ratcreature | meta-ish sga fanfic thoughts

I read quite a lot SGA fanfic and I'm starting to develop-- well, it's not quite a pet peeve, but this plot device in SGA fanfic that random alien "natives" capture/torture/sacrifice/chase the team with primitive weapons without ever being given proper motivation or even just common sense, it's staring to make me twitch whenever I see it. I get that the point of these stories isn't the alien culture but the h/c or sex ritual or whatever the author needs the spear waving natives for, but still.

For one it throws me out of the story, because it is so obvious that the Pegasus natives are only there for their effect on the team, that they aren't even real people. It's not that the team being the primary interest in the story was a problem, well developed cultures can serve the same ultimate purpose in a narrative, it just wouldn't be so blatantly obvious that they are only there as a plot device. These natives don't even get the minimal development of stock characters, who at least have a thin veneer over their purpose of just serving the heroes' plot. Even the traditional "exotic backdrop natives", problematic as they are for numerous reasons even when it's all filtered through being fantasy and not projected onto an actual culture, are at least, well, "exotic" and as such interesting or at least colorful.

Which leads me to the second point, i.e. it is reminiscent of the cringe-worthy and racist cliche of "primitive, non-rational savages vs. European explorers" in adventure fiction. Personally I think that they are so often complete non-entities is kind of worse than even if they were exotic backdrop for the protagonists (like in the typical "Africa movie") because they often don't get even that much minimal agency and presence as people.

That said, I wonder whether there would be any interest in an SGA thematic list with the topic "alien cultures" or something like that, kind of expanded from my earlier post to collect stories that give the Pegasus cultures at least a bit more room than to be just savages alternatively hurting the team or making them have sex.

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As someone who loves to world-build, I can't understand why people wouldn't go into more detail about the cultures the SGA gang meets up with. I think there's a balance, of course; in some of the fics I'm working on, I've found myself trying to hold back and remember to make sure the focus is on the team and not on this cool race with these interesting rituals that I've created.

I suspect that part of the reason we don't see more developed alien cultures in fic is that we really don't get much of it on the show either. And it's a pity because this is one place where fanfic writers have so much more room to maneuver than a TV writer does.

I don't mind the lack of cultural details in some fic, usually in something that's supposed to be light, where the fact that they're getting chased back to the gate by guys with spears is a sort of "just another day in the Pegasus galaxy," and is not at all part of the plot. But if the tone of the fic is more serious and the role of the alien culture is more central to the plot, then yes, I want to see more of the culture and why they're doing whatever it is they do.

And the writer doesn't need to give me an essay. Of course, I want to know why, for example, the aliens wanted to see Sheppard go down on his team, because, yes, that's a plot point (mine in this case). But it's nice to have other almost throw away details like the way they speak or dress or whether the temple is open and airy, or dark and oppressive, and so on. It implies that the writer's thought it through and even if you don't see everything they know about their invented culture, you get an idea of how it hangs together.

One of the things that's making me so very happy to be in this fandom is that, after several years writing in a fandom solidly set on mundane Earth in the here and now, I'm in a science fiction fandom again. For me, inventing alien cultures is a big part of the squee of writing here.

I'd totally be interested in a list that expanded on your earlier list.

For me the offhand references are starting to throw me out of stories because they are not a reasonable "shorthand" for what we see on the show as such fanfic implies.

*nods* I think some writers forget that while they don't always tell us that much about the various alien cultures on the show, we do in fact see them, and so there's a whole layer of information that you don't get in a fic unless the author makes an effort to include that information.

Yeah, I agree with ratcreature-- the problem with the fact that they're getting chased back to the gate by guys with spears is a sort of "just another day in the Pegasus galaxy," is that it's *never happened* on the show-- it's total fanon, that actually contradicts what SGA has repeatedly shown us of Pegasus galaxy cultures. Half the time they're at least up to a 1700s-1800s level of technology, if not MORE advanced than Earth's current level of technology. Even Teyla's people are more advanced than they first appear, as Teyla makes sure to point out to John in the pilot. They're not a bunch of dumb superstitious cave-people, and it's kind of weird to have this fanon that the Pegasus galaxy is full of dirty savages with spears.

