First person to write a Professor Sheppard AU based on this photo wins a million bagillion dollars!

[trinityofone]

Actually, ANYONE who writes a Professor Sheppard AU based on this photo wins a million bagillion dollars a fic from me. Seriously.

Thanks to looking4tarzan for the link.

Comments

[dizzyditz.livejournal.com]

You are so freaking insane. I love you.

[shoemaster.livejournal.com]

There are tons of Rodney is a professor and John is a student fic, but how bout we see the reverse! Or John's the new guy and has to share office/lab space with Rodney.

Or something. But dear god, the bowtie.

[wychwood]

I saw that earlier :) But the sheer hideousness of the bowtie and the stupid background were just too much for me...

(I remember someone writing a high-school AU -thingie where they were teachers. Maths and Physics, I think. It may have been only a snippet, but it was cute.)

(now it'll turn out to be one of yours, or something *g*)

[aurora]

*keeps the window with this post open* I'm really curious about the responses.

I burst out laughing the first time I saw this pic and I still can't look at it with a straight face. It's a bow tie. Gah! *makes expressive hand gestures*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm 2000 words into a Professor Sheppard AU. Yay?

[avoteforla.livejournal.com]

Oh man, why is it so tempting? Why?

[rokeon.livejournal.com]

It even *looks* like a bad yearbook photo!

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Greek-style background!

*headdesk*

[mizz_destiny]

pimpage.
langford_u <<plenty of Professor Shep there you go.

[looking4tarzan.livejournal.com]

*sits and hums the indiana jones tune*

I really shouldn't be wondering to myself if those columns are Ionic or Doric (probably Ionic)


oh god......John as a archaeologist......he beats Mick the Dig and Phil anyway!! (er yeah Time Team)

oooooooooooooooh.......

Dr John Sheppard, has to go find this relic...and has to go through russia meeting this physicist Rodney McKay....who he argues with...but ends up bringin with him...and ends up shagging

can you imagine McKay running away from that big rolling boulder LMAO

AND NOW I'M LATE FOR THE PREMIERE OF MY OWN PLAY, OH MY GOD

[notpoetry.livejournal.com]

The first thing Rodney ever said to John was, "Oh my god, you're wearing a bowtie."

"I like it," John said, dropping his briefcase onto his desk. He thrust his hand out towards Rodney, and shoved his other hand into his pocket so that he wouldn't self-consciously touch his bowtie. "Doctor John Sheppard."

"Yes, the nameplate wasn't a clue, thank you." But Rodney shook his hand anyway, and John tried not to smile, because it really was true: the department secretary knew everything. Rodney was exactly what she'd told John to expect. "I'm Doctor McKay, technically Doctor cubed, whatever, you knew that. Seriously, a bowtie? They're going to eat you alive."

"Your tie has Einstein on it," John pointed out.

"Yeah, well." Rodney threw himself into his chair and crossed his arms. "Sharing an office wasn't in my contract," he muttered.

John dug his teeth into his lower lip to keep from laughing, and left to teach his class.

===

"They liked my bowtie," John said the next morning, and poured Rodney a cup of coffee. He looked like he needed it.

"By they you mean Laura Cadman, and oh my god don't put sugar in it, you godless heathen." Rodney snatched the mug out of John's hands and took a long sip.

John raised his eyebrows and allowed himself a moment to adjust his bowtie, because it had been only Laura Cadman, the pretty blonde who sat in the middle of the classroom and came up to him after class to tell him that he had a much nicer speaking voice than Doctor Sumner, and did he work in radio, and that's a very nice bowtie, Doctor Sheppard. "I still like it," John said, and fixed his own cup of coffee. With sugar. "Is that the Linux penguin on your tie?"

"You recognized it, don't make me shatter your geek cred." Rodney swallowed the rest of his coffee so fast it must have been painful, and set the cup down on his desk with a clack. "I have a class of idiot freshmen waiting for me. Are you sure you can't find your own office?"

"Positive," John said, but Rodney had already left.

===

"Nice tie," Rodney said a week later.

"I like it," John said, flipping it up to look at it. Einstein stuck his tongue out at him, upside-down. "Someone left it on my desk."

"Welcome to the school, or whatever." Rodney grabbed a stack of graded papers and left.

===

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

OMFG. Now I want someone to write Born Yesterday with him as William Holden and Rodney as Judy Holliday.

so this isn't exactly a story, but.

[someinstant.livejournal.com]

So, the thing is, faculty is supposed to provide some sort portrait to go up on the webpage, next to their CV and all the bragging rights bullshit, but John just can't be assed to actually find a damn picture.

(He thinks he probably has one of his old senior portraits from forever ago, one of the casual pose ones where he's leaning up against a fake brick wall in khakis and a polo shirt and incredibly stupid hair. His mom liked that one, until she realized there was a giant, incriminating lump in the vicinity of his left trouser pocket. It's just his calculator, but John's never bothered to tell anyone that. Made him real popular on yearbook signing day.)

