Otter's Rock

Which makes it both hypocritical of them and extremely frustrating on an out-of-universe level that they fully just Do Not Do That once they can.

They get a ZPM and sit on it. The one group they’d already taken in (the Athosians) gets mostly forgotten about (despite the fact that they defended the city during the siege!) and then unceremoniously booted off the planet entirely. They “borrowed” the Tarranins’ spaceship and got it blown up and then didn’t even offer those people apartments. In their manhattan-sized uninhabited city. Go stay in a village on a random uninhabited planet despite the fact that we’ve already established that in Pegasus (unlike the Milky Way) uninhabited planets are usually uninhabited for a reason so there’s not a lot of empty places to move people to.

Like, it is arguably in-character for them to be hypocritical dicks about sharing the city. But there is so much story potential wasted by going that way. Season 1 had a good thing going with the tensions between the Athosians and the expedition. It would have been so cool to see the complications that would arise from the city being actually inhabited.

Atlantis really is the only thing that has an advantage against the Genii and Wraith, so it would make sense that people from earth are very protective of it.

I think the only population group that would have a claim to it are the Ancients, since they built it.

Firstly, though I did talk about the characters, this was primarily a doylist argument about storytelling potential. Your response is a watsonian one based in-universe parameters that the writers could have simply chosen to change.

Stargate Atlantis is fictional, in my opinion it does make sense to follow the rules and reasoning from said fictional world. Rules from the "real" world don't have to apply. I mean, it's the whole point of fiction, is it not?

I don't think that the people from the Pegasus galaxy cannot be trusted in general. They are humans, whether they are from Earth or Pegasus galaxy, there are humans who can be trusted and some who cannot. There were several people from the US military that I did not see as trustworthy, watching it back then.

But apart from the Genii (and I think another group of people, I cannot remember at the moment) none of them developed past a certain technological level, due to the Wraith, so they would be unable to use the technology of Atlantis effectively (at least without being taught how to use it, assuming that at least some have developed somewhat of an understanding of physics and mathematics). But to be fair the same can be said about the Atlantis crew from Earth, especially in the first two seasons, I remember them not knowing what certain technology is used for. The only ones who would be fully capable are the Ancients (and perhaps the Wraith as well), they build it, know how everything works and have the technological understanding.

My main points are going to be:

When a show uses the real US military as a source of both backstory and current employment for its protagonists, that inherently invites real-world reasoning and real-world criticisms of that institution.

While the show rarely (but not never) addresses the colonialism and imperialism, the two are inextricably woven into the fabric of the premise. The audience can see the characters behaving in an imperialist way—and the plot choosing to justify that behavior—without it having been pointed-out in-universe.

While it is of course good writing for a fictional universe to be internally consistent and for it to follow its own rules, those rules do not exist in a vacuum. The writers decided them, and sometimes those decisions were bad.

Before I get into that though, I promised a watsonian breakdown.

[if you are my mutual who doesn't care about Stargate but is reading this to support me, you can skip from here to the next paragraph of bright blue text since between here and there I'm getting into the weeds of canon. After the next blue bit I'm gonna talk about real world stuff like pseudoarchaeology and imperialism etc that'l be more interesting to non-fans]

I have to admit I never heard the terms "doyalist" and "watsonian" before, I looked into it a little bit since you mentioned it and if I understand it correctly it means following the logic of the fictional universe or the logic of our real world? (Sorry if I misunderstand it, it seems to be a quite complex subject.) But I have to say, I'm just someone who loves Stargate Atlantis a lot, so perhaps we have a totally different approach and viewpoint of this topic. (Which can be really interesting too!) I usually only follow a series with the logic of their universe. But it is an interesting approach!

You actually bring up a really good point, I agree, you don't have to understand a technology fully to operate it, at least in a few cases. From what we have seen in Stargate Atlantis I'm assuming that some of the technology of the Ancients requires the user to have a very in depth knowledge of its technology as well as physics, mathematics and other sciences, but there are certainly also things that could be used with less knowledge. And some people from the Pegasus galaxy would certainly be capable to learn to use the Ancient technology, even the more complex one.

I absolutely agree that Teyla is a great example. She comes from a background with very little technology but is able to learn about quite a few things in Atlantis in an extremely short timespan. Teyla is a very intelligent person, so there are surely other equally intelligent people, also able to learn about it. Of course the people of Earth are not the only ones able to understand and learn about advanced technology, I'm sorry if my reply sounded like I was saying that, that was not my intention. If the humans in the Pegasus galaxy are genetically the same as the people from earth then they are of course also capable of the exact same things. (Since they developed in an entirely different galaxy it could be possible for them to develop differently, but that is really just a thought of me.)

