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Addicted to SGA

@cassiope25

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alienfuckeronmain

I've said this before and I'll say it again but I'm menstruating and emotional today and actually have the words because @spurious and I have been talking about it--the reason why mcshep is the pairing of all time for me, personally, is this:

Rodney fundamentally believes the best he will ever get is to be tolerated. That if he suppresses his personality for long enough and does the right combination of Tasks, some woman will decide hes not so bad and settle for him. It doesn't matter if he wants her back, being tolerated is enough, and all he deserves.

His sister clearly reinforces this when she asks him about proposing to Katie Brown, which makes me think this was something his parents said as well.

JEANNIE: You think you're gonna find someone better?

McKAY: No, it's not that.

JEANNIE (laughing): ‘Cause you're not!

McKAY: Hang on …

JEANNIE: The fact that you found a nice girl who's willing to put up with all your many little flaws is a miracle.

He thinks it's a miracle, to be tolerated. "You're no John Sheppard," Jeannie reminds him. You can't have anyone in the world like your best friend (who he's painted, to her, as someone who can have anyone in the world). It has NEVER occurred to him that he could be wanted, or desired, for who he is. Only tolerated.

Rodney proposes to Katie Brown shortly after this likely because his sister reminded him the best he could hope for is a nice girl who tolerates him, and he was like I need to lock this down.

THEN, MEANWHILE. John Sheppard, who wants Rodney so badly. Not suppressed or polished or Best Behavior Rodney, either, but Real, Messy, Selfish, Arrogant, Prickly, Unmasked Rodney. John is, without a doubt, the person Rodney is most unabashedly himself in front of, the person who has repeatedly seen him at his worst, the person with which he totally allows his guard to drop, the person he spends his leisure time with. John has seen him, in whole, and wants him. Desires him powerfully and self destructively and all-consumingly with no hope for reciprocity for literal years.

For someone who believes he is fundamentally unlovable and only tolerable and has never even considered desire as a component in his lonely future--to have the person who knows him best (and a person he grudgingly but profoundly admires and loves and thinks is, for some reason, the Platonic Ideal of manhood and also coincidentally so handsome he could have anyone in the world he wanted) WANT him like that...it just!!! they're so romantic to me

#this this this#I totally agree#rodney settled for being tolerated#he thinks it's the maximum he can go for#john gets so much attention but not the one and ultimate he wants#they are both so wrong#mcshep forever#addicted to mcshep#rodney mckay#john sheppard#mcshep#stargate atlantis#sga#alienfuckeronmain
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alienfuckeronmain
flyingflood asked:

For sga, if you want to elaborate on how much you think the actors “knew what they were doing” I’d be interested!

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alienfuckeronmain answered:

So I don't think they played McShep up actively as a romance or perceived of their characters as gay. But I think they were aware of the shippers and aware of that reading of the characters and did little to dissuade it.

Mostly, I think Joe Flanigan KNEW if he played John the way the script wrote him--resident Cool Guy Ladies Man--he would not be interesting. Joe's performance MAKES John for me. And while that does not mean he consciously decided to play John as a Don't Ask Don't Tell Era gay man, I think he was well aware of the aspects written into the character that had the potential to make him creepy, typical, irritating, etc. And I think he did actively trouble and downplay those aspects, which includes entering thoughtfully into his scenes with the female characters, and, by contrast, with Rodney and other male characters as well. If your character is written as a bit of a womanizer and you very much do not want him to be read as a womanizer, one way to combat that is to play him as a bit gay--or at least, not be afraid of the potential he will come off as gay. And I think that's what Joe did, and that he knew he was doing it: it was important to him John was a good friend to the women in Atlantis and to do that with the script he was given, he pushed certain subtextual aspects of John's character using his acting, and knew those choices would make John potentially come across as gay, and either liked that or didn't care.

With my rewatch, I've been noticing similar intent in David Hewlett. John's character is not as explicitly misogynistic, so acting choices can ultimately override those moments of sexism. But Rodney is, explicitly in text, a misogynist. So, David was tasked with the challenge of playing a main character we, the audience, are supposed to love, who is objectively and openly misogynistic. Actually, there are many textually grating things about Rodney, it must have been a challenge to play him in such a way he still comes across as flawed and complex but ultimately lovable. And again--I don't think David chose to depict Rodney as a gay man suffering from internalized homophobia--but he DID make deliberate choices in his interactions with female characters and male charactesr (and especially John) in order to trouble and complicate the textual misogyny. Rodney's growth from SG-1 and even season 1 of Atlantis to where he is at the end of the series is WRITTEN inconsistently (since the writers were dead set on making Rodney a self insert). But it is ACTED in a beautiful arc. David poured so much love and effort into making Rodney complicated, and like Joe, clearly didn't care if the side effect of that effort also made Rodney seem gay.

In short: the actors did a hell of a job making their characters into far more than what they were written as. I don't think they meant, concretely, to make these characters seem gay and in love, but they WERE troubling and pressing on their misogyny in the script in such a way it was clear they weren't concerned with the possibility these characters could, easily, seem gay and in love.

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#interesting ask - intriguing reply#joe flanigan#john sheppard#david hewlett#rodney mckay#stargate atlantis#sga#mcshep#or not mcshep#al#alienfuckeronmain
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