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

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[sholio]

I'm aware that my views of romance are probably not the healthiest ever. I don't know that I've ever talked about my family much, but my father's basically an abusive, alcoholic con artist (his most recent shenanigan last year was trying to literally drink himself to death while calling me and my sister periodically to give us weepy, self-pitying progress reports on how his suicide was coming along). The happiest times in my childhood tended to be when he wasn't around. And, growing up, I got to watch my mother trying to be her mate's be-all and end-all, first with him and then with a series of other users and manipulators. Now my brother's married to an abuser and manipulator of his own, whose inability to rein in her spending forced him to join the Army to pay off her debts. (Long story. Long, frustrating, "gonna choke a bitch" story.) My maternal aunt's husband is in jail for DWI; my paternal aunt's husband is a religious fundamentalist and control freak who doesn't let her go anywhere without permission; and my grandfather physically abused his daughters before being institutionalized for insanity!

I seem to have bucked the trend by managing to become happily married myself, but to someone who's as independent and private and as much of a hermit as I am. We have separate bank accounts, take mostly-separate vacations, have our own sets of friends and tend to conveniently absent ourselves when the other spouse's family comes to visit. And we've been together for 13 years, so it must be working! I think actually, the longer I'm married, the easier it is for me to see romantic love as a positive thing rather than a destructive force, but it's awfully hard to fight off the "love destroys" meme that I picked up as a kid.

I'm not trying to whine here, just ... trying to explain, really. There are a lot of reasons why romance doesn't appeal to me and this is only part of it, but I can't help thinking it's most likely a big part, especially why I prefer romance that isn't played out as the grand love story of all time. I like romance that's understated and doesn't upset the existing relationships in a character's life, and I like unhappy romance that screws everything all to hell, especially in fanfic. This is not to say I can't be sold on something else, but ... it's harder. And, like I said, I've made a conscious effort to be more tolerant towards romance of all types, because it does make it easier to get by, in fandom and in life, when you're not feeling kicked in the gut every time two characters kiss.

But I think the way people are feeling towards Gero's statement is very much the way I feel when I read a slash fic that explicitly has John and Rodney realize that sexual attraction is why they spent so much time together and enjoy each other's company so much (yes, there is a line to that effect in ACaDL, and I'm the one who wrote it, and it felt like twisting a knife to do so), or read fan-squee that puts a slashy spin on statements and actions in canon that I read in a gen way. I don't get mad about it because, well, there's no point really; it's not like it'd change anything, and I'd be mad all the time. Besides, who am I to tell other people how to fan. I certainly don't want to stomp around harshing on other people's squee. But I often feel as if the majority of fandom is focused on a particular reading of canon that invalidates my own, and I am seeing a lot of my own gut-level emotional reaction to that in the way that people are reacting to this particular statement from Gero.

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[ariadne83]

I agree actually. You've articulated why I didn't have the rage response to that post that other people seem to have had. I didn't like the episode that much, but I think it was more a victim of Gero trying to wear too many hats. I like his writing but I really think he needed someone else to direct - it's like betaing your own story.

I don't believe in soulmates or destined romance, and I got married knowing that it might not work out but I want to try, more than for any other reason. I deliberately maintain some separation from my husband's friends, not because I don't like spending time with them but because I don't have the common interests he has with them, and I think it's healthy for him to have his own space. I wonder if that *is* a function of upbringing; my parents' relationship is a watered-down version of yours, because my father is a functional alcoholic - he can get emotionally abusive when he drinks, but it's relatively rare.

One of the reasons I like McKay/Sheppard as a romantic pairing is because of all the things they *don't* have in common. I don't believe it's a pairing that's destined in the stars, and I think they'd have to really work at it to stay together in the face of all the pressures they're under. I don't see it written that way very often, but it's how I envision it.

To cut a long story short, I'm sorry you've been feeling isolated, and I may not know exactly where you're coming from but I can relate.

