#my first stargate fic!

[finalgirlkateausten]

hide away and find your peace of mind

set at the end of SGA 1x11 The Eye, right after the team regains control of the city. it is my professional opinion (no seriously i'm an emt lol) that Elizabeth and Rodney should've gotten hypothermia 😤

"Everyone okay?" John asks, looking around the room as Teyla more or less carries Beckett in. He keeps glancing back at Elizabeth, just to convince himself she's really not dead. Now, she's leaning heavily on the console, her eyes closed. "Elizabeth?"

She blinks, taking a moment to focus on him. "I'm alright, Major. I think I should just get out of this jacket, it's a little too warm in here."

John blinks at her. The large, empty, mostly-metal city running on minimal power isn't what he would call warm. But when he notices that her jacket is still dripping rainwater as she sheds it, some old first aid training lights up in his head.

"Hey," he says suddenly, "getting out of that wet jacket is probably a good idea, but I don't think you're as hot as you feel-- do you want my coat? It's dry... drier."

Elizabeth takes it when he hands it to her, frowning as she slips her arms into the too-big sleeves. John turns to Rodney and Dr. Beckett.

"Rodney, how long were you out in the storm?"

"I've lost track of time," Rodney mutters, and though he doesn't seem as foggy as Elizabeth, John suspects the shivering he'd written off as a shock reaction is actually far worse. "Beckett, what do you think?"

"Not sure he's gonna be much help right now, Major," Ford reports, standing next to the desk chair the doctor is sitting in so he doesn't slump over and fall out of it. "Dr. Beckett? Carson?"

Beckett awakens slightly with a groan before bending double and getting sick into a hastily provided trash can, thanks to Teyla's quick reflexes. John concludes that it's probably best to take matters into his own hands.

He's pretty sure his Basic Life Support certification hasn't even expired yet.

With the power still spotty and no doctors lucid enough to help them in the medbay anyway, John decides to just grab supplies from wherever he can find them and bring them back to the command center. He delivers portable space heaters first, and then blankets and dry clothes, just spare sweatshirts and sweatpants that will probably fit Rodney and be huge on Elizabeth. And then he goes for medical supplies just in case, spending the whole trip trying not to think about Elizabeth changing clothes or if his own wardrobe would fit her any better. None of those thoughts are any of his business.

The medbay brings him heated blankets-- provided he can plug them in-- and a thermometer that looks battery powered, at least. The storm is still impossibly loud, and John reflects that he might not mind one of those blankets himself.

When he gets back to control, Elizabeth and Rodney have changed clothes, and Ford and Teyla, the geniuses that they are, have dragged mattresses from wherever the closest living quarters were, taking up the floor of the briefing room. It's kind of cozy, with the heaters, and John plugs in the heated blankets and passes them out to everyone's enjoyment.

"If it's still storming," Elizabeth murmurs, her words slurring, "I might... try to get some sleep. Before the others come home."

Rodney squints. "You don't look so good."

"At least I'm not oozing blood everywhere," Elizabeth retorts, and John realizes he's gonna have to keep juggling things a little longer.

"Let me see your arm, Rodney," he requests, as Teyla hands him bandages from a first aid kit. "Elizabeth, honey, I don't think you should go to sleep just yet, but how about you take this thermometer and tell me what it says your temperature is, okay?" He doesn't know where the pet name comes from. Hopefully she won't remember later. Ford is giving him a look, though.

Teyla, god bless her, helps Elizabeth coordinate her hands enough to handle the thermometer, and it beeps just as John finishes wiping off Rodney's arm, much to his patient's protest. "What does 34.8 mean?"

"Damn, that's celsius," John says, beginning to wrap the bandage. "I don't know."

"Human body temperature is 37 degrees celsius," Rodney informs him. "She's too cold."

There's a stretchy wrap that seems like it's made to secure the soft bandages. John adds that. "What else am I supposed to do?"

"You could share body heat, Major," Ford pipes up, helpful as always. John glares at him.

"We've really only got the mega-bed, anyway," Rodney points out.

John moves slowly down to the mattress, taking a non-electric blanket for himself. "Elizabeth?" He asks, sitting beside the edge of her heated blanket. "Is it okay if I get in your personal space?"

She smirks at him, which feels incredibly in-character for her even if her eyes are still a little too glassy. "Well, I don't have a decent pillow, do I?"

It's nice, when she settles herself against his chest, and not just because she shares the electric blanket. Her skin is still far too cool to the touch, even though she's flushed. Even with Teyla on her other side, relaxed but not dozing, John still feels a little too awkward. "Rodney?" He asks, trying to joke. "Wanna hug? You seem a little chilly yourself."

"I've got more muscle mass to keep me warm," he insists, but he makes his way over to lie with them, folding his hands behind his head and letting John throw an arm over his shoulders. Ford drapes them in another heated blanket before returning to Beckett Duty-- and snapping a picture with a field camera.

Rodney laughs, and Teyla smiles. "Fuck you," John offers.

But Elizabeth is starting to feel warm again tucked against him, and he decides it's not a terrible way to wait out the storm.

