John Sheppard: Blue Collar or Bastard?

[cupidsbow]

While mainlining SGA (season one) over the weekend, I compared notes with a couple of friends on how we read John Sheppard. It was freaky and fascinating, because it turned out we had two wildly divergent versions of John--I'm talking quantum-mirror type differences here--and up until that point we had all thought we'd been talking about the same

Comments

[mecurtin]

The thing about Sheppard is that there are a million of them.

Neither of these versions rings completely true to me, for instance.

In the first place, I assume the subculture he comes out of is military officer, which is neither blue-collar nor silver spoon. I think most of the points you make for "laconic bloke" are true for Sheppard, except that I'd say:

1. His father was a military officer, and he was under great pressure to follow in his footsteps. He has relatively little experience with civilian life.

2. He's much smarter than he shows (except to Rodney), because being too intellectual was considered effete or dangerous in his native subculture.

3. He has a Master's Degree in something like aeronautical engineering, but it was from one of the military schools, not a civilian university.
. . .
7. He's uncomfortable in formal situations because he expects everyone to expect him to fuck up.

[cathexys]

Yes, your Sheppard's much closer yto mine than either of the above ones.

I mean, I could buy the silver spoon, but all the selfishness doesn't work with that. I'd much more go the out of context, emotionally withdrawn, cannot connect route (which oddly resembles the working class version as well)

[ellieptical]

Yeah, that's more my sheppard.

[el_gilliath]

Agreed. But I've always been particular to the idea of him having a degree in Math. Be in minor or not

[psycho_tabby]

Definatly the laconic one, though probably smarter than you said, very very smart but doesn't want to be the tall poppy sort of thing so hides it.

[cathexys]

well, i think the psychopath/sociopath derives in equal parts from The Storm/The Eye and his general charm used to hold people at arm's length (the sense that we know very little about him even by the end of the third season) and fannish desire for that particular characterization (if they're not canonical like Keller or, maybe Krycek, we create them :)

i agree on your comments on selfishness...i didn't read the above like that, though...

[shadowspinner]

Yeah, I found that pretty bizarre too. He's a SOLDIER. Soldiers KILL PEOPLE. If he wasn't very good at it he'd be a bit crap, wouldn't he?

(I totally spent that whole two-parter bouncing up and going "JOHN IS SO AWESOME" in a squeaky voice, occasionally pausing to go off and grab someone and tell them how JOHN IS SO AWESOME. :-D)

[wickedwords]

I see John as closer to your laconic bloke version, and the high-class version reminds me a lot of the standard stuff that gets hung on heroes in a generic sense. The selfish-ness in particular goes with that, so among the people who feel that way that you talk to, I'd see if they were serious fans of the protagonist of any action/adventure show.

[numena]

That's probably my favorite thing about Sheppard --- that there are so many versions of him.

I'd say the first version is closest to mine, though there are a few differences. For instance I'd say he has military somewhere in his background and though I haven't really thought about it before, class-wise I'd put his family at upper-middle class. He tends to remind me of all the people I went to high school with actually. Especially with all his ribbing and poking fun at people he considers friends. (I'd also say that he's something of a perfectionist and quite a bit smarter than he'd like to let on.)

All that said though, if it suddenly turns out that Sheppard actually is some sort of sociopath there's a little part of me that won't be surprised. There's this weird dissonance in the character that just confuses and fascinates me.