To AU or Not to AU

[viridian5]

I have two major reasons why I can't just go AU and forget two and a half seasons of badness on Andromeda.

1] To me, it feels like cheating, taking the easy way out. I've always prided myself on finding ways around or through stupidity. "Raveling" was all about that. I started thinking up stories around shows I liked specifically to put a logical

Comments

[maryavatar]

I haven't seen much of S4, thanks to Sky One screwing us over yet again, but I've always thought that Harper and Rhade could be a very interesting pairing. Could Harper ever trust another Nietzschean? Is Rhade really that devoted to Dylan? How differently would a Niet raised on a mixed Human/Niet world react towards mixed-race relationships?

I tried to write one myself, but ended up with Harper sabotaging Rhade's nanobots and killing him. Whoops.

AU without an O'Connell? For shame!!

[wirrrn]

Hey,

You already know (leastways I hope you do) how much I worship your XF AU's "Turnabout:, "The Truth" and the one with the magic. I also love your Pike/Benny "Re-union", but I honsetly don't consider it AU, because (Sorry Joss!) you can't kill a vampire with electricity. Benny is still out there somewhere...

Gav!

btw- saw the first ep of FIREFLY on a friend's import DVD. Keen! Nathan Fillion looks *great* and the guy who plays the Doctor looks like Christian Kane Lite. Nice to see Joss' sexophobia is still alive and well ...I totally didn't need that "she's a whore, Joss...

Re: AU without an O'Connell? For shame!!

[viridian5]

The "one with the magic" is "Changed," and thanks! I kind of consider "Reunion" to be what really happened too....

Nathan is great, and the doctor's cute in a very buttoned-down way, but Joss' problem with sex continues on. Though at least Zoe and Wash seem to have a decent sex life.

Re: AU without an O'Connell? For shame!!

[wirrrn]

Hey,

Yes. I like "The One with Magic" (Nothing wrong with my memory, no sir!)

The Doctor appeals to me in that hyper-repressed way that some guys have before an inevitable explosion (eg Pete on TWO GUYS AND A GIRL, Mulder)...

Gav!

btw- do we ever see The Reapers?!

[djinanna]

Andromeda makes me very sad now. Just-- very sad.

[viridian5]

Me too. I would so love to transplant original recipe Harper and Beka to a show that appreciates them.

[stungunbilly]

Nobody can free another from their own self-imposed boundaries; but it has always seemed sad to me to allow fiction to rule the mind, rather than allowing the mind to rule fiction.

[viridian5]

If I try to force my brain or inspirations to do something they don't want to do, I either hit a block or end up with a lifeless stretch of story. If I go with whatever the crazy alchemy of my own brain throws at me, I usually get material that I love even as it surprises me.

If a story isn't there, it just isn't there, and trying to make it exist just takes time away from fics that will actually work. I've been writing for years, so I know how this stuff happens for me.

Re:

[stungunbilly]

You are a creative and skilled writer, so yeah, I get what you're saying about inspiration and trying to force something that isn't there. I've had the experience of killing off my creative flow by trying to write what I had no feeling for. I meant to say that I could see alternate ways the show could have gone, and that it doesn't have to be a cop-out to write them. Naturally I wouldn't try to talk you into writing anything. I have always loved the stories you chose to share.
When I first saw the show, I really enjoyed the ethical and philosophical dilemmas it posed, and also found all the characters to be intriguing and rewarding of further exploration. Your stories, and others I read, seem in many ways a better exploration of the given territory than the paths followed by the producers to me.
Frankly, I had trouble suspending disbelief for some of the choices they made. The X-files last few seasons make little sense to me, also.

[viridian5]

Thanks!

If I had an Andromeda AU idea in which a slash pairing I can no longer write in current canon could work there, I'd be fine with it. My problem was that people were suggesting that I pretend that none of the bad stuff had ever happened just so I could write the pairings, which I can't do. I need more of a concept than "sex between them doesn't seem disgusting like this." *g*

I was so happy with first season, but I kept seeing missing scenes, which is how I started writing for this fandom. It gave me a lot of raw material to work with....

