romantic love, philia, and the Stargate teams

[tielan]

I started with Irreversibly's post about romantic love in friendship, skipped over to minisinoo's reclaiming philia: or the mis-sexualising of relationships, and realised that she's nailed down precisely how I love to see my SGA team - all the relationships in Stargate, actually.

I think that, to some extent, we've co-opted the term 'family' as the philia standard in Stargate: Jack's 'family', John's 'family' - the people who are important to them and who they would die for. And who, for that matter, would die for them in return. The team aspect isn't always seen, since most writers seem to prefer to focus on just two or maybe three characters.

It's something I've been thinking about as I plan my sgabigbang - primarily because it's very much team-oriented with the John/Teyla threads woven in and out of it, and I was wondering if this was a bad thing or a good thing. I mean, from my POV, it's a good thing. But from the POV of broader fandom, probably a bad thing.

So it was good to be reminded of the importance of philia - not just between John and Rodney, but between John and Teyla, Teyla and Ronon, Ronon and Rodney, John and Ronon, Teyla and Rodney - and between each of the members of the team and the others in Atlantis.

One of the reasons why I loved the team_sga's Team Teyla thing so hard.

It's certainly reason why I made the Thing-A-Thon so it could be John-and-Teyla, and not just John/Teyla. Because the friendship angle between them is just as important as any hint or hope of romance - possibly even more so. I mean, I'd really really love to get some John/Teyla out of it. Well-written, plotty, detailed, in-character John/Teyla...

I'd love some John&Teyla philia, though.