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Feb. 18th, 2007 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charloweenHere’s the thing. At ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
piratefanatic’s urging, I’ve been getting caught up on my SGA. The great thing about SGA is it’s so fluffy and consequenceless (there’s always that tidy reset button hanging around the corner) that I can watch a bajillion episodes in a row. I can’t do that for Battlestar or, like, Forever Knight (though for very different reasons).
The point: every episode of SGA I watch, I love Ronon more and more. Actually, after “Echoes”, he’s probably my favourite character on the show. He’s my SGA boyfriend (or John’s boyfriend, if John wasn’t a creepy fucking robot but that’s neither here nor there at this point). I like that they show us how strong the relationship (…romance??) between Ronon and Teyla has grown, and how it’s an entirely different kind of relationship than what Teyla and Ford had. Ford was the team’s little brother, and as sorry as I was to see him go, it works out a lot better to have the fourth member of the team being an equal, rather than a subordinate. I don’t mean just militarily, I mean in terms of how the group dynamic played out. Ford was simply too junior.
Props to the show for picking up on that running with that as they wrote him out of the show. It’s not that he was inadequate; he was a great character, but there wasn’t any place for a little brother on Atlantis. Not in the direction they were taking the show, anyway. The humans were fighting a war, and there was no time to be mentoring while on the front lines. (Not that John could do that anyway, see previous comments re: being a creepy robot man.)
Which brings me back to Ronon. Ronon the replacement for Ford (hey! they’re both dark-skinned! no-one will notice!), Ronon the semi-feral, strong-and-silent alien warrior. Ronon, SGA’s Teal’c, Worf, D’Argo, Tyr (die, Andromeda, die), the character who is a warrior first and a teammate second. You know the type: physically big, ethnically and culturally distinct, with typically “black” hair – dreads, shaved head, long-and-kinked (or tentacles, and yes, I know that Anthony Simcoe is a white actor, but D’Argo is coded black-alien in every other way), and he carries a cool weapon that is significant or unique to his race.
But - and here’s the cool part - Ronon is written (and played, brilliantly) with a lot more warmth and humanity than those other guys. He’s not as gruff, or cold, or as obsessed with honour and lineage as all the rest of his type. Maybe it’s because he’s an underwritten background character, or maybe it’s because as the fourth member of the team and a career soldier he just follows John’s orders; but when he does act outside of the team situation (ie. when he’s not the ‘efficient killing machine’ character) he’s got a side to him that those other characters don’t. He smiles. Now I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and I’m pretty sure that’s what makes Ronon so fundamentally different from Teal’c or Worf or Tyr (die, Andromeda, die). Ronon has a healthy sense of humour, and a moral/ethical/personal code where it’s okay to laugh, to have fun, and to show compassion without seeing that as any kind of compromise.
Some of the difference probably comes from the fact that out of all these characters Ronon is the only one who’s actually human, but he is from an alien planet in another galaxy, so I’ll let that one slide. Also, unlike the Luxans or Jaffa or Klingons, Ronon has lost his entire planet, culture and society when the Wraith culled and destroyed it. For the others, there are still those of their own kind out there that he could return to. Ronon doesn’t have a ‘people’ to return to. One of the many things he shares with Tyr (including the frame, the hair and the costume...) is that all his neighbours, family, and anyone he could call friend, are all taken from him and he becomes a lone wolf.
On the other hand, Ronon does have the benefit of a strong human community to fold himself into. He doesn’t have to suffer the same kind of isolation – the lone alien amongst humans – as the others do. And maybe in the end that’s what Ronon has that the others do not. After the “I’ve been hunted for sport by crazy space vampires for seven fucking years” twitchiness wore off, Ronon pulled that particular stick out of his ass and wiggled his way into the Atlantean community. He didn’t assimilate – didn’t shave or cut his hair or dress (as Teal’c and Teyla do) in the same uniforms as the rest of his team – but he did find a place... and he repays those initial gestures with loyalty and what looks to be true friendship. Kind of like a puppy, but Jason Momoa (preeeeeeeeeetty) plays Ronon far too wily to think of him as a pet of any kind. (And he’s probably sleeping with Teyla. Or John. Or both.)
He looks like he should fit the stereotype they've constructed him as, but in all the personal moments when he's not hunting or tracking being their pet-mascot-thing, he's a much warmer character than, say, John "freaky robot" Sheppard. Normally it's the hero who gets all the nice moments, but here it's a guy who barely rates as 'sidekick'.
