Hindsight (Stargate Atlantis story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Hindsight
Author(s):	Rageprufrock
Date(s):	2005
Length:	23,493 words
Genre(s):	Earth AU, slash
Fandom(s):	Stargate Atlantis
Relationship(s):
External Links:	Hindsight (Glitterati) Hindsight (AO3)
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Hindsight is a popular John/Rodney AU written by Rageprufrock in which John Sheppard did not join the air force due to diabetes and instead became an FBI agent. He meets Rodney, whose canon backstory remains the same, over a case. The story is set before and during the Atlantis mission.

It has been reported that Hindsight was written for the Harlequin challenge on SGA Flashfic^{[citation needed]}, though the only story by rageprufrock actually posted to the community for the challenge was "He's Having Her Baby".

The story was one of many, many John/Rodney AUs where the fic writer gives one or both characters a different job. The Giant McShep AU List has 1,099 entries and counting, several of which feature John as an FBI agent; Hindsight appears to be the earliest.

Zoetrope made a fic trailer for the story, and Dr_Fumbles_McStupid made a podfic of it.

Although the story has been recced by many fans, it initially generated some debate on LiveJournal concerning the accuracy of Rageprufrock's characterization of Rodney McKay. See The 2005 Discussion at The Cutting Board. The reaction may have been due to Rodney's status as a BSO in SGA fandom.

DVD Commentaries

In her DVD Commentary of the story, Rageprufrock wrote,

A number of people take issue with this story, claiming that Rodney is reduced to his most loud and obnoxious traits--to which I say: well--yeah. Firstly, I think it's difficult to argue that based on canon, Rodney is anything but loud and obnoxious, and if Rodney needs to be romanticized to be palatable, I think it does the character great injustice. Part of the reason Rodney's so dear to me is that he's so utterly unendearing--and yet. And yet. So Rodney's loud and obnoxious, and unless you're looking, you don't see beyond it, and frankly, John and Rodney don't know each other well enough yet for John to look for these things. More than that, it's Rodney's actions which speak far more loudly than anything he babbles, and in these, he's always exactly in stride with the emotional development of this story.

summertea posted a DVD commentary as part of the DVD Commentary Challenge in 2007.

Recs and Reviews

Unknown Date

This fandom is ruining my reputation -- I keep reccing slash. But damn, this is just an amazing AU, with a John Sheppard who is just like the John we know, with one difference that changes everything. Rodney, of course, is supremely Rodney -- with one difference. Slow and serious and funny in the best possible ways, and by the end of it, you will not only believe, you will beg for more.

2005

I can rave, but I can't possibly rave enough. It's a pre-show AU that ends in, well, not quite the same place where the canon starts. But close. Close enough, anyway, that your imagination can take things from there, though I really hope Pru will take over on that point pretty damn soon. So my point is, this is an AU history, which is really not that easy, folks. And, and - I mean, this is perfectly John, with just one tiny (but important) difference, and also so totally Rodney that I was forced to make undignified noises when I first read it.

They are so totally in character and the story has plot and relationship angst and one of the best happily ever after endings ever in the history of the world.

This is the kind of AU that changes one thing, just one small, maybe trivial thing, and then allows the universe to unfold accordingly. The Rodney here is a little shrill, but John is John: wanting the same things, believing the same things, working for the same things—or at least doing his damnedest in trying.

This one as been rec'd by everyone with access to a computer, but that ought to tell you something. Otherwise known as 'The FBI AU', Agent Sheppard is assigned to the case when somebody tries to kill Rodney. Spot on characterization and a solid plot make this story damn near perfect.

The 2005 Discussion at The Cutting Board

A discussion of the fic was held at a then-new SGA livejournal community, The Cutting Board where it generated 85 comments.

This discussion caused wank when Rageprufrock, the story's author, complained about the community.