(Additionally, John's not really sure why a picture's necessary. After all, the CV's the important part for prospective students, right?)

(What John doesn't get is that some faculty pages are essentially academic porn. I mean, when a CV is just that good-- and John's is, considering he won the MacArthur Fellowship two years ago-- it's nice to be able to get a look at the person whose brain just made you convulse.)

Anyway. John can't be bothered with the whole picture thing, so on Tuesday one of the dept. secretaries kidnaps him from his office (he was very busy. McKay had just taken his bishop.) and manhandles him into position in front of one of the inspirational posters in the grad student lounge.

(It used to say HONOR in big blue letters underneath the Corinthian columns, but someone took a Sharpie to it, and now it says HORROR, with little stick figures of undergrads being violently disembowled by righteous TAs with red pens. John thinks it's much more inspirational now.)

The secretary (Linda? Leena? Lorna?) tells him to step in front of that mess, shug, and hold still a minute. John really, really wants to cross his eyes or stick out his tongue, but Lisa-- Lisa, right-- would probably use her powers for evil and he'd never get the leftover cookies from lectures and job talks ever again.

(If John had stuck out his tongue for the photo, however, the program would have secured at least two more incoming PhD students next year. Both were frightened by the bowtie and serial-killer-calm expression.)

...this could go on for quite a while.

[siria]

*STARES*

[looking4tarzan.livejournal.com]

Just occurs to me this could be carrot for the plot bunny where I had John speaking Ancient Greek and Rodney Latin

*hmmmms* this will EAT at ME

No matter how much I squint, this does not resemble my dissertation. Sigh

[birdsflying]

John's in the queue at the staff canteen, the Jell-O cups are just ahead and there's one blue one left. Which either means Rodney McKay, the erstwhile terror of the Maths and Physics department and John's current officemate, has been, gone and eaten the rest, leaving the last one for John as apology for the not-quite-empty-coffee-mug-on-a-stack-of-graded-papers incident. Or he's not been through yet and everyone else has taken advantage of this and gone for the forbidden fruit.

John thinks he has more chance of getting back into the Air Force than the former being true.

He takes a moment to check the canteen - it looks remarkably (suspiciously) peaceful and there's a table hidden behind the pillar that he can retreat to with his spoils - and snags the last cup. Doris on the register gives him a look and he uses his best charming grin on her. She melts and he winks at her as he heads towards the tables.

He's eaten all of what passes as the Macaroni and Cheese (it's best if you don't look at it too closely) and is deep in the latest edition of Journal of Aircraft's headline article on the future of Micro-Air-Vehicle Development, when the The Astrophysical Journal thumps down on the table next to him.

"You! You took the last Blue Jell-O cup!"

"Hi McKay."

McKay reached for the Jell-O cup and John made to stab him with his fork.

"Ow! What in the hell are you playing at, Sheppard!" McKay is clutching at his fingers and John thinks that it's only his excellent self-preservation instincts that prevent him from actually stabbing him. McKay is vindictive and John still remembers what happened to Kavanagh, the short-lived officemate before him.

John clutches the Jell-O cup protectively. "You snooze, McKay, you loose. Besides, you owe me for the coffee incident."

The chair scrapes on the tile as McKay sits down and flicks through the journal. "Hrmph."

[randomeliza.livejournal.com]

Ah, what the hell. I'll give it a try:

The lecture theatre is the smallest one in the university. Rodney privately thinks that this is some sort of a conspiracy to get him to transfer - the closer the quarters in which he has to work with the idiots the university has the gall to call his "peers", the more likely it is that he'll just get fed up and take his big, fat government grant somewhere else. He made a nuclear bomb in sixth grade, for god's sake - as long as he's taking the classes he needs to get this degree, the government won't really care where he's going. Very shortsighted of the university, then, Rodney thinks. He's attempting to blow up the desk in front of him with his mind when the professor walks in, lounges against the desk, and gives them all a blinding smile.

"A neutron walks into a bar. 'I'd like a beer,' he says. The bartender promptly serves up a beer. 'How much will that be?' asks the neutron. 'For you?' replies the bartender, 'No charge.'"

The class just stares at him.

He continues to lounge, hip hitched on the desk, shuffling with his papers. He's young, too young to be wearing an incredibly geeky - geekier than even Rodney would touch with a ten-foot pole - bowtie. Perhaps it's supposed to be ironic, Rodney thinks, resenting him and his stupid joke and his stupid smile and his stupid hair, which looks like it hasn't seen a brush in recent memory. The professor shrugs and says, "Worth a shot," and Rodney slumps down in his seat, positive that there's some conspiracy afoot. Maybe he shouldn't have made his last professor's TA cry?

The professor took out a marker and began writing on the board - "Dr. John Sheppard" in big, spiky green letters, followed very quickly by equations. Then he turned around and grinned again, and said, "All of this will be on the exam. Bonus points for any good quantum mechanics jokes."

Rodney was sure that this was going to be a very, very long semester.