Canon vs. Fanon, part 14: A Sam Carter Edition
This is going to be a little shorter than usual. I could claim that it's because the next two topics on my Sam list are too huge and detailed to add to this one, but I'll be honest here and confess that a certain complete box set arrived in the mail this morning, which means that my fandom time has been rather abruptly and gleefully diverted elsewhere. Sorry about that. [Heh. Not really.]
Welcome to the lastest edition of Canon vs. Fanon! I offered you a choice of four different topics, and the Sam Carter edition received the most votes. So here we go: some common fanon tropes about Samantha Carter.
Recap: Canon is anything shown onscreen in the movie or show; show supersedes movie, when necessary. (Catherine Langford speaks with an American accent, not a German one.) Fanon is defined as popular concepts that occur regularly in fanfic, but have little or no actual canon basis to defend them.
I’m going to ramble a bit before we get to the actual canon vs. fanon, because Sam fanon is very dependent on fic genre. So before we begin, I need to clarify just what Sam fanon I’ve chosen to analyze here, and my attitude towards Sam herself.
Unless you’re a relative newcomer to this LJ (and if you are, you’re welcome to poke around!), you’re probably aware that I am a most emphatic gen girl. That means the fanon discussed in these essays are those concepts found commonly in genfic.
For Daniel, my usual subject [for some odd reason], that doesn’t seem to matter too much; Daniel fanon apparently crosses multiple genre lines. I’ve only done one Jack edition, so far, but reaction in the comments indicates that Jack fanon is also pretty universal. Teal’c fic, sadly, is such a rarity that there really isn’t any fanon about our favorite Jaffa. (I know of exactly two - Teal’c carrying an unconscious Daniel cradled in his arms and Teal’c’s inability to get drunk despite drinking to excess, thanks to Junior - and I’ve debunked both of those in previous sections.)
Sam fanon, though, is an entirely different story.
There are lots of Sam fanon tropes that seem to exist in shippy fics that don’t appear in gen. Since I don’t read slash or het, this is only what I’ve picked up from comments and observations in meta posts from other people LJs, and I’ll be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong. But there seem to be some common fanon ideas in ship fics - Sam the homophobe, for example, or Sam the hussy who dares to date Pete instead of waiting patiently for her One True Love, or Sam who hates Daniel for daring to come between her and her One True Love.
I’m not going to comment on fanon concepts like those, because I haven’t read the stories that use them. But I will say this: I unabashedly love Sam. I love her for her struggle to be successful in “this man’s army,” to quote Janet’s ex. I love her for her enthusiasm and her strength and her bright-eyed approach to life, and most of all, I love her for being human. She makes lots of mistakes over the years, yes - but just as I despise the fanon trope of Saint Daniel, I hate the veneration of Perfect Sam.
Sadly, the Perfect Sam trope is actually sometimes canon, thanks to some very poor writing; I think all of us winced when Felger, in Avenger 2.0, gushed that “even your mistakes are perfect!” But we forgive Jack for RDA’s tendency to make him act a lot more stupid than he possibly could be and still be half-way competent, don’t we? Instead of blaming Sam for the writers putting irritating words into the mouths of the likes of Felger and Bregman and Landry, I prefer to ignore the poor writing and focus on Samantha Carter: a very human person, with foibles and fumbles and a rather pathetic inability to keep a successful relationship going. Good thing she’s got her marvelous friendships among her teammates (and her motorcycle) to keep her occupied. :)
On to the fanon! Let’s take a look at some common Sam fanon concepts and compare and contrast them to the reality of canon. (I should mention that tejas suggested a superb addition to the fanon list, but it’s one that demands a lot of research [oh, the humanity!] and will have to wait for the second Sam edition.) I would like to remind you all that I’m not out to denigrate or mock any fanfic authors who might use these fanon concepts; my purpose is to show what’s fanon, and what is actually canon.
Sam has known General Hammond since she was a child, and sometimes calls him “Uncle George” in private.
While writers might think that this is reasonably extrapolated from what we know from canon, we have no actual proof of this; in fact, the evidence actually contradicts it.
We do know that George Hammond and Jacob Carter know each other well. They are chatting quite amicably in Secrets; Hammond is in Jacob’s hospital room when he goes into crisis in The Tokra; Hammond actually calls Jacob “old friend” in Show and Tell. However, that doesn’t automatically mean that they met each other’s families. Military officers who served together can develop very close bonds of friendship that need not include their familial lives.
