the stars like dust

A Short List of Stargate: Atlantis Stories

(that I can’t stop re-reading)

Now with added context.

Special Note: This is not a comprehensive list, at all. Even of my current favorites, let alone general recs. Included here are the first ten stories that come to mind as ones that I re-read compulsively, of late.

 

• “Second Skin” by Toft Froggy.
• “Advantage” by Resonant
• “Close Encounters” by Amireal
• “Oblivious” by Shalott
• “Three Fates” by Auburn and  eretria
• “A Little Bit Crazy” by the Grrrl
• “Four Quarters” by trinityofone
• “Something to Remind You” by cjandre
• “The Best Things in Life Are Free” by Smittywing
• “Crimes against Humanity” by Jenn

Two of these are works in progress, three are extreme alternate universes, one is a high school alternate universe, and all of them have John and Rodney having sex in them. The linking qualitiy is the spontaneous need to read them repeatedly. Though the sex in them is important, I think, none of them would cling to me the way that they do without being emotionally powerful as well as hot. I also needed to be able to recognize the John and Rodney I know from SG:A in them. Even when that is extremely disturbing, as in "Crimes". 

“Three Fates” and “Four Quarters” both have soundtracks associated with them, and are extended aus with more than one part and artwork as well. The development of the world behind the stories definitely has something to do with the way these universes haunt me. I should mention here that although I do frequently re-read these, it is selective. Generally I go over sections of the story again and again, not the whole work.

Several of these are by well-known writers, but the stories are not chosen based even partly on this.

There are no Ronon stories on the list, as Ronon stories are treasured and doled out in a miserly way, to make them last. Too few, still too few.

There is a lot more I would say, but not without spoiling the stories. If anyone is interested in analysis, tell me and I'll do it under a cut. Meanwhile, please keep your hands inside the car at all times and enjoy the show.

 

So I'm telling the SO about John Sheppard and how quite surprisingly gay he reads for a guy who keeps having het sex. Enter skepticism, which I counter, but then! The SO comes back with a one-two punch that's hard to counter.
"Is he gayer than Avon?"
Which. Well, no. NO. How COULD he be?
Not fair, not fair at all. The leather alone...
But wouldn't John be cute in all that leather? Or, hey, Rodney. If Rodney were in Blake's 7, he'd pretty much be Avon, wouldn't he?
So why isn't Rodney as lightly loafered as John? Because he's hot for John, no doubt, but. John's the elf.

Now I want to talk to you about GURPS, which is a role-playing system blah-blah-blah, but the important things about it are the ways in which it pertains to the creation of a character like oh, say, Rodney McKay. Witness the innovation  brutal repetition of a numbered list.

1. GURPS game masters give players a set number of points which they can trade in for skills, powers, etc. for their characters. Eidetic memory like Mulder's, for example, is quite a number of points, whereas the skill of tracking takes a few but not nearly as many.
2. You can buy more total points by assigning your character "negative" traits, characteristics or disabilities which can disadvantage play. Examples would be the inability to lie well, or an obnoxious personality that others find strangely off-putting. Thus one is enabled to give a character stuff like, oh, high level engineering skills. Or the ability to use Ancient technology.
3. Once you've played a character that has a high number of both negative and positive points, you start to prefer them to boring old flawless heroes, because disadvantages can be incredibly entertaining.
   

Thus GURPS trains you out of bad Mary Sue habits early, if you are lucky and have a good gaming group.

Which brings me to Rodney. What a great GURPS character! And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the creation of Rodney McKay took place at a gaming table or using the GURPS tables. He's balanced. For every insanely powerful aspect he has, he has some problem, disability, or social trouble. He's definitely still in the positive points (the high ones, because it's an Atlantis team, not a typical American high school), and needs to be. But he works in the story, or the game if you will.

In fact, a lot of the team is pretty balanced. Sheppard has his black mark and that dorkiness (and also DADT!), Zelenka the fearfulness, Carson the overall inability to make moral decisions. Etc. But Sheppard isn't truly balanced unless he's gay, or was a geek in the past, or *something*, because he's got the Ancient gene, great looks, math genius, tactical wits, training, black ops abilities, is an ultimately talented pilot, etc. So the best stories give him those things, the quirks that lend interesting development through adversity or the prospect of social trouble. Jonas never got off the ground with the audience, y'know?

Rodney is very well balanced, and we love him. When I give Sheppard balance points? I love him. Ronon is a fish out of water, has an entire dead planet and seven years of bad road, and wow, amazing skills and looks. And I love him. Teyla? Is part deadly creeptastic enemy. Has struggles with her people. Is incredibly hot, and wise, and has crappy judgement about prior allies. Hmm, I love her too.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about. And also chocolate cookies, because yum.

So I've blathered about John and Rodney, and why I love them as a pairing. I also mentioned that Ronon/Rodney comes close, and now I want to talk about why.

Why R&R? The Bullet List by stungunbilly

• There is a classic balance between them of skills and talents, nature and abilities. They could be an amazing duo as an exploration team, and of course they have that Odd Couple dynamic that is so entertaining to watch. Sort of like a more competent Rimmer and Lister.
• They are both emotionally vulnerable in different ways, and both have to reach to relate to those around them. Possibly they could reach each other well because they would both know they had to work at relationships.
  
