#ep. the eye

[dr-futbol-blog]

Grace Under Pressure, Pt. 1

The episode in which McKay spends most of his time having a discussion seemingly with his own hallucination gives us a lot of insight into his mind. Grace Under Pressure (S02E14), the title a reference among other things to Ernest Hemingway's definition of what courage is, once again separates Sheppard and McKay, and it is really rather obvious that they spend the entire episode trying to get back to each other. The episode is also thematically so similar to 38 Minutes (S01E04), where the action likewise mostly takes place within a malfunctioning jumper, that it may serve as another confirmation that the episode would have worked best after the mid-season finale (between The Eye and The Defiant One). This is clearly the best time in the season to have this kind of claustrophobic character study that deals with the fall-out of events of more action-heavy episodes that the characters have not had time to deal with.

As the episode opens, we find McKay on a jumper doing some kind of tinkering, alone together with an older pilot that we have never seen before. Given his age, it is possible this man has the authentic gene and had been chosen for the expedition because of that rather than for being the best of the best when it comes to piloting. And given that we never saw him on the original staff, he must be a newcomer and hence someone that Sheppard had personally chosen for his command. While we do not know how he wound up chauffeuring McKay now, it might also be that he had been personally chosen for this particular mission by Sheppard given that he seems to be trying really hard to make nice with McKay, to engage him in conversation.

Griffin: So, let me ask you something. As a scientist, does it bother you that most of your work, no matter how brilliant, will eventually be considered misguided? 'Cause that would bother me. McKay: I'm sorry?

If we recall, we ended the previous episode with Zelenka telling McKay to not even speak to him, this being a common occurrence in the life of Rodney McKay. This pilot seems to be enough of a chatterbox that McKay is actually attempting to use his abrasive personality to get him to shut up for a moment because he can't think with the man's mouth going off. We do not know what the man's personality is like on the usual but based on what we see him do the brief time that we get to know him, it is rather obvious he had to have been ordered by Sheppard to do two things: to engage in friendly conversation with McKay and to safeguard him with his life. And this is not the first time we see a pilot behave this way toward McKay when for one reason or another he is not being piloted by Sheppard. In The Siege (S01E19), on a mission that Sheppard had wanted to join McKay but had been unable, the pilot Miller acted both friendly and protective toward McKay -- and in both of these cases, it is doubtful McKay himself was what inspired these feelings in the people under Sheppard's command.

We cannot be sure how long McKay and his chauffeur have been alone together but apparently they are returning from the mainland so it must have been at least some hours, and definitely long enough for what McKay sees as the man's inane chattering to have started chafing on him. Later on, similarly alone together in the closed space of jumper, Zelenka asks Sheppard to stay quiet and not bother him while he is working because he cannot concentrate, which seems to upset Sheppard somewhat. There is clearly a mismatch here because McKay has learned how to work while Sheppard is talking his ear off and Sheppard likes talking to McKay while he is working away, but Zelenka is not McKay and Griffin is not Sheppard.

Also, while Griffin is probably just being curious and making small talk, he is, likely inadvertently, undermining McKay's entire profession and professional career, and although he is not wrong, it is also not something that McKay cares to be thinking about. Worrying about his legacy is not going to help him save the city, knowing that one day everything he has accomplished is ashes and dust is doing nothing to give him incentive to keep pushing. Riding that Nobel wave has brought him nothing but pain. And again McKay displays that Canadian politeness, telling the man he is sorry when he is not sorry at all and actually means that he wants him to stop talking.

Griffin: Well, given enough time, everything's pretty much proven wrong, right? McKay: No. Griffin: Everything from the Earth being flat, to the sun revolving around us. McKay: Well, if you wanna go back hundreds of years! Griffin: Scientists get it wrong more times than they get it right. Take the tomato.

Griffin is waxing philosophical and McKay's Engineer's mind is not really interested in pursuing this line of thinking. However, try as he might he cannot stop himself from engaging just because he thinks the man is being so offensively stupid when he is not really even wrong. Having spent over a year in the city of the Ancients and more time than that studying the technology of the Ancients, McKay knows better than anyone else how little they actually know about the universe and how limited their understanding of the science of the Ancients is. They have revolutionized science many times over and most of his colleagues back on Earth are basically working in the equivalent of a flat Earth heliocentric model because they have to keep their discoveries a secret from the general population. And McKay himself is proving old paradigms wrong all the time. But he feels defensive here, thinking that the man is accusing him of being wrong when McKay's entire identity is constructed on him being able to use his knowledge and expertise to earn approval from people.

