Stargate Atlantis

Fandom
Name:	Stargate: Atlantis
Abbreviation(s):	SGA
Creator:	Robert C. Cooper, Brad Wright
Date(s):	2004-2009
Medium:	Television Series
Country of Origin:	US and Canada
External Links:	IMDB EpGuides
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Stargate Atlantis is a highly successful spinoff of Stargate SG-1, making it part of the gateverse. The show aired for five seasons on the originating channels, SyFy in the US, The Movie Network and Space in Canada, as well as in many other countries.

Canon

Stargate: Atlantis is an episodic television series about a group of international explorers from Earth living in the Pegasus Galaxy in the lost city of Atlantis. The pilot episode, The Rising (Part 1 and 2) explains how the group arrives in the city. The pilot spins off from events on Stargate SG-1 and the recurring character Dr. Elizabeth Weir. She assembles an international team of scientists and a military contingent under the command of Colonel Marshall Sumner, who dies in the first episode, allowing our hero John Sheppard to become the top military official. The team does not know what they will find, or if they will ever be able to come back to Earth, as they have no power source they can take with them. Dr. Rodney McKay, who also had originally appeared on Stargate: SG-1, is the chief scientist of the expedition.

During the first season, the city has no contact with Earth and must survive on their own, but from the second season onward they are in contact and personnel go back and forth. This plot development was a great disappointment to many fans who had joined in the first season.

The show uses the same format as SG-1, with most episodes focusing on Sheppard's team travelling to various planets and meeting new people. The Atlantis team manages to make enemies more frequently than allies, including another relatively advanced society called the Genii.

Fandom

Rodney McKay, by Lorraine Brevig, displayed at MediaWest*Con, 2009, oil painting on canvas board, 12" - h x 9"-w

John Sheppard, by Lorraine Brevig, displayed at MediaWest*Con, 2009, oil painting on canvas board, 12" - h x 9"-w

See also Timeline of Stargate Atlantis Fandom, Hewligan, Stargate Atlantis RPF

SGA fandom took off almost immediately, building on a base of existing Stargate SG-1 fans and acquiring new fans from other media fandoms. It is one of the fandoms that straddled the line between mailing lists and Livejournal, and thus has a fairly strong presence in both, although the journal-based fandom is more widespread and still active. Many mailing lists have their own archives and also affiliated LJ communities; sometimes mailing lists were more active earlier in the fandom's history, but as LJ fandom grew communities became more widespread. Communities exist for almost every pairing, and many of the major characters also have their own fan comms.

The Gateworld forums are a hub for fannish discussion that is more focused on the canon than discussion of fanworks, partially due to the site being for all Stargate related discussion.

On November 9, 2004, Leah and Alyse launched SGA fanfiction archive Wraithbait, which started affiliated to the Yahoo! Groups Wraithbait mailing list for SGA slash (founded September 14, 2004), but was open to gen, het and slash from its inception. Additional archives are listed below.

banner of the sga_newsletter community

Because many fans came into SGA from fandoms with a tradition of centralised infrastructure like due South, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Stargate: SG-1 there were efforts to create central and multi-ship spaces on Livejournal as the fandom got going. The Stargate Atlantis Flashfiction community was inspired by its due South equivalent and opened in February 2005; the SGA Noticeboard was created in April 2005; the daily SGA Newsletter in July 2005. A weekly newsletter, atlantis_news, existed from February 2005 to March 2006.

The LJ fandom is often dominated by the McKay/Sheppard slash pairing. This is reflected in the meta discussion of the canon and fanworks, the kind of fanfiction that gets recommended the most, the stories people look for on SGA Storyfinders and what gets the most feedback on those communities. Other places on the net have a different focus.^{needs citation} The LJ community Lostcityfound for all het and gen fic was created in July 2005. notmcshep was created the following year for all pairings that were not McKay/Sheppard, including het, slash and femslash.

A Fandom That Ate Fandom

SGA was definitely a fandom that ate fandom. In 2006, a fan posted: "Okay, I have to ask-- does EVERY awesome writer from EVERY fandom I've ever been in now write for SGA?"