It's sad that the characters were fuller bodied and more nuanced first season than fourth.

The last few seasons of The X-Files were an abomination.

[solitary_summer]

Hope you don't mind me dropping in and spamming your journal like this...

[disclaimer 1., I've seen nothing of s4 so far & 2., I'm not much of a Harper person, so maybe I've a slightly different perspective of things.]

If this makes any sense to you at all, this is my version of what happens to Dylan.

Like so often with Andromeda I've no idea whatsoever if this an impression the writers intended to create, but as I see it, they set up a scenario that made it almost impossible for Dylan to succeed and at the same time retain his idealism, integrity and sanity. He decides to rebuild the world he knew, and against all odds he even succeeds. And then do what? At the end of s2 he choses not to become one of the triumvirs, but steps back into a semblance of the life he used to have, seemingly content with this. If you're uncharitable, you could say he's shirking the responsibility, happy to go back to taking orders and playing soldier, but given his circumstances and what he went through it's understandable that part of him would be

[viridian5]

I don't mind you "spamming" me at all!

I'm with you on your analysis of Dylan, and I could still write season 3 Dylan. I enjoy "shades of gray" characters, and I've been predicting his slide into darkness since season one.

My problem is that he's become smarmy, overpoweringly smug, openly hypocritical, unnecessarily ruthless, and ever more misogynistic in season four. I can't bear to watch Kevin Sorbo with the three shades of emotion Dylan is now allowed to have. Having one episode of classic Dylan in "Conduit to Destiny" only brought home how much better Sorbo used to be.

The way the show cheerleads his bad behavior bothers me too. If the writing presented Dylan doing what he's now doing but had an iota of awareness that maybe it's wrong, it would be different.

I'm very unhappy with Dylan and the writing in general in season four.

Re:

[solitary_summer]

*sigh*
Damn. It's not as if it had been all that brilliant so far, but between a few good episodes like 'The Unconquerable Man' and 'Shadow Cast By A Final Salute' I could at least make up my own slightly more fucked-up version of things with a generous amount of selective perception .

If the writing presented Dylan doing what he's now doing but had an iota of awareness that maybe it's wrong, it would be different.That's what keeps intriguing me. I keep seeing things I'm not sure are meant to be there at all, and after three seasons, I still haven't figured out what exactly they intend for us to see or not. Or where they're going to go with the show, for the matter. I keep thinking, they can't really expect anyone to take this at face value, and so far there's always been the odd episode to *maybe* support this, but then again... Are all those ambiguities just due to bad writing and production

[viridian5]

My "Slipfighter the Dogs of War" review was all about my conjectures that the writers were subtly blackening Dylan in a way Kevin Sorbo didn't notice, since he saw only the surface "Dylan, our hero!" stuff. This season I no longer sense undercurrents and ambiguities, as it's all "Dylan, our hero!" now.

Season three was studded with a few good episodes like "The Dark Backward," "The Unconquerable Man," and "Shadows Cast By a Final Salute." Season four is nearly halfway over, but we've only gotten "Conduit to Destiny."

[ci5rod]

It is sad, but it's not entirely unexpected for me. From day one I haven't been able to write Andromeda fic because I couldn't make any pairings work in my head. I've gradually drifted away from the show because, well, loving Harper and Romy (and their respective actors) isn't enough.

It's a shame, because I've always wanted to write Harper fic. I can't make the slash work, though, because I've never liked Tyr and Dylan is just so ugh. I'd go so far as to write het, even, except that getting together with Romy would be so bad for Harper's ego. My annoying subconscious did come up with a strange Babylon 5 crossover, but I'm frankly too scared to write it.

So, my sympathies. Maybe going AU is cheating, but there are some battles that just can't be won. I suspect this is one of them.

[viridian5]

I ended up writing a lot of gen for this show, because I often had trouble with pairings too. Now I really have trouble with pairings.