Random question

[bluflamingo]

Is it just me, or do John/Rodney fics tend to default to either (a) John's been repressing/ignoring the part of him that likes men and not had sex with one since he joined the air force or (b) John's been completely straight until now; while John/Cam fics tend to default to John's been having sex with men (as well as or instead of women; and who may or may not include Cam) but keeping it secret since he joined the air force?

Maybe it is just me, but I'm scanning the John/Cam fic I've got tagged, and I can't find any where either (a) or (b) are true for John (Cam's a little more complicated, sometimes) but can think of plenty of John/Rodney where (a) or (b) is off the top of my head.

And I guess my real question is less 'is this true?' and more 'why is this?' Because John's got to have a thing for scientists? Because Rodney's just that awesome that John would change the habits of a life-time for him? Because John/Cam people have an air force pilots kink (I vote that one, personally)? Because it's a lot easier to hook John and Cam up if they've been involved with other pilots (or indeed each other) before (though if it is that one, surely it's easier to hook John and Rodney up if they've been involved with other men before?) Also, now my own habits are showing, because of course everyone doesn't write John having only been involved with other military guys before, unlike me.

No, I don't know why I'm suddenly contemplating this question-too much time trapped in my parents' house? Family induced insanity? Who knows.

Comments

[torachan]

That's interesting and makes me really want to read some John/Cam (which I don't normally read since the only SG-1 I've ever watched is like the pilot and maybe another couple eps from season one). I haaaaaate that so much John/Rodney is essentially WNGWJLEO (sometimes slightly more updated for modern times).

I want to say it's that SGA as a fandom feels very old-school to me and I think is very influenced by old-school shippiness, of which "gay for you" is an essential component.

[bluflamingo]

I want to say it's that SGA as a fandom feels very old-school to me and I think is very influenced by old-school shippiness, of which "gay for you" is an essential component.

Ugh, I hate that. It's not less romantic if they've loved other men (or indeed other people of any gender) before falling for their current partner. And WNGWJLEO is creepy and vaguely homophobic - why don't people just make them both bi, it's so much easier that trying to explain away the canon female partners.

Talk about preaching to the converted there, sorry!

Though that still doesn't explain why it's only John/Rodney - I mean, it's not unusual to read John/Ronon where John's been involved with/interested in Rodney first, for example. Maybe it's just a subsection of the John/Rodney people (she says carefully, being aware that she's talking to one of the many sane and reasonable ones).

makes me really want to read some John/Cam (which I don't normally read since the only SG-1 I've ever watched is like the pilot and maybe another couple eps from season one)

If it helps any, Cam's only in the last two seasons of SG1 (I'm a bad SG1 fan, I've only seen from season 9 on). And John/Cam shippers are lovely (though sometimes a little anti-fanon-Rodney, and his attendant odd shippers)

[torachan]

LOL No need to be careful around me. I certainly don't consider myself a shipper, just someone who happens to read and write the pairing. (I actually like John/Ronon a lot more, but am easily swayed by the fact that a lot more people will read John/Rodney.)

I think the old-school shippers are congregated in the John/Rodney section, for whatever reason, so people who write smaller pairings are less likely to fall prey to those old tropes. And some may also feel like John/Rodney is such a strong influence, they have to write past John/Rodney into their stories. Or they may themselves feel like John/Rodney is so obvious they must have had something going at one time, even if they didn't stay together. I know with Harry Potter, even though I write and read Sirius and Remus with people other than each other, I do feel like wherever they are now in the story I'm writing, there was something between them in the past.

[bluflamingo]

And some may also feel like John/Rodney is such a strong influence, they have to write past John/Rodney into their stories. Or they may themselves feel like John/Rodney is so obvious they must have had something going at one time, even if they didn't stay together.

I think you're probably right. I know I've done a combination of both in some of my fics, though it's usually been part of the plot rather than a passing mention, if that makes sense - it's there because it has to be for the story to make sense, not as background colour. Though I've also used other pairings as mostly passing mentions in other fic (a Lorne/Mitchell story in which John and Lorne were involved at one point and it's not important to the story, it just exists, for example).

