DVD Commentary: Scorecard (SGA)
No, I never asked y'all if you wanted me to do one of these. Mostly this is for my own entertainment, and if somebody reads it and finds it halfway interesting, well, yay!
Also, this is going to be less with inserted tracks and more with me rambling about the story with maybe a few sections pulled from the text. That's just the mood I'm in. :)
You can find Scorecard on my website or on livejournal.
On The Writing
This story took me an extraordinarily long time to write, considering how short it is compared to how much work I put in on it. It was one of those strange lightning bolt conceptions; one day I was doing my usual ljing when I was hit with a strange urge for some McKay/Weir sexin'. I say strange, because I'm pretty much a McKay/Sheppard OTP kind of gal. Yes, I do mix and match on occasion, but it's not really my modus operandi. So I had this urge, and naturally it took me all of about ten seconds before I wanted to stick John into the mix.
My original impulse was to have Rodney and Elizabeth fantasize together about John. I tossed the idea out to the flist, and got a round of 'do it! do it!'.
And well. Then I had to make it a little bit darker and mixed up. What I set out to write was a scenario where Rodney, for some reason, gets Elizabeth all hot and bothered by talking about John in bed. Then later, she turns it around on him, having figured out the secret that even he hadn't acknowledged. The story was supposed to end with his big revelation.
I wanted to give Elizabeth and Rodney's relationship a little context, so this strange behavior didn't seem out of character. I started writing in Antarctica, trying to establish a pattern of half-hurtful, half-enjoyable teasing between them.
Elizabeth is studying Dr. Jackson's notes on the declension patterns of Ancient when Rodney steps up behind her. His breath is hot against the back of her neck, his broad body like a furnace in the freezing room. She doesn't move, doesn't raise her head, but she can't focus on the words any longer as she waits for him to make his move.
"So, Major Sheppard, hmm?" he says quietly, his words pointed as he breathes them into her ear. "Something along the lines of can't do without him, wasn't it?"
She doesn't rise to his bait. "You were there. You saw how he manipulated the technology. Surely you can see how valuable that is, Rodney."
He humphs, the little puff of hair stirring the hair over her ear, tickling. Elizabeth spins around on the stool, her knees forcing him to step back. He's still in her space, however, a bare inch between them.
"Are you jealous?" she asks with a goading smile.
"Please, Elizabeth." He tucks his arms behind his back and settles into a wide stance, his chin tilted in that lecturing pose she's already come to recognize. "How many times do I have to say it? Whether someone has the gene or not is a biological crap shoot. It doesn't make them more than human."
She quirks an eyebrow. "Much like intelligence."
And I went on for about 1500 more words like that before I decided that the story was too slow and blah to really do what I wanted it to do. I was spending way too much time in Elizabeth's head, explaining how their relationship worked and why she was letting it happen the way it was. So I pretty much scrapped that draft, and started over.
My next attempt tried to incorporate what I already had in mind through flashbacks. I figured that way I could jump right into the action, but still have the background necessary to explain to the reader why the characters were acting the way they were.
About this time, I showed chopchica what I was doing, and she started pressing me to continue on, to show what would happen if Elizabeth got her wish and slept with John. I resisted at first, because I'm not into John/Elizabeth at all. And besides--I had a very specific place I wanted to end the story. But she kept at me, and what do you know. It turned out she was right, that the John/Elizabeth scene was the natural place for the story to go next.
But she didn't let me rest there. Since both of us are McKay/Sheppard nuts, she wanted to see the scene where John and Rodney got together. Naturally, that's where the story wound up in my head, but I didn't want to put it on the page. Mostly because I didn't want to step out of Elizabeth's POV.
But the idea wouldn't let me go, and so finally I realized that I didn't need to have a sex scene to get the point across. I just needed a simple little tell so that Elizabeth would realize what was going on.
So, 4800 words later, I had my story done. Four sections, three sex scenes, and a lot of angst.
Except I didn't like it. The flashbacks were awkward, the sections were unbalanced, and I really didn't have a point for the story.
Which meant taking the story apart and trying to piece it back together into something that had flow and meaning. Finally, I figured out that while I personally was interested in the McKay/Sheppard relationship, the story is really all about Elizabeth. Elizabeth being human, and making human mistakes, and learning to guard herself.
The final step was finding the structure to frame the story with. I struggled with that a lot, and kageygirl helped me a lot with ironing out the opening and the end.
On The Story
Elizabeth wants to run her fingers through his hair and tell him everything will be all right, but that isn't the way it works between them.
