they just seem like such fundamentally different people with different backgrounds and attitudes about the work and the world.
Absolutely, and I have a whole rant about this up somewhere *g*. But y'know, I've run into soooo many people who absolutely cannot see those differences.
A lot of what slashers often find most appealing in slash is "difference" between the men (so you end up with shorter/taller, blond/brunet, scientist/flyboy, etc.), and they just don't see that with L/C. A geek is a geek is a geek. They're both mathematicians, right? And both short. Gah. Anyway, all many fans see is the age difference and the fact that Charlie, being younger, is de facto better, sexier, smarter (and he must be that, if he's helping Larry with the math, and yes I've got a rant on that as well *g*).
Even those times when Larry and Charlie have argued, people don't seem to get why they're arguing (in terms of different ways of thinking, intellectual strengths, philosophical positions).
As for that bargain, they set Charlie up in the house to make it easier to give him a family life, and they set him up with Amita as a "will they/won't they" in order to say, "He's heterosexual." But they have to string us along with Amita because consummation would take Charlie away from female fans as a love interest/fantasy figure. It's a real mess is what it is.
Even that whole scene with Charlie and Larry at the funeral, with the whole "too many of us die alone" thing? It's just not true. Feynmann married three times. Einstein was married and had a lover. Reimann was married with a kid. Poincare was married with four kids.
I mean, it's not that there weren't any who remained single, but the idea that great geeks in history had women trouble is... unsupported as a generalization, as Larry might say.
no subject
Absolutely, and I have a whole rant about this up somewhere *g*. But y'know, I've run into soooo many people who absolutely cannot see those differences.
A lot of what slashers often find most appealing in slash is "difference" between the men (so you end up with shorter/taller, blond/brunet, scientist/flyboy, etc.), and they just don't see that with L/C. A geek is a geek is a geek. They're both mathematicians, right? And both short. Gah. Anyway, all many fans see is the age difference and the fact that Charlie, being younger, is de facto better, sexier, smarter (and he must be that, if he's helping Larry with the math, and yes I've got a rant on that as well *g*).
Even those times when Larry and Charlie have argued, people don't seem to get why they're arguing (in terms of different ways of thinking, intellectual strengths, philosophical positions).
As for that bargain, they set Charlie up in the house to make it easier to give him a family life, and they set him up with Amita as a "will they/won't they" in order to say, "He's heterosexual." But they have to string us along with Amita because consummation would take Charlie away from female fans as a love interest/fantasy figure. It's a real mess is what it is.
Even that whole scene with Charlie and Larry at the funeral, with the whole "too many of us die alone" thing? It's just not true. Feynmann married three times. Einstein was married and had a lover. Reimann was married with a kid. Poincare was married with four kids.
I mean, it's not that there weren't any who remained single, but the idea that great geeks in history had women trouble is... unsupported as a generalization, as Larry might say.