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[sholio]

Thank you. :) I think my preferred reading of McKay/Sheppard is similar to yours -- two very different people who are going to have a rough road ahead of them, but can make it work if they try. In fact, if you tried to pin down my favorite character relationships (the ones I like to read, and the ones I like to write) to one common theme, more often than not the commonality is two people having a rough go of it, but surviving anyway.

I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that I feel isolated; it's more like the awareness that you're one of the only vegetarians at the party, so you have to either be prepared to defend your beliefs every time someone passes the chicken hors d'ourves, or just buck up and eat the damn chicken. I'm learning to develop a taste for chicken. *g* I don't think it's too different from any of the other little coping things that we have to do in order to get along with a non-homogenous group of people; it's just that the Gero comment and fandom's reaction to it happened to touch a nerve. And I really do appreciate the sympathy; thank you. :) I think just getting it out in the open is helping me feel less upset about it. (Which I'm sure is true of people venting about Gero's statement, too. And I agree with you, on the "beta'ing your own fic" problem. I had no idea he'd directed the episode as well as writing it.)

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[ariadne83]

How could there not be conflict *g*? Neither of them is very demonstrative, neither of them likes to communicate and their conflicting career goals would force them to compromise... which neither of them likes to do. It's a gold mine for Mills-and-Boon break up plots (the ones where they get back together years later and have grown up enough to work for it instead of walking as soon as it gets hard), but ones that are actually rooted in reality instead of fake misunderstandings.

I think Gero made a comment about how it was his last writing/directing gig for Atlantis, so I'm not 100% sure how much he did/didn't do (but he did just direct a movie, so...), but 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.

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*

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[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.)

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[ariadne83]

*facepalm* I just read the whole article from MGM - this was Gero's first time directing an Atlantis episode. No wonder it was less-than-legendary.

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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

See, this explains a lot, it really does. (and wow, I appreciate your frankness, I get a lot shyer talking about such things online! but it does help to see where it's coming from.)

I was raised by an unusually happy married couple, so I'm coming from the completely opposite angle - romantic love isn't the be-all to me, but family is. Really, I'm not fundamentally a slasher or a romantic - rather, it's that I have a family kink approximately a million miles wide. Marriage is part of how families are created. And for me, "true love" isn't about sex or flirting; it's about settling down with someone, having someone to come home to and share stories with, knowing someone is always there for you, knowing you're there for someone.

I tend to follow the romantic lead because in modern society, a sexual relationship is about the only such relationship that is accepted in the long-term. Roommates or teammates don't usually stay together forever (the "forever" thing is a kink of mine that I can't explain, but considering the cliche of "happily ever after" I'm not alone in it.) If they can, I'm totally happy with them like that; I don't need to have sex to bond them. But with most people - fictional characters and in real life - the expectation is that however close friends they may have, eventually they're going to find love and settle down.

Back before I slashed, I used to get very upset about romance that "broke up" my favorite friendships - in, say, The Sentinel, the idea that Jim or Blair might eventually marry the right girl and move out of their apartment and stop sharing their lives broke my heart. But by most society standards, if they didn't eventually marry and settle down they'd be something of misfits, rejects, and considered to be lonely and unhappy. Slash provided a neat solution to the dilemma; it gave them the fulfillment of a romantic relationship that didn't break up the friendship.

And SGA appealed to me because most of the show seemed to be about how family and friends can be as fulfilling as any romantic relationship. The characters had a family in each other, marriage/slash optional. Now s5 is flying in the face of that. If Rodney didn't have anyone else important in his life, if he didn't have any other kind of love, then I'd be totally fine with him getting romantic love and finding it life-changing. But he's getting family love and friend love, and that Gero would think that utterly unimportant - it burns!

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[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Were you a Sentinel fan pre-TSbyBS?

I got into TS after it had been off the air a couple of years, and my impression has been that a lot of fans felt very burned by the first cancellation, after S2P1, and never really warmed to the fourth season. Whereas I think of the implausibility of the "resolution" in TSbyBS as a great gift, one I've written dozens of stories off of. And I'm thinking maybe I'll feel the same way about any end-of-S5 resolution they hand us for SGA.

