A Question for the F-List

[grav_ity]

[Poll #1787223]

Feel free to argue in the comments, but be nice to one another.

(Obviously, I have opinions of my own and do not understand people who feel otherwise, but to each their own...)

(And yay! My polls are fixed!)

Comments

[amenirdis.livejournal.com]

I may be the only one who liked him, but I really did. I like the quiet geeky type, and he really seemed to understand her better than Laurie.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

SEE! THIS IS WHAT I MEAN! I love Jo TO PIECES in the scene where she turns Laurie down, because she knows him well enough (and herself not quite well enough) to know that it would be a TERRIBLE IDEA. I remember being THRILLED with Fritz the first time I read the book, and in the years since, I've only come to like them more.

[emmy-roo.livejournal.com]

Oh good! I assumed that everyone liked Jo/Fritz, so when you said you have Opinions I was terrified that you'd totally misunderstood the relationship between Jo and Laurie. You can't marry your brother, which is how she feels about him. And while it's entirely possible that she was attracted to him, she needs someone really grounded to counter her flights of fancy, and because she's Jo, marvelous, irritating, brilliant, moody Jo, she knows this about herself and always has. That's why she is so close to Beth and Meg. She recognizes in them a steadiness that allows her the freedom to be herself without flying off the deep end.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

There's been at least one published "fix", and I just...don't get it.

[shadadukal]

You're not f-locked. ;)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I like to leave it open to the floor. :)

[shadadukal]

But as you said your f-list, I thought you meant for this to be f-locked. *shrugs*

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Well, even though there are people I haven't added back, I still consider them f-listers. ;)

[shadadukal]

Okay, I only consider flisters people who I've added back, but then again, my journal is completely flocked so there's nothing to see but old fanart entries if I don't add someone back.

[shadadukal]

Fritz or someone else definitely not Laurie. I was utterly shocked when I got online and discovered that apparently most people wanted Jo and Laurie to get together (which apparently has been the case since the 19th century).

[emmy-roo.livejournal.com]

They do?! *is flabbergasted* But they'd be such a terrible fit!

[shadadukal]

I know! But apparently most people ship Jo/Laurie. Louisa May Alcott got fan mail begging her to have them end up together. So glad she didn't cave!

[emmy-roo.livejournal.com]

I think I would have cried over fan mail like that. What an indictment of your writing abilities that so many fans would so misunderstand your greatest characters.

[shadadukal]

That's the Ship Sinking write-up for Jo/Laurie at TV tropes:
It almost seems like Louisa May Alcott wrote the first sequel to Little Women deliberately to sink the Jo/Laurie ship ("I won't marry Jo to Laurie to please anybody," she wrote in her diary); Jo March's marriage to Professor Bhaer in Little Women is a confirmed Authorial Take That to Jo/Laurie shippers. Alcott showed NO mercy to her fans' demands of having Jo marry Laurie — a Like Brother and Sister speech, an Ill Girl who chases all thoughts of other love from Jo's mind, Jo marrying her other best male friend and beta-reader when she's "back", and a Last Minute Hook Up for Laurie with Jo's little sister Amy. According to the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the book, Louisa May Alcott wrote to a friend, Alf Whitman, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect." Where's the Internet when you need it?

And you can see the history of the shipping here. I am really confused by this ship tbh.

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

Alcott took a shot at the detractors in "An Old Fashioned Girl" too in the last chapter:

“Come, Philander, let us be a marching
Every one his true love a searching,”

Would be the most appropriate motto for this chapter, because, intimidated by the threats, denunciations, and complaints showered upon me in consequence of taking the liberty to end a certain story as I liked, I now yield to the amiable desire of giving satisfaction, and, at the risk of outraging all the unities, intend to pair off everybody I can lay my hands on.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Fritz is awesome, and he understands and respects Jo better.

Plus, he challenges her in the right ways. Laurie, not nearly as much.

