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xparrotSo 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.
"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.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-27 08:06 pm (UTC)Which is all Gero is saying too. The only difference is that, due to the characters on the show being presented (and, I gather, seen by their creators) as straight, this love would have to come from a woman, not a man. (I don't think that's necessarily *right*, but I do find it vanishingly unlikely that this particular show would portray two people in an openly same-sex relationship.) So the problem is *not* Gero saying that romantic love is more enduring than friendship love, because you're saying that too -- that friendship without sex can't endure! The problem is that he hasn't sold us on the idea that what Rodney has with Jennifer *is* that relationship for Rodney.
So, let's say that Gero agrees with the majority of slashers, that truly enduring love comes not from friendship but from a romantic relationship. He doesn't want to see Rodney lonely in the end. But due to some combination of network restrictions and how he personally sees the character(s), that person can't be John (or Carson), so he introduces a love interest so that Rodney won't be "alone" at the end.
See, to me, you are saying "friendship alone is not enough" and that's exactly what I have such a knee-jerk problem with! Because to me, it is enough, and saying "But without sex it wouldn't last" is devaluing the existing relationship.
I'm kinda working from both your comments and emails here, because I'm reading the latest email while I'm writing this comment. I should take the rest of this to email, really, because I do think I'm digressing a bit from your above comment, not to mention starting to argue in circles; I think here we're just running up against a fundamental difference in how fictional relationships *work* for us, on an emotional level, that is probably not resolvable. And I do agree with a lot of the rest of your comment, so ... I'll carry on with answering in another comment.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 05:41 am (UTC)No, what I'm saying is that most people, to be happy, need romantic AND friendship love together. The ideal romance, to my mind, the one that will make most people happy (depending on the person, of course), is to have a lover and a best friend in one person.
There are exceptions to this rule, but of almost all the happily married couples I know in my acquaintance, this holds true. A romantic relationship that isn't based on friendship won't last either, in my experience. Friendship isn't enough to create the stable bond of commitment, because with most people, however good friends you are, your friend is going to want to get married, too. So no, friendship isn't enough.
But sex/romance isn't enough, either. Gero is saying it is - he didn't write Rodney & Keller as friends; no one's written them doing any friend things together, sharing interests, having fun, etc. Rodney's incredibly awkward around her, he won't relax and be himself as he is with his friends (e.g. John or Radek or Sam.) Lovers can become friends over time, but they haven't really known each other long or well enough to be close friends yet. So for Gero to say that romantic relationship trumps the friendship, when that romance is not a friendship itself, I find fundamentally wrong, a juvenile view of love.
ETA: Because I fear this point has gotten muddled - I'm not saying friendship doesn't endure, because it does. Rather, it's that a particular type of friendship, the cohabitating/partner/team thing that I am so hung-up on in fiction, almost never endures unchanging. In NCIS, the end of s5, the team is broken up - they keep in touch, but it's not the same; it's not what I want to watch or read about. Likewise, if Rodney moved back to Earth as he was saying he might at the end of "Brainstorm" (wtf??) I'm sure he'd still stay in touch with John, and they'd get along fine whenever they saw each other, but the break-up of the team would break my heart, and they'd have lost the particular closeness I love in them, that when they want to have fun, they go to each other, and are there for each other when losing their minds, etc.
So it's not that I don't think friendships can last, but rather a particular type of very intimate, partner-like, marriage-like, roommate friendship, that happens to be my particular kink, and what almost all of my favorite fictional relationships are - those relationships I have trouble seeing lasting, by the rules of society, as only platonic friendship.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 07:26 am (UTC)I think ultimately, though, it does come down to what pushes a person's particular fan buttons -- because while your explanation makes perfect sense for you, it doesn't make that fundamental kind of emotional sense for me; that is, I can accept it intellectually, and I think I understand what you're explaining, but I don't feel it emotionally. I'm willing to take friendships on faith, but not, generally, romance. You can take romance (friendship-based romance, I hasten to caveat *g*) on faith, in a way that I can't, but not friendships, in the way that I do.
