The first prompt of that Teslen appreciation week is “Teslen Throughout History”which made me remember the Sanctuary MerMay fic I still haven’t posted. It’s written (I finished it in May) but I’m planning on an illustration for it. I was without the PC for 3 weeks and so I haven’t made any progress obviously in that time.

Anyway, The Tragic Tail is Helen/James ship, with some references to her past with John. However, the only real interaction with the Helen of 1912 is with Nikola. It’s Nikola who holds her when she first breaks down from the horror of what happened. It’s Nikola who sees when the ‘last Titanic survivor’ dies and calls Helen so she can talk with someone who understands. Ever since I wrote it my intent has been to tag it with something like “Nikola is a good friend” because he really was.

My observation of shippers generally (I’ve been writing fanfic for over 20 years now) is that generally “opposition ships” are ignored, or maligned, generally torn down to make ‘your ship’ seem the undisputed best. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever been guilty of that and I think if I have, it’s only when the “opposition ship” was a complete NoTP that I had a real antipathy for. Generally speaking I’m ship and let ship. If I dislike something it’s on it’s own merits (or rather negatives), not just because it’s the opposition to something I like.

I’m not threatened by Teslen. I ship Helen/John/James as an OT3 because it just screamed at me. There was not much choice involved. I saw Revelations and boom – I was done for. But I have eyes and so I can’t deny Nikola’s importance, nor would I ever want to do that.

I freely admit in season 4 the show seemed to be leaning to making Helen/Nikola canon. I can definitely see how their friendship could turn romantic. I don’t object to the pairing, I just don’t see it as a ‘great love’ I guess. To me their interaction seems far more platonic. They are very close, I would definitely say Helen treats Nikola like family. However exasperated she gets with him, there’s always a bit of fondness there and they will always be friends. I’ve always seen Nikola’s flirting with her to be more like banter as there never seems to be any expectation of it going beyond flirting.

I kinda headcanon actually that Nikola started being outrageous soon after The Five met as a way of testing her. Helen never took offense because she liked that she wasn’t being treated like a porcelain doll. I think Helen would always have bristled at being treated like a delicate lady. So Nikola being outrageous, without any intent to go further, was just like a way of affirming her independence.

Man I’m not sure what this rambling is. Thoughts on Teslen I guess. I still don’t know if I will actually do anything for appreciation week. Maybe I’ll do a series of headcanon/meta posts about their friendship. Maybe I’ll make a gifset or two. I don’t know.