kate | (Reply)

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My John Sheppard is heavily influenced by the first few seasons, because I only watched patchily after that.

That said:

The flying/Atlantis thing is the core of my characterization of him. I don't know that I find an AU Sheppard without either to be OOC exactly, but I generally don't find him interesting without either of those. (If there's other stuff that's going on that I would find interesting even in original fic I might still like it, but not because it's an SGA AU.)

That said, it doesn't have to be flying-as-flying or Atlantis-as-Atlantis. I connect them both to a Sheppard who has never felt grounded, who has always wanted to escape from everything including himself, who has never felt like any place on Earth was home. Flying gives him that escape; Atlantis gives him a home he doesn't need to escape from. If you replace "flying" and "Atlantis" with other things that mean "escape" and "home at last" it will probably still read as a Sheppard story to me.

There are other things that go into it to - I ship John/His Issues (whatever is it about him that made him feel out-of-place so long; that can vary by the fic but the effect is usually the same.) He's a very private person, or at least one who is used to keeping everything wrapped up inside, which is why there's so little we know about him, and a large part of his everyday personality is a front to fit in, but when he does choose to let something out he can be surprisingly open, and he is at heart a doofus. (An AU!John who has already found his Atlantis can be a lot more well-adjusted than this, but in that case I want to see the doofy side a lot more, too.)

Which is to say - I pretty much agree with everything you said but I emphasize certain parts a bit more.

Also: I think of Atlantis as one of the show's characters. So if you have an AU with John and Rodney and Teyla and Ronon and Elizabeth and Sam and Woolsey and Lorne and Zelenka and Keller and everybody but you don't have someone or something which stands in for Atlantis I feel like you've left out one of the main characters for no reason.