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So I'd planned to be more active in the fandom when the back half aired here in the US, but in reality I seem to be just -- I don't know, burned out or just still cocooning or whatever. After over a year of pretty faithfully reading a good 75% or more of everything I saw come across ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_noticeboard, I'm just in a place right now where I kind of don't care what's going on in my fandom. I'm sort of over here in my little hobbit hole, watching eps and writing my bizarre kabillion-word Ronon/OFC, and I don't have the slightest idea what's going on, or what the fan reaction has been to the back half, or really anything. I've kind of been debating taking noticeboard off my friends list and just keeping tabs on sga_newsletter, but that's kind of like admitting that I'm never coming back, and I'm not to that point yet.
I did, however, decide to challenge myself to read all, I dunno, ten thousand and nine nominees for the DiversiFICation awards (atsgdiverse_award ), which will probably take me until long after the voting period has come and gone, but so far it's been really cool. I am, however, stalled in the Beckett/McKay/Sheppard category -- not because there are more nominated stories there than anywhere else, but because -- dude, these girls? The Beckett/McKay/Sheppard girls? HOLY SHIT, but they love their massive multi-part epics! I've spent probably over a week reading Aleatoric Life and Alone In Your Mind and Life Without, all of which are awesome and recommended, but all together they took me a week to read, and I have an English lit degree, for which I routinely knocked out Victorian novels in two days. According to Mary, now I know how other people feel when I post things -- "It's really that long? Really?"
I sort of wish that Beckett/McKay/Sheppard were my pairing, because this is clearly where all the really juicy stuff is going on -- "Aleatoric Life" has actually come to rival the ridiculously addictive "Being An Anchor" (fandom=Sports Night, author=Lanning Cook) for my favorite rape-recovery wallow (I used to think I really wanted to write a schmoopy rape-recovery epic, since I love reading them so much, but then I realized that Ronon is kind of my permanent rape-recovery fandom -- he's already canonically dealing with the long aftermath of surviving a brutal, dehumanizing assault that stripped him of his sense of security and upended his life and gave him intimacy issues, so I mean, I'm kind of not hurting for chances to write about the exact same stuff I probably would have written in my theoretical rape story). "Alone In Your Mind" is hot and full of interesting stuff in the Ancient Artificats You Really Wish You'd Never Picked Up subgenre so it kind of, you know, feels like real science fiction, which I always appreciate. And "Life Without" is fucking amazing, and I almost can't say anything at all about it, because the suspense leading up to a few key plot turns is too juicy to be missed -- but it's just, it's complicated in the way I want all my multi-player relationships to be, with lots of emotional backstory and a searingly realistic blend of domesticity and hurt/comfort post-Atlantis, and I can't believe how deftly the authors navigated several different layers of AU story-building and laid them out bit by bit through the course of the story for you to piece together what the hell happened to Atlantis. I can barely hold one plot thread in my head all the way through a story! It's also kind of the love child of the previous two series in a way that -- well, if you read them all together, you'll see perfectly well what I mean, and why the three of them kind of triangulated nicely together and made my week well-spent.
On the canon tip, like I said, I've been feeling kind of drained and not so keen to do long episode recaps like I'd half-planned to, so let me sum up the back half thus far, in my humble opinion.
"The Return, part 2": dumb and kind of dull, but I'd expected it to be, so I wasn't that disappointed. I was a little bit baffled by how O'Neill had more to do in that episode than anyone on, you know, the show that I actually watch and give a fuck about, but whatever, I guess those guys over at SG1 pay the light bills and all. Anyone who remembers how fucking much I hated Progeny will probably have a good sense how much I hated finding out that they left that poor bastard floating in space right up until they thought they could get some use out of plundering his grave and defiling his corpse to use as a suicide bomber against his people. But whatever, if you go by canon, they're all horrible people, that's not news. I can't think for what reason I would ever want to see this episode again, which is a little sad because of how much I loved, loved, loved "Return, part 1" -- but, as I said, I kind of expect the endcap to any multi-ep arc on SGA to be one long moronic firefight, so it didn't really hurt my feelings any.
