Jack/Daniel forever!
Jul. 19th, 2008 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineAs promised: Civilian and Military, or Why I Ship Jack and Daniel (plus why I don't want to watch SG1 seasons 8-10, why the Space Monkey scene is the shippiest thing in the history of anything, and why exactly Menace is so deeply awful) Now with extra random tangential babbles!
Baffling question: Given that I love Ronon more than life itself and find his awesomeness to be beyond the descriptive power of words, why don't I ship John/Ronon?
I mean, there are a billion reasons. They seem practically custom made for it- taciturn comrades in arms who display a ridiculous level of understanding of each other and loyalty to each other and have practically no deep personal connections apart from that. They spar together! They get touchy! Ronon supports John through his family trauma! John is the only thing holding Ronon to Atlantis! They've been mistaken for gay at least once in canon! They've vowed to die shooting shoulder to shoulder in canon! I mean, honestly.
And the fact is that I don't ship John/Ronon for pretty much exactly the same reason I don't ship Jack/Teal'c. Both pairings have much the same dynamic to recommend them, though the particular characters are in some ways very different. And it's because both those pairings are missing this one essential dynamic that's present in both Jack/Daniel and John/Rodney, which is apparently THE slashy thing I'm kinking on so hard in the stargate verse.
So, why I ship Jack and Daniel, seasons 1-4 (one reason of many, many reasons, just the one I'm thinking about right now):
Because you see, the Stargate verse is ALL ABOUT -- could you please mentally insert "for me" and "in my opinion" at all the appropriate places here? Cause I don't feel like making those macros. So, like I was saying, the Stargate verse is ALL ABOUT -- well, when it's good. When it's bad it's about shoddy world building, colonialism, and genocide. But what can you do? Oh, right, sorry.
So when the Stargate verse is good, it's ALL ABOUT the tension between military and civilian, the tension between the protectors and the protected. Because Jack is a soldier. At base, at bottom, the single most essential thing to know about him, is that he is a soldier. And I say soldier as opposed to warrior, because I don't mean fighter, I mean protector. Jack has, down at the base of his personality, a desire to protect his people, and that instinct has been refined by his military career so that he has an intricate mental hierarchy of who gets prioritized at what cost, which he no more needs to think about than I need to think about breathing. People who are his responsibility over others. Americans over non-Americans. Tauri over non-Earth humans. Humans over aliens. And, above all, overriding everything, civilian over military.
And Daniel is under Jack's command, and he is the only civilian under Jack's command, which is this incredibly intense double-whammy of protectiveness. So I am not saying that "They must be slashy, because Jack feels so protective of Daniel!" because I think that protectiveness flows directly from the way I see Jack's personality, and would exist regardless of sexual or romantic connection. Rather, the fact of that protective dynamic makes slashing them- adding the sexual or romantic connection to that already intense dynamic- so damned interesting. And it all comes back to that thing where slash allows us to play with highly gendered dynamics while actually removing the confounding factor of gender. (This is, uh, something you either understand or don't. Because I can't explain it any better than "Slash takes gender out of intensely gendered dynamics" and if someone can explain it better, then by all means link me).
Which is not to say that Jack feels no need to protect soldiers, under his command or otherwise. But I see this huge disconnect between "protect" and "watch their backs." Jack and Sam and Teal'c watch each other's backs. They have his six. He'll never leave them behind. They go into hugely dangerous situations together, and he commands them tactically in ways that put them in danger to achieve mission objectives, and he does his damndest to make sure they all come home, and that bond is intense. But it's also completely different from his protective impulse toward civilians, which is to keep them out of that danger in the first place.
The writers do an absolutely heroic job of keeping Sam from being the damsel in need of protection (shocking, that they avoid keeping a highly trained and competent soldier from being a damsel in distress. But I have low expectations of TV writers) That, of course, is my problem with Sam/Jack (not that I don't like it, just that I can't quite love it the same way): What I love about Jack is that protective instinct, and what I love about Sam is that she isn't cast as needing that protection. How do I make THAT ship work for me?
So in the first season Jack is leading Daniel into combat which goes against all his instincts for how to treat him as a civilian. And he has to teach Daniel this skill set, weapons training and hand-to-hand and crap, because that's necessary for him to be safe, but it goes against all Jack's instincts to protect Daniel emotionally as well as physically, to protect him from having to become a soldier. See the problem there? And Daniel, in turn, gradually begins to in some ways conceptualize himself as a soldier, until we get tension between the two of them on that front- because Jack still very much classes him as civilian.
