#ep. letters from pegasus

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Pegasus Project, Pt. 5

We do not know how long it took McKay to check Carter's yield calculations but although he may not be as good as maths as he wishes he were, he is not exactly mathematically illiterate either. He can do it, it just takes him time, and we have every reason to believe that he would have wanted to be thorough with the calculations given how much they know is riding on this working out. The next that we join them, McKay and Carter are both on the bridge of the Odyssey as they approach what ever black hole in the Pegasus they had pre-selected for the mission, Carter standing behind the helm and McKay standing behind the captain, seeming to be watching her as she watches the navi computer.

Emerson: Maintain orbit at minimum safe distance. We'll keep sub-light engines on standby. Mitchell: Is that thing cool, or what? McKay: Hmm. Mitchell: The black hole.

The mainstream audience are probably going to think that McKay is watching Carter like a lovesick puppy because he is bereft of her attention or something, even though we may note at that the very beginning of the scene he is not even looking at her, instead looking past the two women to the corner of the room at what ever is there, we do not get to see what holds his attention. But he then turns his head to glance at Carter and, noticing that she is preoccupied by what ever she is currently focusing on, he decides his time is better spent getting to know Colonel Mitchell instead. We can tell that McKay's attention was not initially on Carter by the way he has to turn his entire body to look at her and then just as soon deciding he would rather be looking at something else. There is a very good looking man who seems to be up on the front window all by his lonesome, and maybe he could use the company. And given that on the bridge Mitchell is the person most like Sheppard out of everyone there, it is quite natural for McKay to gravitate toward him. McKay misses Sheppard, and although he knows that Mitchell is not Sheppard and will always pale in comparison as far as McKay is concerned, getting to know the guy might go some way into alleviating his homesickness.

Let us make note of the fact that when McKay was standing next to Carter, he was keeping a respectable distance to her and still had his hands behind his back, which seems to be something he does when he is feeling unsure, to get his confidence up. Because McKay suffers from a major case of imposter syndrome and feels inadequate when he compares himself with Carter, the true artist to his fine technical player, he does have a deep-seated desire to be accepted by her. He does want to connect with her, he does desire her approval and would like her to pay attention to him -- but none of this is sexual in nature. His body language is not one of a man attracted to a woman, and the fact that he seeks physical closeness with Mitchell instead, actually angling his body toward the Colonel, standing much closer at his side, shows us who he finds the most attractive person in the room currently. He had every opportunity to stand much closer to Carter if it was something he desired but it is not. He simply does not think of Carter like that.

And so McKay walks up to Mitchell and parks himself slightly behind him in a way that we have seen Sheppard stand behind McKay e.g., in Allies (S02E20). He glances at Mitchell and then joins him in looking out of the window at the accretion disk of a black hole, seeming to "maintain orbit at minimum safe distance" to the man but still standing noticeably closer to him than he had to Carter. Mitchell engages him as he feels someone come stand next to him by the window, but it is possible that he is not aware that it is McKay, that he was making his comment to anyone that might have joined him just to speak his thought out loud, just to share in the awesomeness of what he was looking at. McKay, who might never have seen a black hole this close but who has been working with black holes his entire career does not seem as impressed by the display outside, and in fact seems to find Mitchell himself much more interesting to look at, the handsome man that he is. Mitchell's resemblance to Sheppard is reinforced by the comment he makes, calling the accretion disk "cool".

That is precisely the kind of thing that McKay thinks Sheppard would say in this situation if it were the two of them stood side by side looking out at the marvelous display. McKay looks from Mitchell out to the accretion disk and smiles, seeming perfectly content. And what is important to understand here is that McKay's comment, "Hmm," is one that Sheppard would get. We have seen before that Sheppard is able to read McKay's hums and haws, whines, grunts and other types of noises not just because the two of them have been so intimate as to him having heard and learned them all, but also because they have that bond that is deeper than words that seems to be facilitated by the Ancient gene.

What McKay meant to communicate was something to the effect of "That really is something to look at, isn't it?" basically in agreement with Mitchell. Mitchell, however, cannot read McKay as easily as Sheppard nor does he have any incentive to do so, and so he seems to interpret the noise that McKay makes as noncommittal at best and disdainful at worst, and one thing about Mitchell that does make him resemble Sheppard even more is that while he is by no means stupid, he lacks the formal education of the eggheads, making him preemptively defensive about being thought of as stupid. He seems to feel this toward McKay especially, since because McKay actually suffers from a similar affliction himself, he had perhaps come across as needlessly combative during their initial meeting.

But McKay has no reason to think that Mitchell is particularly stupid given that, due to the years he has been contracting for the military, he has met more than a few military types and he knows that no one who makes Lt. Colonel in the USAF can be a slack-jawed yokel. But because he is feeling defensive, Mitchell seems to feel the need to clarify what he meant to McKay, hence pointing out to the thing they are both seeing from the window before them. And it is Mitchell himself who seems to be the black hole to McKay in that McKay may have taken orbit around him but the man is also draining all of the energy and good mood out of him.

McKay: What you're looking at is called the accretion disk. It's matter trapped in the gravity well. You can't see the black hole itself. Mitchell: Which is cool.

Mitchell continues resembling Sheppard and yet being not at all like him. Because McKay is feeling nervous and unsure, feeling the need to impress the cute boy in class now that he has just moved to a new school (and because McKay himself has within him a black hole with an unquenchable need for approval), he tries doing the thing he thinks he knows best, which is to offer up information. He knows that Sheppard wants him to explain things to him, is curious and likes listening to McKay talking about things he is passionate about, and so he tries to do for Mitchell the thing that he would be doing for Sheppard if it had been the two of them stood by the window.

McKay's go-to method for bonding with someone is to overshare personal things about himself, which he is not doing here. He is not seeking to bond with Mitchell so much as he wants to impress him with his knowledge of Astrophysics. But because he is petty, arrogant and bad with people, he comes across as sounding decidedly condescending here. It is likely not McKay's intention to "mansplain" black holes to Mitchell or to sound patronizing with his explanation but he does it all the same, definitely coming across to Mitchell like someone who thinks that he does not understand the basic things about space, in spite of probably having had to learn a thing or two about Physics before they allowed him in a fighter jet let alone to step through a wormhole at the helm of his own gate team on a regular basis.

McKay can definitely sometimes be arrogant and condescending, although for the most part it results from his poor self-esteem. He has a constant need to prove himself because he has little self worth, because he does not think that other people tolerate him if he has nothing to give them, there is nothing that he can do for them that might make him worth keeping around, worth tolerating. But even if he can occasionally be condescending, even more often than that he simply sounds condescending to people without meaning to. People can interpret him coming across as arrogant due to their own short-comings and because he had never developed really good social skills on account of his family environment and very likely having skipped grades in school, having started at University much younger than the other freshmen. He finds it difficult to relate to other people and making new friends, and hence his attempts at reaching out are frequently misinterpreted.

Even Sheppard sometimes interprets McKay as being condescending, as revealed through his discussion with Rod in McKay and Mrs Miller (S02E08), although it has never been a deal-breaker to Sheppard -- and the truth of it is that Sheppard can be condescending himself. In fact, one of the reasons Sheppard and McKay had gotten along like a house on fire was because they both had limited social skills and were bad with people, and because they were both bad with people, they also found it easier to let slide some things that people with better social skills might not have found so easy ignore or get over. And so, even though it is very obviously not McKay's intention to make Mitchell feel stupid, he does seem to manage to hit some kind of a nerve and Mitchell takes offence at McKay explaining something to him like he was a child or an idiot, someone who knows nothing about nothing.

What is ascinating about this is that Mitchell tells McKay that it is "cool" twice here, which can only remind McKay of Sheppard and the time that Sheppard had felt McKay had been condescending toward him in Trinity (S02E06). There had been a similar dynamic there in McKay really looking forward to telling Sheppard (and pretty much everyone he knows) about the very cool thing they had discovered, and Sheppard seeming to get defensive about the way McKay was going about explaining it to him. The thing of it was that even McKay and Zelenka did not fully understand what they were looking at, and it actually seemed like Sheppard had been able -- because he had a better understanding of weapons as opposed to physics -- to give McKay and Zelenka a solution, an answer to a question that the two of them had still been puzzling out together, which had made McKay feel defensive in turn. McKay does not like to feel stupid either.

They were both feeling a need for the other man to see them as capable and competent, and not for the other to think of them as stupid, and it is ironic that two people who seem to be able to read each other as easily as they can could misinterpret each other as badly at the same time. It is because they understand each other so well that they are also capable of getting each other so very, very wrong when they make assumptions instead of talk things out, check in with each other, communicate honestly and openly about how they feel.

It is for this very reason that they had needed to talk about it for a really long time to actually get back on the same page with each other. But this, a Lt. Colonel of the USAF being impressed and excited about something and describing it as cool, McKay launching into an explanation that comes across as condescending because he wants to be seen as cool because he knows something about the cool thing, the Lt. Col. then taking offense at this and replying with "Yeah, but that's what makes it cool," all of this had taken place between Sheppard and McKay previously. And what is more, this had happened just before the two of them had a major falling out that McKay would rather not even remember, and particularly not now that things were finally OK between him and Sheppard.

But at the same time, this is completely different. Sheppard really, really likes McKay and he is the one who seeks out McKay's company, comes to check in with him. The two of them were flirting with each other, and witnessing their interaction there may be at least part of the reason why Zelenka seems to know all about their relationship -- in addition to Sheppard forcing him to accompany him to the bottom of the ocean to rescue McKay in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14). We had just seen in the flashback scene in No Man's Land (S03E01) that Zelenka seems to spend quite a lot of time in a position to observe the two of them interacting with each other, so it would not take a man with half his intelligence to figure out what is going on.

But while Sheppard may be drawn to McKay, Mitchell is not. He turns to give McKay a look before very pointedly walking away from him, and we see that McKay actually draws his head back as Mitchell is looking at him, seeming intimidated by what ever look Mitchell was giving him. In fact, as McKay turns to watch him leave he has a look on his face that is horrified, like he is not quite sure what had happened here. McKay had joined him to spend time in his company and Mitchell is behaving like McKay has personally offended him in some way, and while McKay has no idea what that might be, he cannot be entirely sure he had not put his foot in his mouth at some point and just not realized it. And so Mitchell "looks at the camera like he's in The Office" and joins Carter instead, and because he cannot be quite sure why the Colonel is behaving this way, McKay has to at least suspect that homophobia may be a part of it. Mitchell does not want to be around nancy boys, it might be catching. And realizing that just makes him sad.

Carter: We're in optimal range for releasing the gate. We can commit to the next phase. Emerson: This is Emerson to flight operations. Release the gate.

While McKay had been trying to connect with Mitchell due to his resemblance to Sheppard, we cannot be sure whether or not Mitchell felt like McKay was hitting on him, was condescending him or that he just does not like him for no reason at all, Mitchell then joins Carter behind the helm. And the thing to note here is that Mitchell parks himself way closer to Carter than where McKay had been standing earlier. The two of them are team mates, and although Carter is meant to be in a clandestine relationship with General O'Neill at this time, there were hints that Mitchell had a soft spot for Carter and that he was somewhat pining for her, that will-they-won't-they the fuel with which network television used to run. Nothing ever happens between them but he may well have wanted it to.

But while they are team mates and had gotten closer the longer they had worked together, Mitchell getting this close to Carter may have been motivated by him feeling a sudden need to reassert his heterosexuality and not even because he thought McKay was hitting on him but because McKay's comment had felt emasculating to him. Carter is someone who is just as smart as McKay who has never treated him the way he felt like McKay was treating him, so getting close to her may have been his way of seeking protection from her against McKay. We see that Mitchell gives her a look that is probably meant to communicate what he thinks of McKay but to her credit, Carter does not seem to respond to it.

McKay: Well, it's going to be a few minutes before the gate's in position and ready to dial out, and I missed lunch. So, I'm going to fix myself a sandwich. Anyone want anything? Anyone? No? No. All right, fine.

They release the gate that the Odyssey had brought over from the Milky Way, and watch it slowly drifting toward the accretion disk of the black hole. Both Mitchell and Carter seem to be mesmerized by the sight and it is definitely something that even they do not get to see every day. McKay, however, seems to have other things in mind and so he interrupts their literal star-gazing by announcing that he is going to get himself a sandwich. This is one of those scenes where McKay is presented as the comic relief, as the buffoon who does not know how to behave like a normal person. But this is really quite interesting.

The Odyssey had unloaded supplies on Atlantis and it seems as though they had been carrying citrus fruit based on Vala eating one for breakfast while on the ship. They had their meeting between breakfast and lunch, and Sheppard was carrying with him a lemon that he had commandeered at some point between breakfast and lunch and which he then unloaded unto Mitchell. Because McKay says that he had missed lunch, it implies that he had every opportunity to have lunch before they had embarked -- and yet, he had not. McKay, who is hypoglycemic and needs regular sustenance, had skipped lunch before embarking on a space voyage. This is more than a little curious.

Furthermore, McKay seems to be hungry here, which is important for two reasons: for one, when people are in the presence of someone they find attractive, they tend to lose their appetite, especially in the early part of a relationship or when infatuated by someone. There are hormonal reasons for this, the body releasing Oxytocin and Cortisol, which reduce the appetite and constrict the blood vessels in the stomach, actually making it difficult to eat around the object of one's affection. We had actually seen this back when Sheppard and McKay had first started falling in love, McKay's appetite that we had seen was voracious in Underground (S01E08) and him having pointed out that he was hypoglycemic and needed to eat in Hide and Seek (S01E03) and 38 Minutes (S01E05), only for him to seem not to feel hunger at all by the time The Defiant One (S01E12) rolled along and following which Sheppard and McKay had started hooking up. Of course he still needed to eat, and it seems as though Sheppard had been making sure that he did not forget to eat while he was working by bringing him a sandwich he had made himself, as seen in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), but he definitely seemed to have much less of an appetite as the season went on.

What is more, we had just seen in a flashback how Sheppard himself had only nibbled at his sandwich while they had been in the commissary, seeming to suffer from a similar affliction. And yet, McKay seems hungry here. He confesses that he is famished, which is just confirmation of what we already know: he is not physically attracted to Carter. His body is not exhibiting the symptoms of being around the object of his attraction. He is, however, currently light years away from the object of his attraction and seems to have missed lunch. It is also possible that he is even more hungry than missing lunch would warrant given the timing of his comment here is borderline inappropriate. The others were having a moment and he felt the need to make excuses for why he needed to eat now, which just tells us that he is hungry. And his hunger might be explained by him having participated in some strenuous activity besides just packing his bags back when the others were having lunch at Atlantis. To spell it out: they were having sex when he was meant to be having lunch, having skipped meals in favour of being together not for the first time.

One final thing we need to note here is that McKay offers to get the others something, offers to make them sandwiches, which is not just a nice thing to do and betrays his tendency to do acts of service to seek acceptance from people, but also tells us that he seems to think that making sandwiches for someone else is what you do when you want to do something nice for them. It has been implied that Sheppard has made him a sandwich and brought him coffee to the lab, and McKay himself had offered to make Sheppard a sandwich when the two of them had been bantering in Condemned (S02E05). Not only is making a sandwich going to make McKay feel loved but it is also very much going to remind him of Sheppard, and so he might actually opt to do that here instead of looking out at the scene before them that he thinks he should be watching with Sheppard and not without him. We see that McKay basically escapes from the bridge, he removes himself from the situation and actually seems to have tears welling up in his eyes as he takes off. The reason he needs to announce that he is leaving is because has to excuse himself, he has to spend a moment alone to get himself back together. McKay is ever the tragic clown who is seen as a bumbling fool but who actually feels profoundly, who loves deeply, and who really, really misses his guy right now.

Continued in Pt. 6

[sparktober]

Sparktober Watch Party!

Saturday, Oct 7th, 2023

Today's line-up is 1x15 "Before I Sleep" and 1x17 "Letters from Pegasus," scheduled for 4pm-6pm US Central Time (UTC-5).

Download ahead of time or stream along here: https://uofi.box.com/v/sgaS1-BeforeISleep https://uofi.box.com/v/sgaS1-Pegasus Pass is Sparktober

4pm-6pm - Chicago 5pm-7pm - New York (UTC-4) 2pm-4pm - Los Angeles (UTC-7) 10pm-midnight - London (UTC) 8am-10am Sunday 10/8 - Sydney (UTC+11)

We'll count down and discuss in #ep-discussion in Discord. See you there!

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 24: Someone Actually Called the Cops.

So recently I was like, “I should do something different than my usual” and I decided to open up a little thread for critiquing ppl’s short stories, and I kid you not, the very first story I got was someone’s Seto Kaiba erotica. Which, even in erotica form, did not have very much romance in it. So, now that Yugioh will apparently haunt my every waking move forever until I die, lets get back to S4. Lets desperately get back to canon. I miss canon.

Last we left off, Kaiba lost KaibaCorp...again. Really feels like he loses this company once every couple of years (weeks if we count season 1-3). Except, this time, Dartz didn’t read the fine print in the legal files that says the company must be run by a member of the Kaiba family. While that was a huge plot point with Pegasus, turns out that Seto and Mokuba’s memories have been blended so thoroughly, like a very fine Shadow Realm smoothie, that they just...forgot.

And like I’m positive that Roland remembers, but Roland’s not gonna say something and accidentally reveal he’s the 4th Kaiba brother and have to get abducted all the time and actually work for a living. Anyways, they forgot why Pegasus abducted them in the first place in Season 1, and honestly, so did the writers of this season 4 years later. Not like it mattered, because if Seto and Mokuba did take Dartz to court, the world would end before their case would even start.

Which is how, after one talk with Roland, Seto and Mokuba just sort of laid prone on the metaphorical ground and let it wash over them that yes, KaibaCorp is gone.

I really like this extra-long helicopter, PS.

Both members of Kaiba’s Sunglasses Army decided to align themselves with Kaiba, although honestly, I don’t think anyone else in this company has realized that they’ve been bought. It happened...1 hour ago. Like what do you even do if your company randomly gets bought in the middle of a workday? Like no lead up, no indication, just BAM you’ve been bought?

And if Duke works for Pegasus who got bought out by Dartz and then Dartz bought Kaiba Corp-------What does that make Duke? Is he gonna have to start wearing sunglasses inside?

Anyway, Roland knows better than to tell Seto Kaiba he doesn’t work for him anymore while still in the same helicopter as Seto Kaiba, who already crashed one plane today and will crash yet another plane before this episode is through.

(read more under the cut)

Seto decides to align with Yugi since he needs to confront Dartz eventually. Which is when we find out that Seto always planned to align with Yugi and was just giving him a really hard time.

Because over the last several episodes, Seto has had an entire team at this random museum in Florida in order to take some pictures (that really should have already been on the internet but wtv, it was 2003 so maybe it wasn’t?)

It’s like most of the way through s4 and the biker ninjas still send me. How did he make SO MANY biker ninjas? At what point was Dartz like...and now...all my mooks...will be ninja bikers. Or orcs. Mostly Ninja bikers.

Did Alister or the others ever tell him “hey, Master Dartz, I get that your 10000 years old but like...do you not understand what a biker is?” and was Dartz like

“clearly bikers are the most evil thing in the world, obviously.” completely unaware that most bikers are just 45 year old accountants.

In these scenes we also get a gander at their laptops and, if you ever want to see high level life crippling OCD anxiety in picture form, it’s illustrated very clearly right here:

Not only did they draw this keyboard in 1 pt perspective, they used like a ruler to draw all those letters so they were the same size. Some artist put so much time getting this nice and crisp and smooth...and then this happened.

And I’m pretty sure they died after that. I’m pretty sure this scene killed an artist.

It’s at this point that Yami kinda puts two and two together and was like “WE BOUGHT PLANE TICKET’S, YOU ASSHOLES.”

(It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen Mokuba smile like this, and it’s because he’s been hiding the fact for So Many Episodes that he and his brother prepped like hours ago to get this huge dunk on the rest of the party. He just wants to dunk on them so bad. Look at him. His company was bought today. BUT he gets to spend time with his bro dunking.)

Serious question, will Delta refund your flight if the Great Leviathan appears in the sky and tries to eat your soul to reboot the world from the ground up?

Of course not. They will never refund your flight. Trick question.

We switch back over to Rebecca and Duke, who have been absent from this show for so long, I actually forgot what Duke’s name was and had to think for like...5 entire minutes until I remembered that his nickname sounds like a poop and I was like “oh man, what name of poop would it be???” and then I recalled “Dookie. Yes. His name is literally Dookie. Wow that took way too long!”

Then we start a story arc I’d to call “My Kingdom For a Sharpen Filter” where, much like King Lear, the Yugi crew splays themselves on a battle field just strewn with different ways to sharpen an image, but can’t for the life of them use any other one, but the one deep in the heart of what is now DartzCorp.

And so yes, we are going to fly to San Fransisco, hop into ye Olde KaibaCorp, and log into proto-Noah in order to read a language that Arthur Hawkins can already read.

This is nonsense, but they put it there because it’s something to do. And honestly, it’s not a card game, so I’m down for this change-up. Lets go visit a version of Noah’s brain. At least they won’t drop an orichalcos for the 12th episode in a row.

On the way, Seto decides to try and egg on Yugi.

This backfires as you expect it will because Yami doesn’t freakin care. Like he’s not Yugi, he doesn’t care who the King of Games is, he harnesses freakin Dark Magic. The Wizard never cares if he’s King Arthur or not, and in fact, he probably prefers it....

..................Except in that spinoff where they had Yugi as a reincarnation of King Henry VII.

...................................................never mind.

And then Seto Kaiba says this actual line and I just...

WH.

WHHH

WHAT?

This entire show is just watching Yugi desperately cling to his scary ass hobbies. The tagline of Yugioh is “1001 reasons to go back to school and get a real job.”

What does Kaiba think Yugi does when he’s not around? Does he actually think Yugi attends school or sleeps at night or works an actual job? Like...he thinks Yugi has...NO HOBBIES.

Very interesting insight into what Seto considers a hobby and not hobby.

Especially since this Yami, who spends most of his spare time farting around his scary ass brain castle and getting lost. Occasionally he is forced on a date with Tea and wipes minds. That’s it. That’s all the things Yami does outside of hobbies.

Anyway, what is Dartz doing during all of this?

After this, Dartz pulls back the literal curtains on this room to reveal these candles that each hold the soul of someone he’s murdered.

There are not NEARLY enough candles for this segment.

A very brave man to have candles littered on the floor when his hair is down to his ass and all of his mooks have floorduster coats.

I really want to know what the local arts and crafts store thought when Dartz strode in there and bought every single tiny styrafoam skull during the Halloween sale and was like “can I put souls in these? You sell the kind I can put souls in, right?” and then immediately pulled out like a dozen 50% off coupons like a complete asshole.

Anyway, using this candle hocus pocus, Dartz uses the Orichalcos powers to take advantage of something Yugi did in the first episode. We distantly recall there was a giant eyeball in the sky--turns out if you bust up the eyeball with, lets say, a card that has a dragon on it, the eyeball will explode into many tiny Orichalcos pieces that will fall all over planet Earth.

So apparently Yugi didn’t save anyone at all when he busted that eyeball, because he instead set in motion Dartz’ evil plan to eventually use these many tiny Orichalcos pieces like the one seen here, to kill the hell out of people.

Good job, Yugi. Too bad you missed the Actual Bakura.

In fact, actual Bakura is probably the only one who survived this incident because I guarantee that Ryou Bakura is too busy eating all the contents of his fridge out of stress. He’s probably opened his window at this point, seen the crazy lights in the sky and in the street and was like  “Blooooooody nope nopenopenopenopenope” and just locked the windows and doors, turned up Hercule Poirot to max volume, and stuffed his face with cookies.

(Or biscuits, I guess.)

WELL.

I don’t know how to tally that.

Yugioh not only broke the tally I was using to measure the distance they spent commuting this season, it also broke the tally on the amount of people who have died on this children’s show.

That’s a really big number.

We’ve had real duel monsters for a couple weeks but youknow...this time they’re extra, extra, extra real. More so than the last times. Also they’re all Orichalcos versions of their cards so their extra edge now. They’re the hot topic versions of what were already pretty hot-topic ass cards.

MMM. We come full circle, back at a dock, a warehouse, and some huge ass boat.

Right where we belong. Where all friends meet, where we can all finally be one.

Yugioh found one of the only cities that has a very famous and tourist heavy pier/warehouse district in it just so the Yugi gang could finally feel comfortable in their natural habitat. HOWEVER, there’s just one tiny problem in this scene, and it’s that it’s not overlaid with the actual soundscape of a SF pier, which is that of 100000 screaming seals

I don’t have a seal problem, you have a seal problem.

Anyway, the only healthy adults here attempt to follow the children into danger but someone on the animation team was like “we just lost the keyboard drawing guy to that capslock! We cannot lose any more interns to a crowd scene with 9 people in it and 2 dead bodies!” and they uh...

And we immediately eject Roland and whoever that weird sunglasses guy is out of the script. Mokuba gave them a longing glance as they helicoptered away. Maybe because he missed his Dad stand-ins that he went through such efforts to call in the first place. Or more likely, because Mokuba would have preferred to be on that helicopter and far away from whatever the hell is going to go down on this dock.

Honestly the rest of Joey’s storyline this episode is him going rogue because of Mai rage, and it both comes out of nowhere and also seems very on point for him.

Meanwhile, Rebecca’s unbridled rage towards Yami Muto is still low key hilarious to me.

Witness the only character here who thinks Yami should suffer actual consequences and witness Yami just appear to not give a single damn about it.

Nearly spat out my own drink watching this.

The...

...police...

...exist in this universe?

Anyway, while Tristan and Tea try to locate a payphone to dial 911, Seto and Yugi decide to invade Seto’s own company by going through an elevator that you have to reach through the sewers.

Straight up I don’t think SF even has sewers. At least, not in the sense that you can walk in em like New York or Paris or other cities that have sewers. Our sewer systems are very small cuz we got something called “liquefaction” which means our ground is so soft (and artificial--a lot of the land is fake), that when there is an earthquake, certain parts of the city will...liquefy. It’s Terrifying. We kind of...avoid going and building underground except in certain stable places. (like even BART gives me the heebies.)

I just have a very strong distrust of basements, caves and other underground places in general and it’s not because of spiders, or ghosts or whatever, I’m just afraid of faultlines. It’s like having an active volcano, but you just don’t see it, and we haven’t had a Big One since 1989 so...any day now (I mean, 2020 has been such redic content, that I think we’re finally ready)

Again, Japan has way more intense Earthquakes than we do, and yet they have a billion underground subways and very, very tall buildings, so like, this is mostly a big cultural difference between the two of us. And the bedrock. They probably have better bedrock than we do (honestly, I just have no idea).

MASTER HACKER SKILLS.

Almost as good as that time he hacked into Pegasus’ company by dropping a satellite on it. I’m starting to think Seto actually doesn’t know how to use a computer.

Anyway, Seto is faced with...real cards, real monsters, indisputable evidence, and he decides, it’s time. It’s time to finally face facts.

So, while these two are just flinging cards around willy nilly, Tea and Tristan are ...actually talking to police.

4 seasons. They’re actually doing it.

Although, TBH, they probably should have gone to the Japanese Embassy first? Just throwing that out there.

Ah Yugioh, the only kids show around that tells you point blank not to trust cops. Timeless.

U.S

In some weird underground earthquake hazard, Rebecca proves that she is smarter than Seto Kaiba. She’s maybe even the smartest person on this show. Nice that we gave her nothing to do this season but pine over Yugi who is already taken by Tea who he is also not even dating.

Not that I love Rebecca or anything, I actually have a hard time with her voice, but like...they really dropped the ball on Rebecca.

If she does end up joining Kaiba corp as their back up Felicity Smoak while Seto just runs around aimlessly punching stuff that really is just offbrand Arrow but with cards. And with slightly less resurrections.

So, lets get a gander at that computer.

We didn’t get to see Kaiba pull out 12 other discs to complete the installation process for these all these Hard Discs. Maybe the lure of throwing a very aerodynamic CD across the room like a paper card was so strong that his dev team forced him to switch to these defunct squares?

PS, I am a true millennial, OK? But, I don’t remember Hard Discs.

Hard Discs were SO long go. I stopped using these damn things in Elementary school. The last Hard Disc I ever touched was in college, when I had to put my art portfolio on a disc to submit it to my degree. I don't know even why. Everyone had a mac, so I knew no one’s computer in the department even...HAD a disc drive so it was like...whomst among you has this damn computer from 1997? Whomst among you is still using Windows 95? WHY would I put IMAGES on a floppy when I can just email them to you?

Anyway, I had to get a USB hard disc reader, and to get that reader, I had to call my Dad who had legacy software because he’s a computer engineer, and he had to mail it to me.

In that same portfolio review, PS, I also had to submit my portfolio as slides.

I didn’t even know where to produce slides so I had to ask all these old people and go to the last photo processing store on earth to get digital pictures turned into negatives and then turned into freakin slides.

SLIDES.

I honestly think they just did that to weed people out of the art degree.

Anyway, I tell you this story just to say that there is no way in hell that Kaiba was using a hard disc during the height of the CD era. We were CD or go home since 2000. We had pretty decent jump drives at this point. We had wifi. It was realllly bad wifi, but we had it. Your phone could connect to the internet. It would charge you 50 bucks, but it COULD connect.

Who on the Yugioh team DID this?

Anyway lets see these pictures that for which, we spent thousands of dollars in unused plane tickets, destroyed a Caltrain, killed 2 ancient Atlanteans (and their dog), killed 3 random mid-villains, walked across the entire Peninsula, crashed an international plane, and left both the plane and the train to rot gas fuel into the nearest lake which is right next to a ghost graveyard?

Yeaaaaaaaaaah!

Like he reads it and is all “They’re gonna resurrect Atlantis” and it’s like WE KNOW. Dartz and his hooligans have talked about starting their Utopia to reboot the world since Gurimo. Since Day 1.

