Meta: use of the word "unholy" in fanfiction
The use of the word "unholy" in SGA fiction has been intriguing me for a while. I was curious enough to search my computer for every instance of that word. It appeared in 11 of the McKay/Sheppard stories on my hard drive, as well as a few comments-to-stories and authors' intros.
It didn't occur in any of the non-SGA stories on my hard drive, which include a few dozen Star Trek: Voyager stories and several hundred Emergency! stories (the paramedics-in-LA show from the 70s). Obviously that is in no way a scientific sample, but I was a little surprised not to find the word ever used in E! fic because serial killers and firefighter-stalking rapists are standard fare in that fandom. I've even read a novella about firemen turned devil worshippers. There are lots of texts in E! fic where the word unholy would fit pretty easily, but instead, it keeps popping up in SGA.
So I decided to look at all the examples I had from SGA (just the fiction, not the comments or author notes) and see if I could discern any patterns. These are all McKay/Sheppard because that's pretty much all I read or save.
Further discussion below the cut. There are quotes (potential spoilers) from the stories listed below. Personally I think the spoilers are extremely minor for 9 of the 11 stories, but YMMV.
Danvers, Fell in Love with a Girl
kHo, A Soldier and a Coward
LadyCat, Condescending to Earth [serious spoilers]
LadyCat and Yin, Liberty
Pru, Bell Curve
Sheafrotherdon, Bound by Will [serious spoilers]
Sheafrotherdon, Skies to Conquer, Gave Us Wings
Spacebabe, Viva Las Vegas
Speranza, Kid A
Wojelah, Where We Ought to Be
Wolfshark, Completely Necessary
I don't think I've said anything here that could qualify as criticism of anyone's writing, but if any of the authors whose work I've discussed feel criticized, I apologize. I just find it fascinating how language changes over time and how communities create new words or new meanings for old words.
The use of the word "unholy" in fanfiction
What does "unholy" mean? The opposite of holy, and what does that mean?
I think the person-on-the-street answer would be to give an example of a holy person. Mother Teresa of Calcutta comes to mind - caring, selfless, giving. As an example of unholy, sadly there are so many more examples in human history. The German leaders who carried out the extermination of millions of Jews, gypsies, gay men and others in World War II certainly qualify.
The 11 examples I found of using the word "unholy" in SGA fic fall roughly into three categories: "conventional" usage; usage to convey intensity of sexual desire; and a category which for lack of a better idea I'll just call "other".
A) "Conventional" usage
In each of these cases, the word "unholy" seems, more or less clearly, to convey the wrongness of something.
“'What is this? Why are you people awake at this unholy hour?' Darla's voice could be heard at the back of the crowd still falling to its knees." (Danvers, Fell in Love with a Girl)
"It’s been a month since John almost got killed by friendly fire, which is just the most unholy combination of words Rodney’s ever heard..." (kHo, A Soldier and a Coward)
"After first crawling through the sludge that was DC at the end of rush hour and then passing through an unholy level of security checks, he had reached yet another non-descript conference room." (Spacebabe, Viva Las Vegas)
"'Rodney,' Sheppard drawled, 'take it from someone who knows. If that bunch ever met the Junior League, they'd terrify them out of their twinsets. Or take over Earth in some kind of unholy alliance. I'm not sure which.'" (Wojelah, Where We Ought to Be)
"'It's a weapons system,' Rodney says, beaming, and John sees then that Rodney's practically bouncing on his toes. 'I think-and oh, you're going to love this; you're going to love this so much-but I think it's a disintegrator beam,' and the thing is, John does love it, John loves it with an unholy passion; loves the idea and the thing itself and the very words: disintegrator beam." (Speranza, Kid A)
The last example, from Speranza's Kid A, is a nice bit of Sheppard characterization: John is thrilled by the weapon but, if the word unholy connotes wrongness here, seems to think he shouldn't be, because it reveals his geeky inner 12-year-old or maybe because soldiers are supposed to soberly accept the necessity of violence, not revel in it.