All this is crap I want SO BADLY to play with in fic.
And this is why the space monkey scene is the slashiest thing in the history of anything. Because this is the most dangerous situation that Jack has ever gotten Daniel into, and Daniel is still so very not equipped for it -- remember Jack and Sam moving calmly and professionally from cover to cover down the mothership hallway while Daniel kind of flails along behind them? And Jack shoots Skaara to save Daniel (yes, the particular innocent civilian he has wanted to save- for God's sake, the kid who reminds him of his dead son- he SHOOTS the kid who reminds him of CHARLIE in order to save Daniel. We slashers couldn't make this shit up)
And then do you remember what Daniel says to him? He says "I'll stay and watch your back." He very specifically invokes the language that classes himself as military, as expendable for the completion of the mission in a way that he could never be as a civilian. And he is Daniel, so don't think for one damn minute that he doesn't know what he's saying, that he doesn't understand the very deliberate way he is insisting on that categorization for himself. And Jack has to accept that. He has to accept that reclassification, trust Daniel to watch his back, leave him behind at his post in a way that he could never, ever do to the civilian Dr. Jackson (not before caressing his cheek, I should note). And it breaks him up. It completely fucking destroys him. It's a failure of the highest magnitude, because of all of them, Daniel is the least acceptable person to be left behind on that ship, and because he has completely and utterly failed at protecting Daniel from having to become a soldier.
And then he hugs Daniel in that gate room, and do you know what he's thinking? He's thinking This is my second chance. I'll never let that happen again. I'll never lose him, never fail to protect him again. Oh Jack. How little you know.
Okay, look, it's my romantic flight of fancy, all right? I know a lot of that isn't there in the text. But this is my babble.
And that is why I don't really want to watch the last seasons. I'm just so much less interested in Daniel once he stops being the civilian of the mission, once he transitions finally and for all into a soldier. It's good, consistent, believable, well-written character development... it's just that he develops into a character I find so much less interesting. I have yet to see any evidence of that civilian/military dynamic between Cameron and Daniel. Daniel doesn't need Cam's protection, by that time. And when Jack and Daniel had personality conflicts, it was about a struggle of two separate world views, two divergent opinions, about a diplomatic or military solution- there was never any doubt that Jack was the military leader, the tactical commander- their struggles were about Daniel trying to assert the validity of a non-military viewpoint. Whereas the only moments of conflict I've seen between Cam and Daniel seemed like two military men vying for personal rather than ideological supremacy, which is a drastically less interesting conflict. Maybe that's not true. God knows I've only seen two episodes with Cam. Anyway.
Tangent number one: I really need to compare/contrast "Heroes" and "Sunday." The position of doctors on this civilian/military divide and protection issue is fascinating. Both shows got so much emotional payoff out of killing the doctor and killed Carson and Janet in such interestingly different ways... huh.
Tangent number two: The "you stupid son of a bitch" moment at the end of Menace is truly, deeply horrible, isn't it? It strips that worldview conflict between them down to its very barest bones. Because from Daniel's perspective, Jack just shot an unarmed, helpless, terrified little girl. But the real reason it's horrible? Is because we know that Jack doesn't need anyone to tell him that. Because Jack accepts and faces up to the things he does, bears the responsibility for every horrible choice he makes, personally shoulders that moral weight. Because that's part of his duty. He makes the horrible choices, does the terrible things, carries the moral weight- he protects those under his command from having to carry that, the military as a whole protects civilians from having to carry that- that shouldering of responsibility is important to Jack.
And Daniel completely fucking fails to understand that. Does he honestly think that Jack was just being trigger-happy? That it was an easy decision to make? That Jack doesn't feel the weight of it? Does he fail to understand Jack that completely? In that moment, yes. And Jack has to look at Daniel- at a Daniel who even five years later is such a civilian, still so naive and protected in some ways- and know that is what he really thinks of me. That split-second of revulsion in Daniel's eyes is Jack's reward for a lifetime of service.
How fucking HORRIBLE.
You know what it reminds me of? Supernatural, that moment in Malleus Maleficarum. You know the one. Dean has spent a season and a half wrestling with his personal moral compass, shouldering the responsibility of a lifetime of violence and hatred and- God, it's some beautiful, intense character development- And then Sam tells him, "I need to become a ruthless, unfeeling killer, just like you."
