walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2005-08-12 01:48 pm
walkingshadow) wrote2005-08-12 01:48 pm
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sooner or later you take off your skin and go to sleep
birthday dinner for my mum went off very well last sunday, though the cake didn't so much. that, however, was through no fault of my own, but the fault of the oven (it did the exact same thing the last time my mother tried it a few months ago), and we've determined that my mother hasn't been doing nearly enough baking recently to establish the proper temperature levels of the new oven, and we'll just have to keep at it until we get it right. it's all in the name of science. and then last night we all went out for a birthday dinner on her actual birthday, which would have been more fun if the kids had been less cranky, but was still fun, and ended in ice cream. i've yet to get my mother a birthday present of my own, but have engineered the giving of both a probe thermometer (for meat and poultry) and season one of northern exposure, both big hits. hopefully we'll get to watch an episode or two before c. and the boys go home on saturday.
s. and i studied yet again on tuesday, and i'd forgotten we were supposed to meet—again—today, so i didn't set an alarm and was, of course, late. it was also a day where i couldn't do math in stupid ways, and that's irritating. but! today was the first night of bellydancing class for me and cousin m. and that was a good time. there are fourteen women in the class, from early late teens or early twenties to mid-fifties (plus one young girl who came with her mom), and it's amazing how awkward and utterly uncoordinated some people are, but we're having fun. i don't think i'll be able to lift my arms tomorrow.
[eta: my shoulders are okay so far, but i'm sore in strange places, e.g. my hips and obliques. this is going to be better than pilates.]
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gjstruthseeker was in town for a spell earlier in the week and is expected to reappear for the weekend, but has still not read harry potter and the half-blood prince, making all proto-fic babble on my part completely impossible (silentfire is my voice of encouragement and sanity, thank god). instead she keeps asking spoilery questions which i keep refusing to answer. we did have a good time though, rehashing conspiracy theories (conclusion: dumbledore is an evil, evil man) and making our heads hurt trying to track the references and allusions. i mean, dumbledore has a scar above his knee, just like odysseus did (and it identified him as the rightful ruler when he finally got back to troy 20 years later), but what does that MEAN?
but what's really important is that 1)rageprufrock finished hindsight and it was just as amazing as you might have hoped, and 2) i have been watching actual episodes of stargate:atlantis and am so in love it's passed being not even funny anymore and is funny again. as expected, i have approximately 3987234 screencaps from the eight episodes i have watched so far, and will probably post a whole bunch of icons for the taking once i make them. in the meantime,
basically? it is all about john. john john john zomg.
101/102: rising
john likes it in antarctica. well, of course he does. john is a super-loner.
i find ancient tech fascinating, because it's your intent that matters, your intent and your will. it's echoes of the pure at heart, the clean mind, the good intentions, though i don't think it actually works that way. the drone, was it actively going after sheppard? or just seeking a target? john circling the chair, touching the chair, does he have any pull toward it or instinct about it? does the tech talk to him? i have read that story, and it is awesome. it's so fucking cool the way atlantis responds to him. so cool!
john has deep, deep reservations about the whole going-to-another-galaxy thing, is wary of the set-up and not sold on the idea; but he's so resilient and adaptable, he stands back and observes and lets it all percolate. he has a few things he holds absolute (e.g. his PRIVACY) and guards them fiercely, but he's extremely flexible with everything else.
thing i love about major john sheppard #53: the way he scrunches up his face to brace for going through the wormhole.
the scientists = truly a bunch of dorks. rodney so enthused as he explains the zpm to o'neill, the two who find the puddlejumpers ("spaceships!!")
i would love to meet john's mother. john takes off his night-vision goggles when he enters Teyla's home, says "nice to meet ya", tries to light Teyla's torch for her; probably taught to stand until the ladies sit, open doors for women, say ma'am, sit up at the table, make his bed every morning, etc. we'll have to get to know each other! like, let's have an ice-breaker right now! and ford is all, hooo boy. but it WORKS. regardless of his reservations, sumner seems to appreciate that john gets results.
