyond what we saw on the screen. But I haven't seen a lick of fic.
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The destabilizing effect on team dynamics of any within-the-team pairing niggles at me too, no matter who it is. And it strikes me as a pretty hard sell for onscreen!Jack to have a romance with anyone on his team while they're serving together. But fics are fantasies and what-ifs and creations of whole other worlds between the lines, and while the intra-team romance issues are always considerations, they don't kill my enjoyment of fic. I think the boundaries of plausibility and ICness are different for different people, and dependent on the set-up of any given piece of fic. I think it's awesome that you're flexible in reading and writing while maintaining your core conception of the Jack character.
I am so, so, so noromo as far as onscreen team member/team member romance goes. And I love Jack/Sara too, as you probably know. I'm so happy that there are people who are into her as more than ancient-history backstory for Jack.
I really liked some Jack/Janet I read, but there wasn't much of it, and I haven't seen anything new in an age and a half. My own sense of them would be two grown-up, experienced people enjoying each other's company in private, a lot of sparkage there and a mature, relaxed, easygoing appreciation that makes it worth the hassle of keeping a relationship under the radar (I don't think either would be comfortable, professionally, with anyone at work knowing they were seeing each other). Lots of humor and affection, and no feeling at all that they were just using each other for convenience, but not a strong in-loveness between them either -- I don't see it as a lifelong pairing. Eventually they'd decide to call it a day, and move on to be old-friends-who-used-to-be-lovers, with all the old, warm affection as an extra layer of bond underneath the continuing bond of loyalty and respect and caring at work. Kind of poignant, really. That's my vague conception, anyway.
What do you think about Jack/Kerry? I liked her so much, and I've always been intrigued by that brief thing they had, wanted to read more about what was going on there beyond what we saw on the screen. But I haven't seen a lick of fic.