I think it would be a lot harder for me to work around this if it were explicitly stated in canon, like Rodney's "best friends" comment about Carson, which did kinda throw me for a loop.

I've been thinking about this today. When I first heard it, it was jarring - was the strong John-Rodney friendship an illusion? But then, with the help of much meta-reading, I came to see this as a useful insight into Rodney's vocabulary of friendship/emotional landscape.

- Helen