The mention of the tomato is interesting here, especially in the context of this particular episode, and we may note that the word is given room to breathe here, there is a clear pause after Griffin mentions it that is meant to give the audience time to chew on the thought. To give the audience the chance of wondering why they are talking about tomatoes in the first place. In gay slang, tomato refers to a gay man that comes across straight either unintentionally or by design -- straight-passing. Tomato is often erroneously considered a vegetable because it looks and tastes like one where it is actually a fruit. Relevant to what happens later is that McKay has been projecting straight guy who is offensively and lewdly interested in women in the military context so long that it has become a second nature to him. McKay, contracting for the military, has been forced to or has chosen to project the image of a straight man and hence he is what is called a tomato in gay slang. This whole conversation is so out of place that if it was not meant to remind us of the fact that McKay does this, I do not know what the point is.

McKay: Excuse me? Griffin: Well, after the conquest of Mexico in 1519, tomatoes were carried eastward to Europe, where they were believed to be poisonous. McKay: Shouldn't you be concentrating on what you're doing? Griffin: I've got it covered. You worry about you.

Griffin waxing poetic about the tomato is enough of a non sequitur that he seems to jam McKay's brain entirely for a moment. Of all the things that he thought he would be having a conversation about today, the conquest of Mexico was not among them. What Griffin is telling him may be correct but it is not altogether fair. Tomato is a part of the nightshade family and in Europe, nightshades such as henbane, deadly nightshade or Belladonna and mandrake were mainly used in witchcraft and in poisoning people, and hence them having been cautious with the new plants is reasonable. Also, tomatoes are toxic. They contain three different kinds of toxins: tomatine, solanine and antropine, and eating unripened tomatoes or the green leaves and stems of the plant can be deadly. It is not that they erroneously believed tomatoes to be poisonous but that they are delicious enough to eat regardless. The reward is worth the risk. Griffin seems very confident in his opinion where the scientists studying the tomatoes had a more nuanced understanding of the concept.

Now, Griffin is actually there only to fly McKay around as he checks to see whether the jumper has been fixed to the extent that it can be taken back into rotation but instead of telling him to shut up and focus on the flying, McKay is still being polite about it, trying to get the man to understand that he needs to stop talking on his own. He asks him "Shouldn't you be concentrating" when he means "Please concentrate." And this may be relevant for later because the pilots are connected to the jumpers via a neural interface and everything that they think (even subconsciously, as we saw during Condemned S02E05 -- and this may well be the same jumper that had been shot down then) has tangible, physical effects in the real world. McKay has been spoiled by flying with Sheppard because before now, he had not even had to be worried about something going wrong because of the pilot's mind wondering. This man seems to have the kind of cavalier attitude toward safety and security that McKay cannot stand in people working for him, and although Griffin does not seem to be among the people working directly under him, he is definitely planning on having a talk with Sheppard about this later on.

McKay: I am worried about me! This is the first flight this thing has had since it was shot down and repaired. It deserves all of your attention. Griffin: It made it to the mainland. If anything was gonna go wrong, it would have gone wrong by now. It took the Italians and the Spaniards to realise that tomatoes are, in fact, delicious. McKay: Good for them.

So, there are a few jumpers that have been shot down but given that they said that the jumper shot down with Markham and Smith in The Brotherhood (S01E16) was "lost," the jumper that Sheppard flew into the hive in The Siege (S01E20) got done blown up, and the jumper that Ford had stolen was not shot down (and whether they were ever able to retrieve it or not, we do now know), there are not that many options for which jumper this is. The likeliest candidate for which jumper this is is the one shot down on the prisoner colony in Condemned (S02E05) that they may have been able to retrieve after the planet was culled. The intensity with which McKay says "shot down" suggests that he had very much been on the jumper when it had been shot down and he was not looking for a repeat experience in the form of a crash landing here.

But let us note the fact that even though McKay says that he is worried about himself, and he certainly is, he is also worried for Griffin and for anyone else that might use the jumper later. He, too, is a worrier which is what Sheppard had told Ronon in the episode in which this jumper had been shot down. Relevant to what happens in this episode is this: Sheppard's final command when the jumper had been shot down had been for it to protect McKay by any means necessary which we can see in the fact that he was the only one of them that survived the crash with nary a scratch on him. And because he had thought that they were going down, Sheppard had thought that really hard. Ergo what we have here is a malfunctioning jumper with a single focus on keeping McKay safe from harm.

