(no subject)
So, I was talking to my friend about what I find unsatisfying about SGA stories, and what the mainly boils down to is how all the stories about love or romance or sexual relationships that are about love. In some fandoms, that works for me (see: SV where I really would prefer to read a story where Chloe falls in love, which is sort of weird, but true nonetheless, or SPN where I *only* read Wincest, period-gen in that fandom doesn't interest me). In SGA, it's weird because here you have these people who all have massive personalities and serious emotional problems and they're heroes we're exploring another galaxy and saving the universe from space vampires, and all the fic is about falling in love. I find that strange. I'm not being critical, just observing.
Anyway, so, oddly, I think I might be an SGA gen-writer.
Ronon watches the Atlanteans with his arms crossed and his chin tilted down to his chest. He watches them and wonders what they're thinking about, what their motivations are individually for traveling across unknowable vastness to stick the wrong keys into various slots and get shot at by Genii and sucked on by Wraith. He wonders what their lives are really like on Earth, imagines sometimes Earth as a series of round domes all connected by mesh corridors and open-air colonnades, everything open to the sky, Earth-people's faces turned up to the sun, because why not when there is no threat from the Wraith?
Ronon still has trouble with open spaces and hugs walls when he's forced out onto a pier or a jetty. He can remember, though, life before the that fear, standing in the chimeri fields and picking the bright orange stamens with his fingers, his cousins and aunts and uncles and the bright network of family stretched out around him. He can remember the days when Satedans truly believed that their genes would keep them safe and that the sky held promise not destruction. They would travel the stars in ships, take the fight to the Wraith, triumph.
Ronon watches the Atlanteans and sometimes feels pity for each of them that they traveled so far on hope for something he doesn't even know about and all they really got was disillusionment, mortal danger, and the sort of cynicism that Ronon himself grew up without.
*
When he was a child, his grandmother told him this story:
Far on the other side of the stars is a planet made of water. The people who live there dive under the waves and swam to the bottom of the great, connected ocean. From the bottom of the ocean the people of this planet collected rocks. Small rocks, huge rocks, boulders and pebbles and pieces of sand. The people on this planet stacked up all these rocks bit by bit, rock by rock, swimming below and rising up to the top of the stack, generation after generation, until the rocks cleared the surface of the water. But they did not stop then. They continued to swim down, down, down and collected more and more rocks, adding coral and shale and the bodies of sea creatures to their pile. The pile grew and grew and grew. There were more and more people, hordes and communities. They grew so many and the rock pile so large, the people were separated, and the people from one side of the rock pile to the other did not know one another or speak the same language even. They built their rock pile higher and wider, but no one remembered why.
The people of this planet took up against one another. Some said the pile belonged to them and no one else and pushed dissenters off the pile and into the waves. Others said the rock pile was pointless and the sea had always sustained them and took back to the waves, their feet growing webbing and their hands elongating into scoops. Some said the rock pile had a higher meaning, and that they should turn inwards and think about this deep truth. Others said the rock pile belonged to all and that strife benefited no one. Some did not care one way or another, only caring to pass their days with fishing and piling rocks and feeling the sunshine on their bodies.
There came a day when no one remembered that the rock pile was of their own making. Great cities sat up on it and forests grew out of it. Many kinds of animals flourished there. The people had grown far from the ocean, many of them living in the middle of the great pile of rocks never seeing the water in all their long lives. Many believed the rock pile was not built by the hands of their ancestors, that any who said so were fools or liars or both.
Because no one tended the rock pile, because no one swam to the bottom of the ocean and scooped up rock after rock to set upon other rocks, the rock pile began to crumble. At first, this came as a light tremble under foot that many ignored. But the trembling grew and grew, and many great and learned men studied the trembling. Some said the trembling was the great fish upon which the rock pile sat turning over on his belly. Others said it was from people leaping all at once on the other side of the rock pile. But it had been so long since the people had swam to the bottom of the ocean, no one thought to do so.
Tidal waves came and great quakes. The people were terrified and ran in circles. They blamed one another and murdered each other in the name of stopping the rocks from cascading off the pile and into the sea. Fires burnt all the great buildings. The animals threw themselves against walls and the forests crumbled.
The ocean swallowed the great rock pile up one day and all the people slid back into the ocean, most perishing, but some remembering the stories of their ancestors, and those very few remembered how to swim. Those very few swam and swam down to the bottom of the ocean and picked up rocks. Small rocks, huge rocks, boulders and pebbles and pieces of sand. They sat these rocks on top of one another.
*
Ronon knows now that this story isn't just a fable; it's the story of Atlantis. It isn't just a fable, but it is one all the same.