Let’s take a closer look at what happened in those first few episodes:
Secrets. We meet Jacob for the first time. A smiling Hammond tells Sam, “I invited Jake myself, Captain. I thought you might enjoy the surprise.” Note that the casual use of the nickname implies a close friendship, yet George is clearly unaware of the possibility of any animosity or discomfort between father and daughter.
After Sam, with a rather forced smile, thanks Hammond, Jacob clarifies, “George and I served together back when the Air Force really was this country's first line of defense.” Why would Jacob have to specifically tell Sam this, if George was an old friend of the family? Jack hadn’t yet joined the group; he’s clearly talking to Sam.
Later, just before Jacob tells Sam about his cancer, she tells him, “General Hammond's going to present us with our medals at a private ceremony back at the base.” There is no “Uncle George” here.
The Tok’ra. When Sam tells Hammond she’d been speaking with her father, it’s clear that he already knows about the cancer - which means that either Jacob or Sam have previously told him about it. Considering how private the matter is, I can’t imagine Sam telling Hammond about it no matter how close they might be. That suggests that Jacob told George himself. Again, proof of George and Jacob's closeness, but...
“Sam, I've known Jacob a long time.” Why would Hammond have to tell her this, if she personally knew it already?
Later in the episode, when Sam goes offworld to meet the Tok’ra, Jacob calls Hammond directly to tell him that he’s been hospitalized. George drops everything to see him. He’s still there when Jacob goes into crisis. All this clearly indicates a close friendship, but there’s no suggestion of any family connection.
1969. Looking at things from the other side, so to speak: it’s Jack who knows details of young Hammond’s personal life, not Sam. And she certainly shows no sign of recognizing him as a young man, which would be a reasonable possibility if she’d grown up knowing him.
Conclusion: While Sam’s father certainly had a long and close friendship with General Hammond, there is no canonical basis for the suggestion that George knew Sam when she was growing up, or that she ever calls him “Uncle George.”
Jacob affectionately calls Sam “Sammie.”
Nope, nope, nope.
Jacob calls her “Samantha” in Secrets, when he’s trying to convince her to try out for NASA. He greets her as “kid” in Show and Tell, Seth, and Death Knell, and calls her "kiddo" in Threads. But Sam is called “Sammie” only once throughout all of canon - not be Jacob, but by Urgo.
(I would be willing to entertain the notion that Sam’s Uncle Irving - “Sam. Sammie. You like me. I remind you of your Uncle Irving.” - might be the source of Urgo using that particular nickname. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the only usage throughout all of canon.)
Even in The Devil You Know, when we catch a glimpse of Sam’s childhood, Jacob is calling her Sam.
Conclusion: While Jacob sometimes calls Sam “kid,” he never addresses her as Sammie.
Sam frequently exclaims, "Holy Hannah!"
This is another prime example of a single instance of canon seized by writers and exaggerated out of proportion. Considering how often the expression crops up in fics, readers might assume that Sam is saying, "Holy Hannah!" in every other episode. But how many times did she say it, really?
Cold Lazarus. Daniel panics when the fragment of crystal partially morphs into his own face, and calls for "Captain Doctor" and Teal'c to come and take a look. As Sam leans closer to the crystal at Daniel's prompting, the crystal entity morphs into a miniature blue version of Sam's face. Sam jumps back and blurts, "Holy Hannah!"
Sam uses the expression in early Season One. Fair enough. After that, however, we have to wait a decade to hear it again, in Season Ten:
Spoilers for S10! Uninvited. As they track the other-dimensional creature outside the cabin, Sam exclaims, "Holy Hannah, did you see that thing?"
I have a certain skepticism towards late season canon that meshes with fanon, as it's quite likely to be the writers influenced by the fans, rather than the other way around. Whether or not that's the case, though, it still remains a fact that Sam uses the expression only twice over a period of ten years.
We do know that the expression was probably picked up from Jacob, as he uses it twice within a single episode:
The Tokra, part 2. When Sam and Hammond tell Jacob that her job actually entails travel to other planets, and he finally believes them, Jacob exclaims, "Holy Hannah!"