Well, partly. The other thing is - anything can happen in an SGA story. The combination of Ancient technology, otherwordly location, and mysterious brain-breaking pseudo-science is - well, let's just say that the characters are flirting with the line where sufficiently advanced technology becomes magic. And sometimes they get all the way to home base and start straddling that line, or even openly fucking with it. Want a story in which wishes come true? SGA can meet that need. Want a story involving mythological creatures - vampires, fairies, centaurs, unicorns, maybe gorgons or phoenixes or King Kong? SGA can meet that need. Tentacle porn, Japanese rope bondage, all manner of weirdly erotically-fixated deii ex machina, sentient light - really, there's nothing that can't happen in this fandom. And I think that's the other reason people can't resist it.

A fan in 2005 wrote:

I started reading SGA because of the fandom equivalent of a heavenly conjunction; suddenly three thousand FF writers, including 80% of my favorite ones, were writing stories in this fandom, causing massive orbital fluxes and gravitational anomalies.

I am not a strong woman. When it comes to fandom, I am downright weak. I knew better than to try to resist.

And since then, SGA's gravitational pull has only increased. I now call it the black hole of fandom, and I could do this whole extended metaphor thing involving solar masses and the Schwarzschild radius and the Chandrasekhar limit, but I think we'll all be glad I chose not to. Suffice to say, SGA is where I expect we'll make alien contact for the first time; some writer will notice a new name on her friends list, click, and discover that the fine entities of Alpha Centauri have been sucked in and are now searching for SGA slash. (They will probably want OT3 fic - maybe little glowing fly creatures from "The Defiant One"/big power-eating cloud from "Hide and Seek"/sentient energy beings from "Home." I mean, they're aliens.)

I don't think people from the darkest depths of fandom (and the universe) are piling onto SGA because of the brilliance of its canon. Because, um, the canon? Is, well, sometimes funny. And full of characters, and reasonably well-acted, and angsty, and sometimes interesting. It's not - it's not brilliant, though.

But now I feel like I've betrayed McKay and Zelenka and Sheppard by saying that.

Are you starting to see why so many people are in this fandom? It's the characters, baby.

Gen Fandom

Like many SF canons, SGA provides a wide range of opportunity for gen fans to explore the canon and create fanworks that are not pairing focused. Gen fans might be devoted gen-only readers, writers and watchers who leave the romance and sex to others, or they might be shippers of any sort who sometimes like to create or discover gen works.

In fanfiction, gen works cover the gamut from plot-driven, novel-length works that stick close to canon or go wildly AU,to short scenes or character studies that focus on one small aspect of the SGA world. In vids the field is wide open to interpret all sorts of aspects and relationships on the show that aren't about a ship, unless you mean a Wraith cruiser or the Daedalus. The work of many fanartists is gen, ranging from studies of individual characters, Atlantis itself or any other part of the SGA world an artist chooses to render.

Most fans believe that gen fanworks get less attention than their shippy counterparts, particularly in a fandom like SGA that has one dominant pairing. There are always crossover hits, stories that are talked about and enjoyed by fans outside the gen-only or gen-mostly crowd.

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose by synecdochic is a story that can be read as gen, but could be said to have slash backstory. It was and is very popular with fans of all kinds, but it did not really grow out of a gen fandom culture.

Samdonne's John Sheppard gen focused, Your Cowboy Days Are Over is more of a gen story for gen fans, although it is widely recced. (See as an example, mecurtin's Gen SGA Recs.) The story combined the complexity of ethical dilemmas that had no real right answers with a harder, more modern sci-fi basis and became a favorite for a lot of people because of its quality while others found it too depressing; a fate it shared with Freedom.

Ltlj's series Retrograde will turn up on nearly any list of gen fics. It is a complex novel-length fic exploring an Atlantis that has integrated into the Pegasus Galaxy and never connected with Earth. While the main novel is gen, some of the later installments are slash.

Many fans intrigued by the military presence in Atlantis enjoy Miss Porcupine/Domenika Marzione's extensive universe (with several AU offshoots) of gen stories focused on the military, especially Evan Lorne and a team of fleshed-out OCs. The stories range from short and humorous to novel-length action pieces, and include detailed knowledge of or research on military culture and procedure.

City on the Edge of Forever, the pilot (also by synecdochic) is another oft-recced gen story. It is a short exploration of how the first few episodes of Stargate Atlantis would have gone if the main characters had all been smarter than they were portrayed in canon.

Many communities and challenges are open to all kinds of fanworks and can be the source of significant gen works. The SGA Big Bang has 13 gen works in the 2007-2009 years.