He watches the people in Atlantis stacking their rocks and pebbles and boulders, and sometimes he even swims down to the bottom of the ocean, too, and helps them, even if he doesn't believe it makes a difference. Belief really doesn't matter when the culling beams come. All has been lost before and will be again.
**
Maybe ficlets for everyone first and then a real story.
Anyway, so, oddly, I think I might be an SGA gen-writer.
Ronon watches the Atlanteans with his arms crossed and his chin tilted down to his chest. He watches them and wonders what they're thinking about, what their motivations are individually for traveling across unknowable vastness to stick the wrong keys into various slots and get shot at by Genii and sucked on by Wraith. He wonders what their lives are really like on Earth, imagines sometimes Earth as a series of round domes all connected by mesh corridors and open-air colonnades, everything open to the sky, Earth-people's faces turned up to the sun, because why not when there is no threat from the Wraith?
Ronon still has trouble with open spaces and hugs walls when he's forced out onto a pier or a jetty. He can remember, though, life before the that fear, standing in the chimeri fields and picking the bright orange stamens with his fingers, his cousins and aunts and uncles and the bright network of family stretched out around him. He can remember the days when Satedans truly believed that their genes would keep them safe and that the sky held promise not destruction. They would travel the stars in ships, take the fight to the Wraith, triumph.
Ronon watches the Atlanteans and sometimes feels pity for each of them that they traveled so far on hope for something he doesn't even know about and all they really got was disillusionment, mortal danger, and the sort of cynicism that Ronon himself grew up without.
*
When he was a child, his grandmother told him this story:
Far on the other side of the stars is a planet made of water. The people who live there dive under the waves and swam to the bottom of the great, connected ocean. From the bottom of the ocean the people of this planet collected rocks. Small rocks, huge rocks, boulders and pebbles and pieces of sand. The people on this planet stacked up all these rocks bit by bit, rock by rock, swimming below and rising up to the top of the stack, generation after generation, until the rocks cleared the surface of the water. But they did not stop then. They continued to swim down, down, down and collected more and more rocks, adding coral and shale and the bodies of sea creatures to their pile. The pile grew and grew and grew. There were more and more people, hordes and communities. They grew so many and the rock pile so large, the people were separated, and the people from one side of the rock pile to the other did not know one another or speak the same language even. They built their rock pile higher and wider, but no one remembered why.
The people of this planet took up against one another. Some said the pile belonged to them and no one else and pushed dissenters off the pile and into the waves. Others said the rock pile was pointless and the sea had always sustained them and took back to the waves, their feet growing webbing and their hands elongating into scoops. Some said the rock pile had a higher meaning, and that they should turn inwards and think about this deep truth. Others said the rock pile belonged to all and that strife benefited no one. Some did not care one way or another, only caring to pass their days with fishing and piling rocks and feeling the sunshine on their bodies.
There came a day when no one remembered that the rock pile was of their own making. Great cities sat up on it and forests grew out of it. Many kinds of animals flourished there. The people had grown far from the ocean, many of them living in the middle of the great pile of rocks never seeing the water in all their long lives. Many believed the rock pile was not built by the hands of their ancestors, that any who said so were fools or liars or both.
Because no one tended the rock pile, because no one swam to the bottom of the ocean and scooped up rock after rock to set upon other rocks, the rock pile began to crumble. At first, this came as a light tremble under foot that many ignored. But the trembling grew and grew, and many great and learned men studied the trembling. Some said the trembling was the great fish upon which the rock pile sat turning over on his belly. Others said it was from people leaping all at once on the other side of the rock pile. But it had been so long since the people had swam to the bottom of the ocean, no one thought to do so.
Tidal waves came and great quakes. The people were terrified and ran in circles. They blamed one another and murdered each other in the name of stopping the rocks from cascading off the pile and into the sea. Fires burnt all the great buildings. The animals threw themselves against walls and the forests crumbled.
The ocean swallowed the great rock pile up one day and all the people slid back into the ocean, most perishing, but some remembering the stories of their ancestors, and those very few remembered how to swim. Those very few swam and swam down to the bottom of the ocean and picked up rocks. Small rocks, huge rocks, boulders and pebbles and pieces of sand. They sat these rocks on top of one another.
*
Ronon knows now that this story isn't just a fable; it's the story of Atlantis. It isn't just a fable, but it is one all the same.
He watches the people in Atlantis stacking their rocks and pebbles and boulders, and sometimes he even swims down to the bottom of the ocean, too, and helps them, even if he doesn't believe it makes a difference. Belief really doesn't matter when the culling beams come. All has been lost before and will be again.
**
Maybe ficlets for everyone first and then a real story.