Later, after he and Selmac are fully blended, he slides off the bed and tests his balance for the first time. He says, "Whoa!"
Sam, alarmed, asks, "What?"
"No more arthritis!" Jacob easily bends his knees and laughs. "Holy Hannah, no more arthritis!"
Conclusion: While Sam probably picked up the expression, "Holy Hannah!" from her father Jacob, she actually uses it only rarely.
Sam thinks fondly of Daniel as her kid brother.
While this might come as a surprise to some, there is never a single instance, in ten years of canon, when Sam or Daniel express any kind of familial sentiment. An amnesiac Daniel asks in Fallen, “Samantha Carter, was there ever anything between us?” But there is never a single line of dialogue that suggests that Sam and Daniel think of themselves as brother and sister.
Aside from that slight contradiction to this common fanon trope, there is one other minor complication: Sam is actually younger than Daniel.
We know that Daniel calls himself “four and a half years old” in August of 1969. That means he was born in either ’64 or ’65 (with most fanfic writers choosing the latter). In Entity in S5, however, we’re given a quick glimpse of Sam’s record; and that includes her date of birth, which is December 29th, 1968. Here's a screencap, courtesy of niamaea, who actually spotted this:
I will admit that this canonical fact is not one that I like very much. If Sam is really that young, then her accomplishments - not only a doctorate, but advancement to Captain (not to mention having flown in the Gulf War) - seem like too much in too little time. Unlike Daniel, who at least has a quasi-canonical background of attending college at sixteen (from the book Stargate: The Movie), Sam probably experienced the normal childhood of any army brat. Nevertheless, it’s solid canon: Sam is actually three years younger than Daniel.
ETA October 16th, and again on October 21st for clarity: Thanks to aurora_novarum for getting me in touch with Codger, the same expert I quoted extensively in the Jack O'Neill edition. He has given me permission to use the information I've added below. Codger offers proof, in Air Force terms, that while December '68 doesn't work as Sam's birthday, it's also impractical to suggest that Sam is really older than Daniel (even if I would personally prefer it that way...).
There's been a lot of discussion in the comments as to whether or not it's actually possible for Sam to have been born in December '68.
First of all, let's clarify exactly what Sam was doing in '91. Many people focus on Sam's lines in the pilot episode, when she first meets Jack at the briefing before they went to Abydos to get Daniel. If Sam flew during the Gulf War, the theory goes, she has got to be older - possibly even older than Daniel.
Let's take a closer look at what Sam actually said, and what those statements mean:
Kawalsky challenges her, "Have you ever pulled out of a simulated bombing run in an F-16 at 8-plus G's?"
"Yes," Sam answers calmly.
Later in the conversation, Sam states, "Colonel, I logged over a hundred hours in enemy airspace during the Gulf War."
That's actually two separate statements: that Sam has undergone battle training in an F-16, and that Sam flew in enemy airspace in '91. Many of us, however, have put those statements together to form the conclusion that Sam must have flown in battle in enemy airspace during the Gulf War.
That's not what Sam said, and it isn't actually possible. There were no female fighter pilots in the Gulf War. Women were not flying fighter aircraft until 1993. If Sam flew in enemy airspace during the Gulf War, she was flying a C-130 cargo plane. One hundred hours of flight time means thirty to fifty missions, but it was not in combat situations. (That doesn't take away from the courage demanded to fly in enemy airspace, though.)
So much for the Gulf War. I'm actually happy to have that clarified for me, since Sam-the-fighter-pilot seemed a bit much, combined with everything else. But where does that leave us in determining Sam's age?
I've always understood that canon dialogue takes precedence over canon visuals. tejas clarifies why in the comments below: dialogue is written specifically by the writers, but props and visuals are often created without detailed input from the writers. This can lead to contradictions and inaccuracies. Of course, if there is no canon dialogue, we need to be satisfied with canon visuals, like the screenshot I've used above. But Codger points out that we do have some very solid canon regarding Sam's Air Force career, which, in turn, allows us to extrapolate her age.
Sam was promoted to Major in 1999. In the U.S. military, officers are up for review for promotion after ten years of commissioned service, from the time they are first made 2nd Lieutenant. If they are rejected by the selection board and fail to make Major - something that happens only to those captains below the twentieth percentile - then they are brought up before the board once more the following year. If they are rejected again (and 98% of those who are rejected the first time don't make it the second time, either), they are decommissioned, with no exceptions.
