senfic pet peeves

[boogieshoes]

this is just a general grump, but sometimes when reading senfic, i feel like i'm the only one who views the military favorably.  i don't think i've run across a fic yet that has the military discovering jim and blair, but also treating them with dignity and respect.  except for sg-1 crossovers.  makes me grumpy.  also makes me want to continue on my own AU thingy that... keeps trying to write itself while i'm at work.

-bs, sighing over too many ideas, at the wrong time, with not enough writing talent to do the job right

Comments

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Writing talent is something you acquire, not something you're miraculously born with... write, write anyway, and you'll develop it.

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

I guess that would be because of all the information we have about the military "planning for ALL contingencies," even the unthinkable. For every 500 people who are decent, honorable human beings, there is one who is a cold-blooded, cold-hearted psychopath. It is these who institute and oversee the stuff us civilians find out about and distress ourselves over.

And we are certain - given Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and My Lai and the other stories - that the honorable folks would ignore Jim, as is his right. And the psychopaths would be intrigued.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

yeah, but i kind of disagree. the thing is, all these bad-military stories are based on the idea that jim can do miraculous things other soldiers can't - except that with current technology, he's not really all that exceptional. rifle scopes these days can place bullets up to *2 miles* away from the sniper in question. satellite imagery - enough said. listening devices... etc, ad nauseum. the dishonorable folks not only have access to technology better than jim anyways, they also wouldn't have to deal with the human factor to work it.

which is why i think that at most the military establishment in the last 20 years or so might have run a few tests and then realized these guys weren't the new sparkly weapon they might have otherwise appeared to be. which is where my own AU kinda starts out. the military knows about sentinels and guides but tends to treat them like telepathy - there may be something there, but it's not worth the hassle to get at it. until there's a game-changing sequence of events.

it's the game-changers that's giving me trouble. you have to have a decent explanation for the sort of technology bunker-busters i'm looking at, and i haven't figured it out yet. and that explanation will set a bunch of the rules in the universe, and affect things down the line - it's too big not to.

-bs

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

"Game-changing sequence of events" - quite right. Most of the fic I saw wanted Jim for black-ops, where other means were subject to discovery. Now, granted: the AUs where Sentinels and Guides were seen as draftable resources would definitely fall under your complaint, and there it is valid. Falls, I think, under "Sentinels are easy, why go to machinery?" Which YS McCool has discussed at length.

What technology bunker-buster?

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure right now. i'm thinking a solar flare to knock out the satellites - it won't do squat for shorting out ground commo or ground-based tech, though. what i'd like to do is make specifically ground communications technology screwy. something where contact signaling is ok, but less certain, while things like radio and other wave-related technology is messed up because of some sort of interference. a period of excessive magnetic activity, perhaps. but i'm not sure what would do it. and then you still need something - some reason - for the military to start recalling their sentinels, start gearing up. i'm thinking an invasion by the chinese. right now, they're the only ones in any kind of state who could do it, *and* have the numbers to pressure us into recruiting anyone we can get our hands on.

so the idea is that my story would chronicle the opening sequences of a war where the technology is slowly dying due to various events, and then we luck into... yellowstone blowing. or the new madrid fault zone waking up. or an ice age. stuff we *might* be able to deal with, if they happened alone, but everything happening all at once spells disaster.

but like i said, i haven't done enough research to really put it all together yet, and there are some things i *have* to get down and settled first.

-bs

i was just thinking...

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

... i was mulling this over after i got home from work today - it's not *just* that the running theme in sendom sometimes seems to be 'the military is evil' - the government is factionalized, and i'm sure there's some factions that have no problem using military personnel and monies for nefarious purposes.

i think part of the problem is that almost to a man, military personnel in these stories are complete bastards. that's what really drives me up the wall. there's no lack of honest, decent people in the military, even spec ops specialists tend more towards the good guys than the bad guys. so why to 'fic authors insist on representing the military with the worst possible people? not to mention the dumbest... most of those characters wouldn't get past basic. the military requires more brains than brawn most days.

-bs

Re: i was just thinking...

[karieflybabe.livejournal.com]

I think this is true of all fandoms, even NCIS, to a certain degree, tends to fall in the direction of "Us<>Military" with having a group of non-military personnel solving crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of Navy/Marines... but what puts a different spin on it in that Gibbs is Ex-Military and Ziva is Mosad, it's an eclectic group who have to know the rules and regulations of any Military establishment.

But still, when they come to talk to the Military Officers, they almost always get a sort of 'cold-shoulder'isk attitude towards their job... And that's all the writers fault.

How this ties into fandom and fanfiction is, you write what you know, or think you know. If all that fandom writers have seen is military being asses, then that's what they will write.

Re: i was just thinking...

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

How this ties into fandom and fanfiction is, you write what you know, or think you know. If all that fandom writers have seen is military being asses, then that's what they will write.

that's true, karie, but i also think - at least in sendom - that a big part of this is canon being overstressed. or maybe a better phrase would be 'poor choice of cannon'. in *canon*, all the military you see are either stupid, or dangerously unstable, which sort of makes sense, because who else is a cop going to be interacting with?

but what you don't see is the 3 million *other* military folks cringing with disgust over the dispicable actions of a few kooks. and also, this makes sense, because in the real world (tm) mil-folk have a tendency to be very closed-mouthed over a lot of things. reason being; an awful lot of military culture and reactions are simply unexplainable unless you've been there and lived that. and that's just the living on base part - never mind the actual being in uniform and going to see the elephant part!

couple this with Naomi the ever-hippie, and i think fandom makes far too big a deal out of the culture clash between Blair and Jim. what it starts boiling down to is, in AUs where Jim is re-activated, the authors think they need an enemy, and the USArmy is the obvious one. which means Jim must not be part of the Army any more, so he can be a sympathetic character (or, he's really been a petit batard all along, which is signaled by him still being Army at heart).

and then there's the evil overlord list. the reason it was made in the first place was that *pro* media publications - sf/f, movies, etc ad nauseum - have a tendency to have long-winded, completely idiotic villians, that any 5yo child could overthrow easily. and fanfic authors are not slouches when it comes to their villians failing the evil overlord test. :-p
indeed, they share very good company with pro-fic authors on that score!

individually, yeah whatever. it's just that when you put them all together, it's like smacking the mule on the rump and wondering why it kicked you in the a**.

::coughs::

ok, i'm off my soap-box now. really.

-bs

Re: i was just thinking...

[karieflybabe.livejournal.com]

This is probably why I write what I do. Some people don't like the 'Blair as cop' stories, but you have to think, it could happen. Some people don't like the 'mystical guide/shaman' stuff, but you have to think, it could happen. Some people don't like military being assholes, but you gotta think, it could happen...

Ok, that last one is much less likely, but I was on a roll.

*Loves sitting on the edge of the soapbox once in a while*

Re: i was just thinking...

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

::giggles:: sometimes, tho, being on a roll is fun...

-bs