Paradigmata, by Sophonisba [wish fulfillment challenge]
-title- Paradigmata ~ We Break Shit ~
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-ratings/warnings- Occasional strong language (note the title); a digression into opera at one point; the Gatespeak hypothesis.
-timeframe- The first scene takes place between 2-05 "Condemned" and 2-06 "Trinity," and the last some time after 3-04 "Sateda."
-spoilers- Er... perhaps for "Runner" and "Trinity"? If they even still count as spoilers?
-characters- Ronon, his team, Elizabeth, Lorne, and cameos by Chuck and Zelenka.
-notes- This was rather heavily inspired by a show I've recently grown fond of, called Human Wrecking Balls. (I still want to see them break up a BMV branch.)
-disclaimer- You should all know by now whom SGA belongs to, and that I am not among them. Also referenced within are reasonably famous creations of Stephen J. Cannell, of Tôhô Studios, and of Wolfgang A. Mozart. (I'm not really sure who owns Human Wrecking Balls off the top of my head, or I'd credit them, too.)
-word count- 1787
-summary- Watching alien entertainment. Or entertainment from your homeland. It's all in how you look at it, really.
Paradigmata ~ We Break Shit ~
"No, we had movies," Ronon shrugged. "Since before I was born. The broadcast radio started transmitting radiotelevision, too, in some areas, but you had to have a viewscreen to get the picture."
"You did?" Teyla said encouragingly.
John tried to echo her receptive way of holding herself, congratulating himself for coming up with team movie nights in the first place. Ronon might have pointedly refrained from giving him a dubious look when invited, but he had come and he was actually talking.
"There was one in the Specialists' salon," the new teammate in question went on. "Sometimes the stations broadcast old movies, and sometimes they did picture serials or special programs that were made for radiotelevision."
"This thing tonight is a TV program," Rodney put in. "We picked out one we thought was relatively self-explanatory, given how slowly our subtitling and dubbing projects are going."
Ronon grunted inquisitively.
"Well, at any given time, half the volunteers on any of them generally have at least three other priorities to do."
"This is called 'The A-Team,'" John added. "I used to watch it all the time when I was younger."
"Let me guess," Rodney said. "You wanted to be Murdock."
"Murdock was AWESOME."
Teyla rolled her eyes and started the disc going, familiar with the process after a year of such movie nights.
*
"That can't have been real, can it?" Ronon asked when the episode was over, while everyone who'd been translating helped themselves to drinks.
(It had mostly been Teyla; her English was getting pretty good, although it was still odd to hear her speak it with an accent that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the slight accent she had in Gatespeak.)
"Well, no, they fake most of their stunts," Rodney said.
"It's a made-up story, if that's what you mean," John said. "It's an adventure for kids, which is why nobody ever gets killed no matter how many guns they shoot off -- which I think is silly, I grew up on stories of adventure and swordfights and villains getting killed most thoroughly dead, usually after they'd proved their evilness by killing a bunch of characters you didn't particularly care about and several that you did, but it was kind of a fashion to do this sort of non-serious-violence in family entertainment in our part of the world for a while."
"Your explanations are improving," Teyla told him.
"Thank you. I try."
"But it's in color," Ronon said.
"Well, yes, color television came in before I was born." Rodney rolled his eyes.
"What, did you only broadcast the news in color?" John asked.
"And history shows, and operas, and stuff like Amabarakalak."
"What's an ambarakelek when it's at home?"
"It means 'we break shit,'" Ronon told Rodney. "Great show."
"We break shit?"
"There were these two brothers, Dyne and Jasher Norvik, in the reserves, and they'd walk in empty-handed in normal clothes and break the shit out of something."
"Such as?" Teyla asked.
"Like a housecart, or a boat, or a theater -- the time they broke up a military canteen, we were all in the salon watching, and they followed that up the next tennight with the Wraith dart one of the units had captured."
"Wow," Rodney said. "That sounds... exactly on the intellectual level I'd have expected."
"Oh, come on, Rodney, like you wouldn't watch two guys busting up a Class 6. Or, better yet, a DMV branch. There'd just be something... visceral about watching a DMV branch get torn to pieces, and that ticket-number thing getting thrown across the room."