Man.

Anyways, there was one plus to the pictures, and it was that Seto Kaiba recognized the Oricalchos logo.

just...

The Oricalchos logo is...

...This logo, Seto?

You...didn’t recognize...seriously? Not until just now? You have been inside of this logo, rearing to lose your soul to Alister 2 times, and he only recognized it...just now.

I mean Seto takes a while y’all. He’s a genius, but his memory is so, so bad, that he will Eventually get smart, but you have to wait until like episode 24. But he’ll get there. Just gotta be patient.

And, when he saw it, he wigged out in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

Y’all I feel like I’ve seen to many weird zooms on Kaiba’s crotch in this show. Or just in life in general, especially after that surprise fic. That’s all.

I don’t know why everything exploded, but maybe the logo is cursed in the same way as God Cards? I dunno.

Anyway, this is when Dartz shows up with his brand new dog.

So they run outside onto the roof.

Now listen, does every Kaiba Corp building need the same weird ass roof? Is it like a McDonalds?

Because I’m just picturing this type of roof in SF and I’m having a time.

Forgive me if I made this lemming joke already. He’s just stood on a cliff’s edge so many times I can’t keep up.

RIP Dragon Jet, who took us from S3-S4, you’ll always live on in our memory, you glorious, wasteful, beautiful death trap.

Seto and Yugi are fine by the way, they just kinda jumped out, as you do when you’re an immortal god possessing a small boy and a...whatever the hell Seto is.

It’s at this point we reintroduce Valon because Joey went rogue and has decided to take on Dartz by himself. This is what happens when Tristan leaves the party. You always need Tristan to hold back Joey by his armpits to keep him from fighting random people.

So I guess Valon’s gonna die next episode. That’ll be nice.

What’s great about this show is each arc is just watching each villain die. You know they’ll die. But...how much?

Anyway, that’s all for today. I’m still drawing a hell ton of stuff so I don’t know when the next update will be...but just now I haven’t dropped off or something. I’ll...eventually get to it.

And if you just got here, this is a link to read all of these in chrono order.

Anyway, I mentioned Hercule Poirot, (because watching a hell ton of BBC was how I spent time with my family when I was a kid, and my very Southern Grandma freakin LOVED Hercule Poirot) So here is the best subplot of that show, which is David Suchet eating stuff.

And which doesn’t want to embed for some reason. Probs can’t embed more than one video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17antzzJrzQ

[reeltoreal-cl]

Black TV Shows & BGLOs

In 2020, the United States is finally confronting its issues with racism in society as well as the entertainment industry. With that, there has been a surge in black content on various streaming platforms.

Television shows with predominantly African-American casts often feature a glimpse at special pockets of black culture. One pocket often featured is the cultural experience of pledging historically black fraternities and sororities, otherwise known as Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs). The five fraternities and four sororities that comprise BGLOs, affectionately called “The Divine Nine,” are officially known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC).

Feature films tend to focus either on stepping, as with Stomp The Yard and Step Sisters, or the issue of pledging vs. hazing, as with School Daze and Burning Sands. Black sitcoms and other small screen productions, however, tend to explore BGLO issues with more nuance and humor.

A Different World - Ep. #216 - “It’s Greek to Me” - 1989 - NBC

Hillman College best friends Dwayne and Ron are in the midst of pledging fictional fraternity Kappa Lambda Nu. As time goes on, Dwayne becomes disillusioned with the process and argues with Ron over whether what they’re enduring is worth the benefits of the frat. Dwayne eventually drops line while Ron crosses into the brotherhood, and they see that their friendship can survive different paths. The matter is handled amicably and respectfully, and Ron is seen in future episodes as an active member.

Season 2 is when A Different World found its identity within the HBCU experience, as Debbie Allen took over the direction of the series after Denise’s character departed. Debbie and sister Phylicia Rashad are both Howard University alumnae, and Phylicia is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

A Different World - Ep. #421 - “Sister to Sister, Sister” - 1991 - NBC

Though no episodes depicted Whitley pledging, in this one Whitley oversees Kim’s pledge process for fictional sorority Alpha Delta Rho. Like its predecessor, the episode questions the pledge process itself, and further, the ethics of whether someone should pledge a friend. While Whitley defends her actions, Kim ultimately gets revenge when she over-seasons Whitley’s eggs with pepper. Whitley realizes she was being harder on Kim because they were friends, and learns how to be a better sister overall.

You can watch A Different World with a subscription to Amazon Prime Video.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - Ep. #408 - “Blood is Thicker Than Mud” - 1993 - NBC

Once Will and Carlton matriculate to University of Los Angeles, they decide to pledge fictional fraternity Phi Beta Gamma. However, things take a turn for the worst when Will finds out he made the cut, but Carlton didn’t because he doesn’t “fit their image.” When Carlton finds out the truth, he reads them for filth in an iconic speech that defends his authenticity. There is no mention of the fraternity in the rest of their college experience.

You can watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with a subscription to HBO Max.

Moesha - Ep. #224 - “Prom Fright” - 1997 - UPN

The episode begins with Frank reminiscing about Kappa Alpha Psi with his frat brother, complete with cane twirling and chanting, “I'm pretty on my left, I'm pretty on my right, I'm so damn pretty I can't sleep at night!” Frank believes his frat brother’s Harvard-bound son would be a good fit to date Moesha as an alternative to Q, but later finds out the boy isn’t interested in Kappa or anything Frank had hoped for. The boy even says he isn’t interested in organizations that perpetuate a “herd mentality,” a rarity in depictions of children with parents in BGLOs.

Moesha - Ep. #401 - “Moesha Meets Brandy” - 1998 - UPN

There is no discussion about Greek life in this episode, however, Moesha’s new college boyfriend Aaron and his frat brother show up wearing Kappa Alpha Psi shirts for their weekend trip to Big Bear.

Moesha - Ep. #407 - “A Terrible Thing Happened on My Tour of College” - 1998 - UPN

Moesha and her friends take a campus tour for prospective student weekend of Maynard University. Part of their introduction to campus is a step show featuring Omega Psi Phi, Kappa Alpha Psi (and Moesha’s ex Aaron from #401), and Delta Sigma Theta. This episode centers on Moesha grappling with the betrayal of a college student named Melvin drugging her drink at a college party, but thankfully Aaron comes to her rescue.

One of the writers on Moesha was Mara Brock Akil, who pledged Delta Sigma Theta at Northwestern University.

You can watch Moesha with a subscription to Netflix.

Sister, Sister - Ep. #608 - “Greek to Me” - 1998 - The WB

Like the transition from ABC to The WB, the show saw Tia and Tamera transition from high school to University of Michigan. As the twins are exposed to Greek life, Tamera finds her anniversary dinner plans interrupted when Jordan goes undercover for student newspaper to investigate hazing. Meanwhile, Ray tries to convince Tia to pledge Alpha Kappa Alpha, while Lisa tries to sway her towards Delta Sigma Theta.

Lead actor Tim Reid wore an Alpha Phi Alpha sweatshirt in this episode, as he pledged the fraternity at Norfolk Stage College.

You can watch Sister, Sister with a subscription to Netflix.

The Parkers - Ep. #101 - “Grape Nuts” - 1999 - UPN

As Nikki and Kim start Santa Monica Community College, they also decide to pledge the fictional Alpha Alpha Alpha, or “Triple A’s.” As they continue in the pledge process, however, Nikki becomes increasingly fed up, which leads her to tell off the sorority sisters. She drops the line while Kim goes on to cross.

This is a rare depiction of a mother and daughter on the same line, as well as an extreme age gap in pledges for a collegiate one.

The Parkers - Ep. #404 - “Meter Maids Need Love, Too” - 2002 - UPM

Kim and Stevie are troubled by three ex-cons pledging their same sorority. Meanwhile, a fictional fraternity pledge bothers Professor Oglevee and T. While some sororities have clauses against criminal records, this is a rare depiction of one in which women who’ve traded prison for college are able to participate.

You can watch The Parkers with subscriptions to Netflix and YouTube TV.

Girlfriends - Ep. #616 - “Game Over” - 2006 - UPN / The CW

The show’s transition from UPN to The CW coincided with Joan’s transition to “It Girl” with the success of her restaurant The J-Spot. In this episode she mentions that she will be honored at a gala for business women thrown by Delta Sigma Theta, and needs to ask one of her potential suitors to be her date.

With this show being set post-college, this reference is a reminder that sororities and fraternities continue to be involved in their communities well beyond the collegiate pledge process and for good causes.

Girlfriends creator Mara Brock Akil pledged Delta Sigma Theta at Northwestern University, and previously wrote on Moesha.

You can watch Girlfriends with a subscription to Netflix.

Luke Cage - Ep. #108 - “Blowin’ Up The Spot” - 2016 - Netflix

When the police bring in Mariah for questioning, Misty jokes with Priscilla, “Look, I was just about to compel her to make a statement before you let your little soror Skee-Wee on out of here.” This is a reference to Alpha Kappa Alpha, but Priscilla corrects Misty with, “Oo-Oop,” indicating that she and Mariah are members of Delta Sigma Theta instead.

Similar to Girlfriends, the show exists outside of the collegiate realm. Mariah is a politician and Prisicilla is an inspector, showing that women in these organizations go on to have prolific careers, in which they are often expected to have each other’s backs in various situations.

You can watch Luke Cage with a subscription to Netflix.

Dear White People - Ep. #104 - “Chapter IV” - 2017 - Netflix

With a blast from the past, this episode sheds light on Coco and Sam’s friendship as freshmen and how their different experiences affected it. Coco is eager to join fictional sorority Alpha Delta Rho, while Sam wants to join the Black Student Union. Alpha Delta Rho is more interested in Sam than Coco due to colorism, and when Coco finds out, she drops. When the sorority sisters later attempt to enter the Pegasus Party that Coco is in, she denies them access.

Colorism is a topic that many in the African-American community are finally beginning to have open conversations about. This is another rare depiction among portrayals of BGLOs, as it is a controversial part of the culture that speaks to issues of elitism.

Alpha Delta Rho may be a callback to A Different World, as it bears the same name and similar colors to Whitley’s fictional sorority. Early on in the episode, Sam even describes their historically black dorm “like a mini Hillman College.”

You can watch Dear White People with a subscription to Netflix.

Marlon - Ep. #208 - “Homecoming” - 2018 - Netflix

When Marlon and Stevie return to Howell University, Marlon is reunited with his frat brothers, with whom he founded a fictional fraternity for those rejected by the more popular ones on campus. Marlon looks forward to overseeing the latest line of pledges, until he realizes that Stevie is on line as an alumnus. It is later revealed that Marlon was the one who blocked Stevie from joining while they were in college, and Stevie becomes determined to prove his worth. Stevie ultimately completes the process, and the episode is punctuated by a step show.

You can watch Marlon with a subscription to Netflix.

While popular 90s sitcoms and TV shows in the late 2010s feature similar references to BGLO experiences, they often were able to host more complex conversations about them in the span of an episode, especially in regards to character values and relationship dynamics. Here’s hoping that as the new renaissance of black television takes place, we see even more diverse perspectives on these fraternities and sororities in relation to issues at large.

[callunavulgari]

Scrapbook 2017, Take 1

Scrapbook for 2017, because I actually kept up with it last year (for the most part) and it helped a lot. So, rules!

Italicized titles = enjoyed muchly, bold titles = love, titles with an asterisk* = OBSESSION and titles in (brackets) are re-watches/re-reads. And lastly, strikethough = DISLIKE.

Goals are: read thirty-five new books this year, finish four video games, finish writing and publish the Sabriel AU, and write something original. Even if it’s just a collection of short stories.

MOVIES

January:

(Flubber)

Arrival

(Spirited Away)

KH X

iBoy

February:

The Awakening

(Finding Dory)

(The X-Files)

(V For Vendetta)

La La Land

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

(Interstellar)

Ex. Machina

March:

No Country For Old Men

Beetlejuice

Pontypool

Logan

Get Out

Beauty and the Beast (remake)

It

April:

Tales From Earthsea

(The Secret World of Arriety)

(Inside Out)

(Kubo and the Two String)

May:

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

(It)

The Secret Life of Pets

(Moana)

Stargate

Your Name

BOOKS

January:

Vicious | V.E. Schwab

Goldenhand | Garth Nix

Frankenstein | Mary Shelley

Illuminae | Amie Kaufman [Fin]

February:

Before the Fall | Noah Hawley

The Martian | Andy Weir

March:

Before the Fall | Noah Hawley 

The Martian | Andy Weir

Annihilation | Jeff Vandermeer

April:

Annihilation | Jeff Vandermeer [Fin]

Vicious  | V.E. Schwab [Fin]

A Conjuring of Light | V.E. Schwab [Fin]

Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero [Fin]

May:

(American Gods)

PODCASTS

May:

The Bright Sessions Eps 1-31

Alice Isn’t Dead Eps 1-2

TV SHOWS BY SEASON

January:

Stargate Atlantis s5

Sherlock s4

Gate

Steven Universe

Travelers

Trollhunters

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Skam

Voltron

Konosuba

Stargate SG-1 (s1)

Taboo

February:

Stargate SG-1 s1, s2

Yamishibai

Frequency s1

(The X-Files)

Grey’s Anatomy s3

Taboo

Legion

The Flash

Black Mirror s1

March:

Legion

The Flash s3

Taboo

Supernatural

(Hannibal s1)

April:

Legion 

Rick and Morty s3

The Flash

Grey’s Anatomy s4, s5

(Hannibal s1)

The Expanse s1

Trollhunters s1

American Gods

May:

American Gods

Sense8 s2

The Flash

Grey’s Anatomy s5, s6

Wynnona Earp

Grace and Frankie

Riverdale

Steven Universe

VIDEO GAMES

January:

Pokemon Moon (7 hrs)

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Dwarf Rogue; 1 hr)

Final Fantasy X (2 hrs)

Dragon Age: Origins (Male Human Mage; 52 hrs)

KH 2.8 | BBS; A Fragmentary Passage (3hrs)

KH DDD Remake (1 hour)

February:

Pokemon Moon (15 hrs)

Dragon Age: Origins (Male Human Mage; 52 hrs)

Mass Effect 2 (Male Soldier Sheppard; 1 hr)

Assassin’s Creed 2 (8 hrs)

Silent Hill 3

March:

Fallout New Vegas

Horizon Zero Dawn (80 hrs) [Fin]

Mass Effect Andromeda (Female Ryder; 41 hrs)

April:

Mass Effect Andromeda (Female Ryder; 83 hours) [Fin]

Persona 5 (80 hrs)

May:

Persona 5 (96 hrs)

Nier: Automata (4 hrs)

LoZ: Breath of the Wild(40 hrs?)

DELIGHTFUL FIC

January:

Stargazers by Ruby_Wednesday (Captive Prince; Laurent/Damen;  Five years after the Truce of Marlas, Damen and Laurent meet again in Delpha. They're forced to work together to soothe the growing tension between their countries. But Laurent does not forgive easily and Damen's not that sorry.)

con·tra·dic·tion by caseyvalhalla (Yu Yu Hakusho; Kurama/Hiei;  Mukuro raised the paper until it was out of range, just to make Hiei lean up on tiptoe, just to see that curl of anger on his mouth again, and she smiled sweetly enough to bare all of her teeth. “Why are you exchanging love letters with the right hand of my political rival?”)

in another time in another castle by caseyvalhalla (KH; AkuRoku; No one grows up without regrets.But time moves in cycles, winds back on itself, and sooner or later that kid you used to play video games with is gonna reappear just in time to ruin your day.)

Hernandes & Jones by antistar_e (kaikamahine) (SU; Japis;  In Miami, it's a statuette. Jasper tells her, "Come on, I need your help," and Lapis says, "That's nice. What part of 'I'm not wearing a catsuit' do you not understand?")

i have my body (and you have yours) by astoryaboutwar (YoI; Yuuri/Victor;  Yuuri overflows with the weight of things that have been said, trembles with what remains.)

A Somaal Universe by antistar_e (kaikamahine) (SU; Japis; Connie flips over the next card. "'Most likely to -'" She reads out loud, and then dissolves into laughter and has to start over, propping the card up on her bump. "'Most likely to freak out when you go into labor and break the speed limit getting to the hospital?'" "Pearl," Amethyst and Jasper say in unison.)

Let's Give Ourselves Promises of Our Unending byaimmyarrowshigh, nichestars (SW; Shara/Kes/Cassian; Captain Cassian Andor tries to define what it means to live after he should have died. His second life is a softer one.)

Abstain by resonant (SGA; Mcshep;  Aliens force John and Rodney not to have sex.)

Advantage by resonant (SGA; Mcshep;  This slave-owner thing was a lot of responsibility.)

Streets In A World Underneath It All by ISMENETRUTH (SGA; Mcshep; "Puddlejumper One: An Exclusive Portrait of John Sheppard on Atlantis," John reads aloud, smirking. "Funny, I'm pretty sure I've never met the author.")

Faith healing by aesc (SGA; Mcshep; The signal had started a year and a half ago, maddening, popping up in Chicago, D.C., Charlotte, New York City, Santa Fe, Montgomery, Santa Cruz, Seattle, a town in Kansas with a name like Desperation and a place in North Dakota called, from what Rodney could remember, Sweaty Groin.)

The home front by aesc (SGA; Mcshep; “This had better be the Sheppard residence,” Rodney says, brilliant, agitated life and volume against a monotonous day and Dave’s subdued welcome, “because I’ve been driving around for hours and if I ever find the woman who did the voice on my GPS system I’m going to personally amputate her vocal cords.”)

Reality by Resonant (SGA; Mcshep; McKay was the perfect object for a crush you never intended to do anything about.)

Cultural Exchange by lamardeuse (SGA; Mcshep;  "What does he think we are, Fine Arts majors?" Rodney grumbled.)

Do You Know What I Know? by DevilDoll (SGA; Mcshep;  "You need to come here, "John said, crooking a finger, "so I can slap you in the head.")

Pegasus Non-Verbal by igrab (SGA; Mcshep;  John always gets a little thrill when he sees Rodney sign at him across the room, casually dissing people literally standing next to him and John is the only one who knows.)

Junk Cheap by DevilDoll (SGA; Mcshep;  If you were thinking you'd love to read an AU where Rodney is a college professor and John owns a junk shop, this is the story for you.)

Denial by DevilDoll (SGA; Mcshep;  "John talks about you all the time.")

All The Way To The Bone by respoftw (SGA; Mcshep;  John is ready for a new beginning and he wants the tattoo to commemorate it. )

February:

Calling Down the Lightning by dreamwaffles (SGA; Mcshep;  Dr. Rodney McKay, PhD PhD, is a wizard.)

Forget Me Not by maisierita (SGA; Mcshep; John the servant turns out not to be anything like Rodney would have imagined.)

Unidentified by fiercelydreamed (SGA; Mcshep; Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.)

into that secret place where no one dares to go by verity (TW; Stiles/Lydia; 4k; The first time he felt Lydia's soul, it felt like a sneeze.) 

Black Helicopters at Dawn by whizzy (SGA; Mcshep; 240k;  Screw the bet. Rodney was going to prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Oh, and incidentally, he might just catch the United States Air Force with their pants around their ankles.)

Out in the Open by Xparrot (SGA; Mcshep;  It's Situation Normal for the team when they're caught in an avalanche, but digging themselves out uncovers more than they counted on.)

A Rational Universe by Xparrot (SGA; Mcshep;  "You're a lot more encouraging than my last friendly hallucination," Rodney says.)

Speech Deprived by Xparrot (SGA; Mcshep;  Rodney was released from the infirmary with painkillers, icepacks, and a strict injunction to limit all unnecessary speech for at least three days.)

Lord of the Sea (masterpost) by Multi (SGA; Mcshep; Among the Goa'uld, Mer'deth was something of an oddity.)

The Return to Normalcy by  Cypher (SGA; Mcshep;  The three month anniversary of the exile--as John thinks of it--falls on a three-day weekend.)

Still by murron (SGA; Mcshep;  On any other day, John might have shot Rodney a quick look, broadcasting his doubt and checking whether Rodney shared it. With a sinking heart, Rodney admitted it would be foolish to expect that kind of exchange right now.)

March:

Surrogate God by PepperPrints (The Flash; Reverb/Harry;  When Harrison Wells returns to Earth-2, someone is waiting for him. Reverb survived Zoom, but with the cost of losing his abilities. Convinced that Harry can return his powers to him, Reverb holds him captive, and he's asking for more than Harry can deliver.)

My Father Before Me by telleer (SGA; Mcshep;  Even after twenty years, Rodney still has no idea how to raise children.)

We Cannot Live Within by laureltreedaphne (SGA; Mcshep; John grinned. "So McKay's attractive to everyone?")

Before We Get Going, Here's Some Books I'd Like You to Read by Chash (The 100; Bellamy/Clarke;  Two months into her new job at the library, Clarke knows the following things about Bellamy Blake: they reserve a lot of books, they have good taste in said books, and they're really good at avoiding her.)

Livewire by marauders_groupie (The 100; Bellamy/Clarke;  Clarke Griffin finds 'Atlas' written on her wrist and Bellamy Blake sees flowers bloom on his skin.)

For Love of the Hunt by acidtonguejenny (Horizon Zero Dawn; Nil/Aloy;  If she’s hard on Nil, it’s because she understands more of him than she wants to.)

Heavy Weapons and How to Use Them by Armengard (Horizon Zero Dawn; Aloy/Petra;  The world ended, and then it didn't, and Aloy seeks a new purpose. In the meantime, visiting Free Heap and one Petra Forgewoman every so often is certainly worthwhile, as Aloy eventually finds out.)

Like a Lightning Strike by miss_aphelion (Hannibal; Will/Hannibal;  In a world where omegas are instant celebrities and treated like royalty, Will just wants to be left alone.)

babel by spqr (X-Men; Charles/Erik;  Two days ago Charles screamed loud enough that Erik heard him halfway around the world, but he didn’t listen.)

Under the Sea by astolat (SGA; Mcshep;  "Oh, thank you," Rodney yelled over the howls of do that conga!, "because what my night was missing was being groped next to the beer keg by a guy in a tiara.")

Lord, Save Me from Your Followers by anamatics (Supergirl; Lena/Kara; Kara, perhaps out of a want for thoroughness in her story, perhaps out of a Millennial-born urge to creep on a the social media of a woman she finds intriguing, discovers that Lena Luthor has a pretty active following on Instagram one afternoon not long after their first meeting.)

The God Machine by robotboy (Marvel; Loki/Tony; Tony goes undercover to spy on Loki. It's a fucking disaster.)

April:

Debt by Storynerd (Marvel; Tony/Loki;  Tony Stark shouldn't find Loki fascinating, but he does, because all he’s ever wanted to do is take things apart to see how they work. Besides, he’s never been any good at following the rules.)

in stasis by ilgaksu (Voltron; Keith/Lance; The story starts like this: with a story where you think you know the end, until it turns out you don’t, until it turns out you didn’t have a clue.)

Yuri!!! in Space by Fahye (YOI; Yuuri/Victor;  "No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win.")

hood & glove by Fahye (YOI; Yuri/Otabek;  "I don't mess with the fae," Otabek says.)

between the motion and the act by Fahye (Captive Prince; Damen/Laurent; "They don't want it to be real," Laurent says. He touches lightly, with his fingertips, where he's written LOVE WINS. "They want us to sell them a fantasy, and they want just enough reality that they can pretend it might happen to them, one day.")

May:

A Perfect Commotion by Ruby_Wednesday (Captive Prince; Damen/Laurent;  Laurent needs this job. Not in the I need to put food on the table and a roof over my head kind of way. He's got a generous inheritance, thank you very much. No, he needs this job to prove he is a functioning adult who did not waste his late mother's money on an expensive education. He can be normal, whatever that is.)

Don't Turn Me Home Again by gyzym (Hawaii Five-O; Danny/Steve;  After a rough day of island living, Danny wakes up in New Jersey and learns the hard way to be careful what he wishes for.)

What We Pretend We Can't See by gyzym (HP; Harry/Draco; Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought.)

Favor for Your Four-Chambered Heart by @kaikamahine (SU; Jaspis; Never Let Me Go AU)**

With Fire in Their Eyes by Asuka Kureru (Askerian) (YoI; Yuuri/Viktor; He lands butterfly-light in a swirl of hair and glittering gauze, and the ceiling crashes to the rink all around him.)

An Unpredictable Amount of Turtles by skoosiepants (TW; Sterek;  Stiles says, “I have a five year plan. A five year plan to popularity that will tank the minute I meet this guy.”)

Bring a Towel by verity (SGA; Mcshep;  It was just Rodney's luck that the guy with the strongest expression of the ATA gene on Earth was some lanky alpha who couldn't follow an order as basic as "don't touch anything.")

Crypsis by zoemathemata (SGA; Mcshep; Rodney McKay is the pissiest Alpha John Sheppard has ever met. And that’s saying something.)

Zen and the Art of Jumper Maintenance by Indybaggins (SGA; Mcshep; The one where Rodney gets sucked in and John… follows. Featuring a quirky John, Rodney in orange robes, crazy Ancient-worship, sheep milking and jumpers that aren't broken but need to be fixed anyway.)

Out of West by rageprufrock (SGA; Mcshep;  In 1991, Desert Storm began, Pete Rose got banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Rodney McKay was framed for academic fraud.)

A Slightly Different Quality of Light by rageprufrock (SGA; Mcshep;  John's very first memory, the one Rodney finds after he goes through six separate data terminals--all of which he has relocated to a roomy lab with lots of windows--is of the sky.)

Bell Curve, or, Ladies Night at the Boom Boom Room by rageprufrock (SGA; Mcshep;  In his rational mind, Rodney knew that following a girl who'd just dumped you into a strip club was really, really pathetic.)

Lock the Door by rageprufrock (SGA; Mcshep; "You can't possibly be this stupid," is what Rodney finally decides to start with.)

No Less Unthinkable by rageprufrock (Yuri On Ice; Yuuri/Viktor;  In which Katsuki Yuuri fights a losing battle with chronic anxiety, the quadruple Salchow, and his own judgment four drinks in — but wins the war.)

DELIGHTFUL FANVIDS

January:

Glitter & Gold (Voltron)

► Multifandom | Saturn

Yuri On Love

A Sadness Runs Through Him - a Gravity Falls PMV

win | multifandom (2015 mashup)

hero | multifandom (2016 mashup)

Multifandom | Goodbye 2016

take it slow | multifandom

ruins | The x-files

McShep - Run Baby Run

McShep - Can't Pretend

February:

Superhero; SGA, Mckay/Sheppard (mcshep) 

Burning Desire (Peter/Roman)

►Purple Lamborghini

►MAD HATTER

Multipsychos | I got blood on my hands

Dean Winchester | Born to be wild (8k)

multifandom || The Apotheosis of War (TYS) 

star wars || timelines

Captain America • Symphony of Violence

March:

N/A

April:

As Much As If You Were A God 

►MultiFandom | Believer

"Lenny"/David [Legion] || give it a twist

►MultiFandom | Stay

May:

Kylo Ren || believer

DELIGHTFUL MUSIC

January:

Fassine | Feather Jesus 

DJ Earworm Mashup - United State of Pop 2016 (Into Pieces)

What’s The Use In Feeling Blue - Steven Universe\

Caravan Palace - Lone Digger

Yoga Session 08 - Music for Meditation and Relaxation

Utopia (Jana Hunter Remix)

Not Afraid Anymore

Susanne Sundfør - (LidoLido Remix) The Brothel

Run Baby Run - The Rigs

February:

The Man Who Sold the World - Midge Ure (2010 Remaster) 

Donna Burke - Sins of the Father

Liz Phair - Got My Own Thing

Seinabo Sey - Pistols At Dawn

Laura Marling - Rambling Man

Willy Moon - Railroad Track

March:

Undiscovered First - Feist

Kubo Soundtrack

Matt Maeson - "Cringe"

Tribe Society - Kings

Elephante - Black Ivory

BISHOP - River

BISHOP - Wild Horses

Lisa Hannigan Oh You Pretty Things

Nina Simone - Feeling Good (Bassnectar Remix)

MIX - MAURICE RAVEL Bolero

Rag-n-Bone Man - Human

April:

The Judge - Twenty One Pilots

Horizon Zero Dawn - Complete Soundtrack (OST)

Believer - Imagine Dragons

Kygo, Selena Gomez - It Ain't Me

K.Flay - Blood In The Cut

Stargate - Waterfall ft. P!nk, Sia

Portugal. The Man - "Feel It Still"

Doc Robinson - Golden Daze

Iko, Iko - the Dixie Cups

Brian Reitzell feat. Mark Lanegan - “In The Pines”

May:

Feist - Century 

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon - Rafferty

Evil Woman - Electric Light Orchestra

Guardians Inferno (feat. David Hasselhoff)

Moby - Memory Gospel

Above & Beyond - Good For Me

Jack Johnson - The Sharing Song

Lamb - Wise Enough

Otto Knows feat. Avicii - Back Where I Belong

Emmit Fenn - Painting Greys

Bon Iver - Holocene

Made In Heights - Murakami

DVBBS & Shaun Frank - La La Land

Totemo - Host

Years & Years - Worship

Klyne - Paralyzed

Embrace - Goldroom

MØ - Say You'll Be There

Zella Day - Sweet Ophelia

Every Other Freckle - Alt J

Angel Haze - Moonrise Kingdom

BANKS - Better

Marian Hill - Got It

Glass Animals - Holiest Feat. Tei-Shi 

WRITTEN FIC

January:

Piece From a Satyr Play (SW; Reylo; 141 words; Her hair is done up in white ribbons, three enormously lopsided buns trailing down the back of her neck.) 

Wasted Early Sunday Morning (SW; Reylo; 434 words;  Her skin is smoother than his, smoother than many of the people that he’s touched in his life, and he aches to touch it now, watching her stretch lazily in the early morning sunlight, spine arching like a cats.)