[torachan]

Yeah, same here. Have you read zillah975's Push Until It Holds? It's John/Ronon, with some John/Rodney in the beginning, and I really love how she wrote the John/Rodney...not relationship, because they don't really even get to the point of a relationship, but just trying to go from friends to lovers and having it really, really not work out (partially because Rodney is confused over whether his love for John is sexual or not). It's really nuanced and adds to the story. (And the fic is just awesome in general.)

[bluflamingo]

Bits of it, I think, but never the whole thing, I can't remember why, cos I liked the idea of it a lot, the trying to make the change and not succeeding - I guess I like the idea of that kind of realism in fic.

[scrollgirl]

Heh. Whereas I purposely avoid even the slightest hint of McShep in my SGA fics. In my various universes, even if I don't come right out and say it in the text, John has never looked twice at Rodney and Rodney is very, very straight and would never look once at John. Which isn't to say they wouldn't die for each other, as teammates, but there's no sexual or romantic subtext.

I'm just stubborn that way ;)

[bluflamingo]

John has never looked twice at Rodney

I can see John having a thing for him in season 5 - to me, it's pretty easy to argue - but I think I'm generally disinclined to make it reciprocal (I think the furthest I ever got was in my big bang fic, or Rodney hooking up with John as a casual thing till he found someone else).

I like that you write them as friends only - variety is a good thing (as is stubborness, sometimes)

[scrollgirl]

I read John in S5 more as someone who is worn down and lonely. His vague, never-consummated thing with Teyla has been laid to rest--she has a son and a partner, and John's not getting in the middle of that. Early in S5, he lost Elizabeth for good. Rodney and Ronon are busy making eyes at the same girl, and he's trying to stay out of it, but I can see John being wary of the entire situation--it's going to mess up the team dynamic, no matter who "wins". I think he's feeling a bit off-balance, though he might not even be consciously aware of it, afraid that his team is changing too much and pulling away from that core friendship as family and romance take priority. For me, this explains his (adorably pathetic) attempts at flirting in "Remnants" and "The Lost Tribe". It's why he checks up on Rodney in "Tracker" and why he takes Ronon surfing during "Brain Storm".

Which isn't to say you can't make an argument for John having a thing for Rodney--though I do appreciate that you don't make it reciprocal! *g*

EatG was interesting in that it highlighted how far John's come since Antarctica--friends, family, a city to protect--while the balcony scene frames how alone he is, in that friends pairing up inevitably leave single people in the cold.

For me, writing John and Rodney as just friends is more a protest against fandom OTPness; it's just a happy by-product that I'm also arguing that John can risk his life for Rodney without it being about sex/romance.

If I ever get around to finishing my cm_tropefic, there's a lot about overturning the belief that the romantic relationship takes priority over all else.

[scrollgirl]

Yeah, I think the WNGWJLEO is in part driven by the OTPness of John/Rodney. If Rodney is the only one for John, then John having had serious relationships prior to Rodney detracts from the specialness of their bond. I've seen plenty of examples where John's ex-wife Nancy is dismissed as a beard. Ditto Katie Brown.

It's the difference between John/Rodney and John/Ronon. The latter pairing is unfortunately overshadowed by the former, and John/Ronon 'shippers probably feel they have to reconcile the fic to the fandom monolith that is John/Rodney, by including a prior John/Rodney slant before they can even get to John/Ronon.

With John/Cam, the pairing may be OTP for us 'shippers, but we don't assume it's OTP in the larger Meant For Each Other sense. I've written Cam as straight prior to John and I've written him as bi. I've always written John as bi, because I think John and Nancy's marriage was real, even if it fell apart later.

[bluflamingo]

If Rodney is the only one for John, then John having had serious relationships prior to Rodney detracts from the specialness of their bond.

I don't get that logic - makes me wonder what they think of real life relationships. What's wrong with 'I love you more than the other people I loved before you' or 'you're the one I think it will actually work out with'? That's not special enough?

