Characterization, what is that?

[kate]

Leaving for Massachusetts tomorrow so I need to get all my work done today, but of course, I've got things on the brain. So, dwircle, let's chat about characterization.
I ask because I've got to write an AU fic that I owe for an auction. And I was thinking of possible things for John Sheppard to do, because the person wants a complete AU. And the thing is, I love complete AUs and there are a number of them on my SGA McShep comfort recs list, but there's a couple similarities to most of them.

One, Rodney is usually a physics professor or a physicist. Sometimes he's a professor of other things other than physics, sometimes he's another kind of scientist, but it's a pretty common thread to Rodney characterization. Now, there are AUs where he's a writer and an accountant and an inventor (But Wait, There's More! series by lavvyan, OMG), but that's the thing about Rodney. He's pretty recognizable as anything as long as you make him smart, competent, arrogant, and bad with people. There are varying degrees on all those things (and to make a sympathetic character, you have to play on the smart/competent part and also show that he has a heart and that he can grow (when SGA was good, they did this well - when not, welllllll...)), but Rodney's pretty easy to pick out, whether he's a cat or an ice cube. I don't worry about his characterization because I think there's plenty out there to make him recognizable, no matter what profession he's in.

Two, John is usually ex-military or current military or ROTC or a pilot. Do y'all see that as a sort of inherent part of his characterization? I mean, I get that, and it's not that I don't write the hell out of that when I write canon (and some AUs, too). But without it, is he still John Sheppard?

Especially the flying thing - can you imagine a John Sheppard that doesn't fly*? The thing is, I have a couple of AU John Sheppards that just can't have had the military background - it's not possible for that to have happened for where he got today. In one of them he's a pilot anyway (recreational); in another, his profession is analogous to the flying. In the one I'm contemplating right now, though, he'd just be a normal guy that went to college to do something he loves and now he's doing it.

There are other things that make him John Sheppard. I think there are themes that come out in any portrayal of him. A partial list:

~He's a fuck-up (to varying degrees - and usually for a noble cause).
~He's smarter than your average bear human, though he's usually lackadaisical about it.
~He's special in some way (usually this relates to the ATA gene; sometimes it's skipped altogether).
~He has family troubles, and by extension most fics about him tend to include families of choice, whether it's a conscious theme or not.
~He is able to make the hard choices, and he is able to sacrifice (himself especially) - this can be missing in a lot of fics (especially AUs of this type because they just don't require the kind of situation that makes this characterization come to the fore - and it's only every spottily displayed in the canon).

And then we get into parts of his characterization that I find interesting. He has a couple of modes of operating, and some people tend to pick one end of the spectrum and stick with it. Other people make him as fluid as the show itself does (which is probably bad writing on the SGA writers' part, but it offers a lot of variety).

~He sometimes acts like a twelve year old (when he's happy or annoyed) and sometimes acts like he's responsible for the world (when there is something on the line - usually other people). This is interesting because if you take either side of this equation to the extreme, you get what I would think of as a remarkably OOC John Sheppard, but a little of either side (or a fairly large helping of both) and you get what I sort of think of as quintessential John Sheppard.
~He can seem remarkably well-adjusted, but it's made clear to us in canon that he isn't. How well-adjusted he is in fic varies wildly.
~He can be charming, but he is reticent about having real conversations. These two are not mutually exclusive to me, but I often see one side played up and the other side played down, in both directions.
~He seems to have an ease with casual relationships yet he never sees it coming (and in later seasons seems almost asexual (though this could be the stress of his life/job as military commander of Atlantis) and he has been married). There are several parts of this that are often used to show that John is in fact gay (a fair interpretation, I think, though not the only one). Characterization runs the gamut on this, from asexual to ladykiller to super-romantic to just bad with people he cares about. Honestly, as long as the rest of the puzzle that is John Sheppard fits together and the author sells me on his sexuality/relationship tendencies, this part doesn't bother me much.

There are others I'm missing in this section, I just can't think of them right now. I find this section is the reason that John Sheppard is so wildly diverse in fic; there is just a lot of leeway, and a dearth of information about his background, so we're freer to fill in the lines with whatever cocktail of John Sheppard traits we like.