For a list of Gen communities see: The Gen section on the List of SGA Lists and Communities

Characters

Carson Beckett | Laura Cadman | Steven Caldwell | Samantha Carter | Ronon Dex | Teyla Emmagan | Aiden Ford | Goa'uld | Kate Heightmeyer Jennifer Keller | Evan Lorne | Rodney McKay | Parrish | John Sheppard | Elizabeth Weir | Richard Woolsey | Radek Zelenka

Popular Pairings

See also Category:Stargate Atlantis Relationships and List of Stargate Atlantis Pairing Names

Although there are a few canon relationships on the show, including McKay/Brown and McKay/Keller, the most popular pairings in the fandom are either based entirely on subtext or only hinted at on the show.

Slash fans quickly took the sometimes combative friendship between Sheppard and McKay, which featured heavily in many of the mission or team-oriented episodes, and ran with it to create the McKay/Sheppard pairing, often known by the portmanteau of McShep, which became by far the dominant pairing by numbers. The large amount of McKay/Sheppard fanworks and discussion of all kinds tends to dominate even inclusive spaces for fannish activity. Unfortunately the fandom can seem bifurcated between the McShep portion and Everyone Else.

Het

The most common het pairing and the second most common pairing in the fandom is John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir, which some fans refer to by the name Sparky. Fans of this pairing used the growing loyalty between the two leaders over the course of the first season and the fact that Weir spent more time talking to Sheppard than to anyone else on screen as the source fodder for the pairing. Sheppard/Weir doesn't dominate SGA fandom the way McKay/Sheppard does, but it is the most frequently encountered het pairing in general fandom spaces.

The second most common het pairing is Teyla Emmagan/John Sheppard. Although the show appears in some lights to support the ship, it did not gain immediate popularity within the fandom. Some fans point to the nature of Teyla's "alien warrior princess" background, others to the fact that she and Sheppard did not spend an enormous amount of time on screen together in the early episodes. Another potential factor keeping the interest in the ship low is latent racism, given that Teyla is a Character of Color played by a Black Canadian actress. In later seasons her poorly explained canon relationship with Kanaan and subsequent pregnancy presented obstacles for any pairing with Teyla.

Other het writers have embraced Teyla Emmagan/Rodney McKay, a pairing that is also popular with fans who usually write slash. Elizabeth Weir/Rodney McKay also has some fans, although neither of these pairings is dominant among het circles. Teyla is also sometimes paired with Ronon, building on their outsider status among the Earth-born expedition. Teyla/Ronon sometimes shows up in McKay/Sheppard slash stories in a "paring up the spares" way that usually leaves them in the background.

Aside from Sheppard/Weir, fans of Elizabeth often pair her with Radek Zelenka, Ronon Dex or Major Lorne. There is some canon suggestion that Zelenka has a crush on Elizabeth, and there is definite canon evidence that Ronon makes her nervous.

Jennifer Keller, who had some UST with Ronon and then a canon relationship with McKay, is a surprisingly unpopular character. While some McKay/Keller and Keller/Dex has been written, and the occasional story with all three together, none of these ships are wildly popular.

Weir, Sheppard and Ronon all have canon past heterosexual relationships that often provide fodder for fanfiction writers to compare and contrast their previous relationships with their current ones.

Some Shipping Manifestos:

• The Heart & Soul of Atlantis: Carson Beckett/Teyla Emmagan, ^{Archived version} (2008)
• Lovers And Fighters: John/Teyla, ^{Archived version} (2006)
• Elizabeth/Ronon: Hearts In Atlantis, ^{Archived version} (2006)
• Go Suck a Lemon: Sam Carter/Rodney McKay, ^{Archived version} (2005)
• When Rodney Met Elizabeth: McKay/Weir Beginnings, ^{Archived version} (2005)
• 'Sparky, or Behind Every Great Woman': Sheppard/Weir, ^{Archived version} (2004)

M/M Slash

There is lots of slash that isn't McShep. McKay is often paired with Zelenka, Beckett or, more rarely in McKay/Dex. John/Ronon is far and away the second most popular ship for slash fans. Evan Lorne also appears frequently in slash fic, either paired with Zelenka in a kind of mirror of McKay/Sheppard (as the two men are the second in commands in those respective departments) or in the unusual pairing of Evan Lorne/David Parrish which has the mostly fanon character of Dr. Parrish who appeared in only two episodes for a few seconds at a time. There are also crossover slash pairings with either Sheppard or Lorne paired with SG-1's Cameron Mitchell that have a small following.