"I think the word you want is 'vicarious'; and honestly, I'd rather watch Teyla and Sergeant Kaur tearing up a D&V office."
"Why, thank you," Teyla said. "Next, I wish to watch this movie, which Dr. Weir recommended to me. It is an allegory of fearsome weaponry and of the cost of war."
"That's Elizabeth for you," Rodney said. "Most of us watch it to see a giant dinosaur break the shit out of one of the largest cities in the world."
"I think that was more the sequels..." John argued dubiously.
*
It seemed, later, that that first movie night had used up Ronon's talking-about-Sateda quotient for the next few months (although John eventually gathered that he might have said something to Teyla, sometime in the middle of Rodney's flirtation with mad-scientist-style obsession, when he was understandably distracted).
But eventually, as he grew to relax, first around his teammates and then around other Atlanteans, he could now and then be heard talking about hruknor (which John had started picturing as some of those shaggy animated wolves that had bison-style short hair on their rear half), or Satedan opera, or Amabarakalak.
*
Well into Ronon's second year in Atlantis, Lorne's team brought in trade, as well as the food they had been sent to get, a fair amount of news and something that looked not unlike one of those little TVs with a built-in video player, along with a handful of slabs that apparently were meant to be put in it.
"I thought maybe someone could figure how to hook it up," Major Lorne shrugged. "A bunch of us were sort of looking forward to watching alien videos, and the guys who sold them to us claimed that one of them was made by a refugee colony. From Sateda."
"We know of them," Teyla said.
Ronon nodded.
"I can see that it wasn't important enough to pass on to the rest of us," Lorne said. "At any rate, they're supposed to be fundraising, both with this and with some project involving somebody called Vashok Rhenn -- "
"Rhenn survived?" Ronon blurted. For a moment, he looked as young as the age he had given them for his record.
"Is he a statesman?" Elizabeth asked. "Or a scientist?"
"He's a singer. In opera. He's probably the best prime-singer of his generation, unless you're one of those idiots who follow Luaa -- Luaa's good, was good, but Rhenn just has exquisite melody and stamina, not to mention a very natural sort of acting, not like that idiot offworld notion that all a prime-singer needs to do is stand there and sing, you could just as well listen blindfold if that's all there was to it -- "
"Ronon," Elizabeth said blankly.
"He likes opera," Rodney shrugged. "He and Nile and Chuck have been known to watch recordings of different performances of the same opera back-to-back and argue about what was better in which one."
"It was the one about the flute," Ronon said. "Fulford was a much better bird-guy, even if he garbled the lyrics."
"I guess," Lorne said.
"That would be because they were singing in English," Chuck said at the same time. "What's this about an opera project? Is it a performance?"
"Were they? I couldn't tell."
"It might be," Lorne answered the technician. "All we got was that it's some kind of co-production involving a number of Satedan refugees, including Mr. Rhenn, some refugees from the world of Hoff -- "
"There were survivors on Hoff?!" Rodney said.
"We did not know of them," Teyla echoed.
"I'd never heard of any of them, at any rate," Lorne added.
"I'm not familiar with Hoffan opera," Ronon said. "Except d'Arla, but everyone's heard of her. But Vashok Rhenn. Maybe singing. You don't know."
"... and the Genii," Lorne finished quickly.
"Well," Elizabeth said, "the next time we have a summit we can ask Ladon what it is, and if it is a performance of some kind... "
"And anyway," John put in, "in the meantime, can you get those things to play?"
"Shouldn't be too hard," Rodney said, looking thoughtfully at the player. "The question will be whether we can adapt the audio and video out to play whatever these are on something with a decent-sized screen."
*
The answer to that question, unsurprisingly, was yes.
"No one particularly appreciates us any more," Zelenka said dryly as soon as one of the slabs -- something in black-and-white involving two people, in improbable costumes, arguing about a flower bush -- sprung to life on one of the common-room screens. "They all say 'Ho hum, another miracle.'"
John rolled his eyes and dutifully clapped, in which he was jointed by several of the other potential viewers.