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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got into TS in s3, was part of the whole Save Sentinel/Damp Not Dead! thing ^_^ Though by the time s4 aired I was mostly out of it. I know I didn't mind TSbBS, because it didn't break them up. I wasn't into slash as a Sentinel fan - since then I've started slashing them, but when I was active in the fandom I was a strictly gen Jim-Blair friendship OTPer, big time, wrote a bunch of gen fic for them, under my old handle XmagicalX. (Oddly, I had several slash fen tell me that they liked my fic, I think because I did OTP them - I wanted them to live happily ever after, I just didn't care if they had sex doing so!)

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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

About SGA in particular:

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.

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. Especially because Keller has no life except her job and her relationship with Rodney. If she had other good friends, I'd be better; but now it looks like that even if Rodney has other friends, Keller has no life instead of him. He's her everything. And according to Gero, she's Rodney's everything. And that's what I'm flipping out about.

It's not that Rodney's going to have sex with Keller that bothers me. It's the thought that next time "The Shrine" happens he's going to forget John and run to Keller's door; that John and the team will become meaningless to him in the face of his love for Keller. 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.

(which is why I loved NCIS's ep "Family" so damn much, because it's all about choosing the former over the latter...)

when I read a slash fic that explicitly has John and Rodney realize that sexual attraction is why they spent so much time together and enjoy each other's company so much (yes, there is a line to that effect in ACaDL, and I'm the one who wrote it, and it felt like twisting a knife to do so)

Umm. To be honest, I didn't like the McShep of ACaDL as much as a lot of other fic, because they didn't have as solid a relationship as I like. The love confession at the end wasn't totally out of the blue, but it wasn't as satisfying to me as a slash relationship based on a firm friendship. I do not like slash that undermines the friendship - it's just that I don't see most slash as doing so.

[sholio]

To be honest, I didn't like the McShep of ACaDL as much as a lot of other fic, because they didn't have as solid a relationship as I like. The love confession at the end wasn't totally out of the blue, but it wasn't as satisfying to me as a slash relationship based on a firm friendship.

Hmmmm~! It would be really interesting to compare notes with Naye on the thought processes that led us to decide, independently but simultaneously, that the story would work better as slash -- and I wonder (though I *really* don't want to attribute thoughts to her that might not be her own, since she's not here to defend herself) if her opinions on romance/marriage might not be more closely aligned with mine than yours, at least when it comes to writing it. I know that for both of us, the story was simply not working as friendship, and when we flipped the switch to "John and Rodney are physically attracted to each other", suddenly everything made sense (which is why I incorporated that line at the end, even though it kinda flies in the face of how I see their relationship in canon). I think you're right that the friendship in the fic isn't as deep as it is in canon (it just hasn't really had a chance to become so, since we started at the beginning) so in order for the characters to be acting the way we wrote them, there needed to be a motive other than friendship there. Adding physical attraction turned out to be just perfect; suddenly behavior which was unconvincing and slightly nonsensical in platonic friends who don't know each other very well made perfect sense for two people dancing around a burgeoning physical attraction.

(Although everyone's mileage varies on this; I remember getting one reaction -- though I can't remember if it was in a review to the story or just something she said afterwards -- from a gen fan who felt that the story was 100% gen up until the last scene. Whereas I had thought that we were writing them very different from how I normally write them as platonic friends, and that the attraction was being blatantly telegraphed! But obviously, different people see different things when they read.)

And I know, intellectually at least, that friendship and romance are not mutually exclusive, but I do think they engage me in very different ways. I relate differently to a relationship if I know it's meant to be romance and not friendship (see below with my comment about your Shrine tag). I have noticed that the characteristics I most enjoy in friendships are, often, characteristics that either fail to engage me or actively turn me off a romantic pairing. Classic example of that: I really dislike bickering, mutually antagonistic couples -- which is why I so thoroughly hated Tony/Ziva on NCIS when I thought the show was going in a romance direction with them -- but I really like that particular dynamic in a friendship. So, if you offer me a clip of two people having a fight, I'll relate to it very differently if I think that it'll end with the two of them in bed, or going out for coffee as platonic friends.

