/// Tried reading some Sheppard/Rodney, since I can see the possibility, but woah, absolutely unsexy. XD Idk if it’s about the characters or about the general vibe of Atlantis, but there’s like, more sexual tension in a scene where a draft ruffles Jack’s hair and he knows it’s his dead bff Daniel, than in a whole well-written sex scene with McShep. XD

/// S3 of Atlantis and I actually started to see the epic McShep pairing. Somewhat. They do have a slashy dynamic.

In SGA, Ronon is ‘just do it’, Teyla is ‘we must do it’, Sheppard is ‘I’d rather not do it but fine’, and Rodney is simultaneously ‘but why should I do it?!’and ‘only I am competent to do it!’ XD

Teyla: …friends?
John, scandilised: I have friends!

Rodney: Where’s Sheppard?
Ronon: On a field trip with a sexy astrobiologist.
Rodney: :((((((

Sheppard, looking at Rodney flirt with Jennifer: Think he’s gonna make a move?
Ronon: Idgaf.
Sheppard: :((((((

Rodney after being in his own and Sheppard’s dreams: I thought there would be more hot girls!
Sheppard: Yeah!
What hot girls, you idiots, it’s just nightmares, Atlantis, and you two. XD

/// Okay, here’s how an average SGA ep goes:
McShep: squabbling and insulting each other and being incredibly annoying
Rodney: Hey, wait! There’s some interesting shit down there!
Sheppard: Cool, let’s go!
Elizabeth: Now wait a second, is it dangerous interesting shit?
Sheppard: Of course, it’s part of the- I mean, we’ll be fine.
Elizabeth: Are you sure?
Rodney: We’re doing scientific research, it’s why we came to Pegasus in the first place!
Sheppard: *thumbs up* *nodding along* *great speech 10/10*  
Elizabeth: You just want to fuck about.
Rodney: Well, naturally- I mean, it’s very scientific.
Sheppard: Absolutely. And it’s totally safe.
Elizabeth: …I’ll have a rescue team on standby.

Rodney: Well don’t look at me, it’s not my fault!
Sheppard: I don’t care whose fault it is, fix it now!
Elizabeth: Rescue team, go rescue these idiots!
Sheppard: We’re fine!
Rodney: Just a minor – ok, hold on, it’s a very very massive problem now! Totally come rescue us!
rescue team spectacularly failing with its task
Rodney: Great, now I have to save ten more people!
Sheppard: You’re loving it.
Rodney: Make yourself useful and do something suicidally heroic, why don’t you?
Sheppard: Sure.
Rodney: Hey, I didn’t mean literally!
*explosions, general mayhem, more stuff gets fucked up*
Elizabeth: …Is anyone still alive there?
Sheppard: Of course, I told you it was completely safe.
Rodney: You’d be dead without me ten times over.
Sheppard: Yeah yeah, you’re a genius, we know.
McShep: back to squabbling and insulting each other and being incredibly annoying
Elizabeth: *sigh*

Also, that would be right up SG’s street with Earth mythology turned into aliens! What a waiste of an opportunity. XD

His more superficial and immediate reaction when loosening up is to flirt with Jennifer, of course (niceness being an interesting side-effect of getting stupider btw). It might be said that underneath the outer spiky shell Rodney is actually nice and fluffy and pretty charming, but that also meant that he was losing memories and IQ points and that for Keller to really like Rodney, he had to change and be dumbed-down slightly. I seriously do not understand how the authors figured it’s a good basis for a pairing and why would the audience buy it.