Conclusion: Sam was commissioned in 1989. (No one here is going to suggest that Sam was in the twentieth percentile or below, are they?)
Working backwards from there, we know that Sam went to the Air Force Academy from 1985 to 1989.
Since a person must be eighteen years of age by July of that year to be admitted into the Academy, that means that Sam must have been born in 1967, not December of 1968. If she'd been born in late '68, she couldn't attend the Academy until after her eighteenth birthday in '86, which essentially means starting the following year in 1987 - which would have her graduation from the Academy in June of 1991, after the Gulf War. Even if we allow her to skip a year of high school and enter the Academy at 17 in 1986 (admissions to the Air Force Academy at seventeen, after high school graduation, are allowed today; there's no reason to assume it was otherwise in the 80s), that would only have her graduating in June 1990, which would hardly allow her time for sufficient training to be involved in the Gulf War.
Conclusion: Since Sam's verbal statement that she flew in the Gulf War in COTG directly contradicts the screecap from Entity, we have to discard that canon as invalid.
Since she needs to be born before July 1967 to enter the Academy in 1985 and graduation with her commission in 1989, Codger suggests moving her birthday to May 1967, which dovetails neatly with the birthstone Orlin made for her in Ascension: "I read about how humans associate certain materials with their birth month. Yours is emerald, right?" If you prefer Sam to be as young as possible, you can move her birthday forward by having her enter the Academy at seventeen - but her birthday must be before July 1968 in order to enter the Academy in 1985. Again, if you want to reconcile as much canon as possible, you might want to consider making her birthday in May.
Codger also mentions that some fans have tried to suggest some reasonable explanation for a delay in Sam's commissioning, which would allow her to be older. These include the following theories, each of which Codger disproves:
Sam was not only out of the Academy by '91, but also post-Ph.D. - with her high test scores, the military would have postponed her training in their eagerness to have her complete her education.
No one ever gets their training postponed in the military to complete graduate school, no matter what.
Sam was serving as office personnel for several years, and therefore on a slower promotion track in her pre-SGC days.
It doesn't matter whether or not Sam worked as office personnel; under the DOPMA law mandated by Congress in 1980, all military officers have the same promotion timeline, regardless of where and how they served.
Sam left the Air Force long enough to get her Ph.D. and then rejoined, leaving her college years out of the equation for her commission track.
In the 1980s and 1990s, this was not actually possible. Unlike today, after 9/11, the military was trying to downsize at that time, as part of the Peace Dividend from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Officers were even offered early retirements, and any person who had left was certainly discouraged from returning. In such an atmosphere, Sam - who tells "herself" in Point of View that "I can't imagine not" joining the military - wouldn't have risked the possibility of not being allowed to resume her commission.
Sam's years in graduate school did not count as time-in-service.
If you're in the military, it doesn't matter whether you're attending graduate school or flying fighter planes; the time counts for commission track, no matter what.
Final conclusion: Not only did Sam and Daniel never express any brother/sister feelings on the show, but Sam is actually younger than Daniel. The December 1968 DOB from Entity doesn't quite work, but Sam is still at least two years younger than Daniel, who was born in 1964 or 1965.
My personal fanon opinion? Nearly all of the fanon concepts mentioned here have no basis in canon whatsoever, although the “Uncle George” trope only ignores a few canonical contradictions, and the "Holy Hannah!" one is actually only a problem of proportion. It’s the last fanon trope on the list, I think, that I find most annoying; Sam and Daniel’s friendship with each other is much too complex and fascinating to be reduced to simply “brother and sister”! [Yes, I know that it drives Sam/Daniel ship fans insane. And yes, I know about the NC-17 fic that disproves it. I’d prefer that it wasn’t linked here.] Much as I still tend to think of Sam as being older than Daniel, I defer to canonical proof and the experts - she may not be so young as to be born in '68, but she's still younger than Daniel. As for “Sammie,” that's one bit of fanon that I’d actually assumed was true, to the point where I suggested that “Sammie” might explain Jacob’s usage of “Danny” - and my thanks to jenniferjf for pointing out my mistake. Bad Fig Newton! No biscuit!
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
