RatCreature's Journal

The aim to make your tv series appear "dark" or "edgy" or "gritty" or whatever does not mean that the screen has to be literally too dark to make out anything. I get that there are mood lighting choices, and atmosphere through colors and so on, but it completely defeats any kind of purpose if your viewer can't see or follow what's going on. It is not all that sinister if you have to squint and guess what is happening. Seriously, things can be dark and edgy even if there is a lightsource somewhere! (This was brought on by me trying to watch SGU, but really it applies to a lot of series.)

I think I mentioned before that when watching SG-1 I keep thinking how much of an easier time the Ori would have getting more worshippers if they just expanded into the Pegasus Galaxy with an "accept Origin and we'll protect you from the Wraith" deal rather than trying in the Milky Way with their "worship us or we'll smite you!" threat. Sure threats probably work as well, but IMO for enduring popularity protection against an external foe would work much better.

I mean, personally I'm not fond of being smited by Priors so I certainly wouldn't object to the daily Ori worship in any case, but I'd be much happier (and less likely to look for some relatively safe way to maybe support some anti-Ori resistance after all) if it came in the guise of being a trade off for not being eaten. They could even be totally honest about the fact that the worship gives them additional power, or at least wouldn't need to worry much about heretics like SG-1 trying to convince the populace that they trick them, after all they could justify needing the people's support to hold off the Wraith or something. Especially during an active Wraith period the trade off of worshipping a group of some energy beings so that they in turn protected me from being culled isn't that bad all things considered, at least as long as the Ori don't happen to draft you into one of their crusades, and even then it's certainly not worse than some of the desperate things Pegasus civilizations are willing to try.

Anyway, with that thought it occurred to me that if the Ancients had wanted to secure worship in the past (and we know that at least some weren't adverse to being worshipped) creating an external threat like that would have been the natural way to go about it. I'm not sure how many Ancients were already ascended then and how many still experimenting with becoming energy back when the Wraith first emerged, but if ascended beings can somehow use power they get from worship, it's not so far fetched that for example a few already ascended Ancients could have wanted to use that kind of boost to help the others of their kind to also ascend for example, like that Oma(?) guy did with Daniel. So I wondered if the Wraith (which IIRC were the end result of one of the Ancients unfortunate experiments gone wrong, weren't they?) couldn't have been originally designed by some Ancient faction with that in mind, only to then reproduce faster than expected or be better with technology and somehow got out of control and were more trouble than they were worth.

Does anyone know what's up with Heliopolis, the SG-1 gen archive? I was following a link there and got to an "account suspended" page. Is this a temporary glitch (like some bandwidth or hosting problem or whatever), or has something happened to the archive recently?

Because half of my f-list seems to be talking about Stargate: Atlantis recently, I thought I'd give the series a try too. I mean, a lot of authors I like write SG:A nowadays, and I just don't read fanfic without having seen at least a couple of episodes first.

I'm not yet fully caught up, but I watched most of season one and the first three (I think) episodes of season two. Overall SG:A is fun to watch, however I'm not quite full of squee. Like, there's the plots. It may be because after watching a whole bunch of episodes they kind of blurred together, but they seem to do "race against time" eps a lot, don't they? It's not that I don't get that for some shows the plots aren't the primary attraction (I am a Sentinel fan after all *grin*), still I was vaguely dissatisfied. The Wraith as bad guys work for me, but I actually find the Wraith, who basically just eat humans, even if they do so by sucking out human life energy with their hands, less creepy than the Goa'uld and their mental subjugation/symbiont thing. And somehow the Wraith's look is even cheesier than the faux-Egyptian theme that seemed most popular among the Goa'uld. I mostly like Atlantis as a city of the Ancient and the Ancient tech angle when they remember to do stuff with it, though.

Also, while watching I was aware that McKay/Sheppard is the most popular slash pairing, so I tried to see them with a slashy mindset, and...eh. I don't really see it. I mean, it's not that surprising, because, while I'm usually open to be convinced of a variety of pairings when reading fic, for me to notice UST, or slashy vibes, or whatever on screen, it needs to be fairly obvious. I guess, I'm just not much of a "subtext" person. Still, subtext or not, I like most of the characters in the ensemble as a whole. BTW, is Zelenka-centric fic popular? If not, it definitely ought to be.

Last but not least, notice my new Stargate icon:

ane suggested I ought to a draw a SG icon, when I asked for ideas on how to fill my remaining 69 (now 68) icon slots in my last gip post. I was a bit at a loss how to give my avatar a typical Stargate look, and settled finally on that motif of vest-wearing character in front of a Stargate, that's fairly wide-spread on the official site, even though I don't like that look all that much. BTW, I'm still open for further icon ideas.

Thoughts on the season seven premiere of Stargate...

( contains some spoilers )