Griffin: Columbus was Spanish. He figured out the Earth was round. McKay: He was Italian. Griffin: So I wonder what it is that makes Spaniards so good at debunking bad science.

While Griffin seems like an honestly inquisitive guy who is interested in how the world works, McKay is able to debunk him using high school history and while as an Engineer he might have some passing interest in how they had navigated their ships to the New World, he has little interest in sciences so soft that he does not even consider them science, like history. There is a parallel hiding in here to the Lanteans essentially being colonizers that have taken over the City of the Ancestors and, although we do know of what kind of pathogens the earthlings brought with them, unleashing the wraith on the unsuspecting populations of this galaxy is sure comparable to the genocide(s) committed by the Europeans. Griffin confidently recites common misconceptions, the least of which is not Spain's reputation of being at the cutting edge of science, least of all the kind of science that McKay cares about (but some of the most famous historical gay scientist of the Early Modern Period were Italian, as it were). And because the man is so confidently wrong and beholden to his beliefs, it is difficult for McKay to get a word in edgewise, and there may be a metaphor here.

Griffin: You're not Spanish, are you? McKay: Oh, yes, of the Barcelona McKays! Now, if you don't mind... What is it? Turbulence? Griffin: The inertial dampeners on this thing should smooth that out.

That Griffin means well is displayed here and while McKay seems frustrated to no end, by asking him if he is not Spanish the man seems to be saying that he believes that McKay is great at debunking bad science. He believes McKay to be a great scientist. To him being Spanish was high praise and he wanted to extend this to McKay. Also, by engaging McKay he shows us that he is not merely having a monologue but is actually having a conversation with McKay, how ever much he might be wishing for the pilot to shut up. This is somewhat ironic, given how he himself had been talking about his hirsute aunt and Margaret Thatcher to everyone's chagrin when the jumper had originally gone down.

Also, McKay seems to take offense at being thought of as Spanish because of his obviously Gaelic name, displaying again the ambiguous feelings he seems to have toward his own ancestry and probably also that at least his father had taken pride in it and had wanted to pass this pride unto his son. And the fact that McKay clearly took offense at what Griffin was saying is not necessarily unrelated to the jumper suddenly malfunctioning. It is not in reaction to Griffin because he seems to be calm and in control so it must be McKay's own sudden outburst, the fact that he seemed to be in distress and his stress levels were probably spiking that made the jumper try to resolve the issue in the only way it could think of, which was by taking it down.

Griffin: What the hell? McKay: Right drive pod's intermittently switching to reverse thrust. Griffin: Cut it. I can drive with just the left pod. McKay: It's not recognising any of my commands. Griffin: Brace for impact. McKay: What? Griffin: We're going down! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

And so they lose control of the jumper and go down. There are a few important points here. For one, it had been the jumper's left drive pod that had originally been damaged so Sheppard must have been trying to bring them down using the right drive pod, short bursts of reverse thrusts slowing their impact. He did not do it consciously because he too had lost control of the jumper before it went down, but it is rather clear that his final command had been to keep McKay safe -- and the jumper had managed to do that using the right drive pod. Here, the jumper is attempting to recreate those conditions because by doing it, it had managed to protect McKay previously. Also important is that both here and later on, the jumper refuses to acknowledge McKay's commands when they go against this prime directive of keeping him safe. While it is the jumper malfunctioning that gets him into this mess, the jumper itself is also working extra hard to keep him safe and alive.

Continued in Pt. 2

[cracklewink]

My Mane 6 Redesigns all together! I was going to post them separately but ended up finishing them all before I got around to it lol

[shrews-art]

Ever here that's left in me is yours just as it was

[aquilaofarkham]

actually this is peak female character design

[shedk1d]

Been cooking up so much TMA fan art

I’m almost finished my first listen, only 6 more episodes I’m so scared </3

[l13]

The loud thumping wakes you up, and you blink tiredly as the sound persists. You look at your ceiling for a second before you realize someone is knocking at your door. You groan, bringing your duvet over your ear as you snuggle in again.

“Leave me alone,” you mumble against your pillow as the knocking becomes more forceful.

Suddenly there’s silence, and when you finally think that whoever is bothering you has left, the knocking starts again.