...Though really, my best match for Laurie might have been Bess, had she lived.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

There's a great scene in the Winona Rider version of the movie where Amy and Laurie accuse each other of wanting to get married for personal reasons (she wants security and he wants to be part of her family, which is really just security of another sort), that I really, really liked (even though the same movie cut the "To the Devil!" scene, which I totally like more!).

You are right about Fritz being a better sort of "challenge". :)

[rosewildeirish.livejournal.com]

The beauty of the story in relation to Jo/Laurie is it shows you the progression and evolution of a relationship - how you can grow up with a person, love them, and ultimately realize that this person is not right for you. As a child reading it, I wanted Jo and Laurie to end up together, all the way through until they don't. And when she meets Fritz, there's a completion in that, a feeling of rightness that if you'd told me about it while reading of her younger years? I would not have grasped.

It's the progression and growth that I like about the story, and the relationships.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Part of it for me was loving Jo and Laurie as friends so much (and another part is that Fritz is much, much more my own type than Laurie anyway, but that's another story!). That was so atypical of the period, publicly anyway, and it I love "found families" as a trope.

But yes, as a grown up I definitely love the self-awareness aspect of Jo's relationships the most.

[whereismysam.livejournal.com]

I think Laurie & Jo would end up killing each other if they'd married. They were too much alike in a lot of ways. XD

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Plus, you know, FRITZ IS AWESOME.

I think I'm one of a very, very small minority who was never particularly attached to Laurie. Which is weird for me, as I am typically on the side of "childhood sweethearts"...except that's not what I consider them to be.

(Never, ever get between Heidi and Peter! Or Wendy and growing up!)

[crazedturkey.livejournal.com]

Oh thank god everyone here is sensible :)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Well...almost everyone!

(I expect irony_rocks will yell at me later...)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

WHERE HAVE ALL THESE EMINENTLY SENSIBLE PEOPLE BEEN ALL MY LIFE???

Jo/Fritz FOREVER. Especially if I imagine him as Gabriel Byrne. Which, you know, is nothing like he is in the book, with the beard and whatnot, but YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID because, hello, GABRIEL BYRNE.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

HEE!

Before the internet, Jo/Laurie never even would have occurred to me! And yet...it seems to be "the fix".

(I only very recently saw that version of Little Women, and yes: I love them.)

ETA: Plus, he's German, which means I get to indulge in my love of nicknames that have only tangential ties to the given name, and somehow "Fritz" is the diminutive for every f-starting male name in the country.

[emmy-roo.livejournal.com]

I see him as Gabriel Byrne in my head, too. And I've been in love with Gabriel Byrne ever since. ;)

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated Fritz and hated that Jo got married and had babeez blah blah blah. Jo should've lived a merry spinster life all her days, as Maud does in "Old Fashioned Girl" and Molly in "Jack and Jill."

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

My second choice would be no one.

[lexsara.livejournal.com]

Add me to the group that thinks Laurie and Jo would have been very unhappy together. I always loved Fritz, and how he was exactly what Jo needed. Laurie (or Teddy, I tend to alternate in what I call him) was a wonderful best friend, but he and Jo were too much alike and I always saw them as brother/sister.

I do remember freaking out though when I heard about the Laurie/Jo shippers and the 'fixes' and letters to LMA. I guess to me, it's always gonna be Fritz. They just ... fit. (My second choice too would be no one, I could see Jo and Plumfield together for life with all her 'boys' at the school)

Can I just add I ADORE this film version of LW?

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

I think I related to Jo (possibly because of the focus of the narration, maybe the personality), and *I* loved Laurie, so of course Laurie and Jo should get together (which thinking how fandom ships work generally, may explain some of the popularity of the pairing).

As I've grown older I can appreciate the better dynamic with Fritz, but I can't help but knee jerk back to Laurie.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I wanted Jo/Laurie when I first read it, but by the end of the book I thought Alcott was RIGHT, darn it! :-)

(I still have moments where I waver, though.)