Fan Fic and More

Annie and I have a section on The Haunt where Fifthwheelers can have their "fifthwheel manifestos" published, if they so choose. To that end, this thread. Here are some questions you might consider while posting.

1) Why first attracted you to the pairing of Alex and Tess?

2) Why do you think that Fifthwheel works, because it cannot be denied that it does?

3) How does shipping Fifthwheel affect the CC pairings in your mind?

See below for why I ship Fifthwheel.

Why Fifthwheel?

I first became interested in the pairing of Alex and Tess when I read a fic a few years ago on fanfiction.net (It was Nicole Anell's "The Greatest Stories Never Told", which is brilliant, and happily can now be found at the Haunt). It was a pairing I had never considered, but the writer did such a great job of making this a realistic (and logical) pairing, I never quite forgot about them, even though, I was too invested in Dreamerdom at the time to investigate the pairing more fully. That changed about a year or so ago, when a fic that had been percolating in my mind for a long while - the secret story of Alex and Tess, canon-based - needed to be written.

I admit to being inspired by the Polar novel in my impending story, Love in Unexpected Places. While I am in no way polarist, the way Whiteotter made canon events work with the possibility of Liz/Michael made me wonder if I could do the same for Alex/Tess. Since the latter pairing seemed inherently more logical to me, being as I wasn't invested in Alex/Isabel or Kyle/Tess to the same degree I was Max/Liz (like them together, but I can handle either couple apart, which I can't do with Max and Liz), I decided to see if I could outline a logical, canon-based story that takes into account Tess's guilt as Alex's "murderer" and make it work.

It was Annie who really got me interested in the Fifthwheel ship as a whole, because of her interest in my story. She has thrown herself full-fledged into the ship, and both of us are determined to help it grow, because it really has so much potential, for the following reasons.

Alex and Tess just make sense to me. In some ways, they are both outsiders in the group of eight that composed the teen group on Roswell. Yes, Alex had Isabel, but never completely. Yes, Tess had Kyle, but it became clear in canon that she was mostly "settling" for him. It seems to me that the fact that neither was ever fully paired with another main character leaves them both a little bit out in the cold.

Their characters work well together. Alex's sense of humour is a good balance for Tess's lack of one (Kyle brought out some playfulness in her, and I could see Alex accomplishing this even further, because he was invested in the Abyss in a way that Kyle never was, and, thus, was more able to try to understand Tess, because he understood Isabel to a certain degree). Tess's passion and loyalty are desperately needed by Alex, who is often the last person thought of by the rest of the group. He was never properly appreciated for what he brought to the original six, in my mind, and I could see Tess, once she got past her Max issues, recognizing his inherent worth.

Plus, last but not least, I love both characters, and I feel that they were never fully developed to the extent they should have been. Fifthwheeling puts both Tess and Alex in the centre of the action - they are no longer just secondary plot devices, but fully breathing, three-dimensional characters in Fifthwheeldom. The questions that the pairing brings up - how can Alex reconcile his friendship and loyalty to Liz and still have a romantic relationship with Tess, her nemesis? Can Tess let go of "destiny" for good and truly embrace her human side, which she in some ways abhors, by being with Alex? - fascinate me.

The argument I often hear against Alex/Tess is "But, but...Tess KILLED Alex? I just can't imagine them together because of that." Well, yes. But even though Tess became a convenient plot device for the writers (they needed to get rid of her, because they didn't know how to write for her), there was still that kernel of potential goodness in Tess. In the scene where Alex dies, it is quite obvious that Tess didn't do it on purpose. In fact, what happened renders her more vulnerable and interesting, in a way. Even she was shocked by what her "gifts" had wrought, and I believed her when she told Max that she didn't do it on purpose. Do I forgive what happened to Alex for Tess to get what she wanted? No. But I can understand how it happened. She had been taught that getting home was all that mattered. Even though she believed this with every fibre of her being, that flashback scene of Kyle, who had no reason to remember Tess positively by then, reflects that even so, she had regret.

Anyway, those are my arguments for why the pairing of Alex and Tess works. The possibilities are simply endless.

At first the idea alone didn't make much sense at all to me... they'd hardly interacted on the show, and when they had... well, it wasn't exactly friendly. But then one day a couple years back I came across a short, one-parter called Other Blondes, I don't even remember how, and something in it just clicked with me. The piece is very short, and not even overtly Fifthwheeler, but it opened up the possibility to me, and stayed in my head for a long time.

Still, I was a Gazer, pretty much a die-hard CC-er... something that changed for me once I decided I preferred quality of writing to the in-tact-ness of my "OTP," and I realized through that that I'd been restricting myself thinking only in CC terms. Since Alex was basically my favorite character at the time, I tried looking for UC fics involving him... tried a Groupie, which was good, but had more to do with Sel's writing capabilities than what I really saw of the characters, and it was the only one I've ever been able to read. True Blue... besides never being able to actually find a quality fic, just seemed bizarre to me, since Liz was SO MaxandLiz on the show.

