December Semi-Daily: SGA

[resonant]

wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."

A RL friend of mine recently shared a not-yet-published het fanfic crossover she wrote, and it was hilarious the difference between her characterization of John Sheppard and the one that this community seemed to agree on.

Her John Sheppard was strong, silent, sarcastic, and sexually dominant -- not in a negotiated kink way but like a romance novel hero from the seventies, the kind of guy who pins his lover's hands with one hand while he rips her shirt off her with the other, and she swoons because he's so forceful, and then in the morning he slips out of her bed and leaves her sleeping and it's because he's a Loner who Goes It Alone.

Fandom's John Sheppard was goofy, socially awkward, boyish, and deeply closeted. If he slipped out of a bed and left a lover sleeping, it was because he didn't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with how he felt, and the story would end with the lover chasing him down and forcing a confrontation of the kissing sort. I loved it that he was earnest with women who were teammates or bosses but fairly indifferent to women who were supposed to be love interests, that he really seemed to want a friend, that he was a guy who couldn't quite connect with humans and then an alien city fell in love with him.

Probably neither of those characterizations is 100% canon-accurate -- it always seemed to me that the writers and Joe Flanigan were envisioning the character quite differently -- but I sure like ours better than hers.





25 -- isabellerecs, "What was your most favorite Christmas present that you ever received as a kid?" and/or "What Christmas present had you wanted badly but never received as a kid?"
26 --runpunkrun, I'd be interested to hear about your experience with the CPAP machine.
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 -- mecurtin, What is the most beautiful sight you see outside on a regular basis? Can be a building, landscape, plant, animal, artwork, people playing, whatever.
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[mecurtin]

My memory is that we had people using that first characterization during the first 2 seasons, but some time in S3 our collective perception of Sheppard shifted. I have the dim impression that someone did a widely-linked analysis arguing that Flanigan's acting wasn't *bad* (which a lot of us were feeling up to that point) but that he was acting a version of Sheppard that was counter to the "text" the writers/showrunners were giving him.

[resonant]

I came to the fandom very late, and honestly the "true" characters, as I perceived them in my head, mostly were the ones I saw in fanfic rather than the ones I saw on television.

[norsellie]

Yes yes yes!

(True story: I and a gay male friend of mine almost fell out over John Sheppard. He was convinced he was a 1000% het frat boy. I was convinced he was 1000% closeted gay gay gay. Both of us used as our primary point of evidence Sheppard's conversation with Ronon where he asks, "...or a guy...". I saw it as Sheppard's first tiny, tentative step at coming out. He saw it as Sheppard setting up a teammate to rag on if Ronon said he was into guys.)

needs SGA icons

[resonant]

Well, see, that's why it's better to have a story rather than an interpretation -- each of you could have written a story, and then we'd have two stories!

[norsellie]

Very true! (I wasn't actually that fussed, just a little puzzled by his interpretation. He was downright angry. It was weird.)

Yey, I have an SGA icon!

[cesperanza]

Oh I LOVE this answer--yes, wow, that's such a wild difference of characterization! I might have to steal and quote this it's that good, but as someone professionally interested in different readings, I mean, that's a doozy.

It reminds me--I still have the poster in my office--of the Sentinel, where Richard Burgi was posed, muscles bulging, in a sleeveless t-shirt, with the caption THE MOST SENSITIVE MAN IN AMERICA. I mean....aside from anything else, obviously no history of "sensitive" as a euphemism for "gay" for most of the mid-20th century--sensitive and artistic! :D (Also, hello Steve Rogers but I digress...:D)

[resonant]

I remember that ad! Apparently "sensitive and artistic" was forgotten in favor of "sensitive New Age guy."

I love Skinny Steve the Art Student so much.

[northern]

That was good, to be reminded of the power of fanon. Thanks!

[resonant]

Everything's better through the lens of the good fanfic.

[isabellerecs]

I gotta say, I don't recognize your friend's John at all. :P *shakes head* LOL, wild.

[resonant]

No, I didn't either -- it was very strange. Because it was a crossover, there were two other significant guys whose names started with J, and I kept thinking he was one of them.

[jesse_the_k]

TRUE THAT!

[out_there]

That's a very different interpretation of Sheppard but I feel like it's a valid summary of how Sheppard appears to outsiders and girlfriends interpret his bad connections with people (of course he's into me, he's just the strong and silent type -- as opposed to the whole he doesn't seem interested or particularly invested, and yet he's so much more engaged when talking to his teammates).

"If he slipped out of a bed and left a lover sleeping, it was because he didn't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with how he felt, and the story would end with the lover chasing him down and forcing a confrontation of the kissing sort."

I've read that story many times and loved it every time.

[resonant]

Yep, me too! In fact, I've written it at least twice.

[mekare]

Seeing as I spent most of my recent travel time reading sga fic this was the perfect post for me to read today. Also, I really do need to go back and watch canon because I can't for the life of me make sense of that first characterization?

[resonant]

I think we all project what we want to see on our beloved characters. Her projection is a lot more conventional than ours -- we apparently wanted him gay, lonely, and secretly nerdy.

[wychwood]

Hahaha, that is super amazing!

I mean, OK, I definitely know that my mental versions of the characters are heavily influenced by slash fandom, but even so, the idea of John being, like, super DOMINANT and MANLY like that is just so weird to me. The goofiness is definitely there in canon! Awww, John.

[resonant]

It was ... more than I wanted to know about the fantasies of my co-worker, to tell you the truth.