so john likes ferris wheels, which are about height, not speed—seeing things at a distance, county fairs, midways, etc.; they are wholesome. and *college* football, and anything that goes faster than 200 mph, heh. from what i gather, john joined the air force because 1) above all other things in the world, john wants to FLY, and 2) there is this rumor about having a high-ranking father. john's obviously committed to the people he protects and takes that very, very seriously, and he *likes* what he does, but he's still conflicted about the whole thing, i think. not only does he have the best smirk i've ever seen, he has the best "fuck you, SIR" smirk, and i'm guessing it got honed through an entire life of practice with authority figures.
the wraith are seriously goth overboard. with the gown! and the hair! and the pancake makeup! but they have mouths like lampreys when they absorb their food through their hands. what do they do with those teeth, and please tell me they're not involved in human-like courtship rituals.
you can name it later! and the way it carries over to the next episode with rodney and the transporter! and again—i thought we agreed you weren't going to name anything?—in re: "atlantica", ahaha.
ford = totally cute as a button. so cute! and so crushing on major john sheppard. but who can blame him? he grabs onto john's shoulder, and rubs it, when they're all huddled around the window after the city rises, a very strange thing for him to do; and when john taps him, says "you're with me" when they're rescuing sumner et al., ford has this tiny little grin that says "yay! he picked me! me! yippee!" and if he weren't a marine, he'd clap his hands and hop up and down.
103: hide and seek
rodney's advice to jump on the hot athosian women before they (the women) realize that they (rodney and beckett) aren't actually that cool? so geeky and perfect. especially when he talks with his hands like that. and then he hops over to the examining table and jumps up. geektastic. he's so jealous of sheppard and the way he uses the tech: we saw it in the first episode when they were walking through the city and things kept lighting up, unasked, and in the way rodney brings him to the puddlejumpers later. just, frustrated awe.
the throwing-rodney-off-the-balcony scene: such a *boyish* thing to do, not only to push him off the balcony, but to not tell anyone beforehand so they would freak out when they saw it. it's the most animated we've *ever* seen john, and the most animated we'll see him for a while. the way he smiles down at rodney on the ground? that's a real smile, a *delighted* smile, and we get a couple more when he joins rodney et al. on the ground, though none so big. and later, he *mocks* mckay (the face he makes at mckay when he tells weir "he fainted"? so first grade), which i don't think we see him do to anyone else. and you know, the scene at the end where john acknowledges his bravery just by saying "he must have passed out" and then grinning at him, it's so sweet.
john's face is incredibly mobile and expressive, but what's amazing is that he manages to not actually express anything with it. i especially have a thing for his eyebrows and the way he deploys them for effect. versus mckay, who is a total open book. someone called mckay "pure id" and that's totally it—whatever he's thinking, he tells you, including (but by no means limited to) his doubts, fears, boasts, opinions, suppositions, and conclusions; it takes physical effort or outside intervention to hold it all back. john doesn't tell us ANYTHING.
telling the kids stories, naww. i find it hilarious that he stopped the flow of the story at its climax to not only explain the concept of the hockey mask, but to explain the actual game of hockey, and that he did it unsuccessfully.
um, and i love john in his little black shirt eating popcorn. oh god. "i'm teaching teyla how football is the cornerstone of western civilization." "it's a metaphor", and how telling that john brings that metaphor to atlantis as his personal item. see again: john as extremely paranoid and expecting the worst before he even gets there. and he brings up the ferris wheels again—how much he likes ferris wheels. obviously the ferris wheel is his go-to small talk item. and the fact that it's obviously a team activity, which is why weir wasn't invited.
question: john's personal item was the hail mary tape, so where did war and peace come from? not that i've actually encountered w&p yet, unless that's the book he's reading when halling comes to tell him jinto is missing.
notice that john and the marines keep pointing their guns at the energy-sucking blob like that's actually a viable line of defense.