You groan, cursing under your breath as you stand up, grabbing your gun from your vanity. You walk to your front door, opening it angrily.

“What-” your outburst dies down at your lips when you lock eyes with the last person you’d expected to see standing outside your apartment, but one you’d longed for, for years.

Your first instinct is to panic, there’s no way you were conscious. The person standing at your door was supposed to be dead.

So you raise your gun up, hand trembling, “This isn’t real.” you choke out, and Vander raises his hands slowly, opening his mouth to speak but you cut him off, “You’re not real, you’re not here.” There are tears dripping down your cheeks, the gun threatening to fall from your hand with how much you were shaking “Y-you’re dead, this can’t-” you clutch at your chest, heaving, and Vander’s hands grab at your shoulders when your knees buckle,

“My love,” The gun slips from your shaky grip and falls to the floor the moment the words leave his mouth. His voice, god fuck, his voice. You’ve dreamed of it, you’re certain you’ve heard it, back when the grief first clawed at your heart, when the illusions spilled into reality to try to mend what was broken.

But this sounded too real, and you gasped when his hand cupped your cheek, thumb wiping the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “Darling, my darling girl. It’s me,” the sweet but rough sound of his voice sent shivers down your back, and you wanted to drown in it, you wanted to hear it again and again and again until you couldn’t anymore. You blinked rapidly, tears blurring your vision as your eyes danced across his features, the five bright white dots across his forehead would have confused you, if you weren’t on the verge of a panic attack.

You didn’t realize you’d raised your hand to cover his, until you felt the warmth of his hand under your skin. “S-stop, this isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real,” you squeezed your eyes shut, whispering frantically in order to wake up from this sickly realistic dream, to end this before you woke up and missed his touch again. And yet you craved more, desperately running your hands down his sides, back up to his chest, his shoulders, his back.

God, he felt real, and he was so warm, not like the previous dreams you’ve had when he was always cold, just a silhouette of the man you loved. He even smelled like your Vander. A sob broke through you, and you threw your hands around his neck, crying against his chest. Even if this wasn’t real, you’d still take advantage of this opportunity to feel close to him one last time.

You tried not to cry harder when his arms immediately circled around your torso, hugging you tight to him as you both slipped down to the floor, “Shh sh, love it’s me. Please, look at me,”

“If I do then I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.” you muttered against his chest, nuzzling closer to him, “Let me have this, just for a moment.”

“You have me, forever.” His rough gravelly voice vibrated against your chest as he spoke, his breath hitting your ear as he nuzzled against your hair, his hands running up and down your back, spreading warmth everywhere.

Too real, too real, too real.

“I miss you so much. I-I can’t-” you take a shuddering breath in, “I can’t live without you. I need you back, please. Please, I’ll do anything.”

“My love, my heart. You beautiful, stunning creature. Look at me, I beg you.”

You could feel him leaning away just so he could cup your jaw, lifting your head up softly, so so softly.

Please.

“Look at me.” he mutters, the softness of his request filled with desperation. You slowly open your eyes, blinking away your tears, gaze immediately locking with his.

Your lips part as you take him in. The color of his eyes was much greyer than you remembered. You raised your hand to follow each feature, each wrinkle of his. After a moment, You brought your other hand up, as well, cupping both his cheeks in your hands, feeling his stubble prickle at your palms. “Vander… This- this can’t be real.” you move to pull away but he cups both your hands, keeping you in place, leaning his forehead against yours, “It can, it is. I’m here honey. I’m here.”

You can’t help but stare at his lips, watching them move as he speaks, your mind trying to make sense of what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling.

Please.

You can’t let yourself get too hopeful because this isn’t possible, and he seems to get it too, so he starts explaining.

He tells you everything. How he was on the verge of death, how a man, Singed, found him, turned him into something vile, but the mutation kept him alive, even if he wasn’t entirely himself. He tells you about how all he felt was pain, but you and the kids were the only thing in his mind the whole time, trying to block away everything else. Tells you about Powder, Vi, and Isha, how they found him, brought him somewhere, a colony of some sort. A man, the Herald, helped him, and “..honest to God he kind of scares me, but it-it didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now because I’m here. I’m here with you.”

Please.

