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.

(Podfic version as edited by Lim.) Every once in a while I see a mention of this story on my flist that begins, “I know I must be the last person to read this…” so I figure I’m maybe not the last. A great action/adventure/history in an engaging and clever format, read by three dozen readers and assembled with care and skill into a not-quite-seamless but nevertheless pretty darn good whole. The variations in volume and quality of the various recordings have been mostly evened out. And I realized that I really don’t mind hearing American and Canadian (and Athosian and Satedan :-) voices as rendered in an English accent; I thought it would throw me, but quickly the accent faded into the metaphorical background, and I just heard the story.

This is a faux trailer for a nonexistent movie: McKay and Sheppard do Ocean’s Eleven. Fabulous use of a wide variety of source material, and put together really well.

Scenes from Epiphany are used to imply an AU history for John and how he met Rodney and came to Atlantis, and there’s some astonishing vid-manip work.

This is a remix of a story I haven’t read. It’s the kind of AU I like best (which is alas rare in SGA) - set in a world that is close to, but not quite, canon, in which familar canonical events (or their analogues) occur. Rodney’s still an SGC scientist, but John is a robot - except that he is not, as he claims to be, an AI sex toy, but a highly advanced and highly secret experimental model. The plot includes both standard Harlequin tropes and startlingly clever twists and revelations. There’s a bit of handwavium tossed around, but no more than in the show. A good read.

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.

I was intrigued by the title, captivated by the first line, and entertained mightily by the rest of the story. Sort of an Aubrey/Maturin fusion in feel, if you will. The story alternates sections of Doctor McKay’s journal (written in nicely period prose) and sections of dialogue that sound like they could have come from an episode of SGA in which the team has a collective nautical delusion.

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

I’m generally not a fan of stories about younger versions of the characters, but this AU in which they are college friends who become something more while on spring break is lovely and hot and sweet, with well-done structure that flips between flashback and present.

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.

I know Toft from the HP fandom, and I’m happy to see her in my new fandoms. This is a cross-dressing Sheppard story; cross-dressing is not really one of my kinks, but it’s handled very well here, and there are a lot of interesting aspects of Sheppard’s sexuality explored here - not to mention of McKay’s. Men communicating poorly is one of my story kinks.

John gets turned into a female…and nobody notices. I like this take on genderswitch because John stays very much John, with his only physical differences hidden or hideable, and the interesting part is how others react (or how John thinks they would react).

Lorne/Zelenka. I have a serious soft spot for Lorne/Zelenka, and I think she gets their voices very nicely. I really like the detail of setting, too, as their acquaintance slowly builds and becomes more. Spoilers through 3×12.

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.

Abductions, murderous villains, and Wraith - and the occasional bomb through the window - in between all of it, let’s have an adrenaline-fueled relationship, shall we? Cute and funny McKay/Sheppard relationship development set against a backdrop of narrow escapes from certain death.

This is apparently based loosely on the movie Never Been Kissed: Rodney’s masquerading as a biology grad student in order to get close to Professor Sheppard, for purposes that I don’t want to spoil here but the cool thing is that the AU converges with canon, which is my favorite type of AU. As you might expect, he gets close to Professor Sheppard in an, er, rather different way than he was supposed to. The absolute best part is Ronon, who takes to hanging out on a college campus with unexpected zest.

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.

This is a rec with a caveat. I originally passed over this story because a, BSDM isn’t my thing, and b, I had not read the series which the story notes say this is an “unauthorized homage” of. I read it because of Cathexys’s (locked) post in which she referred to the story as a feminist critique; this is how I read and interpreted the story, and that’s why I liked it.

I guess I’d describe this as a “BSDM AU”. For discussion that includes the BSDM aspect and the relationship between this story and its source, see Millefiori’s post here; to me, it reads as brilliant social satire on traditional views of the role of women:

Until 1941, subs hadn’t been allowed in the military at all; temperamentally unsuited, everyone said, for fighting. Much better to keep them safe at home. Subs were excellent aids and secretaries, junior engineers, kindergarten teachers, nurses, assembly-line workers, mechanics, accountants—careful, rule-following, meticulous, obedient. In the midst of World War II, personnel shortages had forced the armed forces to allow subs to enlist, but they’d been put in separate units, and couldn’t be promoted beyond Corporal. Subs had separate rank insignias until 1970 and wore an S-pin on their collars until 1982.

I’m not generally a fan of BSDM, but here I don’t think it’s intended to be either particularly realistic or even titillating, so for me it works more as a metaphor, the absurdity of which is what makes the satire work. Helen also pokes fun at some canon and fanon elements (such as Sheppard’s frequent defiance of orders). The characterizations are fairly loose, as usual with her stories. The writing is beautifully invisible and just pulls the reader along.