An excerpt of Rageprufrock's comment was posted at Metafandom: "Breaking the seal--fandom style. There's absolutely no mature way to put this, so I'm going to table this in terms that appealed to me between the ages of three and forever: Ow! Ow! I'm breaking my silence. // Nothing inspires a childish fit of rage faster than seeing something crafted over the period of weeks get torn to tiny, uninspired pieces, taken out of context, mauled by readers, and picked at--and have to gloss it over with a shiny, mature veneer. Outside, I'm holding my chin up high, smiling, and glowing in the Southern sun, and inside my head is a fucking ACDC concert: I'm busting eardrums and breaking expensive machinery."

The original post on LiveJournal has been deleted. It can be read using these links: archive link to LJ and archive link to Dreamwidth. Below are some quotes from that original discussion at The Cutting Board.

From the initial post:

[the moonmoth]: The story is an AU, in which John never joined the Air Force, becoming instead an FBI agent. Rodney's history up to the point where the story begins seems unchanged. Then one day in Colorado, Rodney discovers a bomb in his car, and John is subsequently called to the scene. That's how they meet, and the story goes from there.

The thing about AU's that has always attracted my interest is the characterisations. They really need to be spot-on if the characters are to be removed from the familiarity of their usual surroundings. On the first read, my opinion was that Pru had wholeheartedly succeeded in this. On the second read, I tried to be a bit more critical.

John's character was quite different to the John we see in canon in several ways. He seemed more open, less self-contained, and while he does work long hours and live alone, you get the sense that it's less of a choice on his part -- not something he seeks out, but something that just is, because of the demands his job puts on him. Contrast this with the canon John, who liked the solitude of Antarctica, and had to think long and hard before giving that up.

Perhaps because of this unusual openness to his character, or perhaps because the story is from his POV and we thus get a peak into his head, he also seems to possess a vulnerability that we just don't see, or haven't yet seen, from canon John. This is most obvious in the scene with Francesca (a kidnapped girl he's been searching for but finds too late) and his subsequent reaction to her death, but also in his relationship with Rodney. Despite telling himself that he isn't gay, that he isn't really interested in Rodney and is just using him, he shows a remarkable passiveness in allowing Rodney to muscle him around, take care of him, and in the end almost falls into the relationship without meaning to. This highlights his loneliness, his need for human contact and affection, and leads me to see him as a younger, less hardened version of canon John (I even began to picture him as Joe Flanigan's part in 'Family Portrait').

In fact, this makes sense in the context of this universe. John dearly wanted to join the Air Force and become a pilot, but was disqualified at birth by a medical condition. Despite the obvious satisfaction he takes in his job, there's always the sense of melancholy that he couldn't follow his dreams:

He smoothes a hand over his face and gets distracted when he hears a hum outside the window, and when he turns, he sees a Blackhawk helicopter crawling across the sky, and he cannot, cannot look away.

He grew up on military bases but has had no military training. He deals with rapes and kidnappings and sometimes-gruesome murders, but he's never been to war. Obviously some innate compulsion to save lives remains intact, but he's gone through his career without the desperate trauma of full-scale battle. He does have to deal with some horrific things, but at the end of the day he can return to his nice house in quiet suburbia and work through it all at his own pace. There's no indication that he's ever lost people he's close to in his line of work.

Rodney, however, has led his life exactly the way we've seen it in canon, right up until that fateful morning with the bomb. Presumably he's not long returned from Siberia, and is now working in Cheyenne Mountain on the preliminaries for the Atlantis expedition. So his character should be akin to the Rodney McKay we first met in SG-1, previous to his posting to Antarctica. It more or less is -- snarky, obnoxious, holier-than-thou. However, I found myself pausing to think more than a couple of times.

The first thing that struck me was the use of the word 'yell'. Rodney 'yells' a lot in this story. Admittedly, I haven't seen his SG-1 episodes in a while, but whilst he was smug and arrogant and annoying, I don't remember him being particularly belligerent or neurotic. He was quite self-contained, expressing his panic in a very reasonable way, embracing the sense of inevitable doom-and-gloom with surprisingly little fuss. (My memory, of course, could be faulty -- please do correct me if I'm wrong about this). It was only later, on Atlantis where it was his and his team's lives on the line that he really began to show the neuroticism, raise his voice, gesticulate wildly. Arguably, this is the first time that he ever really understood the responsibility he held -- what it would mean for someone to die because he couldn't find the right solution. Contrast this with his dismissive attitude to Teal'c's situation in his very first appearance in the 'gateverse, and you can really see the character growth that he's undergone.