SG-1 characters come and fit right away. It’s like they’ve knows each other for ages from the beginning, it’s a family unit from the get-go, they’re comfy with each other, they’re established as characters and as a team and as separate couples, they fit with their newly sci-fi world, even. More than that, they’re all likeable people who are easy and willing to get along, to belong, to work together.
SGA characters, on the other hand, come in a tight zip format, awkward with each other, trying to adjust, trying to take in the new environment, and then, as they learn all of it, they unfold, fitting against each other’s gaps and bumps, filling their surroundings and roles. And they’re not really likable, they don’t really want to be working together and belonging to each other, so it takes time for them to like each other and make a team, and for the audience to like them. (And it’s not just Rodney.)
(Actually, I think the only character who doesn’t unfold is Elizabeth? She’s pretty much the same and having the same relationships with everyone in her first ep and in her last. Characters have relationships at her, so to speak, their perception and behavior changes regarding her, but Elizabeth remains the same. Which is likely why I never really liked or disliked her, she’s just.. ok. And I mean, even Woolsey, who’s there just cos there should be an administrator, unfolds enough within one season.)/// Also, Sheppard comes across (or would want to come across) as an infantile slacker with an anti-authority attitude, laid-back, personable if a bit self-satisfied, just there to do the bare minimum, and like a bit of a hot dumb frat boy. He mostly succeeds, actually, but there’s still something dark lurking underneath the constructed façade.

Also also, that crystal life form Sheppard tells real Sheppard that he’s the only thing Sheppard’s afraid of – so, Sheppard’s afraid of his dark side and what he’s capable of, and he pushes it all down and tries to be the façade he came up with, but that’s really difficult when you’re a military officer. He liked it in Antarctica cos there wasn’t anything that could go wrong or lead him to making choices (plus the lack of people and personal connections he could make and then inevitably fuck up). Plus, the military itself provides a no-choice structure – he only has to obey commands to be not responsible. And yet, he always disobeys and always gets himself into situations where he has to make a choice (he does coin flipping for Atlantis when the military fails to order him and yeah, I can bet he ignored whatever he got).
(So, daddy issues – being pushed into a pre-planned and pre-arranged life he didn’t want, and mindfucked into feeling guilty for letting his father down (the need to disobey and learned inaction), and yet he chose the career that couldn’t be the farthest from his father’s wishes but has the same structure of obedience and control. So, he just followed the installed pattern, making it his comfort zone: being ordered – disobeying – making choices – feeling guilty when the choices are wrong (and refusing to make choices  altogether when the previous cycle was a bit too rough).

Kinda looks like his attitude is just bristles and self-protection and he uses his intellect for it in a way too heavy-handed way. Like, he was bullided as a kid and maybe his parents (father, specifically?) were never on his side and never tried to give him solutions for communication problems, concentrating on his intellect and assigning the most value to it, pushing him for results and removing from social interactions (especially since genius baby Rodney would’ve been bored with peers). But since Rodney’s not a sociopath, he wants human connection and friends and be valued as a human being and not a walking physics manual, and he wants to be better and snap out of the comfort zone shitty behavior, but it’s hard and makes him feel way too vulnerable and inadequate.
Also, it’s Sheppard by whom he wants to do right the most. After he destroys the solar system Sheppard is so pissed off with him and tells him doesn’t trust him – as if it’s the first time Rodney’s let someone down. (And btw, it’s Sheppard who he puts into a special category of ‘we have a habit of saving each other’s lives’, as if no one else on the team saved Rodney’s life and he hasn’t saved theirs.) Sheppard makes him want to be better, braver, try harder, he wants to be someone Sheppard respects and calls his friend. And Rodney doesn’t really trust and rely on anyone – except for Sheppard. (Curiously, Carter, who he considers to be the only person smarter than him and hallucinates in the drowning jumper for help, doesn’t help at all, because he doesn’t trust her and doesn’t listen to her. His subconscious is set for a failure there, he already knows he’s going to die and Carter is there to like, expedite it and prettify his last minutes alive.)