[parhelios]

part two of the stargate atlantis animorphs au where john sheppard used to be tobias! this will hopefully get turned into a full fic at some point but i like telling ppl about my fic ideas its fun

an important part of this au is that at least once on atlantis people have started reminiscing about favorite foods on earth they miss and when john was asked what he missed the most, he just blinks and says "burgers" and everyone gives him shit about his basic ass answer but little do they know the real answer is fresh mouse

part one here

he never really realized just how much he missed truly flying on his own wings until he did it for the first time in too many years, circling over the spires of atlantis and relishing the feeling of thermals under his spread wings. he can’t help but chuckle as on the way to rodney’s lab later in the day, he spots some of the biologists in their lab losing their minds. he does make a note to be a little less conspicuous though. john makes another note to let chaya know that if she ever needs anything, he’s her man, for the rest of time. he’s never been more grateful for anything.

(meanwhile, rodney and less so elizabeth, have been tinhatting about john since kolya's invasion of atlantis. john was weird enough they decided they needed to investigate him more and found that large swaths of his childhood and teen years are redacted to hell and back. they can't even figure out when he was born, exactly. it's WEIRD, and the fact that not even weir has clearance makes it all the more disturbing. rodney tries his best to find an unredacted version--surely it must be somewhere in the files sent on the atlantis expedition, in case of emergency--but not even that works. the thing is, by this point, john is their friend, and though they are definitely concerned and more than a little weirded out, they trust him. they trust that if it becomes necessary, he'll trust them too.)

missions go for the most part as normal, but whenever john can get the free time, he spends it flying. eventually, ar-1 gets sent out on a recon mission to a new gate location, a supposedly uninhabited planet which they believe might serve as a potential alpha site for atlantis in case of wraith incursion

as they begin their expedition, the group moves through the brush, ears and eyes sharp for any darts or wraith patrols. they walk for some time, having chosen to head in the direction of what looks to be a plume of smoke in the sky--perhaps a sign of civilization? certainly an anomaly worth checking out. when they reach the source of it, all four come to the same conclusion. a ship has crashed here. small fires still burn in the trees and brush at the edge of the clearing from its crash landing, but for the most part it looks only superficially damaged. however, not one of them save john recognize the design, and john keeps his mouth shut.

it is an andalite blade ship, and john wonders wildly about what it could be doing so far from home as he leads rodney, teyla, and ronon towards the entrance. he's able to keep his reaction to himself pretty easily, years of having to think about his face and his words coming in very handy for deception. rodney and the rest recognize it as being like nothing they've ever seen before--an egg-like pod with a tail curving above it, ending in a sharp point facing the front of the ship, two small, stubby wings curving off of the side. rodney starts to lose it with excitement at another spacefaring race which they have not encountered before, and john has to keep his mouth shut. after the war with the yeerks, the andalites and the humans had come up with a plan to deal with the yeerks, which none of the animorphs had been privvy to, except that once they were dealt with, the andalites would return to their part of the galaxy under seerow's kindness (their prime directive) and not contact the humans again. they took ax, the one andalite who had joined the animorphs and fought alongside them for the whole war, and they took the morphing cube, and they'd said that earth could keep the animorphs and any remaining technology left behind by the andalites or yeerks on earth. what they were doing here, he had no answers for, and he knew that rodney would be inevitably disappointed when he learned that they were all major assholes who wanted nothing to do with earth and had avoided aiding them until the eleventh hour.

when they get inside, john notes no signs of the pilot, and tunes out rodney's excitement at the pilot's chair clearly designed for a quadraped, and heads straight for the console, to try and find out all he can while the team is distracted examining the ship itself. his knowledge of andalite is ingrained, still sitting in the back of his mind from when elfangor gave him his knowledge. from what he can tell, this was an experimental blade ship designed for long-range travel through z-space, featuring a prototype andalite hyperdrive, which apparently worked a little too well. after poking around some, the team determines they should get as much data as they can for themselves from the ship and head back to the gate to pass the info on to weir and return with a bigger science team to study the ship itself. john makes a private note to hold a briefing. this requires a bit of an update in clearance for everyone involved.

of course, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, and as they leave the ship they are promptly ambushed and captured by a wraith patrol.

while the rest are thrown in a cell, john is taken to the wraith queen, who interrogates him on the crashed ship and though he protests ignorance, she decides to drain him until he breaks. she seems to believe it is some new trick by the atlanteans, but john catches something she likely did not mean to slip to him. she references a prisoner, and from what little she reveals, it sounds like the andalite pilot. john refuses to give up any information to her, and so the queen decides, drained as he is, that he is best used as an example for the rest of his friends, to... encourage them to cooperate. she drains him practically to the point of death, and has him dragged back to the cell, throwing him to the dirty floor at the feet of his friends.

he can feel himself dying, as he lays in the cell, every bone screaming as his team surrounds him, and he feels tears dripping onto his face, which he knows without looking is withered and aged from the feeding. and john knows in that moment that there is one way that this will go, unless he changes. he mumbles out an apology, tells them not to worry about him, and not to freak out. and then he begins the change.

for those unaware, morphing is a process which tends to be extremely unpleasant to watch, unless the morpher is an estreen who can control the process of the morph. john is very much not an estreen, despite his deep familiarity with being a hawk, and he knows exactly what this looks like as the shift megins and he takes in the horror on the faces of rodney, teyla, and ronon. he’d seen people shift birds, and the first time he'd done it, he'd watched himself in a mirror, out of pure curiosity.

