*hugs you* I know, and I'm sorry for venting in your comments. This has been building all day, and I think I had to do it somewhere before I exploded. I'm feeling much better now.
I also know that you and I have very fundamentally different views of romance and marriage, and I think it probably in large part goes back to our upbringings and the sort of couples that we were exposed to as role models. It's not that I'm categorically opposed to romantic love and marriage and pair-bonding in general. But there's not really much I can do about my emotional reactions to it.
I think that Rodney/Keller is very non-threatening to me as romance goes, because I don't see a lot of evidence of intense pair-bonding. Theirs would be a low-key relationship in which they maintain separate groups of friends and largely separate lives. That is, to be honest, my romantic ideal and the one that I find the easiest to accept in fiction. It doesn't threaten any of the other relationships in Rodney's life because it doesn't cross over into the same territory, and I don't see the same intensity that I do in his friendship with John.
And I'm perfectly happy with that. It obviously doesn't match how the writers see it, but, well, that doesn't really surprise me, because I gathered all along that they thought they were writing some kind of grand, fated-in-the-stars romance and it just doesn't read that way. But I'm perfectly fine with that, because I hate grand, fated-in-the-stars romance, full of passion and giving up your previous circle of friends and spending all your waking hours lost in another person's eyes. (See: Twilight.) And I like low-key romance that doesn't preclude a person's ability to continue to have individual friendships with other people. Regardless of what the SGA writers meant to deliver, that's basically what I see, and in honesty, the less that Rodney and Jennifer have in common, the less their relationship is likely to interfere with the existing relationships in his life. Don't get me wrong, I want them to like and appreciate each other;, I don't want them to be unhappy. But like I've said to you before, I find the whole idea of a couple who are each other's everything to be claustrophobic and unpleasant. And the idea of Rodney having his team, and Jennifer having her job, and the two of them being satisfied in their individual, professional and personal lives and yet still having each other to curl up with at night ... I find that incredibly appealing, really the best of all possible worlds.
(In other fandoms, there's a reason why I enjoyed writing Bulma and Vegeta so much, and found myself identifying so strongly with Bulma, because in large part, that *was* my ideal marriage -- a loving but mostly-absent spouse, a satisfying career, and lots of time alone to pursue one's own hobbies or friendships.)
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I also know that you and I have very fundamentally different views of romance and marriage, and I think it probably in large part goes back to our upbringings and the sort of couples that we were exposed to as role models. It's not that I'm categorically opposed to romantic love and marriage and pair-bonding in general. But there's not really much I can do about my emotional reactions to it.
I think that Rodney/Keller is very non-threatening to me as romance goes, because I don't see a lot of evidence of intense pair-bonding. Theirs would be a low-key relationship in which they maintain separate groups of friends and largely separate lives. That is, to be honest, my romantic ideal and the one that I find the easiest to accept in fiction. It doesn't threaten any of the other relationships in Rodney's life because it doesn't cross over into the same territory, and I don't see the same intensity that I do in his friendship with John.
And I'm perfectly happy with that. It obviously doesn't match how the writers see it, but, well, that doesn't really surprise me, because I gathered all along that they thought they were writing some kind of grand, fated-in-the-stars romance and it just doesn't read that way. But I'm perfectly fine with that, because I hate grand, fated-in-the-stars romance, full of passion and giving up your previous circle of friends and spending all your waking hours lost in another person's eyes. (See: Twilight.) And I like low-key romance that doesn't preclude a person's ability to continue to have individual friendships with other people. Regardless of what the SGA writers meant to deliver, that's basically what I see, and in honesty, the less that Rodney and Jennifer have in common, the less their relationship is likely to interfere with the existing relationships in his life. Don't get me wrong, I want them to like and appreciate each other;, I don't want them to be unhappy. But like I've said to you before, I find the whole idea of a couple who are each other's everything to be claustrophobic and unpleasant. And the idea of Rodney having his team, and Jennifer having her job, and the two of them being satisfied in their individual, professional and personal lives and yet still having each other to curl up with at night ... I find that incredibly appealing, really the best of all possible worlds.
(In other fandoms, there's a reason why I enjoyed writing Bulma and Vegeta so much, and found myself identifying so strongly with Bulma, because in large part, that *was* my ideal marriage -- a loving but mostly-absent spouse, a satisfying career, and lots of time alone to pursue one's own hobbies or friendships.)