Lucid

[fiercelydreamed]

So I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of reading shaenie's work before, but she is hands-down one of the best, most vivid, most intensely original writers in fandom, and she's gotten pulled into SGA. She's currently working on a story so long and innovative and well-built that it's all I can do not to harass her for updates every two hours

Comments

[saldemonium]

Guh. That's about all I'm capable of saying right now. Guhx10.

[fiercelydreamed]

*grin* I'll take "guh" any day of the week -- thanks for reading.

[perverse_idyll]

*purrs and rubs self all over this story*

What surprises him is Rodney.

John, my friend, you are not the only one.

Games and desperation and ghostliness and the strangeness of being out there, alone in the universe. This fic is like the sound of someone panting in the dark. Very sensual, but with the tension of something that might snap at any moment.

You know, I love it when John and Rodney aren't just 12-year-old boys together, but are warped and honed by the pressure of their circumstances and their own personal weirdness. It makes their sexual attraction to each other even more private and untranslatable to strangers. I like the slightly pathological edge. It's, um, hot.

achingly beautiful

Not many fics could get away with applying this to Rodney. Thank you for making it feel absolutely true.

[fiercelydreamed]

the slightly pathological edge

Oh, man, so true. When shaenie" sent me the prompt, I think I only gave myself about a minute and a half to come up with the scenario before I started writing. I don't really want to know what it says about me or about the show that this is where my mind immediately went.

I'm so glad you liked this -- I've never done an honest-to-god flashfic before, and it's a very different animal from what I normally write (both in terms of the process and the results).

[perverse_idyll]

it's a very different animal from what I normally write

Yes, but it's still got you stamped all over it. So to speak. ;)

Maybe this is the flip side of the slightly shallow, sometimes clownish attitude of the show. Because if it were written by grownups, for grownups (I don't mean this in a snotty way), John would be a darker character, and Rodney would adapt to what it meansto be a destroyer. Not to the exclusion of everything else they are, of course, i.e. Rodney's still Jeannie's big bro and John's a goofball. But because they're both misfits. As it is, Rodney often "passes" by mimicking how other people behave, because really, he hasn't a clue. With Sheppard, it's hard to tell if he's masquerading or just aloof and accustomed to holding people at bay.

But yeah, whether they like it or not, they've both got a little bit of monster in them.

Oops. Treading into personal canon here. I'll stop rambling.

[fiercelydreamed]

You're totally right about that -- the more I think about it, the more apparent it is that in canon, John and Rodney are 12 years old seven minutes out of every eight. Which is fine, and part of what makes the show so enjoyable -- that John isn't Kirk, and Rodney isn't ... well, I'm too tired to think of an appropriate scifi analogue for Rodney, but that they aren't dashing, debonair, commanding macho men. I mean, come on: snooooooooze. But at the same time, the show is willing to take the characters to dark places (The Eye, Trinity, Doppelganger, Miller's Crossing x100) but unwilling to let them linger there for longer than the end credits. They're adults pushing forty who have done deeply messed-up things, some by accident and some by conscious design, and it's just not plausible that their social immaturity would buffer them from the consequences of that. I've always liked SGA stories with that darker edge (part of the reason that astolat and helenish so easily own my soul) for exactly this reason, for acknowledging that both these guys have some

[aurora_84]

GUH. I love that this story is a bit fucked-up, just like they are.

[fiercelydreamed]

a bit fucked-up, just like they are

Ahahhaha, so true. It's funny -- you're the third person to comment and the second to mention that this story is on the twisted side, and I think this is the first time I realized how very ... benign? ... everything I've written in SGA has been up until now. And granted, "benign" probably isn't the right word (given oh, the suicide pact, the kicking John out of the USAF for DADT violation, that thing where I gave Rodney serious brain damage twice ...), but the things I've written in this fandom have somehow been serious without being anywhere near as dark as the majority of what I've written elsewhere. How strange.

I can tell I've been doing homework for too long because I'm rambling. Anyway, thanks much for reading, and I'm glad you liked it. :)

[shaddyr]

Whoa.

This is kinda of a little bit disturbing in that not totally over the top but obviously fucked up nonetheless way.

I love how Rodney is waiting for him to break. I love how John just wants to watch for now. I love the unresolved longing, how John's just *this* close to breaking...

Nice.

[fiercelydreamed]

*laughs* And comment-wise, we are three for four on people thinking this story is a bit fucked in the head. Score!

I think that I'm incapable of writing for the prompt of "voyeurism" without making things a little twisted. Something about the word itself triggers it: I can imagine all kinds of contexts where someone could watch someone else do something sexual and have it be a totally vanilla, sweet thing, but ask me for voyeurism by name, and this is apparently what you get. Not that I'm bothered by that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it for being disturbing.

[lavvyan]

This is so hot I have no words. None.

[fiercelydreamed]

*grins* Thanks, L.