Jack O'Neill/ Sam Carter - Part of a team, not a ship

[Crow T. Robot]

I'm not sure men make worse romance writers than women FF

Neither am I.

I’ve seen male characters completely butchered by female writer. There are very few female writers out there that write a passable male-point-of-view. A majority of female writers out there approach male characters like their woman with male body parts.

Which isn’t the case.

Maybe it’s because I grew up surrounded by men my whole life. Men really do think and see the world differently from woman. One example is overall men are blunter and more out spoken than woman. Then tend to say what’s on their minds more when woman (and you could argue social conditioning here) tend to try to be more diplomatic.

Can I take a common scenario I’ve seen over and over in Shipper fan fiction? That’s when Daniel and T team up on Jack and tell him how’s he’s neglected a poor mistreated Sam. (Insert the barfing smilie here please). Have you actually EVER seen this shake out in a male dominated group before when you’re the only girl in it? I haven’t. Nine out of ten times the guys side with the guys or they stay out of it and avoid the sticky issue completely.

There’s a LOT Romance stuff the males in my family mock and make fun of.

So it’s not just male writers.

[scarimor]

Neither am I.

I’ve seen male characters completely butchered by female writer. There are very few female writers out there that write a passable male-point-of-view.

This is also true. However, most romance is written for females, so that's the caveat. There aren't the male readers/viewers around to find fault with the writing - because they're not reading/watching it.

It is precisely because romance is read/watched mostly by women, that men struggle to write it effectively. If romance were a genre consumed predominantly by men, then the opposite would be the case. Female writers wouldn't be good at it (in general) and male writers would. It is a demand-led issue.

Male viewers of scifi tend to tune out any romantic threads to scifi, for example, and don't complain that the writing has damaged the female character. (I'm talking generally of course - there's always the exception). Female viewers find much more of a problem with it: even those who like the romance (e.g. the Jack/Sam shippers) often see problems with what it does to the female character. That's because, even as appreciators of the romance, they see the inept way a (usually) male writer handles the female character through that thread. The male writer's sensibilties are not in tune with the typical female consumer's sensibilties of romance, and being male he struggles to write a woman in that relationship well in the same way that a female writer may well struggle to write a male.

[grasshopper64]

Just to start out, I honestly didn’t see anything shippy even after Divide and Conquer. It wasn’t until I came online and read what people thought when I realized that they’d been trying to say that Jack and Sam might like each other as more than friends. I had assumed that Jack had meant that he cares about his entire team more than he should which is true and the fact that Daniel and Teal’c had also waited for Jack and Sam really did throw me off the supposedly shippy moment since I viewed it as a team moment. I wasn’t blind to some of Jack’s earlier comments about her tank top in Broca Divide or even the kiss in WOO but I still view that as more of a ‘male thing’ rather than a romantic thing. Sam is an intelligent, attractive woman and Jack’s not blind but I don’t think that means they’d be good together romantically and really IMO they didn’t do that good of a job of keeping it two sided. Too often we got to see more of Sam crushing on Jack than the other way around so I really can’t be clear as to what Jack felt but for me, it made him seem less romantically interested in her than she was in him.

Yep, Divide & Conquer was where it all started or should I say where they went wrong. In S1-3 there was nothing overtly shippy, if you wanted to see something between S&J you could, if not you could ignore it.
D&C is one ep I will not rewatch, the whole "I care about you more than I'm supposed to" felt so contrived like most of the shippy stuff. Jack would have said the same thing if it had been Daniel/Teal'c stuck behind that shield.

That kiss in window of opportunity, if Jack had real feelings for Sam he would not have kissed her in front of everyone like that, he was just bored in my opinion. He did it because he could get away with it.

I honestly felt like TPTB wanted to end the ship a couple of different times but when they would put a potential end on it, the shippers would be mad so then they’d decide to try and appease them. Which is really one of their biggest problems because they always seem to want to please everyone…shippers, slashers, gen/team fans, etc. and in doing that, they end up annoying everyone but in different ways. I really don’t think there is any way to get out of that anymore and because of that they might as well just stick with keeping it open to interpretation for good.

I like Sam but I really did feel embarrassed that she was shown to be pining for her boss. They became friends and family over the years but he was also still her boss and I hate to watch anyone act that way. Also I like Jack and Sam’s friendship before they decided to throw the ship in there more because before they at least seemed comfortable talking to each other when they were alone. After that however, I got embarrassed again anytime we saw them try to interact because it was all so awkward. Just to use Lost City as an example. Their whole beginning conversation at his house was terrible. I ended up feeling like she knew nothing about this man who is supposedly her friend. I mean she’s never really been his confidant but I just figured they’d at least know things to talk about (even though again I’m not sure what they’d talk about in a romantic relationship either since they don’t have much in common). It was just stilted and awkward when they were trying to interact on a personal level.