"size doesn't matter." "it's a myth." you guys. <333.
as a side note: john is the laziest speaker i've ever heard. not in a slurring kind of way, just in his rhythm and pacing. why have i read in fic that he's from texas? was that supposed to be based on his accent? the way he pronounces his long /a/ (as in "mckaaaay", esp. when rodney goes to sacrifice himself to the darkness in front of the gate, or john needs to reign him in from a diatribe) is pure valley girl. he's drawn-out and diphthonged before nasals, e.g. on "saaandwich" and "damaged", and he replaces /eh/ with /ih/ in front of nasals (aginst), which used to be a southern thing, but has now spread to at least the midwest. he doesn't pronounce the /t/ in "atlantis" (itlannis) like i do and i think most Americans do (and like everybody else on the show does). i know joe flanigan is from california, and i haven't heard anywhere that he's been altering his natural accent in any way for this role. has he?
104: thirty-eight minutes
ahaha, they're all canadian! well, kavanaugh and weir at least have very canadian tells (kavanaugh's /l/ in "overload", weir's "sorry", "been"). kavanaguh, by the way, is an ass, a total and complete ass in every way. he's the kind of person who makes other people violent.
the four of them are totally a team already, cool to see; we start seeing rodney as the genius-at-work. rodney was obviously flipping out not just about his own imminent death, but about john lying there with that *thing* sucking on him and oh god that was so amazingly gross. rodney was so worried about shep there at the end, waiting for carson to find a pulse, and so relieved when he was okay—wandering off in the background, rubbing his head.
"we should let you rest." "no, you should get me food." which made me startle, because they've gotten very comfortable with each other while we weren't watching—rather, *john* has gotten comfortable with them. he's always unfailingly polite to everyone else.
the whole, there's something i have to say before i die thing, i dunno. it doesn't ring true. and it wouldn't have been "i've had this crush on you for a while now, dr. weir", so i don't know what they were trying to do there. just, weird.
105: suspicion
ford: oh god major sheppard, sir, can i come with you on your joyride around the planet, can i, can i, huh? can i?
john: you're like a kid, you know that?
ford: yes, sir.
and he GRINS and bribes john with a nice turkey sandwich! ford remembered, and john is susceptible to food bribes! oh god SO CUTE. i watched that scene six times in a row.
the fact that john immediately trusts teyla, and trusts all the athosians . . . john's usually more paranoid than that. he's also usually more ruthless, but i think he feels beholden to these people and that they are adoptively his, so they go in this separate category in his head, the one-of-us category instead of the potential-deadly-enemy category, which i think includes everybody else. he would take betrayal awfully, awfully hard.
it's obviously difficult for the marines who are all rah, rah, marines! (which is, btw, all marines), to be under the command of this laid-back, smart-mouthed, insubordinate CO. almost unfair to them. if it weren't for the gene? john would never have been invited anywhere near atlantis. john is very clearly the odd man out: not a marine, definitely not part of sumner's outfit, and obviously not one of the scientists; what would have happened if sumner hadn't died the first time out? ironically, the only thing holding the atlantis military together under sheppard is the marines' unshakeable faith in the chain of command. i'm guessing he and bates continue to clash.
106: childhood's end
this episode = "miri", the star trek episode with the kids ("in the beforetime"). their logic, by the way? that they're going to keep up with the ritual suicide/homicide as long as no wraith come to their planet? that's the same reasoning as the guy who rubs his fingers to keep the elephants away. no elephants! it's working!
watch john gather to him hero-worshipers, through no actual effort of his own. see: ford, jinto (and the other athosian children, who in "hide and seek" take turns pretending to be him), and now keras.
ford is so damn cute with the kids. he has the best smile ever.
rodney with the kids is as expected, because (like john, actually) he treats them like regular people, except that the kids are even *more* annoying than people usually are.
107: poisoning the well
john is extra, SUPER detached when talking to steve, nothing but deflection and one-liners, the wraith not getting in anywhere—which follows perfectly, as the wraith is a highly dangerous pow, but then you realize that this is basically what john is like with *everyone*. john wasn't happy with getting tissue samples from steve, but later when they're going to stick the terminal patient in there with him and weir is balking, john says to weir he's spent time with steve, and doesn't pity him, says repeatedly "he's going to die anyway"; later, when steve is suffering, john says "we're gonna help you", and steve says "do not have pity for me" and john looks startled.
love, love, love the star trek ref. so true and such a perfectly apt and aware little nod. immediately sets up john as kirk and rodney as spock. but again, john strikes me as too much of a *gentleman* to get a kirk rep.
carson is so cute with his lady friend
eh, not so much a fan of weir; more a den mother than the leader of a colony.