B) "Unholy" used to convey the intensity of sexual desire
"That fast, there's a wild, unholy want gnawing in the pit of John's belly, and he tries to hurry Rodney up, scratches at his back, nips at Rodney's mouth." (Sheafrotherdon, Skies to Conquer, Gave Us Wings)
"The angle is awkward, the depth of penetration sucks, but still, it feels good. The slight burn of being stretched open, the unholy need that's burning through his nervous system..." (Wolfshark, Completely Necessary)
"John was some unholy combination of all of these things: dangerous and painful and exciting, a shock like electric running through Rodney's veins and as familiar as star charts..." (Pru, Bell Curve)
In the last example, "unholy" doesn't refer directly to the strength of Rodney's desire, but to the combination of qualities in John and how they affect Rodney. However, as with the other two examples, "unholy" seems to be associated with something uncontrollable: "unholy want gnawing in the pit of John's belly," "need that's burning through his nervous system," "dangerous and painful and exciting, a shock..."
In all three of these stories, the need is going to be satisfied in the end (or probably just a few paragraphs later) and that resolution is clearly a happy event for both John & Rodney and for the reader. If unholy=negative, it clearly doesn't refer to the fact that they want each other - this is slash, slash readers want them together! Instead, if there's any negative element to their desire, it might refer to the sense of being out of control, overwhelmed by need. They're alpha males each in their own way, and used to being, if not completely in control of every situation, in at least as much control or more than anyone else around them.
C) "Other" part 1: examples from LadyCat and LadyCat/Yin
"Rodney's comment is a promise, and a shudder runs through John. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, thinking about what it's going to be like when all of Rodney's unholy focus is brought to bear on him." (LadyCat & Yin, Liberty)
The second quote is from a story where Rodney has created a tiny private retreat for John and himself, on a balcony in Atlantis, on a day when John's feeling both burdened and isolated by his position:
"The rain bounces off [the tarp], leaving the balcony protected, while each new drop makes the patterned colors glow. It’s almost unnatural, unholy, that it’s so perfect against a sky that’s the worst kind of paper grocery-bag gray John’s ever seen." (LadyCat, Condescending to Earth)
These latter examples are passages that made me stop and wonder about the authors' intent in their choice of words. That's a good thing of course - it made me think and dig deeper.
In the first passage John thinks about Rodney's "unholy focus." None of the other meanings for the word unholy seem to fit here; the reader is left to supply a meaning from the context. I think in this case the relevant context is Rodney being a genius. The intellectual resources he can apply to a problem are unlike what anyone else can muster.
In the second passage, the word unholy seems out of place again. But, putting "unnatural" with "unholy" has (for me anyway) the effect of lending meaning from one word to the other. The tarp and patchwork quilt Rodney has used to create their balcony retreat (a blanket fort for grownups!) are bright, multi-colored, and maybe even jarring when seen against the gray sky and heavy rain. The image of a little tent on a balcony in Atlantis is unusual, too. The words unnatural and unholy occur at a point when John may be experiencing a moment of trying to make sense of the incongruity of what he sees. For a moment, the scene is hard to comprehend.
The idea of incomprehension suggests another interesting shade of meaning to the earlier passage, Rodney's "unholy focus." It makes perfect sense to me that Rodney would sometimes, maybe quite often, seem incomprehensible to the people around him, even the extremely smart people chosen for the Atlantis expedition. Being a genius doesn't just mean he thinks faster; it means he thinks differently, thinks in ways others can't.
D) "Other" part 2: two passages from Sheafrotherdon's Bound by Will
This one requires a little more context to make sense of the quotes. In Bound by Will, Team!Sheppard is detained off-world by people who mark the bodies of the economically valuable members of their communities (like scientists) to prevent them being claimed by another group. They realize they can't get away with keeping Rodney permanently, but mark him anyway to warn off their rivals.
The mark is a painful tattoo across Rodney's shoulder blades. Toward the end of the story, after Rodney is out of the infirmary, John convinces him to accept help applying a salve to the wound:
"John unscrews the lid of the jar of ointment, looks up and tries to clear his mind of the memory of Rodney's shoulders, bent beneath the sharpened tool of a bureaucratic artisan, flexing in pain and humiliation, taut with an unholy strength."
The phrase "taut with an unholy strength" stayed with me for days after reading this story. Why "unholy"? The shades of meaning in the previous two passages - Rodney's strength is somehow unnatural or beyond comprehension? - don't seem to fit as well here. Well, maybe "beyond comprehension" if John is wondering how Rodney managed to hold up through pain of getting the mark, but that doesn't seem to be the issue.