And Dean, who became the person he is, made so many of those horrible choices, lived a life of so much violence and death in order to protect Sam has to look Sam in the face and realize that's what he really thinks of me.
Jesus. How fucking HORRIBLE. And I love both of those moments so much (and I didn't realize till now just how many of the same protectiveness kinks Sam and Dean hit for me. Apparently this is a Thing of mine. Learn something new about yourself every new pairing, I guess)
Random tangent number three (this is the last one, I swear): The third ramification of the fact that Jack is so very military is that I can't ever quite believe any fic where Jack can casually brush off the frat regs. Because those aren't arbitrary rules at all- they are important guidelines to allow him to protect his team. Violating them, in a very real way, makes him less able to command effectively in the field, and makes him less able to protect his people, and that is just not something Jack could ever possibly take lightly.
That is why I'm fairly convinced that if Jack ever does sleep with Daniel while they're still on SG1 together, it's only by rigid compartmentalization- when my Jack says "I have to be on my game offworld" he doesn't just mean the literal physical distraction of sex with Daniel, he means his ability to compartmentalize that. Without that divide, Jack couldn't be sure that he was taking care of his people to the best of his ability, and I honestly don't think he would allow himself to keep Daniel on his team in that case- which is horrible, because I also don't see how he could bear to put Daniel under someone else's command, to send him out there without Jack, either. It's a hell of a no-win for Jack, if he doesn't maintain that barrier.
On the other hand, I don't think Daniel has to compartmentalize at all. Because what he does at the SGC and who he loves have been all wrapped up from the minute he came back from Abydos, because Sha're was all tied up in his work for so long and that emotional investment his SGC work transferred straight to Jack (because Daniel is a hell of a serial monogamist, really). And while he might intellectually grasp Jack's need to enforce that division and decide to respect it, I don't think he can ever really get it on an emotional level. That's a conflict that I just barely started toying with last fic, and I really want to mess with it more but I don't have a story to hang it off yet, so back burner it goes.
Oh my God I talk too much. Coming next: This civilian/military dynamic in Atlantis, how John/Rodney is exactly the same and completely and totally different all at once, and how the Miller's Crossing scene is also the shippiest thing ever. Then I am DONE and will SHUT UP, I swear.
Baffling question: Given that I love Ronon more than life itself and find his awesomeness to be beyond the descriptive power of words, why don't I ship John/Ronon?
I mean, there are a billion reasons. They seem practically custom made for it- taciturn comrades in arms who display a ridiculous level of understanding of each other and loyalty to each other and have practically no deep personal connections apart from that. They spar together! They get touchy! Ronon supports John through his family trauma! John is the only thing holding Ronon to Atlantis! They've been mistaken for gay at least once in canon! They've vowed to die shooting shoulder to shoulder in canon! I mean, honestly.
And the fact is that I don't ship John/Ronon for pretty much exactly the same reason I don't ship Jack/Teal'c. Both pairings have much the same dynamic to recommend them, though the particular characters are in some ways very different. And it's because both those pairings are missing this one essential dynamic that's present in both Jack/Daniel and John/Rodney, which is apparently THE slashy thing I'm kinking on so hard in the stargate verse.
So, why I ship Jack and Daniel, seasons 1-4 (one reason of many, many reasons, just the one I'm thinking about right now):
Because you see, the Stargate verse is ALL ABOUT -- could you please mentally insert "for me" and "in my opinion" at all the appropriate places here? Cause I don't feel like making those macros. So, like I was saying, the Stargate verse is ALL ABOUT -- well, when it's good. When it's bad it's about shoddy world building, colonialism, and genocide. But what can you do? Oh, right, sorry.
So when the Stargate verse is good, it's ALL ABOUT the tension between military and civilian, the tension between the protectors and the protected. Because Jack is a soldier. At base, at bottom, the single most essential thing to know about him, is that he is a soldier. And I say soldier as opposed to warrior, because I don't mean fighter, I mean protector. Jack has, down at the base of his personality, a desire to protect his people, and that instinct has been refined by his military career so that he has an intricate mental hierarchy of who gets prioritized at what cost, which he no more needs to think about than I need to think about breathing. People who are his responsibility over others. Americans over non-Americans. Tauri over non-Earth humans. Humans over aliens. And, above all, overriding everything, civilian over military.
