write like you need it to survive

Sooooo I may have mentioned I am posting a story for stargate_summer this year. I've got my posting date-range--I'm going the last week of June. I'm not sure of the exact date because it includes the weekend of a certain bridal shower for which I will possibly be the only member of the bridal party in attendance apart from the actual, you know, bride. And groom. Probably. So there are some logistics to sort out there.

Anyway! The story is up to 58,000 words at this point in the beta process and I still have ... many more things to add and fix, and I have index cards and an outline and everything, so we all know what that means, right? Yes. Cat-waxing.

So! Here's Stargate SG-1, Season Four on the characterscount wiki, devoted to tracking Bechdel test passes/fails and in general the representation of women and people of color in TV shows and movies. There's not a lot there because you have to be a special kind of obsessive to do this much counting, but anyone can add more! If you're interested in this sort of thing, you can hook up with other people who are at characterscount.

Season 4, as it turned out, was even more dismal than every other season preceding it for representation of people of color--it included twelve episodes (more than half!) where Teal'c was the only person of color, and we got to the twelfth episode of the season before two people of color spoke to each other at all. So, uh. *facepalm* Oh, show. What.

And now, off to find something else to do that is not working on my bigbang but also not totally giving in and allowing Generation Kill to take over my brain as it has been trying valiantly to do for the last ten days or so. /o\

Ummmm, I totally did not forget for a while I had written this, what, no.

This is a fixit of a fixit, or in other words a sequel to Common Language, a Bechdel Test fixit story I wrote about the kidnapped Air Force sergeant from "Children of the Gods." This will not make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read that.


Sam, Daniel. post-"Children of the Gods" and post-"Secrets". PG. 1,302 words.
"Teal'c, all of this started, from our perspective, when a woman under my command, Sergeant Jessica Hoyt, was kidnapped from this facility. What can you tell us about her current whereabouts?"


( Tell )

This is technically not a fixit, because "Cold Lazarus" actually does (however briefly) pass the Bechdel Test. But this popped into my head when I was thinking about the episode, and I figured nobody would mind an extra drabble-and-a-half of women talking to each other.

post-"Cold Lazarus." PG. 150 words.
Sara had been too long a military wife to be able to ignore the phone.


( Incoming )

Weirdly, "The Broca Divide" was the first SG-1 episode to pass the Bechdel test, which is good, because then I don't have to think about it anymore.

And the next episode, "The First Commandment," turns around and fails in epic fashion: only one woman speaks in the entire episode. Which is not to say she's the only woman appearing in the episode, mind you...

( What would we do without screencaps? )

Gen. Sam. 1,107 words. PG. Beta thanks to iulia!
There was one thing Jonas couldn't take away.

( First Principles )

"Children of the Gods," for all its faults, was not actually too hard to write Bechdel test fixits for--there are multiple female characters who are reasonably memorable (by description, at least, even if they don't have names) and they are shown to meet or at least be in the same place at the same time.

Things get dicey in the first regular episode, "The Enemy Within," as only two female characters speak: Sam Carter, and the masked surgical nurse whose complete dialogue consists of two lines: "Scalpel" and "Large clamp", if I'm not mistaken. I couldn't think of a way to get Sam talking with this unnamed and mostly-unseen nurse about something other than the (male) patient, Kawalsky, so I decided to make use of a woman who showed up in the episode (and later showed up in another) but never got to speak: ( Colonel Kennedy's aide. )

Gen. Sam. During "The Enemy Within."
942 words. PG.
Beta thanks to splash_the_cat
Not for the first time, Sam cursed the fact that dress blues did not include name tape.

( Differences )

Inspired by beccaelizabeth's counting of characters in Torchwood, I decided to count characters in Stargate SG-1 while rewatching, to calculate percentages of female characters and characters of color. (SPOILER: the results were kinda depressing.)

Methodology: I counted the number of speaking characters per episode. Partly just as a matter of feasibility, I did not count: a) people who did not speak, b) people who spoke only in crowd scenes where it was difficult or impossible to determine who was speaking, and c) disembodied voices (which means that a couple of times I left Chevron Guy off the count for an episode he was in, which means in a few spots the stats should probably be worse). This also means that characters who appear at two different ages are counted as a single speaking character (characters who appear in two different universes/timelines/bodily forms are, however, counted twice).

Counting characters of color was, obviously, a judgment call. (I counted Sha're, Skaara/Klorel, all other Abydonians, Apophis, and Bra'tac, for instance, though I am not sure how all the relevant actors identify their own races.)

In addition to counting and calculating percentages, I tracked the Bechdel test (There are two women, who talk to each other, about something other than a man) and a race-Bechdel test (There are two characters of color, who talk to each other, about something other than a white person) for each episode. In a lot of cases this was also a judgment call, and scores range from 'Pass' to 'Pass?' to 'Fail' to 'FAIL'. Caps indicates that an episode included only one woman or one character of color who spoke.

I have my raw data sheet with comments on Bechdel and race-Bechdel pass/fails and lists of characters who spoke in the order they first spoke, if people want data to look at/quibble with/recalculate for their own purposes. I'm not posting it now because it's long and unwieldy, but I'm happy to share it if anyone wants it.

And with that: Results

( Table, which hopefully works. )

Conclusions: I am actively trying not to draw too many (or too sweeping) conclusions; in a lot of cases the numbers and passes/fails speak for themselves, I think.

One thing I did notice is that in the two episodes where Sam is the only woman to speak ("The First Commandment" and "Solitudes") the episode centers significantly on Sam. ETA: Just realized that's two of the three episodes in which Sam is the only woman to speak; she's also the only one in "Within the Serpent's Grasp" and has no special role there. In the eight seven episodes where Teal'c is the only character of color to speak, he generally plays a no more than usually central role; in fact episodes that center on Teal'c tend to focus also on his family and/or the Jaffa, so they tend to include other characters of color and pass the race-Bechdel test.

I also noticed that - while percentages of women and characters of color are mostly dismal across the board - episodes frequently manage to pass either the Bechdel or race-Bechdel test, at times alternating from one to the other over a string of episodes.

Also, I do not think I would have bet dirt, going in, that "The Broca Divide" would manage to be the best episode of the season in terms of the Bechdel and race-Bechdel tests. I guess it had to be good for something.

I briefly attempted to track the statistics on who died and who was shown in some degree of undress, but it became unwieldy and crazymaking, so I leave that to future inquiries by brave people who are not me, and move on to counting season two.