"Thank you, thank you, it would have been much more impressive if it'd been spontaneous," Rodney said. "Now! Never mind that," he scowled at the flower bush arguers, who had now graduated to pulling off their hats and throwing them at each other before stalking off in opposite directions, "I want to see the Satedan thing."
Lorne dutifully handed him another of the slabs, and Rodney popped the first slab out and it in.
The picture that appeared on the screen -- after text declaring it to be a production of Pan-Satedan Studios -- was a relatively poor-quality color image of a ruined city. It looked vaguely familiar.
Ronon sucked in a sudden, shocked breath.
"The Wraith came, as they do," a man spoke over the pan shot of the ruins. "Thinking that they would destroy our cities, and our people, and everything that made us Sateda. But we ARE Sateda, for all we're telling you this now in the language that you offworlders will understand. And if all our works are to be shattered, it is we who will shatter them. If it is made by the hands of man, the last of it will be destroyed the only way we know how, by our hands and sinews alone."
Ronon was on his feet now, as the camera cut between still-standing buildings and the occasional randomly-preserved statue or fountain.
"If we leave anything in this place for the Wraith to come back and find," a second baritone declared, "it'll only be because the last of us have made it out already and we want this to come with us, to help tell you what we were, and who we were, and why we won't give the Wraith the satisfaction of sounding our death gong."
The screen dissolved to a medium shot of two tired, superficially abraded, and solidly muscular barrel-chested men, both with their hair matted into dreadlocks, one with a full dreadlocked beard and another with something of a receding chin.
"We're Dyne -- " the second went on.
" -- and Jasher Norvik -- " the one with the beard, who had begun the narration, continued as the two of them charged the camera --
-- and Dyne chorused with him, as they started paired flying kicks, while in the audience Ronon shouted along, " -- and WE BREAK SHIT!"
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-ratings/warnings- Occasional strong language (note the title); a digression into opera at one point; the Gatespeak hypothesis.
-timeframe- The first scene takes place between 2-05 "Condemned" and 2-06 "Trinity," and the last some time after 3-04 "Sateda."
-spoilers- Er... perhaps for "Runner" and "Trinity"? If they even still count as spoilers?
-characters- Ronon, his team, Elizabeth, Lorne, and cameos by Chuck and Zelenka.
-notes- This was rather heavily inspired by a show I've recently grown fond of, called Human Wrecking Balls. (I still want to see them break up a BMV branch.)
-disclaimer- You should all know by now whom SGA belongs to, and that I am not among them. Also referenced within are reasonably famous creations of Stephen J. Cannell, of Tôhô Studios, and of Wolfgang A. Mozart. (I'm not really sure who owns Human Wrecking Balls off the top of my head, or I'd credit them, too.)
-word count- 1787
-summary- Watching alien entertainment. Or entertainment from your homeland. It's all in how you look at it, really.
Paradigmata ~ We Break Shit ~
"No, we had movies," Ronon shrugged. "Since before I was born. The broadcast radio started transmitting radiotelevision, too, in some areas, but you had to have a viewscreen to get the picture."
"You did?" Teyla said encouragingly.
John tried to echo her receptive way of holding herself, congratulating himself for coming up with team movie nights in the first place. Ronon might have pointedly refrained from giving him a dubious look when invited, but he had come and he was actually talking.
"There was one in the Specialists' salon," the new teammate in question went on. "Sometimes the stations broadcast old movies, and sometimes they did picture serials or special programs that were made for radiotelevision."
"This thing tonight is a TV program," Rodney put in. "We picked out one we thought was relatively self-explanatory, given how slowly our subtitling and dubbing projects are going."
Ronon grunted inquisitively.
"Well, at any given time, half the volunteers on any of them generally have at least three other priorities to do."
"This is called 'The A-Team,'" John added. "I used to watch it all the time when I was younger."
"Let me guess," Rodney said. "You wanted to be Murdock."
"Murdock was AWESOME."
Teyla rolled her eyes and started the disc going, familiar with the process after a year of such movie nights.
*
"That can't have been real, can it?" Ronon asked when the episode was over, while everyone who'd been translating helped themselves to drinks.
(It had mostly been Teyla; her English was getting pretty good, although it was still odd to hear her speak it with an accent that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the slight accent she had in Gatespeak.)
