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)

[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...

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

[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...

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

[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...!)

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

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

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.)

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

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

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.

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

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

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.

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

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

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...!)

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

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

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*)