Everytom

Word count: 750

I used to play this game of matching Trek characters across series: Chakotay was equivalent to Riker, Spock to Data, etc. If I tried, I could match up the whole cast of one show with another. This wasn’t just a recreational activity - it also said something about the function each character would have in a story, and was thus related to the find-and-replace theory of badfic. (If you could find-and-replace Mulder and Scully with Jack and Sam, the fic was probably badfic.)

So, when I go looking for Tom Paris in all the wrong places, it’s because I need someone to do what he does in my Voyager fic. Xander was a kind of Tom Paris, and I’m thinking that Colonel O’Neill himself is the Tom Paris of Stargate. (It’s clear that Teal’c is Anya/T’Pol/Spock/Data/Odo/Seven.) I would have expected a more minor character to play Tom - I can imagine that it’s difficult (from a plot perspective) having your male romantic lead also being your rebellious smart-aleck outsider - who is going to snark about his non-relationship with the female lead, if he’s busy angsting over it? You lose a bit of elbow-room that way, but there are also benefits to not having so many separate characters to juggle.

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