You don’t realize you’ve lost track of time until you’re looking at yourself. You blink quickly, eyebrows furrowing, but then you realize you’re looking at yourself in the mirror. Vander is still holding you tightly, and the side of your face is pressed against his chest, listening to his heartbeat as he whispers sweet nothings against the crown of your head. You stay there, listening to his voice and his heart for what feels like forever.

He grabs your shoulders, pulling you away from him just enough for him to look at you in the eyes, “Are you okay?” he asks, but his voice is muffled, sounding too far away. You blink slowly up at him and he frowns sadly.

“I missed you so much. Even in death I missed you, but I wasn’t selfish enough to wish I could see you again because that would mean you’d-” he cuts himself off, the strands of his hair moving as he shakes his head, eyes clenched shut as if to rid himself of that painful thought. “I-I’m here. I’m real. Darling, I’m alive, and I need you to know this.”

His eyes are pained as he stares down at you, once again cupping your jaw, thumb caressing your cheekbone “Say something.”

“I love you.”

His face immediately crumbles, eyebrows squeezing together as his tears start falling, and he tucks his head against the place between your neck and shoulder, crying as he squeezes you impossible tighter, “I love you.” he chokes out, and you feel him pepper soft kisses over your skin, the brokenness of his voice bringing fresh tears to your eyes as well.

You don’t know how long you stay tangled together like this, just holding each other, but Vander leans back suddenly, looking at you with so much adoration that it makes you want to scream. “Hi,” he mumbles, petting your hair softly, his other hand drawing circles on your back.

You start pressing soft kisses all over his face, not being able to contain your affection, and he closes his eyes, laughing giddily, the deep sound traveling over your skin, spreading warmth everywhere. God, you’ve missed this, missed him. “Hi.” you mutter, pressing one last kiss at the corner of his mouth.

His puffy eyes glance down at your lips, “Can I-”

“Please.”

He kisses you.

2024 © l13 | Do not steal, copy, edit, translate or re-post any of my works.

[incipientdreamer]

Hey Alice, how do you know what Sam and Celia were asked in their interviews? Hey Alice, how do you know Lena changed her style of job interviews? Hey Alice, how do you just *know* how to file cases when ypu don't even listen to them? Hey Alice, how do you already know Sam has a crush on Celia? HEY ALICE, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING FOR THE OIAR??

[time-woods]

well look who's back

this thing

[ohmaerieme]

thats strange.... this dr pepper is starting to taste like maternal instincts towards devin "dev" dimmadome

[kayascodelorio]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022-) S02E03―No Pain

[potato-lord-but-not]

WHHGGGGGAGGHHHJHH they love each other so much it makes me ILL

[dr-futbol-blog]

Epiphany, Pt. 17

And so we join Sheppard in the warm afterglow of really good sex -- is what we might say if the purpose of this whole scene was not to demonstrate the opposite. Usually, when two people are falling in love and enter a sexual relationship, they cannot get enough of each other physically, emotionally, mentally.* This desire for closeness, for going at it "like bunnies," the inability to keep hands off of each other is all chemically induced and reinforced. It is meant to glue the newly forming couple together, to facilitate pair-bonding and make two individuals become a unit, a couple. We see this take place across cultures, even across species. When couples first start copulating, sometimes they can stay in bed for days, unable and unwilling to disentangle from each other even to have sustenance.

All of that is obviously not what has taken place between Sheppard and Teer. When we find them partaking in what is possibly communal breakfast the next day, Sheppard is not "all over" Teer. He is not seeking physical contact with her but by his placement at the table, whether he had sat down before or after her, seems to be putting distance between them instead. This is emphasized by the yellow rosettes seen at the start of the scene, being handed to Teer, yellow roses symbolizing friendship. Essentially, Teer is being friendzoned by Sheppard.

Sheppard: Haven't any of you seen thunderstorms? Avrid: The Sanctuary provides rain for the orchards. Sheppard: I'm talking about thunder and lightning. Giant bolts of electricity shooting down from the sky. Hedda: Sounds scary!

While he says "any of you," Sheppard seems to be having a conversation with Avrid, who is seated directly across from him. Hedda is seated by his side, also excitedly listening in on the discussion where a man dressed in red that we saw real close with the bearded gentleman earlier is seated by his other site (and the bearded man sits across from him, the two of them engaged in conversation). There does not seem to be any girl-boy-girl-boy logic to the seating arrangements, and if I had to venture a guess, Avrid had seated himself first, Sheppard had then parked himself across from him and Hedda had rushed in to secure a place by his side leaving only a place diagonally across from Sheppard for Teer. I have also mentioned the script in Western popular culture of the man bringing breakfast in bed for the woman following good sex (which is meant to advertise the man's potency as a provider), which is not what we see here. And we might think nothing of it had it not been for Sheppard's express wish that it were Avrid that brought him breakfast instead of Teer earlier. And so Sheppard having a conversation with the brother of the woman he seems to be ignoring could be construed as rude, especially if the sex was recent.

