Hindsight, by Rageprufrock

[the-moonmoth.livejournal.com]

I think this community is a terrific idea, but I haven't seen anything come out of it so far so I thought I'd give it a go. Please bear in mind that I haven't written this kind of analysis in many years, and I was never much good at it then. So, on that confident note...

Link: Hindsight, by Rageprufrock
Summary: discussion of the characterisations in the above story

The story is an AU, in which John never joined the Air Force, becoming instead an FBI agent. Rodney's history up to the point where the story begins seems unchanged. Then one day in Colorado, Rodney discovers a bomb in his car, and John is subsequently called to the scene. That's how they meet, and the story goes from there.

The thing about AU's that has always attracted my interest is the characterisations. They really need to be spot-on if the characters are to be removed from the familiarity of their usual surroundings. On the first read, my opinion was that Pru had wholeheartedly succeeded in this. On the second read, I tried to be a bit more critical.

John's character was quite different to the John we see in canon in several ways. He seemed more open, less self-contained, and while he does work long hours and live alone, you get the sense that it's less of a choice on his part -- not something he seeks out, but something that just is, because of the demands his job puts on him. Contrast this with the canon John, who liked the solitude of Antarctica, and had to think long and hard before giving that up.

Perhaps because of this unusual openness to his character, or perhaps because the story is from his POV and we thus get a peak into his head, he also seems to possess a vulnerability that we just don't see, or haven't yet seen, from canon John. This is most obvious in the scene with Francesca (a kidnapped girl he's been searching for but finds too late) and his subsequent reaction to her death, but also in his relationship with Rodney. Despite telling himself that he isn't gay, that he isn't really interested in Rodney and is just using him, he shows a remarkable passiveness in allowing Rodney to muscle him around, take care of him, and in the end almost falls into the relationship without meaning to. This highlights his loneliness, his need for human contact and affection, and leads me to see him as a younger, less hardened version of canon John (I even began to picture him as Joe Flanigan's part in 'Family Portrait').

In fact, this makes sense in the context of this universe. John dearly wanted to join the Air Force and become a pilot, but was disqualified at birth by a medical condition. Despite the obvious satisfaction he takes in his job, there's always the sense of melancholy that he couldn't follow his dreams:

He smoothes a hand over his face and gets distracted when he hears a hum outside the window, and when he turns, he sees a Blackhawk helicopter crawling across the sky, and he cannot, cannot look away.

He grew up on military bases but has had no military training. He deals with rapes and kidnappings and sometimes-gruesome murders, but he's never been to war. Obviously some innate compulsion to save lives remains intact, but he's gone through his career without the desperate trauma of full-scale battle. He does have to deal with some horrific things, but at the end of the day he can return to his nice house in quiet suburbia and work through it all at his own pace. There's no indication that he's ever lost people he's close to in his line of work.

Rodney, however, has led his life exactly the way we've seen it in canon, right up until that fateful morning with the bomb. Presumably he's not long returned from Siberia, and is now working in Cheyenne Mountain on the preliminaries for the Atlantis expedition. So his character should be akin to the Rodney McKay we first met in SG-1, previous to his posting to Antarctica. It more or less is -- snarky, obnoxious, holier-than-thou. However, I found myself pausing to think more than a couple of times.

The first thing that struck me was the use of the word 'yell'. Rodney 'yells' a lot in this story. Admittedly, I haven't seen his SG-1 episodes in a while, but whilst he was smug and arrogant and annoying, I don't remember him being particularly belligerent or neurotic. He was quite self-contained, expressing his panic in a very reasonable way, embracing the sense of inevitable doom-and-gloom with surprisingly little fuss. (My memory, of course, could be faulty -- please do correct me if I'm wrong about this). It was only later, on Atlantis where it was his and his team's lives on the line that he really began to show the neuroticism, raise his voice, gesticulate wildly. Arguably, this is the first time that he ever really understood the responsibility he held -- what it would mean for someone to die because he couldn't find the right solution. Contrast this with his dismissive attitude to Teal'c's situation in his very first appearance in the 'gateverse, and you can really see the character growth that he's undergone.

