So I finished Season 1 of SGA and well...I have rambly thoughts.
Be forewarned that I haven't read any other SGA meta yet (with lack of time and in avoidance of spoilers) and I tend to tangent everywhere and babble, so I apologize.
But, well, can I just say how much I love conditional competence? Like, as in characters with Flaws, and I'm not talking here about no whimpy flaws that are really blessings in disguise and really makes them all Heroic, no. I'm talking about Flaws with a captial "F" that pwns you in the worst way not *only* at the most godawful times, but at every other time in-between. I'm talking about those flaws that makes one go all shify-eyed in discomfort, because they're not Tragic flaws, they're not flaws of Greek Heroism, but they're Human Flaws which I find incomparably beautiful.
And just, how incomparably *awesome* SGA is to have characters that have these flaws? And not only as side-characters which is what usually happens to characters who are allowed these kind of flaws, like Will Turner; occasionally you'd have side-characters with such flaws claw themselves into the limelight a la Sheldon Jeffrey Sands (done so by a resurrection into the heroic towards the end, two eyeballs less), or even rarer you'd have a series like Naruto which would make the flawed character the star. Never, though, have I seen an entire *cast* of these awesome well-rounded characters and it's a baaaaare and fine edge that they're treading here with making the characters all so impossibly layered. Because see, layered characters stories are harder to sell, because genre is easier to advertise.
The trick, I think, is that the writers of SGA obeyed the laws of being in a sci-fi genre. They have the CaptainKirk-type, and the Doctor-type, and the Geeky-scientist type, and the Counselor-type, and the AlienWarriorBabe-type...and then they
subverted those types and made them sneakily
human and
layered which is just *awesome* beyond compare.
And let me just say again that conditional competence is SUCH a hot-button for my fandoms that I didn't know I had until I had several conversations about SGA; because here's the thing, I don't like incompetence, it's irritating (and can we say comedic write-off? Yes). But then total competence, while occasionally intriguing, kinda either leaves me cold or freaks me out. (Which, hey, is probably why I got so incredibly freaked out by 'Home')
Conditional competence though? That's *neat*. These are irredemable personality flaws, these are socially embarrassing flaws or, even worse, flaws that prevent people from being *capable*. Conditionally that is; because these characters have their strengths as well as their weaknesses and they have their areas of expertise and areas where they're out-of-depth, and how unbelievably rare is it to have a show that shows *both*? For *serious* characters? ::bounces::
And it just, it amazes me how incredibly *human* the characters in SGA are, how real they are, how Flawed they are and
yes, with a capital "F"ing hell, much like the way that
( Spoiler for Serenity ) It is there so hard and so real that it *hurts* sometimes with a brilliant resonantcy and it is joyful sometimes with a breathless surprise and it's morbidly funny sometimes so you're able to laugh because it's true, it's *true*, and it's silly and strange and strangely real in improbable impossible ways.
It's karma that comes back to
bite you, and consequences that you didn't know were there, and every grey area of shady-ness and people backs to the wall with a gun to their head and it's some line in Firefly, by Shan Yu, that THIS, this is how you really learn about these people:
"Live with a man forty years. Share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then, tie him up and hold him over the volcano's edge--and on *that* day, you will finally meet the man."
And so we *meet* these characters, and they're multifaceted and they're strange and they're beautiful, and people are shown in betrayal and in cowardice and as arrogant and in denial and as failing in the ways that humans do (and failing
spectacularly), and making choices that have no right or perfect answer. These are people that you can't always trust at your back, who are uncomfortable to live with, who are out of their depth, and who, sometimes, are just not enough.
And that makes the times that they *are* enough all the more improbably awesome and breathtaking.
And let me just squee at Weir!
Granted, she is an *older* woman which is hard to portray and hard to make stand out in sci-fi without going Medicine Woman. Granted, TPTB needs a writer that understands diplomacy better to give her better stuff. Granted, this is a
boys show of places to explore and things that go boom.
( But omg whoa. (potential spoilers) )And Teyla! Like, call it whatever for me to relate her to another character but she like Naruto (or probably Gaara, post Kazekage), except way better socialized. Because she has Issues, so much so that she's nothing like Lana Lang. She Wears the Lana Lang, in a scary and facinating way that's fabulous to compare to both Sheppard and Wier.
( (potential spoilers) )And oh Beckett ::wibble:: gah. "First, do no harm." And just the honestly shady medical ethics he has going which delights me to no end that was being dealt with especially in parallel to Sheppard's shady martial ethics, and just how neat is it to compare his reaction to Atlantis with John Sheppard's??
( Beckett has a problematic relationship with Atlantis, no joke (potential spoilers) )Dude, just...awesome show.
Awesome,
awesome show because sometimes the science doesn't make sense and sometimes the sociology doesn't make sense and it's really sorta like Back To The Future except with more historical eras and people-eaters and things that go boom except it brings me to wonderful mental places and it introduces me to characters that are brilliantly human and to
Atlantis, which,
whoa. ::flails like Zelenka in Letters From Pegasus::
And is it wrong that I'm so utterly amused that this icon's keyword is "seagulls"? XD![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}