Interview (posting attempt #27)
1. What was your first fandom?
Classic Star Trek was my gateway fandom. I wrote my first fic in the early 80's and thought that I was the only person on the planet who did such things. OH INTERWEBZ, if only you had existed back then, I would have known that I was not alone!
2. How did you get into writing fanfic/creating fanart?
I just started writing. I was making up stories in my head and then I started putting them on paper. I figure I was the only person who did such things, but then I moved from a small prairie town into a big city and found someone else who not only liked Star Trek, but she wrote fanfic too! That was first time I found out that this thing I did had a name.
3. Is SGA your main squeeze, or are you poly-fandom-ous?
I traced back the linage of my (sometimes fickle) love affair with imaginary characters on LJ last year.I'm going to totally cheat here by stealing from that as it answers this question very well, I think.
I love madly, truly, deeply and I'm usually monogamous in my passion; I am often stunned at the people who can actively watch, discuss, wank argue, and write in multiple fandoms. I am a strictly one fandom at a time girl.
Not that I don't like other things at the same time, I just don't LIKE THEM like them. You know. I only flirt with them, but I'm really just a tease - I'm taken.
If I had to recount my TV boyfriends:
- the Original, the one, the only, Captain Kirk (Circa 1967)
Oh, I was true to James 'Tomcat' Kirk for a very, VERY long time indeed. Even through the new iterations like TNG, DS9 and VOY, my True Love remained. But eventually, our relationship grew stale and a new boy caught my eye.
- Jarod, The Pretender
Ahh, Jarod, so innocent, so curious, so full of angst, so amazing - a childlike genius with a burning desire to make everything right and enough daddy issues to choke a small nation. He made me feel like writing for the first time in years! Oh the passion! Oh the doomed romance! But, once again, my fickle heart was distracted by another...
- Spike; Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Blond!Bad!Boy! The accent, the cheekbones, the 'I am sex personified' walk - Spike sucked me in (ha! I said sucked!) and made me his own. I was a fervent Redemptionista, an unapologetic Spuffy fan and once again, fanfic bubbled forth. I thought that I was his forever! Who knew it would take a genius to steal my heart away...
- Rodney McKay, Stargate Atlantis
Rodney, oh Rodney, I think that I love you - and your wild, crazy love affair with a certain tousled Air Force Colonel. I never thought that I would get caught up in a sordid, three way affair with TWO characters, and SLASH them no less! (I blame sp23 - it's ALL HER FAULT!) But here I am, still embroiled in this mad, passionate ménage à trois with McKay and Sheppard two years after the #$%^&($@ PTBs killed my damn show (not that I'm BITTER or anything) and it's as lively and fun as it was on day one.
One good thing about NOT having cable/satellite is that there are no new potentials out there to work their magic on my heart and try to seduce me away from the boys. I've heard about all these sexy shows with their sexy characters, but I think I'll stay in Atlantis for just a little bit longer.
There are still other people actively writing in this Universe, so I'm not alone - our ZPMs haven't reached maximum entropy just yet I suppose - and I like it here. A lot.
So. That's my story.
4. What makes John and Rodney such an inspiring couple for you?
That's a tough question. I'm not sure inspiring is the right word - to me, that implies there is something about them I want to emulate or aspire to. They're totally nuts, so - not so much.
More than anything, I love the variety of interpretations that fandom has of the two of them. Almost invariably, what shines through is their commitment to one another, their willingness to suffer not just the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but the painful agonies of *talking* about *feelings* and crap like that.
They are snarktastic. They are adorkable. They are meant for each other.
5. Who's your favourite, John or Rodney (or both)? How come?
Oh God, yes! It's All About Rodney! And also, John. I do love the two of them, and my adoration for John has grown quite a bit over time, but if I had to be trapped on a desert island with one of them, it would be Rodney.
Even though I might want to kill him shortly thereafter.