So, as I said, Sheppard makes Rodney a better man. Because Rodney knows he’s deeply flawed and not that great of a person, but being exposed to Sheppard slowly but surely changes that. Rodney wants and needs Sheppard’s approval and appreciation – he wants to be the man who Sheppard would call his friend. Sheppard makes him selfless, brave, makes him think faster, do more, think about consequences, strive and match Sheppard’s moral ideal. Sheppard doesn’t want him to be ‘nice’ (like Jennifer), doesn’t even demand Rodney to change, he just presents an image, in a general way, of what Rodney thinks a worthy man should be like, and it’s Rodney’s own job to recognize it and get there.

Rodney: Hey, so I’ve turned Elizabeth into a Replicatior…
Sheppard: FOR FUCK’S – I fucking hate you, because if something goes wrong I will have to kill her! >:C
Rodney: Oh. Right. Sorry. :(
Elizabeth: Guys I think I have superpowers now…
Rodney & Sheppard: Cool! :D  

Oh, and Sheppard got over Rodney’s solution – and Elizabeth’s consequent self-sacrifice pretty quickly. I mean, Sheppard was really pissed off about the solar system and slapped Rodney real hard with the ‘I don’t trust you’ spiel, but like, only bitched for five seconds about Elizabeth and never held it against Rodney afterwards. Yeah, that’s the epic Sheppard/Elizabeth romance right there. *snort* What I’m willing to allow tho, is Sheppard’s priorities shifting over time and making him choose Rodney over nearly anything else. And when Rodney actually fucks up, Sheppard just blames himself. Losing people also pushes him towards both notions – killing Sumner, losing Ford, then Carson, then Elizabeth, then Dr. Heightmeyer – none of that is really his fault, but he’s knee-jerk reaction is to take the blame, and it also makes him kling onto Rodney unhealthily hard. Rodney’s actually on the same page with him about it, from the reasons to the escalation, and I’m pretty sure they’re both aware about their mutual co-dependency and both find it part-welcome and part-alarming. It’s also why I find Rodney/Jennifer laughable – Rodney’s about as fucked up as Sheppard by s5, and it makes their ability to develop any sort of meaningful connections with ‘new’ people non-existent. I mean, I can allow Rodney’s fling with Jennifer to be a desperate attempt to make distance between himself and Sheppard (re: part-alarming) (Sheppard’s solution is to pent up and distance from everybody, of course), but that’s the point – it’d be a fling, quick, brutal, doomed to fail and drive McShep even more co-dependent (re: part-welcome, and they don’t really need and want another relationship).

Carter & Co: Atlantis is in deep shit we need to cannibalize one of our ships to help them asap or else they all die!
Meanwhile, McShep & Co: Let’s go steal a ZPM from the Replicators!! :D :D

"Oh no," Sheppard had responded darkly, stabbing his pen furiously through the pages of his Big Book of Cryptograms. "I am much more of an asshole than you will ever be."         

The sun plays on her curls, making them look glittery. It reminds him a little of the curtains he has in Atlantis.

That’s actually partly the reason I can’t imagine them in all the pairings the canon was roping them into – because these women were all fucking serious and grown up af and mcshep is out there, existing in a parallel reality of sorts, and trying to shove them into that serious reality was really ooc and fake. It’s as if the writers didn’t entirely realise what had they done and were trying to play by the usual rulebook of het romance, and of course it looked just really weird and misplaced. And they’ve set themselves up with that uniquely idiotic behavior scene with the balcony in the very fucking beginning and had no choice to proceed with it, because it was a brilliant characterization choice – and it split the entire character pool into mcshep and ‘everyone else’ with no chance to intersect. Also, for romantic subplots, if mchsep were actual teenagers, setting them up with pscychologically mature girls could signify their own character growth and coming of age, like in YA texts. But mcshep are not teenagers, they’re in their late 30s and that’s it – this is their characters and they’re really incompatible with the regular romantic tropes. XD