This was something I felt all through the story. It's not that Elizabeth doesn't feel deeply, or doesn't want intimacy. It's just that she's unable or unwilling to make those connections for some reason.
"Rodney," she murmurs, empathy washing away her urgency. "It wasn't your fault, you know."
Again, Elizabeth cares a lot, and she can reach out when her people need her. But it's not an intimate connection. It's what she thinks she needs to do.
She tugs at her wrist, but instead of letting go, Rodney pushes her back and moves on top of her, slipping his warm, wide thigh between her legs. She presses into it before she can stop herself. "Not this again," she says, but the irritation in her voice is blurred by husky want.
Rodney laughs, and she's not sure if it's hysteria or cruelty lurking at the edges of the sound. "Yes, this again. Why won't you admit it, Elizabeth? You want him. You're hot for him right now."
And that's where we jump into the deep end with this version of the story. By rewriting the story the way I did, we miss out on a couple things that concern me from a reader's POV. First, there's no build up to Rodney's actions here. We get a hint of the relationship with the next line: It's a broken record by now, a pricking tease that he's been at since Antarctica--but the question is, is it enough? I found that I just couldn't fit anything else in to the story, so I had to take it on faith that the reader would be able to make that jump with me. (Look out for sharks below!)
The other point that went missing was Elizabeth's relationship with Simon. There was a brief bit in earlier versions that talked about how she still missed him, but since she feels like she'll never see him again, she's made these choices. In this version, I just sort of hoped everyone forgot about him. :)
Elizabeth drags on her clothes in haphazard jerks, not bothering to find her bra.
I'm thinking Rodney's still got her bra squirreled away somewhere. *eg*
Remarkably, it doesn't affect their professional relationship, or their friendship. Oh, he gives her wary looks and concerned eyes for a few days after, and she doesn't return to his bed, but Elizabeth knows that Rodney didn't mean to hurt her.
I think Elizabeth, on the show, has a kind of resigned irritation with Rodney. She doesn't necessarily get him the way John does, but she knows him, and forgives him his less than stellar traits for the most part. I think she'd be hurt in this situation, but she'd understand why it happened, and that Rodney was just being Rodney.
Elizabeth presses her face into the back of Rodney's neck, running a hand up under his shirt, playing with the fuzzy hair of his belly. She can do this.
Elizabeth sets out to do something that might be construed as malicious, and she knows that it's kind of malicious, but it isn't, not really. It's about doing something that feels like redressing power, and she's not completely comfortable with the idea even when she's rationalizing it. So she has to work herself up to it.
She takes him as deep as she can go on the first swallow.
"Jesus!"
She hasn't done this to him before--there never seemed to be any time for something so hedonistic--and the intimacy of it is nearly overwhelming.
And again, we're back to the intimacy issue.
"Do you want John to fuck you, Rodney?" she asks as she presses in, and Rodney comes, long arcs splashing all over his stomach and chest.
That was supposed to be the big reveal, the whole point of the story. I still like it, though it loses a lot of the oomph once I changed the story to revolve around Elizabeth.
"I'm sorry. I--" She wants to tell him that she cares, that this was stupid, that he needs to face reality, that she'd enjoyed the sex, but she knows that sometimes it's best not to say anything at all. Instead, she hurries back to her quarters, feeling absolutely disgusted by herself.
Elizabeth realizes that no matter what her realizations, that the whole thing was a bad decision. Oops.
All of her people are safe, she understands that, but she also understood Rodney's explanation well enough to recognize that they really did die in that other timeline.
That always kind of creeped me out about Letters from Pegasus. Meep.
Rodney's words were like a spur under her skin, driving her to notice John, to watch him. One day, it was the odd curve of his ears as he stared off into space during a briefing.
This was another thing I built up in the other version. This whole game that Rodney played with her, teasing her about John, getting her to think about what a sexy, desirable man John is, when she'd been trying to shut down the part of her that acknowledged that fact from the start.
She could fall in love with John Sheppard, if she let herself, but she couldn't bear a relationship with him. They're too much alike in all the wrong ways, and too different in the ones that matter. Strangely enough, she thinks that if John weren't here, in Atlantis, that she and Rodney could have made a go of it, despite the fact that they would never be in love.
And I suppose that says what I feel about those two pairings. I do see chemistry between them, but I think each couple would have very specific issues.
Elizabeth pauses at the door, an unexpected blush rising as she realizes it's both John and Rodney. She's faced them together, since, with little awkwardness, but not like this. Not at night, when no one else is around, when her innocent intentions might be misunderstood.
'Cause dude, that's got to be weird. And also tempting. Wow, it would have to be tempting, even as fucked up as both relationships were.
