Hieroglyfics Recs

Rodney always wanted to be a Mountie! The clip choice is good and often utterly brilliant (I laughed out loud when the line about visiting Vancouver was matched with a shot of The Alien Planet That Somehow Always Looks Like Vancouver) and the internal timing is well done. My one criticism is that I think it would have benefited from judicious cutting - the song’s extremely long, and it felt to me as though the vidder was reaching for clips to use during the long dialogue section. To me, it’s a sort of “reverse” vid in that rather than re-interpreting the show through the song, it illustrates the song using the show.

Heroes/SGA crossover, gen. When Micah grows up, he joins the SGC and is sent to Atlantis. It’s a really nifty take on the ’sentient Atlantis’ trope, and a perfect meshing of the universes. Written for the picfor1000 challenge.

An illustrated and rhyming answer to the sga_flashfic “Ways to Die” challenge, a la Edward Gorey. Randomly spoilery for various eps up through S4, will make you grin like a loon.

“They Built This City on Rock and Roll,” dude! Effects galore, sparkles and goofy faces. This made me giggle and grin with its utter cheesetasticness. The best part is the scream at the end.

Oh, Rodney. This is Rodney, his failures and his triumphs, his self-recrimination and his glee. Yay.

What do Michael, Teyla (The Gift), John (Conversion), and Elia (Instinct) have in common? Heh. No science was harmed in the making of this vid, but it was sure bent a little - then again, SGA does that regularly, doesn’t it. This is hilarious, and the clip choice rocks like a rocking thing.

SGA vid set to the Muppet Show theme song. If the Hermiod cameo doesn’t make you laugh out loud, there is no hope for you.

Lim’s vids push the boundaries of what I consider fanvids; they are technically brilliant, but because I am not a particularly sophisticated vid fan, they tend to go over my head. But I really like this one, set to “I Saved The World Today” by the Eurythmics, partly because of the very cool use of color and effects and stuff I don’t even know how to describe, and partly because it takes in everyone in Atlantis, from Caldwell to Kavanagh, sending the implicit message that everyone is an important part of the bigger team that is Earth’s presence in the Pegasus galaxy.

This is a remake of one of her earlier vids, and now contains spoilers through Tao of Rodney. I like the way she’s played with the colors, and the way the internal sync works - the movements to the beat are really cool. The message is a little mixed, as Rodney is not exactly strictly a scientist here, but it’s funny and makes me ♥ Rodney all over again.

Sheppard (Flanigan) gen/het pastiche vid. (It’s hard to describe this with my predefined categories!) I guess you’d call this a constructed reality vid: Joe Flanigan as James Bond, set to the Bond theme (as used in Casino Royale), with clips from SGA, Thoughtcrimes, and other Flanigan appearances. The technical aspects are uneven - there are a few odd aspect-ratio blips, and some of the timing seems off to me - but the clip selection is extremely clever, and the effect is brilliant.

Elizabeth-centric drabble series. The last line makes me the good kind of weepy.

Oh, this cracks me up! These short vids are made to the audio of what appear to be 1950s era PSAs. The clip selection and timing is genius, and the freeze-frames make me giggle. And hey, black and white again, although obviously the effect is intended to heighten the period effect. I can’t wait to see the promised third and fourth parts.

Coincidentally, two black-and-white Sheppard vids came out within a few days of each other. Lim’s vid was maybe a little too abstract for me, the literalist non-viddy person, though it’s clearly a technical masterpiece. I prefer this vid simply because I get a clearer narrative from it: to me, at least, this is a rather martial vid about John’s responsibility as military protector and defender of Atlantis. Things I particularly like are the repeated image of John and his dogtags, and the altered speed in some clips which gives more of an urgent, frantic feel that matches parts of the music. It’s a surprisingly long vid; I say surprising because I generally prefer shorter vids, but I didn’t notice the length of this one.

This story reminds me, in an oblique way, of AJ Hall’s HP story Lust Over Pendle. The stories themselves have nothing in common, but what both share is a sort of trancendence of genre, in which the world of the story is utterly original, surpassing canon, yet reasonably derived from it. Hall’s story is a comedy of manners, while M’s is cyberpunkish SF; both have action-adventure plots which bring the authors’ worlds into a collision with the more familiar canonical ones.