the eyes went first, turning big and yellow. you could hear the crunch and grind of bones as they shrunk and molded into each other, the mass folding into z-space and condensing as his fingers merged and feet split, limbs and body shrinking into itself. feathers began to burst from the skin, starting as strange mottled patterns on the skin before lifting themselves up. the corners of his mouth stretched up as the bones of his face shifted and the skin receded over his elongating beak, leaving yellow keratin behind.

the morph felt the same as always, but alongside the grinding of bones and the odd crushing feeling that always came with a smaller morph, john could feel the strength returning to his body the closer he got to hawk-shape. as the morph finishes, he reaches out with thought-speak to the others, trying to get them to stop freaking out as he wriggles free of his shirt and vest, ruffling his wings.

rodney immediately goes "I FUCKING KNEW IT-okay not the bird thing i did not see that one coming but SOMETHING was going on--" but john's thought-speak very quickly shuts him up, and he takes the initiative of rodney's dropped jaw to come up with a quick plan and hop out of the cell through one of the holes in the wraith netting. the wraith probably think he’s dead already, and john is happy to keep it that way—he’s got an escape to make.

[stella-de-nuce]

Chapters: 7/7 Fandom: Stargate SG-1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sam Carter/Martouf | Lantash (Stargate) Characters: Martouf | Lantash (Stargate), Sam Carter (Stargate), Daniel Jackson (Stargate), Teal'c (Stargate), George Hammond, Jack O'Neill, Senator Kinsey (Stargate), Robert Makepeace, Louis Ferretti, Daniel Johnson, Apophis (Stargate), Apophis' Host (Stargate) Additional Tags: Humor, Crack, Character Study, Past Relationship(s), Episode Fix-it, Alien/Human Relationships, Tok'ra (Stargate), Canon Child Death, Writing Exercise, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Open for feedback, Tok'Ra Friendly, Minor Oc Characters, Headcanon, Minor Canonical Character(s), Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, Nobody likes Kinsey, Goa'uld (Stargate), Crack Treated Seriously Summary:

In this AU of "The Serpent´s Song" (S2/E18) the Tok'Ra came pretty much right after they got Apophis into the infirmary and Lantash's "little otburst" happened earlier. A deeply ashamed Lantash wants to leave trying desperatly to escape anger of SG-1 so they might bring someone who can handle the diplomatics better so they hopefully heed their warning about Sokar as they still have time. (Warning: Timeline not exactly canon compliant!)

Samanther Carter, who is a bit shocked at Lantash´s unusual level of "hot-headedness" stops Martouf, who has taken control from his broken-hearted symbiote, and demands some overdue answers, ignoring their very large audience in the gate room.

Will the stars deciding their fate be changed? Will Lantash and Martouf face their growing feelings for Sam alone? Will Sam learn the truth about them?

[escriveine]

“Seriously, would you stop calling it a dry spell?!” Rodney squinted into the bottom of the plastic cup, hoping a hidden morsel of Jell-O would appear in the path of his questing spoon.

John took a big, crunchy bite of his apple to cover the smirk curling the corners of his mouth. Not that there was anybody else in the night-dimmed hallways they were walking through.

“Look, brilliant ideas are, like, a dime-a-dozen here, okay?” Rodney popped the sadly empty spoon into his mouth and sucked all the lingering traces of blue off it. “I mean, with me, and Sam, and even on occasion Radek coming up with new things all the time, it’s not really a question of great ideas, it’s more a question of translating those beautiful theories into—”

“Actual reality?” John deadpanned around his mouthful of fruit.

Rodney dropped the spoon into the dessert cup with a sigh. “Yeah, that. I mean, ‘dialing up the attraction’ between two things already predisposed to attraction sounds like it should be as straightforward as… ” He trailed off when he heard John snort out a laugh. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” John lied airily. “I mean, you set out to crank up some attraction, then end up making a pretty girl-bot, and you don’t see why people might say you’d been having a dry spell?”

“Oh, har-dee-har, Lieutenant Colonel Flirts-with-sexy-spaceship-captains!”

“Dammit, she tied me to a chair! Again!” John glowered and held up a hand between them. “And before you say anything, it was not in a fun way, and it was at gunpoint!”

Rodney shrugged noncommittally. “She does seem to have a thing about you and bondage…”

“How ‘bout we move on,” John muttered, then bit an over-sized chunk from his dwindling apple.

⸻

(A coda to Be All My Sins Remember’d, in which Rodney finds out what John did with all his recent late-night free time, John has an epiphany of his own, and together they finally figure out how to really make all right with their world. — Inspired by luluxa’s gorgeous McShep fanart Stained Glass) Read the rest on AO3

[riverageleis]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stargate Atlantis Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard Characters: Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Carson Beckett Additional Tags: McShep - Freeform, Mutual Pining, Can you guess the love language, There is an actual Spotify playlist Summary:

John does nice things for his team in an effort to cover up his attempts to get Rodney to notice him. Rodney, being Rodney, is so wrapped up in the grand gesture he has planned for John that he almost doesn't notice. Also, they play Battleship. (This seems like such a McShep thing to me...)