Yes it's one thing that annoyed me that they had to keep bringing up the ship just when you thought it had gone away The rest of S4 wasn't too bad, apart from Beneath the Surface and Entity perhaps, S5 & S6 were largely ship free, except perhaps a couple of moments if you looked hard enough. Then we had S7. I saw Grace as Sam letting go, admitting that it was never going to happen with Jack. (The "I'm a safe bet" thing).
Then she met Pete and we still had shippy moments keep popping up in S7 & S8 And I won't go even go into Threads........

Lastly, I really do have a problem seeing them get over the whole chain of command issue (which they even joke about in the 200th episode of course). They can barely force themselves to call each other by anything besides “sir” and “Carter” when they’re together casually as friends, how in the world are they going to do this in a romantic relationship that’s supposed to exist between equals?

That 200 scene turned out to be so much better than I was expecting, yes they can't even get over the Sir/Carter thing. Funny thing was way back in
S1/2 he did actually call her Sam a few times. Hell back then they hugged a few times, even flirted a little and it wasn't shippy or awkward.

Also I can’t even begin to count the number of times shippers have cited the fishing trip invitations as though they are something really special between them. Jack’s asked Teal’c and Daniel to go on these trips too though, so I don’t really get the difference.

Yes that's one thing I don't get, Jack actually asked Daniel to go fishing first
And he even asked Thor........what does that says about Jack, IMO he just wanted some company.....
Another thing that often gets said is that scene at the end of Threads
where Jack is sitting next to Sam, proof they are together, not so much
You can draw your own conclusions from that scene......

[JessM]

Can I take a common scenario I’ve seen over and over in Shipper fan fiction? That’s when Daniel and T team up on Jack and tell him how’s he’s neglected a poor mistreated Sam. (Insert the barfing smilie here please). Have you actually EVER seen this shake out in a male dominated group before when you’re the only girl in it? I haven’t. Nine out of ten times the guys side with the guys or they stay out of it and avoid the sticky issue completely.

There’s a LOT Romance stuff the males in my family mock and make fun of.

So it’s not just male writers.

*raises eyebrow at stuff in bold* Whoa... I guess I haven't read enough shipper fanfiction, but just reading that is enough to make me barf. I don't think I could ever picture that particular scenario. I guess the shippers would argue that oh, but Daniel and Teal'c are her friends and are concerned.

But then again I don't know how they treat the Sam-Teal'c and Sam-Daniel friendships in fanfiction either.

[DEM]

But then again I don't know how they treat the Sam-Teal'c and Sam-Daniel friendships in fanfiction either.

Most romance fanfiction is, IMO, overly sappy or sugary or what-have-you. It may be a male-female writer thing, but honestly, I think it (sugariness) is better characterised as a genre effect. I mean, the women characters seem... unreal to me, too. For awhile I entertained the idea that I just don't get people, but nah, I don't believe I'm that out of touch. Note: I'm talking only about straight-up 'ship fic, not all fic that involves people kissing or shagging or whatnot.

When it comes to the show writers (and teevee writers in general), I think there were two distinct factors at play. First, women generally aren't written very strongly (unless they are CLEARLY a lead; cf. Cold Case, L&O: SVU); rather, they are supports. It's like producers see WOMAN and all sorts of things snap. The writer gets hung up on 'female gender' and overcompensates. For example: "Women are not as assertive as men, women are not as assertive as men, women are not as assertive as men... soooo... my female character should vacillate a lot, right?" When the writers were writing 'Sam Carter, USAF officer and science guru', they did fine. It's when they had to write 'Sam Carter, woman looking for luv' that brains melted.

Second, writers -- like most artists -- tend to specialise or at least excel at one genre more than others. Those who write character studies generally don't write actionfests. (I also think it's rare for dramatists to be good comedy writers; unfortunately there are a lot of writers who apparently think they're great at both ) Thus, as scarimor mentioned before, scifi-action writers probably ought to leave straight-ahead romance alone.

All that said, I do believe the gender-effect theory is not without merit. More than one research study has shown that (in U.S. television) there is a moderate but direct relationship between a) the amount of involvement of female writers/directors/producers and both b) narrative strength of female protagonists and c) number of female characters. No, women creators don't create perfect female-lead stories any more than men create perfect male-lead stories, but the data clearly show that women writers contribute something of positive effect.

all mnsho, of course.

[scarimor]

Wot you said, DEM. This is in lieu of the green my fridge won't give you.

