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

Eros and Filios

[sholio]

If I could see McKeller as a low-key, friendly but not all-important relationship, then I'd be a lot better with it. But the writers are so determined to make it more than that that I have a hard time accepting it like that.

And see, this is one of those cases where what they say is so obviously different from what they're writing that I don't have any trouble ignoring what they're saying. ^^ For one thing, it seems very obvious to me that Gero is using love in an exclusively "romantic love" sense (as many people do). This isn't jarring for me because a lot of people use the word "love" to mean romantic love and don't use it for friendship love at all; in fact, "Tao" is one of the only times that I've ever heard "love" used in a non-sexual way on TV, except perhaps between parents and children.

I think it would be a lot harder for me to work around this if it were explicitly stated in canon, like Rodney's "best friends" comment about Carson, which did kinda throw me for a loop. I also had trouble with Jason Momoa's comment about Ronon and Rodney's friendship because I do see what he said as being generally borne out by canon. And if Rodney had said "You are more important to me than anyone else" in canon, or made a choice between, say, saving Keller's life or John's, or confiding in Keller vs. John at an emotionally unstable moment, that'd probably weird me out just like the "best friend" comment did. But considering this is a statement that doesn't really seem to be borne out by what I'm seeing in canon, and it's also coming from a guy who's written his last episode of the show, it just doesn't really affect anything, does it? I'm having trouble getting worked up about it, because I'm just seeing the same use of "love" to mean "romantic love only" that so many people use -- he doesn't really say ANYTHING about Rodney's past relationships with anybody, unless you see the overriding feature of John and Rodney's relationship as being their romantic love. So in that sense, yes, he's putting them down. But as far as love goes, he's talking about eros, not filios. (Stupid English language, having only one word for love!) Most people in the modern day consider eros (sexual love) a higher calling than filios (friendship love) and in fact use "love" to mean eros only, but the Greeks valued filios more highly. And the show's writers write incredibly deep filios, which totally resonates with me; even if their intent is to show eros as being superior, I don't think they've conveyed that in the text, so in this case I'm happy to take the text and leave authorial intent alone.

Re: Eros and Filios

[(Anonymous)]

I think it would be a lot harder for me to work around this if it were explicitly stated in canon, like Rodney's "best friends" comment about Carson, which did kinda throw me for a loop.

I've been thinking about this today. When I first heard it, it was jarring - was the strong John-Rodney friendship an illusion? But then, with the help of much meta-reading, I came to see this as a useful insight into Rodney's vocabulary of friendship/emotional landscape.

- Helen

Re: Eros and Filios

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I think it's jarring when it's said in reference SGA, which is one of the few shows that *does* use "love" to mean filios, on more than one occasion - "Tao," and even in Gero's own episode, Jeannie tells Rodney, "I love you."

But yeah, I definitely am way too worked up about it. Just wish it wasn't at the end of the show like this; I'd really wanted to go out on a high note, instead of being left with stuff I want to fix, after 4 seasons that made me happy! Oh well, it's making the impending cancellation look more and more like a blessing...

And the show's writers write incredibly deep filios, which totally resonates with me; even if their intent is to show eros as being superior, I don't think they've conveyed that in the text, so in this case I'm happy to take the text and leave authorial intent alone.

Yes, this! Must keep this in mind! *embroiders it on a pillow*

In a more general note:

Most people in the modern day consider eros (sexual love) a higher calling than filios (friendship love) and in fact use "love" to mean eros only, but the Greeks valued filios more highly.

*laughs* When I was discussing this conversation with Gnine, she remarked that you are very Greek in your tastes (before you posted this comment ^^)

The thing is - I think a lot of slashers are actually bucking the modern trend. Rather than ranking eros above filios, they skirt the issue by *combining* eros and filios. Which is why so many slashers were perturbed by Gero's comments, perhaps even more than gen fans, because while gen fans are used to viewing romantic love in a separate category, in the ideals of some shippers/slashers there is little difference...