John Sheppard, Stargate Atlantis Character Mini-Essay

[sporangia]

The following is a mini-essay is a response to Ann Tara’s comments about John Sheppard’s background. I managed to lose it on my computer for about a month.    This is the beginning of a continuing series of observations I will be posting. I will label all my essays and post them under cuts, so if you are not interested in reading ponderous

Comments

[ann_tara]

I don't think Sheppard's difficulty with his father was because of John's sexuality. There are lots of complicated reasons for why I believe that, but I won't go into them here. Except that if Sheppard was even minimally smart about his personal life, his father would have never known his son was gay.

I agree, it's just not only wrong, but lazy and dumb. This has become the knee-jerk caricature that some fans automatically turn the lead into, like it's "Step One" out of some rote by-the-book bad fan-writing manual - especially those fans of the "other guy", not the lead, the science/academic guy. There are a myriad of reasons why they do that, none of them having anything to do with any genuine insight into the character, IMO. I find it to be a form of fannish homophobia in the slash community, because they always make queer the guy they don't like best - it's never the "other guy", the scientist or academic, even if and when that character at times displays more tendencies in that direction. That only makes those fans hit the lead

[esteefee]

I find it to be a form of fannish homophobia in the slash community, because they always make queer the guy they don't like bestI've seen this over and over in fandom after fandom, regardless of canon. Fans will explain away the lead's marriages and on-screen affairs with women as er, hysterical (no pun intended) overcompensation or what have you for deep-set self-loathing of their obvious gayness, instead of simply writing the character as bisexual or bi-curious

My Comments on Your Story Choices (part 1)

[sporangia]

My comments on you story--Choices

I am posting here because this is more analysis than comment.

Choices is a fascinating story, thank you for writing it. Because of its ambiguous structural set-up the actions of all the characters are open to a wide range of interpretations which makes this story subtly different (I think) for each reader. In fact each time I read it my feelings toward it changed

Re: My Comments on Your Story Choices (part 1)

[esteefee]

I think John would be willing to be a parent, or at least wouldn't be against the idea. His thought at that point (about the planes) was more of a self-protective one, since the opportunity was pretty much lost to him just then. When I was writing the story, I tried very hard to make him as unreliable a narrator as I could just after the procedure. He's pretty much all over the place