However, he hasn't undergone it yet. But you wouldn't know it from this story. This is very much a post-Atlantis Rodney in a pre-Atlantis setting. Bit of an anachronism, but I actually don't mind it too much. It works well enough in the early scenes, setting up a good dynamic between Rodney and John, and beyond that there's enough subtlety and skill in the writing that I can believe their relationship is having a significant impact on his behaviour.

That said, the particular characterisations for both Rodney and John fit very well together, and whilst it's never explained explicitly, you can really see what it is about each of them that leads them to need the other so much. Despite the nitpicks and a couple of inconsistencies in some of the details, it's that that makes this story such a good read, and one that holds up well to re-reading.

Comments

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Excellent review! Good catch on Rodney's yelling. I'd noticed the yelling but hadn't thought to much on it. Perhaps I'm so used to the SGA version of Rodney that I can't imagine him as he was three years ago. S1 Rodney is my default, and he's the guy who yells at small children cry ;)

I particularly like what you say about John not having experienced the trauma of battle situations or fubared rescue missions, which means AU John is a little more open, more open to emotion and to possibilities. This John never received a black mark for disobeying orders. I'll try to post a few more thoughts when I get home from work. Thanks for kicking this off!

part I

[rivier.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you chose this story - someone else on my flist asked me to read it the other day, because she had some reservations and wanted to triangulate her concerns.

It's interesting: I definitely agree with your first comment - that an AU works if the characters are true to themselves, so that no matter what the background, the people in the foreground will need to be recognisably the John Sheppard and Rodney McKay of Stargate: Atlantis.

And I absolutely didn't think this story managed that at all.

For me, the Sheppard of Hindsight is less dissimilar to the Sheppard of Atlantis than the two Rodneys. But in part, that's because both Sheppards are cyphers. So the lazy, superficial all-purpose charm made sense, but I didn't understand why Sheppard would have chosen this career - one that forces him both to see the worst of humankind, to empathise with it, and to be left largely impotent much of the time, to right society's wrongs. He also seemed extremely passive about Rodney's encroachment into his life. The Sheppard of the show seems very able to set his own boudaries, keep people at arms-length - in short, be less of a girl, frankly.

I didn't recognise this Rodney at all. Worse, it seemed to me that this was an absolute distillation of a certain fanon cliche version of McKay. The McKay of Hindsight never, ever stops loudly and pathetically complaining, or whining, or bragging, or bitching the world out. He pretty much hates or despises everyone, and they hate and despise him back with equal ferocity.

I couldn't understand why a man so consumed with anger and contempt would try and force his way into a relationship with a total stranger - and worse, why Sheppard would let himself be played into that relationship, especially when the story sets out with him ostensibly heterosexual. This McKay was something of an obsessive bunny-boiler: I absolutely can't think of anything from the show that supports the idea of McKay calling Sheppard up umpteen times a day, inviting himself into someone else's life, trying to comandeer them. He's way more self-contained than that, by necessity.

Part II

[rivier.livejournal.com]

...

Making McKay so one-dimensional and hostile completely belies the draw of the Atlantis McKay, who is simply a more rounded, less aggressive, less predictable creation. The McKay of Atlantis - hell, even the McKay of SG-1 - doesn't moan about everything, or bang on incessantly about his 'fake' medical conditions. Yes, he does these things *sometimes* - but he also deprecates himself, works co-operatively, banters, is at times awed and quiet and efficient and aware of the world around him and the people within it, cares about those people enough to offer his own life to save them, repeatedly. I didn't get any sense that the Hindsight McKay would be capable of any such grace. And he seems utterly oblivious to the massive offensiveness he generates or the contempt it earns him. The Atlantis McKay understands that he's socially inept much of the time, but just can't do what it would take (Allina, or Katie Brown) to remedy that.

In making McKay nothing but an arrogant, needy, pushy, whingeing asshole, Hindsight destroyed any sense for me of understanding why Sheppard or anyone else would want to be within a thousand miles of this man. I didn't even get a sense of any genuine sexual chemistry - most of the physical descriptions seem to be fixated on McKay's thick heavy hands and scowling mouth, contrasted with his verbal comments on John's exceptional comeliness.