And Daniel is under Jack's command, and he is the only civilian under Jack's command, which is this incredibly intense double-whammy of protectiveness. So I am not saying that "They must be slashy, because Jack feels so protective of Daniel!" because I think that protectiveness flows directly from the way I see Jack's personality, and would exist regardless of sexual or romantic connection. Rather, the fact of that protective dynamic makes slashing them- adding the sexual or romantic connection to that already intense dynamic- so damned interesting. And it all comes back to that thing where slash allows us to play with highly gendered dynamics while actually removing the confounding factor of gender. (This is, uh, something you either understand or don't. Because I can't explain it any better than "Slash takes gender out of intensely gendered dynamics" and if someone can explain it better, then by all means link me).
Which is not to say that Jack feels no need to protect soldiers, under his command or otherwise. But I see this huge disconnect between "protect" and "watch their backs." Jack and Sam and Teal'c watch each other's backs. They have his six. He'll never leave them behind. They go into hugely dangerous situations together, and he commands them tactically in ways that put them in danger to achieve mission objectives, and he does his damndest to make sure they all come home, and that bond is intense. But it's also completely different from his protective impulse toward civilians, which is to keep them out of that danger in the first place.
The writers do an absolutely heroic job of keeping Sam from being the damsel in need of protection (shocking, that they avoid keeping a highly trained and competent soldier from being a damsel in distress. But I have low expectations of TV writers) That, of course, is my problem with Sam/Jack (not that I don't like it, just that I can't quite love it the same way): What I love about Jack is that protective instinct, and what I love about Sam is that she isn't cast as needing that protection. How do I make THAT ship work for me?
So in the first season Jack is leading Daniel into combat which goes against all his instincts for how to treat him as a civilian. And he has to teach Daniel this skill set, weapons training and hand-to-hand and crap, because that's necessary for him to be safe, but it goes against all Jack's instincts to protect Daniel emotionally as well as physically, to protect him from having to become a soldier. See the problem there? And Daniel, in turn, gradually begins to in some ways conceptualize himself as a soldier, until we get tension between the two of them on that front- because Jack still very much classes him as civilian.
All this is crap I want SO BADLY to play with in fic.
And this is why the space monkey scene is the slashiest thing in the history of anything. Because this is the most dangerous situation that Jack has ever gotten Daniel into, and Daniel is still so very not equipped for it -- remember Jack and Sam moving calmly and professionally from cover to cover down the mothership hallway while Daniel kind of flails along behind them? And Jack shoots Skaara to save Daniel (yes, the particular innocent civilian he has wanted to save- for God's sake, the kid who reminds him of his dead son- he SHOOTS the kid who reminds him of CHARLIE in order to save Daniel. We slashers couldn't make this shit up)
And then do you remember what Daniel says to him? He says "I'll stay and watch your back." He very specifically invokes the language that classes himself as military, as expendable for the completion of the mission in a way that he could never be as a civilian. And he is Daniel, so don't think for one damn minute that he doesn't know what he's saying, that he doesn't understand the very deliberate way he is insisting on that categorization for himself. And Jack has to accept that. He has to accept that reclassification, trust Daniel to watch his back, leave him behind at his post in a way that he could never, ever do to the civilian Dr. Jackson (not before caressing his cheek, I should note). And it breaks him up. It completely fucking destroys him. It's a failure of the highest magnitude, because of all of them, Daniel is the least acceptable person to be left behind on that ship, and because he has completely and utterly failed at protecting Daniel from having to become a soldier.
And then he hugs Daniel in that gate room, and do you know what he's thinking? He's thinking This is my second chance. I'll never let that happen again. I'll never lose him, never fail to protect him again. Oh Jack. How little you know.
Okay, look, it's my romantic flight of fancy, all right? I know a lot of that isn't there in the text. But this is my babble.
And that is why I don't really want to watch the last seasons. I'm just so much less interested in Daniel once he stops being the civilian of the mission, once he transitions finally and for all into a soldier. It's good, consistent, believable, well-written character development... it's just that he develops into a character I find so much less interesting. I have yet to see any evidence of that civilian/military dynamic between Cameron and Daniel. Daniel doesn't need Cam's protection, by that time. And when Jack and Daniel had personality conflicts, it was about a struggle of two separate world views, two divergent opinions, about a diplomatic or military solution- there was never any doubt that Jack was the military leader, the tactical commander- their struggles were about Daniel trying to assert the validity of a non-military viewpoint. Whereas the only moments of conflict I've seen between Cam and Daniel seemed like two military men vying for personal rather than ideological supremacy, which is a drastically less interesting conflict. Maybe that's not true. God knows I've only seen two episodes with Cam. Anyway.
