SGA The Shrine

SGA The Shrine

I’d heard a lot about this episode and I finally got there. I think I must have abandoned SGA before I got to this point during the original run because I would have remembered an episode that had me crying almost the entire time.

I wish that instead of getting rid of so much of the main cast and replacing them with other characters who didn't add much besides unnecessary bureaucratical drama or comphet romantic side plots, the showrunners had kept the original cast and focused on giving the team solid, emotional stories.

The Shrine, like S2E4 Duet and S4E1 Adrift, grapples with issues of identity and agency, further exploring what happens when you lose those things.

As McKay loses the mental capabilities he so prides himself on, his entire personality changes. He’s painfully aware of his decline and he clings to Sheppard, even going to his room in the middle of the night for comfort. He grieves himself and doesn’t want to be seen or remembered as the person he will become, trying to say goodbye in advance. Eventually, he's bedridden and barely able to make conversation.

And John Sheppard, the man who refused to discuss McKay's potential eulogy in S3E14 Tao of Rodney and refused to say goodbye earlier in this episode, is at McKay's bedside. There's no suicide run for him to make, no Genii to kill, no prisoner to talk into self-sacrifice to guarantee the safety of someone he loves. For the first time, we see him near tears.

If you got enough money to live happily and comfortably for the rest of your life, but everyone who saw you immediately knew what fandom you are in and understood what that means, would you take it?

me: i gotta be careful i don't want to get TOO into spn and destiel and then lose all sense of reality like some weirdos.

misha collins: castiel has appeared to me in my carpeting.

Both of them deserve the world and more. Both of them believe themselves to have messed up beyond repair resulting in self hatered. Both of them believe their partner deserves the world and will try to give it to them a million times over.