Cosmic Love (SGA; Mcshep; 786 words;  There’s solid matter under the palm of his hand, a beating pulse, and a heart to go with it. A living person that Rodney thought that they’d lost.)

can’t help but be wrong in the dark (The Flash; Barry/Julian; 2,942 words;  The day that Allen had snarled an insult back in response to one of Julian’s cutting remarks, he’d gone home and fisted his cock furiously, thinking about the slant of Allen’s mouth and how it would look smeared with come. How Allen’s hair would feel, knotted in Julian’s fingers as he fucked his mouth.

eat flowers, breathe light (SGA; Mcshep; 1585 words;  John gives Rodney a dreamy smile, swaying slightly towards him, and says, “You have really beautiful eyes, you know that?” )

February:

Bifurcation Theory (TW; Stiles/Derek/Lydia; 7208 words; Lydia sucks in another shaky breath, trying to think of a polite way to explain that she's sorry, that this was a mistake, and she didn’t mean to bother him. Just as she’s opening her mouth, Derek sighs gustily, the sound breaking apart with static in her ear. “What’s Stiles done now?” he asks, his tone resigned.

March:

Ain't At Home (Home's Where I'm Going) (Horizon Zero Dawn; Aloy/Vala, Aloy/Avad; 2 Chapters - WIP; 3420 words;  “Not all comforts are bad,” Vala whispers, and Aloy shudders apart.)

April:

Ain't At Home (Home's Where I'm Going) (Horizon Zero Dawn; Aloy/Nil; Aloy/Petra; 2 chapters - WIP; 1872 words;  She’s beautiful, deadly, her eyes gone sharp and flinty as she stares down each of her victims. Nil licks his lips, throat working when she turns to him afterwards, eyes soft again, now that the killing is done.)

love, can't protect you now (SGA; Mcshep; 1635 words;  “When they come,” Rodney tells him quietly, “I won’t kill you.”)

May:

Ain't At Home (Home's Where I'm Going) (Horizon Zero Dawn; Aloy/Erend; Final Chapter; 1539 words) 

Say You'll Be There (The Flash; Barry/Iris, Barry/Thawne; 1159 words;  Barry swallows, fingers tangling with hers, and says, “Storms make me think of him.”)

FANMIXES/GRAPHICS

January:

Keep Your Heart Inside: A mix for love, hazy and undefined, the kind that leaves you wanting.

February:

N/A

March:

you know the words: a mix for your inner weeaboo.

April:

Cotton Candy Skyline: music for picking at scabs.

May:

[uniformbravo]

since it seems to be steadily taking over my whole brain now im just gonna let myself ramble about yugioh for a bit

idk i just keep thinkin abt how it was my favorite show when i was a kid... like not just i liked it a lot, but u know how when ur a kid u pick ur Favorite things & it’s a big deal, like i had Declared this as my Favorite Show

i honestly don’t rly even remember my experience with it in terms of my Feelings like i dont remember having a favorite character or anything like that, i just have a lot of Evidence of me liking it lmao like. u know those school folders they sell at like walmart that are themed after different shows n stuff, i had a yugioh one & it was cool af (i still have it actually, i’d get it to take a pic but it’s in my brother’s room & its almost 1:30 am). i remember my best friend at the time (like. 3rd grade) said she hated yugioh so she would always scoff at my folder lmaooo but like i knew she was wrong so

o shit i found a pic of it online tho here it is

gangs all here...... dam when they droppin their latest single tho lol

i also got this yugioh play set for christmas once, it was like. a plastic dueling arena that u would set little monster figurines on and each player had a bunch of little orange plastic balls that they would take turns shooting at each other’s monsters until urs were the last standing, or something like that? all i have left of it are the little orange balls and a couple of the hologram projectors that went in each of the 4 corners of the arena. i wish i knew what happened to the monsters tho, bc they were actually pretty cool. there was like. a blue guy. and a gold one. i think one of them might have been the summoned skull? i think they were mostly monsters that became plot important later in the show & i’ll definitely recognize them when they show up but i haven’t gotten there yet.... im pretty sure they were basically exodia’s pals tho, like reputable monsters. the Big Boys

hwhgosFHOFJ I FOUND A PIC OF THIS ONE TOO

HELL YEA BOY THATS FUCKIN IT BRO AAAAAAAAAAAA

every bone in my body just liquefied and became nostalgia from looking at this image GHRGHGH I WANT IT SO BAD

ofc i also have a deck of actual cards w/ such iconic features as the dark magician (which is Shiny), summoned skull, change of heart, and this one rly beat up guy i found half buried in the sand on the playground at school one day named griggle, my prized possession

(imagine this but more fucked up looking)

oh and how could i forget, i fuckin. made my own deck of cards, it’s like a bunch of cut out pieces of scrap paper that are all different sizes & i made up a bunch of monsters and drew them & my favorite part (i looked thru it the other day) is there’s a couple cards in there with just numbers on them which i assume was either meant to be added to the monsters’ attack or ur own life points, but one of them is 500 and the other is 50,000,000,000 which is absurd i literally just wrote as many zeroes as i could fit on the paper & it shows, imagine drawing that fucking card my god. i imagine that in my mind it was like, meant to be really rare & hard to get but like. the whole deck is only like 30 cards? so i guess @ whoever faces me u better fuckinnn say ur prayers

that’s all the physical evidence i can think of, but i do have some memories..... fuck i remember watching all the new eps air on saturday mornings aaaa oh man there are a few Classique moments of the show im excited to get to, not by virtue of being particularly Good but because despite having been such a big fan of the show i like barely remember anything from it at all, so these little bits and pieces that i do have r like. exciting. im arranging them into a bullet point list

first of all, and i may be wrong, but i stg at one point pegasus drops someone thru a trap door in his castle or smth??? or someone gets thrown out a window or Something idk why this moment stands out so much but if it doesn’t happen then i will be Very disappointed (i think it was bandit keith. get fucked)

this one’s already happened a few times but for some reason a memory that stood out to me from this show is yami yugi being like “pegasus!” in his Deep Man Voice all like >:o so i was v happy to hear that. also while im here this is pretty obvious but the way he says “previously on yugioh” at the beginning of eps is great, love it, having a blast w/ that one

one saturday there was a big two-part hour long special called “joey’s betrayal” where like idk joey has to duel yugi for Evil Reasons or something and i was SO HYPE for that special bc i was like O Shit joey’s Evil now and like. this was around the time that my sister kinda stopped wanting to get up early for saturday morning cartoons lol so she was sleeping but i was So excited for the ep & i didnt want her to miss it so i left her a note on the desk in our room for her to see that had all the info abt the episode like the title & the time it would be on so u know she could like, wake up & See it & come out n watch it, but the whole thing went by & she never woke up so i had 2 go back in there & take the note down & throw it away looooooooool. but yea so im REALLY excited to get to that episode due to its Impact

eventually i kinda lost interest in yugioh & stopped keeping up with it but obvs the show kept going on w/o me & one day i turned on the tv & it was on & it was like, tristan was trapped in the body of a teddy bear or something? & i was like wow thats weird glad i stopped watching & i never looked back but now I Am Looking & i can’t wait to get to that episode, however-old-i-was me was a Fool

this one doesn’t count but i remember thinking the theme song was SO COOL (and i was right that shit slaps so hard )& being disappointed there were no lyrics i could sing along to..... except for when it was time to d-d-d-duel ofc

FUC I JUST REMEMBERED ANOTHER THING I OWNED HOW COULD I FORGET oh my godddd it was a yugioh poster that i had on my wall for so long & i am EXTREMELY sad that i don’t have it anymore, idk why i thought i could just Throw It Out like a CLOWN, but it was like. it had yugi and friends on it (tho i think one of them might have been missing, it was either tristan or tea, also i just learned how tea’s name is spelled fuckin HUH), & yugi is like, he’s little yugi & he’s got his hands & maybe part of his face? pressed up against the “glass” (the barrier separating his world from ours, keeping him Contained), i remember this detail clearly bc i looked at it a lot and learned how to draw that effect from that specific poster... anyway the best part of the whole thing is that it came from like a scholastic book fair or something so it said in big letters “it’s time to READ!” it was SO good & im DEVASTATED i don’t have it anymore........ to gaze upon its brilliance one last time....................

anyway i think thats all my yu-gi-oh related childhood memories woah why did i type out the whole ass title like that this time damn what the fuck lmaooo 

rly sad abt the poster actually the more i think abt it the cuter it sounds tbh i wanna see that art again..... how could this happen.... i tried looking it up like the other stuff but i couldn’t find anything at all u_u

ok it’s late af now i need to go to bed before i pass ou

[jumpingpuddles]

Something I’m noticing on this rewatch is that Teyla and Elizabeth are always backing each other up whenever there’s a conflict, and I love it.

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Pegasus Project, Pt. 2

The meeting continues, and we see that Sheppard is putting a lot of effort into staying in what he had called one's "best behaviour" in Sanctuary (S01E14). One might imagine that McKay also felt the need to be on his best behaviour, especially since he has a need to impress Carter, and possibly Jackson -- albeit to a lesser extent, since he is involved in those soft sciences that are barely science to him -- regardless of whether or not he feels sexual attraction toward her. But while McKay is by no means behaving badly, he is not going out of his way to be on his best behaviour either. His need to impress Carter and Jackson is of a scientific sort and his method of getting attention on the scientific arena has always been combative, and that currently seems to be the only thing that he is going for: he wants them to see him as smart and capable and to be viewed as an equal, of having his place around this table. Which is ironic, given that they seem to have come all this way partially to get his expertise on their project and as we later learn, Jackson at least thinks that McKay could have won the Nobel Prize many times over. And while McKay has not met Vala and Cam Mitchell previously, SG-1 are not strangers to him in the same way they are for Sheppard, he has worked with them before, and hence does not feel the need to give them a certain kind of first impression the way Sheppard seems to. It is especially to Carter that Sheppard seems to feel the need to project a certain image.

Sheppard: If he speaks again, I'll shoot him. Daniel: But to answer your question, we are introducing another stargate into the equation. Teal'c should have it in position right now. Carter: If we can make a connection between that gate and one from the Pegasus galaxy— McKay: You, you're trying to make a jump. Don't shoot me; you know I can't help myself.

When McKay had been about to launch into an explanation of what it meant to put a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua together, which Carter anticipated was about to get somewhat graphic (and all of the Earth humans very likely were able to picture it in their mind's eye, as it were -- also, as an aside, it is not nearly as impossible as McKay makes it out to sound because mixed breed St. Chihuahuas are out there), we saw that Sheppard had already opened his mouth, as though to launch into some comment. We have seen over the course of three seasons that Sheppard has a need to constantly communicate with McKay and he cannot help himself making comments on everything he says or does. It is Sheppard's default mode to make a witty rejoinder to anything McKay says, and by having introduced the topic of dog-on-dog sex where the issue of size is the central question, he most definitely would have had something to say. Sheppard does not have time to make his comment, however, before Carter jumps in to chide him not unlike a sister would, not altogether different from Jeannie's "Meredith!" that she herself witnesses later. We see Carter shaking her head in a way that tells us that she is more than familiar with McKay and his antics, like she is the one who has to suffer him on the regular.

Only, she is not the one who gets to suffer and/or enjoy him on the regular, Sheppard is. It is obvious that Carter managed to veer into Sheppard's territory in a major way, and he hates it. He hates her, and the nicer and more wonderful that she is, he hates her ever more. And now we see Sheppard make as though a conspiratorial comment to her, saying it to her while it is meant for the whole room and especially McKay to hear, as though the two of them were each other's bosom buddies. His eyes are fixed on McKay as he makes his comment, intimating that it is meant mainly for him, and he looks at her only briefly, giving her a faux-friendly smile, scrunching his nose and squinting his eyes as though to communicate that he is jesting, of course. This is just friendly banter between two colleagues, this is the kind of horseplay they engage in all the time.

But let us make record of what Sheppard actually does here: he lays claim to McKay in front of her in particular. He is telling Carter that McKay is his to chide or punish (and also to reward) when the occasion calls for it, and that even in the case that they actually were required to shoot him for what ever reason (say, if a situation such as had happened in The Long Goodbye (S02E16) were to happen again), he is the one who would do that and not her. It is his job. Shooting McKay, telling him off for talking about doggy sex, and everything in between -- that is Sheppard's territory. She does not have jurisdiction over him. The same way as someone's spouse is automatically entitled to a shot-gun seat in the car over their buddies or even members of their birth family, so too Sheppard seems to think that an intimate relationship with McKay, which he is obviously unable to fess up to in public, entitles him to be the one who gets to shake his head at McKay when he is being McKay in front of company. Carter doesn't even go here.

On the face of it, it seems like Sheppard is telling McKay to be quiet and stop making inappropriate comments and interrupting the discussion, but what he is actually doing is telling Carter to quit while she is ahead. McKay does not seem to be looking for Carter's attention in any particular way and has been neutral pretty much throughout the meeting, sticking to business. He is being remarkably subdued, and like we have seen him be exceedingly neutral when speaking Carter's name e.g., in the meeting in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), so he seems to be considerate of Sheppard's feelings also here. His crass and extremely loud feigned interest in Carter was never about Sheppard, apart from him seeming to use it to protect Sheppard's career and reputation in the message that he sent for the SGC to view when they were cohabiting the first time and had to suddenly re-establish contact with Earth. He also may have exaggerated some things related to Carter he had needed to vent some of his own jealous feelings regarding Sheppard and the women, to try to make him feel reciprocal jealousy because he was feeling jealous himself. But otherwise, he has not been antagonizing Sheppard using Carter on purpose, and seems to be careful not to do it here, being almost overly courteous -- not to impress Carter but to be considerate of Sheppard's feelings. And his excitement here is also not due to getting to work with her so much as him being pleased that he was able to follow Carter's line of thought, of figuring out what she intended before she had had the time to explain it.

McKay tells Sheppard not to shoot him like he had just promised Carter that he would do if he talked out of place again, and McKay obviously knows that Sheppard did not mean it. In asking Sheppard not to shoot him he is actually playing along with him, he is giving Sheppard the attention that he seems to crave by including him in the conversation because McKay cannot help engaging with Sheppard any more than Sheppard can help engaging with him. He further reminds Sheppard that he cannot help himself, which just confirms and reaffirms the intimacy between them. Sheppard knows McKay better than anyone and it seems like McKay felt like Sheppard needed to be reminded of this. Carter knows him in a professional capacity but besides McKay's oversharing of his childhood in an attempt at bonding, the two of them are not that close. Carter does not know him very well, and does not know most things about him like Sheppard does.

Like we had noted in connection with Inferno (S02E19), when Sheppard had tried telling Weir that he does not know what guys are like because he does not pay attention to guys, here we see again that there is no one who knows McKay better than Sheppard does. McKay is reminding him of something that he already knows: he can't help himself. And this is likely true of him in contexts other than this conversation as well, McKay blurting out things that he should not. And like we had discussed in connection with the previous episode, it is quite possible that although we do not hear Sheppard tell McKay "the L-word" until Tao of Rodney (S03E14), after a fashion, it is entirely possible that McKay himself has let it slip in some moment of weakness or in the throes (or the afterglow) of passion. McKay seems wholly incapable of not saying what he is thinking. He knows that Sheppard is not good with feelings and especially expressing them, that he likes to keep an ironic distance to his emotions, but McKay himself is like an open book to him. McKay cannot help himself and Sheppard knows this about him.

Sheppard: A jump. Can you do that? Mitchell: One of Colonel Carter's more brilliant planet-saving ideas from a few years back. Stargate Command inadvertently dialed the gate address of a planet that was on a collision course with a black hole. P3W-451, if memory serves.

We see Sheppard shaking his head at McKay now, and he seems to be partially copying what Carter had done earlier because he feels like Carter is his romantic rival, is his competition for the attentions of McKay -- which of course is not true. He is shaking his head in lieu of shooting him, which he naturally had not even contemplated, and he is the actual long-suffering spouse here.

But at the same time, Sheppard is pleased that McKay had said what he just said. Sheppard does not care if McKay interrupts them until the cows come home, he has always enjoyed listening to McKay talk. Sure, what the Earthlings have planned on doing in their galaxy is probably really important but it is not truly a concern for him. It had seemed at the start of the previous season that Sheppard had made the decision never to return to Earth, that there truly was nothing left for him there. Sheppard is a Pegasusian, he is a Lantean, he has returned to the city of his ancestors, and what ever trouble Earth was facing now, it was an abstract concern for him. Sheppard would rather have been listening to McKay talk about dog-on-dog sex all day long, and he most definitely does not mind McKay very obviously frustrating Carter with his antics. in fact, he encourages it. The worse that McKay looks in front of Carter the better.

Besides which this, Sheppard looking at McKay and shaking his head is an example of that wordless communication between them, and although he shakes his head no, what his gaze seems to communicate is "Yes, I really am upset," possibly even "We are so going to have angry sex later, you had better come ready." McKay gets to see the real Sheppard briefly while just as soon as he turns to Carter, Sheppard puts a mask on, puts on a friendly façade. He is asking her a follow-up question like his intention is to show that he had been paying attention, he is a good student unlike that rowdy boy in the back row, when in fact he is the one who comes up with all of their mischief and the teachers never catch on because he has the face of an angel. This is also probably what he had been like in his boarding schools for real as a child.

Carter: The only way to disconnect before Cheyenne Mountain got swallowed up was to set off a shape charge right at the event horizon. Now that energy spike forced our outgoing wormhole to jump to another stargate that was relatively close by. Mitchell: And, if we can do it again we can tie up the Ori supergate indefinitely.

Carter is about to answer Sheppard's question when Mitchell interrupts her, and because he is a newcomer to the flagship team of the SGC that he has been asked to lead, it is possible that he feels the need to prove himself. Mitchell feels the need to show both that he understands what the plan is and that he has knowledge of what SG-1 has done when he had not yet been around, that he has studied everything that they had done and that he really belongs there.

Because Mitchell is friendly toward Carter and McKay is combative when it comes to sciencey stuff, it may be easier to disregard the sexism in Mitchell very obviously speaking over Carter, whose rodeo this actually is. Even though Mitchell technically outranks Carter, having two Colonels in one single gate team was always going to cause issues, and Mitchell's apparent need to assert himself here seems to be part and parcel of him needing to prove that he is a leader and that Carter is in his team. Note the way Sheppard has unclasped his hands now, and is looking directly at McKay before Carter starts showing them things on the screen that draws his attention away from McKay. McKay having given him that little bit of attention had immediately made his body language relax incrementally.

They then rehash some backstory and more exposition to why they have come to Atlantis now to solve their own issues in the Milky Way. What is interesting is that the trouble they had with the black hole mentioned by Mitchell had been way back in the second season of SG-1, before the character of McKay had yet been a twinkle in anyone's eye, but that problem was actually one that McKay could well have helped the SGC to solve given his expertise in Astrophysics, and likely he had been at Area 51 learning about the stargate and its properties at the time. It was because McKay had such extensive knowledge of the gate that he was later invited to solve another problem they had with the gate, and he very likely would have been privy to the same mission reports that Mitchell has perused, since learning about how the gate acts near a black hole is precisely to kind of thing he had been hired to research.

And like we had seen when McKay had been working with Carter previously, he thinks that she is way too reckless and cavalier with her "brilliant planet-saving ideas," risking everyone's lives in the process. None of them in this room beyond Jackson had been aware of how close to annihilation Earth had come then. Given that he had likely read such reports, it is not surprising that McKay had thought that Carter was some irresponsible bimbo who just throws crap at the wall until something sticks before actually meeting her, antics such as using a nuke to divert a wormhole having given McKay a first impression of her long before they met. And like he had on their first encounter, McKay has some notes on her plan now.

McKay: Even if you were able to establish an initial connection— Mitchell: We need a nuke, we know. McKay: And a dialing crystal capable of— Mitchell: Already have one. McKay: And if you want to— Mitchell: Yeah. McKay: —keep the connection— Mitchell: Yeah! McKay: —open for more than— Mitchell: Yeah! McKay: —thirty-eight minutes— Mitchell: Yeah, yeah, yeah! McKay: —you need to find a black hole in the Pegasus galaxy! Mitchell: This is not our first barbecue, Doctor McKay!

McKay is a world-class Astrophysicist and the foremost expert on stargate technology in two whole galaxies, so he is well within his rights to point out the problems he sees in their plan, even if they had thought of all of them already. He has to make sure that they have thought of everything before lending them his expertise on the matter. McKay is not doing anything out of the ordinary here, he is talking shop and not even being particularly combative about it. But for some reason, Mitchell decides he has had enough of McKay.

Just like Major Lorne had on their initial meeting, Mitchell seems to think that McKay is a real piece of work, egotistical and self-important. He starts locking horns with McKay for reasons that probably have more to do with his own feelings of inadequacy than with McKay, and he is just projecting this feeling on McKay like McKay was purposefully trying to make him look stupid. We see that Mitchell tries to counter everything that McKay says but what we also need to understand is that none of what he says is his idea originally. He is just telling McKay what Carter had explained to him. They have obviously had a mission briefing before they had left for Atlantis, and this is all old hat for him. For McKay, however, he is being presented with this science problem afresh and he is thinking it over, thinking out loud like he is wont to do, trying to cover all the basis like a responsible scientist (not like Carter) would do.

It seems like everyone in the room starts watching them go, knowing that they would not get a word in edgewise. Jackson still seems to be watching McKay like he actually likes him (and perhaps worth noting is that much later on, Jackson is the only person to call McKay "Rod," which he may secretly have wished to be called all his life). Jackson clearly thinks that McKay is one one the cool kids, and while he is not attracted to him, he still likes watching him in his element. Carter just smiles and looks down, clearly having expected McKay to have this initial reaction to her plan. He would not be McKay otherwise. She knows that he needs to get it out of his system so that he can actually get McKay to help them with what she had come here seeking his help for, knowing that they need him. It was humiliating for her to have to need him but this is his forté. What they were attempting to do was important enough for her to undergo the humiliation of having to ask for his help, and now Mitchell was winding him up for no reason, making him even more difficult to work with than he usually is.

Vala clearly has no idea what she is supposed to think about this, and Mitchell is so very obviously frustrated. He is full on sighing and rolling his eyes exasperated with the man sitting next to him, and is probably wishing that he could shoot him. What is interesting is Sheppard. Nothing in him outwardly changes from his previous position except that he goes entirely still. Note that he is watching Mitchell, not McKay. Even though he does not see Mitchell as his romantic rival the same way as he does Carter, he is very much another rooster in the henhouse. Like Caldwell, he is an Air Force Colonel that outranks him, and his dismissiveness of McKay as a scientist and of Carter apparently as a woman is something that he finds alarming, because it might indicate he has other views that Sheppard would definitely dislike, that he has dismissive views of other minorities as well. He does not know Mitchell from Adam but he thinks that he knows the type. He is one of the good old boys. All American corn fields and apple pies by the books kind of a guy.

Mitchell is most probably a "high-school to flight-school" type, basically the antithesis to who Sheppard is. And the way Sheppard regards him here is cold. He had been joking about shooting McKay but if this guy disrespects him, his men (including the man that he loves) or his way of running things in his city, he might just shoot Mitchell. Sheppard is keeping quiet here because he feels like he is forced to, because what ever he might say in this moment would indubitably be bad -- could get him court-martialed, in the worst case scenario. He had worked way too hard for what he has with McKay now to throw it away, but you can tell that having to watch this is affecting Sheppard deeply. He is protective of McKay, and while he knows that McKay can take care of himself especially when it comes to the science of it all, the instinct to jump into the fray for McKay is still there.

McKay: I am just saying, the yield calculations can be extremely tricky, if not borderline impossible. You may need me. Vala: Colonel Carter said as much. Carter: Oooh, we weren't going to tell him that.

Mitchell is not doing anything to hide his almost immediate and visceral dislike of McKay, his face broadcasting "Take a load of this guy!" for everyone in the room to see. This is especially egregious given that McKay appears to be right in cautioning them about the plan, and he furthermore volunteers his help so that they might get it right. There is nothing compelling him to get involved with this, he just sees people in need of help and decides to extend a hand.

The way McKay does it is somewhat surreptitious because McKay fears rejection and hence does not want to outright offer his help. The way he sniffs "You may need me" with his nose up in the air sounds unarguably haughty, but again this thing that might be interpreted as egoism if you did not know McKay at all is just him protecting his soft centre, is a defensive strategy that is meant to lessen the pain of the inevitable rejection because he knows that people usually do not want him around. In fact, the way Mitchell has been talking to him, looking at him, his negatively charged body language, he was making it pretty obvious that he does not want McKay around. But at the same time, he can see that they need him. They will not be able to pull this off without him, possibly not even with him.

What happens then is interesting. First of all, Sheppard looks up at the ceiling on McKay's words about being needed by these guys, not unlike he had when Norina had been talking about wanting to study under McKay back in Inferno. He is rolling his eyes but he is doing it for a different reason than Mitchell. It does not even need saying but Sheppard admires McKay. He thinks McKay is just great. He has told many people when McKay has not been around to hear it how much he thinks of his skills (even Mitchell, it later turns out), and he had called McKay a genius to his face just in the previous episode. Sheppard's look is not communicating his exasperation with McKay's self-aggrandizement because that is not even what he had been doing here. McKay was not talking about himself and how smart he is, he was offering his help to people he thinks are in need. Sheppard gets that. Likely he is thinking Of course they need you, Rodney. They came all this way for you. What makes Sheppard roll his eyes back is McKay beating around the bush this long to get to the point, of taking his sweet time circling back to what he had wanted to say all along, and McKay taking his sweet time doing things is something that Sheppard has experienced more than once. McKay wants to be included but would never say it out loud, and Sheppard if anyone is aware of McKay's broken self-esteem, likely knowing all kinds of things about his childhood. It is obvious to him that they need him, and it should be obvious to McKay himself. But he needs McKay too.

What ever Sheppard was thinking, it is interrupted by Vala suddenly bursting out in nervous laughter because while she does not understand everything that is going on in this room, she does understand enough to be amused by what she had been watching. It was especially amusing to her that Carter seems to have predicted this whole thing, which tells her (and Sheppard) that she does know McKay pretty well. Being able to anticipate someone's responses is a sign of intimacy, and while McKay might not be the most difficult guy in the world to figure out, and in fact winding him up and watching him go is something that most people in McKay's life have figured out is easy to do at some point, it is still upsetting for Sheppard to see that Carter knows him like this.

And Vala, not being savvy to all of their Earth customs and having a limited repertoire of social skills says what occurs to her out loud, seeming to break the tension in the room at the same time. And while it appears to be true that Carter had told Vala this, she had never intended for McKay to hear that they need him because she knows that the guy would never let it go. And Carter's response to suck in a breath through her teeth and squirm about not having wanted to tell McKay that they need him is even more upsetting to Sheppard. It really grinds his gear because it proves to him without the shadow of a doubt that she does know him. Sheppard knows McKay well enough to know that she knows him well -- too well for his comfort.

Weir: John, do you think you could spare Rodney from your team? Sheppard: Hell, you can keep him. Mitchell: Nice.

McKay himself looks pleased when Carter basically confesses that it was true, that they actually needed him and had come here looking for his help. McKay's whole modus operandi is to perform tasks for other people to get them to tolerate having him around, to like him back, maybe even some day to love him if he just manages to do enough things for them, does all the right things in the right order.

McKay has a soft look on his face that has nothing whatsoever to do with attraction or him feeling any kind of way toward Carter beyond just being glad to be included. His face is basically saying "Well, how about that!" and Sheppard is easily able to read his thoughts off of his face. And while Sheppard might love seeing McKay like this, he wants McKay to be happy and content, he hates how easily Carter managed to put this look on his face. It is obvious to Sheppard that McKay craves Carter's approval -- and while neither of them may realize that the reason he craves her approval so much is because she resembles his mother, whose approval had always been conditional and hinging on good behaviour (and which is also why him ending up with Keller when they ran out of story is a goddamn tragedy for the ages, but more on that later), he sure as heck does not want McKay to be looking at anyone else like that.

Sheppard is actually upset here. He is not being glib for the sake of being glib, he is not wisecracking away because he is too cool for school and making it out to seem like he doesn't even care, whatever, he's not bothered in the least. It isn't eating him up at all. Sheppard tells them that they can keep McKay, obviously not meaning a word that he says, and note that he is looking at Mitchell when he says this and then turns to look at Vala, but pointedly does not look at Carter. Not only had Sheppard personally asked to have McKay in his team after having seen him willing to sacrifice his life for the greater good in Hide and Seek (S01E03), even if McKay was not personally important to him, we know that he is an integral part of Sheppard's team. He is not someone who is there to open doors and to hack computers to him, he is someone that had just rained fire on a planet just because Sheppard had asked him to. The reason he seems to be saying this to Mitchell in particular is not just because he does not want Carter to "have him," but he seems to feel like he needs to "play it straight" for Mitchell, thinking that Mitchell is not a guy that would just let it slide the way they have decided to live up here in Pegasus, away from the watchful eye of the brass. And in this, he is protecting McKay too, because if he has to go on a mission with military men alone and without him, it is better that they think he is just eccentric and a science nerd rather than that they think he is any of the colourful words the Air Force had for gay men.

Mitchell smiles to himself at Sheppard's comment, as though he had just gotten the dirty end of the stick. In this he is behaving similar to how Major Lorne had reacted to Sheppard pairing him off with McKay in The Runner (S01E03), where his intention had been to make sure that McKay would stay safe when he felt unable to protect him himself at the time. Mitchell seems to be acting not unlike a school bully who has just been paired with the class nerd for a group project, and it is obvious again to everyone in the room that this displeases him, even while realizing that they do actually need him, they had come here for a reason.