However, he hasn't undergone it yet. But you wouldn't know it from this story. This is very much a post-Atlantis Rodney in a pre-Atlantis setting. Bit of an anachronism, but I actually don't mind it too much. It works well enough in the early scenes, setting up a good dynamic between Rodney and John, and beyond that there's enough subtlety and skill in the writing that I can believe their relationship is having a significant impact on his behaviour.

That said, the particular characterisations for both Rodney and John fit very well together, and whilst it's never explained explicitly, you can really see what it is about each of them that leads them to need the other so much. Despite the nitpicks and a couple of inconsistencies in some of the details, it's that that makes this story such a good read, and one that holds up well to re-reading.

[comment by rivier]: I'm glad you chose this story - someone else on my flist asked me to read it the other day, because she had some reservations and wanted to triangulate her concerns.

It's interesting: I definitely agree with your first comment - that an AU works if the characters are true to themselves, so that no matter what the background, the people in the foreground will need to be recognisably the John Sheppard and Rodney McKay of Stargate: Atlantis.

And I absolutely didn't think this story managed that at all.

For me, the Sheppard of Hindsight is less dissimilar to the Sheppard of Atlantis than the two Rodneys. But in part, that's because both Sheppards are cyphers. So the lazy, superficial all-purpose charm made sense, but I didn't understand why Sheppard would have chosen this career - one that forces him both to see the worst of humankind, to empathise with it, and to be left largely impotent much of the time, to right society's wrongs. He also seemed extremely passive about Rodney's encroachment into his life. The Sheppard of the show seems very able to set his own boudaries, keep people at arms-length - in short, be less of a girl, frankly.

I didn't recognise this Rodney at all. Worse, it seemed to me that this was an absolute distillation of a certain fanon cliche version of McKay. The McKay of Hindsight never, ever stops loudly and pathetically complaining, or whining, or bragging, or bitching the world out. He pretty much hates or despises everyone, and they hate and despise him back with equal ferocity.

I couldn't understand why a man so consumed with anger and contempt would try and force his way into a relationship with a total stranger - and worse, why Sheppard would let himself be played into that relationship, especially when the story sets out with him ostensibly heterosexual. This McKay was something of an obsessive bunny-boiler: I absolutely can't think of anything from the show that supports the idea of McKay calling Sheppard up umpteen times a day, inviting himself into someone else's life, trying to comandeer them. He's way more self-contained than that, by necessity.

[scrollgirl]: I think I have to agree with the_moonmoth regarding Rodney's characterisation. Yeah, he's a little more more in this story than in canon. But while I can understand the Rodney of "Hindsight" coming across on first, second, and third glance as belligerent and abrasive, I think there's an underlying compassionate side to him. It's clear he cares a lot about John as a person. In the beginning he does bulldoze John into a relationship, but later he doesn't call John up a dozen times a day to simply be oblivious and demanding, but to be the person who gets John out of his own head space. He makes sure John eats and works fewer hours and gets enough sleep. There's a deliberate choice there to be a comfort to John, in his own unique Rodney McKay way.

I agree with you that Rodney on the show is more self-contained than we see in the fic, but like you say, perhaps he's self-contained by necessity. The way Rodney meets John here is very different from their canon meeting. Here, their meeting is all about Rodney, his car, the bomb. Rodney quickly comes to view John as "his" too. On the show, their meeting is about John, science, and the mission. Their relationship is an ongoing professional one that deepens into friendship, they live in close quarters with 200 other people, they're never off the clock. In the fic, their professional connection is over with quickly, and Rodney is free to pursue his interest. Maybe that's enough to fork their relationship off on a different path?