After several re-readings of this story, I put the "unholy strength" passage together with the following one, which occurs earlier, while Rodney is still in the infirmary. Like the other passage, it's John's POV and concerns John's memory of witnessing Rodney's ordeal.
"And as Rodney sleeps, John stands over him and hears the echo of every breath and broken plea in the mark's grim genesis; sees the stark, fragile beauty of Rodney's arms stretched wide, pale in the paler light of morning, bound in place, in supplication, for his team."
I have no idea if Sheafrotherdon intended it, but to me, the Christ-imagery here is very strong.
We don't know from the story if Rodney had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the place where he was strung up and marked with a knife, or if he saw taking the mark as the only way to keep his team safe, and went without being forced. That John's most searing memory of the scene is Rodney's arms raised "in supplication, for his team" suggests to me that Rodney made a choice to do what was necessary to protect John, Teyla and Ronon. He wasn't a helpless victim.
(At one point Teyla tells Weir that Rodney was made to drink something that "impaired his thinking" and made him "compliant" but that doesn't necessarily mean he went into the ordeal unaware, incapable of choosing to endure it to protect his team. The drug might have been given after the decision was made but before the cutting started, to keep him from moving involuntarily in reaction to the pain.)
So here are two passages, both John's POV, both his memory of Rodney enduring something terrible and thereby saving his team from injury or death. In one passage Rodney's body is "taut with an unholy strength" and in the other his arms are outstretched in an image that suggests Christ on the cross. The use of the word "unholy" paradoxically suggests to me something of its opposite.
I wouldn't go so far as calling Rodney "holy" because that seems exaggerated, not to mention that Rodney himself would probably find it laughable, since he's usually portrayed in fanfic as an atheist. But selfless? Yes, I can definitely see Rodney as selfless. Not all the time, obviously, but it's well-established even in canon that he'll risk himself for others: the energy-creature in Hide and Seek, facing the Wraith in The Defiant One, taking the enzyme in The Hive, and alternate!Rodney struggling to open the jumper bay doors for John et al while Atlantis floods in Before I Sleep.
That's where my meandering thoughts end. I'm glad this isn't an academic assignment, because I'd have to make an effort to summarize my ideas and wrap them up with a lovely conclusion!
It didn't occur in any of the non-SGA stories on my hard drive, which include a few dozen Star Trek: Voyager stories and several hundred Emergency! stories (the paramedics-in-LA show from the 70s). Obviously that is in no way a scientific sample, but I was a little surprised not to find the word ever used in E! fic because serial killers and firefighter-stalking rapists are standard fare in that fandom. I've even read a novella about firemen turned devil worshippers. There are lots of texts in E! fic where the word unholy would fit pretty easily, but instead, it keeps popping up in SGA.
So I decided to look at all the examples I had from SGA (just the fiction, not the comments or author notes) and see if I could discern any patterns. These are all McKay/Sheppard because that's pretty much all I read or save.
Further discussion below the cut. There are quotes (potential spoilers) from the stories listed below. Personally I think the spoilers are extremely minor for 9 of the 11 stories, but YMMV.
Danvers, Fell in Love with a Girl
kHo, A Soldier and a Coward
LadyCat, Condescending to Earth [serious spoilers]
LadyCat and Yin, Liberty
Pru, Bell Curve
Sheafrotherdon, Bound by Will [serious spoilers]
Sheafrotherdon, Skies to Conquer, Gave Us Wings
Spacebabe, Viva Las Vegas
Speranza, Kid A
Wojelah, Where We Ought to Be
Wolfshark, Completely Necessary
I don't think I've said anything here that could qualify as criticism of anyone's writing, but if any of the authors whose work I've discussed feel criticized, I apologize. I just find it fascinating how language changes over time and how communities create new words or new meanings for old words.
The use of the word "unholy" in fanfiction
What does "unholy" mean? The opposite of holy, and what does that mean?
I think the person-on-the-street answer would be to give an example of a holy person. Mother Teresa of Calcutta comes to mind - caring, selfless, giving. As an example of unholy, sadly there are so many more examples in human history. The German leaders who carried out the extermination of millions of Jews, gypsies, gay men and others in World War II certainly qualify.
