would you like a little RAGE with your RAGE?

[xparrot]

So Martin Gero made some comments on the most recent episode of SGA.

"For five years, we didn’t even know it, but all [Rodney] wanted was for someone to tell him that they loved him in an unconditional way."

I want to...I want to kick Martin Gero's head in with a big spiky boot. OF LOVE.

So the love of friends and family (because doesn't Jeannie love him, too? or was she lying when she said "I love you" in "Miller's Crossing" and faking her tears in "The Shrine"?) counts for snot, because it's not romantic, sexual love.

And unconditional love is quoting a guy's own brain-damaged love confession back at him (six months later), and then offering him sex on a plane to make him shut up.

I have no boyfriend! I HAVE NO LOVE! What do I do??? My life is empty! Meaningless!

*cue total fucking mental breakdown*

Okay, now I'm going to do my best to forget this episode ever happened. There's been other eps I haven't enjoyed, but this is the first one that's seriously in danger of spoiling my fanning. It pretty much ruined Rodney's character for me even when I was ignoring the McKeller (I swear, I'd've been almost as outraged if the ep had gone the same way only with John instead of Keller, though at least then I'd have some McShep making out), and now that I am meant to think that banging Keller on the plane is the most significant and important event of Rodney's life in the past five years - yeah. Someone tell me how to hold onto my SGA love, because I don't want to lose this fandom, but the show seems pretty determined to use its dying breath to drive me away.

ETA: I gotta say, SGA these days is really making me appreciate NCIS. NCIS has one s5 ep that is explicitly the 100% opposite theme as this.

Comments

Re: Comment got too long, oops! (edited)

[sholio]

I just don't want to see this argument progress any further, TBH. I've already lived through this once with the Jack/Sam, Jack/Daniel canon-vs-fanon ship wars in SG-1 and it was extremely unpleasant. Can't we all just get along? *g*

I'm definitely having flashbacks. D:

I think that's probably a main cause of the narrative dissonance: he didn't see the need to explain/show the relationship further because it was so clear in his head.

That's actually a fantastic insight! And I wonder how much it explains the problems that people had with the episode? One of the recent discussions I was involved in (maybe at sga-talk, I can't remember) had to do with unspoken assumptions in fic, and the fact that a lot of John/Rodney fic relies heavily on the assumption that most of the readership expects the characters to get together, so the writer doesn't have to do much work to sell the pairing. This is fine for people who are already on board, but it makes the stories very jarring and somewhat OOC for people like me, who still need the groundwork to be laid.

If one has proper groundwork for an episode like "Brain Storm", most of the problems evaporate (well, leaving aside the plot-level problems, of course). I mean, if it takes place within an established relationship, then Keller's declaration of love at the end doesn't come out of the blue at all.

SGA has always been a show where most of the emotional arcs take place offscreen. Carson and Cadman appeared as a couple *once*; Teyla and Kanaan weren't even hinted at until the episode where her pregnancy was revealed; John and Rodney's game-playing was retconned three seasons into the show. I think people tend not to complain about retcons that fit with how they want to see the characters, but do notice it when the retcon jars their semi-canonical, semi-fanonical idea of how the characters supposed to be. (Like "Game". I *do* remember people getting upset about "Game", but the ones who objected to it were those who didn't see John and Rodney as close friends, maintained that they did not hang out off duty -- which, up to that point, had never really been seen in canon -- and were upset when their impression of the characters was retconned by canon. Something vaguely similar is happening with Keller/Rodney here, I think.)

Re: Comment got too long, oops! (edited)

[ariadne83]

I desperately want to read more stories where John and Rodney *weren't* madly crushing on each other from the first moment they met. My husband and I took four years to get around to our first date, and even that was a coincidence because we happened to bump into each other on Valentine's Day. Where is the realism??

Re: Comment got too long, oops! (edited)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I think people tend not to complain about retcons that fit with how they want to see the characters, but do notice it when the retcon jars their semi-canonical, semi-fanonical idea of how the characters supposed to be.

This is totally true, but I don't think the word is "retconning" so much as adding to existing canon. We get invested, we start seeing things in the characters, and then we accept what new canon details fit our views and ignore those that don't. I think pretty much all fans do this, because we have to. Because of screenwriter schizophrenia - all the show writers tend to see the characters somewhat differently; they are inconsistent across episodes. The only way to get consistency is to ignore certain elements. (e.g. in SGA, John's mathematical abilities come and go.)

Most of the time the dissonance is low-level enough that we can easily ignore or explain away what we don't like. But when it's a major contradiction to our internal view of canon, we flip out, because we realize that what we're watching the show for doesn't exist except in our minds. It's a major disappointment, because it means that whatever we thought we saw we were imagining, and what we hoped to see we never will (e.g. I wanted a Rodney & Ronon friendship ep, and then Jason Momoa said they're not friends. So all the joking I was taking as friendship between them apparently wasn't teasing but genuine antagonism, and I'd never get an ep where they hung out together by choice, and that's really disappointing.)

Many 'shippers build relationships largely in their minds, reading between the lines of canon, and those 'ships become the most important part of the show for them. A lot of 'shippers enjoy subtext as much or more than text because part of the pleasure of 'shipping is looking for the details, peering between the lines. This works fine up until the point one's chosen 'ship is sunk (by a competing 'ship or a character death or whatever); then there's no point to being a fan anymore, because not only will you never see the 'ship you wanted, but all the details before that you were reading as 'shipping were misleading; you were reading them wrong.

Gero's comments so bothered me (more than the actual ep did) because it feels like he's discrediting all his previous episodes. All the times John or Jeannie or anyone else seemed to prove their love for Rodney, it apparently meant nothing; I was misreading his episodes. He didn't just sink McShep; he sunk Rodney & Team, and that's why I flipped out.