6. Where can people find more of your work (McShep or otherwise)?
On my LJ
http://shaddyr.livejournal.com/
Archive of our Own
http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaddyr/
7. Pick a piece/story of yours that stands out for you. Give us links and tell us why!
I love get-down-and-dirty fics, but I also really adore the friendship between John and Rodney. The 12 year old silliness, the pranks, the one-upmanship - and of course, it's the snark that reels me in every time. I love writing these kinds of interactions between them. It's really hard for me to pick, so here are a few short gen fics that illustrate some of these things between them.
Inertia - 1,101 words
http://archiveofourown.org/works/79126
Coffee - 468
http://archiveofourown.org/works/84370
Grist for the Mill - 2,699 words
http://archiveofourown.org/works/84387
Like Father, Like... - 1,762 words
http://archiveofourown.org/works/79124
8. Finish this sentence: John and Rodney walk into a bar...
...and John stops in awe. "whoa," he says quietly. "An open table in front of the 65" projection TV, live football on the tube, half price pitchers of draft and .25 cent wings - are we sure we're not on the mist planet?"
Rodney reacts with considerably less enthusiasm. "Sports, crap beer and re-flux inducing hot-wings. This is not the mist planet, it's hell!"
John just laughs and quickly makes his way over to the aforementioned table. Rodney follows behind him and leans in close to whisper in his ear. "I know this is your idea of paradise, but if you want to get laid any time in the near future, we're out of here in two hours, and not one second more. And that's only if they have food on the menu that won't make my stomach lining implode on itself.
The next 2 hours are a battle of wills as John extols the wonders of football - "A stupid, mindless waste!" Rodney exclaims - hot wings - "I like not having ulcers, thank you!" - and great beer. "What, this American horse piss?".
Rodney praises the wonders of room service and pay per view movies and adds in a threat of ice cold water and long term blue balls. They walk out 1 hour and 57 minutes later, both a little fuller, a little drunker, and a little more annoyed. But as usual for them, annoyance turns to snark which leads to flirting which results in making all possible haste back to their hotel room where John ends up sliding the key-card into the door by touch alone. He's rather busy kissing the hell out of Rodney and can't actually spare the any effort to look at what he's doing. Eventually, the card slides home, the door swings open and they stumble through the room shedding clothing and shoes until they tumble into the bed.
John pulls back for a moment, Rodney's mouth chasing after his, but he's got Rodney pinned to the bed and he can't move. He squints down at him.
"You sure we're not on the mist planet?"
"No chance, because if we were, I'd be fucking you by now," he growls. John just laughs and settles in to kiss him senseless and prove that reality is way better than the mist planet any day.
9. What question do you wish we'd asked?
Oh hell. I don't know. I asked outsideth3box if she had a question for me. She asked:
To AU or not to AU, and why?
I like AU fics a lot, especially in this fandom. It's endlessly fascinating to watch John and Rodney (and the rest of them,) have to deal with situations unlike those they have had to deal with on the show. It's fun to watch how they react, and I love watching how they still remain true to who they are even in radically different circumstances - as dads, sports casters, models, fashion designers, police officers, plumbers, surfers, businessmen - the permutations are endless, but the boys remain the boys.
If anyone else has questions they wanna ask, I'm open!
ETA:
melagan asked: Which episode or scene made you sit up and take notice of the McShep slash for the first time?
It's hard to say. I don't think it was an episode that made me think, "huh, lookit the slashtastic goodness!" For me, it was more that I looked for the M/F pairing (I always do) and I didn't find one that clicked for me. Weir and Sheppard seemed like the logical choice, but the chemistry wasn't there for me. Teyla & Shep seemed like the next best, but it still didn't grab me. I was sold on the buddy vibe between McKay and Sheppard, and it was really the fanfic that made me think about it, and *then* I started seeing it.
Personally, though, I think the show just *screams* WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKIN' SUBTEXT when McKay and Sheppard are fighting over using nanites to save Elizabeth and Rodney calls Sheppard John for the first time. They are so obviously (to me) lovers in that scene that I wonder how the world doesn't know.