[Crow T. Robot]

This is also true. However, most romance is written for females, so that's the caveat. There aren't the male readers/viewers around to find fault with the writing - because they're not reading/watching it.

Well I could argue you’d have to expect this type of female character downward spiral then. If your arguing female= romance. You would have to also argue Sci Fi = Male. Sci Fi is mostly written for men by men. (Please note I’m not arguing the hard Sci Fi not the Fantasy genre of it.) Which annoys this girl who grew up on Star Wars.

Male viewers of scifi tend to tune out any romantic threads to scifi, for example, and don't complain that the writing has damaged the female character. (I'm talking generally of course - there's always the exception).

No kidding. One reason why IMHO introducing the Arthurian legends in to Star Gate was the BIGGEST mistake they could have done and why the ‘ship’ is so much more noticeable now than they ever wrote it with Sam and Jack. (And with Sam and Jack it got bad) The Arthurian legends are considered a “Romantic” legends with some very rare exceptions like Mary Stewart and Jack Whyte—both more historical fiction. When your basing your plot off of a Romantic epic—It’s going to trickle down!

[Crow T. Robot]

*raises eyebrow at stuff in bold* Whoa... I guess I haven't read enough shipper fanfiction, but just reading that is enough to make me barf.

Oh it can get ugly. I flinch when any author suddenly makes Jack the perfect SNAG of Sam’s dreams. (Sensitive New Age Guy). It is down right nauseating at times. But I can’t say the Shippers are the only ones that do it. Pick up slash some time where again it’s written by women for women. What some authors do to Daniel would make you scream.

I’m stating that it’s not just male writers that struggle writing women. There are a lot of female writers out there that can not write men either.

[scarimor]

Well I could argue you’d have to expect this type of female character downward spiral then.

Yes. Indeed.

If your arguing female= romance. You would have to also argue Sci Fi = Male.

Yes it is, but here's where it's more complicated. Romance is about characters' feelings above all else. Scifi is not. So the problem that (most) male writers have writing females doesn't surface in the scifi genre if they steer clear of writing romantic threads. Mostly. If they can keep off the fact that their character is female (and this is perfectly possible when they're concentrating on scifi-ey stuff) the issue doesn't arise.

The classic example is Ripley, from the movie Alien. Ripley was originally conceived as a male protagonist, and the screenplay was written. Then, afterwards, the producer (was it Fox? I forget names) suggested making the hero a female character instead. And they changed nothing in the script (except the odd personal pronoun in dialogue). The result is a seminal female heroic protagonist of the science fiction genre.

[Crow T. Robot]

Yes it is, but here's where it's more complicated. Romance is about characters' feelings above all else. Scifi is not. So the problem that (most) male writers have writing females doesn't surface in the scifi genre if they steer clear of writing romantic threads. Mostly. If they can keep off the fact that their character is female (and this is perfectly possible when they're concentrating on scifi-ey stuff) the issue doesn't arise.

No arguments there.

The thing is sometimes stuff is read in to things that are not really there. One argument for example is Jack must care for Sam in “That” way because T most times is his first choice for the dangerous missions. Excuse me….. T out weights Sam by a 100+ in pure muscle mass. Jaffa are stronger than humans SO in closed quarter fighting Jack’s fighting from essentially a woman’s disadvantage. Bringing T along instead of Sam is really a no brainer to me when faced with close quarter combat.

There are times where the difference in sexes NEEDS to be accounted for in good story telling.

Just taking a favorite slash and or shipper chestnut here. (NO offense to any writers that may have used it. I’m not singling anyone out!) Big bad rapist targets poor defenseless Daniel or Sam and Jack must come to the rescue. Now with Sam it doesn’t take much thought plot wise to make it work. A man if determined enough odds are can and will overcome a woman. Doesn’t matter how well a woman’s trained your trained to cut and run. Take the slash angle and the scenario takes a LOT more work and thought. What part of ‘easy victim of opportunity’ does Daniel shout at roughly 6 ft with enough muscle he can rival some American Football players? That’s not even taking in to account Daniel does know how to defend himself AND keeps cool head under pressure. Daniel’s realistically NOT going down easy. To make the big bad rapist scenario work a writer better think out and plot it out very carefully.

There are times where a writer does need to consider differences in the sexes when approaching a plot.

[scarimor]

... There are times where a writer does need to consider differences in the sexes when approaching a plot.

Agree with all post.

(except I'd bring Teal'c and Sam along to help me kick someone's ass )

edit! This bit's been brought to my attention:

Doesn’t matter how well a woman’s trained your trained to cut and run.

I don't agree with that part. And I know from personal experience of adversarial encounters (not sexual, but I don't think that's necessarily significant when we're talking about violence of any sort) that it's not always my instinct to cut and run.

