seaboe_muffinchucker

After a gap (filled by my obsession first with NCIS and then with Numb3rs), I have returned to reading SG1 fan fiction. The gen stuff, mostly as recommended by Fig Newton (because very few reccers focus on gen, and besides, she's good).

I've been thinking again about why I still don't read fanfic from other shows (including NCIS and Numb3rs) except on the rare occasions when I find stories I like that cross over with SG1. I actually think I might have an answer. A lot of people write fanfic to follow up on relationships that either did not officially exist in the shows, or that were not given enough screen time (in the opinion of the fanfic writer).

That's not, however, why I read fanfic. I find a lot of fanfic that focuses on sexual and/or romantic relationships to be a frustrating waste of my time. Because (for the most obvious example), I watch SG1 for the adventures. The relationships, while important, are secondary. When a story focuses on the relationship instead of the adventure, I lose interest. This is why I prefer Gen SG1 stories even though I'm a S&J shipper (one who believes they can't have a happy ending until Jack retires, and that children will never be in the cards).

My ideal SG1 story would be an off-world adventure that took for granted that S&J were a couple. It wouldn't be about their relationship. It would be about the adventure. The fact that they were a couple would be completely unremarkable. Unfortunately, no one will ever write this story. The shippers would want to focus on the relationship, and the non-shippers would find the relationship anathema. And I don't write fanfic.

Sigh.

I've been reading a lot of fan fiction lately, and while I've mostly been avoiding the Sam/Jack stuff, a lot of them talk about Jack's marital status, sometimes in a rather sideways manner.

That set me thinking. In CotG, Jack tells Daniel that he and Sara are separated. In Lost City, Sam asks him "do you ever talk to her?" Between those two events, very little is said. In fact, so far as I can recall, the words "divorce" or "ex-wife" are never used in relation to Jack. The closest we come to those terms is when, during Solitudes, as he's telling Sam about the parachute accident. She says "your wife" and he says "at the time."

Now, it's fairly clear they are divorced. What's not clear at all is when they were divorced. In Cold Lazarus, Sara speaks of getting back together. To me, that indicates that while separated, they are not divorced.

My theory is this: I think Sara divorced Jack, sometime between CL and Solitudes. I think throughout the first season, Jack was still very much in love with her. His outrage at the idea that he would turn to another woman (in TBFTGOG ETA: oops, that was in Politics, wasn't it?) was real. To him, at that point, being attracted to another woman was the same as being unfaithful. Jack has way too much honor to be unfaithful.

I think Sara divorced him, in part, because she knew he would never divorce her. She was the mother of his child, and he still loved her. He failed the child and failed the wife. He would never cause her more hurt and harm by divorcing her. Just as I go with the CotG scenario, that she left him. I grant you, there's some confusion here. In CotG, Jack tells Daniel that Sara left him, but in CL, she says he left her. With canon in conflict, we accept the version we like the best.

I also think that, no matter what hopes she'd had, by the end of CL, Sara knows her marriage is over. The way she says "take care of yourself" indicates that she doesn't expect to see him again.

I do wish they'd brought Sara back, at least once. I liked the actress. I also think they did a piss-poor job of giving Jack a life. Sam, despite Jack's cracks, did have one. She had a father and a brother. She patronized a coffee shop. She gave special lectures at the Academy. Teal'c had a life--granted, not much of one on Earth, but he had one. He had Bra'tac and Dreyauc and Ry'ac (not to mention Ishta and the whole of the Jaffa Rebellion). Even Daniel had a life, eventually. We saw a lot of Jack's house, and his cabin, but nothing of his friends or family. Daniel was in the same boat, but the difference was that we knew what had happened to his family. As far as Jack was concerned, he might have been hatched from an egg. No parents, no cousins, no brothers or sisters were ever mentioned. Then they took away the wife we knew he had, leaving him with nothing outside the Mountain.

It's not a very nice way to treat a hero.