In this story, John, Teyla, and John’s son Ben - whose mere presence raises questions in the reader’s mind, and who is really at the heart of this story - are refugees on a planet called Bajan, which is somehow protected from the Wraith. To be allowed to stay, John must give up one memory at a time to the Bajan authorities. Slowly the strands of detail weave a story, and we learn who Ben is, why John has left Atlantis, and what has happened to other refugees from the Wraith.

I remember being confused by the combination of “gen” as a descriptor with NC17 as a rating. After reading the story, I have to agree that this story is essentially gen. However, it is most definitely about relationships: John’s friendship with Teyla, his somewhat off-balance relationship with his case officer Ekatarin, his prickly detente with other characters I shall not mention here, and most of all the fierce love between John and his son. (The NC17 is for explicit het sex, John/OFC; it is not a romantic relationship, more of a convenient outlet between military comrades.) I really like the action-adventure component of the story; the bits of John’s parents and life on Earth didn’t work for me as well, although some repeating themes I thought were beautifully done. The thematic structure is fantastic, really well done, with interesting parallels drawn between events of various episodes and the events of the story. The writing is evocative without calling attention to itself.

This was written between S2 and S3, so the events of S3 have made it AU. I strongly rec this story for action-adventure fans and John Sheppard fans in particular.

Dawn Summers, Jeannie Miller gen, SGA/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover. This is billed as a crossover with Night of the Comet (which I haven’t seen), but it’s really more of a fusion or even a pastiche, based on the movie summary. The passage of a comet reduces everybody on Earth to a pile of dust, except for Dawn, Jeannie, and Jeannie’s daughter and nephew. Post-apocalyptic roadtrip fic ahoy! I persevered through the confusing-to-non-BtvS-people beginning and was rewarded with good stuff later on, as Dawn travels through the eerie wasteland of empty Midwest strip malls and convenience shops, and meets up with soccer-mom-on-a-mission Jeannie. Oh, and McKay’s cat. Really well written.

Teyla and Rodney (and the rest of the team) gen (offscreen Teyla/OMC), illustrated, art-format. Spoilers for McKay and Mrs. Miller - personally I don’t think they are huge spoilers, but if you haven’t seen the ep you might be confused by what Rodney’s sister calls him. Teyla and Jeannie strike up a correspondence. It’s a sweet, humorous, heartwarming look at family dynamics - both between Rodney and his sister, and among the members of Rodney’s team, who function more or less as a family.

Team humor vid which is quite silly, but does a clever job with the dialogue snippets. I admit that one reason I like this is that it’s very short - just over a minute, not so long that the single joke gets old. I’d probably like it more if I had ever watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Rodney and Ronon gen. I suppose this is technically No Man’s Land related, because the characterization and situation spring directly from what’s shown in the episode, but there are no real spoilers past Allies. Rodney is obsessed with a multiplicity of ways to die. Darkly funny.

John and Teyla centric gen, alternate history AU.

This story, a pastiche of Lawrence of Arabia, is set in an AU Atlantis in which Sheppard came to Atlantis as a captain (and thus with less military authority); because he doesn’t go on the initial expedition to Athos, Teyla’s necklace isn’t activated, the Wraith don’t come to Athos, Sumner lives and the Wraith don’t awaken. Sumner runs his missions with the arrogance of a technologically and morally superior race, alienating the Pegasus people; Sheppard (the Lawrence character) is relegated to being “Captain LightSwitch,” using his gene to turn things on, until he gets itchy feet, wangles a mission to Athos, finds a kindred spirit in Teyla (who is a combination of Feisal and Ali), and “goes native.”

The brilliance of this story lies in the way that canon events (e.g. the meeting of the Genii, the discovery of the wrecked Wraith ship) are retold as they would have happened in this version of Atlantis. There are some very clever subtleties, such as the puddlejumpers being “gateships” (but of course!) and Sheppard’s thoughts on the “alternate alternate” history from the events of “Before I Sleep.” Sheppard is the perfect tragic Lawrencian hero, charismatic and sympathetic, disillusioned about the military yet a strong leader, ultimately a pawn in a terrible war.