Tangent number one: I really need to compare/contrast "Heroes" and "Sunday." The position of doctors on this civilian/military divide and protection issue is fascinating. Both shows got so much emotional payoff out of killing the doctor and killed Carson and Janet in such interestingly different ways... huh.
Tangent number two: The "you stupid son of a bitch" moment at the end of Menace is truly, deeply horrible, isn't it? It strips that worldview conflict between them down to its very barest bones. Because from Daniel's perspective, Jack just shot an unarmed, helpless, terrified little girl. But the real reason it's horrible? Is because we know that Jack doesn't need anyone to tell him that. Because Jack accepts and faces up to the things he does, bears the responsibility for every horrible choice he makes, personally shoulders that moral weight. Because that's part of his duty. He makes the horrible choices, does the terrible things, carries the moral weight- he protects those under his command from having to carry that, the military as a whole protects civilians from having to carry that- that shouldering of responsibility is important to Jack.
And Daniel completely fucking fails to understand that. Does he honestly think that Jack was just being trigger-happy? That it was an easy decision to make? That Jack doesn't feel the weight of it? Does he fail to understand Jack that completely? In that moment, yes. And Jack has to look at Daniel- at a Daniel who even five years later is such a civilian, still so naive and protected in some ways- and know that is what he really thinks of me. That split-second of revulsion in Daniel's eyes is Jack's reward for a lifetime of service.
How fucking HORRIBLE.
You know what it reminds me of? Supernatural, that moment in Malleus Maleficarum. You know the one. Dean has spent a season and a half wrestling with his personal moral compass, shouldering the responsibility of a lifetime of violence and hatred and- God, it's some beautiful, intense character development- And then Sam tells him, "I need to become a ruthless, unfeeling killer, just like you."
And Dean, who became the person he is, made so many of those horrible choices, lived a life of so much violence and death in order to protect Sam has to look Sam in the face and realize that's what he really thinks of me.
Jesus. How fucking HORRIBLE. And I love both of those moments so much (and I didn't realize till now just how many of the same protectiveness kinks Sam and Dean hit for me. Apparently this is a Thing of mine. Learn something new about yourself every new pairing, I guess)
Random tangent number three (this is the last one, I swear): The third ramification of the fact that Jack is so very military is that I can't ever quite believe any fic where Jack can casually brush off the frat regs. Because those aren't arbitrary rules at all- they are important guidelines to allow him to protect his team. Violating them, in a very real way, makes him less able to command effectively in the field, and makes him less able to protect his people, and that is just not something Jack could ever possibly take lightly.
That is why I'm fairly convinced that if Jack ever does sleep with Daniel while they're still on SG1 together, it's only by rigid compartmentalization- when my Jack says "I have to be on my game offworld" he doesn't just mean the literal physical distraction of sex with Daniel, he means his ability to compartmentalize that. Without that divide, Jack couldn't be sure that he was taking care of his people to the best of his ability, and I honestly don't think he would allow himself to keep Daniel on his team in that case- which is horrible, because I also don't see how he could bear to put Daniel under someone else's command, to send him out there without Jack, either. It's a hell of a no-win for Jack, if he doesn't maintain that barrier.
On the other hand, I don't think Daniel has to compartmentalize at all. Because what he does at the SGC and who he loves have been all wrapped up from the minute he came back from Abydos, because Sha're was all tied up in his work for so long and that emotional investment his SGC work transferred straight to Jack (because Daniel is a hell of a serial monogamist, really). And while he might intellectually grasp Jack's need to enforce that division and decide to respect it, I don't think he can ever really get it on an emotional level. That's a conflict that I just barely started toying with last fic, and I really want to mess with it more but I don't have a story to hang it off yet, so back burner it goes.
Oh my God I talk too much. Coming next: This civilian/military dynamic in Atlantis, how John/Rodney is exactly the same and completely and totally different all at once, and how the Miller's Crossing scene is also the shippiest thing ever. Then I am DONE and will SHUT UP, I swear.