With John/Cam, the pairing may be OTP for us 'shippers, but we don't assume it's OTP in the larger Meant For Each Other sense

True, I suppose. Which raises the interesting (to me at least) question of what makes a pairing a meant for each other pairing - or why people write them that way, anyway.

I think John and Nancy's marriage was real, even if it fell apart later.

Same here. Write everyone as bi, it's so much easier!

[scrollgirl]

Which raises the interesting (to me at least) question of what makes a pairing a meant for each other pairing - or why people write them that way, anyway.

We believe in fairytales maybe? We like the idea of there being one person out there for us, fate and destiny, etc. I mean, there are definitely some pairings I can believe are MFEO. Especially when you're talking about genre media in which fate and destiny are real things. (It's not as much of an issue in "reality" based media.)

But the problem with TV shows is that characters are constantly evolving, and two people who were perfect together ten years ago may not necessarily be right for each other today. Kirk/Spock of TOS might have been MFEO in 1966 but that doesn't mean they're more legitimate than Spock/Uhura in 2009. That's my opinion, anyway.

I wonder if Travis has it right, that SGA fandom is much more old school than you'd expect for a show from 2004. A lot of BNFs moved over from fandoms like Due South and Smallville, and they came from there from The Sentinel and Highlander. Those are old slash strongholds, with far fewer female regular characters. (Believe it or not, except for Smallville, SGA was an *improvement* on male:female ratio!) And they carried over that cop buddy dynamic in which the two male heroes were the most important thing in each other's lives.

Hmm, this comment is a bit incoherent, sorry. But I gotta rush, so can't fix it!

[bluflamingo]

And they carried over that cop buddy dynamic in which the two male heroes were the most important thing in each other's lives.

I don't think you're incoherent at all, that makes a lot of sense, particularly with the why is John/Rodney a MFEO pairing but not John/Cam or John/Ronon, even amongst their own shippers, because they don't have that male lead, buddy cop vibe that John/Rodney have. And yeah, I know enough about all those shows to know SGA is a big improvement at least in terms of regular female characters who aren't there as love interests.

And I guess, if you're looking at your pairing as the most important thing in each other's lives, it actually makes a kind of sense for them to be straight and/or repressed till they meet, because it makes the canon serious relationships with women easily dismised.

We believe in fairytales maybe? We like the idea of there being one person out there for us, fate and destiny, etc.

No, I get why people like it - I mean, it's not my thing because I hate the idea of there being one person out there, and the implication that you can't be happy without them, and anyway I prefer daily stuff to sweeping epic - I just wonder why some pairings are MFEO and some aren't. Okay, SGA has a bunch of original authors who come from shows with that feel, but why does everyone else write the pairing that way? Because that's how the original people write it? Because they see it too - and if they do see it, why? If you don't come from a background of male leads=MFEO, what makes it so for you? Why Kirk/Spock in 1966 but Spock/Uhura in 2009? Why not still Kirk/Spock?

I suspect that now I'm the one being incoherent, apologies - I usually get incoherent once I start asking why.

[scrollgirl]

Okay, SGA has a bunch of original authors who come from shows with that feel, but why does everyone else write the pairing that way? Because that's how the original people write it? Because they see it too - and if they do see it, why?

I honestly have no idea. I started a comment about how the canon epic romance means smaller pairings only have scraps to work with, etc. But the truth is, I don't know why SGA fandom specifically is like that, considering many BNFs and most of SGA fandom would argue that it's not the epicness of SGA canon that draws them to it, but "Team" and "Snark" and the daily stuff you mentioned. SGA isn't epic the way SG-1 is--in fact, I remember the comparison that someone (cesperanza, I think?) made once about how SG-1 was the Student Council President and the yearbook staff and SGA was the A/V geek and that slacker kid on a skateboard who threw spitballs during homeroom. (Of course, this only referred to the SGA boys; Weir and Teyla were far too grown-up for this kind of characterisation.)

