Rat Creature's Journal

( spoilers for SGA 5x02 )

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis / Avatar: The Last Airbender Fusion
Characters/Pairings: Teyla as Waterbender
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt "SGA/Avatar the Last Airbender crossover" for the SGA fanart fest Painted Spires, as additional fanart for the Amnesty Week. This is more a fusion than a crossover, but I think it's still within the prompt's parameters. Originally this was supposed to be a series of portraits with each of the team matched with an element from Avatar (I thought after Teyla I'd do Rodney as Earthbender, Ronon as Firebender, and John as Airbender), but I only managed to finish Teyla in time to still post (just barely) during Amnesty Week.

Preview:

( the image and a high resolution detail are behind the cut )

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt "Victorian steampunk AU" for the SGA fanart fest Painted Spires. Admittedly mechanical pterodactyls aren't the most efficient way for a flying machine, Steampunk or otherwise, and not a very likely or even possible path technology would take from an SF standpoint, but this way was much cooler visually than merely changing the puddlejumpers with pipes or gauges or whatever. I mean, they more or less look like flying lunch boxes. Not really realistic technology, but this is Stargate after all, and I'm pretty sure John would think that mechanical, flying dinosaurs were cool.

The original is 30x40cm, so unfortunately I had to scan it in two parts, and you can see a slight line where I merged, because I fail at digital manipulation and didn't know how to make the two parts fit completely seamless.

Preview:
( The image and a higher resolution detail are behind the cut. )

To My Destiny, by Kodiak Bear. Gen. (ca. 8,800 words)
In this AU Janus convinced the Ancients to allow the use of his time travelling technology and they took Atlantis into the future, to present day Earth, when they continue the fight. It's an interesting premise and the Ancients here are just the right mix of ruthless and creepy but not actually bad guys.

Guardians of a rare thing, by Livia Penn. Het, Ronon Dex/Samantha Carter. (ca. 6,200 words)
This goes AU from Return I: Ronon comes to Earth rather than stay in Pegasus. Ireally like this take on Ronon at the SGC, and his perspective of Earth.

The Great Pegasus Train Robbery, by Sholio. Gen, team. (ca. 10,500 words)
This humor story casts the team as train robbers in the Old West, and they aren't very good at being bandits, but their efforts are very entertaining.

Knights Errant, by Sholio. Gen. (ca. 5,300 words)
So this is a Knight Rider fusion, with Rodney as the car, John as the driver. And okay, the story doesn't really have much of a plot beyond the setup of John meeting the car, but well, I think the scenario is awesome. (Don't judge me, okay? I liked the series as a kid...)

Bright Wings, by Snarkydame. Gen. (ca. 7,000 words)
In this AU Pegasus cultures are squatting in Atlantis, rather than it lying abandoned. It goes further AU than that because the expedition members are among the residents too, with the team running a salvaging operation looking for bits of Ancient tech in the older, submerged parts of the city, but the story still mixes in enough elements from canon Pegasus cultures and Ancient and Atlantis tech that the scenario isn't just some generic fantasy type of city.

Mona Lisa Box, by Tzzz. Slash, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard. (ca. 14,000 words).
This is a fusion between Terminator: The Sarah Conor Chronicles and SGA, and it is a rather creepy love story, with a great twist on the origin of Skynet. I was a bit bothered by the implications the ending had for Rodney's characterization (I don't want to spoil it by being more specific), but apart from that I enjoyed it.

Almost All Grown Up, by Xparrot. Gen, team. (ca. 5,900 words)
I really like AUs with John as a Pegasus native, and making John a Genii, but tell the story from Teyla's Athosian POV, when we as readers know there is more to the Genii, was a narrative ploy I really enjoyed.

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis / His Dark Materials
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, the team's dæmons Nioke, Keho, Tykallita, and Imara
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint, a little bit colored pencils
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This is an illustration for Trinityofone's SGA/HDM story Dæmonology, John and Teyla and their respective dæmons are sparring with each other, while Ronon's and Rodney's dæmons watch (these two themselves are somehow offscreen). The story itself is McKay/Sheppard slash, but the picture is very much gen.

The faint, yet still annoying line in the middle where the colors don't quite match is there because the paper of the original is of a larger format than my scanner, so I had to scan it in two parts, and didn't manage to make them fit perfectly.

Astrid helped me fix some perspective and relative size and positioning problems in an earlier pencils sketch of this. The illustration is much better for it. Any remaining problems however are my fault.

Preview:
( the image and high resolution details are behind the cut )

( spoilers for SGA 4x20 )

Totally unrelated to SGA I learned a new piece of trivia today: I've always been vaguely puzzled by the color name "ivory black" because it seemed contradictory (ivory not being black and all). Then today I happened to look at the label on the back of a tube of acrylic ivory black, one that went into all kinds of technical detail that I have no idea what it means (it has some kind of numbers for hue, value, chroma and codes for the pigments and symbols for opaqueness and lightfastness and so on) but also had a list of ingredients and apparently that black is made from charred animal bones. Hence the name "ivory black".