I didn't buy this as an Atlantis AU in the slightest. I found it mean-spirited - McKay is mockable for the most part, and since the story is told from Sheppard's POV, we're seeing Sheppard enter (reluctantly) into a relationship with someone he seems to share the world's contempt for. For me, one of the defining virtues of SGA is the extent to which there is a genuine and understandable sense both of friendship and bonding, and the ways in which no man can be judged by one action alone.

I know I'm expressing this rather forcefully - my apologies! I hope this doesn't come across as deliberately aggressive. I literally finished reading the story a few minutes ago, and it did rattle me. I feel gloomy that this is such a widely-recommended story, and that people new to Atlantis will read it and then take its interpretation of these characters as the template for the canon of the show itself.

part 1

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, you made me think. How I hate that. *g*

I think that for me, I don't mind that the author starts with a season one Rodney. I think that that character is more familiar to fandom-at-large, and is a completely acceptable place to start. I didn't find his character or actions out of scope based on 'Rising' as the starting point; I was pretty much fine with all that.

I agree with you that this John is fanon John, primarily due to his passivity in their relationship. But it's within my three-degrees of canon for what I can accept as a version of John, and as it's an AU and she has a really good explanation for the changes in John's character (he's diabetic), I was quite happy to roll with it.

For me, the main hiccup came at the end. I loved the set up, the way the characters interacted, and the way the universe she created diverged from the canon universe; my problem is that when I read a story as a WIP, part of the fun is the whole 'what happens next' game. For me, I saw markers that the story would go longer -- Rodney went to Antarctica, and we know as fans of the show, that there is an Antarctica expedition, then the decision to go to Pegasus, then the trip back to home for everyone to say their goodbyes.

I wanted to see that goodbye.

Instead, the leaving for Antarctica and the leaving for Pegasus were joined into one thing with one goodbye; and that's the point, to me, of where this story should have ended. Unhappily, yes, but hey, it was true to the characters and the setting and so it would have worked for me. Because really, by that point, we are done with John's story.

[destina.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad you posted about Hindsight; it's a terrific first-discussion story.

Right up front, I have to say that there were a couple of lines in this story that were laugh-out-loud funny, to me, in the good way. And a couple of things I found really insightful, about character. McKay's string theory model, the gift given in an attempt to get Sheppard to put out, was my favorite thing about the story. *g*

However...the characterizations in this story struck me as being over to the extreme edges of what's seen in canon for both Sheppard and McKay. I can see the Sheppard of canon in this story, if I squint -- laconic, laid back, easy-going. The Sheppard of Hindsight is incredibly passive, which is rather odd given his profession, and that turned me off. Even so, it's easier for me to buy an even more laid-back Sheppard than it is to see the extreme version of McKay.

When I watch the SG-1 ep in which McKay was first introduced, I see a one-dimensional obnoxious jerk who trampled every last nerve of everyone he interacted with. His meta-purpose there was to be fingernails on the chalkboard. But by the second episode in which he appeared, he had already started to take on three dimensions, including some vulnerability and a sense of his own limitations where science was concerned. This is why I don't quite buy Hindsight's strident, obnoxious, truly annoying McKay as being 'pre-Atlantis'. He's at the far edge of who McKay is -- he's a big ol' bundle of irritating.

Which brings me to what rivier said:

In making McKay nothing but an arrogant, needy, pushy, whingeing asshole, Hindsight destroyed any sense for me of understanding why Sheppard or anyone else would want to be within a thousand miles of this man.

This, more or less, is my primary problem with the story. I'm not able to see any defined connection between the two characters that explains why they even like each other. Why would someone like Sheppard, as portrayed in this story, be attracted to someone like this McKay? Yikes. More than that, I try to follow the whole McKay-as-pursuer thing here, and I just can't do it; this McKay hasn't the social skills to make it plausible.