The 11 examples I found of using the word "unholy" in SGA fic fall roughly into three categories: "conventional" usage; usage to convey intensity of sexual desire; and a category which for lack of a better idea I'll just call "other".
A) "Conventional" usage
In each of these cases, the word "unholy" seems, more or less clearly, to convey the wrongness of something.
“'What is this? Why are you people awake at this unholy hour?' Darla's voice could be heard at the back of the crowd still falling to its knees." (Danvers, Fell in Love with a Girl)
"It’s been a month since John almost got killed by friendly fire, which is just the most unholy combination of words Rodney’s ever heard..." (kHo, A Soldier and a Coward)
"After first crawling through the sludge that was DC at the end of rush hour and then passing through an unholy level of security checks, he had reached yet another non-descript conference room." (Spacebabe, Viva Las Vegas)
"'Rodney,' Sheppard drawled, 'take it from someone who knows. If that bunch ever met the Junior League, they'd terrify them out of their twinsets. Or take over Earth in some kind of unholy alliance. I'm not sure which.'" (Wojelah, Where We Ought to Be)
"'It's a weapons system,' Rodney says, beaming, and John sees then that Rodney's practically bouncing on his toes. 'I think-and oh, you're going to love this; you're going to love this so much-but I think it's a disintegrator beam,' and the thing is, John does love it, John loves it with an unholy passion; loves the idea and the thing itself and the very words: disintegrator beam." (Speranza, Kid A)
The last example, from Speranza's Kid A, is a nice bit of Sheppard characterization: John is thrilled by the weapon but, if the word unholy connotes wrongness here, seems to think he shouldn't be, because it reveals his geeky inner 12-year-old or maybe because soldiers are supposed to soberly accept the necessity of violence, not revel in it.
B) "Unholy" used to convey the intensity of sexual desire
"That fast, there's a wild, unholy want gnawing in the pit of John's belly, and he tries to hurry Rodney up, scratches at his back, nips at Rodney's mouth." (Sheafrotherdon, Skies to Conquer, Gave Us Wings)
"The angle is awkward, the depth of penetration sucks, but still, it feels good. The slight burn of being stretched open, the unholy need that's burning through his nervous system..." (Wolfshark, Completely Necessary)
"John was some unholy combination of all of these things: dangerous and painful and exciting, a shock like electric running through Rodney's veins and as familiar as star charts..." (Pru, Bell Curve)
In the last example, "unholy" doesn't refer directly to the strength of Rodney's desire, but to the combination of qualities in John and how they affect Rodney. However, as with the other two examples, "unholy" seems to be associated with something uncontrollable: "unholy want gnawing in the pit of John's belly," "need that's burning through his nervous system," "dangerous and painful and exciting, a shock..."
In all three of these stories, the need is going to be satisfied in the end (or probably just a few paragraphs later) and that resolution is clearly a happy event for both John & Rodney and for the reader. If unholy=negative, it clearly doesn't refer to the fact that they want each other - this is slash, slash readers want them together! Instead, if there's any negative element to their desire, it might refer to the sense of being out of control, overwhelmed by need. They're alpha males each in their own way, and used to being, if not completely in control of every situation, in at least as much control or more than anyone else around them.
C) "Other" part 1: examples from LadyCat and LadyCat/Yin
"Rodney's comment is a promise, and a shudder runs through John. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, thinking about what it's going to be like when all of Rodney's unholy focus is brought to bear on him." (LadyCat & Yin, Liberty)
The second quote is from a story where Rodney has created a tiny private retreat for John and himself, on a balcony in Atlantis, on a day when John's feeling both burdened and isolated by his position:
"The rain bounces off [the tarp], leaving the balcony protected, while each new drop makes the patterned colors glow. It’s almost unnatural, unholy, that it’s so perfect against a sky that’s the worst kind of paper grocery-bag gray John’s ever seen." (LadyCat, Condescending to Earth)
These latter examples are passages that made me stop and wonder about the authors' intent in their choice of words. That's a good thing of course - it made me think and dig deeper.
In the first passage John thinks about Rodney's "unholy focus." None of the other meanings for the word unholy seem to fit here; the reader is left to supply a meaning from the context. I think in this case the relevant context is Rodney being a genius. The intellectual resources he can apply to a problem are unlike what anyone else can muster.