/// Judging by the ep with the Game (everyone was surprised to find out about it) and the ep with the cars (Teyla stumbled over them by an accident), no one actually knows what mcshep are up to in their spare time and also how much of said spare time they spend together. :) Sheppard introduces everybody to golf, for example, and I suspect it’s cos Rodney doesn’t play it, so it’s not the special ‘John&Rodney’ pastime. They also don’t have separate entertainment going on – like, say, Lorne sneaks away from people to paint and Radek has his pigeons thing. Nope, the moment there’s something potentially cool, it immediately becomes ‘John&Rodney’ thing – starting with the personal shield and balconies. :) As in, Rodney activates the shield – Sheppard, come shoot me in the leg! Rodney finds the Game – Sheppard, come play with me! Rodney gets into whales – Sheppard, let me tell you everything about it! Maybe it was the same with the cars – Rodney ordered some from Earth and immediately ran to Sheppard with them. Cos it does look like this kind of shit starts with Rodney (like, say, ‘five bucks says you lose your memory first’) and Sheppard happily joins in and they never ever tell anyone about it. :) And I suppose it’s not even intentional (once the Game is out they are eager to explain it to anybody, and they play chess in public afterwards, and Rodney chases after Sheppard across Atlantis about the whales cos he’s so excited, and they invite Teyla to the car racing) – it probably just doesn’t occur to them to share with the class. :) Which results in them basically spending all their free time together while even their closest friends don’t have a clue it’s a thing.

/// When Rodney takes Lucius’s potion and makes Sheppard clean his room – Sheppard doesn’t actually act any differently about him other than the room cleaning part – and with Lucius we’ve seen how it affected people around. (And it kinda looks like Sheppard’s been exposed to potion!Rodney for a fair amount of time and it’s already ‘the longer the worse the reaction’.) Which kinda makes you think Sheppard’s default mode is already ‘liking Rodney an abnormal amount’ and the only difference is that he’s a bit more willing to be at his service. :) And I mean I’ve seen this incident on tvtropes being taken as ‘Rodney’s experementations on Sheppard are sure sexually suggestive’, but tbh, it looks like simple exercise of power – it’s Sheppard’s who’s usually pushy and demanding (in crises, grant you, but Rodney is petty enough to take it personally anyway), so Rodney turned the tables on him. So yeah, on his side, nothing sexual about this one. On Sheppard’s side, tho? Hmm. :)

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how hard John Sheppard flirts with alien women, but only when McKay is around? Like, whatever you hc his sexuality, he does not give one single fuck about these women. His number one goal is to keep Rodney from getting any, and I think that’s very sexy of him.
That also kinda implies Sheppard thinks Rodney can get all these chicks by just showing up. XD Rodney thinks that about Sheppard, but he’s being objective cos Sheppard’s conventionally hot, from his looks to his guns to his brains. Rodney, though? Now, he’s not conventionally anything – his looks are average, his courage is very hidden, and his intelligence is overbearing, and if anything, falling for Rodney would require getting to know him and then getting to know him even more, but that’s not the case with Sheppard. He just goes ‘okay, this physicist guy is hot!’ right away and then pines for five entire seasons. XD

It’s actually the main difference between Sheppard and Rodney. Rodney’s that gifted child who was taught his worthiness as a human being lies with his achievements, so he does in fact have to prove his worth to everybody. He’s an overachiever with self-esteem issues (part over-blown part over-compensated), and when he fails, even slightly, at anything, it fills him with dread.
Sheppard, on the other hand, has already failed, from the beginning, when he disappointed his father, and it made him an underachiever. He can’t ever fit with the demands, so why even try? He doesn’t want to prove anything to anyone, so he doesn’t care for ranks, superiors’ opinions and setting goals. But he does have to live to the expectations he imposes on himself but it’s still a projection of parental expectations and subsequent punishment: if you can’t be what I want you to be, you’re not worthy to live, therefore, you should die.
In the end, Rodney’s parental mindfuckery boils down to the same thing, it’s just that he was given a cookie whenever he was brilliant, and Sheppard was punished whenever he wasn’t. So they both stay in that comfort zone, and Rodney endlessly strives to get that cookie of validation and Sheppard endlessly punishes himself for failing to be superhuman.

