Keller - gone, but not dead.
.
Someone on my flist (in a locked post, so I won't mention her name) asked if she was being overly critical of a story where the author killed off Keller so that John and Rodney got together. Several of us thought not, because the story suggests that Jennifer's death was slow (and the author gloats that she hopes it was), and specifically lets us know that Lorne was the killer -- coldly and without conscience -- because Jennifer was "inconvenient".
ETA: Story-post is now locked. I guess the 6 people who expressed discomfort with it, out of the 30 or more positive responses, was too much for her to handle.
Fortunately, the story is not well-told or fleshed-out, so it doesn't pack much of a punch --IMO -- but it's an ugly little scenario. And let's skirt lightly over the possible feminist rant about how so much "entertainment" uses hurt and/or humiliation of women for the "thrill value" (Make her a bitch and then kill her off; no one will care.), and that maybe it would be nice if women themselves didn't add to that pile of shit.
But more than that -- as writers, [a] we've complained about the lack of imagination in the episodes and [b] we've stated that we have the imagination to do so much better! So why not demonstrate that? It's not necessary to kill Keller in order to 'get rid' of her.
So, okay. Here's my list of ways we can disconnect Jennifer from Rodney, either during the last seasons, or after the finale. They can be unrealistic -- if TPTB can do it, so can we -- or even sappy, but they must leave her not permanently harmed. Feel free to add any other ideas in the comments.
1) The runner they met in "Tracker" contacts them; he's tired of running and wonders if they could remove the tracking device if he's actually in Atlantis. Big consultation -- Rodney and Radek devise a machine that will interfere with the tracking signal while the man is on Atlantis. Then Carson and Jennifer, working together, manage to extract the tracking device from his spine. During his long convalescence, Jennifer falls in love with him. When he's recovered, they go together to pick up the little girl he rescued, then the three of them go to his home world to live their lives together.
2) After she's almost killed in the other woman's body in "Identity", Jennifer freaks out. She's had enough, damn it! The Pegasus galaxy is just too uncivilized and dangerous, and she can't even feel safe when she's in Atlantis. So she resigns and heads back to Earth the next time Daedalus makes a trip.
3) Despite TPTB, Jennifer's not stupid. She gradually realizes that, although she and Rodney like each other well enough, they're really not compatible. They can be friends, but marriage would probably make both of them miserable. She gently breaks it off, and suggests that Rodney should look at someone to whom he seems to have a much closer affinity / relationship. (Hint, hint.) After he gets over having his ego bruised, Rodney finally notices that John has always been there for him...
4) Carson-clone is permanently back on Atlantis (or the original Carson never died -- he had to go home for a couple of years because of family troubles; choose your own scenario). People keep going to him first, and Jennifer's nose is a bit out of joint because no one treats her like the Chief Medical Officer anymore. But then she realizes that she was never truly happy as CMO, and what she really wants to do is work with the local populations. So they start a 'traveling doctor' service, with Jennifer visiting the less-developed worlds in rotation to provide medical care. Through this, [a] she and Rodney just naturally drift apart and call it quits and/or [b] she falls in love with a local man on some planet and marries him.
5) The Atlantis people refuse to stay on Earth (whole 'nother story) and head back to the Pegasus galaxy. But Jennifer realizes that she's really not comfortable with that type of 'pioneer' life; she wants a safe, comfortable Earth-side life. Then, based on her experience, she's offered a high-muckety-muck position at a big-name hospital facility. After some discussion and agonizing, she and Rodney break up; he's not ready to leave Pegasus, and feels Jennifer should be free to look for love on Earth if that's what will make her happy.
6) Her brother and sister-in-law (or best friend, or someone she's close to) are killed when a drunk driver hits them, leaving three children behind. Her parents are too old to care for young children on a full-time basis, so she quits to go home and become surrogate parent to her nieces and nephews. Again, Rodney doesn't want to leave Atlantis, so they break up.
7) SGC needs doctors with a high security clearance, who won't freak out at treating problems brought in from off-world, or even at treating off-world visitors. Knowing that Carson is back on Atlantis, they pull in Jennifer. She's thrilled by the honor and, again, she and Rodney break up.
I could keep going, but that's enough. Most of these might leave Rodney a little disheartened about being rejected, but that's life. We've all lived through it, moped a bit, then picked up, got our shit together, and carried on; Rodney is capable of doing the same. And he still has Atlantis, and interesting work that he loves, and his team who he cares for very deeply for, and -- whether you see the relationship as gen or slash -- John, whom he loves.
So, yeah. Many fans don't like Keller, because TPTB wrote her without finesse, and forced us to swallow a 'relationship' that had no substance or reality behind it. She could have been so much more -- a strong team-member, providing support and advice from 'behind the lines', with a solid friendship with all the team; it isn't necessary to have a 'love interest' to tell a good story. And there may be fans who like her well enough to 'fix' her character and create that dynamic addition to the team without overshadowing the others. I'm not one of them; I'd just as soon she stayed in the background, with only 'walk-on' scenes in whatever stories I read. If an author really doesn't want her around, she can be written out of SGA, or simply ignored for the purposes of the story. After all, no story features every character that we've seen on-screen.
But gratuitous death, which casually makes another character act out of character, simply isn't necessary. We should accord basic human dignity even to people we don't like; treating them as nothing more than an irritating mosquito demeans ourselves as well as them.
*shrug* I've discussed this with the author, and haven't changed her mind; probably won't change anyone's mind. And maybe I'm being all goody-two-shoes; it's a 'little thing', and it's 'only fiction'. But little things add up, and fiction can make us think or desensitize us; I'd rather aim for the high road than making the low road the default.