"Echoes": STONE FUCKING AWESOME, in every conceivable way. It's like the "Grace Under Pressure" that everyone gets to be in! They throw us a couple of these every season, an episode that's so outrageously clever and coherent and funny and effective that it's almost confusing and scary to those of us who have scaled down our expectations for this show.
"Irresponsible": idiotic, and I was the one person who actually liked "Irresistible." Thanks for making me ashamed of defending that episode, assholes. This is one of those episodes that clearly started out totally high-concept, and then when they realized they didn't have, you know, anything *but* the concept, or anywhere to take the plot in any way, they were already too far into production to scrap it. Or at least, that's what I like to imagine happens. Because I can totally see how "John and Kolya have a showdown in a big faux-Western homage episode!" sounded awesome at the writers' meeting. Someone really should've figured out how to write an awesome episode around that, and yet, they really, really didn't. Au revoir, Kolya. You will live on forever in rape-recovery fic, because you just kind of seemed like that kind of guy. And I mean that as a compliment, honestly.
"The Tao of Rodney": ridiculous, but impossible not to love anyway, dammit. Had it been fanfic, I would have eaten it up with a spoon, but the concept was just slightly silly enough that I kept having these moments of looking askance at the tv and going, "Really, show? Seriously?" But whatever, it's Turn David Hewlett Loose And Watch Him Go Theater, and I gots my popcorn. It was totally cake and ice cream for those of us who love our ensemble cast, because the premise of the episode is basically, "Let's tell McKay he's dying and then watch him have these neurotic, endearing little scenes with every single person in the cast, and also Zelenka." I might possibly have gotten a little misty a couple of times near the end, okay? Are you happy? It was contrived and manipulative and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I feel like I should put "The Game" in a separate post, in case I ever feel like linking to it on its own...so that is what I will do, I guess.
sga_noticeboard, I'm just in a place right now where I kind of don't care what's going on in my fandom. I'm sort of over here in my little hobbit hole, watching eps and writing my bizarre kabillion-word Ronon/OFC, and I don't have the slightest idea what's going on, or what the fan reaction has been to the back half, or really anything. I've kind of been debating taking noticeboard off my friends list and just keeping tabs on sga_newsletter, but that's kind of like admitting that I'm never coming back, and I'm not to that point yet.I did, however, decide to challenge myself to read all, I dunno, ten thousand and nine nominees for the DiversiFICation awards (at
sgdiverse_award ), which will probably take me until long after the voting period has come and gone, but so far it's been really cool. I am, however, stalled in the Beckett/McKay/Sheppard category -- not because there are more nominated stories there than anywhere else, but because -- dude, these girls? The Beckett/McKay/Sheppard girls? HOLY SHIT, but they love their massive multi-part epics! I've spent probably over a week reading Aleatoric Life and Alone In Your Mind and Life Without, all of which are awesome and recommended, but all together they took me a week to read, and I have an English lit degree, for which I routinely knocked out Victorian novels in two days. According to Mary, now I know how other people feel when I post things -- "It's really that long? Really?"I sort of wish that Beckett/McKay/Sheppard were my pairing, because this is clearly where all the really juicy stuff is going on -- "Aleatoric Life" has actually come to rival the ridiculously addictive "Being An Anchor" (fandom=Sports Night, author=Lanning Cook) for my favorite rape-recovery wallow (I used to think I really wanted to write a schmoopy rape-recovery epic, since I love reading them so much, but then I realized that Ronon is kind of my permanent rape-recovery fandom -- he's already canonically dealing with the long aftermath of surviving a brutal, dehumanizing assault that stripped him of his sense of security and upended his life and gave him intimacy issues, so I mean, I'm kind of not hurting for chances to write about the exact same stuff I probably would have written in my theoretical rape story). "Alone In Your Mind" is hot and full of interesting stuff in the Ancient Artificats You Really Wish You'd Never Picked Up subgenre so it kind of, you know, feels like real science fiction, which I always appreciate. And "Life Without" is fucking amazing, and I almost can't say anything at all about it, because the suspense leading up to a few key plot turns is too juicy to be missed -- but it's just, it's complicated in the way I want all my multi-player relationships to be, with lots of emotional backstory and a searingly realistic blend of domesticity and hurt/comfort post-Atlantis, and I can't believe how deftly the authors navigated several different layers of AU story-building and laid them out bit by bit through the course of the story for you to piece together what the hell happened to Atlantis. I can barely hold one plot thread in my head all the way through a story! It's also kind of the love child of the previous two series in a way that -- well, if you read them all together, you'll see perfectly well what I mean, and why the three of them kind of triangulated nicely together and made my week well-spent.