[judgeverse]

Camile convinces the Tok'ra to lend out their mental recall technology, hoping to sort out Telford and Rush's tangled brainwashed bodyswapped memories. Inside the mess, there's unexpected reasons for forgiveness. (rating: T, genfic, wordcount: 3,732) - - - “Defection is too good to be true. Why would you throw away that luxurious life to spend your time with Alliance scum?” Kiva leaned in, face to face with him, and narrowed her eyes. “The failure is on my part, and it ends now. Congratulations on your final victory, Colonel Telford.” She gestured for Varro to come forward, and pointed to Telford’s shoulders. “Hold him down.” Varro complied, but there was pain in his eyes. If he didn’t do it, the guards in every corner would kill to take his place. He rested his hands on Telford’s shoulders, squeezing softly. This was his friend, or so he had believed.

[thewritingramblingsofstacey]

I missed the voting, but I was almost 32 when I started writing in the Stargate Atlantis fandom in 2006! This was pre-AO3 on LiveJournal!!

I was 19 when I started writing fanfiction.

Feel free to mention your first fandom you wrote for and what inspired you to start writing in the replies!

PLEASE REBLOG!

[airbear23]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stargate SG-1 Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Sam Carter, Cassandra Fraiser, Janet Fraiser Summary:

You wake up every morning, praying the last few weeks have only been a nightmare.

[california-112]

Friday

General Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | Gen | English

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis

Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Carson Beckett's Mother, Carson Beckett (mentioned)

Additional tags: Episode: s03e17 Sunday (Stargate Atlantis), Grief/Mourning, Panic Attacks

Summary:

Rodney's chair crashed to the floor as he rocketed to his feet, his own involuntary movement slamming him back to reality. Looking away from the untouched plate of fish and chips, he saw Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon sitting around the table, tense as they looked at him warily. Beyond them, the mess hall had fallen silent, and he felt a hundred eyes watching him. -or- In the wake of Carson's death, Rodney struggles to deal with what's happened.

SPOILERS FOR S03E17 'SUNDAY'

Link to AO3

[questionablecuttlefish]

Okay Fine Let's Talk Timebomb and Season Two.

I do want to talk about this because I have a Lot of thoughts and feelings and it has been building up and building up, not only based on what's happening in other social spaces, but what people keep bringing into mine despite my best efforts to avoid it.

This isn't any kind of hatepost, I don't think I could hate Ekko or the ship if I tried, I just want to explain my very mixed feelings about the whole thing.

My likely-to-be-very unpopular take on Season Two's Timebomb romance is that it left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.

Not with what was in the show itself, I feel like that was perfect. Powder and Ekko sold me completely. They made me feel things. I even liked how Ekko and Jinx's story ended. I think it was beautiful, poignant, perfect...

...until.

'The Discourse' since, the way the fan culture has exploded around it, and particularly some of the creators' commentary on it, has made me sour on the whole thing.

It feels like I'm suddenly part of an increasingly small subset of people who saw what they did with S2 Timebomb and applied our media literacy to what was on our screens and got something very different to what the fandom consensus seems to be.

For context, I semi-shipped TB before this. Though I've always been Team Lightcannon, I had a lot of respect for timebomb, I understood it, I had read a few very good fics, I was just in the space of "Jinx has hurt Ekko too much for him to ever fully forgive her for murdering his friends, they might come to an understanding, and there will always be a silent undercurrent of love beneath the hurt, they may fight together on the same side again someday, but whatever bond they had as kids is broken and they can't go back, and both know it."

I respected, and still do, people who shipped them romantically, but I've always seen them as a broken childhood friendship being a much more interesting dynamic, and being hot for each other lessening that to an extent and not really adding anything to it.

All of his interactions with Jinx in season one are violent; she murders five Firelights point-blank in front of him in her intro scene, and Ekko reacts particularly upset to the pink-haired girl, Eve or Eva, whom Jinx shoots in the back. It's clear this isn't even the first time she's fought them. We don't know how many of Ekko's found family she's put on the Memorial Wall or how close he was with any of them.

Ekko is clearly convinced that "Powder" is gone, and the person who replaced her is a cold-blooded killer who can't be reasoned with. Leading to the Bridge confrontation, and this:

This is the first time Ekko catches a glimpse of "Powder", yes, but more importantly, this is the first moment he recognizes Jinx's humanity. He's hurting her, killing her, and he can't do it.

....and she knows he can't do it.

So, to save him the weight, she pulls a grenade, with the intent to kill them both, foreshadowing quite neatly where Ekko/Jinx (but not Ekko/Powder) is going to go in S2.

Fast forwarding from Season One here, Ekko disappears for 2/3rds of the second season, completely offscreen.

When we catch up with him he's woken up in the S2E7 AU; the Powder Timeline.

Here's where I start to get a little confused by the fandom take. Because, you know, I've seen enough Star Trek and Stargate and Supernatural and Batman the Animated Series and Quantum Leap to know exactly what this is.

This is the 'bottle episode', this is the 'Perfect World' trope, where the protagonists find themselves in an alternate universe - or trapped in a dream - or they've died or think they've died and this is their 'heaven' - where they have everything they ever wanted.

This is familiar storytelling and E2 follows a familiar pattern, the protagonist struggles to adapt to the surreal new circumstances, they are seduced by the illusion, particularly falling in love with someone in the Perfect World, but eventually, they start noticing something incongruous - something isn't quite right - (In this case, it's Vi's death, and Powder holding back her genius and hiding her grief to be support girl for others) - that reveals the Perfect World to be not as perfect as it seems.