And then suddenly everyone was talking about Fifthwheeler... Kath, Annie, Ella, it was everywhere. I remembered the short fic I'd read way back when, and took up the moderator position when a FW forum opened at the Eraser Room, and I think it's been the discussion in there (along with, I'll admit, the sneak peeks of Kath's fic that I'd seen and chats with Annie) that really convinced me.

I've always been strongly pro-Tess, and loved the idea that there was a lot more to her than we had the chance to see on the show. We knew she had vulnerabilities, but they never got fully explored, or even addressed, and while I loved Kyle and the idea of he and Tess together, I could definitely see the possibility of Alex being the type of support and stability that Tess needed. Tess would have given him a chance, because she desperately needed to have somebody on her side, and Alex was exactly the type of person to support the odd man out.

Also, I'm going to disagree a little with Kath here and say that I think Tess has a great sense of humor... though she tries to deny it. (I'll slag you with my death-ray eyes?) I think she and Alex have very similar senses of humor, both a little off-the-wall, a little unexpected. I think Alex and Tess would be very at ease around each other, once they got to know each other, and it would be an endless stream of them affectionately half-teasing one another, whereas with Isabel (on the show) Alex was always afraid of making the wrong move, and with Kyle, Tess was never sure enough about her own feelings to be fully comfortable around him.

I think that's the gist of it. And I agree with Kath that their very possibility of a relationship brings up questions that just beg to be answered... and what better way than exploring them through fanfic?

I’m not exactly what you’d call a diehard Fifth Wheeler, so I don’t know that my post will be quite as interesting as Kath’s and Lisa’s.

My interest in Fifth Wheeler was borne out of – quite simply – boredom with the CCs. My first year or so in the fandom, I was a diehard CCer, and particularly a diehard Dreamer. But as time went on, and I read more fanfic, and became more interested in the characters and their interactions with each other, I became fascinated with the ‘what if’ possibilities that unconventional pairings present. I have always been a fairly obsessive In Crowder, and then I was fascinated by Ground Zero, then Lanewalker, Loyalist, etc. My interest in Fifth Wheeler didn’t come along until later, when I started hearing Annie and Kath and Lisa talk about it, and I thought to myself… why not?

So I read a few recommended fics to see what this ship had to offer, and found that the pairing of Alex and Tess did indeed work for me. I will second Lisa and say that I’ve always felt there was more than meets the eye when it came to Tess, and also second her on Alex and Tess having very similar senses of humor and being able to get along and be at ease with each other. And of course, there’s the idea of them both being on the outskirts of the group (as has been addressed in many Fifth Wheel fics, and obviously evident in the shipper name chosen for them) and the possibility of them bonding over their feelings of rejection.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. :D

jbangelo wrote:My interest in Fifth Wheeler was borne out of – quite simply – boredom with the CCs.

Bravo, Jenny! That's one I forgot to mention.

Howdy all~

Sorry. This should have been up awhile ago, but I really had to think about it - to get into the whens, whys, and hows - before I could post anything.

My Fifthwheeler love story starts years ago, on a little fanfic board that has long since stopped existing. It was one of those I stumbled on during my early days in the fandom, and I was despretally hunting for Dreamer fanfiction. You see, back then, I was a diehard CCer, especially Dreamer.

That's when I found <i><b>First Do No Harm</b></i> by Merideth. It was a Dreamer story, but that's where the CC-ish stopped. Michael was paired with Isabel. Kyle was with Maria. And, to my surprise, and later, glee, Alex was married to Tess.

It worked. I mean it really worked in the story, which planted the idea of the two of them together in my head.

Fast forward a few years later, and Kath is talking about doing a Fifthwheeler fic. It brough back all the possiblities the ship had, possiblities that hadn't been explored yet. I've been all about Fifthwheelers ever since.

I know that some people can not see Alex and Tess together. They are just too different to work well as a couple. For me, their differences are what make them so perfect for each other. Alex was the picture of loyality. In her whole life, from what we saw on the show, no one had ever been loyal to Tess. At least, not before she arrived in Roswell. After all, Nasedo, her protector and father-ish figure, was using her as a means to an end. I also see Tess as hothead underneath all of that control she'd developed over the years. She'd be the one to go rushing into dangerous situations, where as Alex would be the one to turn towards for some logical reasoning.

I guess that it all boils down to those two characters acting as a perfect balance for one another.

As Kath said, none of this really was explored on the show. But, hey, that's why we have fanfic. Hence, when she had the idea for the Haunt, I was all about it. I mean, I hate possiblities not being explored. And, after so many chats with Kath, Lisa, Jenny, and Pooh, I've come to see that there were even more than I originally thought.

So, go Fifthwheeler. It is so time to get the Alex and Tess groove on!

Annie, do you have a link for First Do No Harm? I'd like to read it.