Love, Like, and the Loveless Marriage
Okay, so the upbeat business first:
Today is ileliberte's birthday and she's turning 12. Please join me in wishing her many happy returns -- say, by heading over to her journal and commenting on one of her artistic efforts.
In a case of either "nobody but you is even vaguely surprised" or "it's just like when you name your daughter Tiffani and she ends up a stripper...", the rest of " Art Is Long" is turning out to be... umm. Living up to its name. Crossed the 10K word mark this morning and I'm not anywhere near done. Laughably so.
This? Is yet another nail in the coffin for the SGA/miss_porcupine relationship. The money paragaraph: The two [Beckett & Sheppard] trapse through the alien forest and rendezvous with another team, commanded by Major Anne Teldy. Also on the team is Captain Alicia Vega, the tough Sgt. Dusty Wells, and the cute and bookish Dr. Alison Porter.
... It's the all-sassy, all-babelicious, all-amazing, all-girl team! Apart from the hilarity of the writers being so caught up on the name Alison Porter that they re-used it after initially casting a dark-complexioned actress for the role, I'm just... This is not Charlie's Angels. There is no Kate Jackson here. This is VIP. They sound like central casting over at Vivid Video -- the sergeant named Dusty (she'll be a tomboyish redhead, likes to ride 'em reverse cowgirl), the bookish and cute Dr. Porter (all of her previous credits have been as librarians and business types; she looks sexy with glasses and a pencil in her hair), the captain being played by the actress who used to be the big-titted engineer (Dr. Esposito), and Major Teldy, who can look like whatever she wants because her prime characteristic will be her incompetence thereby allowing Sheppard to save the day.
Totally apart from the chicks-in-cammies business, my Atlantis has been harder and harder to see, even squinting, for a while now. Mostly that's a side effect of naming characters and giving them roles in the city and, well, worldbuilding. But not all of it. The rest of it is that my attraction to SGA has always been to its potential as a concept -- the outpost, the frontier, the interface between what we've always taken for granted and everything that defies those expectations -- and the individuals who live/work/thrive there. And SGA has never really been about that; the concept is really a pretext for a very pedestrian set of adventures made unique (really 'just unique enough') by the mixture of character and context. I see places where our 'Earth morality' is both blessing and curse, where we are the aliens in every sense of the word... and they see The John and Rodney Show, which is more third-rate vaudeville than actual drama and made worse by the awful lack of development of both John (missing) and Rodney (characterization re-set every season lest he actually learn from his experiences and grow from that). And that's not a chasm that will close with time. Nor is it at all their fault. I am not their target audience and I can't blame them for that. I'm not here for the comedy and that's what they want to write.
This isn't a Farewell to SGA letter. This is mostly me being a little morose. But I am well aware that I am not sticking around for the right reasons. I haven't left because (a) I'm really, really vested in my characters and their world and (b) I have nowhere to go fandomwise. It's essentially staying together for the sake of the kids and that's... not good. Especially because many of my kids will be leaving the nest soon anyway. (Except in Qui Habitat, where they can't go home and I still have another couple hundred thousand words to go.)
Today is ileliberte's birthday and she's turning 12. Please join me in wishing her many happy returns -- say, by heading over to her journal and commenting on one of her artistic efforts.
In a case of either "nobody but you is even vaguely surprised" or "it's just like when you name your daughter Tiffani and she ends up a stripper...", the rest of " Art Is Long" is turning out to be... umm. Living up to its name. Crossed the 10K word mark this morning and I'm not anywhere near done. Laughably so.
This? Is yet another nail in the coffin for the SGA/miss_porcupine relationship. The money paragaraph: The two [Beckett & Sheppard] trapse through the alien forest and rendezvous with another team, commanded by Major Anne Teldy. Also on the team is Captain Alicia Vega, the tough Sgt. Dusty Wells, and the cute and bookish Dr. Alison Porter.
... It's the all-sassy, all-babelicious, all-amazing, all-girl team! Apart from the hilarity of the writers being so caught up on the name Alison Porter that they re-used it after initially casting a dark-complexioned actress for the role, I'm just... This is not Charlie's Angels. There is no Kate Jackson here. This is VIP. They sound like central casting over at Vivid Video -- the sergeant named Dusty (she'll be a tomboyish redhead, likes to ride 'em reverse cowgirl), the bookish and cute Dr. Porter (all of her previous credits have been as librarians and business types; she looks sexy with glasses and a pencil in her hair), the captain being played by the actress who used to be the big-titted engineer (Dr. Esposito), and Major Teldy, who can look like whatever she wants because her prime characteristic will be her incompetence thereby allowing Sheppard to save the day.
Totally apart from the chicks-in-cammies business, my Atlantis has been harder and harder to see, even squinting, for a while now. Mostly that's a side effect of naming characters and giving them roles in the city and, well, worldbuilding. But not all of it. The rest of it is that my attraction to SGA has always been to its potential as a concept -- the outpost, the frontier, the interface between what we've always taken for granted and everything that defies those expectations -- and the individuals who live/work/thrive there. And SGA has never really been about that; the concept is really a pretext for a very pedestrian set of adventures made unique (really 'just unique enough') by the mixture of character and context. I see places where our 'Earth morality' is both blessing and curse, where we are the aliens in every sense of the word... and they see The John and Rodney Show, which is more third-rate vaudeville than actual drama and made worse by the awful lack of development of both John (missing) and Rodney (characterization re-set every season lest he actually learn from his experiences and grow from that). And that's not a chasm that will close with time. Nor is it at all their fault. I am not their target audience and I can't blame them for that. I'm not here for the comedy and that's what they want to write.
This isn't a Farewell to SGA letter. This is mostly me being a little morose. But I am well aware that I am not sticking around for the right reasons. I haven't left because (a) I'm really, really vested in my characters and their world and (b) I have nowhere to go fandomwise. It's essentially staying together for the sake of the kids and that's... not good. Especially because many of my kids will be leaving the nest soon anyway. (Except in Qui Habitat, where they can't go home and I still have another couple hundred thousand words to go.)