I'm not fond of the softer, more wide-eyed, martyriffic McKay in SGA stories, either, but there is a balance that works for me somewhere in the middle. This story doesn't reach that balance, for me.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I read the entirety of this story this weekend, driving home from a weekend with friends. I was slightly hungover, so I don't know that all my critical faculties were engaged. I was so charmed by this version of John, and all the attendant health reasons that he hadn't joined the military, that I was able to overlook the McKay characterization issues mentioned above. For me, this John was living an empty life, and Rodney challenged him enough to engage him again, which was the basis for his turn to the gay side. I laughed out loud at a couple of points, because there were some hilarious lines sprinkled throughout. On a more practical note, I felt that McKay's military security clearance wouldn't have meant diddly to the FBI - interagency access is notoriously difficult to manage.

[mmmchelle.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you picked this story, too. Since I mentioned that the relationship worked for me. Here's a snippet that shows why:

"I don't think you really understand the severity of this," Rodney says suddenly, his voice damning. He scowls at John, who is settling the folder between his hands, looking politely interested in Rodney's most recent crisis. "I mean--I almost died this morning. Died. Before nine--before two cups of coffee, even," Rodney emphasizes, growing increasingly horrified at his brush with mortality. "And you, you keep smiling your little I Grew Up South Of The Mason-Dixon Line smile! Can we have a little professionalism? Can we have a little focus?" Rodney frowned down at his Styrofoam cup, and held it up again. "Also, can I have a little more coffee?"

John's a little amazed, torn between insult and hilarity, and decides Rodney's too weird to go one way or the other, and settles for bemusement.

He says, "Sure, I'll go refill that for you and remind everybody who won the War of Northern Aggression while I'm out there--happy, Dr. McKay?"

This is back in John's office after they met, and in John's reactions I saw interest. Not sexual interest, but he's already starting to like Rodney. Even as he characterizes Rodney as an asshole, John isn't treating him like one, although other characters are. He's curious, and he's already starting to have fun around Rodney. At least that's how it felt to me.

I have to get to bed, but in the morning I'll mention the technical stuff I wanted to talk about.

[engenda.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly enjoyed this AU, and I'm not one for AU's I generally find them less than satisfying. I adored Rodney in this fic, because it fit with the Rodney that I see on the screen. He's abrasive, loud, whining, opinionated, sarcastic, bombastic, caring, smart, supportive, funny, emotive and touching. I have to agree with sinden here, in that Rodney's all about the actions. It's what he does that's telling not what he says. And in this, he does a lot. He pursues John, a nervous, bumbling pursuit, but dogged. He sends John gifts with funny notes. He rings him to make sure he's okay. He takes him home and takes care of him. He challenges John mentally. There's something about Rodney that does attract John, maybe not physically in the first place, but it's there or John wouldn't have gone out with him at all. This is all before John actually admits to Rodney that he likes him, before Rodney leaves for Antarctica.

John, is fairly passive in this fic, but not overly so. It's from his POV so by definition, it's going to be reactionary. He's responding to Rodney and his environment. He's still solitary, which I think was incredibly well done - he has this place where he's nested, he has the car but he doesn't have the people. He participates in that relationship, it's unexpected to him, but not grudging - if it were so, he wouldn't be in it.

I love that he's still in service, even the FBI - John's a fixer, he wants to do right and help people and this what he does instead of flying. John's feelings about flying, about wanting to join the AF are just heartbreaking. Which, I think, feeds into his loneliness and his sense of isolation - which as in the show feels voluntary to me. He's superficially charming and friendly, but he doesn't really connect on a deeper level.

I loved that Rodney wanted to take John with him. I loved that he tried and couldn't. I loved how by knowing that John wouldn't stop him he realised he was in love with him. The fact that Rodney considered that John may ask him not to go and to consider what his reaction would be shows how much he cares.

Poor Sarah, I felt sorry for her. Particularly when faced with a pissed off Rodney. Rodney going off, had me laughing and felt so "Rodney". When he's in an uncomfortable position he goes on the offensive, which is what he did there.

My main problem with the story was that John actually got to go to Atlantis in the end, gene or no. He suffers from IDDM. Even with the Daedelus being completed (which I assume is the case from the timeline), having a type I diabetic on off world missions is risky. But that can be explained away, reasonably easily.