And the hero has to choose to go home, because he realizes that this isn't real, it doesn't belong to him, he doesn't belong here.

Which is exactly what happens with Ekko in E7.

Which brings is to AU!Powder and Jinx.

And here's where I really start to struggle with the seeming consensus that the romance between Ekko/Powder automatically leads to Ekko/Jinx, like you can just transfer the one to the other.

I'm sorry, fam, I thought my basic media literacy was telling me that this girl:

Is not the same person as this girl:

....and I am not getting into any debate about "Jinx" vs "Powder" as identities within our current Jinx. I'm talking about Powder in the E7 AU.

AU!Powder is literally a different human being.

She may have been the same person up until the explosion in Jayce's laboratory, but from that fork in the timeline, she becomes a FUNDAMENTALLY different person to Jinx, shaped by different experiences, different relationships, different life events.

Powder's physicality with Ekko, as you can see in those GIFs, the casual intimacy, the clear affection, the way she touches him, looks at him, her awareness of him in her space, is so utterly opposite to the way Jinx interacts with him that if anything, it nailed home to me how savagely absent this kind of feeling is from his relationship with Jinx.

Powder loves Ekko. She leans on him, snuggles into him, touches his hands, dances with him, kisses him.

Jinx cares so little about him she barely makes eye contact and would casually kill him without blinking.

And I thought that was the point.

I really thought that was the whole point of E7. Being in the perfect world, getting his perfect love story with his perfect Powder, the girl Jinx could have been, but can never be, drove home for Ekko that his feelings for Jinx, both romantic and resentful, were tangled up in his illusions of "Powder", and it took living those illusions as a physical reality for Ekko to see his mistake.

To be true to himself, and true to her, Ekko had to let that go and go home.

To face his world's Jinx, and be there for her in her darkest moment, even if it meant giving up the love he'd found with Powder, a love that belonged to a different Ekko, for someone who could never love him back.

To me that was Ekko's most heroic moment, an act of selfless sacrifice. But that's what it was - a sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Season Two Jinx is not aware of any of this. The last time she saw Ekko was on the bridge where she nearly killed him, and for all we know she might have thought she succeeded.

She never talks about, thinks about, refers to, or even has scribble-nightmares about Ekko, not even once.

Season Two Jinx is, instead, having a love story of her own.

And Isha was and is a PUZZLE to me. Because she's more plot device than character, she isn't necessary except as a way to give Jinx a villain-to-hero arc and a way to reconnect to her humanity.

But she could have been Ekko.

If they really, really wanted us to have Timebomb Canon, instead of confining the entire arc to a bottle episode in an alternate timeline with a literally, physically different girl, they could easily have given all of Isha's considerable screentime to an Ekko and Jinx romance.

I'm sure Amanda Overton would have been on board with that. But that's not what we got. It's almost like reading two different fix-it-fanfics for the same character, put into the same show and running in parallel.

I'm not crazy, this is what's happening for Ekko in s2;

While this is happening for Jinx at the same time.

But Jinx's love story, too, ends with a tragic sacrifice.

And here's where the two stories finally intersect.

When Jinx is in her darkest moment, her absolute rock bottom, Ekko comes back into her life, a miracle, impossible, a Boy Savior.

But she's still ready to kill him.

Because she didn't dance with Ekko. She didn't invent a time machine with him. She didn't sit and watch the city lights with him and share a tender kiss and a heartfelt gift.

That was Powder.

Jinx and Ekko are resuming right where they left off on the bridge, right back to "I pull this pin and we both blow up".

They've both loved and lost, but their stories are absolutely unknown to each other. Ekko Doesn't Know About Isha. Jinx Doesn't Know About Powder.

It's only when Jinx (a genius, a reminder here) sees monkeys of her own design inside the Z-drive - recognizes her own handiwork, but knows SHE didn't make those - that, I think, sheer curiosity stirs her out of her darkness.

She has to know what that was about. She hesitates, just long enough for Ekko to speak. And, though offscreen, he tells her his story, and maybe she tells him hers.

And it's enough, just enough, to set Jinx back on her Redemption Arc, to become the hero Isha always saw in her.

Maybe even the hero Vi and Ekko saw in her, too. Her new costume is full of references to all of the people in her life who never gave up on her.

(side note, the yellow stars and crowns puzzle me, though - they're quite prominent, but who are THEY for? Isha? Maybe? Yellow isn't a color associated with anyone in Jinx's life, but that crown's identical to the one she scribbled on Demacia in Fortiche's map, is... this a very subtle future Lightcannon tease? Nah. I'm not that crazy.)

I mean her costume is also almost literally both a Fishbones and a Fiddlesticks cosplay, with her hair as Fiddle's tongue, so take from that what you will.

It's clear Jinx and Ekko war painted each other for the battle, but the Firelights are also similarly painted up, and (with Linke even confirming this) there really wasn't time to develop anything else, guys.

And I am, honestly, fundamentally angry at anyone who would suggest that, even if she'd been in any space to want it, our boy Ekko, one of the most genuinely good men in recent fiction let alone in Arcane, would take advantage of a girl he just talked out of suicide.

Moving on. During the battle, Ekko is knocked out and lying not far from Jinx. She doesn't even look at him, she leaps up to defend Vi instead.