But at the same time, the way Sheppard looks at Mitchell when he tells him that he can have McKay, he is telling him to take good care of him. The serious look in his eyes does not match his words. He is obligating Mitchell and Mitchell in particular to take charge of McKay because he does not want it to be Carter. He does not actually want McKay anywhere near Carter, and he sure as hell does not want him anywhere near Carter when he is not there to see to it that nothing untoward happens. And this is another example of Sheppard and McKay having worked on their relationship, the two of them having "talked about it for a really long time," Sheppard seeming to have promised McKay to trust him more. Trust him to take care of himself obviously, but trusting him meant allowing him to accompany a blonde bombshell on a mission too. Sheppard hates this but a promise is a promise is a promise.

Continued in Pt. 3

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Long Goodbye, Pt. 14

Phoebus has just ordered Teyla to kill Thalen and Sheppard with him, and because she now reiterates her "or else," this is when Sheppard finally discovers what is actually at stake here. For Thalen it makes no difference, he does not care about anyone or anything else but killing Phoebus -- or at the very least surviving her attempt at killing him, thus ending their war in a stalemate. But Sheppard cares, knowing many of the people personally and being responsible for all of them, their safety and security. If previously Thalen and Sheppard had both agreed when they had flippantly told Teyla to just ignore her, this is when Sheppard would start screaming inside his head in earnest. Even though we see no change on his face, Thalen in complete control of his body, Sheppard would definitely have a problem with this. And note that again, even though no one is speaking just then, we see McKay looking up into the distance as though he is listening to something.

Phoebus: Kill him now, or I vent halon fire suppressant into all the living spaces in Atlantis. Caldwell: McKay? McKay: I know, I know. I'm almost done here. Teyla: Colonel, can she do this? Chuck: Yes. She's created a shunt between the fire suppressant system and life support. Caldwell: I believe so. Teyla: How many people are at risk? Caldwell: Three-quarters of the expedition.

If Sheppard is screaming inside Thalen's head, trying to get heard, he would likely be trying to say something like TEYLA, YOU GOT TO DO IT, given that she is immediately involved with the situation, or RODNEY, STOP HER, given that we know Sheppard has absolute faith in McKay's abilities and this venting of halon fire suppressant into the living spaces sounds like something McKay should be able to keep her from doing. The latter seems more likely because although he would rather give up his life than have hundreds of people die for him, he may not be quite "there" yet with needing his friend and colleague to shoot him dead. It was only now that the full scope of the problem they were facing had even been revealed to him.

Now, we keep seeing McKay do this, stopping very obviously to listen. It is possible he is merely listening to the exchange as he can hear it from the security camera feed (even though, as pointed out, no one was talking when he had stopped to listen this time), and certainly the fact that it is the life of his lover that is on the line would grab his attention. They are discussing Sheppard, the woman who is holding the whole city hostage demanding that he be killed immediately. It is understandable that McKay would find this mighty distracting. And yet there must be some reason we were told that no one could hear Weir screaming inside Phoebus' head but it is left ambiguous whether Sheppard had the same experience as her.

Because whether it is inside his head or with his ears, McKay is attuned to Sheppard. His entire focus should be on cracking the system to save all the people in the city but for him, Sheppard is more important. Teyla asks how many lives are at stake like it is a rational calculus of how many lives can be exchanged for one where McKay would never need to ask that. Sheppard is the most important thing in his life bar none. Note also that McKay claims to be nearly done with something that was supposed to take him hours to accomplish. Either Phoebus using Weir's knowledge of the system had vastly underrated McKay's abilities, which seems unlikely, or McKay is getting some kind of help in cracking the system, and it is not necessary that he even realizes this is happening himself.

Teyla: Why are you doing this? Phoebus: I have spent my entire life at war with his world. Thousands have died with no hope for victory, both sides reduced to a mere handful of fighters. If he really is the last, then in the end my people will have won.

Whether she is doing this consciously to play for time, to give McKay time to hack his way into the system (and it is not entirely clear Teyla even knows what they are trying to do, having been out of the loop and only given instructions by Caldwell) or she just wants to know, Teyla does the thing that Beckett had suggested Caldwell try on for size earlier: she tries talking to her. And whether it is the intended consequence or not, this moment is important enough for Phoebus to start speechifying, hence running down the clock. It is a grandiose oration, worthy of the end of their long war. She is speaking for all of her people, all the lives that they had lost along the way. Note that Thalen does not say anything, merely looking up at Teyla with what he intends to be sincere eyes. If is difficult to know what he is thinking, what kind of strategy he is devising to use, but given that he is tied up, we have seen Sheppard use both manipulation and charm in such situations, to use his skills in psychological warfare.

It could be that he is not sure which one of them to start working over, which one would be easier to get to. Teyla with her gun is the immediate problem but Phoebus is the bigger problem and while Thalen does not care about the three quarters of the expedition she is holding hostage, he realizes that Teyla does. For Sheppard, the three quarters of the expedition are much more important and where Thalen is trying to devise a plan to save his own ass, Sheppard wants to save the people, not necessarily even knowing whether McKay is among those people or not. This is where Sheppard might start screaming inside his head for Teyla, who of course cannot hear him. Sheppard does not want to die but he cannot take all of those lives on his conscience either. Teyla is going to have to do the right thing. The hard thing. He does not envy her.

Thalen: Don't believe her! Phoebus: Believe me when I say I have absolutely nothing to lose. In a very short time, I will feel excruciating pain, this body will convulse, and I will cease to exist. That's what is ahead for me. All I can hope for now is to achieve victory for my people. Teyla: Phoebus, your people are long dead. Who lost or won a war so many years ago does not matter. Phoebus: It matters to me.

Thalen tells Teyla not to believe what Phoebus is saying and to be fair, she has been lying to them from the very beginning. This too is something that Thalen and Sheppard might both say to Teyla since, through Thalen, Sheppard now probably knows the truth about their war. We never learn the backstory beyond her version of their history. Whether her version matches the events or she is putting a spin on them, what is obvious is that she is using Weir's skills as a diplomat and a negotiator here, delivering this speech like she might once have delivered an address at the UN. Thalen likely does not care one whit what Teyla believes but it is important for him to destabilize the hold Phoebus seems to have on her, having convinced Teyla that she is in charge of the situation. Even though we are not watching Weir and Sheppard go against each other, the alien entities are making use of their respective gifts and giving us a taste of what it might be if the two actually were forced to work against each other.

It is obvious that Teyla does not want to do what Phoebus is demanding she do, and is trying her damnedest to talk her out of it using her own skills as a negotiator, as someone who has brokered many deals. in Trinity (S02E06) she had told Ronon: "A negotiation is a delicate process -- the words spoken are often meaningless." Here, Teyla is trying to make her feel seen and heard, to acknowledge her anguish in the hope that they might be able to find a peaceable solution to their conflict -- but she is far beyond reason. And yet Phoebus' line "It matters to me" is interesting here, especially if we recognize that it has been months since Sheppard and McKay had fallen apart. It has been such a long time that it should not matter who was right and who was wrong. They should let bygones be bygones. McKay seems to have forgiven Sheppard after the events of Trinity but it seems like Sheppard is still holding on to some hurt, perhaps McKay asking him for more time, some words that had been spoken. What ever it is, he is unable to let go.

Thalen: If you kill me, you'll kill him. He cares for you more than you know. Teyla: Please do not make me do this.

Many people have noted the fact that we get a close-up of McKay following Thalen's line to Teyla, his face in anguish. Even though he has been doing this, freezing in place to stop and listen, ever since Thalen had regained consciousness, it is especially noticeable here. Even the mainstream interpretation is that McKay is jealous but for them this jealousy is motivated by friendship. Whether or not one interprets the relationship between Sheppard and Teyla as having romantic undertones or just being friendly, the implication is that McKay is jealous of their connection. That McKay is somehow being slighted here.

In this episode, we have been given the opportunity to see the special connection Sheppard has with Ronon and now his special connection with Teyla and if one goes on only by the maintext, one has to come to the conclusion that he simply lacks this with McKay, that they do not have a special bond that is "deeper than words." There is very little indication in the episode that they even like each other, there is scoffing over television at the start, McKay whining about Weir's imprinting not being his fault and Sheppard telling him to quit his bellyaching, McKay throwing a sarcastic quip at Sheppard before he goes under and then shooting him with the gun that Sheppard had given to him for reasons that must be inexplicable for the mainstream viewer. And now McKay is upset that Sheppard cares about someone else more than him when he so yearns for that friendship.

Let us start with the fact that Thalen is saying this to Teyla because he is trying to manipulate her. He can tell, both by what he has been watching and what he knows through Sheppard, that Teyla is a very empathetic person. Teyla cares about him and does not want to kill him, and he can work with that. He is trying to make Teyla feel sympathy for him, trying to forge a bond between the two of them, between Thalen and Teyla, through the fact that they both care about Sheppard's well-being. They both want Sheppard to live, so they should work together. But even though it is Thalen saying this, it does not mean that what he says is untrue. This likely is what Sheppard thinks. He is not very expressive of his feelings so caring about her more than she knows is a low bar, but Sheppard cares about her a lot. Their conversation in Sateda (S03E04) is basically a confirmation of this. Sheppard tells Teyla that she is like family to him. We have no reason to think that what Thalen is saying that Sheppard feels here is a lie.

However, while many mainstream viewers will jump directly to romance (Do not pass go!) because it is a man and a woman, nowhere is it said that what Sheppard feels toward her has any romantic undertones. There are many ways to care about people, and Sheppard cares for her as a good friend, the first friend that he had made in this galaxy and probably the first friend he had made in a long time. But we also have no reason whatsoever to think that Sheppard was lying at the end of Conversion (S02E08) when he told her that he does not think of her like that, and she also seemed relieved to hear this. They are friends, nothing more, which is also how Teyla had also described her relationship with Ronon.

Their conversation in Sateda made it clear that while he considers Teyla, Ronon and McKay all his family, McKay is in a whole other category to the others. As McKay stops what he is doing to listen to this exchange, hearing Thalen speak words that he has longed to hear from Sheppard for a long time, he is not motivated by friendship. That is not why it looks like this hurts him to hear. Teyla and McKay have very similar expressions here, they are both in as much anguish and it is because Teyla is not the only one asked to make a tough choice here. While what Thalen says is true of what Sheppard feels for Teyla, it is also absolutely true of what he feels for McKay. He cares for McKay more than he will ever know, more than he can even understand. But he is also trying actively to keep McKay from knowing how much he cares.

As we have discussed during the several previous episodes, Sheppard is not very good at expressing his feelings. He is not good at verbalizing his emotions, and probably does not even know how to name them. Coming from a childhood home where caring was probably shown through cool detachment, having lost his mother when he was young, being cared for by nannies and shipped off to private schools, Sheppard is severely emotionally stunted. In Outcast (S04E15), his ex-wife makes a comment about knowing him, making it seem like it is unfortunate that she does know him as well as she does. Their main problem seems to have been the fact that Sheppard did not want to be in the marriage because he had only married her to please his father, but they probably had other problems as well. Later he tells Ronon that he was not very good at marriage. At least he is self-aware about all that.

Sheppard and McKay fell in love during the first season, and they both definitely had recognized what it was they felt by Letters from Pegasus (S01E17). But it seems like to this episode they have never neither of them spoken the "L-word". In fact, it is not until Tao of Rodney (S03E14) that the word is spoken between them and even there they need Weir to function as an intermediary, which we have seen her do before. We'll get back to that episode (and why Sheppard decides to make the moment as awkward as possible) later but just to reiterate something I've written previously, the conversation between Weir and McKay at the end of the episode seems to reflect something that had likewise taken place between Sheppard and McKay that we never got to see. And yet the episode confirms that the word was now out there, it had been spoken. McKay was not wrong in thinking that it took him nearly dying to get Sheppard to say it. McKay yearns for that verbal confirmation of meaning something to Sheppard, acknowledgement of his importance, of being chosen by him. And here, listening to him speak the words to Teyla that he has been longing to hear for months and months, it feels to him like he is again not being chosen. Someone else is being chosen in his stead.

But McKay hears him say these words. That much is obvious. And yet Sheppard probably does not want to say them. It has to be killing him to hear Thalen say something like that without his consent. What Sheppard is thinking inside his head we do not know but let us recall that McKay had said to him before he had gone under that he thought this might have been a way for "two survivors to say one last goodbye," for lovers to say farewell, and while Sheppard never wants to say goodbye, it is something that McKay very much desires. He is forced to keep quiet and listen to this when any moment could be the last, when any breath Sheppard takes could be his last, and he is unable to say anything to him. McKay is not allowed to say goodbye to him.

Also, let us recognize the fact that although Thalen could have outed Sheppard easily during this episode, he never does it because this is not about Sheppard, this is about him not getting killed by Phoebus. Even if Sheppard was thinking about McKay inside his head, of wanting to get some message to him, wanting to say anything to him, Thalen has no incentive to relay his messages. He is not speaking for Sheppard here, he is speaking for himself. He is driving his own agenda. Sheppard's big illicit gay love affair is of no concern to him. McKay had shot him. He wants to keep Sheppard as far away from McKay as possible and he is certainly not about to pass him a note with Sheppard's final words on it. That is not what this is about.

Although Thalen is speaking of what Sheppard feels for Teyla, inside his head Sheppard has to be thinking about McKay because he is always thinking about McKay. He is thinking about McKay's safety and his well-being, not wanting him to die suffocating on halon gas. He might also be holding on to hope that McKay will be able to save him because he has always come through for him. If Sheppard is screaming anything inside his head, it has to be a variation of what he is always telling McKay, RODNEY, WORK FASTER.

Thalen: You don't have to. Phoebus: Shoot him, or I release the gas and just hope it reaches the both of you. Caldwell: She has the capability of doing what she claims. Teyla... I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Phoebus: I am. Kill him.

Teyla is in a difficult situation, many people making demands on her at the same time. She is undoubtedly faced with a very difficult moral dilemma. She is kind of like the goat between the two bails of hay, Phoebus and Thalen both trying to tug at her, to get her do what they want. And as they both tell her what to do, Caldwell leaves the choice to her. This is not an act of kindness because if she was a member of the Earth military, it would be Caldwell's duty to give her the order to either comply or to stand down.

That is the very reason why the military as a chain of command, that soldiers are free to comply with orders without having to pontificate the moral implications of their choices. That is the totalizing nature of the military apparatus, it is meant to vanish the individual in service to the whole. This is not an act of kindness on Caldwell's part but an acknowledgement that he has no jurisdiction over her, especially when it comes to killing the actual commander of this operation. He cannot give the order to kill Sheppard, but he also cannot give an order that will lead to the death of three quarters of the expedition, so he opts not to play and takes the easy way out. If it had been one of his space marines that had caught Sheppard, he would not have this luxury. He would have to give the order, and he would have to bear the responsibility for it. Now he is able to relinquish this responsibility to a native woman of this galaxy who seems wholly unequipped in dealing with this dilemma, this moral choice.

But let us make note of the really interesting thing here, which is that what Caldwell and Phoebus (who is narrative mirror for Sheppard) say here parallels what Weir and Sheppard had told Zelenka in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14). Weir tells him "I'm not going to order you to go" and Sheppard says "I will!" The situation is the inverse of this, as they are discussing rescuing McKay where now they are discussing killing Thalen, narrative mirror to McKay, with Caldwell filling Weir's role. Again there is a conversion of what had taken place between Sheppard and McKay. And although Sheppard's intention was to rescue McKay, he seemed more than willing to sacrifice both his own and Zelenka's life to do it. Thalen is shown sitting down on the floor with his hands tied, not unlike McKay stuck in the rear compartment of the jumper unable to do anything but wait to be rescued. This exchange seems to more than confirm how Phoebus and Thalen have been used as narrative mirrors, and the roles that they bear.

Note again that as Phoebus gives the order, we see McKay stop what he is doing entirely. He now gives Caldwell a look that is part anger and part betrayal. He is pleading for Caldwell to do something when it is he that is meant to be doing something to remedy this situation. His face is saying how can you let her? If he had been able to focus on hacking the system, he might have been able to get in earlier but he seems very much distracted by what he hears is taking place in the camera feed.

There is also the possibility that McKay is channelling Sheppard here, that his expression is due to what Sheppard is thinking about Caldwell's decision not to give the order to Teyla, understanding the implications. If there is anyone that gets what Caldwell does here, shirking his responsibility because he is disinclined to make the tough call possibly due to his own recent experiences and because the whole purpose of his visit had been to make amends. But Sheppard gets that this is an insult to Teyla, this is the same thing Bates had been doing, which was to refuse to see her as a full member of this operation. She is a part of Sheppard's team and if he was in the same situation, he would give the order because that is his responsibility. By giving the order, he would make it easier for her. He would take the bigger portion or her burden to carry for himself. So the fact that McKay looks mad as he glances at Caldwell, this probably matches what Sheppard is feeling right now precisely.

Thalen: Sheppard doesn't believe you'll do it. Teyla: Forgive me, John.

Thalen is looking up at Teyla saying nothing, likely trying to feverishly think of something that might get him and with him Sheppard out of this predicament. For some reason, we keep getting shots of McKay as though his situation, McKay's hackathon, is just as intense as what is happening with Teyla. In the beginning of the episode they had spotted what they thought were two "ships," one in a lower orbit than the other, and this whole scene is a masterclass in using a relationship in the maintext, here a close friendship between a man and a woman, to run cover for the relationship in the subtext that could never be textualized. It is really not that subtle at all when you know to look for it. McKay is in this scene with them because that is his rightful place. What ever decision Teyla makes, it does not just affect her and Sheppard, it very much affects McKay.

Thalen tells Teyla that Sheppard does not think she will do it, and again it is possible he is telling the truth. It is possible that it is what Sheppard thinks, but the tone in which Sheppard thinks it is probably very different from Thalen. Thalen sounds almost gleeful, as though he has figured out something important. For Sheppard, thinking that Teyla will not be able to do it likely comes from a place of despair. We noted earlier that there is a difference between someone that is unable to shoot you because they love you and someone who is capable of shooting you when they know that not doing it would cost you your soul. Sheppard would never be able to live with three quarters of the expedition dying because of him on his conscience, and he has to be silently begging for Teyla to take the shot. But he does not think she has it in her, as tough as she is.

She cares about him very much but she does not know her as well as a lover would. He had given his gun to McKay before agreeing to go under because he wanted McKay to have something to protect himself with if things went South, and to shoot him if it ever came down to that. If the alien had been about to use his body to do something that Sheppard could not live with, he gave the gun to McKay so that he would take him out. We do not know what McKay would have done in this situation, but we did already see him shoot at Sheppard just like Sheppard had meant for him to do. Whether or not he did it because of some mental push from Sheppard is irrelevant because either way, he was doing what Sheppard wanted him to do. Even if it killed him -- and it probably would -- McKay would always try to do what Sheppard wanted him to do. Sheppard never needs to give him orders because fulfilling his wishes is what McKay desires. So Sheppard does not think that Teyla will do it but he wishes that she could. This is a state of affairs that makes Thalen gleeful and Sheppard anguished.

In calling Sheppard John, Teyla is again bringing the episode back to Conversion (S0208) where Teyla had been forced to shoot at Sheppard because in his bug form he had been advancing on her, having already assaulted her once. She told him, "Please do not make me do this" but even though he had been threatening her life, she had only been able to fire on the floor in front of him in an attempt at scaring him to back off. Even when Sheppard had been a threat to her own life, Teyla had been unable to shoot him even just to injure him. And it is possible that it is for that very reason that Sheppard now thinks that she won't be able to do it this time either. Earlier Thalen had told Ronon that he was the only one he could trust not to shoot him on sight, but it may actually be Teyla that he can trust not to shoot him, how ever much Sheppard would now like him to.

So, if we look at each member of Sheppard's team and what they likely would have done in this situation, Ronon probably would not only have not shot Sheppard, he would have let any number of people die to save his life. His loyalty is to Sheppard and he would not have felt any kind of way about sacrificing people to save him even if it would have destroyed Sheppard to know so many would have died for him. Ronon would have sacrificed the others. Teyla, as we see, is unable to make the choice. She cannot shoot him but she cannot sacrifice the others either, so she winds up in the same situation as Ronon but through inaction. She is unable to choose, so he is saved and the others die. If McKay was in the same situation, he would have faced the authentic "Trolley problem" because there would not have been anyone working to "Kobyashi Maru" the situation, like he is doing for Teyla now. He would have had to choose between actively killing Sheppard or letting hundreds of innocents die, knowing that Sheppard would not have wanted either one of them to have to live with their lives on their conscience. And McKay both knows Sheppard well enough and loves him deep enough that he would have made the decision he knows Sheppard would have wanted him to make, regardless of the personal cost to him. That is why Sheppard had given him his own gun.

We may recall that one of the first things Sheppard had been forced to do when he had come to this galaxy was to take the life of his own commanding officer as an act of mercy, convinced that it is what the man would have wanted him to do. Later, when describing the event to Colonel Everett, Colonel Sumner's close friend, they have the following exchange:

Sheppard: By the time I reached Colonel Sumner— Everett: Worse, you admit to firing the shot that killed him. Sheppard: Because I believe that's what he wanted me to do. Everett: You knew him that well, did you? Sheppard: You weren't there, sir. Everett: I wish, for his sake, I was.

The implication here is that because Everett knows that he knew Sumner better than Sheppard, he would have tried harder to save him and would not have taken his life, thinking that Everett would never have wanted to be shot even though Sheppard is correct that in the situation he had been in, beyond saving and in excruciating pain, he was with his eyes pleading for Sheppard to do the kind thing even knowing that he had not earned the man's kindness and was owed only his obedience. But Sumner was not in a position to make it an order and so Sheppard had to make a choice, and he was the one who had to bear the responsibility. It is a heavy burden to bear, and he tells Everett: "There isn't a night that doesn't go by where that moment doesn't play in my head…" Later on, after Everett has had a personal experience that had given him only a taste of what Sumner had suffered, they revisit the conversation:

Everett: I... owe you an apology. Sheppard: No, sir, you don't. Everett: I think I have a pretty good idea. I would have done the same thing as you did when you found Colonel Sumner. It's what I wanted to tell you. Sheppard: Well, none of that matters right now, sir. Everett: I'm trying to say... I wish you had been there for me.

Everett is basically telling him the same as Phoebus had just told Teyla, "It matters to me." It had never been that Everett was not prepared to do the same for his fiend, only that he had underestimated the wraith as an adversary. He had not understood what they were up against. But now that he understood, he knew that he would have done the same and he tells Sheppard, even though he survived, that he wishes someone had been there to do the same for him. The merciful thing. The kind thing. The thing you do when you really love someone is to let them go when it is better for them and not hold onto them selfishly because you cannot bear to let them go.

If there is anyone who knows how Sheppard feels about this, it is McKay. If there is anyone he has talked with about any of this, it is McKay. If there is anyone who knows his last will and testament, it is McKay. It is McKay who he considers his next of kin, who he considers the person who should be the one to make medical decisions for him when he is unable to do them for himself even when he has no official capacity to be this for him. He wants McKay to be this. And McKay had already shot him. Twice. McKay has always come through for him even if he now suddenly seems to have trouble even reading the code on his screen through the tears in his eyes.

Continued in Pt. 15

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Pegasus Project, Pt. 1

As mentioned with the first entry for the season, the third season of SGA coincided with the final season of SG-1, and there seems to have been a real effort to make sure that the viewers from the mothership would be carried over to the spin-off show by the end of the season. To facilitate that, overlap between the two shows was emphasized from the get-go, especially through having characters from the original show appear in episodes of the sister show, which would force fans to check out "the other one." We had already seen General Landry and Mr Woolsey in the previous two episodes, but we then get the first real cross-over episode as the famous flagship team SG-1 visit Atlantis, and the cast of SGA make guest appearances on SG-1. The episode The Pegasus Project (S10E03) takes place on Atlantis and in the Pegasus Galaxy but is a part of the tenth season of SG-1, and seems to have taken place between Misbegotten (S03E02) and Irresistible (S03E03), where the events of this episode are revisited. Since it has bearing on the relationship of Sheppard and McKay, I will discuss it here between the episodes.

Carter: The Ori supergate has been inactive since they sent their first wave. But it's been reported that the Priors are promising reinforcements for their armies, which are on their way and should be here soon. Now we can only assume that means more ships, and these four are already more than we can handle. We have to act now. McKay: Well, why don't you try dialing out? I mean, if it's powered by a black hole...

Having arrived on Atlantis, SG-1 proceed to have a meeting with the senior staff that for now seems to consist solely of Weir, Sheppard and McKay, with Carter laying out some exposition for the episode. Out of the three of them, Sheppard is the only one who does not know them from before, as McKay has worked on Cheyenne Mountain on a couple of occasions, and Weir had actually briefly been the director of SGC when the IOA had insisted on civilian leadership for the programme. A common belief among fans is that although there is overlap between the creators of the two shows, the writers of one show display poor understanding of the characters of the other show, and that the characters come across as acting out of character when appearing on the other show, when written by the writers of the other show.

This argument is volleyed especially against the writing of McKay, that McKay is made out to be much more of an asshole on the other show -- and maybe he is. But for the most part, the McKay that we see on the other show is quite literally not the same McKay as the one on Atlantis, often from alternate timelines or parallel dimensions. And the McKay we had seen before his time on Atlantis had also been a different man from the man that he is now in the sense that his time on Atlantis has definitely changed him, this had already been pointed out by his colleague Brendan Gaul in The Defiant One (S01E12). What seemed to make some viewers especially upset was the perception that the writers of the other show did not understand the dynamic between Sheppard and McKay, that they handled their relationship poorly.

Be that as it may, there seem to be actual reasons for the way the two of them are behaving in this episode, and we have to look at the context of where they actually are in their relationship to understand what is going on. For one, we have to recognize that when the episode takes place, Sheppard and McKay are very recently reconciled. They are very much together at this time, they are in a clandestine romantic relationship that is more or less known to everyone on Atlantis but that they have to keep a secret from the SGC and anyone from Earth because word getting out would most definitely jeopardize Sheppard's command. They had also very recently been alarmed by Mr Woolsey snooping around Atlantis, feeling the need for even more caution around their relationship. But the fact that they are in a good place with each other, they are about to move back in together good in their relationship right here, has everything to do with why they are behaving the way they are in this scene.

So, let us start by how they are seated around the table in the meeting room. Weir, as the director, is at the head of the table where she usually is, which is not unusual. Sheppard and McKay are on the opposite sides of the room which is also not unusual, Sheppard likes to be able to see McKay. But note that Sheppard has parked himself right next to Carter. Sheppard is boxing Carter in, which means that Carter had entered the room first, had taken a seat next to Weir, and Sheppard had then made damn sure that McKay was not getting a seat next to her by occupying the seat on her other side. We have no reason to think that McKay had been hankering for that seat, much though he (is loathe to admit that he) enjoys Carter's company professionally. But Sheppard is taking no chances here.

McKay is seated between Cam Mitchell and Daniel Jackson -- and one of the things we have to note here is that there was a similar subtext being played out between Jackson and Vala; there was a romantic undercurrent to their relationship, Jackson learning to love again while Vala was trying to heal from her trauma enough to open up for him. Jackson seated next to McKay while Vala is seated next to Sheppard is no accident, both of them turned none too subtly toward their counterparts. Both pairs are trying not to be too obvious about their appreciation for each other. And so we see Vala slouching on the table leaning in front of Sheppard in a way that from someone else might indicate interest in him but she seems to be completely ignoring him, attentive to what Carter is talking about. And Sheppard himself seems like he is leaning toward her where in fact he is leaning away from Carter, and quite obviously so. Just the very thought of Carter seems to make him very uncomfortable, and he has his reasons for that. Daniel Jackson, on the other hand, has his entire body turned toward McKay because for some unfathomable reason, he seems to like him, and respects him as a fellow scientist.

McKay: ...you should be able to keep the thing up and running almost indefinitely. Sheppard: I'm sure they thought of that before they came all this way, Rodney. Carter: It was what we were attempting to do when the Ori fleet first came through. Now the Asgard have since tried again, but for some reason, they can't dial out. Weir: But you might be able to dial in?

The first thing we have to acknowledge about this scene is that Sheppard is intimidated by Carter, he feels threatened by her presence here, in his home. Understanding this is crucial for the interpretation of what is going on here. We have seen from the get-go, from Childhood's End (S01E05) when McKay had first mentioned Carter's name for Sheppard to hear, that Sheppard has felt some kind of way about McKay's relationship with her, and positive it was not.

Sheppard is a needy, jealous man and because for reasons that at least initially had nothing to do with Sheppard McKay had made it seem like he was actually attracted to Carter, Sheppard had gotten the wrong impression of what was going on there. McKay had essentially used Carter, whom he very likely believed to be a lesbian (as per what the McKay that had married her had thought about her short-haired military version from a parallel dimension in The Road Not Taken; that McKay thought this Carter was gay), to bolster his own reputation as a man crassly and extremely loudly interested in dumb blonde women, since contracting for the US military forced him into the closet. Sheppard may well have gotten the wrong impression of what McKay actually feels toward her, which is a combination of intellectual inadequacy and a recurrence of his various mommy issues, given how she seems to resemble his mother in both looks and personality. Carter is the kind of person that McKay wishes he were, self-assured, brilliant and desired by the kind of men that McKay wants to be desired by. McKay admires her but would never admit as much, but his open lusting after her is all for show, all to bolster his reputation as a sleazebag womanizer, so that homosexual and bisexual men of his acquaintance could rest easy in his company.

But we have seen that Sheppard is made uncomfortable by the way McKay regards her. We know from later on in the season that Sheppard is in possession of the video message McKay had recorded with the purpose of protecting Sheppard's own career in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), in which he tells basically all of SGC that his "torch was still burning" for Carter (the video message was very clearly never intended to get past the censors); and it was implied in The Lost Boys (S02E10) that Sheppard knows about the time that Carter had kissed McKay -- and probably thought it was much worse than it had actually been. Sheppard had also likely learned about McKay's near-naked hallucination of Carter in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14), where neither man seems to have quite understood what she really was and which is actually revisited in this particular episode. Adding to this that Sheppard is feeling guilty about a couple of things he had done involving women himself while having the tendency to project his issues, him pouring all of this on the figure of Carter starts making sense.