Given that most of them come from a background with less advanced technology and with potentially less education, it would probably be a lot harder for them, but definitely possible.

Your point that the Athosians deliberately choose to stay at that technological level is a really good one. It never occurred to me that this could actually be a deliberate decision of them. I simply assumed that they were never able to evolve further with their technology because of the Wraith. But it is a really interesting thought that they made this decision, probably to keep the Wraith from showing up at their planet, or at least less often, so it was probably a decision out of fear, but still.

It would make sense that Atlantis would let some people from the Pegasus galaxy stay in Atlantis temporarily, like they did with Teyla's people. In a separate part of Atlantis and with security, there would be less of a risk to it. Back in the first season Sheppard took the Athosians back with him somewhat spontaneously, and Dr. Weir was upset that he brought them with him. But I'm assuming that in this situation it was because they were about to evacuate Atlantis themselves and that she would have otherwise been open towards the Athosians coming to Atlantis and staying there. She said a few times that they were welcome.

Yes, I agree Atlantis certainly got most of their food supplies from sources in the Pegasus Galaxy, either through trade or with Teyla's people helping them and providing them with food. Even in the later seasons, when there was more contact with Earth it would not make sense for them to rely on Earth entirely for food or any other resource that would be easier to produce in the Pegasus galaxy, that would be risky and inefficient.

The mainland would have been a good place for agriculture. If I remember right, the mainland was really big as well. So I think it would have been possible to allow people from the Pegasus galaxy to stay there as well. It would have been safer for them to stay there than on other planets, as they could still be protected by Atlantis. They would be able to be somewhat independent and basically only rely on Atlantis for protection and access to the Stargate. But I suppose it could also pose the risk of the Wraith realizing that there is a big settlement on the planet and got there to check on it. It would probably lead to more conflict if people from different planets and with different backgrounds had to stay on the mainland together. But that would have been interesting from a story perspective. I suppose there are many things that could have been explored in the story, sci-fi series almost always give a lot of room for new things to explore. And there is only so much you can do with the time and budget you have for a series. But it's interesting to think about.

Unfortunately I can't really say anything about the points about Stargate SG1 that you brought up. I have watched a total of maybe 10 episodes of different seasons of SG1. It was not as intriguing to me as Stargate Atlantis was and I pretty much only watched it because I really liked Samantha Carter. So I was really glad when she returned in the Stargate Atlantis series.

Your understanding of watsonian vs doylist perspectives is broadly correct—thank you for looking it up to make sure you understood me!—with the caveat that the two are inextricable. You can’t have only one, the way you are trying to do.

The example I’ve seen used most on tumblr is the character archetype common in shonen anime, the young busty girl character who has superpowers which necessitate that she wear revealing clothing. The watsonian explanation is that well she’s got to show that much skin, for her superpowers! But the doylist explanation is the writer wanted to see boobs as much as possible, so he invented the rules of the superpowers to make an excuse for objectifying young women. It is outright impossible to understand the story without understanding the hand of the author making that call.

If you take only one thing away from this exchange, let it be the idea that you must learn to check what is behind things you are inviting to share space in your brain. Your personal belief in the capabilities of all humans does not shield you from parroting extremely racist ideas, as you did when we began this conversation and you invoked the idea of Terra nullis.

Here is the Wikipedia page on that concept.

And here is the Wikipedia page on pseudoarchaeology again.

You should read both, and rectify the gap in your knowledge you admit to having. They might save you from repeating ideas that you really shouldn’t.

I’m white, and I’m happy to engage with you so you can learn, but there are many people on tumblr and in your real life who will be actually hurt if you say something like “wealthy and well-defended people shouldn’t take in refugees because it’s risky.” Too much is happening in our world right now for that to slide by innocuously, even when you think you’re only talking about fiction.

As for Ancient Aliens specifically, there are plenty of resources out there explaining why the show and the concept are problematic at best. A friend of mine recommended this YouTube channel as a starting point:

So let's look at racism and pseudoarchaeology and aliens!

Before we start, I want to point out that I absolutely believe that it is possible there are aliens out there, and I actively hope there are. This is not coming from a place of skepticism about aliens: it is coming from a knowledge of the rotten roots of pseudoarchaeology.

I also want to point out that I have been a big fan of Stargate since the 90s, and while I have problems with it I also love it and will always love it. But I firmly believe that it is possible to love something (or someone!) while acknowledging that they aren't perfect.