.
Someone on my flist (in a locked post, so I won't mention her name) asked if she was being overly critical of a story where the author killed off Keller so that John and Rodney got together. Several of us thought not, because the story suggests that Jennifer's death was slow (and the author gloats that she hopes it was), and specifically lets us know that Lorne was the killer -- coldly and without conscience -- because Jennifer was "inconvenient".
ETA: Story-post is now locked. I guess the 6 people who expressed discomfort with it, out of the 30 or more positive responses, was too much for her to handle.
Fortunately, the story is not well-told or fleshed-out, so it doesn't pack much of a punch --IMO -- but it's an ugly little scenario. And let's skirt lightly over the possible feminist rant about how so much "entertainment" uses hurt and/or humiliation of women for the "thrill value" (Make her a bitch and then kill her off; no one will care.), and that maybe it would be nice if women themselves didn't add to that pile of shit.
But more than that -- as writers, [a] we've complained about the lack of imagination in the episodes and [b] we've stated that we have the imagination to do so much better! So why not demonstrate that? It's not necessary to kill Keller in order to 'get rid' of her.
So, okay. Here's my list of ways we can disconnect Jennifer from Rodney, either during the last seasons, or after the finale. They can be unrealistic -- if TPTB can do it, so can we -- or even sappy, but they must leave her not permanently harmed. Feel free to add any other ideas in the comments.
1) The runner they met in "Tracker" contacts them; he's tired of running and wonders if they could remove the tracking device if he's actually in Atlantis. Big consultation -- Rodney and Radek devise a machine that will interfere with the tracking signal while the man is on Atlantis. Then Carson and Jennifer, working together, manage to extract the tracking device from his spine. During his long convalescence, Jennifer falls in love with him. When he's recovered, they go together to pick up the little girl he rescued, then the three of them go to his home world to live their lives together.
2) After she's almost killed in the other woman's body in "Identity", Jennifer freaks out. She's had enough, damn it! The Pegasus galaxy is just too uncivilized and dangerous, and she can't even feel safe when she's in Atlantis. So she resigns and heads back to Earth the next time Daedalus makes a trip.
3) Despite TPTB, Jennifer's not stupid. She gradually realizes that, although she and Rodney like each other well enough, they're really not compatible. They can be friends, but marriage would probably make both of them miserable. She gently breaks it off, and suggests that Rodney should look at someone to whom he seems to have a much closer affinity / relationship. (Hint, hint.) After he gets over having his ego bruised, Rodney finally notices that John has always been there for him...
4) Carson-clone is permanently back on Atlantis (or the original Carson never died -- he had to go home for a couple of years because of family troubles; choose your own scenario). People keep going to him first, and Jennifer's nose is a bit out of joint because no one treats her like the Chief Medical Officer anymore. But then she realizes that she was never truly happy as CMO, and what she really wants to do is work with the local populations. So they start a 'traveling doctor' service, with Jennifer visiting the less-developed worlds in rotation to provide medical care. Through this, [a] she and Rodney just naturally drift apart and call it quits and/or [b] she falls in love with a local man on some planet and marries him.
5) The Atlantis people refuse to stay on Earth (whole 'nother story) and head back to the Pegasus galaxy. But Jennifer realizes that she's really not comfortable with that type of 'pioneer' life; she wants a safe, comfortable Earth-side life. Then, based on her experience, she's offered a high-muckety-muck position at a big-name hospital facility. After some discussion and agonizing, she and Rodney break up; he's not ready to leave Pegasus, and feels Jennifer should be free to look for love on Earth if that's what will make her happy.
6) Her brother and sister-in-law (or best friend, or someone she's close to) are killed when a drunk driver hits them, leaving three children behind. Her parents are too old to care for young children on a full-time basis, so she quits to go home and become surrogate parent to her nieces and nephews. Again, Rodney doesn't want to leave Atlantis, so they break up.
7) SGC needs doctors with a high security clearance, who won't freak out at treating problems brought in from off-world, or even at treating off-world visitors. Knowing that Carson is back on Atlantis, they pull in Jennifer. She's thrilled by the honor and, again, she and Rodney break up.
I could keep going, but that's enough. Most of these might leave Rodney a little disheartened about being rejected, but that's life. We've all lived through it, moped a bit, then picked up, got our shit together, and carried on; Rodney is capable of doing the same. And he still has Atlantis, and interesting work that he loves, and his team who he cares for very deeply for, and -- whether you see the relationship as gen or slash -- John, whom he loves.
So, yeah. Many fans don't like Keller, because TPTB wrote her without finesse, and forced us to swallow a 'relationship' that had no substance or reality behind it. She could have been so much more -- a strong team-member, providing support and advice from 'behind the lines', with a solid friendship with all the team; it isn't necessary to have a 'love interest' to tell a good story. And there may be fans who like her well enough to 'fix' her character and create that dynamic addition to the team without overshadowing the others. I'm not one of them; I'd just as soon she stayed in the background, with only 'walk-on' scenes in whatever stories I read. If an author really doesn't want her around, she can be written out of SGA, or simply ignored for the purposes of the story. After all, no story features every character that we've seen on-screen.
But gratuitous death, which casually makes another character act out of character, simply isn't necessary. We should accord basic human dignity even to people we don't like; treating them as nothing more than an irritating mosquito demeans ourselves as well as them.
*shrug* I've discussed this with the author, and haven't changed her mind; probably won't change anyone's mind. And maybe I'm being all goody-two-shoes; it's a 'little thing', and it's 'only fiction'. But little things add up, and fiction can make us think or desensitize us; I'd rather aim for the high road than making the low road the default.
.