What Sheppard is saying is likewise interesting. We saw McKay having already entered the sanctuary in the previous scene and it seems as though this discussion coincides with McKay trying to figure out the day-night cycle and the artificial climate of the time dilation field. He even prefaces his comment with "You know, I was just thinking," as though to emphasize the fact that McKay and Sheppard are, once more, thinking about the exact same thing at the same goddamn time. And this kind of seems like a weird, out of the blue topic for Sheppard to be talking about with people who have never seen a storm in their lives given that what we learn here is that there has not been anything resembling a storm the whole time he has been here -- or ever. Where did he even get the thought? Which one of them originated the thought -- McKay or Sheppard?

Now, this seems like the kind of thing that McKay might well be thinking about, he would be interested in. But let us also recall that they had been literally struck by lightning ("Struck, was I, not yet by lightning...") when they had fallen in love, which is something that Sheppard may have been thinking about and remembering the previous night.

If Sheppard can think of giant bolts of electricity shooting down from the sky again in his life without thinking about this moment, it would be a real miracle. And if Sheppard has been thinking about this, as something must have made him recollect this moment (and we saw him starting to go through the goodies in his bag before Teer had told him to sit, indicating that he had wanted to spend some time going through the objects and remembering the people back home, the people who he cares about and who care about him), it seems as though his mind had grasped onto one of his core memories of McKay, one of the most important moments in his life; this man doing actual magic to save not only his life but the entire city that had become his home.

This is why McKay's shirt had been much, much more important to Sheppard than Teer's whole naked self; and we have got to raise the question here of whether he kept the shirt on or he took it off, whether she had allowed him to keep it on or had him take it off. Because whether he was wearing that shirt or not, McKay was indubitably there with them, in the bed or on the floor or where ever it had taken place. Try as she might, Teer would have been wholly unable to exorcise the ghost of Rodney McKay.

Sheppard: Well, it is scary, but it's also very cool. It's OK to be scared, it's part of life. You know, when I was a kid, we used to have storms that shook the house. Scared me half to death. Teer: When we are ascended, we will experience such things.

Now, sharing personal details about oneself is a sign of attraction and Sheppard has never precisely been Mr Overshare, he has always been stingy about telling anyone too much about himself. And here he is not only revealing something about his childhood, he is actually admitting that he was afraid of something, which is even more rare because he will seldom admit such things even to himself. The thing is -- he is so obviously not talking to her here. He is talking to Avrid, and even answering Hedda's question was just a sidetrack in his conversation with the man across from him. And Avrid too seems to be engaged in the conversation, smiling and leaning toward him. Sheppard seems to be avoiding looking at Teer, merely glancing at her briefly only to quickly look away. What ever had happened between them, he can barely look her in the eyes and it is not because he is being a bashful recently deflowered virgin here. He is uncomfortable and it is rather obvious that she is the source of his discomfort. And do note that he is still -- yes, still -- wearing McKay's goddamn t-shirt.

Assuming that what Sheppard is telling Hedda here is the truth and not just him trying to encourage her, what he says is also interesting. If these thunder storm that had shook the house had scared him half to death, it implies that he had been alone, that there had been no one there to comfort him during these times, to tell him that it was nothing to be scared of. Alone in a big house during a thunder storm would be frightening to a child, and may in part have contributed to those obvious abandonment issues of his. Given that it seems as though his brother had a different mother and their age difference not being that vast, Sheppard's mother seems to have passed away when he was fairly young and experiences like being left alone in a house during a thunder storm would contribute to a fundamental feeling of insecurity. Sheppard and McKay seem to have had very different childhoods, horrifying in different ways, but they seem to have come out of them with strikingly compatible sets of trauma.

Sheppard: Hell, if you're ascended, you can make thunderstorms! I'm talking about actually experiencing life. Avrid: We contemplate on the experience that is life each day. Sheppard: I'm talking about living it.

