rather incoherent soapboxing

[frith_in_thorns]

Note: the general 'you' is in use throughout this post.

I want to link to this post by phaetonschariot today.  Go read it now, because the rest of this post is going to assume that you have.  It's meta, although it's headed like a fic, but the header is what's being discussed in the meta.

I lurk around quite a few meta places on LJ, and this topic's been flying

Comments

[sholio]

You were 16 in 2006? Um. *hides walker and cane* *g*

I don't think I really started thinking about this sort of thing -- the fannishly specific situation, I mean, not gay issues in general -- prior to LJ, either. I just didn't really know other fans (fanfic-reading fans, I mean, as opposed to comics/book/SFF fans, which is what most of my fannish friends were). I knew what I liked to read, but I wasn't particularly analytic about it, and most of what I was reading was gen anyway, so shipping didn't enter into it very much.

I guess I could ramble a lot more, but I think in general, I ended up getting overly hung up on the concept of canonicity -- and was very much unaware of how my own heteronormativity blind spot influenced my concept of what constitutes canon-compliant fic.

My reading tastes are what they are, and I'll probably always prefer to read fic that's in line with my own view of the characters, but I do try hard not to imply that my own take on them is the "right" one, and to be open to other interpretations. Especially in those cases where, as you pointed out, it's the existence of real-life people that's being marginalized and ignored.

And that's an interesting view of Ronon/Keller. My own take on canon!Ronon is that he dislikes Rodney and is irritated by him, but I'm not sure if I could quite see him going that far to take him down a peg ... hmm. It'd be intriguing to write it that way. (hee! now my brain wants to do it as a bad Regency romance, where Ronon thinks he's only faking but the facade becomes real, and Keller thinks she wants Rodney but she's swept off her feet unexpectedly by Ronon's too-effective "fake" courting.)

And yeah, the show itself is pretty inconsistent! It's kind of fun to fanwank explanations for some of the more inexplicable stuff ... and it's funny how much of the accidental stuff in the show can be made to support some of the more obviously non-canonical theories -- like my pet fanwank that the Athosians are matriarchal, which is almost certainly not what the writers intended (I seriously doubt if they even know what "matriarchal" means) and yet, it's a disturbingly tight fit for most of the available evidence!

[frith_in_thorns]

Yup, I'm going to finally stop being a teenager this weekend *g* I still feel a bit intimidated in this fandom, with all you gen people being older and much more experienced at writing and life than me...

The thing with Ronon/Keller - in that slightly odd scene at the end of 'Tracker', Rodney asks him if he's interested in Keller, and Ronon to me basically says no, and then when Rodney's walking out the door he suddenly says 'What if I am?' and I saw that as him changing his mind on the spot to spite Rodney. But then, I didn't like season 5 Ronon all that much, especially since the writers suddenly seemed to decide to write him as being really thick, which annoyed me no end.

With canon - I'm still not entirely sure where I stand. Although I usually say that I keep to canon... well, fanfic isn't canonical anyway. And I really like reading AUs which either deal with something changing the course of events, or outright whole different universes.

I also have adopted the Athosians being matriarchal - I like that idea, although again I doubt that's what the writers intended (and I'm jaded enough to think that they might actually be surprised at the idea of a matriarchal society...).

Interestingly for the timing, there is at this moment a rather vocal argument going on on one of my friend's Facebook pages about whether it's more acceptable for homosexuals to be heterophobic than for heterosexuals to be homophobic...