apparently my favorite ship dynamic is a mutual “I value our relationship so deeply and care about you so much that it kind of freaks me out and I’ve decided that if you ever find this out I WILL die so I’m just going to tiptoe around this forever and that will totally work out fine (it will not)”
Cos Rodney at least states things like ‘you’re my friend’ and acts openly freaked out when Sheppard’s in danger. Sheppard tho? He tries it very hard to not let on just how important Rodney is to him. I said in one of the recent posts that they know how bad they have it, but it’s more instinctive than rational, and though Rodney knows Sheppard loves him, if he was asked to put it in words, he’d immediately begin to search for evidence and doubt his special-ness. Cos does Sheppard not love Teyla and Ronon? And is he not chronically unable to lose people? Sheppard doubts his worth as a default, that’s actually little to do with Rodney’s frankness or lack thereof – he can be on his knees, proposing and confessing his undying love, for all the good it’ll do, Sheppard will not believe it’s entirely for real. Yes, he knows Rodney loves him. But Rodney also loves hot girls, blue jell-o and math. So while on some level they do know they love each other a lot and will go out of their way to save each other and spend time together, but on the other, they have enormous self-worth issues and trust issues and openness issues, and it makes them hide the true extent of their feelings and makes them unanware how important to each other they are.

I mean, he obviously considers them all idiots who shouldn’t have any power over him, but then, he’s not overly defiant and it’s not like a personal philosophy, more of a general displeasure of dealing with any higher ups and their stupid demands. And it doesn’t matter if they’re military or not, either, Rodney was just as displeased with Woolsey. But when it comes to military strategy and executive decisions, he lets ranking people do that with only an occasional gripe about intellectual validity of their plans – but he does it at everyone.

/// For fic purposes:
We don’t know if Rodney’s parents were abusive, but he does say they hated each other and projected all of that on him, and then he says to Jeannie their father would want to them to work together. Which means his father was the driving force behind their intellectual development and achievements – something that Rodney was more susceptible to, taking his father as an authority figure and being very reluctant to disappoint him. (And since ‘parents hated each other’ mother, likely, didn’t like that approach and maybe stole Jeannie from under the influence but couldn’t do that with Rodney, (only leaving him with a crippled ability to have a close relationship with a woman?)) So, the father probably wasn’t physically abusive but could be that psychologically, and where Sheppard chose rebellion and even more abuse, Rodney chose compliance and approvement, but approvement of an endlessly insufficient sort, i.e., very good son, but you can and should do more, strive for more, be perfect for me – you don’t want to be the failure your mother obviously wants you to be? And if there were any imperfections – from feeling unhappy to being a disliked weirdo, Rodney suppressed that real hard. (His overeating is absolutely what Sheppard suggests in passing for hom, which is seeking comfort and compensating for the barren emotional landscape of his childhood and the endless stress – he couldn’t express and complain about it, so he found a bad coping mechanism. Oh, and the way he complains about his father reading him Moby Dick and giving him nightmares – as a child with way too active imagination and already unstable mental health, of course his father probably saw him as weak and not manly enough and needing to be introduced to ‘proper’ boy literature and examples of manly behavior. With the best intentions, of course, so Rodney wouldn’t be bullied and ridiculed in the future, but results were the opposite.)
As for mommy issues – idk, could she, perhaps, be blonde and very smart? :) And with women, is he searching for mommy’s approval and acceptance – something she forgot to give him, too busy fighting with his father? (Also, the ‘hated each other, blamed me’ notion – did they just hate each other on principle or did a genius child uncover some hidden problems? Were the parents both scientists? Did mom, like Jeannie, realise she wanted a family life rather than a hardcore career and Rodney’s father despised that waste of talent, like Rodney despised Jeannie’s choice, which he basically learned from his dad? And his mom tried to raise him as a normal kid but his dad never let that happen and only caved in a bit with Jeannie, maybe already too tired of all the fighting or thinking as a girl, Jeannie will end up like her mom anyway, so why try? So, mom won with Jeannie and calmed down, leaving Rodney as a lost cause, but he still wanted her approval but felt like she hates him just like she hates his dad, and as a teenager, that really messed him up, making him feel extra unloved and wrong, and on one hand, brilliant women intimidate him but on the other, he wants to be noticed and appreciated by them.
Oh, and that weird issue with male authority figures that I addressed earlier? Where he in the same time can’t stand them but also doesn’t object too much – so, evidently, Rodney realizes very well his father was an asshole and fucked him up big time, but then again, authority is still authority and has to be obeyed. That’s also interesting in relation to Sheppard, who is an equal technically but de-facto in charge and Rodney, while demonstrating his displeasure, accepts it a lot easier than in all other cases. Sheppard, he can obey – hell, he comes to Sheppard to ask for a fucking permission to go be eaten by Todd to save his own fucking sister (he doesn’t really obey in the end, but he still asks). Like, if your only and closest relative is dying and you can save them by committing a suicide, whose fucking business it is? You just go and do it. But nope, Rodney comes to Sheppard first – and yeah, it can be on some subconscious level a cry for help, i.e., we always save each other, now it’s your turn, I’m all out of options, do something! But Rodney also does consider Sheppard to be an authority to count with – maybe on a closer to the surface level he wanted Sheppard to say ‘yes, that’s very brave of you Rodney, you’re a real man now’, i.e., approve of his choice and confirm he’s doing everything right – cos Rodney needs that reference point, and Sheppard is the paragon of the ‘right’ behavior for him, moral, professional and befitting a man and a leader (re: Doranda).

