and that's the thing, cousin...I'm part of the fire.

[chicafrom3]

So this is one of those totally random fandom-musing posts that comes out of nowhere.

Any and all Andromeda fen on my flist are probably quite aware that I'm very in love with one Seamus Harper and his various character/story arcs. Also probably very aware that I have severely mixed feelings for the episode "Bunker Hill" -- I love the Harper, I love the Harper/Rommie, I love Boston and the Boston kids and Mark Hildreth as Brendan and the whole human/Dragan war in general, and this is also the episode that got me to completely hate Dylan with a passion.

This musing is on "Bunker Hill", but it's not on the above part...no, as mixed as my feelings are for the episode, they make sense. However, the following quote always throws me off whenever I rewatch it, and I will explain why:

Harper: "Well...It's a place you love, it's, you know, a good feeling. Until you have to see it all torn down around you."
Rommie: "And there's nothing you can do to stop it."

The "it's a place you love" bit makes sense. As bitter as Harper often is about Earth and growing up there, he is just as often nostalgic and clearly in love with his homeworld and its history. (Harley-Davidsons, people.) "Until you have to see it all torn down around you", however, does not make sense. Because it was all "torn down" more than two hundred years before Harper was born. He was raised in the post-apocalyptic hell, not thrust into it.

It's easy enough to write it off as Matt and Joe wanting to simultaneously give Harper and Rommie a chance to bond over their mutual loss of civilization and give the audience a sympathetic view towards Harper's Earth. That, however, doesn't hold up for an in-universe view which is what I always aim for when analyzing fandom stuff.

So, uh. Anyone have any ideas for what Harper means by that? It's possible, I think, that he means seeing his family killed off one by one; it's possible that he means some increase in Magog or Nietzschean attacks when he was a kid; it's possible he's being poetic. But none of those answers exactly works for me.

Comments

[oc-pixie.livejournal.com]

I think it was more about his family/home....he may have had it rough but he loved it...then he had to watch the magog tear it all down around him...it was like his big "beautiful" world was torn to bits and there was nothing he could do but watch it burn around him and then become embittered by it all.

Just my thoughts.

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

Mm. That makes sense. He just seems to be exaggerating it to a point that kind of throws me? Although I do like the idea that he can idealize Earth-when-his-family-was-there.

[oc-pixie.livejournal.com]

That's how I always took it because he was speaking to Rommie who had basically been dormant as her civilzation fell...and then you had Harper who was born after the Fall but had to wtch his family basically be taken away from him because of the the magog and the Neitz and both could understnad the loss of home.

[othercat.livejournal.com]

Family/home, I'd say. (What the writers should have done there was have Rommie give him a wtf? look though and or say something slightly confused/callous to allow a further explanation)

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

That would have worked so much better...not least of all because it would be terribly in-character of her. "Harper, WTF, Earth fell apart some three hundred years ago, you're only twenty-five." "I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE I LOVE, OKAY??"

[othercat.livejournal.com]

In the Ideal Andromeda 'Verse, that's exactly what happened. :> Because I can see the blinky before and after, and Rommie trying to figure out the Psychology of it all, because ruins/apocalyptic badness=/= possibility of happy families to her.

[rommies-voice.livejournal.com]

Like the others have said, I'd say he ment his own personal world as in the loss of friends and family, things the Dragons hadn't got round to knocking down or distroying yet.

Also I still love Andromeda, Harper and the Rommie/Harper ship in fact just the other day I was thinking Chica wrote some really awsome Harper/Rommie fic, I wonder what it would take to persuade her to write some more.

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

I was thinking Chica wrote some really awsome Harper/Rommie fic, I wonder what it would take to persuade her to write some more.

Erm. *blush* Inspiration? The ability to write something longer than 500 words again?

I'm hoping doing miniNano will somehow get me to start writing and finishing other stuff, too. We'll see. I'd like to write more Harper/Rommie. Or more Andromeda fic in general. Or finish The Trial of Brendan Lahey. We'll see.