And that's their final interaction on the show.

Instead of returning to Ekko, Jinx chooses one final act of sacrifice.

Ekko's final shot of the show is this.

He's sitting, alone, burning a mourning paper, where he sat with AU!Powder - where he and AU!Powder kissed - a place that has no significance to himself and Jinx, whatsoever.

It's little wonder who he's thinking about here, and which name he's burning on that paper. The girl he truly loved and lost.

For all he knows, Jinx is dead. But it's not only her he's mourning.

Or maybe he does know, or suspect, she's alive.

But either way, he's making one final act of sacrifice, too, with that paper burning into the breeze.

He's letting her go.

He's choosing his own story.

He's staying where he belongs.

Jinx may have become a symbol of the revolution, but it's Ekko who is, and always will be, the true hero of Zaun.

And this is Jinx's final shot.

Because let's face it, we all know she's on that airship.

She's "breaking the cycle". She's "walking away". She knows that Jinx has left too many scars on the people she still loves - on Vi, on Ekko, on the cities of Piltover and Zaun - for her to pick up the pieces.

She knows that if she's going to find out what "Jinx" might stand for now, she has to go very far away from everything and everyone. She has to leave it all behind and find something new.

Maybe even someone new?

And ultimately, that's why I feel the Timebomb we got was perfect, they shouldn't touch it, they shouldn't try to force it to be "Endgame", not because it couldn't have worked, but because that's the opposite of the story they told.

For the rest of my analysis, lol, this got a bit long but i have FEELINGS.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy Jinx and Ekko as a love story if they had actually told that love story. But they didn't. It had no screen time. They have less interactions in S2, maybe even in both seasons added up, than Vi and Loris. Let that sink in a bit.

We know it's Amanda's favorite ship, so she may have intended more, and may even actually give us all more at some point, but please, dear god, let's stop pretending they fucked or kissed or even held hands offscreen.

That's honestly a bit insulting to both of these characters, to insist hell or high water that this very important milestone in their relationship happened, but they just didn't even bother to depict it. That an entire love story (because it would be a whole one, remember, Ekko and Powder had a romance but Jinx did not experience any of that, she and Ekko are back at Square One) would just be cut for time.

They both deserve better than that.

Let's stop pretending there was some grand, horny, Forever Love story with 60 minutes of cut footage, all of it timebomb content, somehow left on the cutting room floor of an animated show where every single frame has to be deliberately hand painted.

Because if in some insane universe they had written, storyboarded, voice acted and animated an entire 60 minute additional timebomb storyline and then cut it from the show, that would itself be a searing indictment of the quality of the storytelling in that imagined arc, but that's not what happened. Anyone who knows how filmmaking works would shoot this one down, and the showrunners already have, so let's leave it behind.

I know Timebomb blew up hard, and I get it, but what we got on the screen is not confirmation that there is any relationship at all between Ekko and Current Timeline Jinx. If anything, Ekko and Powder's beautiful romance only highlighted the tragic 'never to be' of Ekko and Jinx.

And it's absolutely fine to look at the art book, look at the creator comments, and imagine what could have been. Draw the fan art, write the fanfic, imagine the what-ifs and the fix-its, those are all beautiful and valid expressions and deserve their space.

But don't go insisting it's "the canon" and going after the shippers of other ships for these characters as "not canon" or somehow offensive for existing, especially toward one particular ship that, yes, has been around much longer than timebomb, is uncool.

I think this is mostly people who are New From Arcane, it's Baby's First Ship and they don't know how to share space. The timebomb fans I knew pre-season two didn't do this, at least not often enough for me to notice or care.

But I'll just say to them, if a Timebomb follow up happens and they actually tell a good love story for Ekko and Jinx, I will accept it. Grudgingly, because I think Lux/Jinx is an untold, untapped story full of incredible character dynamics that would complete Jinx's story in ways that as much as I love Ekko, he's too tied to her past, he can't.

But I love Ekko, and I love Jinx, and I will accept it.

But I'll also say to them, if the followup doesn't eventuate, if things take a turn they don't expect, if Jinx's airship is heading for Demacia, maybe they'll have to experience just a taste of what it's been like for Lightcannon fans for ten long years.

And maybe that's healthy. Maybe that's okay. Maybe our endgames don't need to be 'canon' to have value and that's a lesson we should learn.

Maybe there's a new Light on her horizon, and that's okay too. Maybe Ekko won't be alone forever. Don't forget - until Arcane - his story had nothing to do with Jinx, and there was a whole lot of it.

More with the Firelights, maybe bring in the original Lost Children of Zaun from his old stories, his inventions, his parents, all could yet be in his future. Who knows? He might find a way back to AU!Powder - or she might rebuild what they worked on together, and come to him, no matter what butterfly effects that could set in motion...

But if Jinx is heading for a Light on her horizon, maybe Ekko might Explore some of his possibilities. Find a new Spark of connection. Just saying. Jinx isn't his only ship, either 😌

And it is okay for people to move on, and let go. Maybe, for two characters whose themes are letting go of the past, living in the moment, redefining their identities, and moving on, that's what their story should be.

[mylittleredgirl]

“Thank you…for everything you meant to say.“

[cesperanza]

I saw your addition to the post about the enshittification of fandom alongside much of the rest of the internet and realized I had no idea that you were among the founders of ao3! I have been following your work for a DECADE and I feel embarrassed not to have known that about your place in fandom history 😅

I wanted us to own the goddamned servers!!! *holds up fist!I*. And now we do!!