Some Shipping Manifestos:

• Czech Mate: The True Adventures of the Flyboy and the Geek: Sheppard/Zelenka, ^{Archived version} (2006)
• Mutual Elements: McKay/Sheppard, ^{Archived version} (2005)
• I Guess This Is Home Now: John Sheppard/Aiden Ford, ^{Archived version} (2005)
• Scotch and Canada Dry: Beckett/McKay, ^{Archived version} (2004)

Femslash

Even though the show has several woman as main characters and recurring characters, femslash is relatively rare. The most common pairing early on was Teyla/Elizabeth. The pairing of Teyla/Kate Heightmeyer has a following and some canon foundation in brief scenes of friendship between the two women. Laura Cadman, a recurring character, features in the femslash fandom as well.

OT4 and Teamfic

fanfiction cover with the core team

The team structure of the show lends itself to OT4 fanworks, usually involving the second version of the core team: John/Rodney/Ronon/Teyla, but occasionally with Aiden Ford as well. A multitude of threesomes are available either in variations of the main four-person team or taking two of them and bringing in Elizabeth, Carson Beckett or one of the secondary characters.

• Three is Better: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard/Carson Beckett, ^{Archived version}, [[Some The Shipper's Manifesto (2005)

Minor Characters

As SGA grew in popularity, like any fandom, minor characters took on more importance. Zelenka was ever-present in fanfiction as a quasi-matchmaker and facilitator with a word of well-timed advice, leading to the tongue-in-cheek Zelenkamatch.com comic. Lorne has his own following and at the time badly needed a first name (fanfic writers have him as Nick, Marc, Evan…). Caldwell has been slowly less demonized, while Cadman ^{[Dead link]}, given she had appeared in only two episodes, is surprisingly popular. There was much speculation about Jeannie prior to season three's "McKay & Mrs. Miller" (older sister? younger sister? reason for the split?). She was quickly moved into the fanfiction universe with a corner penthouse apartment, frequently appearing in Rodney stories that takes place on Earth.

Crossgender

In the world of alternate sexuality, playful crossgendered stories like 2005's It Stops Being Funny At Skirts (where John is turned into a girl and very upset about it) gave way to more serious takes on gender-benders. Instead of light-hearted comedy, they tackled the struggles and gender confusion of a John, Ronon, and Teyla temporarily switched into female versions of themselves; a Rodney and Cadman who've been switched into each other's bodies and have to accept that they can't change back; and a John recovering from very severe torture in fics such as You're Pretty Good-Looking (For A Girl), Second Skin (dead link), Ardhanarishvara, and Like Heisenberg Looking In, Uncertain,

The Lure of the Meme That Ate Fandom: "Five Things"

Rounding out the year was the pervasive and irresistible Five Things meme, with such titles as Five Impossible Things Rodney Did Before Breakfast and Five Ancient Devices They Really Shouldn't Have Initialized and Five People John Slept With After Leaving Atlantis (dead link). So many authors participated in the addictive meme that it could likely be used as a fandom census.

Effect of Canon on Fanfiction

As a result of contact with home, the desperate darkness of 2005's season one fanfiction (Exigencies (dead link), The Taste Of Apples) disappeared since the expedition was no longer trapped. But some of the carefree silliness or "crack!fics" (penguin fics (dead link) popularized by March of the Penguins, the gleeful madness of Pegasus B, 2005's infamous Harlequin Challenge) also dispersed once the expedition was more closely tied to the "real" world of Stargate Command.

Feelings on this trend differ, however. For some, crackfic was still going strong. Meira C., for example, wrote Zootopia, which was an animal transformation story with Elizabeth Weir/Stephen Caldwell UST. Arduinna's Candygram added whimsy to the team, in a story where John, Rodney, Ronon and a Wraith are turned into beanie babies, while skoosiepants's Once Upon a Furry Octopus series made the fandom collectively grin with its tale of a young furry octopus that steals Rodney's pens. Even McKay/Sheppard has its fantastical elements that year, such as Human Enough , where John was born a centaur. So some fans feel that it's difficult to say that the crackfic really lessened even after Atlantis came in contact with earth.

Alternate Universes

Absurd crack!fics (in which, say, Rodney is turned into a 6" dinosaur) for which the SGA fandom had grown famous gave way to long, richly developed and realistic "alternate universes" or AUs, with Stargate characters taken out of the SGA world and dropped into entirely different circumstances. Slash writers, previously able to blithely ignore "don't ask, don't tell" when the Atlantis team was cut off from the military, were suddenly forced to address military regs, or at least give them a nod.

