Can this be the episode where we finally get together and agree that John Sheppard=Jim Kirk is only true if YOU DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT EITHER CHARACTER? Please? Because the fanon is killing me, here, I mean it.
Dear God yes. If this were the sum total of your commentary I would love you forever just for that. I usually try to be "characterization is subjective and therefore you can't really say one is more right than another", but with Sheppard I do have to wonder where people are coming up with some of the fanon.
I also really like your take on Ronon. He's clearly not some dumb just point and shoot guy, and I like the idea that his culture has some kind of warrior zen thing going on.
I do slightly agree with the Sheppard=loner thing. Not entirely, it's just that I don't know that it's his default character--as in, I think maybe I believe that it's something he's become, but I don't actually think it's always who he was. Sheppard obviously has a thing for flying, and I do believe that he joined the military in part because it would let him fly, but I don't really believe that was always the reason. I think over time his "higher" reasons for lack of a better word would probably have been betrayed. I think "team" too has always been important to him. He has that laid-back super-cool vaguely defiant rakish thing to him. I can see his teammates and the younger recruits really looking up to him, kind of making him sort of leader by default. I think whatever happened in Afghanistan was clearly meant to be some kind of Rubicon, where whatever left of his ideals were at least temporarily gutted and his teammates were killed. So for me, the Antarctica thing wasn't so much because he doesn't need people but he was tired of people needing him. He wasn't asked to kill people all the time and no one was looking at him to be the hero. For me that's the appeal of Antarctica for Shep.
And then he goes to Atlantis, where all of a sudden he does have to be the big damn hero again--because that is what I think people need from him, even to a certain extent his team members. He has to be in control and sort of vaguely unknowable because people are more comfortable believing in "Major Sheppard, Military Hero" than someone they know better. So I do think that he, much like Elizabeth, is forced into a certain remove from position alone. Not that I feel like John's much of a sharer by nature and obviously I don't have much canon evidence for most of this, but I do feel like being part of a team is important to him and his most natural setting--and I think that's why we see him at his most comfortable when out with his team and at his most stressed when leadership forces him to go out on a limb.
no subject
Dear God yes. If this were the sum total of your commentary I would love you forever just for that. I usually try to be "characterization is subjective and therefore you can't really say one is more right than another", but with Sheppard I do have to wonder where people are coming up with some of the fanon.
I also really like your take on Ronon. He's clearly not some dumb just point and shoot guy, and I like the idea that his culture has some kind of warrior zen thing going on.
I do slightly agree with the Sheppard=loner thing. Not entirely, it's just that I don't know that it's his default character--as in, I think maybe I believe that it's something he's become, but I don't actually think it's always who he was. Sheppard obviously has a thing for flying, and I do believe that he joined the military in part because it would let him fly, but I don't really believe that was always the reason. I think over time his "higher" reasons for lack of a better word would probably have been betrayed. I think "team" too has always been important to him. He has that laid-back super-cool vaguely defiant rakish thing to him. I can see his teammates and the younger recruits really looking up to him, kind of making him sort of leader by default. I think whatever happened in Afghanistan was clearly meant to be some kind of Rubicon, where whatever left of his ideals were at least temporarily gutted and his teammates were killed. So for me, the Antarctica thing wasn't so much because he doesn't need people but he was tired of people needing him. He wasn't asked to kill people all the time and no one was looking at him to be the hero. For me that's the appeal of Antarctica for Shep.
And then he goes to Atlantis, where all of a sudden he does have to be the big damn hero again--because that is what I think people need from him, even to a certain extent his team members. He has to be in control and sort of vaguely unknowable because people are more comfortable believing in "Major Sheppard, Military Hero" than someone they know better. So I do think that he, much like Elizabeth, is forced into a certain remove from position alone. Not that I feel like John's much of a sharer by nature and obviously I don't have much canon evidence for most of this, but I do feel like being part of a team is important to him and his most natural setting--and I think that's why we see him at his most comfortable when out with his team and at his most stressed when leadership forces him to go out on a limb.