SGA 2005: The year that started it all.

[icarus]

While I struggle through the next transition in Out Of Bounds ... gnnngh, why is this so hard? ... I tinker with my review of 2005 Stargate Atlantis fanfiction. I did one for 2006 and I hope to do one for 2007 as well.



What are the main themes of 2005 Stargate Atlantis and stories that exemplify them? Here are my initial notes.

John and Rodney are easy! Goodbye DADT --

- The very early soft romances. Stories by 2004 early adopters like thegrrrl and mmmchelle.

Initial confusion over loyalty to SG-1, a concern completely dispensed with due to --

- pegasus_b! (No idea what stories to include.)

Which led to SGA having a rep for --

- Wacky crackfic and AUs! I'm thinking the penguin stories. "It Stops Being Funny At Skirts." The story where Rodney is turned into a little dinosaur. The Harlequin Romance challenge, such as that mail order bride story, need to find two or three more Harlequin stories.

- Fandom's love affair with Rodney in fics like "Oblivious," and "Don't Tell."

Other early themes that are now standard to SGA fic, SGA's lighthearted tone --

- Ancient technology does something unpredictable. "Face Value." That one where John and Rodney explore the high tower of Atlantis and end up married. "Double Occupancy." "A Beautiful Lifetime Event."

- Atlantis' black market. Stories that reference Atlantis' drug subculture.

- Paranoid alien cultures, such as that one where John is imprisoned in the mountain and Rodney's the only one allowed to visit him. Other examples?

- Alien society does something to John because he's an ATA carrier (capture him, try to sacrifice him, make him participate in alien fertility rituals, often an excuse for "Aliens Made Them Do it"). I know I've seen this theme, but specific stories, hmm... the only two I can think of have something done to Rodney because of the ATA gene.

- Darker themes (especially in Gen for some reason) from Atlantis being cut off and taking drastic measures, such as ltlj's story, the name of which won't come to me right now, and rivier's Exigencies. The storm over "Transcendental" and the new, darker characterization in the previously light-hearted fandom.

Aha! auburnnothenna reminds of of the hiatus, which took things in a different direction from what happened in canon --

- Such as "Care Packages" and "A Different Fate" and Karen McFaddyon's "A Matter of Discretion."

Then after Atlantis reconnected with Earth --

- The scientists hazing the new military, such as in "Instructional," and that one that starts with Rodney saying, "If anyone asks, I've been sitting here the whole time." "Care Packages."

- Return to earth stories -- silly ones, romantic ones, and ones focused on recovery.

- iibnf reminds me that, good lord, I forgot the Post-Trinity stories.


Did I nail all the main themes? Disagree? Think I'm off my rocker? I could be missing a lot. It's tricky for me because I didn't start reading SGA until September 2005, so I missed most of the year.

Comments

[mmmchelle.livejournal.com]

It's going to be touchy handling this subject delicately, especially since I saw the story as portraying Rodney (and John's) flaws and how badly things would go for Atlantis if Rodney were in charge.

Interesting. Since I had the exact opposite interpretation, although I never did finish the story. But I understand that in the end John tells Rodney he's the best CO John's ever had.

Since that's my tack, which stories do you feel represent how Rodney was usually portrayed in fanfic?

I am the absolute wrong person to ask that question. I simply haven't read widely enough to be able to answer it. I was too busy writing.

Plus, interpretations of Rodney in the corner of the fandom where I hung out and interpretations in the rest of the fandom were never in sync, at least in my experience.

If you want to know stories from around that time in which I felt Rodney was well done, that's a different question.

Leah's Balcony series

anything by kagey, Grrrl or Danvers, especially Danvers "Under the Skin" which I still think is one of the best stories ever written in this fandom

any of alyse's stories

There are probably others.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you. I've read "Under The Skin" (great fic) and some of kageygirl's fics -- and thegrrrl's, of course. Leah I'm almost sure I've read. Alyse I only really know from the SG-1 fandom.

For 2006, I had amothea's encyclopedic help. She reads anywhere from 10-15 stories a day. It's just amazing. But she didn't start reading SGA until the later half of 2005, a few months earlier than me.

Plus, interpretations of Rodney in the corner of the fandom where I hung out and interpretations in the rest of the fandom were never in sync, at least in my experience.

Ah. So there isn't really a main stream of Rodney fics, with astolat's fic at odds with "a" (singular) norm, but rather it crossed more than one interpretation of Rodney. What was your sense of the fandom's interpretations of Rodney at the time?

Would you consider stories like "Oblivious" to be from a different corner of fandom?

(Hooray, I have an eyewitness!)

Icarus