drabble request: Qui Habitat ending

[miss_porcupine]

ravurian: Hmmm. I would like a Qui Habitat AU where those with the strongest ATA gene ascended to take the fight to the Ori...
Okay, so the reason QH isn't progressing faster than it is is that I can't quite stick the ending. I've painted my heroes into such a fabulous corner that I'm still working on getting them out. So coming up with an AU to an ending I

Comments

[ravurian]

Gosh, it didn't occur to me that you might write an AU for the unwritten end, and I'm really sorry if this added to your frustration! This is fab, and bittersweet, and AJ and Teyla are the perfect characters to hang the tale upon. I suppose I'd expected that - if you wrote it - you would negotiate the circumstances under which the decision to try to ascend was reached (and who it would affect), or the mechanism by which ascension was achieved, or the subversion of Pegasan worship of the Ancestors (and deliberate exploitation of the quasi-mythical status of Earthers in Pegasus) to provide the QH-Ascended the same kind of power-boost the Ori got from their worshippers, but, having read this now, I see this was not only the perfect choice of snippet, it was also the perfect entry and exit point to an implied wider story. You managed to convey so much about the unwritten backstory here without allowing it to swamp what you'd written; neither laboured nor overburdened, and a very elegant solution

[miss_porcupine]

Oh, ho ho, so this was a fiendish plot to get me to write an AU novel off of my AU novel. Well now, I have found you out. ;)

Seriously, if I'd gone down your route here -- and I totally would have -- I'd be at 25000 words and counting before I got anywhere. And then I'd wonder how that happened.

My frustration is purely with myself and this story didn't really add to it beyond reminding me that I still haven't got a proper ending for the story since I refuse to use the magic wand the show did (either time, actually). If I'd really been bothered by the prompt, I'd not have written anything. :)

[ravurian]

You have found me out, haha, although I suppose that technically it's not AU yet . I may yet lure you down this path, LOL. I mean, 25000 words of a beginning? I could totally live with that ;)

Re: the ending, there is an obvious (and obviously bleak) one - our guys lose in the face of overwhelming odds. Sometimes there is no happy ending, no neat resolution. I suppose that might pose another interesting AU prompt at some stage - the underground dissident Ancestor/Ancient/Tau'ri worshippers, centuries on, and the myths they have passed in whispers from parent to child, quiet rebels against the hegemony of Origin. Erm. I'm really not helping, am I?

[miss_porcupine]

Oh, believe you me, the thought of following the story to its necessarily depressing conclusion crossed my mind. But in one of the rare times in my fanfic career, I kept popular reaction in mind -- nobody is going to read a story where the good guys lose.

I've killed enough people in AUs over the years (most notably Orpheus and the infamous 'Five Ways Atlantis Dies' drabble) that I know that QH would be immediately and permanently branded "too depressing to read" and, damn it, I have an ego to feed. QH gets so little readership anyway -- it's long, it's unfinished, it's complicated, it's loaded with OCs and characters not Rodney, it's depressing, it's got no hot sex between John and Rodney -- that I'm well aware that 'and the bad guys win' would kill its following almost completely.

[persephone_kore]

As a note, personally, I count all of those except "depressing" and "unfinished" as pluses, and "unfinished" is neutral. ;)

[miss_porcupine]

Me, too, but you and I are part of a small tribe, not the dominant species of the planet. :)

[ravurian]

Hmm. I see your point, but I wonder whether the thought of popular reaction is what's giving you trouble? Your hard work, your ability, and your strong instinct for what works in terms of character and plot, are what earned you an audience in the first place. It seems a shame to think of those very qualities as somehow negative now, and to be fighting them, or compromising your instincts, in service to, well, to what you think we want instead of what the story demands. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusions, precisely, but I do think that you will find that people will go with you wherever the story takes you nonetheless. You've earned that. And, honestly, sometimes fandom needs that story...

Personally, I love that QH is long and complicated, that it's loaded with OCs, and that it's not focussed solely on John and Rodney. FWIW, I'll go with you (and not just to see how challenging I can be in prompts, either).

[miss_porcupine]

It's not the popular reaction, which doesn't not matter, because ultimately, the decline and fall of Atlantis isn't what I want to end on. Spending hundreds of thousands of words and (coming up on) four years to painstakingly depict the slow and crushing defeat of our heroes... It'd be hard to read, but it would be a bitch to write. I can't write hopelessness that leads to despair. Or, rather, I could, but I don't want to.

Even if the end of my story is the tattered remains of our happy band looking around at what victory has cost them, that's okay with me. And I can probably admit that that's exactly what it's going to look like -- I don't intend for everyone important to survive this story (or to die nobly en route) or for the damage to be only cosmetic. My special effects budget is enough to make James Cameron weep and none of my actors are signed on for a sequel. I can blow it all to hell if I need to.

But I still need to defeat the Ori first. :)

[ravurian]

I keep meaning to e-mail you and ask about the ending. Because I *adore* this story...but I've only read half of it because I realized that it could very likely be a terribly depressing end and I just can't go there. Fic is my happy place, not my weepy place.

So yay! Just knowing you'd *like* to not end on a "and all life ceased to be" makes it better. :D And now I can go CATCH UP.