Which is all my way of saying, I have no idea why McShep fans think John and Rodney are MFEO when nothing about their dynamic is about the epic destiny of, say, Clark/Lex. In that sense, MFEO is just something fandom has injected into McShep because... we're lazy? The pairing is just so mammoth that inertia dictates John and Rodney must be together, no questions asked?

It's why there are plenty of Reboot Kirk/Spock 'shippers who think they are still MFEO, even though canon has clearly said, no, they're really not. (Which isn't to say Kirk and Spock couldn't still get together, if that's what a fanfic author really wanted--but it's not so easy as assuming of course they belong together, as if Kirk is the only person Spock could ever love.) The dynamics of the Reboot movie is such that Kirk/Spock is emphatically not the only pairing available, but there are still plenty of people who refuse to accept that Spock/Uhura is canon.

[torachan]

I came to SGA from LotRiPS and Harry Potter and general RPF and it just felt like stepping into a time machine, really. Which is not to say there isn't stuff that feels more modern in SGA fandom, but overall the whole vibe of the fandom felt more like what I've seen of those older "buddy cop" fandoms that you mentioned.

[dossier]

I think that it's mainly a meme-type thing. I recall back in 06 the trend was gay!John, though my tags for that time period are woefully inadequate.

[bluflamingo]

You're probably right and that is it - maybe because of John suddenly turning out to have been married before? - 2006 was before my fandom time (just!)

[lilyleia78]

I love all the interesting discussion going on here! I can't say that I've noticed the John/Rodney trend you have. I've read plenty of stuff where John and/or Rodney have been with other men, although usually not since coming to Atlantis - the community being too close knit or their positions of authority being deterrents. But possibly my recent mainlining of it has made it difficult to notice any one scenario emerging as repetitive. I do try to avoid gay-for-you as the homophobic implications bother me, though I have seen it done well. Plus JF's performance doesn't exactly scream straight to me, leaving me with the feeling that Nancy may have been an honest attempt at a 'normal' life, but that being with women wasn't/isn't the norm.

But to your question: repressed!John possibly works better with Rodney because Atlantis being so far from Earth and the Air Force gives him a reason/excuse to turn back to men even if he's been denying that part of himself for years, esp that first year when reconnecting with Earth was far from guaranteed. Whereas on Earth with Cam you need a reason for him to risk his career to hit on/be with Cam - one easy reason being that he's been doing it his whole career. Of course, the romantic in me points out that you don't really need an excuse to be with someone you love, but it's a theory anyway.

[scrollgirl]

I've read plenty of stuff where John and/or Rodney have been with other men, although usually not since coming to Atlantis

I wonder if there's a trend, like dossier mentions, like S1 McShep is slightly different from S2 McShep. Certainly S5 John is a very different animal (one I'm quite fond of) and you'd have to tailor your fic to how the characters have changed over time. Now, if only someone could do a random sampling of fic published in different years, maybe we could see if one year has a prevalence for WNGWJLEO over other years.

[bluflamingo]

Now, if only someone could do a random sampling of fic published in different years, maybe we could see if one year has a prevalence for WNGWJLEO over other years.

You get right on that, then :o)

[bluflamingo]

But possibly my recent mainlining of it has made it difficult to notice any one scenario emerging as repetitive

Could be - I more or less stopped reading the pairing anything like as much as I was a few months ago, and now that I'm only reading odd fic, it feels more noticeable. Though of course that could be because that's what I inadvertently stumble upon more!

But to your question: repressed!John possibly works better with Rodney because Atlantis being so far from Earth and the Air Force gives him a reason/excuse to turn back to men even if he's been denying that part of himself for years, esp that first year when reconnecting with Earth was far from guaranteed. Whereas on Earth with Cam you need a reason for him to risk his career to hit on/be with Cam - one easy reason being that he's been doing it his whole career

That makes sense, yeah. Plus with Cam I suppose you've got the whole long distance thing as well, and it's asking a lot of someone's suspension of disbelief that they'd believe John would give up pretending not to be interested in men, risk his career, and get involved with someone he'd hardly see, possibly especially when it's a minority pairing - people might be more inclined to buy all that with Rodney because they're more inclined to see it? Not that they have to, of course, since if they do get split up, one tends to follow the other.