But to recap what we have discussed before: Carter knows that McKay is gay and actually started liking him better when he figured this out about him back when McKay decided to overshare with her, McKay thinks that Carter is gay and that he is helping her out by publicly hitting on her, and Sheppard knows that McKay is not interested in women ("Woolsey wasn't the weirdest thing about that timeline") but still suspects that maybe Carter is the exception for him since she is so butch and resembles his mother, and even when Sheppard does not really think that McKay is interested in women, because he is bisexual himself, he is just bothered by any woman that McKay has ever given attention to, ever, he just is, OK? He is a petty and jealous man with serious projection issues, so it says more about him than it does about McKay that Sheppard cannot let it go.

And so, what Sheppard does here is very similar to what we had seen him do in Inferno (S02E19), when he was feeling jealous over Norina giving attention to McKay even when McKay himself had been mostly ignoring her. Sheppard had been so sick with jealousy that he actually started painting McKay in a bad light for her, trying to make her see McKay as less desirable, less competent, less worth pursuing, less like the McKay that he sees when he looks at McKay himself, so that Norina might not want to pay him any more attention. And he does it here, trying to make McKay seem less appealing to Carter, to make him seem as someone not worth Carter's time. Surely Carter had thought about that already, Rodney. She doesn't need your help. And note that although Sheppard does usually call McKay Rodney especially when they are among people he trusts, here his intention is very consciously to lay claim to him. He is calling him Rodney in front of Carter to emphasize the intimacy between the two of them, well aware of the fact that Carter had known McKay before he had, had known him before the two of them had ever met. He is painfully aware of their "history," make no mistake about that.

Sheppard's reference to them "coming all this way" is further implying that he sure wishes they hadn't. He may have the home court advantage here but he does not want to have that Jezebel in his home. But at the same time, Sheppard's comment to McKay here is again one that is for him and for him alone, that shuts everyone else out of the conversation between himself and McKay. Sheppard is again inviting McKay into that world that is shared only between the two of them, only Carter seems determined to draw him right out because they have need of him. Sheppard is sitting with his hands clasped on his lap, trying very hard to make himself seem relaxed, which is the opposite of what he is actually feeling here. The more Sheppard tries to make himself look relaxed, the less he is actually feeling it. His body language here is similar to when he had been seated by this very same table in Before I Sleep (S01E15), and the older Weir had been telling them about how McKay had died saving their lives in another timeline. That is how uncomfortable Sheppard is here.

He also has to look away from Carter as she is speaking, worrying his lip in that way that he does when he is feeling mighty uncomfortable, almost pained. He hates this science-off that seems to start commencing between Carter and McKay here, knowing that he is not equipped to participate in it. He also seems to glance at Vala while biting his lip, and the uninitiated observer might think that Sheppard was turned on by her or that his gesture had anything to do with her, where the lip thing is actually his self-soothing gesture and he is looking away from Carter, not at Vala here. Vala has her hand on the table in front of Sheppard and she is drawing on the table surface with her finger, and if someone did not know Vala at all, they might also think that she was looking for Sheppard's attention, trying to flirt with him, where she is likely barely aware of his existence at all. But Sheppard does give her a cautious look, not sure what to make of her. He might think that she is flirting with him, and he is not here for it. But his focus is mainly on Carter. This is anything but easy for him.

Carter: Well, that's the problem. It was designed to dial in from another galaxy. Sheppard: Like one of the stargates in the Pegasus? McKay: No, no, no, no, no. The diameter of a stargate is not arbitrary. There is a specific correlation between the energy required to create a stable wormhole— Carter: And the size of the gate. I know that!

Sheppard's comment is insightful, showing not just that he is more intelligent than he lets on most of the time because he likes to keep his cards close to his chest, but also that he is really trying to come across as an intellectual equal to Carter, to show that he can think on the same level as she can, even though he does not have her formal education in science, because he sees Carter as his romantic rival for the attentions of McKay.

Sheppard's behaviour here has two prongs: to make McKay seem less desirable to Carter and to make himself more desirable than Carter to McKay. And most likely McKay has no idea what Sheppard is doing or why he is doing it, again feeling like he is undermining him in front of company for no discernible reason, and in front of people like the SG-1 that he really would like to impress, too. Because McKay does not realize how much Sheppard loves him, he has no way of correctly interpreting his behaviour. This is also true for much of the audience -- they see Sheppard come across as a dick for no reason because they do not recognize his motivation in this. And so, albeit we have seen that McKay really appreciates Sheppard's insight and his ideas most of the time, he contradicts him here in front of other people because Sheppard's own behaviour toward him is making him defensive.

One thing to note here is the size discussion, which is very often connected to dick size in particular. Obviously they are not talking about dick sizes here (even when Sheppard and McKay had been talking about dick sizes in Hide and Seek (S01E03), they had explicitly been talking about boat sizes), but the suggestion is always there, especially since McKay very shortly associates connecting two gates with having sex. What is interesting here is that it is Carter who seems to get defensive about gate size (the fact that she gets defensive around McKay is interesting in and of itself, possibly revealing that she is still feeling some kind of way about him calling her a dumb blonde back in the day), whereas McKay has no preference for big gates or small gates, merely calmly pointing out that they are not commensurate. We have noted before how McKay seems to have no anxiety whatsoever relating to the size of his dick, which betrays the fact that his dick is sizeable enough for him to never having had to worry about it. While the SG-1 are basically going "It's not the size of the gate, it's the motion of the event horizon" here, McKay is the one saying that size does matter. And Sheppard would agree with him there, as he had indicated that size matters to him very much when it comes to his partners, this having been one of the first conversations Sheppard and McKay ever had with each other.

What is happening around them, as McKay and Carter are having their science-off, is that Jackson keeps looking at McKay almost admiringly while Mitchell is rolling his eyes, barely able to keep his annoyance from showing (and we may note that Sheppard notices him doing it already here, which may explain his behaviour toward Mitchell later on; to say that Sheppard is defensive over McKay is an understatement). Vala seems to be paying attention mostly to Carter, trying to keep up with the conversation, and while she looks at Sheppard when he speaks, she seems almost dismissive of him. Sheppard himself has drawn his chair back from between the two women that he had chosen to sit between (and given that he is both a Lt. Colonel and dark and beautiful, Sheppard is basically an amalgamation of the two women on either side of him), seeming to need some distance to them. We see that Sheppard is very obviously leaning away from Carter but he is not sitting as close to Vala as the other angle would have led you to believe.

McKay: And, it's exponentially proportional to size, which means the energy required to create a connection with a supergate would far exceed that of an ordinary gate. It'd be like putting together a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua. Vala: And the problem with that would be…? McKay: Well, obviously it's a question of… Oh, I see. You're mocking me, aren't you. Vala: What? No, I'm not from Earth. I honestly didn't get the reference.

This is a very interesting exchange and not just because McKay makes a reference to dog-on-dog sex, which in this instance obviously means heterosexual sex for the purposes of procreation that McKay does not seem to be a fan of, but also because he had likened Sheppard to a dog, a friendly face waiting for him when he gets home (while talking about cats) in Letters from Pegasus, and so there might be something more to his analogy. Regardless, it tells us that he is thinking about sex here, sexualizing the technical process when it did not need sexualizing, and while it is a rather apt analogy that dumbs down the complicated science behind it, Vala takes exception to him making references that she does not understand. McKay has no way of knowing it, of course, but Vala had displayed frustration over the Earthlings making references that she doesn't get earlier, and her vaguely hostile response to him had nothing to do with McKay and everything to do with the rest of her team, country bumpkin Mitchell in particular.

But what is really curious here is the way Jackson looks at Vala, and McKay interpreting his look in the wrong context. Because Jackson had been paying attention to McKay and looking at him respectfully he makes note when Jackson looks at Vala following her comment, seeming to disapprove of it. McKay interprets this as Jackson disapproving his teammate making fun of the science nerd, and McKay is immediately defensive, probably because he has been made fun of by the popular kids in school before -- something that is confirmed in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08). But that is not what Jackson was doing at all. As mentioned, Jackson and Vala's relationship was somewhat similar to Sheppard and McKay in that it mostly played out in the subtext, in looks and the positioning of their bodies, the way they were around each other. They did get to consummate their relationship in a timeline that was later erased but for the most part, it was extremely subtle -- more subtle even than Sheppard and McKay's relationship. And just like Sheppard and McKay had been paralleled with Carter and O'Neill previously, they are paralleled with Jackson and Vala here.

The point of this whole scene is to show that the way Jackson behaves toward Vala is the same as how McKay behaves toward Sheppard. They are both feeling mortified by the behaviour of their romantic interests in public because they both feel like the behaviour of the person they love rubs off on them. When you are in a relationship you are in a position to embarrass the other through association. If a spouse behaves badly, it reflects badly on the other partner. Jackson narrows his eyes as he looks at Vala because he does not approve of her behaviour, not for the first time and not for the last time. They are not together like Sheppard and McKay are but he does have all the hallmarks of a long-suffering spouse, and seems to feel like Vala is embarrassing him in front of someone that he respects and even admires here. The whole point of showing this little moment is to parallel the two subtextual romances, and McKay's reaction to the look that Jackson gives her only calls attention to this fact -- to how much of the narrative plays out through looks and subtle cues that can easily be misinterpreted if the viewer lacks the context, does not know what to look for.

But Jackson is not the only one who gives her a look following the comment. Sheppard also looks at her when she starts backpedalling, realizing that she had put her foot in it and offended this obviously very important stranger needlessly. Sheppard smiles as he looks at her and if you did not know Sheppard at all, this might be interpreted as a friendly smile, that he was approving of what she was saying because he obviously encourages people making fun of McKay, Sheppard being a dick like that and McKay being the butt of all of his jokes, because he sees him as some kind of comic relief like the great big high school bully that he is. Based purely on a maintext reading of this whole scene, one could easily come to the conclusion that Sheppard was the too-cool-for-school action hero and that he is embarrassed that his clown of a sidekick is making him look bad in front of the other cool kids. But when you look at his face you can see that Sheppard's eyes are cold as they move from McKay to her, his smile dangerous.

Sheppard is so in love with the man sitting across from him that it makes him very nearly actual crazy, and if Vala really had been making fun of him, she would have made an enemy for life. If Vala had been making fun of McKay and had not backpedalled because, as an alien like Ronon and Teyla, she simply failed to get his reference, Sheppard very likely would have said something biting to her. It is her bluster that makes him relent, and it is notable that Vala seems to be making her excuses to Sheppard as much if not more so than to McKay himself. And it is not because she finds Sheppard attractive and hence wants to make sure that the pretty man does not think ill of her, needing to make sure that she did not ruin his impression of her. No, Vala is good at reading people and and has a well above average survival instinct, and she seems to have caught on to the fact that Sheppard is a dangerous man who would literally kill for the man sitting across from them. The last thing she needs is smoke like that.

McKay: Oh, well, they're both dogs… Carter: McKay! Weir: Colonel Carter, please continue. Sheppard: If he speaks again, I'll shoot him. Daniel: But to answer your question, we are introducing another stargate into the equation. Teal'c should have it in position right now.

McKay seems instantly mollified by realizing that Vala was not kidding, that she actually is just a clueless alien who had been upset for not to get his brilliant analogy, and so he immediately starts earnestly explaining what he had meant because he thinks that it was actually a good way to explain what the problem is. What happens then is also significant: Carter thinks that this talk about dog sex is not appropriate for the work place and hence chides McKay, and in taking the liberty to chide him actually displays their familiarity. One does not chide colleagues like this unless they are very close, this is the kind of thing that either a sibling or a spouse might do, they have the right to chide someone in this manner. And the thing is, she is being way too familiar with McKay for Sheppard's liking here. It is not her job to chide McKay when he is being more McKay than is appropriate for polite company, it is his job. It is his right. It is his prerogative.

It is Sheppard who gets to look at McKay the way Jackson had just looked at Vala, not Carter. Carter may think that she knows him like that but she does not know him like that. Sheppard is pretty sure that he knows McKay better by now than she does. He's really pretty sure. He is positive. He is almost certain. There is no way that she could know him better than he does even if they had kissed. He has kissed McKay many more times than she has. He has kissed him way better. He is pretty sure he has done things for McKay that she couldn't even do if she wanted to. And again we see Sheppard smile as this takes place, but note how he actually pushes himself back against the chair at the same time, to maintain control of himself. It is almost as though he physically rejects having to witness it.

And yet, what she says here really rubs him the wrong way. We see that he is looking at McKay the whole time, only briefly glancing at Carter as he makes his comment because his comment is not really meant for her. He says it to her but is meaning it for him to hear. We see that his mouth was open and he was ready to say something when Carter beat him to it, and as he closes his mouth he looks truly upset. He is also tightening the grip of his hands, trying to calm himself, to keep himself under control.

And let us just be clear here: Sheppard is not actually advocating for shooting McKay, that is not what this is about. He is joking, he is making a quip, only the onus of his quip is not "We are all so very embarrassed for McKay's behaviour here on Atlantis, please do forgive us, he is our cross to bear and I intend to make sure that he plays nice," or however the mainstream audience interprets this line. As Teyla had pointed out in Trinity (S02E06), in negotiations the words spoken are often meaningless, and it is the look on Sheppard's face that is significant here, especially since we have seen that they are both capable of reading the thoughts of the other man by looking at his face. Sheppard is upset here. There is almost a cold rage bubbling underneath the surface, and it is caused by the same thing that we have seen upsetting Sheppard before: he feels like a woman is making advances on his man right in front of him and he is not allowed to put a stop to it. There is nothing he can do when a female romantic rival is moving in on his man in public.

Sheppard's comment is once more two-pronged: he puts out this severe but obviously not serious offer up for Carter to make it clear to her that reigning McKay in is not her job, it is very much his job, and he dares anyone to move in on him when it comes to that. And at the same time, he is trying to communicate to McKay how much this is actually upsetting him. He needs McKay to reign that shit in not because he is embarrassed by the dog sex talk but because he is bothered by the familiarity between him and Carter. This is the first time that Sheppard is actually seeing McKay and Carter around each other, and while there had been absolutely nothing going on between them, Sheppard still feels like she is the ex he has never gotten over.

But as good as McKay is reading Sheppard's thoughts usually, he seems lost and upset here, not understanding why Sheppard is behaving so cold and hostile toward him all of a sudden. McKay does not understand, he has no way of understanding how much Sheppard loves him, and how jealous and possessive he is about him. McKay does not regard his own life important enough to comprehend that someone actually could feel this way about him. As far as he is concerned, Sheppard seems to be trying extra hard to impress Carter -- and that figures, Carter is the brilliant blonde bombshell that all the men fall for. It is only natural for Sheppard to fall for her too, everyone else does. His only comfort here is that Carter, as far as he knows, does not like men like that, and she has in fact not been giving Sheppard any undue attention here. This scene really is a masterclass in show, don't tell.

Continued in Pt. 2

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Long Goodbye, Pt. 4

Lorne and his team have brought in the other pod and unsurprisingly, we find McKay working on it. And just as unsurprisingly we find Sheppard watching him work, and even Caldwell has chosen to join them instead of spending time with Weir hosting the alien consciousness, a soon to perish representative of a vanishing civilization. For sure, they might figure that Weir is able to learn as much about their culture as there is to learn but at least one of them might have stayed with her for security reasons. But alas, they have not and are now both listening to McKay explaining things about the pod technology in the way that he knows Sheppard likes him to explain things to him, simplified but not dumbed down to a condescending degree.

McKay: As I understand it, the beam that hit Elizabeth was part of a failsafe feature built into the pod system. As cellular failure progressed, the pod stored her consciousness in a sort of flash memory. Caldwell: Why? I mean, what good is the technology if the effects are temporary?

Sheppard is frowning as he looks down at the pod in front of him, apparently having agreed to host the consciousness of the man inside. He seems to be having second and even third doubts about it but we may note that even though his eyes are fixed on the pod, his head still seems to be turning when McKay is moving in the room, following the sound of his voice, which again show us how his body is like a compass needle to McKay's True North. We may also note that McKay has really tried to figure out how this alien technology works before allowing Sheppard anywhere near trying it on. He has tried to make sure it is going to be safe for him.

Sheppard: It's a Black Box! McKay: Well, that makes sense. Even if the body is incapable of being revived, the survivor can still report what happened to their ship. The rescue team could interrogate them even if they were incapable of regaining consciousness. Caldwell: You're talking about a human flight recorder. That's pretty dark.

Even though Sheppard has kept his eyes fixed on the pod, the way he looks up as he makes his suggestion tells us that he has been listening to everything McKay has been saying with a keen ear. And again he displays his understanding and his quick thinking in coming up with an explanation to Caldwell's why question. McKay can tell them how it works, he is the one who comes up with the why, the two of them working together. And we may note that McKay accepts his explanation immediately and fully, even elaborating on it, appreciating Sheppard's insight.

However, note the way Sheppard narrows his eyes as McKay comes up with a hypothetical scenario that seems to resemble something that Sheppard has actually lived through -- reminding him of something that we are only going to learn about him later, which is his failed rescue mission in Afghanistan that he himself had been freshly reminded of through his rescue of McKay in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14). Sheppard had been forced to relive his failure to rescue Captain Holland, and although we learn more about what had happened in Phantoms (S03E09), it is never made entirely clear whether Holland had already been dead by the time Sheppard had reached the chopper or if he had actually been able to have the conversation with Holland as he had while he had been hallucinating Teyla was him -- whether he got to unburden his heart with Teyla through having a conversation with Holland he never got to have in the real world, having been too late.

Whether or not Sheppard had been able to get a "report" or to "interrogate" Holland following the crash, McKay's words nonetheless seem to remind him of the event. This makes it seem as though he has not told McKay about that, at least not yet, and hence McKay does not know how tender the flesh is that he is inadvertently pinching here. If he had shared that with McKay, it might have resolved many issues between them, McKay better understanding where he is coming from. What ever had happened, Sheppard probably did collect the black box from the chopper and it had featured in his court martial. And what is more, none of this would be nearly as acutely in Sheppard's memory if he had not come so very close to losing McKay when his jumper had suddenly and without warning gone crashing down from the sky. He is now forced to imagine interrogating McKay after his death, and he does not like this thought at all.

Sheppard: Pretty useful thing in times of war. McKay: Well, it could also be the means for two survivors to say one last goodbye, hmm?

Not wanting to dwell on his memories, Sheppard makes a general and non-committal reply to Caldwell where McKay, possibly influenced by the romantic yarn Phoebus had purposefully been spinning to get them invested in this, makes a comment that is, we can only hope, unintentionally cruel towards Sheppard. If McKay knows about Sheppard's history, it would be hurtful but as it seems as though that part of Sheppard's personal history is still unknown to him, McKay may only intend a much lighter jab with his words, referring to the personal history between the two of them because he still has sore feelings about not getting to say goodbye to him when he decided to fly the jumper to the hive. Or his tone might simply come from him quoting Phoebus, this having been her excuse for why she wants to do this. But McKay definitely has some bitter feelings when it comes to Sheppard and saying goodbye, although he may not yet know why it is so difficult for Sheppard to say, and to especially say to him.

Like Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, Sheppard does not want to say goodbye, albeit for a different reason that I will return to by the end of the episode. Sheppard has those serious abandonment issues and he is looking for someone that will never leave him, who will stand by him until the end of the line. And although McKay very much is that guy (it will take Sheppard being transported 40,000 years into the future to finally realize this), McKay himself needs verbal affirmation that he is important, that he is cared for, that he is Sheppard's choice. To him, saying goodbye means letting someone you love know that you care about them where for Sheppard having to say goodbye, having to let someone go, is straight up torture -- and this is a point of fundamental disconnect between them.

There is backstory to why they feel the way they do, and it may not be a coincidence they have this exchange just as Weir is being wheeled into the room in a wheelchair. It seems as though both men had lost their mothers while they had been young, and we might venture a guess based on their respective pathologies that for Sheppard the loss had been sudden and dramatic (car crash, or even a private plane crash, where she had not died in the crash but of the injuries sustained soon after the crash) and for McKay it had been a protracted affair of watching his mother wither away from an illness. But in spite of this, Sheppard had been forced to say goodbye to his mother and McKay had been denied the opportunity to say goodbye to his because he had not been by her bedside when it had finally happened, he may have been off to college, working on some theorem or taking care of Jeannie, or what ever, depending on his age. He had not been there and never got the chance to say it. And it seems like he never gets the chance to say it to Sheppard either, and not for lack of having had the occasion.

For McKay, saying goodbye is what you do to someone you love, you stay at their bedside and suffer through the pain and then you get to say it. For Sheppard, if you never say goodbye to them it means that they are not really ever gone -- to a child's mind having said goodbye might even translate to having caused their death, having given them leave to die. Because Sheppard has such a strong ATA gene, it also indicates that probably both of his parents had it, and there is also the possibility that he had somehow been able to tap into his mother's pain the same way Beckett seemed to tap into McKay's pain during The Hive (S02E11), mother and son inadvertently creating some kind of a loop where he was forced to experience her death, which would have made the whole ordeal even more traumatic to him as a child. Sheppard does not want a repeat of that experience ever, and so he avoids having to say goodbye to a pathological degree, he will not even say goodbye on the phone. However, it is not that he does not appreciate the sentiment, since we find out in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08) that Sheppard has kept a copy of the video message McKay had recorded in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) that was essentially McKay recording his goodbyes, his final thoughts and messages to people.

But the way McKay says it here, both fond and challenging, makes it seem like this has been a topic of conversation between them -- perhaps even a point of contention between them following the events of The Siege (S01E20) where McKay had been truly hurt by Sheppard's choice to sacrifice his life for him without telling him, without giving him the chance to say goodbye. Even if he might appreciate where Sheppard is coming from, getting the chance to say goodbye is important to McKay. It is an acknowledgement of the bond between them. It is the chance to let the person he loves to know how he feels, to reaffirm what he should of course already know. McKay will keep trying to get his chance to say it to Sheppard just as hard as Sheppard keeps avoiding having to say it to McKay, and to him in particular.

Caldwell: Are you sure she's up for this? Beckett: Physically, she's perfectly fine. Besides, Elizabeth wouldn't take no for an answer. Phoebus: Love is a powerful thing, Carson. Sheppard: You're a hopeless romantic, you know that? Phoebus: Well, you're just as hopeless, otherwise you wouldn't have agreed.

We do not get to see Sheppard's reaction to McKay's words, we do not get to see how he understood and received them. Beckett wheels Phoebus in and tells them that Elizabeth had been quite insistent that they go through with this, further cementing the fact that it is Phoebus pretending to be Weir that is trying to get this to happen, who has a burning drive to see the man in the pod imprinted on a man of this civilization they have never before encountered, only to have one last word with him. As mentioned, although she tells them that this is her husband and they do seem to know each other very well, intimately even, they appear to be enemies intent on annihilating each other's cultures and while she could just have watched him die right here without ever being revived, her hatred is such that she seems to feel the need to see him suffer. It is not enough that he and his people are erased from history, she needs to see the defeat in his eyes and that kind of devotion, that kind of all-consuming obsession is not far from love.

She is pretending to be a woman missing her lover and her hatred for the man is passionate enough that she manages to fool all of them. She tells them here, by way of an excuse, that love is a powerful thing but she does not actually tell them that she loves the man in the pod. It is possible that Thalen had taken or killed something important to her and this is why she needs revenge. If Thalen had been responsible for killing her actual husband or her child -- possibly even their child (in mythology, Phoebe was one of the Amazons and we might be dealing with a similar civilization that had closed men off but still needed them to reproduce, while Thalen would have come from the Gargareans where the two peoples would have met once a year to repopulate both tribes, girls going to the Amazons and boys to the Gargareans) -- then her need for revenge might find an explanation but alas, we never learn of their motivations, how their two cultures had come to clash. But while she may in some fashion be motivated by love, the reason why she is giving them this excuse now seems to be because she is playing Sheppard and McKay. We already saw that McKay was feeling romantic what with his reference to lovers saying goodbye, given with a smile, but it seems as though he is far from alone in this.

Sheppard calls Weir a hopeless romantic, sounding jaded, needing that sarcastic distance to authentic feeling. This is not really an assessment of her character as much as just a jibe at her comment because Weir cannot precisely be described as such. She is not very expressive with feelings, and Sheppard seems well aware of this. Even when we saw her with her actual lover, Weir seemed outwardly cold and distant, and this may have been one of the reasons that had driven her lover to seek comfort in the arms of another. Weir is not unfeeling but she tries very hard to control her feelings and not to let them show, and this has likely served her well as a career diplomat if not in her personal relationships. Point is, while Sheppard says this, it is not true, and he does not even intend it as a description of her character, he is merely pointing out that she is being uncharacteristically schmoopy. But knowing everything that Weir knows about him, Phoebus pulls an Uno Reverse on Sheppard and calls him romantic, and this actually is an apt description of him even though he tries very hard to hide it.

Sheppard is the romantic hero, not unlike Philip Marlowe, in spite of his dark-clad and occasionally jaded exterior, in the sense of fulfilling the chivalric ideal of masculine military heroism emphasizing subjectivity and the primacy of the individual. But he is also romantic in the sense that he loves a lot and even though he has tried hard not to, love seems to motivate most of the things that he does. In the first season, we saw him read through War and Peace, which contains a famous love story and later on we learn that he has also read The Princess Bride (and he has read it, not just seen it, quoting from the book), meaning that Sheppard actually enjoys romantic literature and is a big schmoop underneath his gruff exterior. And it is not just that he consumes romance, Phoebus through Weir also knows that the man is hopelessly, helplessly in love and had just taken a jumper to the bottom of the ocean to fetch his man, she knows that Sheppard would pretty much do anything for the man that he loves. Using the idea of love to motivate Sheppard into doing this is ingenious, it shows us how well Weir knows him.

But because they have this exchange, a man calls a woman a hopeless romantic and she basically responds "it takes one to know one," implying that they are birds of a feather, it is so easy for the mainstream viewer to interpret this as indicating that they have romantic feelings toward each other, when that is not even adjacent to what is established here. Sheppard did not agree to do this because he has feelings for Weir but because he thinks that he knows what Phoebus, missing her husband, must be feeling -- he explicitly said as much. He is doing this so that Phoebus might be reunited with her husband one last time, and if he can give her her husband back for even a moment, he figures it is worth doing. Sheppard is a hopeless romantic but even more than that, he knows loss. He knows what it is like to yearn to be reunited with a lost lover. It is so easy to see Sheppard's motivation when one looks at all deeper into his character and yet the heteronormative assumption makes it easy to jump to conclusions. A boy, a girl and love has been mentioned so obviously they are sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. But actually Sheppard finds it easy to empathize with someone missing their husband because he knows himself what it is like to miss a man who is "close enough".

Beckett: I've gone over the respective EEG patterns and I can say with some degree of confidence that this... imprinting... that Doctor Weir's temporary occupant calls it won't last more than a few hours. Caldwell: You can guarantee that? Beckett: A day at most. McKay: Well! I'm sold! Shall we?

Sheppard does not answer Weir clearly teasing him because he seems to have no defense against these accusations, against the truth. He had indeed agreed to do this, and he had agreed to do this because he does empathize with the recently deceased alien. His entire motivation is to give her a chance to see her husband again, there is not even a veneer of any military or scientific reason he can spin on this. He does not enjoy her rubbing it in his face like that, with that almost mocking tone, but that does not make it untrue.

Now, it is likely that Sheppard had discussed this over with McKay before agreeing to it, if only to find out the technical details of what precisely would be happening to him. But McKay's chipper tone here seems almost too chipper. It is like he feels the need to project how fine he is with this and has no concerns whatsoever. And what is more, he seems anxious to get this show on the road because he also needs it to be over with. He has clearly bought into the romantic narrative just as much if not more than Sheppard -- but he is being asked kind of a lot here. Not just to lend the body of his lover for a few hours but to safeguard his psyche, his body and his life from alien technology. McKay is sounding far too confident to actually feel this confident about this, he is like the polar opposite of the adage "the lady doth protest to much," the dude is way too excited.

McKay: And... Beckett: He's still alive. Same as before. Life signs even fainter than the first one. If we're gonna do this, we should do it now Caldwell: I'd prefer if this alien consciousness weren't armed. Sheppard: Right. McKay: Oh! Beckett: Colonel Sheppard. You'll have to be in close proximity to the pod for the transfer to happen.

Just as soon as McKay springs the pod open, we may see that he takes a step back, not chancing that he is caught in its imprinting beam. Like he had made it known on the Ancient warship Aurora, it is better that he is on the outside to figure it out in case something goes wrong, and he knows that it is his job to look over Sheppard while he is under this alien consciousness. And Sheppard seems to agree. When Caldwell, who we may recall is a superior officer to Sheppard, turns toward him likely with his hand out based on the movement of his shoulder, expecting Sheppard to give him his gun for safe-keeping when he points out that it is better that they do not let Sheppard get possessed while he is armed, Sheppard takes his personal weapon and gives it to McKay. Not to his superior officer that requested it but to the man that he actually trusts with his gun. Never mind that guns are phallic symbols but this is his personal gun, it is basically like letting McKay use his toothbrush as far as intimacy goes.

This is not a small gesture. And it is not just that he trusts McKay to keep his gun, he is also giving McKay protection by the same gesture. If anything goes sideways, and of course it will (it always does), McKay has some protection on him. Given that even the guards outside are armed with stunners, McKay is now the only person with live ammo on him because Sheppard entrusted him with his own gun. Now, while this is not his first time holding a gun, McKay does not quite seem to know what to do with it likely because he is not wearing his holster and seems unsure if shoving Sheppard's gun into his pants is something he should be seen doing in public. Whether or not McKay himself recognizes what a huge gesture and display of trust this is from Sheppard, it is nonetheless significant.

Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, I know. Beckett: But you're not moving. Sheppard: You know, they were husband and wife. Anything could happen. Phoebus: I promise to be discreet, Colonel. Sheppard: Well... I guess I'll see you guys later. McKay: Have fun!

Now that he is actually called upon to do it, Sheppard seems to have a renewed round of doubts about this. He even goes so far as to speak some of them out loud: these two had been a married couple. The implication is that he means that there might be some intense passion, some public displays of affection, and that is how Phoebus at least chooses to interpret him. She gives him (false) assurance that it will be discreet, they will not abuse his body unduly. However, it is not necessary Sheppard meant that, as "anything" also entails getting violent since married couples could indeed behave any kind of way toward each other, everything being fair in love and war, and Sheppard would not be that off about his assessment either.

But even further than that -- Sheppard might actually be concerned about how his body could be used by the two of them, being that they are a married couple. We have seen Sheppard have some sexual encounters recently that did not leave him feeling very happy, and we have seen him suffer touches and attempted seductions from women that he did not welcome. I have written about his long history of sexual trauma at the hands of women, and his reluctance now to give his body over to this man, yes, but also to this woman who is occupying Weir's body is starting to give him doubts. When he was looking at an elderly couple, it probably had not occurred to any of them that they might want to have passionate sex. But when he thinks about what he might want to do if he was reunited with McKay for one last time, he suddenly understands that they might actually want to use his body in ways that he is not comfortable with.

But feeling like he is already in for a penny, Sheppard does finally take a step closer to the pod preparing to give these people their one moment together. At the same time, we see that Sheppard had been standing opposite McKay on the other sided of the pod the whole time, and only now moves to stand opposite Weir. And we may note that he naturally does not say goodbye as he sets to undertake this, he tells them that he will see them later which implies temporary absence and subsequent reconnection, which he is much more comfortable expressing. Now, Sheppard uses the plural here with "you guys," talking to everyone. But he holds McKay's gaze for a long moment between "well" and "I guess" because he is mainly taking his leave from McKay. And McKay's response -- and he knows Sheppard was talking to him like he always is -- is exactly the kind of thing that someone might tell their spouse before they leave for a night out, to hang out with their friends. McKay tells Sheppard to "Have fun!" like he is the one getting to have an experience while McKay is staying at home waiting for him. Like Sheppard is stepping out for a few hours and then coming back home to him. They may not be married but it takes effort not to see that these two men are a couple.

Continued in Pt. 5

[dr-futbol-blog]

Irresistible, Pt. 11

We then get one of those rare truly private moments between Sheppard and McKay, and as I have mentioned before, we do not get them very often and when we do, there is usually some attenuating circumstance that precludes them from acting like they normally would with each other. We know that they had been alone together for hours twice already in this episode, and we did not get to see a single glimpse of what they had done or how they had behaved around each other then. But now that they are both alarmed about their friends and colleagues and are working to figure this out, we get to see this brief moment cognizant of the fact that this is very much a "No time for love, Dr. Jones!" situation. Now, this scene is not just central to this episode and understanding what happens at the end but quite literally to the entire subtextual narrative of the relationship between Sheppard and McKay. So let's dive in.

Sheppard: This is creeping me out. McKay: Yeah, reminds me of an old Batman episode, actually. Catwoman used a drug to put a spell on Batman, making him fall in love with her. Ended up doing all sorts of evil things for her.

We find Sheppard and McKay presumably at McKay's lab or where he usually works, and McKay seems to be typing away on his laptop, likely trying to figure something out. It is curious that the scene starts with Sheppard walking up to McKay from having been away from him, and as we soon learn, they had been apart for at least a moment since McKay had time to rummage around Lucius' quarters while they had been doing their individual things. We do not know why they had split up since everyone acting so strangely would probably make them want to cling even more tightly to each other, but even though they are very obviously attached at the hip and seem to spend most of their time with each other, it seems like they do not feel the need to spend every second of every day together. So, they have been doing their individual things, Sheppard possibly having done some recon or talked to more people while McKay had been snooping around gathering intel. Even when they are apart, they are working together, are working toward a common goal. We can also note that both of them have now removed their tactical vests and have their jackets open, showing us that they are more relaxed in each other's company. Pay attention also to the soft tones in which they speak to each other when they are alone. It is rarely we get to hear either of them sound like this with other people.

It is important that we see Sheppard coming up to McKay because people often insert this dynamic of hero and side-kick to their relationship, lampshaded here by their discussion of the 1960s Batman TV series featuring the "dynamic duo," the original "ambiguously gay duo," where Batman was the hero and Robin was his young sidekick. But that is not what Sheppard and McKay are. McKay is working here in his lab and it is Sheppard who comes up to him, and like we had learned in Allies (S02E20), when he brought coffee to the people working in the lab, and through the sandwich someone (with knowledge of Afghani spices) had brought to McKay in Letters from Pegasus (S02E17), Sheppard is known to hang around the lab. Later on in Quarantine (S04E13) we actually find Sheppard there, playing a computer game with McKay and trying to get him to spend even more time with him than he already does. This is to say that Sheppard wants to spend time with McKay and seeks out his company because he likes McKay, he wants to spend his time in McKay's company. Sheppard does not just love McKay, he also likes him.

What ever Sheppard had been doing at the side of the room, or whether he had just entered the lab and was marching right up to McKay, we may note that he then takes a seat right up in McKay's personal space. There is no reason whatsoever for Sheppard to sit this close to McKay. The chairs move, he could have drawn the chair back and taken a seat or he could have remained standing behind the chair, leaving it between the two of them -- which is what a heterosexual man coming up to a friend would have done. A colleague probably would have remained even further back.

But Sheppard is not McKay's friend, his leader or his colleague, which is why he actually presses himself even closer to McKay than the chair had allowed him, shifting on the seat so that he inches closer to McKay. Sheppard is McKay's lover, and that is the only explanation for him taking a seat this close to McKay, pressing his pelvis up toward him as he finds a comfortable position, and while we do not see his legs, they are almost certainly touching and he likely has his legs on either side of McKay, creating a protective barrier around him with his own body. Most stock photos for "lovers sitting on barstools" have more space between them than Sheppard puts between them here. Sheppard does not make eye contact as he takes the seat, seeming to focus on McKay's laptop and what ever he has up on the screen instead but the only thing this establishes is that Sheppard has such an awareness of McKay's body, an extended proprioception that encompasses McKay's body as well as his own, that he knows exactly where McKay is without having to look at him. They are also both turned toward each other here, just like they had been before and for most of the episode, because they both want to be able to see the other man.

What they say is also interesting. While we do not know whether Sheppard is coming into the lab or just returning from having checked something out on the other side of the room, he again launches back to their conversation like it had never ended, like he was picking it up from where they had left off. It seems like theirs is a never-ending conversation that they only ever put temporarily on pause, which makes it impossible for us to tell whether we are jumping in in medias res or whether this is the actual start of the scene because the res are always in medias with these two. What is more, we have to appreciate the fact that what Sheppard tells McKay here is an intimate confession of what he feels in this moment. He is not disguising his feelings but is sharing them with McKay openly and without reservation, seeming to trust McKay with his innermost thoughts. This is creeping him out but he would not admit as much to just anyone. Sheppard is not big on sharing what he feels or what he really thinks with people but seems to think nothing of sharing this with McKay.

McKay, for his part, acknowledges what Sheppard says and expresses his assent with "Yeah," but he then goes off on an unexpected tangent, and this is the difference between McKay and Weir, as Sheppard himself had noted in Conversion (S02E08). Weir was not very good at making Sheppard feel less freaked out and resorted to just saying the obvious, trite thing to him that people are supposed to say in these situations (which here would have been something to the effect of "Yeah, me too"), whereas McKay never says the expected thing. He manages to soothe Sheppard's feelings without even trying by just being himself, through saying things that grab Sheppard's attention, takes his thoughts in a whole other place from where he had been just a moment ago. McKay is never afraid to be himself which is one of the things that had made Sheppard fall in love with him. And although people might be tempted to think that McKay talking about Batman while they are meant to be focusing on figuring this thing out is something that exasperates Sheppard, that he only barely tolerates McKay's ramblings and wishes he would get to the point, indulging him just to keep things rolling along, that is not what is happening here.

Note the way Sheppard is nodding along to what McKay says. He not only seems to agree with what McKay is saying, he is fully invested in listening to him. Unlike what some viewers seem to think, Sheppard likes listening to McKay talk. From the very beginning Sheppard has enjoyed hearing what McKay has to say, and unlike most people in McKay's life, he is always encouraging McKay to talk to him, to tell him things, to explain things to him, to just say things to him. Sheppard does not care what McKay says because he knows that what ever it is, it is worth hearing out. In the alternate universe of Moebius, McKay had told Carter that he would gladly listen to her read out a phone book -- which he seemed to do immediately after having checked out Jackson's dick right in front of an Air Force Major, which is not really relevant here. But while McKay had been putting up a show of finding Carter attractive, Sheppard actually seems like he would gladly listen to McKay read out a phone book, and it very much seems like he is interested in Batman only because McKay is interested in Batman. Sheppard is always interested in what McKay has to say even if no one else is. This is not a case of McKay assuming someone is interested in what he is saying due to his poor social skills and hence prattling on while the other person wishes he stopped talking, this is the opposite of that. McKay is comfortable talking to Sheppard because he knows that Sheppard wants to hear what he has to say.

We learn later on in Irresponsible (S03E13), which is a direct continuation of this story, that Batman is McKay's childhood hero and that Sheppard knows this fact about him. McKay admires Batman and because liking Batman is a part of McKay, then Sheppard too finds himself liking Batman and at the very least finds himself talking about Batman with McKay because that is something McKay enjoys talking about. It is not about Batman to Sheppard, it is about McKay. He would gladly discuss fungal infections if that was something McKay wanted to talk about. Sheppard is in love, and when someone is in love, the quirks and personal interests of the other person also become theirs. Loving things that they love is a part of what being in love is all about.

And we have to pay close attention to what McKay actually says here with regards to Batman because this has everything to do with how we have to interpret the end of the episode. McKay says that what is going on here reminds him of an episode of the TV show (likely Scat! Darn Catwoman, S02E41) where Catwoman had drugged Batman to make him do "all sorts of evil things for her." McKay had interpreted this as Batman falling in love with her due to the drug when in the episode, Batman had actually not even taken her drug but a "universal antidote," having been faking it the whole time. This is obviously relevant for the resolution of the episode because, as stated before, McKay does not drug Sheppard, that is not what happens. As a matter of fact, Sheppard had likely taken Beckett's "universal antidote," and McKay just seems to go along with people thinking that he had drugged Sheppard because there was nothing else he could say in that moment that would not have given the game away, would not have compromised Sheppard's whole entire career.

But the important thing to understand here is that what McKay thinks is hot here is not getting Batman to do evil things, it is doing evil things for Catwoman, being completely under her thrall. McKay finds fulfillment in doing acts of service for other people. McKay admires Batman, yes, but more than that he relates to Batman, he self-identifies with Batman. In Irresponsible he describes Batman as "Misunderstood and unappreciated by many, his most formidable weapon was the power of his brilliant mind," very obviously describing himself. McKay does not get off on getting people to do things for him, he gets off on pleasing others, on doing things for people that pleases them. What is hot is someone telling him what they want him to do in no uncertain terms and then doing the things that gets them off. And Sheppard knows better than anyone else that in order for him to get McKay off, he has to tell him what he wants McKay to do for him.

Now, the thing is, their conversation here relates directly to the end of the episode. Everyone thinks that McKay has drugged Sheppard and that Sheppard is doing things for him because he has been drugged. They assume that McKay wanted to see what it would be like to have someone at his beck-and-call, to have someone do things for him. And it is because they have this conversation here that we are meant to attribute a motivation for McKay that is based on what he says here, that Batman doing things for Catwoman was a turn-on for him. The maintext reading of the scene is gay as hell -- McKay getting Sheppard to do things for him because it turns him on? There is no straight explanation for McKay doing something like that. What ever way you turn what happens, there is a sexual, erotic component to it. But attributing it to McKay getting off on getting Sheppard to do things for him is to misunderstand his character badly.

It would be gay as hell for McKay to drug Sheppard into doing things for him because it turns him on, like he says here. Only, McKay more than likely knows that Sheppard has been violated in the past. McKay knows that he has had his autonomy taken from him, McKay knows what Sheppard's father had put him through as a teenager, which we can see by the way he had requested permission to accompany Sheppard to the man's funeral before he had even talked it over with Sheppard. He knew that Sheppard would need someone there with him. Because they had talked about it for a really long time when they were patching up their relationship, it is likely that McKay knows about Chaya, about Teer, about Neera, about Mara, about the wraith queens and about other women who have violated Sheppard's bodily autonomy even before he had come to Atlantis that we have never even heard about.

They hint at Sheppard's history of having his consent ignored and disregarded later on in this very episode through his conversation with Lucius who is threatening to do to him what others have done to him before -- and of course his autonomy had been violated most of all by his father who had his whole life planned out for him and who, according to Sheppard, had thought that going to Stanford instead of Harvard was an act of rebellion. And knowing all this, it would be more than cruel for McKay to even think about doing the same to him, to violate his autonomy and to disregard his consent for his own amusement, for a joke. And of course many people think that that is precisely what happened.

But although McKay remembered the episode as Batman falling in love with Catwoman due to the drug and doing all sorts of evil things for her, that is not what actually happened in the episode. Batman had pretended to be under her spell in order to save Robin. It is not Batman who falls in love but Catwoman actually proposes to Batman who rejects her because it would hamper his crime-fighting bachelor lifestyle. What actually had happened was that in the previous episode That Darn Catwoman it had been Robin that had fallen under her spell, had been overtaken by the drug "Cataphernic," and he is the one who ended up doing "all sorts of evil things" for her and Pussycat, who had actually been the one to drug him.

It is actually interesting that they make the reference to the episode where Batman does not fall in love with her due to the drug in this context because the film Batman and Robin (1997), the iteration of the films that pays the most homage to the old TV show what with their bat-skates and bat-credit card and being silly and over-the-top all around, features a similar plot. Only, it is not Catwoman who drugs Batman and Robin with her pheromones to fall in love with her, it is Poison Ivy. And Poison Ivy succeeds where Catwoman had failed, even if the plot of the film is borrowing liberally from the TV show. Poison Ivy manages to put both Batman and Robin under her thrall and make them compete over her with the aid of this pheromone she secretes. Batman seems to be less affected by her charms than young Robin, even seeming to become immune eventually, and the film contains a very obvious queer subtext what with the director having been gay and the lead actor actually playing Batman as a gay man on purpose, as revealed in later interviews.

The story itself is like a thinly veiled allegory of the evils of heteronormativity, the villains either locked in a cold marriage or oversexualized caricatures of a man and a woman as opposed to the domestic partnership based on mutual respect that Batman and Robin have. The film has been analyzed to death ("Batman & Robin serves as a utopian text favoring homosexuality, in which the characters that conform to the 'normal' gender and sexual roles of mainstream society are depicted as deviant criminals incapable of meaningful relationships, while the heroes of the film subtextually exhibit gay tendencies and are ultimately able to form the strongest bonds of all") but the important thing here is that they could easily have made the reference to this film that people likely would have remembered better than the old TV show, but instead they purposefully chose to make the reference to the story where Batman never was under her thrall, people merely thought he was.

Now, memories are notoriously unreliable and the episode he makes a reference to may have been misremembered by McKay. But at the same time, because he makes a reference to the episode in which Batman had not been under the influence of the drug and they return to this exact conversation at the end of the episode where we are meant to think that McKay is recreating the episode as a fantasy of his, this is definitely a point in favour of Sheppard doing what he does not under the influence of any drug, only the natural ecstasy he feels around McKay. It is McKay who is irresistible to him and the spell he is under is a simple but profound case of having fallen in love.

McKay: Kind of a turn-on, actually. Julie Newmar in a cat outfit... Sheppard: Eartha Kitt was Catwoman. McKay: Not 'til Season three. Sheppard: Really? McKay: Yeah. You didn't know that?

A lot is also happening here. First of all, McKay is explicitly sharing his turn-ons with Sheppard like that is a normal thing for colleagues to do. He does not even think twice about it, sharing something personal and intimate with Sheppard seems perfectly natural to him. The mention is so off-hand that is suggests the two of them have discussed their turn-ons before and extensively, that they know most of what turns the other man on, and this is something that McKay mentions now as something that it had not occurred to tell Sheppard before but that he was reminded of now. McKay mentioning his turn-on here is also important in the fact that if we believe that McKay had drugged Sheppard at the end of the episode, this would have been his motivation for it. Any way you turn the episode, it comes out gay. As mentioned, that is not what I think happened there, but that is the maintext reading. In the maintext, McKay wanted to make Sheppard his sex slave because it turns him on.

The second thing is that McKay mentions Julie Newmar in a cat outfit, and most people are going to connect the dots here, they are going to infer that the turn-on he mentions was Julie Newmar in a cat outfit even though that is not strictly speaking what he says. McKay says that the idea of being drugged into doing evil things for someone is a turn-on, and he then mentions Julie Newmar in a cat outfit, this being another thing that he seems to remember from the episode as he reminisces. He is not saying that he found Catwoman hot, now or back then, but people are going to make the assumption because a hot woman in a catsuit is hot to most people. She was sexy, she was meant to be sexy. Many, many pre-teen boys had their sexual awakening watching her on screen, where McKay's own sexual awakening may have had more to do with the Caped Crusader himself. Adam West's Batman may have been more than a little silly but in his thin spandex, he was also sexy. But the thing to note is that Catwoman is dressed in black, and it is Sheppard who is "the man in black" on the show, he is strongly identified with the Johnny Cash song. There is an argument to be made that on some level Sheppard resembles the Catwoman to McKay, who loves cats, Sheppard being the "familiar face waiting for him to come home from work at the end of the day."

Note the way Catwoman poses in the specific episode McKay is talking about with her hands on her hips -- resembling what Sheppard had done back in the commissary. If McKay self-identifies with Batman then it is Sheppard that he sees not as Robin but as Catwoman in this scenario, dark and oozing sex appeal and making him want to do things for him, to do anything for him. McKay had mentioned "all sorts of evil things," and this is no coincidence. We had seen McKay reign literal fire from the skies on wraiths that had been turned human with no memories only in the previous episode, and McKay had done it without question just because Sheppard had needed it. They may have formerly been wraith but McKay had killed actual people for Sheppard. That is a pretty evil thing to do, all things considered, and we have been shown that McKay would do anything Sheppard asks. When Sheppard asks him to do something McKay does not stop to ask whether that something should be done, only if it can be done. Doing things for Sheppard brings his life meaning and gives him a sense of purpose.

This is not a throw-away line, this is pretty damn important to how we view the characters, what is coming down the line. Now, McKay does not view Sheppard as feminine or effeminate -- but he does see him as very sexy. And it is also for Sheppard's benefit that he seems to make the mention of Julie Newmar in a cat outfit, thinking that it might be something that Sheppard would remember, something that he would have paid attention to in his youth. McKay is not attempting to bond with Sheppard over their shared love of sexy women, which seems to be how the mainstream audience views this exchange (and their behaviour back on Lucius' homeworld). He is reminiscing and because he wants to share in this memory, he is using it to trigger Sheppard's memory of the old TV show. The reason to insert this exchange on sexy women and implying that the two of them were checking out the women on the planet together is as misdirection because this episode is so romantic when it comes to the two of them. This episode has everything to do with their relationship, how close the two of them are, how intimate, how the two of them share a bond that the others do not. Mentioning Julie Newmar in a cat outfit throws a very thin veneer of plausible deniability on the scene where the two of them get lost in each other's eyes.

Only, Julie Newmar in a cat outfit is not what Sheppard remembers. Sheppard seems to remember Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, not Julie Newmar. Both of them were sexy but because of the racial politics of the 1960s, where the kiss between Captain Kirk and Uhura on Star Trek had been the first interracial kiss on network television, they were unable to pursue the same kind of a romantic storyline for the characters as they had for the first two seasons of the show. Where Julie Newmar's Catwoman had been in love with Batman, with Eartha Kitt they had to bury this aspect of their relationship deep in the subtext. Eartha's Catwoman was also notably more camp than Newmar's, and Eartha Kitt is a gay icon not just because of her campy performance but because she was a prominent advocate for LGBT rights, having been quoted as saying: "I support it [gay marriage] because we're asking for the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It's a civil-rights thing, isn't it?" She had advocated for gay marriage especially loudly at the time when this episode was being written. She has credited gay men with keeping her employed on the stage and resurrecting her career. And she paralleled gay rights and the Civil-Rights Movement which puts an interesting spin in using her as a reference here -- they had not been allowed to show a romance between her character and Batman in the 1960s, and they were not allowed to show a relationship between a USAF officer with another man now, forcing it to be played out in the subtext.

Reading a homosexual subtext to the relationship of Batman and his young side-kick Robin actually goes back way before the TV show, popularized by the 1954 book by the American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham called Seduction of the Innocent, a volume just as if not more problematic than Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), discussed in connection with Allies (S02E20). There is no reason to think that either man had read this book if not out of general interest but it nonetheless had a massive effect on popular culture and how youthful pursuits like the reading of comic books were seen by the general public. The book had been written at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the US, being a direct attack against the corrupting influence of comic books that made many a parent concerned that reading comic books was seducing their sons into homosexual behaviour (and we can certainly ask the question of whether Sheppard likes to read comic books now as an adult because he was forbidden from reading them as a young boy).* Wertham wrote:

They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown…. It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm. Like the girls in other stories, Robin is sometimes held captive by the villains and Batman has to give in or “Robin gets killed.” Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on Earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident. In these stories there are practically no decent, attractive, successful women. A typical female character is the Catwoman, who is vicious and uses a whip. The atmosphere is homosexual and anti-feminine. If the girl is good-looking she is undoubtedly the villainess. If she is after Bruce Wayne, she will have no chance against Dick. (p. 190-191)

This was the author's reading of the subtext in the comics which he based partially on interviews of young gay men trying to establish a connection between juvenile delinquency and reading comics. This was no joke, there was actually a hearing by the Senate's judiciary committee and over 50 cities had attempted to ban the sale of comic books based on this one book whipping up a moral panic. The book had far-reaching consequences and people still debate to this day whether Batman represents the ideal male or the ideal queer male identity. But like Bill and Aldo of the Sitting Ducks, Batman and Robin lived in an inarguably domestic setting with each other, and having Sheppard and McKay discuss Batman in this episode is more than a little interesting given how Sheppard and McKay were about to start living together.

For what ever reason, Sheppard seems to remember Eartha Kitt's Catwoman better -- and in fact does not seem to remember Newmar's Catwoman at all, and given that Sheppard appears to be slightly older than McKay, it is not as though he would never have seen the first two seasons of the show. McKay mentions that she had not come on the show until the third season, which is a lampshade given that the show was now on its third season and there were changes that were being affected on the show as the result of a bigger budget, a need to rope in the viewers from the mothership, to appeal to the general audience while still maintaining the integrity of the narrative. What is real fascinating is that there is an episode in the third season of Batman that takes place in the fashion world where Eartha Kitt's Catwoman escapes into a ladies' dressing room, and says the following: "If the dynamic drips react the way I expect them to react, they will not step into this most hallowed and forbidden no man's land -- but Batgirl will." She establishes no man's land as a place where no (heterosexual) man dares traverse.

But as interesting as the references are, in this scene it is the wordless communication between the two of them that is the really important thing, this being the most blatant example of them communicating wordlessly, of McKay being able to read Sheppard's thoughts right off of his face, that we have seen since Trinity (S02E06). There, when McKay had come behind Sheppard's door to try ask him to talk to Weir for him, the two of them seemed to have an entire conversation where McKay was speaking using his words and Sheppard was answering him only using expressions, McKay perfectly able to understand what Sheppard was communicating to him without him needing to say anything. They have a bond that is deeper than words, and we see it here.

Now, Sheppard is not not saying words to McKay because he does not think that what McKay is talking about is important enough for him to answer. He actually says "Really?" when McKay mentions the tidbit about Eartha Kitt only having come on the show in the third season because he does find it interesting. And Sheppard does answer him, only he does not need words to do it. This is how the two of them communicate when other people are not around to see them, they do not need words to speak. Sheppard is fully invested in this conversation about Batman even though they are meant to be doing more important things here because this is how the two of them are when there is no one else around, when they do not need to be considerate of other people understanding what the two of them are communicating to each other.

Their conversation actually goes like this:

McKay: Kind of a turn-on, actually. Julie Newmar in a cat outfit... Sheppard: Eartha Kitt was Catwoman. McKay: Not 'til season three. Sheppard: Really? McKay: Yeah. You didn't know that? Sheppard: No, I didn't know that. This is clearly important to you. McKay: We need to watch it together. There are so many things I want to do with you. Sheppard: Rodney, the computer. What were you doing? McKay: Oh!

McKay literally responds to the look that Sheppard gives him, and although Sheppard is being extremely expressive, this being an acting choice, he does not do this with anyone else. He does not attempt to communicate wordlessly to anyone else and McKay is not able to read anyone else's face like he is able to read Sheppard's. This is a thing that only the two of them do and they only do it with each other, and we see them do this over and over again.

The most important thing here, however, is the way McKay seems to get lost in Sheppard's eyes. While Sheppard was the one who had come very close to McKay and had parked himself right at his side, he still keeps his eyes mostly focused on McKay's laptop, he is trying to focus on what the two of them are supposed to be doing instead of what they both want to be doing, which is being all over each other. They had just returned from having spent several hours alone together doing who knows what but even so, it is rather obvious that both of them would rather be doing something else altogether than figuring out why everyone they know have suddenly turned to pod people. But although Sheppard is trying to focus, just as soon as McKay looks at him he has to return the man's gaze, we see him looking up at the other man with an open and almost vulnerable expression, looking directly into McKay's eyes. Sheppard is the one to look away first, and McKay continues looking at his face, seeming to space out, seeming entranced. Sheppard actually has to get him to snap out of it, McKay is so lost in some thought. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the thought "I can't believe you didn't know Julie Newmar was Catwoman" is not the thought that makes McKay look at Sheppard's face like it contains all the answers to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. McKay looks at Sheppard like he is in love. Sheppard looks at McKay like he is in love. That's it, that is the whole show.

Continued in Pt. 12

-* I had discussed Sheppard's possible past experiences with conversion therapy mandated by his father and what might have occasioned it, whether it had been a mostly innocuous tryst at boarding school or finding magazines in his room that he was not meant to have. But it might just have been his interest in comic books which would just add an extra level of tragic to the whole thing. From Wertham's book:

One young homosexual during psychotherapy [=conversion therapy] brought us a copy of Detective Comics, with a Batman story. He pointed out a picture of ‘The Home of Bruce and Dick,’ a house beautifully landscaped, warmly lighted and showing the devoted pair side by side, looking out a picture window. When he was eight this boy had realized from fantasies about comic-book pictures that he was aroused by men. At the age of ten or eleven, ‘I found my liking, my sexual desires, in comic books. I think I put myself in the position of Robin. I did want to have relations with Batman. The only suggestion of homosexuality may be that they seem to be so close to each other. I remember the first time I came across the page mentioning the Secret Bat Cave. The thought of Batman and Robin living together and possibly having sex relations came to my mind. You can almost connect yourself with the people. I was put in the position of the rescued rather than the rescuer. I felt I’d like to be loved by someone like Batman or Superman.’

[dr-futbol-blog]

Inferno, Pt. 1

The episode Inferno (S02E19) completes the miniature arc within the season begun in Trinity (S02E06) and followed up in Aurora (S02E09). Many people have noted the throughline connecting the episodes and we even get intentional call-backs to the events of the previous stories. In fact, Inferno builds on the previous episodes and they also give it context -- we can understand what happens here only in light of what had come before. And so the episode begins on an Ancient outpost inhabited by a native population, not unlike what Doranda might have been like if its native population had not been destroyed by the catastrophic failure of Project Arcturus.

There are a few things we need to note at the offset. It is important to pay attention to the fact that we join the team in medias res, in the middle of a scene, and that things have already happened that we never got to witness. We do not start the story with a blank slate but the current dispositions of our characters result from exchanges and interactions we did not get to witness, starting from when the natives, the Taranans, had first contacted Atlantis and asked for their help. And who ever had been their first contact to these people, it is now a beautiful tall blonde woman that is acting as their host, trying to make them feel welcome.

Before we dive in, let us make record of the following: Sheppard is not interested in this woman. He may find her attractive but if you were to ask him her name a week hence, he might not even remember it. She is inconsequential to him -- but she is important for the episode. The second thing that we need to keep in mind while watching the episode is that although this woman is explicitly described as "hot," the inferno of the title is McKay, and he is this particularly to Sheppard. I will return to this by the end of the episode.

Sheppard: Impressive! McKay: Hmm! Norina: This is our central Control Room. And this... is our shield generator control.

Norina, who seems to be the local chief scientist, has apparently brought the team by the window overlooking a courtyard housing the gate, a breath-taking view of an Ancient settlement. The view truly is impressive, as pointed out by Sheppard, which is why there is a comedic beat in both Sheppard and McKay looking at her rather than at the view. The implication is that she is even more breath-taking to look at than what is outside, and that because both Sheppard and McKay are looking at her, they both must be interested in her, attracted to her. Sheppard is being rather obvious about his interest, his body turned toward her, maintaining eye contact to the point of staring, even having that slightly drugged look about him that people have when they find someone very attractive. He also has his hand on his holster, tapping his fingers on his gun as though he were nervous or excited. And indeed she is attractive, and not in a trashy way, seeming like a classy lady dressed in the way the women of Sheppard's social class might dress for a semi-formal function. So you might think that Sheppard is indeed attracted to her -- if you had never seen him before and knew nothing about him.