Elizabeth squares her shoulders--and tiptoes through the door with a grin waiting to emerge. She's not above using whatever advantage is at hand, after all. Rodney is sitting at his workspace, pointing at the laptop screen. John's leaning over him to study it, one hand braced on the counter. She's about to clear her throat, anticipating the jumps they'll both make, when the rest of the scene penetrates.
John's other hand rests on the back of Rodney's neck, thumb moving in slow, caressing circles.
Elizabeth backs away, holding her breath until she's a good five feet outside the door.
The one thing I don't like about the above is that it's very similar to the scene in Five Men Teyla Emmagan Was Never Attracted To where Teyla discovers the McKay/Sheppard relationship. I didn't realize that until after I wrote it, and by then I needed that exact moment too much to change it. Ah, well. I do love the contrast in intimacy here; the thumb touch is exactly the sort of thing Elizabeth wanted, but never really let herself have.
I was also sad that I couldn't link the final scene to a specific episode, like I had the previous three. Hot Zone, Sanctuary, and Before I Sleep fell into a nice little arc of messed-up relationships that I could draw from. Unfortunately, Brotherhood leaps into a whole other arc, and I didn't want to place anything after it. So I lost the symmetry on the last section.
On The Pairings
I kind of went to a place no OTPer will go with this story. I realize that for a fan of McKay/Weir or Weir/Sheppard, this story is absolutely not the kind of story they want to read. But it doesn't give McKay/Sheppard fans a lot, either, especially if they can't handle anyone getting between the two for a short while.
So really, I guess you have to be here to read about Elizabeth.
I was wary of writing this, because I absolutely did not want to make it about paring bashing. I've often stated that I'm not a fan of Weir/Sheppard, but that doesn't mean I'm out to get those who like them together. I wanted to be very respectful of the two characters, and make sure that I got into their heads and understood what they would see in each other. What I wrote worked for me, and I think that's all I can hope to accomplish.
Another thing that worried me was whether people would think that Elizabeth was too far out of character to sleep around. But again, I tried to give her rational (or humanly irrational) reasons to do so. The response was much better than I expected. Thank you guys for that.
I also found out that I still find McKay/Weir really hot, but only in a down and dirty kind of way. I'd rather they keep their emotions on a friendship level.
Anyway. If you've got any questions on something I didn't address, feel free to ask. If you've read this far, thank you so very much!
Also, this is going to be less with inserted tracks and more with me rambling about the story with maybe a few sections pulled from the text. That's just the mood I'm in. :)
You can find Scorecard on my website or on livejournal.
On The Writing
This story took me an extraordinarily long time to write, considering how short it is compared to how much work I put in on it. It was one of those strange lightning bolt conceptions; one day I was doing my usual ljing when I was hit with a strange urge for some McKay/Weir sexin'. I say strange, because I'm pretty much a McKay/Sheppard OTP kind of gal. Yes, I do mix and match on occasion, but it's not really my modus operandi. So I had this urge, and naturally it took me all of about ten seconds before I wanted to stick John into the mix.
My original impulse was to have Rodney and Elizabeth fantasize together about John. I tossed the idea out to the flist, and got a round of 'do it! do it!'.
And well. Then I had to make it a little bit darker and mixed up. What I set out to write was a scenario where Rodney, for some reason, gets Elizabeth all hot and bothered by talking about John in bed. Then later, she turns it around on him, having figured out the secret that even he hadn't acknowledged. The story was supposed to end with his big revelation.
I wanted to give Elizabeth and Rodney's relationship a little context, so this strange behavior didn't seem out of character. I started writing in Antarctica, trying to establish a pattern of half-hurtful, half-enjoyable teasing between them.
Elizabeth is studying Dr. Jackson's notes on the declension patterns of Ancient when Rodney steps up behind her. His breath is hot against the back of her neck, his broad body like a furnace in the freezing room. She doesn't move, doesn't raise her head, but she can't focus on the words any longer as she waits for him to make his move.
"So, Major Sheppard, hmm?" he says quietly, his words pointed as he breathes them into her ear. "Something along the lines of can't do without him, wasn't it?"
She doesn't rise to his bait. "You were there. You saw how he manipulated the technology. Surely you can see how valuable that is, Rodney."
He humphs, the little puff of hair stirring the hair over her ear, tickling. Elizabeth spins around on the stool, her knees forcing him to step back. He's still in her space, however, a bare inch between them.
"Are you jealous?" she asks with a goading smile.