108: underground
aha! aha! john and rodney interaction omg. john makes a snarky joke at rodney's expense and rodney laughs like he means it, like it's surprised out of him, even though he follows it up with, oh please, my side, you slay me. surprised at the banter, but boom! there it is! omg! and rodney goes back with the major! eee! the way they play off each other in the bunker. have obviously gotten to know each other better by this point, or at least worked with each other enough to be comfortable. i love that things are going on behind the scenes, that many things are happening between episodes, meaning the landscape is a little different every week, and we're forced to play a bit of catch-up to figure out what's changed. john and rodney mirror each other's body language, which has been happening for a few episodes already.
i was going to comment on how amazing it was that all the civilizations we encounter not only speak modern american english, but idiomatic modern american english (sans clitics), but the genii have clearly never heard the proverb the enemy of my enemy is my friend. so never mind.
i'm so confused by the father and daughter who look like they're practically the same age. wtf?
mckay not really, really an asshole. seems to operate in the social world just fine so far; nasty, but also recognizes when other people are right, and knows when to offer kinder words (e.g. in "rising", telling dr. weir that for what it's worth, her decision was the right one); basically, he speaks his mind and is ruthless when other people are wrong, and i think i get whatsmallbeer was saying about discomfort the other day, because rodney and i both have a problem with stupid people, but it's extremely bad form to *mention* it. he spares no feelings, has no sense of occasion, e.g. telling the chancellor they'd never capture geothermal energy that way (john: "mckaaay.") and telling the genii that if people could just learn to keep their secret underground hatches locked . . . , when he is so obviously the one at the disadvantage and in trouble. possibly that's his defense mechanism, but more likely it's him being unable to stop himself, and not particularly wanting to, or ever having needed to, especially since he's usually right. in "rising", rodney's "shut up. and concentrate" was perhaps a bit blunt? or rude? but dude, beckett needed to shut up and concentrate.
john seems to recognize some sort of down-time, not-working time—he goes around in civvies—but he goes around in civvies while *armed* in atlantis.
is john actually a talented mathematician, or is john an all-around intelligent guy who's good at math? because the things i know that john's been able to do so far are 1) calculate 6! (for the number of possible 6-symbol gate addresses using 6 given symbols, 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720) and 2) figure out a magic square, which is a fun math puzzle. (is there other canon i have yet to encounter?) mensa, which rodney made such a big deal out of, isn't a genius club, it's basically an IQ test, and if you have a gifted IQ (130 and above), you're likely to pass. i would dearly love for john to study matrices and be a human calculator, but i don't know if he does or is. mathematicians (though if john were actually a trained mathematician i think we'd know, right?) are the most precise, rigorous people in the world; they look down their noses at scientists.
john recognizes churchill, reads the russian classics in his spare time, has quite the vocabulary: in fact, he sounds like a textbook gifted child, and based on the way he plays dumb convincingly, he's probably textbook in a lot of the problems gifted kids can have growing up, the way other kids and adults treated him, what they expected of him, and he learned to be stupider than he was, so as to fit in or to get them to leave him alone.isilya talked about giftedness the other day, an apt topic since there are suddenly a bunch of really smart people in fandom these days, e.g. dr. house, charlie eppes, and rodney mckay. john's in that category too, but in his own way i bet he has and had more problems that the other three (at the very least, different problems), who are outright, undeniable geniuses at what they do, recognized early in life and always praised for it. plus the fact that rodney and house (who i maintain are kindred spirits and would either bond instantly or annihilate each other on impact) have their natural personalities and EGOS to defend themselves against the world, and charlie has his family to shelter him. john would have suffered the most from low expectations, self-fulfilling prophecies, peer pressure, and possibly the instability of his schooling if he really was an air force brat and got moved around a lot.
of course, john could be a gifted child who also happened to be extremely talented at math, which would 1) make it easy for people to see quirky math talent, and dismiss him as a savant or trickster, and 2) be an even bigger talent for john to have to hide. obviously this is something that's been done again and again in fic, and i love reading it every time, but i'm really curious to see how they actually play it out.