This is the coup de grâce. Sheppard's comment to Teer is not just dismissive but has such a bitter edge to it. We see her smile vanish, her eyes taking on that injured look again. What Sheppard is referring to here is Chaya - Athar - her ability to lash out at the wraith in a burst of lightning using the power of her mind. And what he is telling both them and us is that he does not care about that. He is not impressed. He would choose living a human life any day of the week. And this is such a dick thing to say to a woman you just had sex with; if we go by the mainstream interpretation of them just being two ships meeting in the night, he is being a huge asshole toward a woman whose only crime is that she is in love with him. Like Sheppard is being some dudebro, a love them and leave them kind of guy, who just wanted to bang her and now that he has had her, he wants to move on to his next conquest and wishes she would stop being so clingy (basically what took place in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Harsh Light of Day": she hooks up with a guy who was just looking for casual sex who then turns into an asshole when she gets clingy; it is cliché behaviour for college age guys looking for some notches to put on their belts, not grown-ass men).

Only, that is not even a little bit what had happened or why he is behaving like this. Him making the reference to Chaya here, the woman who basically had him under mind-control, tells us that he feels coerced by her, he feels like she took advantage of him in his vulnerable state. He feels used, and probably does not even admit to himself that he might have been violated. What ever he is feeling, it is obvious that it isn't good. He did not have a transformative, wonderful experience of making love with a beautiful, wonderful woman. This is not a man who has had that experience recently. No matter how you twist it, that is not what you get out of his behaviour here.

But at the same time, this tells us that his time with Chaya had taught him something. Meeting Chaya had made him do some soul-searching and he had arrived at the hard-earned life-lesson that he is now attempting to impart to these people. Life is better lived than contemplated. Life can be painful, frightening, disgusting, petty, horrifying, lonely, uncertain, frustrating and a thousand other thing, but he would still choose all of that over what these people have spent their entire lives attempting to achieve because that is what true emptiness seems like to him. Nirvana is the cessation of wanting but in loving and in making love he has received so much that he would not exchange the experiences he has had for anything. And these experiences, they were not had with this woman.

Sheppard: Haven't any of you got things you wanna do as flesh and blood human beings first? I mean, you-you talk about moving on to a plane of existence beyond your own mortality, but you haven't even really lived! Teer: Our lives are full.

Sheppard feels sorry for these people, he feels bad for them for never having experienced the kinds of things he has been able to experience, and the least of the things he has experienced in his life have not happened in the past years that changed not only his life but his entire view of the cosmos entirely. He has gained so much since McKay had told him to think about "where we are in the solar system" on the Antarctic base, and most of it he has been able to experience with the man that he loves truly and deeply and in ways that he would not exchange for a chance at ascension if he had the opportunity presented to him on a silver platter (as it soon will), if he got to make the choice a thousand times over.

Sheppard got to share in the essence of an ascended Ancient, he knows what that feels like. It feels like nothing at all because the person that he got to experience it with was the loneliest being he has ever met. He does not want that, that is what hell sounds like to him. Also, telling someone you have just had sex with "you haven't even really lived" is not exactly a stellar Yelp review for their skills in the bedroom. Teer is, understandably, getting defensive.

Sheppard: Well, I've spent a long time with you folks, and I don't think "full" means what you think it means. Avrid: To ascend, one must meditate. Sheppard: You're not meditating, you're hiding. Avrid: From what? Sheppard: You know the answer to that.

Sheppard is getting kind of personal here, using tough love to try to get through to these people. He is passing judgement on their way of life. The way he looks at Teer as he says "full" here makes it sound like the sex with her had not just been forgettable, it had been offensively bad. It is as though he is saying that he does not just regret it because she is the wrong person but because due to lack of experience, she just had no idea what she was even doing. He is being so harsh toward her here that you almost start feeling sorry for her. This is not what the aftermath of having sex with the love of your life should be like. She had been waiting for him her entire life, she had fantasized about him since she was a little girl and we can only guess that this part had not featured in her fantasies. It is difficult to imagine a man that had enjoyed the sex less than Sheppard is here right now, and it is ironic that this is one of the episodes that make some people interpret him as some kind of a space mack who gets all the girls. He does not seem to want "all the girls" any more than McKay does.