But then I'm such a fan of AUs that I'll forgive what others might consider OOCness. *g*

[miriam heddy]: when we speak of characterisations among fan writers or readers, we often do compare a story like "Hindsight" to that thing we call "canon" (as if that thing "canon" is at all coherent). Canon, of course, is the product of a community effort--multiple writers and directors and editors, etc., with the only consistent thing being the actor himself (who, being human, is really no more consistent than any of the rest of us). "Hindsight" was the product of a single author (which might seem to make it necessarily more coherent, except that it's also the product of a community's collective interpretation of the canonical community's production).

In sum, we have a mess, which is not at all a bad thing, except when you want to feel you can discern a unified, sensible reading out of the mess *g*.

It's also worth noticing that Rodney has been many things in canon, both within a single episodes and across the seasons so far. Being a TV character and not a person, Rodney's fragmented, serving a variety of plot and genre needs (deux ex Rodney, comic relief, male bonding partner for John, etc.).

A more generous way to think about canon might well be to think about how we, as individuals, are many things to many people--rather than being a single, consistent self. We have public and private selves, professional and personal selves, etc. A TV character is like a person, only more oniony (sorry, late-night metaphor, though you can see why cutting through it all might lead to tears).

An AU seems to highlight this fragmenting of canon, maybe moreso than any other kind of story. But I don't suppose that it's a problem limited to AUs.

[she tiger]:"When I saw the show (season 1) I was, "wow, Rodney's an asshole! I didn't realize that!" And that's where I go *blink*. I've seen that remark before, and I have a hard time understanding where people get that. Yes, Rodney is assholish at times. He's obnoxious and brash, and very often in your face...but an asshole? I don't get that at all. This is my problem with this story as well--though I enjoyed the story, Rodney isn't this frenetic and forceful when it comes to personal relations. We see on the show, from the very first episode, that he has quiet moments, small moments of caring and concern.

[sinden]: See, I saw this in a totally different light.

Like any AU it will always have things that make you go 'wtf and where did that polar bear come from?' if you look at it in the context of the show, but if you look at in the context of the AU, it's a whole other story [no pun intended]. I think that rageprufrock did an amazing job of encapsulating her AU and making everything work.

Maybe it's because I have a preference for layered storytelling that allows the reader to get what they want without being told everything and that I like a more, in my mind, canonically-based McKay -- I agree with isiscolo on this, McKay can be truly nasty when he puts his mind and mouth to it as well as all the other redeeming parts of his personality -- but the other thing that has to be remembered is that this is about Sheppard's POV.

He's not going to like McKay from the get go, but he's still oddly charmed and fascinated by him, by this man who can go through life insulting people and getting away with in a way that Sheppard never could.

We also aren't going to know what is going on in McKay's head because of the POV so it's his words and his actions that are the tell. And with McKay, the real truth is always in his actions, they say more than his words because -- let's face it -- McKay is seriously full of hot air and has a rather solid propensity for overstating the truth, especially in terms of its effect on him.

For me, rageprufrock gave him a shape that I could very easily identify, so I find your assertion of a one-dimensional characterisation rather boggling because it's not something I see at all. I truly loved Rodney in this and didn't see him as mockable at all, because he was quintessentially Rodney to me.

[wickedwords]: Oh, you made me think. How I hate that. *g*

I think that for me, I don't mind that the author starts with a season one Rodney. I think that that character is more familiar to fandom-at-large, and is a completely acceptable place to start. I didn't find his character or actions out of scope based on 'Rising' as the starting point; I was pretty much fine with all that.

I agree with you that this John is fanon John, primarily due to his passivity in their relationship. But it's within my three-degrees of canon for what I can accept as a version of John, and as it's an AU and she has a really good explanation for the changes in John's character (he's diabetic), I was quite happy to roll with it.

For me, the main hiccup came at the end. I loved the set up, the way the characters interacted, and the way the universe she created diverged from the canon universe; my problem is that when I read a story as a WIP, part of the fun is the whole 'what happens next' game. For me, I saw markers that the story would go longer -- Rodney went to Antarctica, and we know as fans of the show, that there is an Antarctica expedition, then the decision to go to Pegasus, then the trip back to home for everyone to say their goodbyes.