I mean, Rodney indicates it in s2 that they must always save each other specifically, but Sheppard’s always being general about it (even earlier in this ep), saying his people will come for him. But it would appear Sheppard too thinks he and Rodney have an exclusive saving deal. :)

Pluse I have read multiple places that in an interview at some point Joe admited to being behind McShep and played up their scenes on purpose.
So, Sheppard’s jealousy is actual jealousy and Rodney’s mancrush is an actual mancrush. Because there’s a cool narrative rule that says ‘show don’t tell’ and we believe in what we see, not what is told and then not proven.
Also, whether that's specific acting choices or writing choices composing that way, but Hewlett always played whatever was put into the sсript, always and likely to the letter, but in such a way that he still remained, well, Rodney.
So when there are supposed to be romance and feelings, they’re there, sure, but what’s also there, is the entire Rodney’s fucked-upness, and you can’t help but wonder, is this what he’s feeling or is this what he wants to feel/who he wants to be? That kinda really dampens the sincerity of feelings portrayed. So, his relationship with Katie, with (at) Sam, with Jennifer – it’s all about Rodney and not about them. Yeah, he tries sometimes and sort of takes interest in them and what they're like as a person, but he’s visibly making an effort to be interested. And Rodney can be not self-centered with other people and only when he tries to get the girl it becomes about him, because evidently, getting the girl is an issue and has nothing to do with any particular girl but with the action of getting itself. What comes afterwards – keeping the girl, maintaining a relationship, working on that relationship, adjusting his life and making compromises, having shared goals and shared everything – I’m pretty fucking sure Rodney never thought about any of that. Whatever he managed to have with Jennifer in the alt!future was born out of losing everything else and having no options, and it was too short-lived to make any conclusions about Rodney’s ability to maintain a relationship with Jennifer or any other girl.
In other words, the way Rodney was initially written and then portrayed really interfered with all the later insertions about his love life. Everything we’ve learned about Rodney before s5 says he cannot have a long, happy, normal relationship with Jennifer – but that he… no, not even can have, but does have one with Sheppard. Whoops, wrong development! XD