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God, I just, it hit me all over again while watching eps just how much I love this show and how much it feels like every episode was written for me, because it resonates with my mind in a way that very few shows do. It usually frustrates me that I can't enjoy the usual shows other people around me enjoy, sorta in the way that I'm frustrated that I can't think linearly very easily; which is to say that I figured out another way to go about it.
Hence fandom. Though even then, I kinda just drifted fandoms, mostly lurking and not sending feedback.
Until PotC. Until OUaTiM. Until Saiyuki.
(HP doesn't really count because I've never read any of the books.
Yes, I wrote fic based on the fanon alone. ::braces self for skewering::)
And it makes my head tilt because these fandoms not really similar and they span different genres and mediums. Or rather, maybe it's not because I have a Genre that I truly love. I love, really, the sort of a meta-genre, if it could be called a genre at all, of pastiche. It's a type of story within a genre that's both a tribute and a loving parody of the genre itself. (examples would be American Psycho for horror, PotC for pirate movies, Sin City for Film Noir, OUaTiM for spaghetti westerns, and Saiyuki for adventure sagas) I love love love homages that makes fun of itself, that has a sense of humor about itself, that undermines its own genre while at the same time celebrates it.
Pastiche is perhaps, in essence, the crack!fic of the genre. But let me pause here to define crack!fic as I think of it. Because crack!fic doesn't mean bad!fic to me; instead I think of it as good!fic with astonishing qualities. It's "I can't believe that just happened" and "I can't believe that worked". It's subversive and strange, strange because it shouldn't happen and subversive because it uses its own medium to comment on itself. My favorite type of crack!fic is consequently usually simultaneously meta!fic (which, come to think of it, explains RPAS), done with joy and love and insuppressable glee.
So perhaps it's not so surprising that I love SGA.
It is so much so true to its genre that it has, for lack of a better term, wiggle room. It's sorta like my liking slash because it's an exploration of relationships without the difficulties of power dynamics tied to gender, it's sorta like Republicans being able to critique Bush and being more easily believed because they're Republicans, it's sorta like in an experiment controlling the constants while swiveling only one variable.
I adore so much how SGA is a critique on sci-fi genre itself (sci-fi genre itself frequently being a critique on culture and society), while showing it so much love and empathy and fondness. It's a show that knows both it's roots and loves it and comments on it, from the Ancients in Aurora (who we are shown in that ep. is like Star Trek) to the variations of the Prime Directive (Sanctuary, End of Childhood) to the characters themselves. For instance Halling is like a physical comment on his character archetype (Wise Black/American-Indian Shaman), and Sheppard and Teyla are self-contained gender-fucks (see previous meta), and how they sometimes have a character play the part of Sceptical Audience when they do the especially cliched plotlines (like McKay in Sanctuary).
Granted, I think the cliched plot-lines are part of the point. To be able to allow such play in character and themes, to be able to mess with and to critique the genre so much, a show needs some stable structure (some "draw") to allow it to connect with the audience. In SGA's case, it's the sci-fi codes and conventions that they're utterly playing with, and succeeding at playing with, and doing so with such love in a way that utterly facinates me and nevermind the cliched storylines that aren't really the point for me anyways.
Then again, it returns to how SGA so very much feels like it's made for my brain 'cause I personally don't think there's any new story under the sun. Solely-narrative-based plotlines lose me whereas SGA approaches its narrative like a monumental McGuffin and basically said, "Lets mix up characters and themes and turn every cliche inside out, and do it with some salt for the wounds and lime for McKay and DON'T FORGET THE UMBRELLA!"
God, I love my show. ::blissed out::
Hence fandom. Though even then, I kinda just drifted fandoms, mostly lurking and not sending feedback.
Until PotC. Until OUaTiM. Until Saiyuki.
(HP doesn't really count because I've never read any of the books.
Yes, I wrote fic based on the fanon alone. ::braces self for skewering::)
And it makes my head tilt because these fandoms not really similar and they span different genres and mediums. Or rather, maybe it's not because I have a Genre that I truly love. I love, really, the sort of a meta-genre, if it could be called a genre at all, of pastiche. It's a type of story within a genre that's both a tribute and a loving parody of the genre itself. (examples would be American Psycho for horror, PotC for pirate movies, Sin City for Film Noir, OUaTiM for spaghetti westerns, and Saiyuki for adventure sagas) I love love love homages that makes fun of itself, that has a sense of humor about itself, that undermines its own genre while at the same time celebrates it.