I wanted to see that goodbye.

Instead, the leaving for Antarctica and the leaving for Pegasus were joined into one thing with one goodbye; and that's the point, to me, of where this story should have ended. Unhappily, yes, but hey, it was true to the characters and the setting and so it would have worked for me. Because really, by that point, we are done with John's story.

So we needed a shift here -- in my collaborative WIP world, not the author's completed story world -- that would now show us Rodney's perspective and how John has changed him. They spend 10 months apart, and apparently the Rodney that returns is a lot nicer than the one that went, at least from what we see in the story. He's also ready to admit that John is important to him, and I, for one, would have liked to have seen how that change came about.

The other thing I wanted was that I wanted to see *how* John not being on the expedition changed things. I didn't buy that Atlantis wouldn't light up for anyone else, because I didn't get a chance to see it. They had Beckett and others on their team, people with the gene; why wouldn't they have become the focus for activating Atlantis.

And gene therapy? That still would happen. I don't see how not having John there would have changed that. That was the way I felt about a lot of stuff that was glossed over in that last section: there still would have been a rising, Sumner would still have gone through the gate, and the wraith would still have awakened. And I don't know how Rodney gets home from that.

So that's pretty much my quibbles. I loved the romance and relationship, but I had issues with the extrapolation of what would have happened if John wasn't on the team. Small things, I know.

[destina]: I'm very glad you posted about Hindsight; it's a terrific first-discussion story.

Right up front, I have to say that there were a couple of lines in this story that were laugh-out-loud funny, to me, in the good way. And a couple of things I found really insightful, about character. McKay's string theory model, the gift given in an attempt to get Sheppard to put out, was my favorite thing about the story. *g*

However...the characterizations in this story struck me as being over to the extreme edges of what's seen in canon for both Sheppard and McKay. I can see the Sheppard of canon in this story, if I squint -- laconic, laid back, easy-going. The Sheppard of Hindsight is incredibly passive, which is rather odd given his profession, and that turned me off. Even so, it's easier for me to buy an even more laid-back Sheppard than it is to see the extreme version of McKay.

When I watch the SG-1 ep in which McKay was first introduced, I see a one-dimensional obnoxious jerk who trampled every last nerve of everyone he interacted with. His meta-purpose there was to be fingernails on the chalkboard. But by the second episode in which he appeared, he had already started to take on three dimensions, including some vulnerability and a sense of his own limitations where science was concerned. This is why I don't quite buy Hindsight's strident, obnoxious, truly annoying McKay as being 'pre-Atlantis'. He's at the far edge of who McKay is -- he's a big ol' bundle of irritating.

Which brings me to what rivier said:

In making McKay nothing but an arrogant, needy, pushy, whingeing asshole, Hindsight destroyed any sense for me of understanding why Sheppard or anyone else would want to be within a thousand miles of this man.

This, more or less, is my primary problem with the story. I'm not able to see any defined connection between the two characters that explains why they even like each other. Why would someone like Sheppard, as portrayed in this story, be attracted to someone like this McKay? Yikes. More than that, I try to follow the whole McKay-as-pursuer thing here, and I just can't do it; this McKay hasn't the social skills to make it plausible.

I'm not fond of the softer, more wide-eyed, martyriffic McKay in SGA stories, either, but there is a balance that works for me somewhere in the middle. This story doesn't reach that balance, for me.

[thepouncer]: I read the entirety of this story this weekend, driving home from a weekend with friends. I was slightly hungover, so I don't know that all my critical faculties were engaged. I was so charmed by this version of John, and all the attendant health reasons that he hadn't joined the military, that I was able to overlook the McKay characterization issues mentioned above. For me, this John was living an empty life, and Rodney challenged him enough to engage him again, which was the basis for his turn to the gay side. I laughed out loud at a couple of points, because there were some hilarious lines sprinkled throughout. On a more practical note, I felt that McKay's military security clearance wouldn't have meant diddly to the FBI - interagency access is notoriously difficult to manage.