I don't think either one of us is necessarily right or wrong -- or, rather, human behavior and human emotions are probably broad enough to encompass both situations and do so plausibly, but neither of us believes in the other scenario enough to prefer read/writing it. I can't add sex into the relationship without taking away what I like about it; you can't remove the roommate/partner aspect without taking away what you like about it (but I can; close friends being reunited after a long time apart, or staying in touch despite distance, is actually one of my fictional kinks).
It does give me a much better idea of where you're coming from with slash, and why you slash relationships, however. And I think it gives *me* a better understanding of why some slash/ship stories work much better for me than others.
Edited to add: I actually know some couples who are (apparently) happily married without friendship being present at all -- I'm thinking of my husband's parents here, who have about the most classic "traditional" relationship I've ever seen; he's a stereotypical guy, she's a stereotypical 1950s housewife, they seem to have nothing in common and don't even really seem to *like* each other most of the time, and yet, they've been married for 35 years and seem to do just fine at it. I would never in a billion years want to be stuck in a relationship like that, but for *them*, it's obviously satisfying.
I guess this is why I say that human nature is probably broad enough to encompass any conceivable kind of relationship and then some, including the ones you're talking about, where sex is quietly added to the relationship with no other significant changes -- and probably also lifelong, close friendships, as well. But different readers/writers will have a different tolerance for their ability to convey, and enjoy, different sorts of relationships...
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 08:13 am (UTC)And yeah, a wide variety of human relationships are possible; I'm just focusing on the ones I particularly like to watch/read about (which differs from fiction to fiction, but these are kinks specific to my Type B status quo fanfic fandoms...)
I'm willing to take friendships on faith, but not, generally, romance. You can take romance (friendship-based romance, I hasten to caveat *g*) on faith, in a way that I can't, but not friendships, in the way that I do.
I think this is it, yeah - because usually I do like friendship more than romance, and I like platonic friendships that last - I just have to be convinced they're possible, generally; as you say, I can't take it on faith that they will.
...Well. Hmmm. Actually, for me, I have to be convinced of writer intent. That's the difference between you and me, perhaps - when I read gen fic written by gen fen such as yourself, I find it utterly satisfying, because I know you are seeing the friendship as something meaningful. I don't need for you to slash John & Rodney for me to believe that you see their friendship as important and lasting. That I know you find friendship more important than romance means that I'm happy to take the friendships as is; and even if you write the characters as romantically involved with other people, you still consider their friendship just as/more important to the characters. (Um. This question of writer intent would be why I had that ridiculous meltdown over your Rodney/Keller/Ronon story ^^;)
But most writers put romance first - Gero being the current example, but most other people I know, too. So when they write romance, I'm suspicious that they're writing a romantic relationship to trump the friendships (especially if they then go and say that's exactly what they're doing!) While as if they're writing the friendship as the romance, then there's no question. Most TV writers, who are given to adding romantic subplots into everything, I tend to take as "guilty until proven innocent" - every time they write romance, I suspect that they're trying to supersede the friendships. (This is probably doing some of them a disservice, as Wright's writing definitely indicates he thinks friendship is more meaningful. And this is why I loved NCIS's resolution of Tony/Jeanne so much, because it made it clear those writers think like I do.)
For me, it's the relationship between certain chars that matters (my OTPs) and the significance of the relationship matters more to me than the nature of it - I care less whether their love is platonic or sexual than whether it's important to the chars; and the relationships I fixate on are nearly always friendship-based, whether or not they also include romance. But I get that for you, a platonic relationship is what you care about; a sexual relationship spoils it.
(Perhaps oddly, I have OTPs that are strictly platonic, that I don't want to see as sexual, for whatever reasons. So I understand that feeling, as far as it goes. The difference is that I simply avoid reading slash/ship and stick to gen for those pairings, and if I do read slash, I appreciate that the writer is seeing a significant relationship, just as I do; I don't feel like the slash is undermining my friendship reading, just giving it a different spin. Fics that 'ship against my OTPs bug me, even though I totally understand the other fan means me and my pairing no harm; but I've never had that feeling that slash is breaking my friendship OTP, even if I don't read the pairing that way myself.)