And I get that historically, though I'd have thought that by now the color would be synthetic. I mean, it's not they are still grinding up lapis lazuli for ultramarine (well, I guess there might be people who are into restoration and such and make their colors themselves from scratch with pigments or specialty producers who still do that, but usually it's synthetic these days). So it's kind of gross that they still use animal bones, but that what the tube says in its ingredient list under the "vehicle: acrylic polymer emulsion" there's "pigment: amorphous carbon produced by charring animal bones". So I'm using the same pigment as my prehistoric ancestors, I guess, only in a prepared polymer solution rather than charring some hunted mammoth's bone myself. Still in my mind "gross" kind of wins out over "artistic connection across millennia of history".

( a small spoiler for Kindred, part one )

I just read an awesome SGA story posted for the Second Verse challenge on SGA Flashfic:

Games of Chance, by xparrot. Gen, Rodney McKay. (ca. 12,000 words)
It's a great take on precognition/multiple universes/timetravel in the SG universe, and I loved the frantic, desperate pace of it. I was slightly confused at the beginning, but that turned out to be a very deliberate story telling choice, because it starts right in the action, and it all came together in a very cool plot.

Because it is such a common, recurring request on the SGA genrefinders comm (and because I love Bug!John stories), I decided to compile a proper thematic list for stories relating to Wraith/Iratus bug transformations. The majority is Bug!John, but I have included sections for stories in which another human character is transformed into a Wraith or Iratus bug hybrid, as well as a section for stories dealing with the reverse, i.e. Wraith transformed into humans. Currently it lists about forty stories, but I'd love add any fitting story that I missed. I did not include those Conversion tags that are set completely after John reverted, unless there were at least some remaining transformation related aftereffects.

To avoid having to update the list in multiple journals I maintain it on my website, like with my other thematic list:

SGA thematic list: Wraith/Iratus bug transformations

( spoilers for 4x18 Kindred, part one )

( sorry that the rec is inconveniently behind a cut, but the title and description have significant spoilers for the most recent SGA ep Outcast, even though it is not really an episode tag )

Does anyone know what happened to the reversathon.com domain? I just tried to reread a McShep Match story (for those interested, Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by ras_elased) and was cruelly thwarted by a link leading from the community into the ether of an expired domain. Did that site move? *hopeful* Or just vanish? :(

Forget Me Not, by maisierita. Slash, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay. (ca. 47,000 words)
If you're like me and have a soft spot for amnesia stories, you should definitely check this one out. But even if you don't have an amnesia kink, this is still a great story. The mystery of how they ended up like this in the first place had me hooked from the start, there's angst and some h/c without it being overwrought, and while the Pegasus culture doesn't take center stage in that we find out everything about it, that is simply because we see it from Rodney's restricted perspective, so while it is central to the whole set up and works as a plot device for the John/Rodney story, it feels real and not like they are merely some contrived wacky aliens just there for one purpose.

To keep up the pretense that this journal is interesting, i.e. has content besides boring pet posts, here's an SGA rec, a rather neat SGA teamfic from the SGA Santa exchange:

They Might Be Giants, by Anonymous. Teamfic. (ca. 17,440 words)
It has some OT4, but it isn't a shippy story, but mostly an action-adventure, with some cool sf trappings, that show them as explorers. It has both the team and the remaining Atlantis expedition with Carter, Lorne, Zelenka and Caldwell on the Daedalus in it, and I enjoyed it a lot.

No meta, but I know I'm not the only one whom it has been driving nuts trying to figure out what Sheppard is reading in this episode, and I finally managed.

( a couple of high resolution screencaps )

So, I'm going to include this in my next AU recs update too, but you should read it right away, because it is an awesome story with John as an AI, that is heart-breaking at times, but also funny in places, and just great reading all around: Male Enhancement (The Soul and the Company Store Remix), by Leah. Slash, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Carson Beckett, Radek Zelenka. (ca. 46,500 words)

( spoilers for SGA 4x03 Reunion )

Arranged from the not-so-squeeful to the most squee... :)

( Journeyman 1x02 )

( the first two Moonlight episodes )

( Avatar the Last Airbender 3x02 and 3x03 )

( Supernatural 3x01! )

( SGA 4x02 )

Yay, the Atlantis season opener aired!

( spoilers for SGA 4x01 Adrift )

I've finished reading the SGA tie-in novel Exogenesis by Sonny Whitelaw and Elizabeth Christensen, and I mostly liked the action-adventure part, though I keep getting surprised by just how more creepy and morally corrupt the Ancients are in the tie-in novels even compared to the series where they are of somewhat dubious character to begin with. However the strong presence of emotionally damaged woobie!Rodney really wasn't my thing. Also, I continue to find the way the expedition treats the Athosians when the former once again triggered a disaster that affects everybody disturbing.