In the second passage, the word unholy seems out of place again. But, putting "unnatural" with "unholy" has (for me anyway) the effect of lending meaning from one word to the other. The tarp and patchwork quilt Rodney has used to create their balcony retreat (a blanket fort for grownups!) are bright, multi-colored, and maybe even jarring when seen against the gray sky and heavy rain. The image of a little tent on a balcony in Atlantis is unusual, too. The words unnatural and unholy occur at a point when John may be experiencing a moment of trying to make sense of the incongruity of what he sees. For a moment, the scene is hard to comprehend.
The idea of incomprehension suggests another interesting shade of meaning to the earlier passage, Rodney's "unholy focus." It makes perfect sense to me that Rodney would sometimes, maybe quite often, seem incomprehensible to the people around him, even the extremely smart people chosen for the Atlantis expedition. Being a genius doesn't just mean he thinks faster; it means he thinks differently, thinks in ways others can't.
D) "Other" part 2: two passages from Sheafrotherdon's Bound by Will
This one requires a little more context to make sense of the quotes. In Bound by Will, Team!Sheppard is detained off-world by people who mark the bodies of the economically valuable members of their communities (like scientists) to prevent them being claimed by another group. They realize they can't get away with keeping Rodney permanently, but mark him anyway to warn off their rivals.
The mark is a painful tattoo across Rodney's shoulder blades. Toward the end of the story, after Rodney is out of the infirmary, John convinces him to accept help applying a salve to the wound:
"John unscrews the lid of the jar of ointment, looks up and tries to clear his mind of the memory of Rodney's shoulders, bent beneath the sharpened tool of a bureaucratic artisan, flexing in pain and humiliation, taut with an unholy strength."
The phrase "taut with an unholy strength" stayed with me for days after reading this story. Why "unholy"? The shades of meaning in the previous two passages - Rodney's strength is somehow unnatural or beyond comprehension? - don't seem to fit as well here. Well, maybe "beyond comprehension" if John is wondering how Rodney managed to hold up through pain of getting the mark, but that doesn't seem to be the issue.
After several re-readings of this story, I put the "unholy strength" passage together with the following one, which occurs earlier, while Rodney is still in the infirmary. Like the other passage, it's John's POV and concerns John's memory of witnessing Rodney's ordeal.
"And as Rodney sleeps, John stands over him and hears the echo of every breath and broken plea in the mark's grim genesis; sees the stark, fragile beauty of Rodney's arms stretched wide, pale in the paler light of morning, bound in place, in supplication, for his team."
I have no idea if Sheafrotherdon intended it, but to me, the Christ-imagery here is very strong.
We don't know from the story if Rodney had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the place where he was strung up and marked with a knife, or if he saw taking the mark as the only way to keep his team safe, and went without being forced. That John's most searing memory of the scene is Rodney's arms raised "in supplication, for his team" suggests to me that Rodney made a choice to do what was necessary to protect John, Teyla and Ronon. He wasn't a helpless victim.
(At one point Teyla tells Weir that Rodney was made to drink something that "impaired his thinking" and made him "compliant" but that doesn't necessarily mean he went into the ordeal unaware, incapable of choosing to endure it to protect his team. The drug might have been given after the decision was made but before the cutting started, to keep him from moving involuntarily in reaction to the pain.)
So here are two passages, both John's POV, both his memory of Rodney enduring something terrible and thereby saving his team from injury or death. In one passage Rodney's body is "taut with an unholy strength" and in the other his arms are outstretched in an image that suggests Christ on the cross. The use of the word "unholy" paradoxically suggests to me something of its opposite.
I wouldn't go so far as calling Rodney "holy" because that seems exaggerated, not to mention that Rodney himself would probably find it laughable, since he's usually portrayed in fanfic as an atheist. But selfless? Yes, I can definitely see Rodney as selfless. Not all the time, obviously, but it's well-established even in canon that he'll risk himself for others: the energy-creature in Hide and Seek, facing the Wraith in The Defiant One, taking the enzyme in The Hive, and alternate!Rodney struggling to open the jumper bay doors for John et al while Atlantis floods in Before I Sleep.
That's where my meandering thoughts end. I'm glad this isn't an academic assignment, because I'd have to make an effort to summarize my ideas and wrap them up with a lovely conclusion!