"home" is the next episode up. like hawkeye pierce, i am so excited i could plotz.
s. and i studied yet again on tuesday, and i'd forgotten we were supposed to meet—again—today, so i didn't set an alarm and was, of course, late. it was also a day where i couldn't do math in stupid ways, and that's irritating. but! today was the first night of bellydancing class for me and cousin m. and that was a good time. there are fourteen women in the class, from early late teens or early twenties to mid-fifties (plus one young girl who came with her mom), and it's amazing how awkward and utterly uncoordinated some people are, but we're having fun. i don't think i'll be able to lift my arms tomorrow.
[eta: my shoulders are okay so far, but i'm sore in strange places, e.g. my hips and obliques. this is going to be better than pilates.]
gjstruthseeker was in town for a spell earlier in the week and is expected to reappear for the weekend, but has still not read harry potter and the half-blood prince, making all proto-fic babble on my part completely impossible (silentfire is my voice of encouragement and sanity, thank god). instead she keeps asking spoilery questions which i keep refusing to answer. we did have a good time though, rehashing conspiracy theories (conclusion: dumbledore is an evil, evil man) and making our heads hurt trying to track the references and allusions. i mean, dumbledore has a scar above his knee, just like odysseus did (and it identified him as the rightful ruler when he finally got back to troy 20 years later), but what does that MEAN?but what's really important is that 1)
rageprufrock finished hindsight and it was just as amazing as you might have hoped, and 2) i have been watching actual episodes of stargate:atlantis and am so in love it's passed being not even funny anymore and is funny again. as expected, i have approximately 3987234 screencaps from the eight episodes i have watched so far, and will probably post a whole bunch of icons for the taking once i make them. in the meantime, basically? it is all about john. john john john zomg.
101/102: rising
john likes it in antarctica. well, of course he does. john is a super-loner.
i find ancient tech fascinating, because it's your intent that matters, your intent and your will. it's echoes of the pure at heart, the clean mind, the good intentions, though i don't think it actually works that way. the drone, was it actively going after sheppard? or just seeking a target? john circling the chair, touching the chair, does he have any pull toward it or instinct about it? does the tech talk to him? i have read that story, and it is awesome. it's so fucking cool the way atlantis responds to him. so cool!
john has deep, deep reservations about the whole going-to-another-galaxy thing, is wary of the set-up and not sold on the idea; but he's so resilient and adaptable, he stands back and observes and lets it all percolate. he has a few things he holds absolute (e.g. his PRIVACY) and guards them fiercely, but he's extremely flexible with everything else.
thing i love about major john sheppard #53: the way he scrunches up his face to brace for going through the wormhole.
the scientists = truly a bunch of dorks. rodney so enthused as he explains the zpm to o'neill, the two who find the puddlejumpers ("spaceships!!")
i would love to meet john's mother. john takes off his night-vision goggles when he enters Teyla's home, says "nice to meet ya", tries to light Teyla's torch for her; probably taught to stand until the ladies sit, open doors for women, say ma'am, sit up at the table, make his bed every morning, etc. we'll have to get to know each other! like, let's have an ice-breaker right now! and ford is all, hooo boy. but it WORKS. regardless of his reservations, sumner seems to appreciate that john gets results.
so john likes ferris wheels, which are about height, not speed—seeing things at a distance, county fairs, midways, etc.; they are wholesome. and *college* football, and anything that goes faster than 200 mph, heh. from what i gather, john joined the air force because 1) above all other things in the world, john wants to FLY, and 2) there is this rumor about having a high-ranking father. john's obviously committed to the people he protects and takes that very, very seriously, and he *likes* what he does, but he's still conflicted about the whole thing, i think. not only does he have the best smirk i've ever seen, he has the best "fuck you, SIR" smirk, and i'm guessing it got honed through an entire life of practice with authority figures.