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 08:41 am (UTC)I know, I know, I just keep going!! I will stop soon, really, I'm just finding this discussion way too interesting...!
Reunion after separation is one of my kinks, too, but I do it differently...I have a thing for co-dependency, for relationships that are so strong and meaningful that when they are broken it has a lasting effect on the characters. So I love writing long-term separation stories, but the theme of those stories is that the characters need to get back together, that neither of them is quite as happy apart. Likewise, I like staying-in-touch stories (such as John & Rodney calling each other during "The Return") but only if there's the expectation that eventually they'll be together again, and that no one else is taking their place as best friend.
As far as I can tell, this taste is due to the temperament of an individual. I know with deathfic stories, some people prefer the kind where the surviving characters are strong enough to move on and find happiness again, while as other people prefer the characters to always be a bit broken. My preference is definitely for the latter. ("Freedom's Just Another Word..." managed the trick of doing both endings at the same time, which I think is why it satisfied so many people...) I think it's because I'm an OTPer; ultimately I care more about the relationship itself than the characters in it. (Which is why I get a bit weird when real life and realism is brought into discussions about fic, because in real life I put people first, but in fiction, yeah, it's the relationships that I get invested in.)
...And I have now managed to get 100% off-topic! Shutting up! (...for now...)
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 09:37 am (UTC)Anyway, I focus on relationship above character too -- it's rare for me to enjoy just one character, particularly to the point of getting fannish, if there's not another character around that I like, and a relationship between them I find interesting. But I think I'm 180 degrees removed from you in that I don't like co-dependent relationships; I like people who are complete in themselves, rather than needing another person to complete them. So I actually enjoy moving-on type stories, especially when they come full circle by having the two people come back together, but as more complete and independent people than they were when they left, if that makes any sense.
But, you know ... personal preference, and all of that. With the SGA bunch, I get the impression that you enjoy their codependent aspects where I enjoy them more for their independent/prickly aspects. So I don't really want to see them become more interdependent than they already are; when I first started fanning on the show, at the end of season 2, I actually did want that, and tended to push that in my fic, because in canon they weren't really all that close yet. At this point, they're as close as I would ever want to see them become, if not TOO close (I'm not all that fond of how so many of their major extra-team relationships -- Elizabeth, Carson -- have been whittled away, just leaving them with Team as the be-all and end-all of their existence) so I find myself wanting a little more distance between them, so that I can see them separate and come back together; I want to explore extra-Team relationships a little bit, since canon (and fic) are giving me all the team I want. But after having me a little bit of not-Team, I want to come back to Team again; I think perhaps part of the reason why this show has been able to hold my interest as long as it has is because there is so much potential in canon for both kinds of story, the long-arc, dark sort and the "status quo" sort, and they both interest me for this show, so I've been shifting back and forth between them as I write. I don't recall that I've done that in a fandom before, at least not to this degree; usually I lean pretty heavily one way or the other.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 10:12 am (UTC)I think I get confused when SGA-fanning with you because you have been shifting like that - sometimes you come across like a team OT4-er, sometimes you want more, and I keep trying and failing to pin you down! ^^ I'm more used to approaching a fandom from one perspective or another, and if I decide I want something else, I'll just find a new fandom to satisfy my new craving. So with SGA I do like the interdependency aspect (though I like some other relationships too, e.g. I'm really enjoying Woolsey's interactions with them this season, and I love that Teyla got to keep Torren and Kanaan) - but then I also love Doctor Who, which doesn't have any constant relationships, but a lot of shifting characters. I don't have any Who OTPs, which is why I've never been inspired to fic for it, but I enjoy the heck out of watching the show, enjoy meeting new characters and watching their relationships develop and change.