Like I said in another comment, I write romance in order to engage with the characters in different ways than a friendship story lets me get away with. It's not necessarily that I feel the romantic emotions I'm writing are stronger or deeper; in fact, I think a lot of the romance that I write carries the implicit assumption that the nonsexual relationships in the characters' lives are actually more fulfilling and long-lasting than their romances. (I think this is especially true of my original fiction.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I'm more accepting of McShep initially based on physical attraction in AUs, for just the reason you say; it's often a good way to get the characters close quickly. Though I like it to move into more. I tend to see romantic love as short-lasting; either it breaks up, or it becomes the familial relationship of a married couple.

Naye's views parallel yours quite closely, especially in fiction; her tastes are rather closer to yours than mine. (Gnine is about the only fan I know of who really shares my tastes; we exist in this weird nether-realm between gen and 'ship!) She's not much for slash or shoujo either; not at all a romance fan.

Oddly I think both of you, not being romance fans, are more tolerant of romance in shows; Naye had no problems with any of the outside romances in s4 of NCIS, while as I didn't really care for them - didn't hate them, but I get extremely bored by romances outside the main cast; I much prefer to watch the characters I like interacting. Obviously I don't always (or even usually) like romance within the main cast, either, because writers all too often will use it instead of developing friendships, and again, that bores/frustrates me. Case in point - I didn't like the idea of Tony/Ziva at Ziva's introduction, but now that they have a fully developed relationship, I'm not as opposed to it going sexual. I don't particularly *want* it to, but it wouldn't turn me off the show, because I'd trust the writers to maintain the teaminess even if they hooked up.

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...

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[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

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...

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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

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...!)

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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

(three replies for the win!)

Reading these comments over again - I wish there was some way to assure you that all slashers are not out to deny John & Rodney's friendship (or any other character's). I can tell you that from my perspective, McShep does not invalidate John-Rodney friendship. When I give a scene between them a slashy reading, I am never, ever trying to imply that if they didn't have physical attraction, they wouldn't be as close.

And I've said this before, I know...it just makes me weirdly depressed to think that when I started writing slash, you were forced to conclude I didn't care about John & Rodney's friendship anymore; that every slash fic I've written is pissing on their friendship, for you. For me, slash works just as h/c does; it's a short-hand way to get the chars to express the depth of feelings between them. (The original slash fic, to my understanding, was like this - people were writing Kirk/Spock in outrageous h/c scenarios to get them to confess their love, and then someone decided to just cut to the chase and have them express the love in a more traditional way.)

I think the problem is the social construct of "love" - "true love" is supposed to be romantic; "as a friend feels about another friend" is kind of a joke because friend love is not supposed to be as meaningful as romantic love (heck, most friends rarely even use the word "love" and especially among male friends it's usually treated as a joke when they do). Yet fen are constantly shown male-male friends with bonds more intense than any of their canon romantic bonds. At the same time, we have the social construct of the romantic "ever after"; there are almost no stories that put friendship above romance, in the end. You pretty much can't write a "happily ever after" that doesn't involve romantic love & marriage; there's no formula for it.

Slashers circumvented this, found the escape clause - make the friendship into romantic love, make it an acceptably complete happy ending. A lot of the early slash was the infamous "we're not gay, we just love each other" - the point wasn't homosexual love, the point was the love between two male friends. The point of slash isn't to deny friendship; it's to preserve it in the face of social expectation.

I understand your perspective on romance, that you find the traditional "happily ever after" emotionally disturbing and anything but happy. And I know you can't just switch your feelings around. But as threatened as you feel by slash, most slashers are honestly not trying to threaten you; most of the McSheppers I know absolutely love that the boys are best friends, and that's a large part of why they slash them.

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[(Anonymous)]

"At the same time, we have the social construct of the romantic "ever after"; there are almost no stories that put friendship above romance, in the end. You pretty much can't write a "happily ever after" that doesn't involve romantic love & marriage; there's no formula for it."