Taking the Military Seriously

For slash stories set in Atlantis, writers began to deal with military regulations head-on in stories such as Scenes From A Lesser War and DADT, Damyata, Damyadvam, giving slash romances a serious edge. SGA slash writers still have more latitude than SG-1 slash writers because of the iconoclastic personalities of John and Rodney, the physical distance between Atlantis and Earth, and slashers' widespread belief Elizabeth would gladly cover for gay soldiers.

Focus of Discussions About Race

• The Stargate Atlantis Barista Discussion and the story Buffalo Wings (Stargate Atlantis story) (March 2007)
• SGA Meta: As the bowl of petunias said, "Oh no, not again.", ^{Archived version}, by telesilla (March 2007)
• belated thoughts on race and the fannish "utopia", ^{Archived version} by Lila Futuransky (May 2007)

Remix Culture

There was some debate in SGA fandom in 2006 about when and where it was appropriate to write remixes (authorized and unauthorized) of other people's stories. While most fans agreed that crediting was essential, there was debate about whether or not fans needed permission/authorization to do so.

Two notable sites of conflict were Helenish's unauthorized remix Responsefic of Xanthe's BDSM stories Coming Home and Take Clothes Off As Directed (discussed below in "Alternative Sexualities"), and The Mission Report Challenge on sga_flashfic, in which participants were invited to write responses based on other people's stories. The ensuing outcry caused moderator Speranza to revise the terms of the challenge to allow for an opt-in, opt-out policy, while claiming to be "philosophically committed to the idea that people have the right to make art based on other art provided that due credit is given the original artist".

Effect of Current Events on Fandom

The second half of season two focused on the ethical mistakes and bad moves of the Atlantis team in episodes like "Trinity," "Michael," and the season finale, "Allies." Many fans were outraged and frustrated with their un-heroic heroes, while others loved the moral complexity that echoed the growing cynicism and sliding support for America's Iraq war. (The Stargate franchise has always borrowed themes from current events.) Either way, fans felt it was an open question whether the expedition and Earth even deserved Atlantis.

It's unusual to have one story utterly dominate a fandom, but without question the story of the year was Synecdochic's Freedom's Just Another Name For Nothing Left To Lose. Posted when the fandom's frustration with their tarnished heroes was at its peak, it resonated not only as an excellent story in its own right, but also because it dealt with the mistakes of Atlantis team, what they learned, the shaky ethics of Earth (in the form of the NID), and it took Atlantis away from our side, beginning as it does after the Atlantis team's return to our galaxy.

The comedic take on this feeling was the smirking belief that the Atlantis team must be made up of people the SGC wanted to be rid of, i.e., "Stargate Atlantis: Saving the galaxy by accident since 2004." d's A Team Is Borne sums up the sentiment, where Lorne is sent to the Pegasus galaxy for blowing up valuable artifacts ("I'm being promoted to Atlantis." - "Sure, let's call it that.") and Elizabeth fails the "Great Big Idealist" test as she green-lights an obviously doomed plan.

Canon or Fanon

SGA fandom has a lot of fanon, some that is so common not all fans know or remember that they aren't canon facts. In some cases, the fanon arises to fill gaps left in the canon details. For example, while Stargate SG-1 uses specific numeric designators for teams, Atlantis doesn't follow that tradition, and instead the team leader's last name is the official designation (Lorne's team, Sheppard's team, etc.). Producer Joseph Mallozzi has jokingly called Sheppard's team the "First Atlantis Reconnaissance Team" as well as other names that make rude acronyms. Some fanfiction writers refer to the teams as SGA-1 or AR-1, but the show canon never used either designation.

When a team uses a jumper, then the jumper's designation is used (Jumper One is most frequently used by Sheppard's team).

