Life's a Party

Regarding the J2 Big Bang Haiti-fail, and specifically the subject addressed in whynot's reaction post.


I don't feel there's anything I need to say about gatorgrrrl that hasn't already been said, but I would like to put my two cents towards certain responders to the wank, specifically those who said:

"If this has taught me anything, you shouldn't even try to write POC."
"Yup. This is definitely what I've taken away from the whole clusterfuck."

...and similar comments in that vein.

People don't find themselves at the center of epic race wanks by accident. Racist people find themselves at the center of epic race wanks because they did something preposterously racist.

People who are not racist are not afraid of being called racist. They are not afraid 1) because it is very unlikely to happen and 2) because on the off chance they are wrongly accused of being racist, they can remain secure in the knowledge that hardly anyone is taking their accuser(s) seriously.



Men do not find themselves a the center of epic rape scandals by accident. Rapists find themselves at the center of epic race scandals because they treat women heinously.

Men who do not have a rape mentality are not afraid of being called rapists. They are not afraid 1) because it is very unlikely to happen and 2) because on the off chance they are wrongly accused of being rapists, they can remain secure in the knowledge that even genuine rape victims are often not taken seriously.



People cannot catch homosexuality as though it were a contagion. Closeted homophobes are afraid of "catching gay" because they are themselves gay and hope to suppress their gay urges with obvious overcompensation.

People who are not closeted homophobes are not afraid of being called/becoming gay. They are not afraid 1) because it is very unlikely to happen and 2) because on the off chance they are wrongly assumed to be gay/discover heretofore latent homosexual urges, they are and shall remain secure in their own identity and masculinity.


No seriously. Give me another. I can do this all night.


ETA: And as amazonziti wisely points out in my comment thread: "They are not afraid 3) because if it turns out it's true that they have said or done something hurtful, they will be more interested in assuaging the hurt and changing their behavior than in indulging their own feelings."

Because of course we all say/do stupid hurtful shit from time to time, but (I like to believe) most of us are willing to admit to our mistakes and apologize for and learn from them, and thus manage to avoid doing anything so offensive/heinous/appalling as to start a browser crashing internet wank.

Oh my god, I love this movie. And yeah, I love the Johnny Depp, and the Orlando Bloom, and Kiera Knightley is hot like burning. The special effects aren't bad either. But mostly, and this actually surprised me—I love this movie for the meta.

( Read more... )

I have a lot of personal philosophies when it comes to shows. One of them came up yesterday. I was at morgandawn's house and someone made a comment about the bad science in SGA.

My response was, "Really? SGA's better about their pseudoscience than most shows I've seen provided Joe Flanigan isn't writing the episode. I mean their biology could use some work, but really their physics is...oh. You were talking about the anthropology. See, when you call it a science, I get all confused."

I am so Rodney McKay deep in my soul.

But that's the subject for another post.



Here's my personal philosophy. Bad science only hurts me if I let it. I don't let it. Because otherwise it would hurt me all the time and I'd stop being a sci-fi fan altogether. I've learned to call magic when I see it. I've learned to understand my show's writers.

Honestly I see pretty much all the anthropology in SGA as a giant shoutout to classic Trek. The Genii are a perfect example. Here's an alien race that's 60 years behind us technologically. And it's eeeeevil! Let's make their uniforms look just like the Germans' in WWII! I mean really, the entire show is a giant shoutout. Hey, it's like they took the title Star Trek and replaced "Trek" with "Gate" -- GET IT?!? GET IT?!?

::cough::

Take the large, chunky holes in BSG's anthropology. Interstellar space travel. Field medicine and surgical techniques circa 2006. Gene sequencing machine engineered by Gaius Baltar, Jack of all sciences, master of...all, apparently. Field medicine and surgical techniques circa 2006. I mean, that would make sense in, say, SGA if there were a planet working really hard on weapons technology but not bothering to develop their medecine because hey! Everyone dies by wraith! Trying to put equal focus on medicine would be a waste of resources. But BSG has no such circumstances. There's no good reason why they would be so advanced in one field and so stunted in another.

Unless magic is at work.

Or better yet, fate. A path of societal development foretold by the gods, SO SAY WE ALL.