[engenda]: thoroughly enjoyed this AU, and I'm not one for AU's I generally find them less than satisfying. I adored Rodney in this fic, because it fit with the Rodney that I see on the screen. He's abrasive, loud, whining, opinionated, sarcastic, bombastic, caring, smart, supportive, funny, emotive and touching. I have to agree with sinden here, in that Rodney's all about the actions. It's what he does that's telling not what he says. And in this, he does a lot. He pursues John, a nervous, bumbling pursuit, but dogged. He sends John gifts with funny notes. He rings him to make sure he's okay. He takes him home and takes care of him. He challenges John mentally. There's something about Rodney that does attract John, maybe not physically in the first place, but it's there or John wouldn't have gone out with him at all. This is all before John actually admits to Rodney that he likes him, before Rodney leaves for Antarctica. John, is fairly passive in this fic, but not overly so. It's from his POV so by definition, it's going to be reactionary. He's responding to Rodney and his environment. He's still solitary, which I think was incredibly well done - he has this place where he's nested, he has the car but he doesn't have the people. He participates in that relationship, it's unexpected to him, but not grudging - if it were so, he wouldn't be in it.

[mmmchelle]: The first difficulty I had is with the death of John's mother. The author does a lovely job of showing it to us, of showing us how it affected John, but there is no payoff. The main story is a love story and the mother's death is never conncected to the love story. Had she shown us John talking to Rodney about his mother's death, I would have felt that it had a payoff, as it was I kept wondering when it was going to come up in the context of the relationship between John and Rodney and it never did.

The second difficulty I had is that the last third or so of the story is almost entirely exposition. John tells Rodney he isn't gay. They fight. They kiss. Then we're told that they kiss a lot more after that and eventually they have sex. Rodney asks John if he's sure, and that's it. After all of the build up I felt cheated. I wanted to know what made John decide he was ready for sex with Rodney. I wanted to know how he was feeling the first time they had sex. How did he feel seeing Rodney naked? How did he feel touching Rodney? I wanted to see Rodney's reaction when John said he wanted him. I wanted to know if Rodney was anxious or confident. I wanted to know what they said to one another and how they sounded saying it.

It wasn't just the sex that was given short shrift, either. There is an exposition description of them sharing post-coital confidences, but we didn't get to see it. I wanted to see it, to hear their words and see their expressions and reactions, to feel how hard or easy it was for them to share those things.

Because I didn't see those things, I wasn't entirely sure why John would choose Rodney over the woman he had moved in with. I hadn't fully seen John develop a deeper relationship with Rodney than he'd had with the various women who had moved in and out of his life.

Lastly, the pacing felt off. The last part of the story moved much faster than the first part, and less exposition would have helped with that.

Still, I enjoyed the story.

[dvslj]: A bit late to this discussion, but I had to drop my two cents.

Like I was telling Riv, I had some very mixed reactions to this story. There were things that I really loved about it and then there were things that ultimately left me a little confused.

I liked John in this story, though I did find him quite different to canon John, which I guess is fine because if characterization is to be fiddled with, an AU would be the place to do it. Rodney was the one I had a problem with. I just couldn't see what John's attraction to him was and where it came from. I don't know if that was intended as a peek into John not being able to make sense of the attraction himself, or if it was just the way Rodney was characterize, but it jolted me out of the fic a few times.

Because of that, I just wasn't feeling the connection I sometimes get when reading a story, and I took it to mean that, yeah, something was missing and not clicking for me. So, following from that, my problem was that the fic seemed universally loved, which made me wonder about my obviously subjective perceptions of the characters because clearly, I wasn't seeing the same thing as other readers.

Rodney has many facets, some more admirable than others and when I write about Rodney I have a very deep affection for his character. It's more than possible that this affection might cloud my perceptions and therefore affect the way I write/read/percieve him as a whole. I'm pretty sure that out of the four AU's I've written, someone out there probably thinks the characterizations are seriously whacked and for all I know, they might be write (I'd rather they weren't though).