Fanon can vary from one part of fandom to another, and some bits are more commonly seen than others. Common SGA fanon includes:

• Zelenka owns and operates a still
• Sheppard hates doing his paperwork and often foists it off on Lorne
• Sheppard has an office but doesn't use it, or doesn't know where it is
• The city is either sentient or semi-sentient
• Elizabeth goes out onto the balcony when she doesn't want to be disturbed
• The city runs out of coffee frequently, causing lots of arguments
• Dr. Parrish's first name is David
• Laura Cadman is not merely a demolitions expert, she really loves explosions
• Elizabeth and Teyla get together to drink tea
• There are regular movie nights
• Elizabeth often works through her meals and has to be reminded to eat
• The picture on the nightstand in Sheppard's quarters is of him with his grandfather

The End of the Canon Line

The end of the aired show was a sad thing for many fans, but not all of them. Fanworks and community to the rescue!:

So, regarding the canceling of SGA... I've found that I'm strangely unperturbed. And before you all throw things at me, hear me out: I have drunk the koolaid, enjoy the hell out of our wonderfully queered scifi series, and am going to really miss having new excuses to see those beautiful, snarky, hilariously dysfunctional people re-imperiled together on a regular basis. But the thing is: I didn't get into this fandom for the show, I got into this fandom for the fandom. The writing, vidding, fanart, and squee you all produced had me hook, line, and sinker months before I ever finished an episode, let alone an entire season. And when the show hits the nail on the head the most? Those are the episodes where I think, Wow, it's like they're cribbing off the good fanfic.

The sheer creative energy, the collaboration, the amazing frequency with which you people take the crackiest cliches and make something throat-grabbingly real out of them: that's why I'm here. So the closing of the canon can't manage to bother me yet (though I'm sure it will as the deadline creeps up) because my investment isn't in what they make, it's in what you make. It's in what we, collectively, make together. And maybe this is denial talking, but I can't believe that the day the show ends, you're all going to pack up your toys and go home. I accept intellectually that eventually, this fandom like all others will start to disperse, and that it'll happen sooner for the canceling of the series. I hope like hell that the new fandoms that crop up to fill its place will entice enough of our collective interest that I get to continue to share a sandbox (or sandboxes!) with the rest of you. Still, I am wholeheartedly convinced that this party ain't gonna stop the moment the management yanks the plug out of the jukebox.

We've got ourselves a huge host of homemade instruments (hell, I think the Victorverse proves we've got a world-class underground Philharmonic). Let's bust them the fuck out and dance till we can't dance no more.

Fanworks

Fanzines

While Stargate Atlantis is mainly an online fandom, a few fanzines are still being produced.

Examples:

• 

  Jumper,
  a gen anthology

• 

  Critias,
  a gen anthology

• 

  Undercurrents,
  a slash anthology

• 

  Surfacing,
  a slash anthology

• 

  Shades of Grey,
  a gen novel

See List of Stargate Atlantis Fanzines for a complete list of SGA zines and Category:Stargate Atlantis Zines for an index of SGA zine pages and zine art on Fanlore.

Fanfic

See also Category:Stargate Atlantis Fanfiction

fanfiction cover for the prison AU Crimes Against Humanity

Fanfiction for SGA is highly diverse, with almost every imaginable pairing represented and every genre enjoying some level of popularity. Pairing-specific communities and groups are usually the best source for fanfiction about characters, though some individual characters have stronger followings as well. Gen, het, slash, femslash, threesomes, and moresomes or OT4s are all represented in the fandom. On LiveJournal the sga_newsletter and sga_noticeboard are two of the most central spaces for locating fanfiction. Additional resources are listed below under "Archives."

Gen fic often centers around the main team of Sheppard, McKay, Teyla and Ronon (or Ford) as most episodes followed that pattern. OT4 is a reference to fic about these four characters involved in an intimate relationship, though threesomes with various groupings of both the four teammates or some of them plus other characters are very common.

McKay/Sheppard is the dominant force in m/m slash fiction, though other pairings may be found. Many of the trends in overall SGA fanfiction are found in McShep fic.

Popular Story Tropes

• SGA fandom is one of the homes of many Five Things stories. The idea was included as one of the challenges at SGA Flashfic.
• Genderswap is a common trope in the fandom. Rodney's canon first name of Meredith (a man's name in many parts of the world) led many authors to write Rodney as a woman named Meredith, and stories with John as a woman are also common.
• AU which cast the characters in contemporary or historical Earth-based settings or alternate realities are popular, as are crack AUs where the characters are in a variety of other times and places or even turned into inanimate objects. (see List of Stargate Atlantis Alternate Universes)
• Anthropomorfic

