Some of those who commented apparently didn’t read to the end of the article where I talk about how the women become good friends for life, and how one fan enjoyed watching marathons with her kids. Also, to retaliate to one comment, one doesn’t have to be a “bimbo” to be into hot guys — one can have a brain and sex drive!

It’s great to see how much passion there is about the show, and if you read the article again, hopefully you’ll notice that I wrote it with what I consider to be a quite positive spin. Hey, I even bought a Stargate SG-1 cap, that I wore over the weekend while out of town!

I don’t fault the writer of this article–I actually didn’t find it dismissive of the fans or fandom. On the contrary, it was a bit of an outsider look, showing that what you normally expect from a con (geeky teenage boys discussing non existent technology) is really a group of middle aged women ogling actors (yes, we do that) but also thoroughly enjoying the friendships they’ve made.

I think the writer was also quite favorably inclined towards the actors themselves.

For the record, I’ve heard Claudia Black say she’d love to do comedy and she’s darned funny onstage.

Lighten up, folks. It’s only an article.

See, I attended my first ever Dragon*Con this year, scraping together funds from my summer job to purchase Greyhound tickets and con membership, and bunked with a fellow D*C-goer who needed another roommate to split the hotel bill. Joe Flanigan, Ben Browder, and Paul McGillion were there, but my favorite of the “Stargate hunks”, Michael Shanks, had to cancel due to filming commitments.

Yet I still went.

Why? Because I knew D*C would also be attended by at least a dozen other women I had come to know through fandom over the last six years. I never purchased any photo ops, didn’t get in line for any autographs, but I still came away a winner.

I have a glossy 8×10 photo signed by each of those dozen-or-so ladies, and a 4×6 group photo of those dozen-or-so smiling faces.

THAT is the heart of Stargate fandom.

Sci fi is the most intelligent entertainment on tv, and it is the characters and their adventures that attract us, and if the men are hunky, all the better!

Why is this any more news worthy than the fact that sci fi has always had scantily clad women, pushing the boundaries of what was proper – FOREVER?

Give me my sci fi adventure, and leave the eye candy like the whipped cream on my sundae.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a con, but I have to agree with the folks above that you missed a great deal of the “experience.” William Shatner had a single perspective of cons until he decided to delve deeper into them. The result, his book “Get a Life,” would have been good research material for you as it’s an in-depth exploration of Sci-Fi fans and what draws them to the fandom. He came away from that experience respectful and awestruck.

I didn’t get into Stargate: Atlantis for the pretty, though that certainly didn’t hurt. I was drawn to the relationships between the characters and to the series-long story arc that showed how we so often mean well when exposed to new cultures, trying to “fix” them, but only succeed in messing them up even more. This series is a good life lesson that we should not only NOT assume that we know best, but that when we do mess up, we still need to stick around and do what we can to help.

That this lesson is shown with all the caring and drama and snark of SGA is a tribute to the writers, actors, and everyone else involved in the show. It’s a work of art that has meaning, and that is what draws me to the show — and to the fans who see the same things I see.

Again, I thought this was a good, well-written and fun article, but I challenge you to become an even better journalist. Go. Borrow the Shatner book from your library. Read it and learn. Then go to another con and join Sci-Fi fans everywhere to see how they’re open to new experiences, new thoughts, different ways of living, and who are seeking to make their life and other lives better.