xparrot | would you like a little RAGE with your RAGE?

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would you like a little RAGE with your RAGE?

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.

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I will pick family/friendship love over romantic, every time, but the way SGA is playing now, the way Gero is writing it, Rodney wouldn't, and that gets to me.

Aha! And now things clear up for me. :) I go for a true romantic partner over family. Family gets distracted, has their own lives, things going on. They're there for you if you need them, yes (as well as they can be, and if they're not tangled up in something themselves). But they don't know you like your romantic partner does, and they can't be there for you like your partner can be. That's my experience and so I totally get what Gero was saying. Rodney was looking for someone for himself. (His sister has her family, for example.)

(I can see any member of the team becoming a romantic partner for Rodney within fanfic, and frankly canon has enough for me to see John as a romantic partner for him. But whomever became that romantic partner would raise above team for me.)

So a Rodney with just team strikes me as a lonely Rodney. Especially as his team finds their own loves and lives. (John is the wild card here, I'll admit.)

Of course... this gets complicated by the fact that a romantic partner becomes family...

That's the thing - I see "successful" romance, the romances I get invested in, as leading to family. You get romantically involved, you get married/settle down together, and then you become family; the familial feelings of loyalty and caring and companionship and intimacy become more important than the initial chemistry of romance. Thus I tend to like romances when the people involved don't have a family, when the romance is a way for them to find one.

But Rodney *has* a family, and I don't see him as lonely; I see his relationship with his team as being as fulfilling as any romantic connection would be. So the thought that his team ultimately means nothing to him, that he's going to reject that relationship with his team, with John especially, in favor of building a whole new life with Keller (on Earth, even, since he mentioned he was considering leaving Atlantis), just because they're having sex - I find that idea terribly depressing.

To me, one of the most appealing themes of Atlantis is the story of these misfit people finding a family, finding a home, with each other. For Rodney to leave that home, his team, his family, for a romantic relationship that lacks the developed depth behind it that he shares with his team - that's basically counter to everything I love about SGA.

(To clarify - if the McKeller had been developed over the seasons, I wouldn't resist it so. And Rodney might yet eventually develop a believable "family" with Keller. But being told "I love you" on the first date, and having Gero see that confession as the ultimate in Rodney's life, as the culmination of Rodney's story on Atlantis - that's what kills me. At least in Gero's eyes, Rodney's five-year friendships are unimportant compared to a one-date romance; mutual sexual desire is a more meaningful bond than anything Rodney has gone through with his team, and that feels to me like a denial of, well, pretty much the entire rest of the show...!)

That's the thing - I see "successful" romance, the romances I get invested in, as leading to family.
[...]
But Rodney *has* a family, and I don't see him as lonely; I see his relationship with his team as being as fulfilling as any romantic connection would be. So the thought that his team ultimately means nothing to him, that he's going to reject that relationship with his team... ...I find that idea terribly depressing.

I'd find Rodney deciding his team means nothing to him depressing as well. But finding a romantic partner doesn't mean throwing your family by the way side. It's finding someone for yourself (and being someone special for someone else) and adding them to your family (as well as being brought into theirs). And it means finding someone who's going to stick by you no matter what direction your life takes (and who you'll stick by). Family will support, yes, but they won't come with (more than likely anyway; Jeannie didn't go to Atlantis, or Siberia for that matter).

The way John complicates things is that, in canon, I can see John putting Rodney at that level of importance in his life. But it's such a subtext thing, and I get the sense Rodney isn't fully aware of John's feelings, and I'm fairly sure canon will never out and out couple them... So if I shift John more towards a brother role, that's something Rodney finding a romantic partner would never change.

(Hee! As I'm writing this I'm watching "Moonstruck" which illustrates my view perfectly. Falling in love creates bigger and healthier families, it doesn't separate people from their families.)

John's canonical commitment to Rodney is part of the problem I'm having. But the main issue is that Gero and some of the other writers seem to be wanting to see Keller to separate Rodney from his team. I'd be a lot cooler with the McKeller if Keller had friendships with the rest of the team - "marrying into the family" as it were. But two of the major McKeller episodes physically separate Rodney from his team (Trio, Brainstorm) and then we have Keller vs the team in The Shrine, and Keller pitting Rodney & Ronon against one another in Tracker.

Doesn't help that this season has had a distinct dearth of team-y episodes - which isn't the fault of the McKeller, but it exacerbates the trend. Rather than creating a bigger family, the writers are writing it as if Rodney does have to choose between team and Keller, and he's choosing Keller. And in "Brainstorm" Rodney says outright he's thinking of leaving Atlantis; from that line, his team apparently doesn't mean much to him. I'd wish the writers would show us that Rodney hooking up with Keller wouldn't change his relationship with the team; instead the show's been showing us the opposite.

I'd be a lot cooler with the McKeller if Keller had friendships with the rest of the team - "marrying into the family" as it were. But two of the major McKeller episodes physically separate Rodney from his team...

But a romantic partnership isn't formed with family. It is, by its nature, something that must start with the featured two. It's afterwords that family gets brought in. No matter who Rodney formed a romantic partnership with, it was going to happen with just the two of them. Even if SGA went totally bold and made his partner John, we would have had an ep or two that featured just them forming their new relationship. But, once that partnership is formed, family becomes part of the package.

Heh - which is why I hate most romance on TV, because I have little interest in romantic relationships on their own; I only really enjoy romance that has a friendship (or other) component, and would just as soon have romance stay in the background, if it must be there. Rodney & Katie Brown never had an episode devoted solely to them, and I found their relationship as convincing as McKeller. I wouldn't really have liked an episode all about John & Rodney's Big Gay Love, either; I'd rather have friendship stories with them. SGA used to be a show about family; if they were going to do a romance in it, then it would've been more fitting to the theme to do that romance in the context of the family.

When you date someone really close to their family, then you'll meet their family pretty soon into the relationship (my family's very close, and the brother's girlfriends always got to know us quickly!) So for the writers to isolate Rodney & Keller like this, when their relationship has already progressed as far as "love" - that plays false to me. The closer someone is to their family, the more important it is for their romantic partners to be compatible with the family - so to make so little effort to bring Keller into the team makes it seem like either she's an unsuitable partner for Rodney, or else that Rodney's team isn't that close to him after all. (The fact that she barely seems to know John is especially weird; in college I dated a guy with a BFF frat brother, and I quickly got to know the BFF almost as well as my boyfriend...!)

SGA used to be a show about family; if they were going to do a romance in it, then it would've been more fitting to the theme to do that romance in the context of the family.

Hmm... I'd argue the "used to be". One romantic episode with Rodney as leading man (with his "brothers" chuckling at him in the background, and his date's father mentioned a time or two) doesn't strike me a schismatic shift. ;) If we're watching Rodney fully embrace family (and I think that's been a continuing theme throughout the series) it makes sense he finds a romantic partner. Family forms from that romantic core, after all.

When you date someone really close to their family, then you'll meet their family pretty soon into the relationship (my family's very close, and the brother's girlfriends always got to know us quickly!) So for the writers to isolate Rodney & Keller like this, when their relationship has already progressed as far as "love" - that plays false to me.

But Jennifer has never been isolated from Rodney's "family". Episode after episode has had her involved with and working with various members (including his sister Jeannie). That part came first, the romance with Rodney, which by its nature had to be just the two of them, came second. They were heading back to Atlantis by episode's end, so I'm sure Rodney's family will be involved with the two of them as a romantic pair. Rodney isn't having to choose. (I seriously doubt he'll have to make that choice. This ain't Romeo and Juliet. *g*)

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would you like a little RAGE with your RAGE?

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