"Please, Elizabeth." He tucks his arms behind his back and settles into a wide stance, his chin tilted in that lecturing pose she's already come to recognize. "How many times do I have to say it? Whether someone has the gene or not is a biological crap shoot. It doesn't make them more than human."
She quirks an eyebrow. "Much like intelligence."
And I went on for about 1500 more words like that before I decided that the story was too slow and blah to really do what I wanted it to do. I was spending way too much time in Elizabeth's head, explaining how their relationship worked and why she was letting it happen the way it was. So I pretty much scrapped that draft, and started over.
My next attempt tried to incorporate what I already had in mind through flashbacks. I figured that way I could jump right into the action, but still have the background necessary to explain to the reader why the characters were acting the way they were.
About this time, I showed chopchica what I was doing, and she started pressing me to continue on, to show what would happen if Elizabeth got her wish and slept with John. I resisted at first, because I'm not into John/Elizabeth at all. And besides--I had a very specific place I wanted to end the story. But she kept at me, and what do you know. It turned out she was right, that the John/Elizabeth scene was the natural place for the story to go next.
But she didn't let me rest there. Since both of us are McKay/Sheppard nuts, she wanted to see the scene where John and Rodney got together. Naturally, that's where the story wound up in my head, but I didn't want to put it on the page. Mostly because I didn't want to step out of Elizabeth's POV.
But the idea wouldn't let me go, and so finally I realized that I didn't need to have a sex scene to get the point across. I just needed a simple little tell so that Elizabeth would realize what was going on.
So, 4800 words later, I had my story done. Four sections, three sex scenes, and a lot of angst.
Except I didn't like it. The flashbacks were awkward, the sections were unbalanced, and I really didn't have a point for the story.
Which meant taking the story apart and trying to piece it back together into something that had flow and meaning. Finally, I figured out that while I personally was interested in the McKay/Sheppard relationship, the story is really all about Elizabeth. Elizabeth being human, and making human mistakes, and learning to guard herself.
The final step was finding the structure to frame the story with. I struggled with that a lot, and kageygirl helped me a lot with ironing out the opening and the end.
On The Story
Elizabeth wants to run her fingers through his hair and tell him everything will be all right, but that isn't the way it works between them.
This was something I felt all through the story. It's not that Elizabeth doesn't feel deeply, or doesn't want intimacy. It's just that she's unable or unwilling to make those connections for some reason.
"Rodney," she murmurs, empathy washing away her urgency. "It wasn't your fault, you know."
Again, Elizabeth cares a lot, and she can reach out when her people need her. But it's not an intimate connection. It's what she thinks she needs to do.
She tugs at her wrist, but instead of letting go, Rodney pushes her back and moves on top of her, slipping his warm, wide thigh between her legs. She presses into it before she can stop herself. "Not this again," she says, but the irritation in her voice is blurred by husky want.
Rodney laughs, and she's not sure if it's hysteria or cruelty lurking at the edges of the sound. "Yes, this again. Why won't you admit it, Elizabeth? You want him. You're hot for him right now."
And that's where we jump into the deep end with this version of the story. By rewriting the story the way I did, we miss out on a couple things that concern me from a reader's POV. First, there's no build up to Rodney's actions here. We get a hint of the relationship with the next line: It's a broken record by now, a pricking tease that he's been at since Antarctica--but the question is, is it enough? I found that I just couldn't fit anything else in to the story, so I had to take it on faith that the reader would be able to make that jump with me. (Look out for sharks below!)
The other point that went missing was Elizabeth's relationship with Simon. There was a brief bit in earlier versions that talked about how she still missed him, but since she feels like she'll never see him again, she's made these choices. In this version, I just sort of hoped everyone forgot about him. :)
Elizabeth drags on her clothes in haphazard jerks, not bothering to find her bra.
I'm thinking Rodney's still got her bra squirreled away somewhere. *eg*
Remarkably, it doesn't affect their professional relationship, or their friendship. Oh, he gives her wary looks and concerned eyes for a few days after, and she doesn't return to his bed, but Elizabeth knows that Rodney didn't mean to hurt her.
I think Elizabeth, on the show, has a kind of resigned irritation with Rodney. She doesn't necessarily get him the way John does, but she knows him, and forgives him his less than stellar traits for the most part. I think she'd be hurt in this situation, but she'd understand why it happened, and that Rodney was just being Rodney.
Elizabeth presses her face into the back of Rodney's neck, running a hand up under his shirt, playing with the fuzzy hair of his belly. She can do this.
Elizabeth sets out to do something that might be construed as malicious, and she knows that it's kind of malicious, but it isn't, not really. It's about doing something that feels like redressing power, and she's not completely comfortable with the idea even when she's rationalizing it. So she has to work herself up to it.