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just realized why I even read slash. I just like the "happily ever after" and nothing-ever-coming-between-them thing so much. On a sidenote, friendshipper is nearly the only author that I know of who manages to do that without writing slash (there are a few others, including the owner of the journal I´m now trespassing in, but she´s the best (that´s a purely personal opinion, of course.) Somebody once called it friendship romance, I think - that´s even better than slash.)
And, well, sorry for replying here anonymously and with nothing to say, but I don´t even have an account and I just wanted to thank you for the insight. So, thanks again.
LG
akn

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

[sholio]

Awwww, thank you! ^____^ That is very sweet. I really appreciate it.

It was totally wanting more of John and Rodney that got me into reading slash in this fandom. Since the beginning, my tastes have changed and I've begun craving slash stories that do interesting things with the relationship more than stories that keep them together. But sometimes I'm just in a mood for the boys doing stuff together, and it's much easier to find that in slash than in gen.

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

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Oh, most of my favorite slash OTPs, I started slashing less because I wanted to see them together and more because I didn't want to see anyone else coming between them. Gen smarm-fic sometimes has similar themes (and Friendshipper's is some of the best! ^^) But slash is often "safer" - you can be sure with slash that a random romantic interest isn't going to be introduced halfway through and take time away from the relationships you care about.

[sholio]

I really *really* don't want you to think that *I* think slashers are deliberately setting out to ruin my time in fandom! That would be extremely silly and paranoid and just not true. But I am pretty sure that the "kicked in the gut" feeling that McShep fen are feeling right is pretty similar to the way I feel when I read a slash fic where one of the boys declares something along the lines of "oh wow, I was spending all this time with you because I was attracted to you" or when I run across episode reactions that describe John as "flirting" with Rodney when I just saw him enjoying his company and liking hanging out with him.

But of course I'm not going to say anything to them about it; it's someone else's journal and someone else's story, and I have absolutely no right to jump in and make their fanning experience less happy. If their fanning style is making me unhappy, then it's my responsibility to either not venture into areas of fandom that make me unhappy, or learn to be more tolerant and less bothered by views that conflict with how I see the characters.

And I try, I try like anything to do that! Knowing that a lot of the people who frequent and comment at my journal are slash fen, I try to keep my episode reviews and discussions non-slash-hostile. I don't jump into discussions and say, "My squee, it is harshed by this", because I think I'd be a complete ass to do that, when everyone else is having fun and on the same page; if my squee is that easily harshed, then I need to keep my squee away from places that harsh it.

Also, like we talked about earlier, there is a certain amount of anti-gay bigotry in gen fandom, and I really, really don't want to fall into that trap. The last thing I'd want to do is make the gay fen who read and comment on my journal feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

And I know that no one is harshing my squee on purpose. Of course, neither is Gero; he's simply describing the show as he sees it, and in the process, causing a bunch of fans to feel what I'm pretty sure is the same dismissiveness that they (entirely by accident and with no malice whatsoever) have caused me to feel, on a lesser scale of course, but pretty much a constant since I've been in fandom, especially in this fandom because I associate more closely with slash fen and read more slash than has generally been true of me in the past.

Obviously, as quote-unquote "oppression" goes, this is absolutely as petty as it gets. XD It's just that after so many years of trying so hard to get along with people, and to not put down their fannish tastes even when I felt like they were invalidating my own, it's kind of startling and unpleasant to see this same demographic in the same situation that I've been in, standing up and railing against it when I've spent so much time learning not to feel those feelings so that I won't be tempted to do exactly that to them. If I'm not getting upset about the Gero quote (which I'm really not), it's because I've so thoroughly trained myself not to get upset at that particular sentiment, to avoid being angry all the time! Not just because of fandom, but because of society in general. (Er, sorry about all the edits on this one. CAN'T TYPE.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. The "oppression" here is somewhat different, since this is fans railing against a creator, rather than one set of fandom railing against another. If a fan had said this about McKeller, I wouldn't have had this sort of rage; I'd have just rolled my eyes and moved along. But when it's the creator telling us how we're supposed to interpret his work, telling us that our interpretation is wrong - that's a different kettle of fish.