the wraith are seriously goth overboard. with the gown! and the hair! and the pancake makeup! but they have mouths like lampreys when they absorb their food through their hands. what do they do with those teeth, and please tell me they're not involved in human-like courtship rituals.
you can name it later! and the way it carries over to the next episode with rodney and the transporter! and again—i thought we agreed you weren't going to name anything?—in re: "atlantica", ahaha.
ford = totally cute as a button. so cute! and so crushing on major john sheppard. but who can blame him? he grabs onto john's shoulder, and rubs it, when they're all huddled around the window after the city rises, a very strange thing for him to do; and when john taps him, says "you're with me" when they're rescuing sumner et al., ford has this tiny little grin that says "yay! he picked me! me! yippee!" and if he weren't a marine, he'd clap his hands and hop up and down.
103: hide and seek
rodney's advice to jump on the hot athosian women before they (the women) realize that they (rodney and beckett) aren't actually that cool? so geeky and perfect. especially when he talks with his hands like that. and then he hops over to the examining table and jumps up. geektastic. he's so jealous of sheppard and the way he uses the tech: we saw it in the first episode when they were walking through the city and things kept lighting up, unasked, and in the way rodney brings him to the puddlejumpers later. just, frustrated awe.
the throwing-rodney-off-the-balcony scene: such a *boyish* thing to do, not only to push him off the balcony, but to not tell anyone beforehand so they would freak out when they saw it. it's the most animated we've *ever* seen john, and the most animated we'll see him for a while. the way he smiles down at rodney on the ground? that's a real smile, a *delighted* smile, and we get a couple more when he joins rodney et al. on the ground, though none so big. and later, he *mocks* mckay (the face he makes at mckay when he tells weir "he fainted"? so first grade), which i don't think we see him do to anyone else. and you know, the scene at the end where john acknowledges his bravery just by saying "he must have passed out" and then grinning at him, it's so sweet.
john's face is incredibly mobile and expressive, but what's amazing is that he manages to not actually express anything with it. i especially have a thing for his eyebrows and the way he deploys them for effect. versus mckay, who is a total open book. someone called mckay "pure id" and that's totally it—whatever he's thinking, he tells you, including (but by no means limited to) his doubts, fears, boasts, opinions, suppositions, and conclusions; it takes physical effort or outside intervention to hold it all back. john doesn't tell us ANYTHING.
telling the kids stories, naww. i find it hilarious that he stopped the flow of the story at its climax to not only explain the concept of the hockey mask, but to explain the actual game of hockey, and that he did it unsuccessfully.
um, and i love john in his little black shirt eating popcorn. oh god. "i'm teaching teyla how football is the cornerstone of western civilization." "it's a metaphor", and how telling that john brings that metaphor to atlantis as his personal item. see again: john as extremely paranoid and expecting the worst before he even gets there. and he brings up the ferris wheels again—how much he likes ferris wheels. obviously the ferris wheel is his go-to small talk item. and the fact that it's obviously a team activity, which is why weir wasn't invited.
question: john's personal item was the hail mary tape, so where did war and peace come from? not that i've actually encountered w&p yet, unless that's the book he's reading when halling comes to tell him jinto is missing.
notice that john and the marines keep pointing their guns at the energy-sucking blob like that's actually a viable line of defense.
"size doesn't matter." "it's a myth." you guys. <333.
as a side note: john is the laziest speaker i've ever heard. not in a slurring kind of way, just in his rhythm and pacing. why have i read in fic that he's from texas? was that supposed to be based on his accent? the way he pronounces his long /a/ (as in "mckaaaay", esp. when rodney goes to sacrifice himself to the darkness in front of the gate, or john needs to reign him in from a diatribe) is pure valley girl. he's drawn-out and diphthonged before nasals, e.g. on "saaandwich" and "damaged", and he replaces /eh/ with /ih/ in front of nasals (aginst), which used to be a southern thing, but has now spread to at least the midwest. he doesn't pronounce the /t/ in "atlantis" (itlannis) like i do and i think most Americans do (and like everybody else on the show does). i know joe flanigan is from california, and i haven't heard anywhere that he's been altering his natural accent in any way for this role. has he?