Point is, all the scenes between Teyla and Ronon in “Echoes”? Ronon’s grown a lot from the days when he was an sf cliché. Like I said, he's probably my favourite character on the show. *snuggles Ronon, because he might just let me*
piratefanatic’s urging, I’ve been getting caught up on my SGA. The great thing about SGA is it’s so fluffy and consequenceless (there’s always that tidy reset button hanging around the corner) that I can watch a bajillion episodes in a row. I can’t do that for Battlestar or, like, Forever Knight (though for very different reasons). The point: every episode of SGA I watch, I love Ronon more and more. Actually, after “Echoes”, he’s probably my favourite character on the show. He’s my SGA boyfriend (or John’s boyfriend, if John wasn’t a creepy fucking robot but that’s neither here nor there at this point). I like that they show us how strong the relationship (…romance??) between Ronon and Teyla has grown, and how it’s an entirely different kind of relationship than what Teyla and Ford had. Ford was the team’s little brother, and as sorry as I was to see him go, it works out a lot better to have the fourth member of the team being an equal, rather than a subordinate. I don’t mean just militarily, I mean in terms of how the group dynamic played out. Ford was simply too junior.
Props to the show for picking up on that running with that as they wrote him out of the show. It’s not that he was inadequate; he was a great character, but there wasn’t any place for a little brother on Atlantis. Not in the direction they were taking the show, anyway. The humans were fighting a war, and there was no time to be mentoring while on the front lines. (Not that John could do that anyway, see previous comments re: being a creepy robot man.)
Which brings me back to Ronon. Ronon the replacement for Ford (hey! they’re both dark-skinned! no-one will notice!), Ronon the semi-feral, strong-and-silent alien warrior. Ronon, SGA’s Teal’c, Worf, D’Argo, Tyr (die, Andromeda, die), the character who is a warrior first and a teammate second. You know the type: physically big, ethnically and culturally distinct, with typically “black” hair – dreads, shaved head, long-and-kinked (or tentacles, and yes, I know that Anthony Simcoe is a white actor, but D’Argo is coded black-alien in every other way), and he carries a cool weapon that is significant or unique to his race.
But - and here’s the cool part - Ronon is written (and played, brilliantly) with a lot more warmth and humanity than those other guys. He’s not as gruff, or cold, or as obsessed with honour and lineage as all the rest of his type. Maybe it’s because he’s an underwritten background character, or maybe it’s because as the fourth member of the team and a career soldier he just follows John’s orders; but when he does act outside of the team situation (ie. when he’s not the ‘efficient killing machine’ character) he’s got a side to him that those other characters don’t. He smiles. Now I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and I’m pretty sure that’s what makes Ronon so fundamentally different from Teal’c or Worf or Tyr (die, Andromeda, die). Ronon has a healthy sense of humour, and a moral/ethical/personal code where it’s okay to laugh, to have fun, and to show compassion without seeing that as any kind of compromise.
Some of the difference probably comes from the fact that out of all these characters Ronon is the only one who’s actually human, but he is from an alien planet in another galaxy, so I’ll let that one slide. Also, unlike the Luxans or Jaffa or Klingons, Ronon has lost his entire planet, culture and society when the Wraith culled and destroyed it. For the others, there are still those of their own kind out there that he could return to. Ronon doesn’t have a ‘people’ to return to. One of the many things he shares with Tyr (including the frame, the hair and the costume...) is that all his neighbours, family, and anyone he could call friend, are all taken from him and he becomes a lone wolf.
On the other hand, Ronon does have the benefit of a strong human community to fold himself into. He doesn’t have to suffer the same kind of isolation – the lone alien amongst humans – as the others do. And maybe in the end that’s what Ronon has that the others do not. After the “I’ve been hunted for sport by crazy space vampires for seven fucking years” twitchiness wore off, Ronon pulled that particular stick out of his ass and wiggled his way into the Atlantean community. He didn’t assimilate – didn’t shave or cut his hair or dress (as Teal’c and Teyla do) in the same uniforms as the rest of his team – but he did find a place... and he repays those initial gestures with loyalty and what looks to be true friendship. Kind of like a puppy, but Jason Momoa (preeeeeeeeeetty) plays Ronon far too wily to think of him as a pet of any kind. (And he’s probably sleeping with Teyla. Or John. Or both.)
He looks like he should fit the stereotype they've constructed him as, but in all the personal moments when he's not hunting or tracking being their pet-mascot-thing, he's a much warmer character than, say, John "freaky robot" Sheppard. Normally it's the hero who gets all the nice moments, but here it's a guy who barely rates as 'sidekick'.
Point is, all the scenes between Teyla and Ronon in “Echoes”? Ronon’s grown a lot from the days when he was an sf cliché. Like I said, he's probably my favourite character on the show. *snuggles Ronon, because he might just let me*