On the canon tip, like I said, I've been feeling kind of drained and not so keen to do long episode recaps like I'd half-planned to, so let me sum up the back half thus far, in my humble opinion.
"The Return, part 2": dumb and kind of dull, but I'd expected it to be, so I wasn't that disappointed. I was a little bit baffled by how O'Neill had more to do in that episode than anyone on, you know, the show that I actually watch and give a fuck about, but whatever, I guess those guys over at SG1 pay the light bills and all. Anyone who remembers how fucking much I hated Progeny will probably have a good sense how much I hated finding out that they left that poor bastard floating in space right up until they thought they could get some use out of plundering his grave and defiling his corpse to use as a suicide bomber against his people. But whatever, if you go by canon, they're all horrible people, that's not news. I can't think for what reason I would ever want to see this episode again, which is a little sad because of how much I loved, loved, loved "Return, part 1" -- but, as I said, I kind of expect the endcap to any multi-ep arc on SGA to be one long moronic firefight, so it didn't really hurt my feelings any.
"Echoes": STONE FUCKING AWESOME, in every conceivable way. It's like the "Grace Under Pressure" that everyone gets to be in! They throw us a couple of these every season, an episode that's so outrageously clever and coherent and funny and effective that it's almost confusing and scary to those of us who have scaled down our expectations for this show.
"Irresponsible": idiotic, and I was the one person who actually liked "Irresistible." Thanks for making me ashamed of defending that episode, assholes. This is one of those episodes that clearly started out totally high-concept, and then when they realized they didn't have, you know, anything *but* the concept, or anywhere to take the plot in any way, they were already too far into production to scrap it. Or at least, that's what I like to imagine happens. Because I can totally see how "John and Kolya have a showdown in a big faux-Western homage episode!" sounded awesome at the writers' meeting. Someone really should've figured out how to write an awesome episode around that, and yet, they really, really didn't. Au revoir, Kolya. You will live on forever in rape-recovery fic, because you just kind of seemed like that kind of guy. And I mean that as a compliment, honestly.
"The Tao of Rodney": ridiculous, but impossible not to love anyway, dammit. Had it been fanfic, I would have eaten it up with a spoon, but the concept was just slightly silly enough that I kept having these moments of looking askance at the tv and going, "Really, show? Seriously?" But whatever, it's Turn David Hewlett Loose And Watch Him Go Theater, and I gots my popcorn. It was totally cake and ice cream for those of us who love our ensemble cast, because the premise of the episode is basically, "Let's tell McKay he's dying and then watch him have these neurotic, endearing little scenes with every single person in the cast, and also Zelenka." I might possibly have gotten a little misty a couple of times near the end, okay? Are you happy? It was contrived and manipulative and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I feel like I should put "The Game" in a separate post, in case I ever feel like linking to it on its own...so that is what I will do, I guess.
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Date: 2007-05-13 04:09 pm (UTC)From:Apologies if this is completely out of line, and please feel free to delete if it is out of line, but if you enjoy rape-recovery fics, and liked Tao of Rodney despite the weaknesses you mention, you might enjoy a story I'm co-writing, Your Reward is Neither Here Nor There (http://inkscribe.livejournal.com/17021.html).
We're just now at the Tao of Rodney tie-in chapters, publishing once per week, on Thursdays. I should also note that the first few chapters are dealing with the rapes themselves, not yet the recovery, just to be warned.
I nommed Life Without, Aleoric Life, and Alone in Your Mind for the awards (I have no idea whether other people did likewise -- I hope so, as I think they're brilliant). Like these, Reward involves some pretty brutal stuff, but no magical-healing-penis nonsense.