You do not need to know the movie (or Lawrence’s autobiographical writings, which this draws from) to enjoy this fabulous story.

Teyla character piece. Homage to a strong woman.

Ensemble, crossover with SG1. This one is cool because it uses clips from behind-the-scene specials - it’s kind of a meta-vid about the creation of the shows we watch.

Ensemble. I interpreted this as Atlantis and the Ancients “speaking” across time to the Earth team, although I guess you could consider it John/Atlantis - I saw it as much more of a team thing, though. [ Email merryish @ anyroad.org for password.]

Ensemble gen, crossover with Xanadu, humor. Totally cool and totally wacko. I especially liked the segue into Elizabeth’s appearance in Before I Sleep - that’s the point at which I mentally went, “oh YEAH!” Like Olivia’s passing the torch of Atlantis to Elizabeth, to entirely mangle a metaphor.

Rodney character piece, humor. I especially loved the use of repetition, fast cuts, and OMG the use of the WRAITH, hee!

Cadman and other women centric. Written for the atlantisbasics fest. When two Atlantis women are kidnapped during a mission, Laura Cadman leads a team to rescue them. This is fabulous - strong women doing what’s needed to get the job done. I particularly like the way the minor characters, such as Biro and Miko, are fleshed out and given real life.

The team goes back to Sateda. Nice friendship-bonding story. (Written pre-Sateda and therefore sort of AU now.)

A nice, quiet friendship story about Elizabeth, John, and Rodney.

This is a nicely-crafted story that takes in bits from Sanctuary and Epiphany and melds them with a creatively-imagined backstory. Packs a punch at the end.

Ancient technology turns Rodney into a Wraith. This is a very cool idea, interestingly executed. It’s in the dreaded Present Tense, which I hate. There are also a few canon problems; there’s no mention of Beckett’s retrovirus project, and the climax contradicts things suggested in Allies (which I won’t detail as not to spoil anyone, and I have to admit the climax is really fitting for the story, and honestly, I’m not sure how I would handle this problem). But Rodney’s characterization rings true to me, the insight into what it feels like to be a Wraith is believable and somewhat frightening, and the pacing pulled me right along and had my heart racing with emotion.

[ETA: after some discussion with the author (who hasn’t seen Allies) and the illustrator (who has) I realize that my conception of that episode is a little mistaken because I forgot about facts established in The Defiant One. And as I say, the climax is really perfect for the story. Also, ETA as I re-add this rec to my database, this story was written BEFORE Common Ground. So there.]

An amusing entry in the documentation challenge. You need MS Word to see the meat of this “story”, which is Zelenka’s performance evaluation as written by Rodney. His chief accomplishments for the past year include “not dying horribly.”

SG-1 had an episode mentioning “Wormhole X-treme”, a tv show based on the “real” adventures of the stargate team. This is a fictitious IMDB listing for “Wormhole X-treme II”, a tv show based on the “real” adventures of the SGA team. The casting is funny, the character names are all clever puns (e.g. Leno Pinter for Carson Beckett), and the form is perfect.

OFC-centric gen. No, don’t run away! This is a cool story that reads sort of like a diary by one of the Atlantis marines. The characterization of the different Atlantis personnel could be more distinctive, and the writing itself isn’t particularly outstanding, but the story shines through. And despite it being gen, there is strong emotional content that had my eyes tearing up a little at the end. I think this is perhaps the very best type of Mary Sue, in that Jill represents not just the author but the reader, because I believe we would all react the same way as she does, if we could go to Atlantis.

A Lorne-centric low-key mission story that illuminates the relationships among the various people, and how they work together.

Carson’s gene research reveals that John’s not descended from the Ancients - he’s a Descended Ancient. This is a great exploration of John’s understanding of himself, but it’s done not through introspection (which by itself does not a story make) but through his interaction with his team, and his off-world activities. Although it’s gen, there’s a strong current of emotional friendship running through the story, shown in an understated but still very touching way.