[sholio]

Interesting discussion. :)

While I'd never really noticed it being more prominent in John/Rodney than in other pairings, I'd always just blamed it (here and in other fandoms) on the tendency for a lot of fannish writers to operate from the assumption that close friendship --> sex. I kinda hate that. Okay, yeah, I hate it a lot, actually, and it's the main reason why it took me years and years of being in fandom before I'd read pairings that weren't canonical couples. (There were exceptions, but they were rare.) There's a pervasive meme in fandom that friendship and emotional closeness inevitably leads to sex, which I'd always kinda assumed goes hand-in-hand with Western culture's tendency to idealize love and romance as the single greatest and most important relationship you'll ever have. Therefore, if you're close to someone, you must want to have a relationship with them. And I hate that. I'm not anti-sex or anti-romance, and I often feel weirded out by hardcore gen fandom's insistence on NO SEX OMG EVAR ... but the artificial and contrived simplicity of "emotional closeness = sex!" bothers me too.

WNGWJLEO in John/Rodney fandom I think comes down to the fact that the characters are obviously pretty close -- they hang out together a lot in canon, they're canonically willing to risk their lives for each other -- and for a lot of fans, there is no other explanation than that they've got the hots for each other (whether because they actually believe that, or just enjoy the fantasy -- I've had conversations with people expressing both viewpoints). I hadn't really thought about this being a lingering effect of old-school fandom 'til reading torachan's comment above, and I think he's probably right -- though I don't really read homophobia in the modern version of WNGWJLEO so much as just conflating of friendship and sexual desire, to the point where sexual orientation or sexual compatibility is irrelevant.

One thing I really appreciate about your stories, even though your pairing is not a pairing I seek out by itself, is that you've still got that friendship being important in John's life, but without a sexual component. And I love that so much, because friendship doesn't automatically mean sexual compatibility, and so much fanfic treats it as the same thing. I adored Zillah's "Push Until it Holds" and the handful of other fic that actually deal with sexual attraction as this marvelously complex thing, where the person you desire may not desire you back, where emotional closeness and sexual closeness don't necessarily conflate but may be mistaken for each other. That's the kind of romance I prefer to seek out in fanfic as well as non-fanfic reading, and it's frustratingly hard to find because everyone seems to want "made for each other" fairy-tale romance. I appreciate an unambiguously happy ending as much as the next gal, but I find the more complicated stuff much more rewarding and believable.

[bluflamingo]

WNGWJLEO in John/Rodney fandom I think comes down to the fact that the characters are obviously pretty close -- they hang out together a lot in canon, they're canonically willing to risk their lives for each other -- and for a lot of fans, there is no other explanation than that they've got the hots for each other (whether because they actually believe that, or just enjoy the fantasy -- I've had conversations with people expressing both viewpoints)

See, I get that that leads to it being a big pairing (it's easier to see it that it is, say, John/Cam, who spend about two minutes together in the show, though it doesn't explain why there isn't more John/Ronon, who are easily as obvious). I suppose I get that sexual orientation becomes irrelevant there as well, I just don't get why so many people like to write them as never being gay before, to the exclusion of all else (I mean, assuming we accept that it is like that, and not just my perception). One thing doesn't naturally lead to the other - there ought to be more of a mix, I think.

And I love that so much, because friendship doesn't automatically mean sexual compatibility, and so much fanfic treats it as the same thing

I think I'm just not cut out to write MFEO stuff - I like more practical relationships (like Holland and John having a casual friends with occasional benefits relationship, or non-exclusive relationships, or mostly celibate with occasional non-angsty one night stands) too much. Not even necessarily complicated, just not 'my partner to the exclusion of all else' - you know, team, family, that stuff (all the stuff fandom keeps claiming they love about SGA and then don't write, she says sarcastically).