As an SGA fan, I have to say that your view of the McKay-Sheppard dynamic surprised me. Nevermind that I don't really agree with the Dean-Sam view, either (Sam always seemed to me more than happy to want to leave Dean to fend for himself while Sam angsted about wanting to live his nice righteously simple life in denial of the whole hunting side, in early SPN seasons); in SGA canon, John didn't start treating Rodney anything close to a real friend till season 4/very, very late season 3 (after the big ugly event of... yeah, another tragedy which you forgot to mock). At the same time, everyone (in fandom, usually; or maybe just me, myself and I *shrug*) wanted to see John and Rodney act like friends, *be* friends, but all we saw in canon was snarking and snapping or belittling and no sense of tolerance towards the personal quirks of one, and too much leeway for the less-than-stellar decision making of the other. Rodney's best friend in canon looked to me to be Carson Beckett - the words have been said, even, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me. The actual John-Rodney bond became apparent only after the SGA original group survived great losses of friends/comrades and John, more than anything, seemed to latch onto Rodney being one of the last survivers as reason enough to *finally* act as if he were close to him.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that, while looking for examples of "togetherness" that work without the added tragedy, I personally think you picked awfully wrong examples in the above-mentioned two pairs of characters. Sam and Dean were brought back together by their father's going missing/dying, and one and the other of them dying, while Rodney and John had to lose a whole lot of folks around them before canon finally showed us that their friendship was more than just fanon.
On the subject of tragedy being an overdone cliche and that every relationship can be sold only as long as it has tension in it - well, like the saying goes, there's only one story in the world, and it's being re-told again and again. Anthony and Cleopatra, Gilgamesh and... (whathisname, the furry bloke *g*), God and the Devil, or Adam and Eve. After all is said and written, it's the enticipation of the unknown that keeps an interest in a story, be it a new turn of plot or phrase, or a new style of writing/filming/composing, or a new format of media. We already have 'Dexter's Laboratory' for the story of a up-and-coming-yet-going-nowhere wannabe!supervillain; giving that story some songs, a laughable superhero and a love interest angle that ends with the somewhat naive villain!hero learning the hard way the price of life and love, well. Everyone loved Buz's "Romeo & Juliette" even though everyone and their cat knew the chick buys it in the end. I don't see this as a case of using tragedy to yet another out-cliched extent.
The ending was just that, a fast ending for a short series that managed to give us character development with radical changes, a plot twist that could pass as novel, and something we can watch and say, yeah, OK, the whole thing was less than a quarter of an hour long but at least it had an ending. And, having read "the master plan", I doubt that the makers could have even attempted more with the budget at hand. If the ending was not exactly funny, well, the story of the underdog seen through said underdog's eyes usually isn't, super statuses added or not.
(Please forgive the length and ramblinesss of this; words got away from me.)
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(one more disagree-er; geez, is that even a word?) [and now, with addes *sense-making*]
Date: 2008-07-23 11:18 pm (UTC)Basically, what I'm trying to say is that, while looking for examples of "togetherness" that work without the added tragedy, I personally think you picked awfully wrong examples in the above-mentioned two pairs of characters. Sam and Dean were brought back together by their father's going missing/dying, and one and the other of them dying, while Rodney and John had to lose a whole lot of folks around them before canon finally showed us that their friendship was more than just fanon.
On the subject of tragedy being an overdone cliche and that every relationship can be sold only as long as it has tension in it - well, like the saying goes, there's only one story in the world, and it's being re-told again and again. Anthony and Cleopatra, Gilgamesh and... (whathisname, the furry bloke *g*), God and the Devil, or Adam and Eve. After all is said and written, it's the enticipation of the unknown that keeps an interest in a story, be it a new turn of plot or phrase, or a new style of writing/filming/composing, or a new format of media. We already have 'Dexter's Laboratory' for the story of a up-and-coming-yet-going-nowhere wannabe!supervillain; giving that story some songs, a laughable superhero and a love interest angle that ends with the somewhat naive villain!hero learning the hard way the price of life and love, well. Everyone loved Buz's "Romeo & Juliette" even though everyone and their cat knew the chick buys it in the end. I don't see this as a case of using tragedy to yet another out-cliched extent.
The ending was just that, a fast ending for a short series that managed to give us character development with radical changes, a plot twist that could pass as novel, and something we can watch and say, yeah, OK, the whole thing was less than a quarter of an hour long but at least it had an ending. And, having read "the master plan", I doubt that the makers could have even attempted more with the budget at hand. If the ending was not exactly funny, well, the story of the underdog seen through said underdog's eyes usually isn't, super statuses added or not.
(Please forgive the length and ramblinesss of this; words got away from me.)