See? Now I feel better. God works in mysterious ways. Magic explains all. I keep my sanity. I'm not getting mad at a show for failing to be meticulous about something that is clearly not one of the writers' priorities.



At the beginning of SGA the creators tried to get military approval for their show. The military told them they'd need to get rid of John Sheppard's hair. The creators decided John's hair was more important.

And thank goodness for that.

The next time someone holds a gun wrong or salutes wrong or whatever, I'm just going to picture John in a crew cut and count my blessings.

I had this epiphany tonight about an aspect of my writing.


I can't just throw in pseudoscience. I have to rationalize it in my head first. And then I have to explain it somehow within the fic. This isn't particularly apparent in the fic I've written thus far, or rather, it's not particularly apparent in the fic that I've written and posted publicly.

But take my fic Mutability, for example. I know how the device that turned Rodney into a woman works, in my head. I've rationalized the demolecularization and storage of excess mass that enables him to be smaller as a woman than as a man and tied this in with why the device needs to be keyed to a particular user before it can be activated. I've rationalized in my head what exactly the device is for and how that relates to what it did to Rodney. I've partially rationalized the level of advancement of the device and how it fits in with the timeline of Ancient inventions. See, it's newer than the Stargate technology, since it does things related to what we've seen in other pieces of Ancient technology, only it's a lot smaller.

I haven't rationalized it quite as much as I want to because the whole subject is rather farfetched, but suffice it to say I've put a ridiculous amount of thought into this. It's, like, compulsive behavior for me. I haven't had the opportunity to write any of this in yet. First Rodney needs to figure out how it works within the context of the story, since he's going to be the one doing all the explaining. There's going to be a bunch of exposition on this in my next chapter that I'm going to try to squish in without boring you all out of your minds.


It's a thing.

The thought of writing technology into a fic without first coming up with at least a somewhat logical explanation of how it works actually hurts my brain. This doesn't come from any particular need I have to write accurate science. Hell, I love fantasy just as much as I love sci-fi if not more.

Possibly I feel obligated because I can. SGA is one of the few fandoms where writing semi-plausible pseudoscience doesn't force me to dismiss large chunks of canon. ::cough::Smallville::cough:: SGA is fairly consistent when it comes to physics. Even the theoretical physics isn't totally arbitrary -- clearly someone on the writing staff read The Elegant Universe or some other "string theory for dummies" publication to help with at least most of the SGA episodes. [Note: We are going to ignore the physics of the stargate itself, since the whole "only discrete units" thing and the "one way except for radio waves" thing is really all SG-1's fault, and their physics is in general much shadier than SGA's. Also, any episodes written by Joe Flanigan.] They're not talking out of their asses quite as much as I'd expect. I feel kind of obligated to maintain a physics standard within my own stories.

The biology in the show is a little bit iffier. I mean, what did Carson use to make that retrovirus -- ebola? But even that I can sort of rationalize because, okay, he was a government doctor with high security clearance, therefore probably had access to a lot of highly virulent genetically engineered designer viruses. We're not going to talk about the whole "Duet" two minds in one body thing. We're just not.

The anthropology on SGA is MAGICK with a K. End of story.


Most writers can come up with plausible pseudoscience. Only a few will actually feel the need to explain why it is plausible and tie up every single loose end. Off the top of my head, the only authors in SGA I can think of who do this are astolat and justabi.

Though really, it's not like the reader cares 99.9% of the time whether or not it is explained. If a random Ancient Device makes Rodney psychic, who really gives a fuck how it works? Hell, I don't give a fuck. I love that fic. I've read it, like, six times.


I totally have a point.

I started thinking about this because of the contest down at undermistletoe for guessing which author wrote which fic. Pseudoscience isn't something people usually use when trying to identify writing style. But if, say, one writer were trying to imitate another writer's style in order to confuse and misdirect readers, it's one of the harder things to fake.

I love my show because I have *faith* -- or perhaps it is because I lack sanity. Either way.

Beware of spoilers.

( Wherein there is SQUEE )

( And then CRACK )

( And then META )

( And then more SQUEE )

( And also CRACK )

( Hey look, more META )

( But back to the CRACK )