Pastiche is perhaps, in essence, the crack!fic of the genre. But let me pause here to define crack!fic as I think of it. Because crack!fic doesn't mean bad!fic to me; instead I think of it as good!fic with astonishing qualities. It's "I can't believe that just happened" and "I can't believe that worked". It's subversive and strange, strange because it shouldn't happen and subversive because it uses its own medium to comment on itself. My favorite type of crack!fic is consequently usually simultaneously meta!fic (which, come to think of it, explains RPAS), done with joy and love and insuppressable glee.
So perhaps it's not so surprising that I love SGA.
It is so much so true to its genre that it has, for lack of a better term, wiggle room. It's sorta like my liking slash because it's an exploration of relationships without the difficulties of power dynamics tied to gender, it's sorta like Republicans being able to critique Bush and being more easily believed because they're Republicans, it's sorta like in an experiment controlling the constants while swiveling only one variable.
I adore so much how SGA is a critique on sci-fi genre itself (sci-fi genre itself frequently being a critique on culture and society), while showing it so much love and empathy and fondness. It's a show that knows both it's roots and loves it and comments on it, from the Ancients in Aurora (who we are shown in that ep. is like Star Trek) to the variations of the Prime Directive (Sanctuary, End of Childhood) to the characters themselves. For instance Halling is like a physical comment on his character archetype (Wise Black/American-Indian Shaman), and Sheppard and Teyla are self-contained gender-fucks (see previous meta), and how they sometimes have a character play the part of Sceptical Audience when they do the especially cliched plotlines (like McKay in Sanctuary).
Granted, I think the cliched plot-lines are part of the point. To be able to allow such play in character and themes, to be able to mess with and to critique the genre so much, a show needs some stable structure (some "draw") to allow it to connect with the audience. In SGA's case, it's the sci-fi codes and conventions that they're utterly playing with, and succeeding at playing with, and doing so with such love in a way that utterly facinates me and nevermind the cliched storylines that aren't really the point for me anyways.
Then again, it returns to how SGA so very much feels like it's made for my brain 'cause I personally don't think there's any new story under the sun. Solely-narrative-based plotlines lose me whereas SGA approaches its narrative like a monumental McGuffin and basically said, "Lets mix up characters and themes and turn every cliche inside out, and do it with some salt for the wounds and lime for McKay and DON'T FORGET THE UMBRELLA!"
God, I love my show. ::blissed out::
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SGA is definitely a show that's very fond *and* well aware of its roots in sci-fi; I'm just not entirely sure it's a very self-aware show, too. Yes, Sheppard's and McKay's dialogue especially constantly plays with the context, and the casting of some characters is clearly the result of deliberation -- Weir and Teyla, for one, making them female leaders of their respective people, the delightfully high number of non-white actors -- but the storylines and actual on-screen characterisation, especially with regards to gender and convention, rarely surprise me.
I think the cliched plot-lines are part of the point. To be able to allow such play in character and themes, to be able to mess with and to critique the genre so much, a show needs some stable structure (some "draw") to allow it to connect with the audience.
This reminds me of what Jen Garner once said in an Alias commentary, on the concept J.J. Abrams had for the show -- that they were trying to ground it, give that wacky spy!world a foundation of acceptance...but I must say I was not and am still not particularly impressed by this argument: I hail from the Jossverse, which has it all -- a unique twist to just about every stereotype, a solid mythology, and layers upon layers of in-built meta without letting either the drama, the humour, or the action suffer; to a lesser degree, this is true for Farscape, too, which
SGA approaches its narrative like a monumental McGuffin and basically said, "Lets mix up characters and themes and turn every cliche inside out, and do it with some salt for the wounds and lime for McKay and DON'T FORGET THE UMBRELLA!"
Hee. I get your enthusiasm, though; not like I don't adore SGA with all my heart, if mostly because of the shiny, crack-addled and insanely loveable fandom.
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o.0 er. yes. That's the point of this post. The take cliches and run off a cliff with them.
As with the Jossverse...I keep trying to get into it and bouncing off. He usually doesn't have enough prominent trickster-figures/rogues to keep my attention, or the ones that he does have either descends into the Heroic (xander at points, and spike), becomes a Villain, or is comic relief. I really really adore socially marginal characters, and by that I mean those characters who at least 50% (if not more) of the rest of the characters are violently annoyed at.
Hee. I get your enthusiasm, though; not like I don't adore SGA with all my heart, if mostly because of the shiny, crack-addled and insanely loveable fandom.
=) yeah, I find my reasons are usually not other people's reasons to like something, again my brain is wierd, but I love that SGA the show is so amenable to so many different types of fans. It's like becoming the Perfect Storm of fandom. (and crack. ohhhhh the crack)