For posterity:
First of all, rose_griffes wrote a lovely POI fic for me, for wegetcarter, Three Sides, over here . You should go read it. And also I need to write mine.
I didn't write it today because I was too busy writing a rebuttal. Look, I usually control my urges to write rebuttals of everything in sight, but sometimes it gets away from me.
So over at bsg_epics there was a characterization activity today wherein someone slotted Sam into insecure and I decided I needed to challenge it. Because it touched on that doormat fanon that I can't stand. (probably didn't help that Trucco went and was adorably perfect on Twitter again)
I wrote:
I think he does start out with a bit of famous-and-good-looking-people general insecurity - he's used to his worth being judged by tickets and points and salary and magazine covers and such. He's a sports star so that's what it's about. But I don't think that lasts very long. Because you also don't get very far in sports unless you have confidence in yourself and can project that on your team, which I think he does as well. He leads his team - and strangers- in an unwinnable war for a year. No matter how much he privately fears he's doing it wrong, he still does it.
And when the hits keep coming it seems to me that a fundamentally insecure person would try to push that responsibility away or crumble or demand validation, but he doesn't. After the Cylon revelation, after the first freak out, his reaction is try to understand -- he doesn't shove it into a denial box like Saul does, nor does he let it become his identity like Tory does. He tries to figure out what it means. Sure he's afraid what others (esp Kara) are gonna think - but I don't think that's a personality thing, so much as common sense.
I also think there's a difference between being uncertain with Kara and insecure in himself -- he's not ever insecure in HIS feelings or IMO, his own worth, he just gives her time to figure out her feelings. He doesn't dump her like I guess some people think he should have (well, he does in Collab and in UB, but not after TaB), but I don't think it follows that it's because he doesn't believe anyone else could love him at all. He wants it back to how it was and he hopes by sticking around it will - but even then, he tells her to go if that's what she wants and she doesn't. Of everyone, he's the one who understands what New Cap was like for her -- he saw the dollhouse, he's talked to her about it, so having some patience to get over her shit is really the more assured thing to do. He doesn't believe everything she says, or get all butthurt about it, because he knows she's coming from a traumatized place. He looks beyond what she says to what she actually does, which includes things like confessing to him about her mother's abuse and later, that she doesn't feel real. So anyway, it's not as if she never gives him a reason to believe he's right.
So um, tl;dr; obviously YMMV. In some ways it's all very speculative, because we don't know things like how Kara gave Sam the dogtag back (DAMN YOU RDM FOR NOT GIVING ME THAT SCENE) or even what he was doing when he wasn't around Kara through most of the series, so it's natural to view all his actions through her lens. But I think what we see is more compatible with someone who started out a fairly shallow person, overwhelmed by the enormity of what happened, but became someone who learned patience and maybe a bit of fatalism, while he got more resilient to the crap life kept throwing his way: Bending, not breaking, and I personally think that's pretty self-assured to be able to do that.
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So that is what I wrote. I don't expect it'll change anyone's minds, but whatever, at least I put it out there.
And in other topics, as I mentioned on Twitter, I have this really overpowering urge to reach into my t.v. and rescue Arya. I just can't. It's hard. Sansa's situation is awful, but Arya's really makes me want to bring her here to live so I can take care of her and keep her safe. :(
I didn't write it today because I was too busy writing a rebuttal. Look, I usually control my urges to write rebuttals of everything in sight, but sometimes it gets away from me.
So over at bsg_epics there was a characterization activity today wherein someone slotted Sam into insecure and I decided I needed to challenge it. Because it touched on that doormat fanon that I can't stand. (probably didn't help that Trucco went and was adorably perfect on Twitter again)
I wrote:
I think he does start out with a bit of famous-and-good-looking-people general insecurity - he's used to his worth being judged by tickets and points and salary and magazine covers and such. He's a sports star so that's what it's about. But I don't think that lasts very long. Because you also don't get very far in sports unless you have confidence in yourself and can project that on your team, which I think he does as well. He leads his team - and strangers- in an unwinnable war for a year. No matter how much he privately fears he's doing it wrong, he still does it.
And when the hits keep coming it seems to me that a fundamentally insecure person would try to push that responsibility away or crumble or demand validation, but he doesn't. After the Cylon revelation, after the first freak out, his reaction is try to understand -- he doesn't shove it into a denial box like Saul does, nor does he let it become his identity like Tory does. He tries to figure out what it means. Sure he's afraid what others (esp Kara) are gonna think - but I don't think that's a personality thing, so much as common sense.
I also think there's a difference between being uncertain with Kara and insecure in himself -- he's not ever insecure in HIS feelings or IMO, his own worth, he just gives her time to figure out her feelings. He doesn't dump her like I guess some people think he should have (well, he does in Collab and in UB, but not after TaB), but I don't think it follows that it's because he doesn't believe anyone else could love him at all. He wants it back to how it was and he hopes by sticking around it will - but even then, he tells her to go if that's what she wants and she doesn't. Of everyone, he's the one who understands what New Cap was like for her -- he saw the dollhouse, he's talked to her about it, so having some patience to get over her shit is really the more assured thing to do. He doesn't believe everything she says, or get all butthurt about it, because he knows she's coming from a traumatized place. He looks beyond what she says to what she actually does, which includes things like confessing to him about her mother's abuse and later, that she doesn't feel real. So anyway, it's not as if she never gives him a reason to believe he's right.
So um, tl;dr; obviously YMMV. In some ways it's all very speculative, because we don't know things like how Kara gave Sam the dogtag back (DAMN YOU RDM FOR NOT GIVING ME THAT SCENE) or even what he was doing when he wasn't around Kara through most of the series, so it's natural to view all his actions through her lens. But I think what we see is more compatible with someone who started out a fairly shallow person, overwhelmed by the enormity of what happened, but became someone who learned patience and maybe a bit of fatalism, while he got more resilient to the crap life kept throwing his way: Bending, not breaking, and I personally think that's pretty self-assured to be able to do that.
-------------
So that is what I wrote. I don't expect it'll change anyone's minds, but whatever, at least I put it out there.
And in other topics, as I mentioned on Twitter, I have this really overpowering urge to reach into my t.v. and rescue Arya. I just can't. It's hard. Sansa's situation is awful, but Arya's really makes me want to bring her here to live so I can take care of her and keep her safe. :(