(I laugh a TINY bit because A DECADE is really not even anything in my fannish career, lol. I was old THEN! lol)

But anyway, a lot of us who started the AO3 were archivists of one kind or another - I had inherited the DSA (Due South archive), and astolat had Yuletide, and there were other people who were central to fandom in popslash, smallville, highlander, stargate, etc etc. It's a huge responsibility and there was the fear of those small archives falling into the sea, and then there were all of these fic communities on LJ that were essentially also fic archives--flashfic communities and other kinds of communities, etc. Those people also came hurrying to help because we all wanted a safe place to preserve fanworks, both from venture capitalists/ Web 2.0 but also from just link rot and technical degradation.

The people who rushed to help were really all central to fandom at that time, a Dunbar's number of fannish folk who knew each other and who were themselves individually connected to lots of other fans. A very highly charged network so to speak--and people reading this, you know who you are!! :D. YOU AND YOU AND YOU WERE THERE! --and they're still here on tumblr, so many of the first wave OTW! <3 <3 Because we were and are mostly fandom lifers, FIAWOL folk.

[hedgiwithapen]

DAMMIT HEDGI DAY 2024!

Prompts are now OPEN

What is Dammit Hedgi Day?

Dammit Hedgi Day, the 25th of September, marks the 9th anniversary of the first "Dammit Hedgi" tag on one of my angst fics. Every September I accept [angsty, typically] prompts for three weeks, and then post a massive amount of oneshots and ficlets. Prompt fills range from 200-2000 words, and as the Poll dictates, will start being posted on September 25th

What Fandoms can be prompted for?

Dammit Hedgi Day started with the Flash and DCTV, but has grown! Previous years have seen ficlets for: The Flash (up to mid season 6? I make no promises after that) Supergirl (season 1) Legends of tomorrow (first 2 seasons) Stargirl (all three seasons) Leverage+ Leverage Redemption Blue Beetle (2023) Into the Spiderverse (ish) My Adventures With Superman Young Justice Big Hero 6 Avatar the Last Airbender The Librarians Books of Bayern and assorted original RPG character content That said, I'm not strictly limited to these! I've started watching Stargate SG1, and will accept prompts based on that UP TO MID SEASON 4. Do NOT ask me about things beyond the end of s4, I'm trying to be unspoiled. If you've seen me talk positively about a media, you can ask for it, essentially. I may not fill everything, but I'll try.

What kinds of prompts?

Originally an ANGST fest, it can get a bit more broad especially in recent years. Ideally: send me a fandom/ two characters and a line of dialog like one from a promptlist below OR fandom/ characters and a vague concept-- "Sokka in a time loop" is vague! "Leverage, Daemon au for the Big Bang job" is vague. "Stargirl, Rick and Cindy: "I'm never going to trust you" " is vague. Two full paragraphs that detail who says the line and everyone's feelings on the matter and the outcome is not vague. If you're not sure if something is too detailed, you can always send it in and see, though. Crossovers welcome. DHD is a smut-free zone, and it’s my day so  I will write about characters with my viewpoints so prompt with caution if you like a character I do not :)  You may attempt to rig your prompts for fluff but do not count on it. Do not expect shipping, this is a genfic event. A few ships may slip through at my discretion, y'all know who I Like. You can send me a couple characters and an angst prompt from a list like  this one or This one,  Or this ….or  if there’s a whump post out there that grabs at you, you can use that. If we've talked about an AU, you can prompt that! If I've made a post like " hey neat concept for [show]:...." you can ask for some of that! If there was a prompt from past years you liked and want More Of? (roundups for 2020 , 2021, 2022, 2023) hell yeah! Canon suffering!! Aus make everything worse!! Missing moments, what-ifs, alternate perspectives! As always, everything will be tagged with Dammit Hedgi Day and Dammit Hedgi Day 2024 for blocking the tag purposes.

[spurious]

what was the moment where you said yes to McShep?

OKAY SO.

Obviously you, audioletter my beloved wife know all this but. I’m not sure I’ve talked about how I got into SGA/mcshep on my tumblr so.

After finishing the x-files in 2022, my wife’s Zaddy Husband Mitch Pileggi beckoned us to watch Stargate Atlantis (because we couldn’t stomach Walker Texas Ranger). We’ve both been in fandom for a Long Time and thus remembered the years that McShep reigned supreme, and starting the show we said to each other “haha wouldn’t it be funny if we became ride-or-die mcshep shippers?”

……..yeah.

From the very start of the show, basically every single time John and Rodney were on screen together we’d go “haha mcshep lol”

So now I’m like. trying to excavate my memories to figure out when it Became Real for me.

I do tend to love buddy slash pairings and ships where one person is shrill while the other is chill so it’s not, like, surprising to me in hindsight that I did end up shipping mcshep? And then the SGA fandom being so friendly and active just…allowed my fixation the space to flourish.

But anyway, let’s see what the first McShep thing I saved to my camera roll was!

*drumroll*

It’s this art by the amazing @luluxa:

So at this point I think I was still at the “no no, I’m saving this fanart to my phone ironically” stage.