Example Fanfic

• Across State Lines by bluflamingo - M/M
• Beware Goa'ulds Bearing Gifts by Pink Rabbit Productions - Gen
• Cleansing by nemoinis - femslash
• Defining Dissolution by Regann (John/Rodney)
• Forward Momentum by Kageygirl (John/Rodney)
• Friendly Competition by siegeofangels (gen)
• Gifts Unasked For by docmichelle (John/Rodney/Teyla)
• Hockey Night in Atlantis by Canadian Snoopy (slash, crackfic)
• The Homecoming King by zeplum (Elizabeth Weir/Evan Lorne) (2005)
• Hospitality by kbk (darkfic) (2005)
• Ichor by Lobelia (John/Wraith) (2008)
• Not a Threat (but not exactly human) by Neery (gen)
• Rosencranz and Gildenstern by Wintertime (gen) (2006)
• Unerring Complexities of the Human Psyche by azure horizon (gen) (2011)

Fanart

Missed the Saturday Dance (2006), multimedia installation

SGA is also known for the diversity and sophistication of its fanart in terms of both style and of media. Styles range from cartoon-type line drawings to more realistic chalk or oil on canvas.

Many SGA artists work in more than one medium, and many of SGA's challenge communities are open to all forms of art, so there's a lot of collaboration, experimentation, and playfulness, as well experimentation with multimedia fanworks.

Examples of multimedia fanart include Zoetrope's Missed the Saturday Dance, Newkidfan's Ambushed, Mamoru22's Scrapbook of my Life, and Bootleg: The Best of the Puddlejumpers.

Comic book or illustrated fan fiction stories include such diverse offerings as moonloon and spaggel's Twenty Four Hours With A Rodneysaur , Lenkti's Never Should Do , Astridv's Creature (Double) Feature , Zelenkamatch.com by LillyJK and Newkidfan , and A Bed Too Small by liketheriver

There are many SGA communities that encourage artmaking, including the LJ communities Artword and paintedspires. SGA_Flashfic also receives art submissions, such as The Pegasus Tiniesfor the Ways to Die challenge. Starting in 2010, the SGA Reverse Bang offers an annual challenge where artists' work is the inspiration for an accompanying story, rather than the other way around.

Podfic

podbook cover of the Written by the Victors podfic (2007).

SGA fandom was at its most active during the period when podfic was becoming popular in the mid 2000s; the timing may be part of why SGA became a major podfic fandom. A livejournal community, sgapodfic, was created in 2006, and SGA was one of the first and largest fandoms hosted on the multifandom Audiofic Archive. From 2008 to 2016, the Amplificathon challenge listed SGA as one of the most popular podfic fandoms on the archive.

As of 2023, the Audiofic Archive hosts 1,223 SGA podfics. AO3 has over 600.

SGA fandom also produced an early and unusually ambitious multi-voice podfic, Written by the Victors. 36 speakers from several countries read parts of the script, which was then collected, produced and edited into a remarkably seamless whole by Lim. The resulting podfic is almost five and a half hours long.

Vids

See also Stargate Atlantis Vids and the Category:Stargate Atlantis Vids

Vids in SGA fandom run the gamut, from joyfully absurd looks at canon, like Another Sunday by Jescaflowne, to critical assessments of the characters' actions like yevgenie's Open Secrets of the Pegasus Galaxy, to vids that break the fourth wall like Mamoru22's Cartoon Heroes, to metavids such as Speranza's Supersmart, and everything in between. Because so many SGA vids are unusually effects-driven, with a lot of created footage or highly worked footage, often there are some who say they aren't vids at all, but visual fanart. Others say SGA's just cutting edge--or just unusually prone to breaking the rules.

• Two Worlds

Other

Other kinds of fanworks include audiofics; fanart arts/crafts such as needlework, origami, and at least one mobile; fan films and everything in between. Stargate Atlantis: A Mini Adventure by fraggledragon [1] for example is the First Prize Winner of the Stargate Atlantis McKay contest 2007 in the category "Animation".

Additional examples of different kinds of fanworks:

• Stargate Fancast -- a fan podcast of SA and SG-1

Awards

example of a McShep Award banner 2008

Stargate Fan Awards 2008 banner

2007 Nominee banner

• Skiffy Award - a Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis award that was awarded in 2007 and 2008.
• Stargate Fan Awards - started out in 2001 as a Stargate SG-1 Fan Award that became the largest annual awards event in the Stargate fandom and in later years included Stargate Atlantis.
• McKay/Sheppard Fan Awards - annual awards in Stargate Atlantis fandom for McKay/Sheppard fanfiction, fanart and vids with multiple categories. (2005-2008)
• Isis Awards - founded as a Stargate SG-1 award in 2005 it included Stargate Atlantis from 2006 onward. The award focuses on het fiction.
• Stargate Music Video Awards - annual awards for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis vids (2002-2008)
• Stargate Atlantis Big Bang Site warehouses 2007 2008 and 2009.
  