• Ronon is bluntly honest, as is McKay. Fortunately, they are also both thick-skinned enough to deal with the more unpleasant aspects of this, and could likely learn to understand each other and trust each other very well over time. Given a little incentive.
• Each of them enjoys social status in a different way within Atlantis, and as a duo they could probably increase each other's status.
• Since Ronon has physical skills that McKay could only imagine, he doesn't really have to compete with Ronon, and can admire him instead. Ditto with Rodney's technical genius and Ronon. They might have less problems with professional envy than many couples in Atlantis.
• They are both incredibly hot, in such opposite ways that it makes them lovely together and yet not cloyingly. They make a very dyamic pairing on every level, in my imagination.
• They share loyalties and goals, for the most part.
• It is entirely likely they could amaze each other, even after many years of partnership.

Also, John and Teyla would think their teaming up was incredibly amusing.

Now, if only there were a dozen more Ronon/Rodney stories in my inbox.

ETA: I forgot to mention the most important things, because I take them so for granted. They both have a great capacity for sweetness, with which I think they'd reward those they learned to trust. And they could use a little sweetness from a partner, both of them. Also, food! They really, really like food.

So what is it about John and Rodney together that leaves me reading stories until 3AM when I really, really need sleep?

Why those two? Because I have an abiding passion for Ronon/Rodney, and Ronon/Sheppard can be hot or hotwrong or even sort of sweet, and Rodney/Daniel is crossovery and good, and Teyla ought to be sexing Rodney, because he's Rodney. Even Sam would come around eventually.

But back to the McKay/Sheppard show I come again and again. Only Ronon/Rodney really comes close. And I can't stop with the reading of McKay/Sheppard fiction, in an insanely prolific fandom I can't get enough of the good stuff. So what are these elusive reasons for my obsession?

Naturally, being me, there will be a list.

1. John seems to me like the type who has major hidden abandonment issues. Rodney is a jealous freak of nature, and their messed-up psyches could meld well here. It reminds me of my impressions of Fraser/Kowalski in this regard. Their neuroses dove-tail in a queerly healthy manner. They keep each other alive by virtue of mutual derangement.
2. They are opposite enough to balance each other yet have so much in common they can squabble over obscure details.
3. They look really cute when they play. As a thousand good and not-so-good vids have shown us the balcony scene and the weapons-light-him-up thing YET AGAIN, obviously this is a common opinion.
4. John is so very, very gay. In that special way where he could sleep with/have UST with women smoking hot like Teyla and yet. Plainly gay. And Rodney can legally marry him! Yay, Canada.
5. Rodney is so very, very in love with John. He just is, his expressive face just beams and melts and squishes at him. The final scene in Trinity, the Siege bomb thingy, why am I even pointing these out?
6. Rodney is the first person John has met that he *knows* is smarter than him, whose ideas he takes in preference to his own. This is my interpretation, of course, but I can back this up. And John is a faster on-the-ground thinker than Rodney, and in many ways a superior tactical one. This must fascinate Rodney.
7. The snark is incredibly flexible. It can express everything necessary while being entertaining in and of itself.


There are more reasons, I think. John becomes so much more lovable when he is a buddy to Rodney. He is adorable when he shores up the social weaknesses that leave Rodney exposed. And John has changed Rodney in many excellent ways, strengthened him and rubbed off some of the worst edges. Rodney can keep Sheppard alive, in spite of insurmountable odds, by being able to produce the things Sheppard imagines.

It all comes down to the fact that John loves to fly machines and Rodney can build and design machines, that John says he likes Ferris Wheels and Rodney could make him one. That John can make Rodney show his heroism and develop his undeveloped skills and Rodney can appreciate John's intellect. They are much better together, and also?

I can't be OTP in Atlantis, because there is so much potential. But in 83.252344323% of the universes, John and Rodney are having sex.

SG: A fandom being what it is, I’m sure the story I’m thinking about has already been written. So help me find it, kind people! The one I mean is the story in which Rodney and John have sex, and it’s incredibly, amazingly good, and Rodney finds out that he gets off on bottoming like nothing that he has known before. And then he breaks up with John because of it.

Being such a control freak, the overwhelming orgasms are terrifying to him. John doesn’t get it at all, and keeps stalking poor Rodney, who has really crappy sex with a whole bunch of people to try to escape, though he can’t quit the away team because that would just be admitting defeat. And John is really nice to the folks Rodney sleeps with and they don’t realize at first that rotten things and assignments and mysterious odors start happening to them as soon as they get involved with Rodney.

Meanwhile Teyla knows something is up. She thinks that John broke up with Rodney and starts to try to get him to give Rodney another chance, and talks Ronon into wooing Rodney to make John jealous. And then I forget what happens, but I really want to read it.
So where can I find it?

Fragments from Stories that Might Have Been

(If I actually wrote for SG:A, this could have happened to some unsuspecting Netizen.)

  ( See what you've been spared. )

It will surprise no-one when I say: I love my shows!

Having re-watched Scarecrow and Faith, I am absolutely ecstatic over the status quo of Supernatural, and have every hope of tonight’s being enjoyable too. After my extremely qualified squee over the last several episodes of SG:A, I am happy to

( lay a goopy, spoiler-for-219 Inferno-filled squee on my show again. )

Okay, kids, let us discuss SG:A 218, AKA "Michael".

First we'll cut for spoilers.  Oh, and if you are in the happy-happy place where any criticism of the team is bad for you, probably you should try a different journal tonight. I've been there, and I'd never judge you for it. I love my show too.

( Everything, just like before, is significantly different. )

Hurrah! I got more SGA!
And then I had to say something about it.


( The part with the spoilers for SG:A 216. )