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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[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Random responses:

Status quo kink: It's not that I only like things that don't change. I like status quo in my Type B fandoms, the ones that have characters and relationships I like enough to want to fic them - if I like them that much, I don't want them to change. (and often especially don't like change if I am ficcing them, as Jossing is annoying!) In Type A fandoms, development and arc are usually part of the draw for me (so I loved the evolution of relationships in DeathGate).

And the thing is, my status quo fandoms do bore me quickly; like you, I move on after less than year, usually. (I don't see NCIS lasting more than a couple months, for me.) I just like to know that if I did go back to the fandom, it would be as I left it.

As far as romance in shows goes, I tend to like it better when I know it's being done to advance the characters, rather than trying to establish a permanent romantic partner (e.g. I didn't mind Rodney/Katie Brown because I thought it was doomed; I was generally bored by the Tony/Jeanne but if you read my comment I'm actually really glad it happened, because I like what it did with Tony's character. ...also I never saw Tony as polyamorous; he's never dating women at the same time as far as I can tell. Though I was interested that the only reason he actually did settle with Jeanne long enough to fall in love was because of his job. And I also liked that it took him a while *to* fall in love; it was believable to me when he finally said it, unlike Certain Other Shows. And yet their love wasn't based on friendship, since she never knew the real him, and the show presented it as a relationship that couldn't really work, no matter how much they romantically loved each other...)

Authorial intent plays a role - if I feel the writers are just writing the character in an interesting relationship, I'll tend to be more tolerant of it than if I feel the writers are trying to write She's The One. When a character (almost always a female character) is introduced primarily to be the Romantic Partner of the lead, that gets to me.

Which is why I'm reacting so badly to SGA now. I can understand romance happening quickly, but a real, meaningful relationship - one that leads to commitment, one that will last - I want to see develop slowly, I need to see a strong friendship as well as romantic love, for me to believe it or enjoy it. (Thus my distaste for most UST, because characters USTing will never be comfortable enough around each other to develop a real friendship, so any romantic relationship between them falls flat for me.) Though SGA really couldn't make me happy writing the romance that way, either, because of my OTPing - and this is why I tend not to like canon romance, because I prefer the freedom of deciding for myself which relationships are meaningful, rather than having the writers force it.