McKay is another story. He is watching her, yes, but with a curious expression, as though trying to figure her out. His body is slightly angled toward her (or Sheppard) but not fully turned, and as she turns to return to the control room and Sheppard follows her lead, McKay is slower to turn around and follow them. The mainstream interpretation of the episode seems to be that our boys are engaged in a friendly bout of "competitive flirting," that the tall blonde is some kind of a trophy that they both want to get for themselves. The problem with that reading is that McKay does not actually seem to be trying to get her at all. If anything, she seems to be pursuing him for that "big old brain" of his, and none too subtly. Where Sheppard's first word for her is "Impressive!" and that is certainly how he behaves toward her for the duration of the episode, McKay's reaction is "Hmm...," testament to the fact that he finds her mildly curious. He seems puzzled more than anything else, possibly wondering how this woman had wound up being their chief scientist and whether what she is wearing is actually their lab attire or she had just dressed up for the visitors. He may also be puzzled by Sheppard's behaviour which seems almost comically out of character unless one recognizes where he is coming from with this.

Norina is a beautiful tall blonde woman, and this fact has everything to do with Sheppard's disposition. Not because McKay is interested in beautiful tall blonde women (he says that he is, it is not what he thinks) but because Sheppard is projecting on an industrial scale here. McKay has said that he has a weakness for "dumb blondes," he had mentioned Samantha Carter with an "Oy-yoy-yoy!" the first time her name had come up between them in Childhood's End (S01E06), he had claimed in his video message meant for the SGC (and never to leave the USAF, every part of it in violation of the confidentiality clause) that his "torch was still burning" for her in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), which we know that Sheppard has seen for himself. Add to this the fact that Sheppard likely knows that Carter has kissed McKay and probably had made it much worse in his mind than it had been, and he might even know about McKay's recent hallucination of her at the bottom of the ocean.

McKay had further called the tall blonde avatar of the wraith infiltrator hot in Aurora, admitting to Sheppard that he disgusts himself sometimes. Before they had been captured by Ford's men in The Lost Boys (S02E10), he had also suggested that Sheppard might enjoy a beach planet with tall blonde women more than the jungle they were in which Sheppard seemed to interpret as McKay wanting that for himself, and he had further spent a lot of time with a tall cute blonde fixing up the dart. While none of this means that McKay has a preference for blondes (he clearly has a preference for dark-haired men), because that was all either McKay performing heteronormative masculinity toward the military or him trying to get back at Sheppard for his affairs with women, trying to get Sheppard to understand how he feels, it is easy to see how Sheppard might think that he does. It is something that McKay very loudly and intentionally projects out into the world and if he has never taken the time to explain to Sheppard why he does it, it is easy to see how Sheppard might come to the wrong conclusion. It is a conclusion toward which McKay is trying to draw most people, after all.

McKay is trying to protect homosexual and bisexual servicemen by performing interest in women. He has been forced into the closet by the institution he contracts for, and this is all a defensive strategy. Furthermore, we may note again that when McKay had told Carter that he has a weakness for dumb blondes, his intention was to put her down, not to open up about his taste in sexual partners. That was not even in the neighbourhood of why he had said that to Carter. He finds it safe to perform crass and loud interest toward Carter because he knows that it will never be reciprocated. He does not have to fear that she would ever take what he says to her seriously. He admires Carter for her brain but he would never say as much out loud, not even to himself. McKay has no interest in blonde women or women of any colouration. Rodney McKay is gay-gay.

However, Sheppard himself has had more than a few encounters with women, some of which are fairly recent. Although many or even most of them had taken place without his consent, he does not seem to understand that his consent is both important and necessary for relations of any kind. Back when he and McKay had only just started hooking up he had been seduced by a beautiful Ancient against his will. He had kissed his best friend in a predatory manner when he had been turning into a bug. A wraith worshipper had tried to seduce him for information, a young princess had tried to seduce him for his seed, and he had actually had sex with a good enough woman when he had been feeling lonely and lost, when he had been missing McKay something terrible and thinking that he would never be able to get back to him -- who had also seduced him. He had also been kissed against his will by an alien riding his boss, and this had happened right in front of McKay.

Even though all of this had happened without Sheppard's express consent and without him meaning to partake in these things, he is nonetheless feeling mighty guilty about all of it. He has been trying to rebuild his connection with McKay ever since their return from Earth, and this shit just keeps happening. And this is why Sheppard is projecting so hard. He feels guilt for his encounters with women and projects it on McKay, as though McKay is the one who has women basically tripping on his dick accidentally on purpose. As though McKay is somehow seeking connections with women. John Sheppard is a jealous man, and he does not even begin to know how to deal with his jealousy. And like McKay, he is petty, arrogant and bad with people. He is not good with "I don't know what you'd call it, feelings." That is why he is behaving the way we see here.

McKay: The austerity of the facility suggests that it was built during the height of war. Norina: It is well beyond our science. My skills are rudimentary at best. Sheppard: Don't be so hard on yourself. It took Doctor McKay years to figure out all things Ancient and he still doesn't completely understand.

So, Norina leads them back to the room and we may note that McKay stays back, he has no need to be near her. He further comments in a perfectly neutral tone, on his best behaviour, which seems to be expressing mild interest in the facility. Norina, on the other hand, seems to like McKay, and how ever long they have known each other, has come to appreciate his expertise. While she may want nothing more than to learn from him, she is nonetheless flirting with McKay: the smile, the head tilt, flicking the hair, her "My, what a big brain you have there" schtick is flirtation, and while we do not know what she wants from him, she seems genuine in her interest and liking of McKay. And that is a problem for Sheppard. Let us note that Sheppard's strategy is not to actually compete with McKay, to let Norina know what he has going on for himself in order that he might seduce her. He is instead trying to put McKay down, to make him seem less desirable to Norina. That is an underhanded strategy. If they were in competition for this woman it would mean that Sheppard is coming from a weaker power position, that he is the underdog, and that just flies in the face of everything we have been led to believe about them.

It seems obvious that Sheppard is not trying to get Norina to be interested in him, he is trying to get her to not be interested in McKay, and that makes all the difference. That is literally what is happening here. And what is more, Sheppard does not even actually mean what he is saying here. Only in the previous episode he had told Ronon that he thought McKay was the only one who could figure out Ancient technology -- the DHD -- "Trust me, he's the only one." Sheppard is not trying to make Norina feel better about herself here, he is trying to make her less impressed with McKay even though he feels exactly like that about McKay himself. He knows where this woman is coming from. Also, even though Sheppard is pretending that the woman has his entire attention, just as soon as he is talking about McKay he has to look at the man, and he is just as quickly sucked into an exchange with McKay that leaves everyone else on the outside. He is not facing her, he is facing McKay, his body is turned toward him.

McKay: I have a very firm grasp of Ancient technology. Sheppard: You've blow up entire planets, Rodney. McKay: That wasn't my fault! Sheppard: Well, it didn't do it by itself!

This is a direct call-back to the events of Trinity, and Sheppard seems to be using what had happened then in the same vein, to try to make Norina think less of McKay. McKay is trying to defend his expertise because he does not understand why Sheppard is undermining him in front of people they have only just met and are trying to forge good relations with, and while he is trying to be the grown-up here, he cannot not engage with Sheppard. Sheppard very casually throws one of the worst mistakes in McKay's career -- his life -- into his face like he had failed at flipping pancakes while making breakfast or had misplaced his house keys, not unlike a frustrated spouse.

What had happened on the Ancient weapons platform and everything that had led them there had left deep scars in both of them and here Sheppard is using it to one-up McKay, is using it in an attempt at making McKay look worse, to undermine his expertise, to make him less desirable to Norina. And again, he is not trying to make himself interesting to Norina, he is trying to make McKay less interesting -- although talking about his ability to blow up planets probably has the opposite effect, all things considered. Also, McKay's mention of his "firm grasp" is something that Sheppard ordinarily would very much have interpreted as innuendo, as McKay's particular brand of unintentional double entendre. But we can tell that McKay has no clue why Sheppard is behaving in this way by how he sputters, at a complete loss of words. He is clearly looking for some kind of a rejoinder but is coming up empty, baffled at Sheppard's behaviour. And he is not the only one -- Teyla and Ronon seem to be watching their exchange like it was a tennis match.

But what I want to highlight here is this: because he is now able to make light of what had happened then it means that Sheppard is over it by this time. This is lampshaded later on in Harmony (S04E14), as the eponymous Harmony tells Sheppard, thinking that the two of them are in a romantic relationship: "You're mad at me. Our first fight! I knew it would happen eventually. We'll laugh about this one day." What had happened on Doranda had been Sheppard and McKay's "first fight," the first time they truly came to clash since beginning their intimate relationship. The "first fight" is a milestone in any relationship, and the important thing is how a couple manages to overcome it. And this here tells us that Sheppard has now reached the "We'll laugh about it one day" stage, able to quip and jest about McKay blowing up five sixths of a solar system and themselves nearly with it. This tells us that their relationship is maturing which is ironic because Sheppard is displaying it by acting like a child.

Lycus: Are these our guests? Norina: Yes, Chancellor. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, Doctor Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex. Chancellor Lycus. Lycus: Welcome to Taranis. Sheppard: Thank you!

Their back and forth is interrupted by the local ruler, and Norina seems glad to introduce the newcomers to her leader. She starts with Sheppard and mentions everyone by their full names which indicates that this is how they had been introduced to her some time earlier. Note that as Norina walks past Sheppard to get to the Chancellor, Sheppard is slow in turning his body away from McKay and toward their host. Also, while this is probably residual effect of his attempt at pretending to be infatuated with Norina, note the dopey smile he gives the Chancellor here. He is trying to be charming, although his attempt at being charming seems to have very little to do with securing good relations with these people. McKay, on the other hand, only gives him a wave, which is him on his best behaviour.

Lycus: And thank you for finally answering our calls for assistance. We tried several addresses from the database but were beginning to wonder if anyone could hear us. Sheppard: Sorry about that. We like to keep a low profile. Teyla: So as not to attract the attention of the wraith. Lycus: I see. Well, hopefully you can help us. Our shield generator has been giving us trouble for some time now. Our knowledge of the technology is limited, and the Ancestors regrettably neglected to leave behind instruction manuals.

We get some exposition here, find out what had transpired to lead the team on this planet. Sheppard's line "We like to keep a low profile" is interesting here because in this episode, the writers seem to be talking to the audience, they are finally giving us an explanation for why the blue jello had suddenly been off the menu. Atlantis may like to keep a low profile, but Sheppard and McKay also like to keep a low profile, and this is lampshaded by McKay momentarily pointing out what we have already noted many times in the past -- when Sheppard is talking about "we," he is usually talking about himself and McKay. Obviously he does not mean to say anything about the two of them to the strangers here but it is nonetheless true of the two of them, they like to keep a low profile. Note how Sheppard even glances at McKay when he says "we" here. Atlantis is his home but McKay is also his home.

McKay: Actually, they did. You probably just couldn't understand-- Sheppard: The good news is you found our address. I'm sure we can fix whatever needs fixing. McKay: And by "we", he means me, so... shall we get started?

As he is facing the Chancellor and Norina, Sheppard has folded his arms and effectively forms a barrier between himself and the locals, seeming to feel defensive for some reason. It could be caused by Teyla's mention of the wraith, reminding him of the trouble they are in due to recent events. And here we see Sheppard speaking for McKay, which McKay himself seems to recognize. Sheppard makes promises to them that McKay has to deliver, and McKay uses sarcasm in pointing out that Sheppard's "we" means him in particular. It is significant that they textualize the way Sheppard frequently uses "we," which is something that has been implied but is now confirmed. When he is talking about we, he means himself and McKay, as though they were one person, and he especially uses "we" to mean McKay. Sheppard is speaking for McKay here.

McKay seems to feel put upon and we see it throughout this episode. A lot is being put on his shoulders regarding their wraith problem when he had been the only one of them not involved with experimenting on one in their own home, and he seems to feel frustrated that he is now asked to clean up the mess. The irony here is that although Sheppard had been trying to make McKay look less desirable to Norina, he actually managed to make him look rather cool as he now removes his laptop from his back like a weapon, like he is some kind of science action hero, always ready to fix something up. And McKay is not trying to be cool, he is merely frustrated and just about done with what ever had crawled up Sheppard's rear end, which makes him look even more cool.

Norina: I'm sure I could learn a lot from you, Doctor. McKay: Oh! Well, I'm sure I can learn... Let's start here, shall we?

Although McKay had not even implied that he wanted anything to do with her, Norina volunteers to work with him, offering herself up as his assistant or apprentice. And note the immediate change in McKay's demeanour here. With science he was confident, ready to get right on it. But he does not know what to do with Norina and her interest in him which is so unsubtle that even he seems to be able to pick up on it, even though he is generally oblivious to women being interested in him. And the mainstream audience is going to interpret McKay's self-conscious behaviour here resulting from him being so unaccustomed to beautiful women seeking his company that he does not know what to do with it. He is so bad with women that even when one is clearly coming on to him he does not know what to do and instead of the crass woman chaser that he purports to be, this is the real him, shy and nervous around women. He is just so attracted to her that he becomes a stuttering little boy, stumbles over his own words.

Norina gives McKay a compliment, and he is not actually used to receiving praise. He is more accustomed to having to fight for his place in the world and for people to underestimate his skills, not recognizing his genius. In spite of everything he has done and achieved in his life, McKay feels a constant need to prove himself to people, and he tries to earn their affection and respect through performing tasks. And so, he does not quite know how to respond to someone so openly praising him and he is trying to be polite here. He was clearly going to say "I'm sure I can learn a lot from you, too" which would have been a meaningless pleasantry. Even if he thought that he had nothing whatsoever to learn from these people that are technologically less advanced than they are, it is just a nice thing to say, it does not mean he has to believe it. But McKay is incapable of this kind of subterfuge, he cannot pretend to respect someone that he does not respect, and so he is unable to finish the thought. And that is just the thing: McKay does not think he has anything to learn from these people, and he does not respect this woman. Her whole society is inconsequential to him. McKay is not attracted to this woman. McKay does not like women, and he does not respect women.

It is not that McKay does not have "game." He does not have interest. We should recall what had happened on Dagan in The Brotherhood (S01E16) with Allina, someone that had been very similarly infatuated with McKay, at least as long as she believed he represented the Ancestors. She was a very beautiful and smart woman that had wanted McKay and had been none too subtle about it, basically spelling it out for him, and he still had not caught on to it, he had to be told by Ford that she was after him. And because that was something that he very much did not want, McKay had then tried to let her down easy, had similarly tried to compliment her intelligence without really managing it because he did not actually believe it. He had told Allina: "Just because you originally thought it was a map doesn't make your initial assumption bad or incorrect. Well, incorrect, yes, but it was a good guess."

The situation was similar to what we find here. A woman expressed interest in McKay and Sheppard was upset about it. He had zero interest toward the woman himself, and McKay seemed completely oblivious and unresponsive, and yet Sheppard seemed bitter and was in a foul mood, and it had everything to do with the woman being able and allowed to do something publicly when he had no means of shutting it down that would not have given the game away, would not have resulted in what they were forced to keep hidden coming into light. Sheppard had no choice but to just watch it going down, someone making advances on his lover, helpless to check them. When McKay had asked Sheppard what he wanted him to do about it, Sheppard had bitterly asked him "You don't know what to do?" because it was obvious to him what McKay was supposed to do, he was supposed to shut her down and stop leading her on.

Sheppard and McKay are not in the same place in their relationship as they were then, which explains Sheppard's different strategy here. Back then, the two of them were newly in love and had been living together, sharing quarters. Between their two visits to Dagan is one of the places where Sheppard and McKay seem to have almost certainly had sex. They were entirely cut off from Earth, the two of them clinging to each other for a sense of belonging, of home. While we ended Coup d'État (S02E17) with Sheppard turning in for the night when it was not yet dark outside and never saying whose bed he was heading to, this had been followed by an undetermined time -- but at least two weeks -- of a wraith living among them which had caused Sheppard to withdraw from everyone. Throughout the experiment, Sheppard was keeping watch of their captive, expecting the experiment to blow up in their faces sooner or later.

We found McKay eating alone in the commissary, burying himself in busy work, Sheppard refusing to even look at him as he kept vigil of the wraith, keeping Atlantis secure. He wanted to keep McKay off the project which meant that he needed to keep McKay away from himself because he was not letting the wraith out of his sight. That was not something Sheppard wanted to do, it was something that he felt like he needed to do. Furthermore, McKay does not understand that Sheppard was doing it for a very large part for him, to keep him safe. McKay seems to motivate most of his decisions but he does not understand this himself. From McKay's point of view, Sheppard had been giving him the cold shoulder for some unfathomable reason, and now was picking on him in front of company, and he does not understand why. He does not understand that Sheppard feels awful about all of that which is causing him to project it on the source of his hurt extra hard. It is entirely possible that Sheppard does not understand why he feels like he needs to behave like this himself. Both of them being bad with people is no joke.

Lycus: In the meantime, perhaps you'd like a tour of the facility. Sheppard: Lead the way.

And so Norina joins McKay who we may note turns his back on her as the first thing he does, one in a long line of locals interested in his work that have wanted to be his apprentices, have wanted to watch him work to pick his brain -- Allina, Eldon, Jace, Baldric -- all exceptionally bright and more than a little infatuated with him because of the knowledge and expertise he possesses, all of them seeming to be willing to repay his teaching with affection and maybe more. For McKay, they have been like college students, only even less informed and educated, making him feel like he was running a special ed programme for the Pegasus natives. McKay is basically indulging them for the sake of good relations, trying to be on his best behaviour like Sheppard had instructed him so long ago, but them hanging around him was a burden, not something he enjoys. And that is not what Sheppard sees. Take a look at the smile he has plastered on his face here, at the end. It is very clearly a fake smile disguising his discomfort with leaving McKay alone with Norina, looking almost like a grimace. He hates this but in order to be polite, he has to leave with their leader, do his duty representing Atlantis to these potential new allies. And it is not that he does not want to leave Norina alone with McKay. He does not want to leave McKay alone with Norina. You have to put actual blinders on to not see this for what it is.

Continued in Pt. 2

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Pegasus Project, Pt. 12

The situation is getting more and more intense, and Mitchell and McKay both continue standing behind Carter not so much to take refuge in her but to be where the action is, Carter seeming to have occupied what should be the weapons station but which on the Odyssey seems to be the communications station instead. It seems like both the weapons fire and steering of the ship is done by the other female officer on the Bridge, Womack. While McKay had made the suggestion that they needed to get away from the wraith, wanting to put some distance between him and their arch-nemesis, the captain seemed very much to agree with him. Carter, on the other hand, had just silently observed for a moment, seeming lost in thought. She then seems to come up with one of those brilliant, completely counter-intuitive ideas that resembles Sheppard more than McKay, and which is the kind of thing that has made McKay assess Carter as being reckless in the past.

Carter: No, you know what, we need to do the opposite. Mitchell: What? McKay: What? Carter: Against a gravity well this strong, they've literally got the higher ground. But if we can get them to follow us closer to the black hole… McKay: Then their systems will be affected the same way as ours, including their jamming technology!

Both Mitchell and McKay voice their surprise at her suggestion at the same time, seeming bewildered. For McKay, this is normal since he seems to have this reaction to most of Carter's wacky ideas. Mitchell, on the other hand, has worked more closely with Carter and has seen her at work much more frequently, and even he seems surprised by this suggestion. But as soon as Carter explains what she means, McKay seems to agree with her, and his relief appears palpable. McKay very much wants them to survive this, he wants to return back home in one piece because he has someone waiting for him there, and if one of Carter's wild ideas is going to get him there, he is fully on board with that. They seem to be out of options, as they are now the proverbial sitting ducks at the mercy of the wraith bearing down on them. We also have to appreciate the fact that Carter's plan actually hinges on work that McKay has done previously in trying to disable wraith jamming technology, and the beaming of nukes on board the hives had initially been Sheppard's idea.

Note the way that Mitchell continues standing with regards to McKay, seeming prepared to shield him or to keep him upright again if necessary. Both Mitchell and McKay are holding on to Carter's chairback to keep upright, but Mitchell is much more in Carter's space than McKay is, has his body behind Carter's chair while McKay is stood to the side and back, merely holding on with his hand. And because McKay might easily be able to get a much firmer grip of the chair if he put his body closer to it, he really does seem to want to maintain a physical distance to Carter, and whether this is because he does not want to come across as Grabbyhands McGee (and it is doubtful he would have time to even think along those lines here), or he simply wants to respect his own relationship by keeping a distance to a person whose closeness to him is an issue to the man waiting for him back home, knowing that Sheppard is uncomfortable with him spending time with Carter where he cannot see him, is anyone's guess. We may recall that the first thing McKay does when Carter takes up a post on Atlantis later is to inform her in no uncertain terms that he is seeing someone, and it is not for Carter's benefit that he makes the gesture.

Carter: Which means we should be able to beam the warheads directly aboard their ship. Emerson: In that close, we won't have the engine power to maneuver. Mitchell: So we sling-shot and use the gravity well to accelerate back out. Emerson: Take us in, full power!

Now that both Carter and McKay seem to agree, the two smartest people on the Bridge, it seems like everyone else cannot help but go along with their idea, as insane as it seems to go full throttle toward a black hole. We should also note that it is Mitchell's idea to use the gravity to create the effect of a sling-shot that is crucial to the success of the plan, and this seems to come from his expertise as a fighter pilot, in knowing how the maneuvre himself with respect to the "Gs." It tells us that Mitchell is no fool even if he is less educated than Carter and McKay, and while he may not match Sheppard's intelligence, he is well above average -- like most fighter-pilots come officers tend to be.

Because this is the first major cross-over episode between the two shows, it is obvious that the power of friendship would ultimately save the day -- that it is them working together that resolves the situation. And note that even though we do not see Sheppard after the meeting at the beginning of the episode, he too is a part of finding this resolution since it appears to have been his idea, whether directly or indirectly, of not increasing the yield but the duration of the blast which is what finally wins them the day, not to mention that the beaming of nukes in the first place had been suggested by him.

Womack: Shields are barely holding! Emerson: See it? Mitchell: Not yet, sir. Emerson: Maintain course. Carter: Teal'c, it's Sam. We're about to try something that will probably vaporize the stargate at both ends. You've got exactly twenty seconds to get your hyperdrive on line and get out of there.

Carter sends Teal'c a message, apparently just hoping that it will reach him in time since their decreased distance to the black hole should make their communications even slower than before. Carter does the countdown again, and whether or not the concept of beaming warheads onto a hive is giving McKay flashbacks to one of the most difficult moments of his life, the situation is much too intense for him to have time to dwell on it.

Ironically time seems to slow down as things speed up when they close in on the black hole, and now everyone is speaking in that deep bass that they had been hearing from Teal'c the whole time. One thing to note here is that as neither Mitchell nor McKay have a lot to do while the others are working either steering the vessel or beaming the nukes, and so both of them are stood by a monitor watching the gate and we find them with their heads bent toward each other. They also turn their heads almost at the same time. However, we may note that McKay does not actually seem to be looking at Mitchell because Mitchell is not the man that he wishes to communicate with by exchanging glances. We should also note that McKay is not anywhere near Carter protecting her from the sparks flying all over the place, as he seems to have no kind of an instinct for protecting women with his own body, Carter or otherwise. Even with women he likes, it does not even occur to him to protect them with the possible exception of his sister.

Mitchell: There it is. McKay: Wraith ship's in position! Carter: Beaming warheads in three, two, one, mark.

Mitchell, however, whether he has an instinct to protect McKay or is doing it for some other reason, does seem to be growing more fond of him, and we see Mitchell touch McKay's upper arm as he passes him, not dissimilar to the way that Sheppard had touched him earlier, patting him on the upper arm. Although Sheppard's gesture had been notably more awkward than Mitchell's -- and may give credence to the assertion that Mitchell is who Sheppard pretends to be -- it does again present us with a touch by proxy. Sheppard touches Mitchell, Mitchell touches McKay, the touch from Sheppard is delivered by Mitchell to McKay symbolically.

Mitchell has quicker reflexes than McKay and sees what has happened faster, and so it takes a beat for McKay to catch up. But just as soon as Mitchell parks himself behind Carter again McKay joins him there, even though there is really no reason for either of them to be there. It seems like Mitchell was McKay's motivation for moving from the screen to stand behind Carter, and McKay may have followed Mitchell from Carter to the screen in the first place, and we again note that he puts much more distance between them than Mitchell and Carter do, seeming not to want to touch Carter even by accident where Mitchell has touched him twice and he seems not to have minded.

Carter: The wraith ship has been destroyed. Emerson: Reduce sub-light engines to one third. Let's get hyperdrive back on line. Carter: There's something else. I don't know how it survived the detonation, but… McKay: The stargate! It's still intact. Carter: And it's still active. Teal'c: Odyssey, this is Teal'c. Mitchell: Teal'c, I thought we told you to get the hell out of there. Teal'c: If I had done so, I would be unable to inform you that the jump was successful. The supergate is now active.

Their plan is successful in taking out the wraith ship, and they all seem more than a little relieved. We may note that McKay and Mitchell exchange a glance as the captain tells them to wind the ship down and basically tells everyone that they can relax now. And although it is definitely a moment between them, it is communicating that experiencing danger together has made them bond over the course of this mission, we may still note that for McKay this is mainly a subconscious gesture. He seeks to exchange a glance with someone that is usually with him in similar moments, and just as soon as he realizes that Mitchell is not Sheppard, he has to look away. He even goes so far as to look at the exact opposite way from Mitchell where there is nothing and no one for him to look at, as though wanting to undo or rewind what had just transpired. They are all glad and more than a little relieved but Mitchell is not his foxhole guy.

Mitchell: Are you serious? Teal'c: There is more, Colonel Mitchell. I was able to keep the Stargate concealed until the last moment and lure the Ori vessel into the unstable vortex of the Supergate when the jump occurred. Carter: You mean we just blew up an Ori ship? McKay: ...by destroying a wraith ship. Teal'c: Indeed we did. Today we have achieved a great victory.

McKay lets out a whine when Teal'c informs them that their plan had actually worked -- not just their plan to take out the wraith by beaming the nukes onto the hive and slingshotting around the gravity well but their original plan to increase the duration and not the yield to get the wormhole to jump from the Chihuahua to the St Bernard that he had quite possibly worked out together with Sheppard while the other kids had been mean to him. McKay's whine seems to communicate something to the effect of "Well, how about that!" which we know is something that Sheppard would be able to read off of him.

And again we may note that as relieved as they all are, as happy as this makes them, McKay makes no attempt what so ever to make physical contact with Carter about it. If it was something that he desired and sought out, if he found Carter physically attractive and was infatuated with her, this would be precisely the kind of time when it would be socially acceptable for him to try to hug her or even to just high five her, to try to touch her in some way. In this kind of moment it is acceptable even for heterosexual men to hug each other. But he does not because it is not something that he wants. Instead, he again turns to look at Mitchell because this is something that the desires: to exchange meaningful looks with a man. This is something he has grown accustomed to on Atlantis: knowing that he cannot exchange touches, he cannot hug the person he wants to hug when all is said and done and everyone is beyond happy that it all worked out because they can never be seen doing that in public. All McKay and Sheppard are allowed to do when they are relieved is to exchange meaningful looks, just like they had at the end of Critical Mass (S02E13), communicating in that wordless way only they are capable of with each other. What we see between them are lingering desires, secret longings for his touch.

The episode ends with Jackson and Vala standing outside on one of the balconies on Atlantis having a private conversation, and while we have seen Sheppard and Weir do this a few times, we have never seen Sheppard do this with McKay. However, it likely has happened more than once, and given how Jackson and Vala were being paralleled with McKay and Sheppard in the episode, it is possible that they too had done this when McKay had returned, to have reconnected and gone over what had happened to McKay while he had been away. Earlier Vala had told Jackson "I think I understand why you came back, Daniel. I wouldn't have liked their company either," which may be the kind of thing Sheppard had also told McKay on a similar night, on one of the same kind of balconies.

This is interesting given how McKay appeared almost to be bullied by Mitchell and Carter on the Odyssey before Mitchell seemed to warm up to him, and if McKay had been talking with Sheppard while he had been on the Odyssey, complaining about his treatment by the people on the ship, this might be something that Sheppard also might have communicated to McKay. McKay too had been among people that were not his people, and he was more than glad to be home. Getting a chance to work with Carter was not enough to make him miss Earth or the SGC, and this experience of working with them on the ship had only convinced him that he had made the right choice to come to Atlantis even back when they did not know if they were ever able to return to Earth. He had found the love of his life there, and while Jackson's final words to Vala are "We're in this alone," McKay and Sheppard share a similar sentiment, only theirs is "We're in this together."

And this brings us to the title. SG-1 does not seem to have the same naming scheme for episodes as SGA, but we can still speculate on why they had chosen this name for it beyond this being a project that takes place in Pegasus -- two such projects, in fact, if Jackson's attempt at locating Merlin's weapon and cajoling its whereabouts from Morgan Le Fey is counted as one. There are two episodes with Pegasus in the title, this and Letters from Pegasus (S01E17). That is also why there might be a reference in the title to that previous episode, and hence if the original reference had been to the novel Letters from Atlantis, which I had not discussed at the time, this might be in reference to the book The Atlantis Project (2005) by Scott S. Phillips, still fairly recent at the time of airing. It "offers a profound message of hope and certainty in an uncertain and often deceptive World" as Dr. Stewart tries to solve both the mystery of Plato's Atlantis and his own family issues. The Letters from Atlantis (1990) novel by Robert Silverberg is interesting in that it features time travel by inserting a consciousness to that of someone from the past, and in it the sad and lonely protagonist Roy inserts his mind into that the Prince of Atlantis while someone else has inserted their mind into that of a regional governor, the two of them exchanging letters in a story that is more than a little homoerotic what with having men literally inside other men.