Now, this was October 30th. By November 3rd, I have photos of a trip to mandarake where I was really hoping to find SGA doujinshi cause I SWEAR I’d seen it before (I’ve not managed to find it yet. Japanese fans why. You guys love generic white guys mcshep should be massive here)

The first fic I have bookmarked is from November 2nd with the note “oh no I have feelings about McShep now” and it is Counting Down by @alienfuckeronmain, which is a post-trinity fic.

HOWEVER. I also have a Grace Under Pressure coda bookmarked from a day or so later, and this tracks with my impressions: this is the episode that most intensely sticks out in my mind as being emotionally memorable and something I needed to be reading fic about. Soooooo I guess it was Rodney that got me, and the need to process my emotions about episodes by reading other people’s processing, and, uh, now here I am almost two years later!

SO. To get to the actual question, several paragraphs and approximately a day later, I don’t know that there really was a single moment that put me there, as opposed to a series of moments enacted onto an already-primed pump? Because truly I should know by now that the danger of doing something ironically is that you end up doing it ronically, but. I remember devouring the fic I could find that was non-spoilery as we were watching (lots of episode tags) and it definitely shaped my perspective on John and Rodney’s interactions.

But essentially, this is a ship archetype I tend to like, and Rodney McKay is absolutely the type of horrible little gremlin man I tend to like, and the fic was good, and. Here we are lmao

[ten-cent-sleuth]

Just so you guys know, this event is open indefinitely, despite the Halloween name, so my inbox too remains open for requests! I know I haven’t posted any prompt fills yet (I’m sorry 🫠), but I love the half dozen reqs I’ve gotten and I will be writing them.

Squares still open for prompts:

Smuggling Someone into a Hospital

Dealing With an Extraterrestrial

Drinking By the Fire

Found Family Having Dinner Together

Visiting an Excavation Site

Lighting a Match

Wearing Their Partner’s Clothes

Listening to a Horrific Final Transmission

Big Damn Heroes

Threatening Someone with a Nailgun

Tricked into Marriage

Getting Blood Samples

Ship Haunted by Demons

Chased/Pursued by Reavers

Yelling for the Killer to Get their Attention

Giving a Friend a Ride Even Though You’ll Be Late

Hiding Out in a Hospital

Thank you to everyone who’s already sent a prompt, I love you so hecking much and I am excited to fulfil your request. 🫶🏽

Please send in Stargate fic requests! :)

Specifically, please send in (via askbox or DMs) a prompt from one of the following bingo cards, then give me some idea for what direction you want me to take it in. Like, “This prompt jumped out at me because it made me think of ___,” or, “This prompt would be so perfect for a post-ep to ___ where X and Y have a conversation about ___,” or, “This prompt goes really well with my favourite trope of ___.” Be as incredibly detailed as you wish!

The reason I’m sharing my cards is to hopefully use people’s requests to give me a breather from my current main Stargate WIPs, so I’d like to focus on the writing part and not the coming-up-with-an-outline part here—and that means you cannot possibly get “too” detailed!

Since this is a Halloween Horror Bingo, I am open to dark themes and unhappy endings. Include any content warnings you’d like! Conversely, I am equally open to playing around with the prompts and with the aesthetic of the whole event to squeeze out some fluff and schmoop. If you specify no preference, I shall go wherever the wind takes me.

See below for more request parameters but the long and short of it is shoot your shot with an idea and I just might write it. 👀

What I can definitely do:

Sam/Jack focus (UST, MCD, hand-wavey happily married during canon shut the heck up, any other flavour except smut)

genfic, incl. solo character stuff

^ including-including your favourite nameless/background character getting their time in the spotlight if you want!

canon compliant, canon divergence, pre-canon (I would include post-canon but I’ve only just started s9 of SG1 and s2 of SGA 😅)

AUs (from within the show or your own idea)

What I might do (i.e., feel free to send it in but I hope you don’t mind if I get back to you and am not feeling it):

other Canon x Canon ships in the background of a genfic or S/J story

Canon x Reader

Canon x OC (gimme deets and I’ll see what I can do)

What I will NOT do:

SGU or Origins because I haven’t watched them, sorry…

any of the movies except the original because I haven’t watched them yet, sorry :/

any of the books because—three guesses why

smut (if you send in a spicy prompt, I will find a way to make it T-rated 😂)

You can make multiple requests, but send them as separate asks please. And try not to combine prompts, but I won’t mind if you really want to!

Anon is on. Judgement is off. Let me write your highly specific plot bunny? :)

(It helps me along and betters your chances if you do, but you don’t have to give me a load of details! <3)

[judgeverse]

For millennia, the starship Destiny has been circling aimlessly in a in a distant galaxy ruled over (or rather, loosely supervised) by the once-infamous system lord Ba'al. He's been completely unable to access the stranded starship after years of secretly trying. When a crew of Tau'ri arrives and successfully activates the stranded Destiny, bringing it back to life one day at a time, he's vexed beyond belief. Ultimately, they strike a bargain. In exchange for safe passage once its drives are activated, and continued control of the starship, Ba'al reserves the right to borrow its human crew to assist him. When he's challenged to participate in a brutal medieval-style dispute-settling tournament, he realizes they're the best allies he's got.

Little do they know, his plan to ensure victory is absolutely unhinged, and he trusts only one man on the Destiny to help him.