Archives

Heliopolis is one of the oldest Stargate SG-1 archives; it was founded in 1998. In August 2004 it opened a new section for Stargate Atlantis fanfiction. Due to its history -- as of December 15, 1998 Heliopolis no longer accepted slash material as per an agreement with Area 52 -- the Atlantis section of the archive is only for gen and het material, as of April 2011 hosting circa 220 stories. The Stargate slash archive Area 52: The HKH Standard in turn accepted SGA slash and femslash and hosts more than 2,000 SGA stories. Other Stargate archives, such as Wormhole Crossing (crossovers) and Stargatefan.com (gen fanfic), include both SG-1 and SGA fic as well.

On November 9, 2004, Leah and Alyse launched Wraithbait, an SGA-only archive. It started out as a slash archive due to its affiliation with the Wraithbait mailing list for SGA slash but was open to gen, het, and slash from its inception. Wraithbait is the main Stargate Atlantis archive, hosting almost 9,000 stories as of April 2011.

In addition to Wraithbait there is Atlantica, another SGA-only archive for fanfiction of all genres. It opened December 1, 2004, and as of April 2011 hosts more than 1,300 stories. The Jumper Bay is another SGA-only archive; it allows only gen stories. It opened in May 2006 and as of April 2011 hosts 650 stories. Other archives include McWeir (Weir/McKay Fanfiction), GateWorld Fan Fiction archive for the GateWorld fansite and Atlantis: Revolutions which is actually open to fic from all the Stargate franchises.

In the last years, AO3 has become the main archive for Stargate Atlantis fanfiction.

Other than archives, the LiveJournal nature of SGA slash fandom demanded a different kind of structure and Crossroads, the Stargate Atlantis Slash Index, is the answer to that. The site is not an archive but an index, and indexes all SGA slash fiction by pairing and theme. As of April 2011, it links to more than 6,000 slash, femslash, and multi stories.

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  Wraithbait (slash, gen, het)

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  Crossroads (slash index)

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  Atlantica (gen, het, slash)

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  Heliopolis (gen, het)

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  Area 52: The HKH Standard (slash, femslash)

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  Wormhole Crossing (crossover)

Fansites

• Baal Argento (2005) - personal Spanish-language fansite for SG-1 and SGA.

Meta/Further Reading

• The SGA Project 2006, aka Flavor of the Year by Icarus ("The goal: Give readers a taste of 2006 Stargate fandom, provide a rec-list with context, a description of intertexts, and explanation. ... Well. More or less. I mean, how do you trace the connections between over 2,000 writers and 7,000 stories?") (2006)
• The Angry Black Woman's TV Corner. Stargate: Atlantis and why I hate it. 25 August 2007. (Accessed October 12, 2008)
• Atlantis meta: time to stop and think about things by liviapenn (2007)
• A Genderfuck Reader in SGA by cupidsbow (2007)
• "Anyone who had a heart..." by julad (2005)
• Lemmings in Fandom SGA , post at Journal Fen (Joseph Mallozzi, producer of SGA calls fans lemmings) (January 16, 2007)

Resources

• Stargate Compendium by Morjana
• Stargate Wiki (canon resource)
• Stargate Wiki at Wikia (canon resource)
• Stargate Atlantis overview at Wikipedia (canon resource)
• Arduinna's Stargate Handbook (canon resource)
• Gateworld (canon, spoilers, industry news)
• Stargate: Atlantis - A Brief Introduction to the Show Early 2005 SGA overview at Crack Van (canon and fandom resource)
• Newbie Guide to SGA on LiveJournal 2007 list of SGA livejournal communities (fandom resource)
• (Newer) SGA fic readers guide by skaredykat. Includes links to primers and meta; reclists, reccers/reviewers, and recs; themed lists; challenge communities; archives; ficfinding resources; and information useful to readers newer to fandom. Proportion of McShep to non-McShep resources is about 60/40. Created February 2010, regularly updated. (fandom resource)
• GateWorld - now has links to all the episode transcripts on the Wayback machine.

See Also

• List of Stargate Atlantis Challenges
• List of Stargate Atlantis Fanzines
• List of Stargate Atlantis Lists and Communities
• List of Stargate Atlantis Pairing Names
• Timeline of Stargate Atlantis Fandom