xparrot | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've said it before, but I do think if I stayed in SGA as long as you have, that I probably would switch, would be able to view it as either type of fandom. Though I don't know - I think it's more likely I just won't keep it that long, or at least not this invested. I'm already cheating a bit with NCIS, and though SGA still satisfies me as that and most other fandoms don't, and I see myself coming back to it, I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay...(I'm not OTP myself with any fandom! XP)

(Actually, in their specific case, that's one of the reasons why slashing them does change the relationship to something that's less special to me, because suddenly all the indefinable weirdness collapses into a relationship that *can* be described and easily qualified -- "boyfriends" -- and that makes it less interesting to me than when it's this extremely odd something that even they don't seem to know how to define.)

Hmmmm - I hadn't really considered this, but it's true for me, too. "Uniqueness" is one of the defining features of an OTP for me, and that explains why I particularly like McShep in which their relationship is something unique even if they are having sex - I don't exactly go for "they're not gay they just love each other," but I do tend to like stories in which it's their first gay relationship, or their first real relationship (John was married but it went so badly, and while I don't see Rodney as a virgin I tend to see him as mostly inexperienced with sex)...that "boyfriend" for them is still is a weird and inexplicable relationship. Same as you can define them as "teammates" or "best friends" and it describes what they have for the most part, but not quite. John & Rodney are both so weird about relationships - all relationships, friendships or romantic - that adding sex would either not change much or would complicate things; I don't see it as simplifying anything, at least not right away. Sleeping together would not make them any better at communicating, at least not right away (though yeah, I have read slash fics that it does, but those always seem OOC to me...put it this way, I've got my one slash fic that's about 50K words now, with long-term established McShep, and neither of them have actually said "I love you" to the other in the course of the story yet. But then, gen h/c fics are often about the characters coming together and expressing that they love each other platonically, so much gen, too, has the characters moving towards defining their relationships.)

And that's why I wouldn't want to see McShep go canon, because these writers are not good at subtle, and the only reason they write John & Rodney as well & interestingly as they do is because they don't really know what they're doing; they don't have it figured out. And sometimes it does seem to be played almost sexually/romantically...I sort of feel that saying their relationship is strictly platonic, that there is no subtext, is as limiting and qualifying as making them boyfriends; it's denying some of the mystery! (Which is why some of my favorite fics are those gen-ish stories which don't make a point of it one way or another, that don't try to define their friendship as romantic or platonic but leave it open to anything.)

Hmmm... let me see if I can explain this. While I *do* see what you're saying about defining the mystery, on a totally illogical level (which is, of course, the level where we're operating when we fan *g*) it's usually profoundly uncomfortable for me to write or read sex in the context of a relationship that gives off a strong family vibe for me; it trips my incest squick like whoa. I don't have a moral problem with consensual incest and I can even write it if I try (there's canon incest in two of my original stories, actually) but it's still something that squicks me, and though I know "adopted" siblings aren't the same as flesh-and-blood siblings, it still trips the same wires in my head. I've dealt with it in SGA by trying not to overtly think of them as family when I'm reading ship fic ... in fact, come to think of it, I think that's why I've been downplaying the "family" thing in general over the last year or so, both in my fic and in my head -- my preferred mental model for them used to be family/siblings, but it's more like dorm-mates or roommates these days. I can do family; I can do sex; I can't do family having sex with each other, at least in anything other than a profoundly messed-up kind of way. And I've been reading a fair amount of pairing (in different combinations) and OT4 with the team. Innnnteresting ...! Maybe that does explain it, actually, because I had kinda wondered about that; when I typed "brothers" for the John/Rodney relationship, above, it reminded me that back in season three, I used to *love* thinking of them that way, and I really don't/can't anymore. I think this is directly attributable to reading slash; it means that "family" is no-go territory for me now with them, at least in a warm-fuzzy sort of way rather than a weird/screwed-up way.

And I know that this is irrational and just a matter of the sort of boxes where I put things in my head, but when it comes to gut-level emotional reactions to things, it doesn't matter.. Maybe that's one of the big reasons why it's really hard for me to relate strongly to a couple on both a gen and sexual level at the same time.

But your saying this about sex being part of their strangeness makes me think that it might be very interesting to write them that way -- if occasional sex was just more of their weirdness and the undefinability of their relationship; in other words, they'd still be seeking relationships with other people, but also having sex with each other, and trying to explain *that* to people outside the relationship ... I'm very intrigued by that possibility, actually.

Yup...I can get this to an extent; I think the difference is that "family" has multiple meanings to me. So I love siblings, and sibcest can squick me (though I sometimes like it as a twisted kink; I can't see it as warm & fuzzy but as a fucked up obsessive relationship I sometimes go for it.) But for me, an important part of family is the parents: marriage (or the equivalent thereof) is at the foundation of a family.

This, definitely, has a lot to do with internalized definitions of "family"; my experience with happy marriages means that I see them as, if not absolutely necessary to a family, then at least a common element. So I can see chars as brothers sometimes, but if they're not actually related I'm just as likely to see them as a married couple. And, as mentioned, I see a happy marriage as a best friend + sex relationship, so it's not that far a mental/emotional jump for me to make. (and probably why I tend to prefer happy-fuzzy McShep slash, as I see their relationship as pretty healthy to begin with, for all they're weirdos...)

in other words, they'd still be seeking relationships with other people, but also having sex with each other, and trying to explain *that* to people outside the relationship ... I'm very intrigued by that possibility, actually.

Hmmm. I'm intrigued by polyamorous relationships in general, though I admit I have a hard time seeing it with John & Rodney - mainly because I don't see either of them as having particular strong sex drives; the "Kirk" reading of John always strikes me as OOC, and I read Rodney as the kind of guy who wouldn't really get much out of sex outside of the context of a close relationship; he's not interested in sex itself so much as the intimacy (that's just my personal fanon take, not anything canonical!) (And that's another reason why I don't have trouble slashing them; I don't see sex as that important to their lives. At the same time, it helps to slash them in that I do see them as sexually compatible - "my" John is borderline asexual, and Rodney likes sex on occasion but is easily distracted by other things...

would you like a little RAGE with your RAGE?

Re: Part 2 (edited)

Re: Part 2 (edited)

Re: Part 2 (edited)