As I said in my previous comment to Ratcreature, they did actually get chased off a planet once in "Sateda," but that wasn't a case of them getting attacked because of a cultural misunderstanding, or savage violent natives who hated ALL outsiders-- the villagers had a very specific grudge against Ronon in particular that caused them to react like that. Also, the "chased off the planet with spears" fanon was pretty prevalent even before that. (It just gets into this uncomfortable implication-- is this what the authors really mean to say about less technologically advanced societies? Insanely superstitious, knee-jerk violent, this faceless, indistinguishable mass-- and just generally Not Like Us? It's kind of problematic.)

Fair enough; that's what I get for speculating when I haven't seen all the available episodes. I do seem to remember that kind of thing happening once in a while back when I watched SG-1 and I wonder if it's a holdover from that fandom. And I agree it does have problematic implications, although I think in most cases it's more a matter of lazy writing than anything conscious.

It could be an SG1 trope; I had a bit of meta a while back about why people tend to write a lot of stories where the SGA teams go camping overnight on strange planets, despite the fact that the puddlejumper makes that unnecessary, and the general consensus was "they did it on SG1, so we're doing it here too."

I think in most cases it's more a matter of lazy writing than anything conscious.

Oh, I agree with you-- I think if most people CONSCIOUSLY thought about the implications of the stereotypes they're using, they wouldn't use them, of course! I certainly don't think it's deliberate.

I can't recall the "spear-bearing angry natives" bit happening in SG-1 at all, but I may just not be remembering it. And it could have been a throwaway bit in another storyline. They had plenty of stories dealing with the team getting in trouble with people from low-technology cultures, but it was usually conflict over some real issue, not just a knee-jerk response to seeing strangers. And there are just as many if not more stories about the team helping or getting involved with friendly local people. They did do at least several stories about the team arriving on a planet that had a stargate but basically didn't know what it was/had never used it, and so had never seen aliens before. In some of the stories, the knee-jerk response to the team was fear and violence, but in all the cases I can remember, those were higher technology cultures, usually around or above Earth's current level.

Though I don't have all the episodes memorized, and I may be forgetting some big obvious example.

But yeah, I agree with you guys, the "angry natives who are evil for the hell of it" or "evil natives who sexually assault everybody who comes through the gate" are very overused in fanfic and I tend to avoid those stories. Not that they haven't been done well by some writers, it's just not something I want to read that much of. The overuse of that idea is something I had in mind when I started writing fanfic, and I wanted to do more stories about friendly or neutral aliens or local people, since it seemed more canon, and up to that point I literally hadn't seen hardly any stories like that.

I can't think of any specifics myself, but there were a couple of places where Teal'c got a knee-jerk response, didn't he? Of course, that's not proof of irrationality on the part of the "natives" so much as a healthy concern, considering that everybody "knows" that Jaffa are the servants of the gods and have scary powers-- really strong, you can't kill them, etc.-- so that's not superstition, it's just fact. *G*

In some of the stories, the knee-jerk response to the team was fear and violence, but in all the cases I can remember, those were higher technology cultures, usually around or above Earth's current level.

*nods* Again I think it goes back to familiarity-- the Gou'ald squashed technological innovation, so any high-technology culture they encountered would've been a culture who'd buried or lost their Gate and therefore totally wouldn't be expecting people to come visit them. Whereas any culture that was still under the Gou'ald's control would at least be familiar with the concepts of Gate travel and spaceships and so on.

Yep, that happened a few times with Teal'c, and it was always the "OMG, you have a Jaffa with you, you must be Goa'uld!" response, which is all kinds of rational. There was one episode in particular where they went to a planet where Teal'c had helped kidnap people for hosts for Apophis, so the village grabbed him and put him on trial.

I can only think of a couple of episodes where they ran into cultures that they basically labelled as too dangerous or evil to contact, and in both cases they were higher tech cultures.

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