104: thirty-eight minutes
ahaha, they're all canadian! well, kavanaugh and weir at least have very canadian tells (kavanaugh's /l/ in "overload", weir's "sorry", "been"). kavanaguh, by the way, is an ass, a total and complete ass in every way. he's the kind of person who makes other people violent.
the four of them are totally a team already, cool to see; we start seeing rodney as the genius-at-work. rodney was obviously flipping out not just about his own imminent death, but about john lying there with that *thing* sucking on him and oh god that was so amazingly gross. rodney was so worried about shep there at the end, waiting for carson to find a pulse, and so relieved when he was okay—wandering off in the background, rubbing his head.
"we should let you rest." "no, you should get me food." which made me startle, because they've gotten very comfortable with each other while we weren't watching—rather, *john* has gotten comfortable with them. he's always unfailingly polite to everyone else.
the whole, there's something i have to say before i die thing, i dunno. it doesn't ring true. and it wouldn't have been "i've had this crush on you for a while now, dr. weir", so i don't know what they were trying to do there. just, weird.
105: suspicion
ford: oh god major sheppard, sir, can i come with you on your joyride around the planet, can i, can i, huh? can i?
john: you're like a kid, you know that?
ford: yes, sir.
and he GRINS and bribes john with a nice turkey sandwich! ford remembered, and john is susceptible to food bribes! oh god SO CUTE. i watched that scene six times in a row.
the fact that john immediately trusts teyla, and trusts all the athosians . . . john's usually more paranoid than that. he's also usually more ruthless, but i think he feels beholden to these people and that they are adoptively his, so they go in this separate category in his head, the one-of-us category instead of the potential-deadly-enemy category, which i think includes everybody else. he would take betrayal awfully, awfully hard.
it's obviously difficult for the marines who are all rah, rah, marines! (which is, btw, all marines), to be under the command of this laid-back, smart-mouthed, insubordinate CO. almost unfair to them. if it weren't for the gene? john would never have been invited anywhere near atlantis. john is very clearly the odd man out: not a marine, definitely not part of sumner's outfit, and obviously not one of the scientists; what would have happened if sumner hadn't died the first time out? ironically, the only thing holding the atlantis military together under sheppard is the marines' unshakeable faith in the chain of command. i'm guessing he and bates continue to clash.
106: childhood's end
this episode = "miri", the star trek episode with the kids ("in the beforetime"). their logic, by the way? that they're going to keep up with the ritual suicide/homicide as long as no wraith come to their planet? that's the same reasoning as the guy who rubs his fingers to keep the elephants away. no elephants! it's working!
watch john gather to him hero-worshipers, through no actual effort of his own. see: ford, jinto (and the other athosian children, who in "hide and seek" take turns pretending to be him), and now keras.
ford is so damn cute with the kids. he has the best smile ever.
rodney with the kids is as expected, because (like john, actually) he treats them like regular people, except that the kids are even *more* annoying than people usually are.
107: poisoning the well
john is extra, SUPER detached when talking to steve, nothing but deflection and one-liners, the wraith not getting in anywhere—which follows perfectly, as the wraith is a highly dangerous pow, but then you realize that this is basically what john is like with *everyone*. john wasn't happy with getting tissue samples from steve, but later when they're going to stick the terminal patient in there with him and weir is balking, john says to weir he's spent time with steve, and doesn't pity him, says repeatedly "he's going to die anyway"; later, when steve is suffering, john says "we're gonna help you", and steve says "do not have pity for me" and john looks startled.
love, love, love the star trek ref. so true and such a perfectly apt and aware little nod. immediately sets up john as kirk and rodney as spock. but again, john strikes me as too much of a *gentleman* to get a kirk rep.
carson is so cute with his lady friend
eh, not so much a fan of weir; more a den mother than the leader of a colony.