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.

I don’t actually like the song much, and at nearly 5 minutes it’s (IMHO) far too long, but the clip choices (and, er, partner choices) for each verse are brilliant, and the storyline is fabulous and funny. I mean, John/Kolya! John/Zelenka! John/Bimbo Of The Month! There’s even a flash of John/Hermiod, for crying out loud!

Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Dex. Rodney’s got a crush on John, and he’s jealous of Ronon. The Ronon section was just yay.

This story, written for the sga_flashfic school challenge, is reminiscent of a certain other SGA story (which was written later, btw - this story was written last November) in which a post-Atlantis McKay is teaching at a second-tier school, but it’s less complex, bleaker, and at least to me more compelling, perhaps because it’s so short and punchy. [The story I’m referring to is Synecdochic’s Freedom’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose, another good story.] Excellent structure and pacing. People who dislike character death should probably not read this one.

Rodney’s a brilliant conductor who’s written a violin concerto, and John is the erratic but talented violinist trying to escape the shadow of his famous father. There are a few nods to canon - “think of where we are in the solar system”, the coin flip, flying metaphors - but mostly this is an entirely different world. Yet Rodney and John are both distinctly their canon characters and simultaneously perfectly translated into this world, and their individual faults and problems are transcended by what they can do together - just like in canon.

As I’ve said before, I have difficulty following vids unless they have clear narratives, and this one is actually a constructed narrative, with bits of text superimposed on images both from SGA and other sources, including the vidder’s own shots. Interesting and well-done.

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.

The Opening (McKay/Beckett, Sheppard/various implied, R)
Balancing Act (McKay/Beckett, McKay/Sheppard, NC17)

Series of short stories. Atlantis is a Manhattan restaurant, and McKay is the chef, a demanding and neurotic diva with a crush on the bartender, Sheppard. This AU reminds me a bit of Lalejandra’s publishing AU, except it has fewer in-jokes and is therefore more accessible. Well-written and witty, with clever casting choices. The stories read more like parts of a WIP than as separate stories; in particular, the first story doesn’t really end but just trails off at an odd point, with a suggested plot that doesn’t materialize in the second story (but the author promises more of in the future). The canon allusions are wonderful, and I wish there were more of them.

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.

McKay/Sheppard (and Zelenka-ship that gave me a giggle that I won’t spoil!) screencap comic. Zelenka’s greatest skill is as a yenta. Screencaps and other illustrations are used to great effect - if this doesn’t make you at least smile, you are beyond hope.

As I recently saw the movie Last Night, this made me think a bit of Craig Zwiller: John figures that with the Wraith coming (end of season 1), he’d better get in all the sex he can. He’s pragmatic about it, figuring that he can get sex without emotional involvement from a guy, and hey, he likes Rodney, and Rodney’s probably desperate. But of course Rodney is the poster child for emotional involvement, so things get a little out of control. I liked it a lot and thought the characterization of John as emotionally closed-off was very canonical, but there are some very interesting comments from people bothered by John’s behavior. This comment by hth_the_first comes closest to how I see it.

The combination of sad music and lots of shots of Rodney looking wistful is wonderful.

Teyla character piece. Homage to a strong woman.

Rodney/John, John/Chaya, angst, humor. This was made for the Lord King Bad Vid contest - it’s all overdone earnestness and angst, which somehow makes it absolutely hilarious.

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 humor. West Side Story retold in the SGA-verse. Hilarious.

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!

Rodney/Ronon. I’m not a fan of forced marriage slash stories, which usually strike me as just plain weird, but this one is plausible and cleverly done. Part of its appeal to me, I think, is that it’s not a first-time (even though I love first-time) - Rodney and Ronon already are in a relationship (I believe that Hth’s Thirteen O’Clock, which is I also rec, is a prequel to this) and getting married both forces them to confront their relationship, and forces the others in Atlantis - particularly John - to confront it as well. The story is told through Rodney’s and John’s POVs, and it’s both sweet and sad, as one realizes the depth of his affection for his partner and teammate, and the other feels cut off and abandoned when his teammates pair off together. Although there’s a bit of plot involving aliens and secret technology, it’s really a McGuffin - the relationships make up the story.

Just in case you skipped by this one because of the mpreg warning - go read it, because it’s lovely and very thoughtful. Rodney’s near death, and John makes the decision to save him in a way that is both sweet and heartbreakingly hurty.

n this very cool story, written for the sga_flashfic “this is not happening” challenge, Rodney activates an Ancient artifact…and nothing happens. Or does it? As reality begins to warp and change, only Rodney remembers how things were supposed to be. This hits my story-kinks of both unexpected consequences of ancient technology as well as alternate realities, and the slash relationship, which seems a little out of left field at first, is unexpectedly poignant.