She takes him as deep as she can go on the first swallow.
"Jesus!"
She hasn't done this to him before--there never seemed to be any time for something so hedonistic--and the intimacy of it is nearly overwhelming.
And again, we're back to the intimacy issue.
"Do you want John to fuck you, Rodney?" she asks as she presses in, and Rodney comes, long arcs splashing all over his stomach and chest.
That was supposed to be the big reveal, the whole point of the story. I still like it, though it loses a lot of the oomph once I changed the story to revolve around Elizabeth.
"I'm sorry. I--" She wants to tell him that she cares, that this was stupid, that he needs to face reality, that she'd enjoyed the sex, but she knows that sometimes it's best not to say anything at all. Instead, she hurries back to her quarters, feeling absolutely disgusted by herself.
Elizabeth realizes that no matter what her realizations, that the whole thing was a bad decision. Oops.
All of her people are safe, she understands that, but she also understood Rodney's explanation well enough to recognize that they really did die in that other timeline.
That always kind of creeped me out about Letters from Pegasus. Meep.
Rodney's words were like a spur under her skin, driving her to notice John, to watch him. One day, it was the odd curve of his ears as he stared off into space during a briefing.
This was another thing I built up in the other version. This whole game that Rodney played with her, teasing her about John, getting her to think about what a sexy, desirable man John is, when she'd been trying to shut down the part of her that acknowledged that fact from the start.
She could fall in love with John Sheppard, if she let herself, but she couldn't bear a relationship with him. They're too much alike in all the wrong ways, and too different in the ones that matter. Strangely enough, she thinks that if John weren't here, in Atlantis, that she and Rodney could have made a go of it, despite the fact that they would never be in love.
And I suppose that says what I feel about those two pairings. I do see chemistry between them, but I think each couple would have very specific issues.
Elizabeth pauses at the door, an unexpected blush rising as she realizes it's both John and Rodney. She's faced them together, since, with little awkwardness, but not like this. Not at night, when no one else is around, when her innocent intentions might be misunderstood.
'Cause dude, that's got to be weird. And also tempting. Wow, it would have to be tempting, even as fucked up as both relationships were.
Elizabeth squares her shoulders--and tiptoes through the door with a grin waiting to emerge. She's not above using whatever advantage is at hand, after all. Rodney is sitting at his workspace, pointing at the laptop screen. John's leaning over him to study it, one hand braced on the counter. She's about to clear her throat, anticipating the jumps they'll both make, when the rest of the scene penetrates.
John's other hand rests on the back of Rodney's neck, thumb moving in slow, caressing circles.
Elizabeth backs away, holding her breath until she's a good five feet outside the door.
The one thing I don't like about the above is that it's very similar to the scene in Five Men Teyla Emmagan Was Never Attracted To where Teyla discovers the McKay/Sheppard relationship. I didn't realize that until after I wrote it, and by then I needed that exact moment too much to change it. Ah, well. I do love the contrast in intimacy here; the thumb touch is exactly the sort of thing Elizabeth wanted, but never really let herself have.
I was also sad that I couldn't link the final scene to a specific episode, like I had the previous three. Hot Zone, Sanctuary, and Before I Sleep fell into a nice little arc of messed-up relationships that I could draw from. Unfortunately, Brotherhood leaps into a whole other arc, and I didn't want to place anything after it. So I lost the symmetry on the last section.
On The Pairings
I kind of went to a place no OTPer will go with this story. I realize that for a fan of McKay/Weir or Weir/Sheppard, this story is absolutely not the kind of story they want to read. But it doesn't give McKay/Sheppard fans a lot, either, especially if they can't handle anyone getting between the two for a short while.
So really, I guess you have to be here to read about Elizabeth.
I was wary of writing this, because I absolutely did not want to make it about paring bashing. I've often stated that I'm not a fan of Weir/Sheppard, but that doesn't mean I'm out to get those who like them together. I wanted to be very respectful of the two characters, and make sure that I got into their heads and understood what they would see in each other. What I wrote worked for me, and I think that's all I can hope to accomplish.
Another thing that worried me was whether people would think that Elizabeth was too far out of character to sleep around. But again, I tried to give her rational (or humanly irrational) reasons to do so. The response was much better than I expected. Thank you guys for that.
I also found out that I still find McKay/Weir really hot, but only in a down and dirty kind of way. I'd rather they keep their emotions on a friendship level.
Anyway. If you've got any questions on something I didn't address, feel free to ask. If you've read this far, thank you so very much!