I guess the way I see Rodney was ultimately very different from the one in this story and that kind of took away the enjoyment.

There's no doubt that Hindsight is a well-written, well structured, creative and enviable AU (though I think I would have preferred it without that last paragraph), but there was this one thing that took away from my enjoying it as much as I was at one point. I glimpsed the Rodney I liked a few times, but it wasn't enough.

I do appreciate it though for the fact that it made me question a lot of things about my own writing and fanon in general and I think any fic that challenges your thinking about something has something going for it.

[mythdfied]: I did like this AU, but it wasn't one of my favorites. That wasn't, however, due to the characterization. Like others who've commented, I thought John's characterization was very different from the John of Atlantis, but it wasn't a bad thing; I had to get used to it and once I did, I liked it and I could see how it happened. How a non-military John might have turned out a little differently. The subject matter was a little too rough for me. I don't deal well with things like the case John was working on and it got rather graphic, IMHO, too much for me to be able to reread it again. But that's just my personal bias and I thought the rest of the story was well done.

2006

This is one of the most influential AUs written in the fandom to date. Pru is another prolific, highly readable author.

2007

I could be wrong, but I think this is one of the first AUs in SGA fandom. John's an FBI agent, and Rodney still works for the SGC in Colorado.

2010

This is one of my favorite stories in the fandom, and is perhaps best read as a "what if"--what if John was diabetic and not able to be a pilot? The ending cinched it for me, but I won't give away why.

2012

Wow. This was incredible. I don't even like Stargate and I love this fic.

2013

i think this has to be one of the best SA series ever. i love it and wish it was a million times longer >o<

2014

That was fantastic. I was not expecting Atlantis in an FBI AU. And the plane part made me clap my hands and squeak like a seal. :-D

This was the first SGA fic I ever put into my "I am not going to let these people steal my favorites from me, so there" database of stories on my computer (where they are backed up and safe from people who purge their LJ accounts, the bastards). I am rereading it here because I just recced it on Slash World. I just want to say, thanks again for writing a story that made me laugh out loud and read parts to my kid (who thinks I am insane for liking slash fan fiction so much) and also had such a wonderful happy ending. The other stories in this series are great too, mind you, but this, this was a work of art.

This is another series that I didn't think I'd like in the beginning, but it somehow grew to be another favorite. I love the image of John as an FBI agent meeting the crazy Rodney under such *interesting* circumstances. John's being a little surprised by his attraction to Rodney and his own confused sexuality made sense to me, and I LOVED how this world managed to find it's way back to SGA. I'm glad poor Loretta survived the experience!

2015

Oh man, I haven't read this in forever!!

HOLDS. UP.

2016

That was absolutely perfect and beautiful. John being diabetic was a nice twist, and as I've just been reading another story with John as an FBI agent that fitted in nicely. Rodney's trip to Atlantis where it didn't wake up was an interesting concept.

2017

This is probably the 13th time I've read the Hindsight series. I'm not sure if I left kudos and comments before everything moved to AoOO. I hope I did. One thing I noticed this read thru is how few comments there are. This is a shame, as your stories are always beautifully crafted and always, always make me laugh and cry. No, really. ..that's a good thing!

So. I'm working my way thru all the stories posted here and I will comment and kudo each and every one. Just fair warning.

I love your John. He's real to me; as real as a fictional character can be, anyway. I feel his exhaustion. I feel his loneliness, even if he doesn't recognize it as such. So, so perfect. Theirs is such an unlikely yet wonderful love story that I am compelled to reread it over and over. (My husband is Air Force. He laughed and laughed at John's reaction to Rodney's gift of the plane. He said he'd totally turn gay for a Socata!)

Well done.

2018

An all time fave. Can't tell you how many times I've read this, but it's been long enough that I got to rediscover the delightful "hipster queer-identified vegan Buddhists" quip again. <3