--I really should've thought about Who sooner, because a lot of what you say you like - characters parting and coming back together, getting lives on their own and changing their relationships because of them - is exactly what so appeals to me about the characters in Who. I didn't particularly like that Rose hadn't moved on, and I like that Martha is; and I loved Donna & the Doctor being platonic and didn't want any sex between them. So a lot of the kinks I talk about aren't general or consistent, but specific to particular fandoms; I relate to different characters/relationships in different ways, depending on...I have no idea what, actually! It's a puzzlement...
ETA: (I gotta stop mulling...) I think you and I might see "co-dependency" a little different, too...when I talk about my OTPs, I don't meant a relationship that means everything to the characters, that all they need is each other to be happy and they cannot be at all happy apart. Rather, I like two people being something special to one another, who are something to one another that no one else can be. Unhealthy relationships, where the characters need to be together at all times, like those mated-for-life gazelles that never stray more than ten feet apart - those can creep me out (sometimes I'll like them, but as sort of a dirty kink, not a happy ending...) I ideally want my OTPs to be healthy and happy, which means that sometimes they'll fight and sometimes they'll do their own thing apart, have their own friends and their own jobs and their own hobbies. But I like the idea that if they lost the other person, they're losing something irreplaceable; that no one else could quite be the best friend/lover/whatever that the other person is to them, and they're always going to miss them on some level, even if they're mostly happy otherwise.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 10:46 am (UTC)SGA, though -- it draws me both ways, and I find that after I've been focusing on one thing for a while, I'll get burned out and swing back in the other direction ... but still within the same fandom. I guess this is where it's really coming in handy that the fandom itself is so huge, because it is possible to find gloomy apocafic, or non-con, or really dark torture-fic, or fluffy teaminess, or cheerful, goofy slash ...
I *have* noticed that, for its size, it's really not as diverse as you'd expect (the majority of fic in the fandom is one pairing and kind of self-similar in tone), but it's SO huge that it's usually possible to find something in almost any style, with almost any characters. And it seems to lend itself to more diverse possibilities for writing than any other fandom I've been in. AUs work fantastically well, especially since they're technically canon. You can do star-spanning epics, or quiet little set-pieces; you can build societies from the ground up, or set a story on Earth if you want to. Stylistically, you can do it as a space western, as a comedy of manners, a farce, a gloomy metaphor for Western colonial ambition, a complicated tale of political espionage, a happy romance, a frontier society-building tale, a murder mystery; you can even introduce quite a lot of fantasy elements before you get outside the realm of canonical possibility, considering that telepathy, psychic healing, and dead people coming back to life are totally canonical. You can also cross it over with pretty much any show set in present-day Earth. As far as the range of story possibilities, it's kind of hard to beat.
But I know what you mean, about wanting different things from different fandoms; SGA is just a bit unusual for me in that I seem to be able to do the mental twist required to get the show and/or the fanfic to supply my different needs. I'm not able to do that in most fandoms, and I suspect it's probably more me than the show itself. I don't blame you for not wanting to view the characters in the fandom from certain perspectives, though, because it's probably the same reason why I'm not that interested in reading your slash (and, fyi, you're not the only gen author whose slash I don't read -- I hadn't thought about it, but I can think of a couple of others, too, who write both, and I seem to prefer sticking with one or the other view of the characters from them, and not getting both from the same author).
(And, wow, are we ever off topic now!)
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 10:58 am (UTC)I think you might be right about "codependency", though from everything you've said about character relationships that you fan on, I do think you like them more entwined than I do. But having said that ... I think that our tastes in that area are probably closer than they seem when we talk about it, as evidenced by the fact that we often fan on the same things...
As you know, I definitely do fixate on characters who are tremendously important to each other, and I like to see their relationship as somehow unique -- which is one of the big things about Sheppard and McKay that appeals to me, because "brothers" is about the closest word I can think of to describe how they act, except they're not related so they don't have the shared family history and other weirdness that goes along with being flesh-and-blood siblings; it's a very unique, hard-to-pin-down relationship, and even if they aren't each other's everything (which I actually prefer them not to be), if they ever lost the other, it would be impossible to find someone else with whom they could have a similar relationship. (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.)
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 11:40 am (UTC)(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.)
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-28 07:27 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-29 10:57 am (UTC)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...