SGA: Critical Mass meta and

[permetaform]

lierdumoa's posted meta on Critical Mass, and since we brainshare, I was pretty much pointing at it and going, "YES, like that!"

The 'cause, y'know, the thing I love about SGA is that it has flawed characters and it has them unrepentantly. They are flawed in such a way that you are forced to go, "WTF, man, WTF." And there is NO redemption, there's no fixing, there's no castigating of the characters, there's no shame.

There is no higher force going, "Oh my god, that was a bad character trait! We must punish this character and make sure to show people what *good* character traits are!" And no, Rodney never really changes from Trinity (not in a major personality way, he becomes more cautious, true), Beckett never really changes from Poisoning The Well (he's still hopeful for gene therapy as WMD, and, y'know Conversion), and the effects of these irredemeable character traits will keep on causing waves and fuckups and I *love* that. Granted, the dialogue is sometimes cringe-worthy; but I love that characters are allowed to be fuckups and to be sometimes incompetent, I love that this show allows me to *hate* these characters sometimes because you're *supposed* to hate character flaws.

I love that SGA, not only a war show but a sci-fi show, allows character to be *average* in scary and frightening ways, imperfect. And in a way, this makes it darker than many texts I've come across; because it's not the brave Hero getting tortured and you know they're going to come out all shiny, but because Pegasus galaxy will FUCK these average people up. They will come out tarnished and stained and filthy.

w00t! ::adores::

[]

In other news, I...er. Insta-vidded?

I was planning on using this song for HP, but then this idea attacked me harder, and I was like yes, just like that, and 2 hours later I have a vidlet-thing. o.o It's just a little bit evil.
Arose, 3.6MB (temporarily offline)
Summary: Rodney has problems with things that ascend.

It's un-betaed, and it's short, and I'm strangely really really pleased with it. ::pets baby!vid:: Uses American Beauty soundtrack.

Comments

[zincpiccalilli.livejournal.com]

...because Pegasus galaxy will FUCK these average people up.

You know, oddly enough, the only thing I could think is that Pegasus is not so much fucking the SGA characters up as stripping away any delusions they might've had that they weren't fucked up to begin with.

This sort of ties in with what wistful_fever wrote about all of them being outcasts. After all, as others have pointed out, these are the people—best and brightest or not—who were sent on the one-way trip to another galaxy; if nothing else, this means they were completely expendable. Given just how brilliant some of them seem, I have to conclude that, well, there's something else wrong with all these folks, even if it's merely fanatic devotion to their work. I can't remember who coined the phrase, but Atlantis really is the Island of the Misfit Toys.

Except, when the expedition set out, everyone thought things would be okay. However you screwed up back on Earth, the slate is magically wiped clean again in Pegasus, and you can do better if you work at it. Only Atlantis and Pegasus didn't turn out quite how anybody expected, and irredeemable character flaws remain irredeemable except now that you're one of two hundred people running everything in a vast, unexplored city of dangerous technology and a vast, unexplored galaxy of unknowns those flaws tend to produce exponentially larger fuck-ups than you ever managed back home.

I think the Atlantis people are slowly coming to this realization.

Oh, I'm sure they'll succeed and save the day in the end (really, they have to every time they land in yet another life-or-death situation because otherwise there'd be no show) but usually not by being consistently competent (until it's time for the Hail Mary).

This probably made no sense whatsoever, but I pulled an all-nighter. In fact, I haven't gone to bed yet! ^^;;

[permetaform]

That actually does make sense and are very very good thoughts ::highfives::

stripping away any delusions they might've had that they weren't fucked up to begin with.

[...]

Only Atlantis and Pegasus didn't turn out quite how anybody expected, and irredeemable character flaws remain irredeemable except now that you're one of two hundred people running everything in a vast, unexplored city of dangerous technology and a vast, unexplored galaxy of unknowns those flaws tend to produce exponentially larger fuck-ups than you ever managed back home.

I think the Atlantis people are slowly coming to this realization.

::bounces:: that makes a lot of sense!

[zincpiccalilli.livejournal.com]

That actually does make sense and are very very good thoughts ::highfives::

^_____^

Though I'm still waiting (probably fruitlessly) for the episode where SGA does courtroom drama. Weir, McKay, and Beckett recalled to Earth to face an international civilian board of inquiry, Sheppard a military tribunal, for every action they've taken in Pegasus that we've ever argued the moral implications of. It'd be a fantastic clip show! And, whoa, characterization and angst and all that good stuff! And, OMG, drama and suspense and intelligent television! What's going to happen to our beloved characters? Atlantis?

‹sigh› If only I could trust TPTB to pull it off without taking any easy outs on the messy questions. Bah. It'll never happen.