Is it really just McSheppers flipping? Because as a strictly gen fan I swear I would've have the exact same meltdown; he's denying what I love most about the show. If anything I'm more offended on the gen side than the slash side; it's not just John/Rodney that Gero's denying, but also Rodney & team, and Rodney & Jeannie. The reason the slashers are flipping is because most slashers consider themselves friendshippers as well - they are responding to the same intensity of relationships that you are, they're just seeing them a bit differently. While as Gero is seeing entirely different relationships. Are all the other gen fen really okay with what he said?

That being said - I really am sorry that slash kicks you in the gut like that. I've not read many fics that state that John & Rodney only spend time together because of their sexual desire (barring AUs, most of the canon slash fic I've read with that idea are the early s1-2 ones, when their friendship was so scarcely established in canon that they needed the crutch of attraction to explain why they'd spend any time together.) It's not what I'd like to read, certainly.

Hmm...out of curiosity, does any of my slash give you that impression? (have you read any of my outright McShep?) As I said, I write from the perspective of seeing slash as an extension of the friendshipping, but I'm thinking what I write probably looks different if you see slash as a deliberate denial of friendship...

[sholio]

I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry for sounding like (well, "sounding like" hell, I guess I was) condemning your and a lot of other people's style of fanning, and I need to shut up about it before I lose every last slash-inclining fan-friend that I have. ^^;; I swear I'm not sitting around in fandom feeling unappreciated and miserable; I do not resent slashers for having something I don't, and of course I think people are entitled to feel any way they please about canon. Obviously, though, I had a bit of a pent-up whine. ^^;;

Regarding the rest of your comment, I find it completely fascinating because it is so very counter-intuitive to me. For me, writing romance (slash or het) has nothing to do with securing a happy-ever-after for the characters (which, in my head, they already have) and everything to do with exploring feelings and character dynamics that aren't possible in a platonic relationship. The idea of sexually pairing off two characters who already have a close and satisfying relationship in order to assure their happily-ever-after is so phenomenally UNlike how I view sex and romance that I have trouble even wrapping my brain around it. I mean, from a sociological standpoint, it makes perfect sense to me, considering our society's emphasis on happy-ever-after and romance as the pinnacle of human relationships. It just doesn't really work for me on an emotional level.

It does make a whole whopping lot of sense out of the whole "we're not gay" phenomenon, though -- which I never really believed existed (I don't really think it does in SGA fandom) until reading some meta that pointed to stories of that nature, and my brain had to do MAJOR pretzel-twisting to comprehend it! The way you explain it, though, makes more sense out of it -- that it's basically friendship given the social seal of approval to be friendship forever, which comes by way of sex ... basically, exploiting a loophole in society's standards for love and foreverness. That is ... odd. ^^ And I can see why actual gay people are rather offended by it. But yeah, I can see why people would put the two together in that way.

(WTF, LJ's spell checker claims "foreverness" is a real word, but not "fandom"? Hi, spell checker, confused much?)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh - that's the thing; your perspective is utterly counter-intuitive to me. It took me a long time to realize that you see sexual love and friendship love as mutually exclusive, because that just doesn't make sense to me...!

As far as I know "We're not gay, we just love each other" doesn't really exist anymore except as holdovers in the older fandoms - because gay people did find it so offensive, and because social standards are changing; from what I know, some of the early slashers actually were homophobic, but they wanted their "happily ever after" enough to make exceptions. I haven't read much fic like that myself, my main knowledge is from Henry Jenkins - but that's the thing, when I first read about it, it made total sense to me; I didn't have to try to understand it. I'd always been saddened to know that the expectations of a normal life would eventually break up almost all my favorite friendship pairs; in slashdom I found many fans who shared my disappointment in the inevitable breakup, who wanted to deny it.

Which is why slash isn't everything to me; if you can convince me that the characters will have a happily ever after together without being sexually involved, I tend to be all over that. I don't *require* a romantic "ever after" to satisfy me; it's just that without one, there's nearly always the expectation that romance has to happen, sooner or later, and thus the friendship I like will end, unless the friendship becomes the romance.