Old Soldiers Die Hard is this week's topic of discussion at sga_talk. So, if there's something that's always bugged you about the story or something that just *has* to be said, now is the time! As authors have been doing in past discussions, I think I'll probably stay out of it for the most part and come in at the end to answer questions. I've always really liked seeing my work discussed, whether or not it's positive -- actually, a flawed work makes the most interesting meta!

Which leads right into the next part of this post. Something else that I've been pondering about "Midway" after posting my squee-post ... I've seen various discussions around the fannish 'net about the unpleasant race issues in the episode. It's not that I'm unaware of it, it's not even that I don't care ... it's just that, when it comes to this particular episode, my thoughts kind of align with what delux_vivens said on deadbrowalking (and the comments too). I *can* see the problems with it, it *does* skeeve me if I think too much about it, but the episode (and that fight scene too) just pushed my fan buttons so damned hard anyway, in all kinds of ways ...! I don't really want to sit around defending that fight scene (the whole concept of which is, yeah, kinda worrisome), but I honestly don't see it as being OOC for the characters, or out of keeping with the rough, bloody, essentially rule-free universe of SGA. There's a point in the fight where I think Teal'c is taking it a little more personally than I'd reasonably expect from him, but they're still absolutely in control. (Look how close the spectators are, and Sam's lack of fear.)

And yet it *is* a pretty big thing to have been left out of my Midway commentary in favor of the "all squee, all the time" approach, and I did think about bringing it up even back when I wrote the commentary, before discovering that the things that made me go "hmm" about the episode weren't just me, but, well -- I'm still "all squee, all the time" for the episode in spite of it. I sometimes wonder if I'd be doing myself and the rest of my corner of fandom a favor if I was a little less "all squee, all the time" for the show, though... (But, but ... fan buttons! Pushed! So hard!) I think it's possible, too, that this scene might read a little rougher-edged and less acceptable to someone who didn't grow up the way I did, in a blue-collar environment where a bare-knuckle fight seems like a perfectly reasonable way for two guys to resolve their differences. Again, I'm really not trying to defend the writers' decision to write it the way they did, and god knows they could've done better; it's just that one of the things that really draws me to the SGA universe is that the characters *don't* tend to take the civilized route to solving their problems. It's a frontier. I really like that rough, brutal, frontier feeling to it, and tend to feel a little disappointed in episodes that shy away from showing the darker, dirtier side of that -- which was, in fact, one reason why I liked this one so much, and disliked aspects of Travelers on the same grounds.

On an entirely different topic, I have an RSS question. Does anyone know if it's possible to use LJ to subscribe to the RSS feed for a blog if it doesn't specifically have an LJ feed set up for it? There are several non-LJ blogs that I read (on wordpress and elsewhere) that I would like to add to my LJ feeds if possible. If it's NOT possible (as far as you know) can anyone tell me how to set up an LJ feed for a non-LJ blog, so that I might suggest it? (I feel like a total dork suggesting "Hey, you could set up an LJ feed!" when I wouldn't be able to answer the first question about how to do it.)