Pseudoarchaeology starts in the late 18th Century, intertwined firmly with the roots of what came to be real archaeology. Those first scholars--called antiquarians, and not archaeologists, as the term archaeology hadn't been invented yet--were products of their time, and accepted unquestioningly the idea that white people ruled the world because they were naturally superior, and that you could look at different ethnic and racial groups, and the ones that Europeans liked and respected were then going to be smarter and stronger and better and have more "advanced" civilizations (as judged by what European society valued).

The problem is that when they started looking at places outside of Europe, they immediately saw evidence of massive structures that were obviously very old (the kind they valued!) in places that white people were not from. The pyramids in Egypt, the great city of Zimbabwe, the walls of the Inca. (It would take them a bit longer to find the Cahokia Mounds, which are far inland in North America, but they'd get there.) And their beliefs told them that only Europeans had the innate strength and intelligence necessary to build such things.

This started a conflict within the field as to who had built those structures. Was it the native people who lived there, or their ancestors? Or was it someone else, had there been colonies of white people in ancient Egypt, ancient Africa, ancient America? There were a lot of people in favor of the "there must have been white people around to build these", and argued for it very strenuously. And some of them did things like vandalize sites to destroy evidence of indigenous construction.

Great Zimbabwe is the prime example of this. Great Zimbabwe was a major city in the area that is now the country of Zimbabwe from about the 11th-16th Centuries, before it fell into ruins as the nation declined in prosperity and people moved elsewhere. There is and has always been an abundance of evidence that it was built by the ancestors of the people who live in the area. However, white colonizers worked so hard to insist that it couldn't be constructed by the Shona people, that it had to be Egyptians/Phoenecians/Greeks/Someone Else Lighter Skinned And Thus Better, that the obvious evidence of Shona construction and occupation was not accepted until the 1950s. And during that time of contention, it was looted several times by white people, at least once by someone actively trying to destroy evidence tying it to the other smaller stone-built cities in the region.

Besides "insisting that black/brown people couldn't possibly have built great structures," the early antiquarians who started what became pseudoarchaeology were also really into Trying To Prove the Bible Literally Happened. They wanted to find Noah's Ark, etc. Problem was, most of the stuff in the first half of the Old Testament ... was written down much later and is a combination of mythology and folklore. I am a Christian, by the way. But the thing is, the Exodus cannot have happened as narrated in the Bible. If a group even 1/20th the size of the reported Israelite group left Egypt, we would see evidence of it in the archaeological record, and we don't. Same on the other end: there is no archaeological record of a group entering the Levant and conquering it, aside from the Phoenicians/Philistines along the coast, and we know they are not the ancestors of the Israelites. Every bit of evidence we have is that the ancient Israelites, the ancestors of modern Jews, have always lived in the Levant, as one of many tribal groups in the area.

Anyway! What happened over the course of the 19th and early 20th Century is twofold. One, the people digging around ancient sites got better and better at accurately recording and studying what they found (basically, they developed it into a science which they called archaeology). And two, the evidence mounted that the local communities around the great sites at the time of their building did indeed build them. Black and brown and indigenous people built a lot of great monuments and stone cities and the like. And eventually, you really couldn't try and insist that someone else built those places without ignoring a huge amount of evidence that everyone else in the field was happy to point out to you. The people who weren't willing to accept this left the field of scientific research and thus archaeology and pseudoarchaeology separated.

Once it became harder to insist that white people did it, the pseudoarchaeologists did not give up. They just switched to saying aliens did it. Because aliens are far more believable than black and brown people building cool stuff, right? /sarcasm.

And look, they can have really cool stuff to say. They have awesome stories, some of which sound plausible! ... until and unless you know what the actual evidence says. And why they're so insistent about how the simplest possible explanation--that the local black and brown people did cool stuff--couldn't be right.

Pseudo-archaeology really got a boost in the 90s, when the History Channel on TV decided that they cared more about viewership numbers than about, you know, little things like facts. And the easiest way to do that was to have equal numbers of actual scientists and grifters. You have the scientist give the general consensus based on the actual data, and then the grifter come on and give a line of bullshit that sounds plausible if you don't actually know what the data says, and it also usually sounds cooler than what the actual data says because the grifter doesn't have to worry about plausibility, they just have to worry about sounding cool.

i don't know the etiquette for posting other peoples tiktoks but the delivery of this punchline hit me like a FUCKING TRUCK please

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this is the happiest I’ve ever been

*tosses a golden apple into the crowd*

It can be a "we" problem

Or why ART no longer lets Three out without a chaperone.

reblog it twice and force it

down everyone’s throats

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Please remember I am 99% sure this is about a blog that got popular and got harassed multiple times and is trying to avoid getting that popular again

This was a reasonable boundary given that context but you also don't need the context to not complain about other people's boundaries, even if you think they're weird