108: underground
aha! aha! john and rodney interaction omg. john makes a snarky joke at rodney's expense and rodney laughs like he means it, like it's surprised out of him, even though he follows it up with, oh please, my side, you slay me. surprised at the banter, but boom! there it is! omg! and rodney goes back with the major! eee! the way they play off each other in the bunker. have obviously gotten to know each other better by this point, or at least worked with each other enough to be comfortable. i love that things are going on behind the scenes, that many things are happening between episodes, meaning the landscape is a little different every week, and we're forced to play a bit of catch-up to figure out what's changed. john and rodney mirror each other's body language, which has been happening for a few episodes already.
i was going to comment on how amazing it was that all the civilizations we encounter not only speak modern american english, but idiomatic modern american english (sans clitics), but the genii have clearly never heard the proverb the enemy of my enemy is my friend. so never mind.
i'm so confused by the father and daughter who look like they're practically the same age. wtf?
mckay not really, really an asshole. seems to operate in the social world just fine so far; nasty, but also recognizes when other people are right, and knows when to offer kinder words (e.g. in "rising", telling dr. weir that for what it's worth, her decision was the right one); basically, he speaks his mind and is ruthless when other people are wrong, and i think i get what
smallbeer was saying about discomfort the other day, because rodney and i both have a problem with stupid people, but it's extremely bad form to *mention* it. he spares no feelings, has no sense of occasion, e.g. telling the chancellor they'd never capture geothermal energy that way (john: "mckaaay.") and telling the genii that if people could just learn to keep their secret underground hatches locked . . . , when he is so obviously the one at the disadvantage and in trouble. possibly that's his defense mechanism, but more likely it's him being unable to stop himself, and not particularly wanting to, or ever having needed to, especially since he's usually right. in "rising", rodney's "shut up. and concentrate" was perhaps a bit blunt? or rude? but dude, beckett needed to shut up and concentrate.john seems to recognize some sort of down-time, not-working time—he goes around in civvies—but he goes around in civvies while *armed* in atlantis.
is john actually a talented mathematician, or is john an all-around intelligent guy who's good at math? because the things i know that john's been able to do so far are 1) calculate 6! (for the number of possible 6-symbol gate addresses using 6 given symbols, 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720) and 2) figure out a magic square, which is a fun math puzzle. (is there other canon i have yet to encounter?) mensa, which rodney made such a big deal out of, isn't a genius club, it's basically an IQ test, and if you have a gifted IQ (130 and above), you're likely to pass. i would dearly love for john to study matrices and be a human calculator, but i don't know if he does or is. mathematicians (though if john were actually a trained mathematician i think we'd know, right?) are the most precise, rigorous people in the world; they look down their noses at scientists.
john recognizes churchill, reads the russian classics in his spare time, has quite the vocabulary: in fact, he sounds like a textbook gifted child, and based on the way he plays dumb convincingly, he's probably textbook in a lot of the problems gifted kids can have growing up, the way other kids and adults treated him, what they expected of him, and he learned to be stupider than he was, so as to fit in or to get them to leave him alone.
isilya talked about giftedness the other day, an apt topic since there are suddenly a bunch of really smart people in fandom these days, e.g. dr. house, charlie eppes, and rodney mckay. john's in that category too, but in his own way i bet he has and had more problems that the other three (at the very least, different problems), who are outright, undeniable geniuses at what they do, recognized early in life and always praised for it. plus the fact that rodney and house (who i maintain are kindred spirits and would either bond instantly or annihilate each other on impact) have their natural personalities and EGOS to defend themselves against the world, and charlie has his family to shelter him. john would have suffered the most from low expectations, self-fulfilling prophecies, peer pressure, and possibly the instability of his schooling if he really was an air force brat and got moved around a lot.of course, john could be a gifted child who also happened to be extremely talented at math, which would 1) make it easy for people to see quirky math talent, and dismiss him as a savant or trickster, and 2) be an even bigger talent for john to have to hide. obviously this is something that's been done again and again in fic, and i love reading it every time, but i'm really curious to see how they actually play it out.
"home" is the next episode up. like hawkeye pierce, i am so excited i could plotz.