[mmmchelle.livejournal.com]

The first difficulty I had is with the death of John's mother. The author does a lovely job of showing it to us, of showing us how it affected John, but there is no payoff. The main story is a love story and the mother's death is never conncected to the love story. Had she shown us John talking to Rodney about his mother's death, I would have felt that it had a payoff, as it was I kept wondering when it was going to come up in the context of the relationship between John and Rodney and it never did.

The second difficulty I had is that the last third or so of the story is almost entirely exposition. John tells Rodney he isn't gay. They fight. They kiss. Then we're told that they kiss a lot more after that and eventually they have sex. Rodney asks John if he's sure, and that's it. After all of the build up I felt cheated. I wanted to know what made John decide he was ready for sex with Rodney. I wanted to know how he was feeling the first time they had sex. How did he feel seeing Rodney naked? How did he feel touching Rodney? I wanted to see Rodney's reaction when John said he wanted him. I wanted to know if Rodney was anxious or confident. I wanted to know what they said to one another and how they sounded saying it.

It wasn't just the sex that was given short shrift, either. There is an exposition description of them sharing post-coital confidences, but we didn't get to see it. I wanted to see it, to hear their words and see their expressions and reactions, to feel how hard or easy it was for them to share those things.

Because I didn't see those things, I wasn't entirely sure why John would choose Rodney over the woman he had moved in with. I hadn't fully seen John develop a deeper relationship with Rodney than he'd had with the various women who had moved in and out of his life.

Lastly, the pacing felt off. The last part of the story moved much faster than the first part, and less exposition would have helped with that.

Still, I enjoyed the story.

[engenda.livejournal.com]

I always thought that John activated Atlantis but didn't necessarily wake it up. That is, Atlantis was probably set to initiate viability as soon as the gate activated. So air etc would come on, that simply required Gate activation or life signs. However, getting any of the other functions to work would require the gene. So, that's my interpretation of why John was needed.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything much coherant to say, except thank god I am not alone in not having absolute adoration for this fic, and thank you for letting me know that. :)

[dvslj.livejournal.com]

A bit late to this discussion, but I had to drop my two cents.

Like I was telling Riv, I had some very mixed reactions to this story. There were things that I really loved about it and then there were things that ultimately left me a little confused.

I liked John in this story, though I did find him quite different to canon John, which I guess is fine because if characterization is to be fiddled with, an AU would be the place to do it. Rodney was the one I had a problem with. I just couldn't see what John's attraction to him was and where it came from. I don't know if that was intended as a peek into John not being able to make sense of the attraction himself, or if it was just the way Rodney was characterize, but it jolted me out of the fic a few times.

Because of that, I just wasn't feeling the connection I sometimes get when reading a story, and I took it to mean that, yeah, something was missing and not clicking for me. So, following from that, my problem was that the fic seemed universally loved, which made me wonder about my obviously subjective perceptions of the characters because clearly, I wasn't seeing the same thing as other readers.

Rodney has many facets, some more admirable than others and when I write about Rodney I have a very deep affection for his character. It's more than possible that this affection might cloud my perceptions and therefore affect the way I write/read/percieve him as a whole. I'm pretty sure that out of the four AU's I've written, someone out there probably thinks the characterizations are seriously whacked and for all I know, they might be write (I'd rather they weren't though).

I guess the way I see Rodney was ultimately very different from the one in this story and that kind of took away the enjoyment.

There's no doubt that Hindsight is a well-written, well structured, creative and enviable AU (though I think I would have preferred it without that last paragraph), but there was this one thing that took away from my enjoying it as much as I was at one point. I glimpsed the Rodney I liked a few times, but it wasn't enough.

I do appreciate it though for the fact that it made me question a lot of things about my own writing and fanon in general and I think any fic that challenges your thinking about something has something going for it.

[mythdefied.livejournal.com]

I did like this AU, but it wasn't one of my favorites. That wasn't, however, due to the characterization. Like others who've commented, I thought John's characterization was very different from the John of Atlantis, but it wasn't a bad thing; I had to get used to it and once I did, I liked it and I could see how it happened. How a non-military John might have turned out a little differently.

The subject matter was a little too rough for me. I don't deal well with things like the case John was working on and it got rather graphic, IMHO, too much for me to be able to reread it again. But that's just my personal bias and I thought the rest of the story was well done.