However, given that McKay almost seemed to be bullied in the episode -- he explicitly told Vala that he thought she was mocking him and told Mitchell that Sheppard had been kidding -- there is also the off-chance that they were making a reference through the title to the film The Manhattan Project (1985), in which an unusually gifted school boy Paul decides to construct an atomic bomb for a national science fair, the world's first privately built nuclear device. He is found out by a military investigation team, one thing leads to another and the bomb is in danger of obliterating all of New York, and in the end everyone has to work together to disarm it. It also features the line "You'd get the Nobel if you could publish," which is also relevant with McKay, and is something that Jackson tells him later in The Lost Tribe (S05E10).

McKay would have been in his late teens when the film came out, so presumably he would have already done his own experiment with building a bomb by this time, of which we had learned about in Underground (S01E08). And while McKay's backstory may be based on the film, they may also have meant for McKay's story to have inspired the film in "the real world" of the fictional world, with certain changes of artistic license made to the story, like giving the youth a girlfriend. That does not stop the film from containing a lot of homoerotic innuendo, mind you, but not as much as the next episode that we will delve into, being one of the most important episodes with regards to the subtext in the entire course of the show.

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Long Goodbye, Pt. 7

While the others are regrouping, we get to witness a brief private exchange between Phoebus and Thalen. Phoebus contacts Thalen via the radio, knowing how to use the system through knowledge she has harvested from Weir, and for some reason she makes the initial contact from "Weir to Sheppard". We do not know how the headsets work precisely, so it could be that they need to speak someone's name to activate a private channel, and as we soon notice, the channel is not exactly private even then. What ever the case, the intention of Phoebus is to contact Thalen who is wearing Sheppard who is wearing Sheppard's ear piece. Although she might hate him, for some reason Phoebus also feels the need to talk to Thalen, the two of them all that is left of their entire civilization.

Phoebus: Weir to Sheppard. I'm assuming you can hear me? Thalen: Yeah, I can hear you, but if we keep using these radios, it'll only help them find us. Phoebus: We don't have much time, Thalen. The imprinting is temporary and these people are going to try to stop us. Thalen: We've got all the time in the world and there's only one of them I'm worried about.

It is not entirely clear where Phoebus is, it looks to be one of the lower levels. Sheppard, on the other hand, is clearly on one of the walkways above the city and we know that he knows these walkways well because we have seen him running on them with Ronon in Conversion (S02E08), another intentional callback to the episode, in which it was implied that they do this often. Both Weir and Sheppard know Atlantis very, very well although in different ways. Where Weir may know the day-to-day operations and the people, Sheppard knows the layout and the security of the place. While McKay may not have surveyed as much of the city physically as Sheppard has and may not know the personnel as well as Weir, only McKay may know Atlantis better than the two of them -- or at the very least just as well as they do. And it is because Thalen is using Sheppard's knowledge of the city that he has taken to the walkway and why he is telling Phoebus to stay off the radio now.

Although the two of them seem to be gunning for each other, their exchange here makes it seem like they also have a shared goal of not wanting to get caught by "these people". They are referring to "we" and "us," which is the way we have heard Sheppard and McKay talk about each other often, and that is precisely the point here -- these two characters are narrative mirrors not for Weir and Sheppard but for Sheppard and McKay. Their interactions are meant to let us in on things that have happened between Sheppard and McKay that were never explicitly shown on screen. What is more, and I will elaborate on this later, Thalen is narrative mirror for McKay and Phoebus for Sheppard, just to set the stage. But given the communication problems they have been having lately, it is notable that Phoebus is the one wanting to confirm that Thalen can hear her here, and Thalen is the one assuring her that he is listening ("You don't listen to people -- you don't trust them!").

What Thalen tells her here is important, possibly the most important thing in the entire episode. He mentions, basing this on what Sheppard knows, that there is "only one of them" that he is worried about, and based on what they had just said, his worry is that this "one of them" is able to both find them and stop them. The viewer is invited to wonder who this one person is since it is never explicitly confirmed. Is it Caldwell, who is a shrewd and seasoned warrior that has now taken over the operation? Is it Ronon, tracker and survivalist extraordinaire who Sheppard knows is a formidable warrior? Is it Teyla, who knows Sheppard well and can take him on in stick fighting and is perhaps able to tug on his heartstrings? We are meant to think that he might be referring to Teyla since she is the one who eventually captures him, even though she captures him entirely through luck and chance, and they have an intense and emotional scene toward the end of the episode.

But we are actually more or less confirmed that he is talking about McKay here. Thalen is most worried about McKay because he knows what Sheppard knows, and what Sheppard knows is not only that McKay is capable of destroying not just the city but the entire solar system in under 20 minutes if pushed, who he has seen harness the power of lightning and has told him he could build an atom bomb when he was in high school, who he knows can track them through the city using programmes he has set up personally, the city that he can navigate in the dark and by feeling his way around, who can switch on the stardrive and overload the ZPM, who most definitely knows Sheppard's security code, is the one who had figured out their technology in a matter of hours, whose abilities Sheppard has absolute faith in and who suspects McKay can do so much more than what he has already seen him do. McKay who, as we soon see, has already shot him twice and who is the first person Thalen tries to cripple by taking out the power as the first thing he does.

It is really not a mystery who Thalen is worried about based on everything that Sheppard knows. We will shortly see what Thalen is able to take out both Ronon and Teyla, no sweat. But without McKay, the rest of them are useless. And what really concerns him is that McKay seemed to be able to hear Sheppard earlier, meaning that he needs to make sure they do not meet, has to make sure McKay is occupied. And just like in Conversion, we get scenes where both Ronon and Teyla get to have their moments with Sheppard where they are trying to figure out who they are talking to, but there is a glaring omission of such a scene between Sheppard and McKay. And again it is not because such a scene would not be interesting to see but because it would give the game away.

Phoebus: We both want a shot at the same thing. Thalen: You mean each other. Phoebus: And neither one of us will get that chance if you keep running. Chuck: Sir, I'm picking up some chatter I think you'll want to hear. Caldwell: Put it on speaker.

Chuck picks up on the conversation that Phoebus and Thalen probably think is private, and because we now get the chance to view their conversation from the point of view of outsiders in addition to the two of them, it adds layers of interpretation to the exchange. Phoebus and Thalen seem to be talking about killing each other -- or at the very least that is how the people listening in on the conversation interpret it. They want "a shot" at something, and given that they are gunning for each other, the first level reading is that they literally want to shoot each other dead. But "wanting a shot" at something is also a metaphor for seizing the opportunity to do something and Thalen's clarification "You mean each other" invites an erotic or romantic interpretation. In what ever fashion, they do want each other.

The exchange could be interpreted either way, it is only the context that determines the reading. And this is where their use as narrative mirrors comes in. Between Phoebus and Thalen, the conflict seems to be martial. But between Sheppard and McKay, it is intimate. If they were able to communicate about it openly and using their words, they might agree that they want to same thing, they want each other. And neither will get the thing that they both want if the other keeps running from intimacy. It is implied here that Sheppard is the pursuant and McKay is the one that is running from it, refuses to give in. And looking at the broad arc of their relationship, it is possible that McKay does have reason to be cautious given that he was hurt by Sheppard's decision to fly the jumper into the hive, running roughshod over his feelings. Neither party is blameless and they have taken shots at each other, but that fundamental issue of trust still lingers between them -- McKay thinks that Sheppard does not trust him where in fact Sheppard does not trust himself and hence is incapable of making himself as vulnerable as McKay needs him to be to believe that he is loved and cared for.

Thalen: You're the one that likes to run. My ship ran out of fuel before I could even get a clean shot. Phoebus: That was my plan. Thalen: You didn't have a plan. You just wanted me dead. Phoebus: Still do. As a matter of fact, I can't wait to see that look of defeat on your face, just one last time.

McKay, Beckett and Caldwell gather around Chuck to listen to the conversation between the alien entities, obviously jumping in the middle of something. It is Sheppard's words they first hear, and just as Phoebus had just accused Thalen of running it is now McKay who gets to hear Sheppard's voice make the accusation, albeit not against him. Phoebus and Thalen both lay the blame on the other even though they seem to have been behaving in similar ways, and the same is true for Sheppard and McKay.

While Thalen thinks that Phoebus wants him dead, McKay obviously does not think that Sheppard wants him dead -- quite the opposite. Because they are mirrors we have to flip around what they are saying. Sheppard had been trying to save McKay's life when he had made the choice of flying the jumper into the hive, and McKay himself had made the observation that they had gotten into the habit of saving each other's lives in Aurora (S02E09). But McKay could similarly accuse Sheppard of not having had a plan, just needing to make sure that he lived. Thalen's line "My ship ran out of fuel before I could even get a clean shot" is also interesting in light of McKay having been running on fumes the last days before the wraith attacked, on literal stimulants to keep himself going, and he definitely seems to have been running out of fuel when it happened. If he had possessed more presence of mind then, maybe he could have told Sheppard not to do it, or would have volunteered to do it together, or that he could have figured something out -- but he had been spent. His mind had not been working right, and he blamed himself.

Phoebus may want Thalen dead where Sheppard obviously wants McKay to live, and hence we may interpret what she tells him here as the opposite of what Sheppard would want to tell McKay. He does not want to see a look of defeat on his face but of desire, and Sheppard most definitely does not want to see it for one last time because he never wants there to be a last time. He wants to never stop seeing it. But unlike Phoebus, Sheppard can wait. He has been trying to give McKay that time he had asked for after the siege. Note also the way Thalen is tending to the wounds caused by McKay when he is talking about this, using his mouth to tighten the compression bandage to stop the blood flow. While he is putting his mouth on McKay's handiwork, technically this is also another man putting his mouth on Sheppard. And the same time, it establishes that symbolically the wounds have been caused by words, by things coming out of the mouth.

Thalen: You mean the look on my face when you rammed my fighter, making sure neither one of us would win? That was hatred, not defeat, Phoebus. Phoebus: Is that any way to talk to your wife? Thalen? Run all you like. The moment I find you, you die.

This talk of winning and defeat, while also apt descriptors for war, are things that take place within most games and while they do seem to want each other dead, we cannot be entirely sure that there is not some kind of a game behind all of this, especially since it seems like Phoebus has seen the look of defeat on Thalen's face many times before without having taken his life. Essentially the two of them are already dead, this is their last game, and it is possible that it is the finality of the bout that has changed something about the game for them. And even though it is a retcon, we may point out that Sheppard and McKay were supposed to be engaged in playing "the game" during this time, their dialogue here extremely similar to how Sheppard and McKay talk to each other in The Game (S03E15). Even Phoebus's remark here, "is that any way to talk to your wife?" sounds like she is role-playing, like she is taunting him with the ruse she had used to get these people to spring him free from his pod.

Thalen's line about Phoebus ramming his fighter is more than a little erotic, and again if we look at the opposite of what he is saying we may discover something about Sheppard and McKay. If defeat translates to desire, then hate obviously translates to love and where the word has not been spoken between them -- and it will not be spoken until Tao of Rodney (S03E14), after a fashion -- there had been a moment when they had achieved something mutually, they had both won, arrived at the finish line together, and McKay had looked at Sheppard with love. As discussed previously, they had discovered what making love is like together, very much being a mutually satisfying experience, and it seems to have been the look in McKay's eyes that had caused Sheppard to "ram his fighter," had shaken him to his very core. Falling in love is often described as being like the disorientation from being whacked upside the head, as running headfirst into a wall or walking into lamp post. The experience is violent and life-altering.

Now, it is Thalen who speaks of being "rammed" here by Phoebus but as relates to sex, we have been given hints of Sheppard both preferring the role of the penetrated and his appreciation for well-endowed men. Taking fighter jet as standing for the body, if we flip this around we may recall that McKay had taught Sheppard how to slow down where Sheppard had made it more intense. The whole thing flips into "You mean the look on my face when I made love to you gently, making sure we would both come? That was love, not just desire, John." This is referring to events that had taken place some time before Letters from Pegasus (S02E17), where we get a symbolic representation of this making love that had happened between them, where they had connected on levels beyond the physical, where Sheppard had come to realize that he loved McKay in every way that it was possible to love.

Given this reference to seeing the look on the other's face and Sheppard's Pavlovian reaction to McKay speaking the word "Look," it is also possible that McKay had told him to look at him during this moment, to maintain eye-contact through consummation making Sheppard unable to not look at him when ever he now hears the word. This had actually been a transformative experience for him, and it may even have been augmented by the Ancient gene, the two of them connecting in a way that they never had with another because they had never had sex with another person with the gene and what ever mental tether it had formed between them.

Given also that the episode seems especially to be in conversation with Conversion, we should also look at "ramming" in the context that we saw Sheppard slam two people against the wall that had particular looks on their faces. He was able to see arousal on the faces of Teyla and Weir, this arousal very much based in fear and not desire. We also saw bruises on McKay's neck, suggesting that he had experienced something similar to the two women that we never got to see, we only saw the aftermath, and we saw it very subtly -- although the fact that we saw McKay wearing Sheppard's shirt and we saw McKay's clothes on Sheppard's bed definitely implies that something sexual had happened between the two of them. But it had been much rougher than usual, and it might still be eating Sheppard up, thinking that he had seen fear in McKay's eyes and remembering that look.

While there was an element of dubcon to his kissing of Teyla, what had taken place between the two of them had been at least more or less consensual or else McKay would not have been wearing his shirt afterward, would not have needed to have something of Sheppard's against his skin to comfort him when he was forced to keep a distance, was not allowed to visit him. We may also recall that unlike others, when McKay saw Sheppard half-way into an insect, he seemed to accept him just the way he was. If we convert the words spoken by Phoebus and Thalen to what Sheppard and McKay might have said, we arrive at something like "You mean the look on my face when you slammed me against a wall, making sure both of us would come? That was love, not fear, John."

Beckett: Well... they're heading straight for divorce. Caldwell: That whole thing was a ruse -- in fact, I doubt very much if we were ever speaking with Doctor Weir. McKay: It was a remarkable impression, I'll give you that. Caldwell: From the sound of it, we have two fighter pilots who don't know that their war is over.

While Phoebus and Thalen are having this conversation using their words, it seems like Sheppard and McKay have not been able to talk things over between them. During the time that they have been listening to this conversation, McKay has folded his arms defensively around himself and is even doing his self-soothing thumb thing. It might be the talk of death and fighters, obvious suicide missions, that is making him feel uneasy but it might even be just their tones of voices that make him uncomfortable because at least Phoebus is talking with an intense focus, her voice deeper than Weir's, that makes it sound erotic, like she really wants Sheppard.

McKay may have consented to something taking place between them in order to facilitate the last goodbye between elderly lovers, which is what he thought this was going to be, but he still did not want to be hearing this. He would not be able to scrub his brain from hearing Weir say these things to Sheppard, and he had obviously failed to consider that before agreeing to this. It is also notable that McKay essentially confesses that he had been fooled by Phoebus playing Weir, she had been able to convince him, who we noted has known Weir the longest, that they had been speaking with her. That is why it is even more of a glaring omission that we do not get a scene in which Thalen has to convince McKay that is speaking with Sheppard. And the reason we do not is because they know each other far, far too well.

Beckett quips that they are heading straight for divorce, still seeming to be caught up in the story that Phoebus had been telling them. While it seems clear that these two are not married, it is not entirely clear what they are. Caldwell's assessment may hit the mark but or may also be off in the sense that while they do seem to want to kill each other, there is also a strong sense of game play to what they are engaged in. They have have been engaged in a war on opposite sides, and there are cases of fighter pilots that failed to recognize that the war had ended, continuing executing their standing orders because there was no one to tell them otherwise. This episode seems to be borrowing from Mr and Mrs Smith, which had come out c. half a year before this episode and may have influenced the writer, which features two assassins who are married and are suddenly pitted against each other.

But it also seems to be drawing from the Harlan Ellison short story Soldier From Tomorrow, later turned into The Outer Limits episode Soldier (Sheppard's "We've got all the time in the world" is a direct quote from the episode, "Is there time for us? Time... all the time in the world. But is that enough?") that was famously cannibalized in the creation of The Terminator, which features two soldiers taken out of their time and poses the question of whether there is any point in continuing the war when everything they had been fighting for is stripped away from them. Are they fighting a war because they believe in the cause or because they do not know anything else but war? Every iteration of the story asks slightly different moral questions but this concept, plucking two warriors fighting on opposite sides out of their world, definitely seems to have influenced this episode. The set-up is fairly straightforward and making it an allegory for marriage or something "close enough" seems fitting.

McKay: It is much worse than that. They know everything about this city: the layout, defensive systems, how to access weapons. Caldwell: We just need to find a way to stop them without unduly harming the hosts. McKay: "Unduly". What does that mean? Caldwell: Well, obviously, some force may be necessary.

While Caldwell may have been able to figure out the motivation of the two soldiers, McKay on the other hand knows both Weir and Sheppard well enough that he is able to lay out the full scope of their current crisis for them: these soldiers waging a war against each other know everything that Weir and Sheppard know, both of them formidable in their own right. McKay knows that Weir and Sheppard know everything about this city because he knows everything about this city, including what each of them knows. This is why McKay is "the one" that Thalen is worried about. We may note that McKay is sweating here and because none of the others are shining like he is, it must be caused by the situation stressing him out rather than the temperature.

McKay seems to be anticipating that Caldwell is going to order him to do something that is going to harm Sheppard, just as he had been asked to do in Conversion, when he had to tell them where Sheppard was so that strike teams authorized to use lethal force might be able to find him. Caldwell may recognize by now that he would have real trouble getting McKay to comply with this and so he ameliorates the use of any force necessary to not "unduly" harming the hosts. McKay does not much like the sound of this either but at least he does not plan on killing them on sight -- yet. His reaction also confirms that he still has no idea why he shot at Sheppard earlier. He could have killed him! McKay exchanges a glance with Beckett, but it is brief and he seems to derive little comfort from it, and this is similar to Sheppard looking at Beckett in the previous episode clearly hoping he had been with McKay. Beckett may be his best friend, but McKay really wants to be exchanging both glances and thoughts with someone else entirely. He always does.

Continued in Pt. 8

[dr-futbol-blog]

Critical Mass, Pt. 2

Next we get to see one of those rare private moments between Sheppard and McKay, only this one is taking place out in the open so it shows us how they are when they are just the two of them doing every day things on Atlantis. This too we have never gotten to see before, only having joined them at the tail-end of them walking into places together. Now we catch them seemingly mid-walk, mid-conversation and while there are several scenes with plot exposition between the previous scene and this (the Goa'uld have hidden a bomb -- actually they have rigged the ZPM to explode taking the planet with it -- on Atlantis), the audience is led to connect this to their previous scene with Weir and Ronon, as though this was taking place just after the meeting with the two of them having left it together.

However, that is not what has happened because McKay is telling Sheppard something that he had learned from Weir that Sheppard had not been around to hear since the meeting, he is filling Sheppard in. Note also that they are shot from very far away, the lighting is dark, and we have to work to see them behind several obstacles, things blocking our view.

McKay: Elizabeth's including intel about the in-fighting amongst the wraith in today's status report. Sheppard: Let's hope that trend continues. If the wraith keep fighting like this, might be able to take the weekend off.

So, this is just another day at the office, two pals talking shop. McKay is giving us more exposition, Sheppard is making a quip, wisecracking about the enemy because he is cool like that. Because the lighting in the scene is so dark, it is difficult to see the fact that Sheppard is leaning against the stairway at the start of the scene, as though he had specifically been waiting for McKay to join him there. The fact that they had apparently planned to meet here in advance of this is also obscured by the way McKay launches into telling Sheppard about what he had learned from Weir without any preamble, continuing that never-ending conversation of theirs that had only been paused while they were away from each other. It seems like we are jumping in mid-conversation when we actually see them rejoin each other here at the top of the stairs, and then take off together like they had plans to go somewhere together. Sheppard is also wearing his tac vest, which he was not wearing previously at the meeting, but it is hanging open indicating that what ever reason he had put it on, he was now either finished or on a break from that. Off the clock, so to say.

Also note the extremely ambiguous way Sheppard delivers the line about the weekend here. Even if they were buddy pals, he might have said "We might be able" because they are team mates. They are on the same team. If the team leader decides it is time to take the weekend off, they are all going to take the weekend off. But they leave it purposefully ambiguous here whether he is saying "I might" or "we might." He is using the "we" form at the start of his response, so it would make sense for him to have meant "Let us hope that trend continues. If the wraith keep fighting like this, we might be able to take the weekend off." And by we, he means the two of them. The only reason to make this so ambiguous is that he meant the two of them, together. In the context of their relationship, Sheppard might have been ambiguous in character because is feeling insecure about it, not sure if McKay would want to spend the weekend with him. McKay's response to him is just a soft chuckle which suggests that he is not opposed to the idea.

For obvious reasons we never get to see them enjoy a weekend together. The only weekend we see on the series (Sunday, S03E17) takes place almost immediately following their break-up and it mainly deals with the aftermath of that. I will get into more detail later but it very much seems as though Sheppard is using Ronon to distract himself, and as he basically forces Ronon to do things with him that he usually does on a day off but that he is clearly doing for the first time with Ronon, we learn about his routines. Through this, we actually get some insight into what such weekends, of which there must have been many, had been like for him before that. Only, he had not been alone. Although he was with Ronon, this was the first time he was alone, and he could not bear it.

We get confirmation of this in The Shrine (S05E04), where Sheppard grabs a couple of beers from his fridge and, since McKay is losing his memories, reminds him about the fact that they have done that a lot together. They have had beers alone together many times. That is what they used to do on the weekends: beers, popcorn, tunes, lazing in bed arguing about movies and sharing thoughts, memories from their past lives, Sheppard thumbing through some magazine or comic book. It was not through playing "the game" that the two of them got to know each other so intimately as they clearly do, it was through things like this. And here they are, chatting about it seeming completely at ease in each other's presence, a glimpse into their private world that we get to see only in pieces over the seasons. That we only get to see if we are able to remove the obstacles purposefully put in front of our eyes, able to fill in the gaps between moments we see and moments obscured to us.

The thing is, the blue hues of the corridor (most Atlantis corridors are reddish in colour, there is more light) and the presence of Cadman, who they are about to run into here, who had been with McKay the previous time we had seen Sheppard and McKay together in this part of the city in Duet (S02E04), tells us that they are either coming from or going to McKay's quarters, and given that Sheppard seemed to be waiting for McKay and McKay seemed to be coming from a meeting with Weir, the latter is infinitely more likely. So they are going to McKay's quarters, the two of them together. We may recall that the last time that we had seen Sheppard here with McKay, his intention seemed to be to... come calling. To see whether McKay was alone or she was still with him. By his room. Late at night. Just checking, looking out for a friend in need.

Cadman's presence here contextualizes this scene as connected to that one. What is interesting is that we are given a time frame of 2 hours 46 minutes (those curious pockets of time) between this scene and when next we find McKay in the control room about to send in the data burst to Earth. It is doubtful it took him nearly three hours to compress the data, so this leaves them ample time for all kinds of activities, especially to pass short but intense energy bursts between them. What I am saying is that it is not an accident they run into Cadman here, and it is not random that they are in the blue-hued corridor. And they did not need to compose the scene like this. This is all intentional. Of course, although it is a very obvious retcon, you are free to interpret this as Sheppard and McKay as being on their way to play "the game," since this is definitely the kind of pocket of time that the game was meant to explain away. The whole point of "the game" was to give those parts of the audience that needs the subtext explained away a chance to see something else here. But really.

And so they come across Lt. Laura Cadman, bomb expert extraordinaire. The reason she is acting shifty is because this is a "Whodunnit" episode, everyone is suspect to build suspense. But the reason they have McKay and Sheppard run into her, and to run into her specifically here, and specifically as they are on their way to fool around for an hour (I mean, if you want to interpret them as going to lunch or to play "the game" or what ever, that's your prerogative, there is just about as much evidence for any of those activities; the facts are that Sheppard had been waiting for McKay by the stairs and that we will not see McKay again for 2h46) is to establish a connection between this episode and Duet, just as re-introducing the character of Kavanagh is meant to connect this episode to Letters from Pegasus (S02E17), and to lesser extent to 38 Minutes (S01E04). Although the charming smile Sheppard greets her with here is not unlike the smile he gave the nurse then, trying as he was his damnedest to push McKay away, as performative then as it is now. Sheppard even does the same head-tilt as then as they stop to engage Cadman. He is definitely trying to seem charming.

But even if Sheppard was not on his way to have sex with a man as he gives her this undeniably charming smile, let us just review the fact that she is not only rather young, she is a young woman under his command that he would never even think about in that context. This is to say that even though some people take scenes such as this as evidence that Sheppard is a ladies' man who is interested in every beautiful woman that comes in his line of sight (and how ironic is it that the actual reason for the smile here seems to be to try to disguise the fact that these two men are very much on their way to fuck), that is not actually even in the top 10 of the reasons why he uses his charming smile on women. He is being polite but noncommittal here, acting in a way that does not rouse any suspicion.

McKay: Cadman? What are you doing here? Cadman: Well, it's good to see you too, Rodney.

McKay seems unpleasantly surprised to not just find Cadman still on Atlantis, apparently having been under the impression she was shipping away, but actually near his own quarters where Cadman had first taken possession of his body. We do not know if Cadman was leaving for good or only having shore leave on Earth because we were told that she had a date with Beckett in the previous episode, which must have happened by now and, although we know that their relationship fizzles out before too long, we do still see them together at the end of the episode (and as an aside, Katie Brown is not even hinted at because McKay has given her literally not one thought since escaping the date from hell). The status of Cadman and Beckett's relationship at this time is uncertain, and this is possibly be design, leaving it as ambiguous as the other major relationship in the episode.

But note that although Cadman assumes McKay was asking what she is still doing on Atlantis, "What are you doing here?" might just as well have referred to the corridor near his quarters. That seems to be real busy. Forcing McKay and Sheppard to walk real close, bumping into each other as they try to avoid running into people. Not because they want to walk in each other's space. They just constantly seem to run into too little space for them to walk like straight dudes. It's a problem.

McKay: No, I thought you were leaving on the Daedalus. Cadman: Yeah, I was, but something came up. I asked Colonel Sheppard if I could stay around a little while longer. McKay: Oh, well, that's fine. Cadman: You OK with that? McKay: Yeah, course it is, why wouldn't it be?

McKay does not mince words, and although he is trying to be civil toward her, it is easy to see how displeased he is to see her. This is obvious not just to her but also to Sheppard who, apparently and perhaps to spare McKay's feelings, had left untold to him the fact that she was sticking around for a bit longer. It is obvious to him that McKay sees this lack of information as a betrayal, and hence while he does not say anything, we see Sheppard turn toward McKay and drawing his lips back as though he is smiling deeper when he is not really smiling at all. This is a fake smile, the kind that does not reach the eyes. And turning to McKay with this smile is one of two things: it is either an "Uh oh, I am in trouble now for not having told you, aren't I" smile or "I am totally messing with you but it is for your own good" smile. Regardless, Sheppard very obviously turns the smile to McKay.

What is interesting about this exchange is that McKay does not actually respond to her question. Cadman asks "Are you OK with that?" McKay responds "Yes, of course it is [OK], why wouldn't it be?" He is not saying whether he is OK or not, it is as though he is answering a completely different question to the tune of "Is it OK with you?" And this is not the first time this has happened, only in the previous episode we saw him answer a question neither Teyla nor Ronon had asked. And what is more curious is that he turns his head toward Sheppard as he starts responding, like he was speaking to him. Now, this could just be a syntax error either by the writer or the actor but let us presume it was said on purpose. It is more than peculiar that this keeps happening. And we know that when McKay's full genetic potential is unleashed later on in Tao of Rodney (S03E14), telepathy is one of his first and strongest gifts, he actually has to start blocking people out. That these two would occasionally respond to the other's thought rather than their words and never even notice they are doing it, having the "unsettling" ability to sense each other's thoughts by looking at the other's face, is really not the strangest thing on this show. It could also be that he is just so flustered and uncomfortable about the situation that he does not even know what he is saying but as mentioned, this is far from the only time we see this happen.

Cadman: Colonel. Sheppard: Lieutenant. I would think after all this time, you'd stop being creeped out by her. McKay: She just has a way of getting under my skin. Sheppard: Literally.

Cadman leaves and we may note that she boldly walks in between them which is not something that these men enjoy given how many people they avoid by pushing themselves closer to the other. We may note that Sheppard only says one word to her, basically acknowledging her salute which is something that he is supposed to do as a superior officer. But otherwise it very much seemed like he did not want to be in the discussion, he would rather they had not even stopped to talk to her. It is possible Sheppard had other, more pressing things in mind.

Now, Sheppard smiles politely at her and keeps eye contact with her almost the entire time they are with her, and she seems kind of flirty as she takes off, likely just to tease McKay for old time's sake. And it would be so easy to read something into it, like there was something there, an unspoken attraction when we know that she is presumably with Beckett, Sheppard clearly did not want to be in that conversation and was waiting for it to be over which we can tell by how he picks up their discussion just as soon as she is gone, and they both also start walking to where ever they were going, clearly having a shared destination because these two men are on the way to have sex with each other. That is the kind of misdirection that allowed them to do this. When there is a beautiful woman in the foreground, the audience is completely blinded to what happens in the background.

But let us just note that the face McKay pulls as she leaves and the wide breadth he gives to the woman that almost walks into him, clearly not wanting to brush up against her even by accident. McKay may get "all the women," but he sure does not seem to want any. Like, at all. Let us also note the fact that Sheppard expresses concern for McKay's well-being here, and it is not in the capacity of a team leader. He is concerned because he cares. It also shows us that Sheppard understands what McKay is feeling, knows him well enough to know what he is thinking, and he wants McKay to put it past him for his own sake. It also tells us that the two of them do talk about personal things with each other, they have intimate conversations. McKay's response also lets us know that they share things with each other, they do not keep secrets. They seem to know each other on a level that no one else even could know them. This is a wonderful scene, a masterclass in layered storytelling.

Continued in Pt. 3