Also, with regards to that possible subtext of Sheppard having once been in love with the brother of the woman who would become his ex-wife, what he tells Avrid here, how bitter he sounds, there is definitely some personal history being rehashed here. All through his stay in this place, Sheppard had been wanting to get closer to this man and he would not let him, and Sheppard seems to think it had been out of fear, that the man had been afraid of his own feelings for him, and Sheppard knows a thing or two about what that life is like. It is possible he had been in love with a man that could not overcome his own internalized homophobia in his youth, and while homophobia as such probably does not even exist in this society, fear of their own feelings certainly does. All of them are repressing and trying to escape the thing that they fear. Getting rejected by someone due to their self-loathing has the unfortunate side-effect of them spilling that loathing also on the person attempting to get closer to them, and this is some hard-earned wisdom that Sheppard is attempting to impart on them, on him. What is obvious here is that Sheppard had wanted to get closer to this man and had been unable.

Teer: He means the Beast. Sheppard: Yes, I do. Now I don't know how any of you expect me to feel like I belong here, but every time that thing comes around, I'm out there alone. Teer: You're not alone.

Here, the mainstream audience is given reprieve, they are given the opportunity of interpreting this exchange here in a heteronormative context instead of what it was so obviously building toward. Teer offers up an explanation: he means the beast, as though she knows Sheppard so much better than her brother now that they have had sex that he is able to explain his meaning to Avrid, who seems uncomprehending. Avrid does not speak, he merely looks on at Sheppard, and he does not seem to buy Teer's explanation of what he meant here. And Sheppard's "Yes, I do" sounds like he was giving Avrid an out, not having meant to hash this out in front of the whole village and his little sister or niece at his side, to boot. It is none of his business anyway. So they might as well talk about the beast because that is also a thing that is still pissing him off. Note also that Sheppard full on admits that he has been feeling lonely here, and Avrid pulling away has certainly contributed to that.

And then, Teer's disposition, which had been getting steadily more somber as this discussion had progressed, suddenly seems devastated.

Sheppard: I know, you were out there too. Teer: No, I mean, your friends have come. They number five. They've come for you. Sheppard: They have? Are-are you sure? That's the best news I've-- Teer: No, John. I sense something more. The Beast is nearly upon them.

To add absolute insult to injury, as Sheppard thinks that Teer is saying that he is not alone because she is there for him, he is dismissive of her. And not just a little dismissive, he gives her the whole "men are talking now" dismissive hand flick while briefly looking at her as though to tell a child they have done well in the most condescending way possible. In Harmony (S04E14), Sheppard tells McKay that people often dislike in others what they dislike in themselves, and Sheppard certainly has the capacity to be more than a little condescending. For the life of me I cannot understand how anyone can come out of this episode thinking that Sheppard had enjoyed himself having sex with a beautiful Ancient. If anything, this scene confirms that when Sheppard is telling McKay about the woman who had taught him to meditate being "...very attractive," he is either not talking about her at all, or his comment was more about how he was feeling toward McKay right in that moment than it was about him reminiscing about his time here. Because damn.

And the absolute cherry on the sundae is how, as she tells him that his people have finally come for him, this man who has supposedly just had sex with a beautiful woman that thinks of him as "the one," who has loved him her entire life, who basically thinks he is a Disney Prince combined with Space Jesus, not only tells her that this is the best news he has heard the whole time he has been with them. Sheppard gets up and is willing to drop everything all at once right this goddamn minute to get back to them without sparing her or her people another thought. He is basically already on his way when she tells him that he needs to hurry. They are in danger. And why the beast comprising of the fears of the people sitting with Sheppard here should go after the people who have not contributed anything into its creation and among whom is the bravest man Sheppard knows (and the others are pretty brave, as well), is an interesting question. One that Sheppard has no time to ponder because as soon as he realizes they are in danger, he is off running like he has never run before.

Continued in Pt. 18

-* Sheppard and McKay seem to have started their physical relationship between The Defiant One (S01E12) and Hot Zone (S01E13), and the show had to put up an actual literal quarantine to keep the two of them from getting to each other during this time. They spent most of the season trying to keep them at different locations because they were on such an obvious collision course. Even now, almost exactly a year later, we see Sheppard more turned on by McKay holding a rod with a camera tied to it than this woman kissing him.

[thebluespacecow]

mr Needs to be Needed needing to be needed

[pachimation]

lonely at the top

[lotus-pear]

last words..

[longingquiet]

SAM REID as Lestat De Lioncourt

Interview with the Vampire, AMC - Series 2, Episode 3