thoughts about stargate

[cimorene]

southpaw526 and i watched not nearly as much stargate as i thought we were going to--six or seven episodes, maybe? and we spent a while at target yesterday and got matching shoes <3.

there was much discussion of the unconvincingness of the obviously intended het relationships, like sam and jack's, and the scene in the s1 pilot where sha'uri grabs daniel for a sorta porny goodbye kiss, nevermind she doesn't know it's goodbye. (my quarrel with her stems from the movie, which isn't slashy, but the het isn't very convincing there either.) naina thinks the target audience accounts for much of the stupidity, which i'm sure it does. and stargate's a particularly good series for spackles, i think, being even more full of holes than star trek (which i hadn't previously believed possible). (speaking of spackles, naina didn't know what they were! hee!) but despite the huge onscreen chemistry between ms and rda, a lot of factual canon is against them. one can explain away the mirror universes where he's involved with sam if you don't believe anyone is destined for anything (like me. although it's a dangerous belief to try to hold onto in slash fanon). but the whole obsession with pretty wife as a rationale for going on all the missions

certainly the grief and irrationality are believable if he's so very much in love, although his behavior the rest of the time is remarkably sane and you might then expect him to bring her up more often. right there, canon appears to me to dangerously contradict itself. writing that rationale was a stupid and cheap way to a lot of drama, although their hands WERE somewhat tied by the movie.

but it IS canon regardless--it has to come into any possible explanations. and the fact remains that this definitely gets in the way of any jack/daniel. i mean, we're not just saying 'yes he really loved her,' we're postulating a degree of obsession that makes him totally refuse to see reality and, indeed, engage in behavior (military!) that seems contrary to his habit and probably his beliefs if not his actual nature. at least, i got from the movie and the beginning of the series that the latter was their intent, but it's probably the weakest point of the argument against the pairing. i see possibilities where the exploration, violence, danger, adventure, and travel are something he's extremely attached to and that adventure was his real love all along. this isn't unsupportable in canon.

Comments

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he simply can't let things go without knowing; the whole reason he would have thought of the alien theory would be an example of that (he couldn't believe that a society would just suddenly have written language and had to figure out what caused it). So part of it is that he loves Sha're, definitely, but part of it could also be that he simply can't let something go unfinished, which the business with Sha're certainly is.

Then, of course, there's the whole "exploration of foriegn cultures" and practically living examples of past histories that he might not be able to get away from.

In short: I see him as far too intellectual to be emotionally obsessed with Sha're, but I do think it's conceivable that Daniel is obsessed with knowing things, particular things at any rate. Does that make any sense?

Re:

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i don't know. obsession isn't a neat and tidy thing that just divides up like that. the problem with canon here is that he doesn't *really* act obsessed, with the exception of the occasional highly incongruous scene.

perhaps this can be written off by the spackler as the result of grief or remembering, and then that leaves you only to explain why his real motivations are not more evident.

perhaps he would feel guilty about giving up, once he realized that he was not as dedicated as he had made himself out (to himself as well) to be, like a twist on the badfic device of loyalty to the memory of a dead loved one. if he feels guilty, he probably doesn't like to think about his real motivations very much, and still being on the team would make it easier to ignore. especially given the odds that he'd actually find sha'uri alive and, well, herself.