Do you have a particular John Sheppard recipe? I can look at that laundry list and tell you what dials I turned up to 11 and what items I toned down for any given story of mine (and most of them are different from one another). I can also look at that and tell you THIS is why I'm having trouble feeling John Sheppard in Impromptu (and gives me a nice, easy way to go back through and strengthen his characterization, yay). John is not a given for me; his characterization is all over the place. Rodney is more stable but not completely unchanging. There are aspects of his personality that I will highlight that aren't always what most people think of as typical characterization. I'm curious if you have multiple John Sheppards or just one, and how you came to your current ideal, if it's just the one.

Also, since I'm thinking about how to make this AU work so I can get this auction fic off my plate, if John isn't military (present or past) or a pilot, what would you need to be sure it's him? Not just the hair and the drawl, but the John Sheppard cocktail. If he has a family of choice and has adrenaline-junkie hobbies, sleeps with a lot of people but doesn't get attached to any of them, is charming and laid-back except when you want to have a conversation about him, would that be enough to make it really feel like him? Does he also have to be a twelve year old about things that get him excited and have a heroic streak a mile wide, even for complete strangers? Am I missing some vital part of John Sheppard that would make him seem OOC for you?

*Though I think that for all the initial super-pilot stuff they pushed on us in the beginning about Sheppard, that's not what he's really about. A lot of early fanon characterization was built on this because it was pushed pretty hard in the first season, but it dropped away pretty quickly when it became apparent that he wasn't going to save the day by flying shit all the time. You get the feel in Rising that Sheppard would have done anything to keep flying, but once he has Atlantis, that feeling goes away. And interestingly, later characterizations do tend to shift that impulse - the characterization of 'John Sheppard will do anything to fly' became 'John Sheppard will do anything for Atlantis.' So I think, while I said flying up there, what I really meant was his raison d'être - at first, flying, then Atlantis, and maybe mixed in with Atlantis, his family of choice (team and/or Atlantis personnel as a whole). Back to top.

Comments

[kate]

Interesting - I can totally see Sheppard as an introvert, but you know what, that's not set in stone for me. I could write him as an extrovert, I think. I also would have never picked up on that particular bit of his characterization, but it does make sense of the conflicting superficial charm/inability to have a conversation about feelings thing (which is a favorite of mine, as John characterizations go). The things people see in their characterizations, where they come from - it's all fascinating, I tell you. I was waiting for your comment, I was wondering what makes John characterization for you.

I love that theory, man. I could totally buy into that theory, actually. I write him that way sometimes, even.

[cesare]

My most cynical take on John's "charm" is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Partly because to me, he comes across as smarmy and off-putting in a lot of these moments when he's meant to come off as charming.) He's a good-looking white guy from a moneyed background, and he's used to positive attention, so he feels certain of his welcome and projects confidence, which people tend to find charming.

But by the same token, going by his behavior, John seems like maybe he expects people to be receptive to him on a superficial level, but hostile to any deeper thoughts or emotional expression on his part, which might explain why he finds it so agonizing to share those things.

[kate]

I agree with you - I think his superficial charm comes off as a bit creepy, honestly. And I think (though it's been a while since I really paid attention to canon) that it's more what other people think of him, because they're not really paying attention very well. Which is interesting, and why I go for John/Teyla friendship every time, because she sees him, and he's used to people not bothering to look.

[busaikko]

I project myself all over the character, so um. Everyone else's mileage will vary! For me, learning a foreign language taught me how to hold social-lubricant superficial conversations, and I memorized those scripts ("Welcome, Mr. Tanaka!") and use them every day. I always pictured that there'd be someone in John's wealthy upbringing, a teacher or relative, who drilled those kinds of scripts into him. Like, when he meets Teyla for the first time, he looks so amazed that Sumner doesn't know what to do, that *now* is the time for charm and tea!

[kate]

God, yes! Actually, yes, that totally pins down something that I haven't been able to do just yet - that John's 'charm' is really just the way he had of dealing with the world he grew up in, a way to disengage and get people to basically take no notice of him. It's not that he wants people to like him, but rather that he doesn't want them to look beyond what he gives them, and charm can certainly do that, if it's done right, and that's what I've always felt is his reasoning for it. And that Rodney, at least, and probably others, have interpreted it incorrectly as Kirk-ism or being a smooth operator, when really that's the last thing John wants (and thus why he never sees it coming - that's *not* his intention).