[JessM]

Most romance fanfiction is, IMO, overly sappy or sugary or what-have-you. It may be a male-female writer thing, but honestly, I think it (sugariness) is better characterised as a genre effect. I mean, the women characters seem... unreal to me, too. For awhile I entertained the idea that I just don't get people, but nah, I don't believe I'm that out of touch. Note: I'm talking only about straight-up 'ship fic, not all fic that involves people kissing or shagging or whatnot.

I pretty much agree with you. I think I should have clarified what I meant though... when I said I wondered how the Sam-Daniel and Sam-Teal'c friendships are treated in fanfiction, I meant in the stories that are Sam/Jack romance. I myself have written a couple of romance fics for my pairing (*ducks*). I guess I thought that by "shippers" people were just talking about S/J ship. But it was ship in general? Sorry about the misunderstanding.

When it comes to the show writers (and teevee writers in general), I think there were two distinct factors at play. First, women generally aren't written very strongly (unless they are CLEARLY a lead; cf. Cold Case, L&O: SVU); rather, they are supports. It's like producers see WOMAN and all sorts of things snap. The writer gets hung up on 'female gender' and overcompensates. For example: "Women are not as assertive as men, women are not as assertive as men, women are not as assertive as men... soooo... my female character should vacillate a lot, right?" When the writers were writing 'Sam Carter, USAF officer and science guru', they did fine. It's when they had to write 'Sam Carter, woman looking for luv' that brains melted.

Good points. It's funny, I was rewatching Hathor not long ago and remembered what Sam said to Janet about being annoyed that she wasn't "one of the guys" with the rest of her team but that she felt like she was "the girl." Then I remembered what happened in Threads and it made me think these were two different women that I saw.

[JessM]

No kidding. One reason why IMHO introducing the Arthurian legends in to Star Gate was the BIGGEST mistake they could have done and why the ‘ship’ is so much more noticeable now than they ever wrote it with Sam and Jack. (And with Sam and Jack it got bad) The Arthurian legends are considered a “Romantic” legends with some very rare exceptions like Mary Stewart and Jack Whyte—both more historical fiction. When your basing your plot off of a Romantic epic—It’s going to trickle down!

Ugh. For some reason after reading that I'm reminded of that icky picture and preview from The Quest Part II that show

Spoiler:

Daniel lying unconscious on the ground and Vala is cradling him, looking devastated. I could have sworn I saw some paintings or illustrations of scenes from Morte d'Arthur showing some maidens (can't remember who they were for the life of me) cradling the mortally wounded King Arthur during the journey to Avalon (or something like that - I'm a little rusty on the Arthurian legend stuff).

[JessM]

Oh it can get ugly. I flinch when any author suddenly makes Jack the perfect SNAG of Sam’s dreams. (Sensitive New Age Guy). It is down right nauseating at times. But I can’t say the Shippers are the only ones that do it. Pick up slash some time where again it’s written by women for women. What some authors do to Daniel would make you scream.

I’m stating that it’s not just male writers that struggle writing women. There are a lot of female writers out there that can not write men either.

I don't doubt it for a second. When I visited the Samanda thread once, someone there asked me to read one of their fanfics. She noticed I liked Sam and Daniel so told me that the story had nice Sam and Daniel friendship in it. Well, there was nice hurt/comfort in it, and the friendship stuff was nice, but it was totally overshadowed by Sam weeping for Jack... "Oh Daniel I MISS him so much!" Why Daniel just didn't say "forget it" and stalk off, I don't know. I think instead he said "I know you love him, bla blah"...pretty weak for Daniel actually.

I have read a few slash fics actually, including one by a friend of mine, and in the nicest possible terms I can't get over how she writes Daniel. I really can't describe it much. But Daniel is like this helpless little guy who needs Jack and Jack is turned on by things like Daniel's mop of hair (at least in the early season stories, lol).

[DEM]

I pretty much agree with you. I think I should have clarified what I meant though... when I said I wondered how the Sam-Daniel and Sam-Teal'c friendships are treated in fanfiction, I meant in the stories that are Sam/Jack romance. I myself have written a couple of romance fics for my pairing (*ducks*). I guess I thought that by "shippers" people were just talking about S/J ship. But it was ship in general? Sorry about the misunderstanding.

No need to be sorry, JessM. I don't think there was a misunderstanding. I used your post as a jumping off point to introduce the idea that gender atypicality is, perhaps, just a symptom of a larger issue: That all characters in romance fic tend to be ... somewhat unreal. IMO. That is, it's not (only) that women write Jack as New Age Guy or that Teal'c & Daniel act 'unmale', etc. because they don't know how to write men (or vice versa).... (gotta dash)