Sheppard Moon by Tipper (T)

[sholio]

Rec Category: John Sheppard & Rodney McKay friendship
Pairing: none
Category: Atlantis, action/adventure, h/c, gen, Rodney McKay
Warning: none
Author on LJ: tipper_green
Author's Website: Tipper's Stargate Atlantis Fic
Link: Sheppard Moon

Why This Must Be Read: Tipper is definitely one of the grand masters of John-Rodney friendship stories. This long, plotty, tense story explores some of the emotional fallout from Doranda without falling into any of the "post-Trinity fic" traps, as the team (circa season two), subsequently joined by the Daedalus, explores an Ancient outpost located on a supposedly abandoned moon that is, of course, neither as abandoned nor as stable as the Ancient database would have led them to expect. As well as heart-pounding suspense and plenty of interesting character interaction for most of the cast including Caldwell, this story also contains one of my all-time-favorite scenes between Sheppard and McKay, which I still consider one of the best examples I've read of conveying powerful emotion in a subtle way, without overt "tells". (It's in chapter nineteen, in case you are curious!) This is novel-length gen fanfic at its finest.

Comments

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Excellent, I was just in the mood for something longer and gen. This gets bumped to the top of my to-read list. :)

[sholio]

I hope you like it! I highly recommend all of Tipper's stories; Failure to Communicate is actually the story that got me not just into the fandom, but into the show itself! (I read it when I'd only seen one episode of the show, and hadn't really liked it, but I loved the story; so between that story and some vids, I figured that I had to give the show another try, and, well, the rest is history ...)

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Failure to Communicate is actually the story that got me not just into the fandom, but into the show itself!

Heh, same here! :) FTC was one of the first few SGA fics I read, on the first night after I watched my first ep. And thus it was majorly responsible for sucking me into this fandom; by the time I was done with the story, I was hooked. (But I also really liked that first ep, Hide and Seek).

It says something about the quality of writing in a fandom, if one hasn't even read all the stories of their favorite writers because there's just so much...