"Well, no, they fake most of their stunts," Rodney said.
"It's a made-up story, if that's what you mean," John said. "It's an adventure for kids, which is why nobody ever gets killed no matter how many guns they shoot off -- which I think is silly, I grew up on stories of adventure and swordfights and villains getting killed most thoroughly dead, usually after they'd proved their evilness by killing a bunch of characters you didn't particularly care about and several that you did, but it was kind of a fashion to do this sort of non-serious-violence in family entertainment in our part of the world for a while."
"Your explanations are improving," Teyla told him.
"Thank you. I try."
"But it's in color," Ronon said.
"Well, yes, color television came in before I was born." Rodney rolled his eyes.
"What, did you only broadcast the news in color?" John asked.
"And history shows, and operas, and stuff like Amabarakalak."
"What's an ambarakelek when it's at home?"
"It means 'we break shit,'" Ronon told Rodney. "Great show."
"We break shit?"
"There were these two brothers, Dyne and Jasher Norvik, in the reserves, and they'd walk in empty-handed in normal clothes and break the shit out of something."
"Such as?" Teyla asked.
"Like a housecart, or a boat, or a theater -- the time they broke up a military canteen, we were all in the salon watching, and they followed that up the next tennight with the Wraith dart one of the units had captured."
"Wow," Rodney said. "That sounds... exactly on the intellectual level I'd have expected."
"Oh, come on, Rodney, like you wouldn't watch two guys busting up a Class 6. Or, better yet, a DMV branch. There'd just be something... visceral about watching a DMV branch get torn to pieces, and that ticket-number thing getting thrown across the room."
"I think the word you want is 'vicarious'; and honestly, I'd rather watch Teyla and Sergeant Kaur tearing up a D&V office."
"Why, thank you," Teyla said. "Next, I wish to watch this movie, which Dr. Weir recommended to me. It is an allegory of fearsome weaponry and of the cost of war."
"That's Elizabeth for you," Rodney said. "Most of us watch it to see a giant dinosaur break the shit out of one of the largest cities in the world."
"I think that was more the sequels..." John argued dubiously.
*
It seemed, later, that that first movie night had used up Ronon's talking-about-Sateda quotient for the next few months (although John eventually gathered that he might have said something to Teyla, sometime in the middle of Rodney's flirtation with mad-scientist-style obsession, when he was understandably distracted).
But eventually, as he grew to relax, first around his teammates and then around other Atlanteans, he could now and then be heard talking about hruknor (which John had started picturing as some of those shaggy animated wolves that had bison-style short hair on their rear half), or Satedan opera, or Amabarakalak.
*
Well into Ronon's second year in Atlantis, Lorne's team brought in trade, as well as the food they had been sent to get, a fair amount of news and something that looked not unlike one of those little TVs with a built-in video player, along with a handful of slabs that apparently were meant to be put in it.
"I thought maybe someone could figure how to hook it up," Major Lorne shrugged. "A bunch of us were sort of looking forward to watching alien videos, and the guys who sold them to us claimed that one of them was made by a refugee colony. From Sateda."
"We know of them," Teyla said.
Ronon nodded.
"I can see that it wasn't important enough to pass on to the rest of us," Lorne said. "At any rate, they're supposed to be fundraising, both with this and with some project involving somebody called Vashok Rhenn -- "
"Rhenn survived?" Ronon blurted. For a moment, he looked as young as the age he had given them for his record.
"Is he a statesman?" Elizabeth asked. "Or a scientist?"
"He's a singer. In opera. He's probably the best prime-singer of his generation, unless you're one of those idiots who follow Luaa -- Luaa's good, was good, but Rhenn just has exquisite melody and stamina, not to mention a very natural sort of acting, not like that idiot offworld notion that all a prime-singer needs to do is stand there and sing, you could just as well listen blindfold if that's all there was to it -- "
"Ronon," Elizabeth said blankly.
"He likes opera," Rodney shrugged. "He and Nile and Chuck have been known to watch recordings of different performances of the same opera back-to-back and argue about what was better in which one."
"It was the one about the flute," Ronon said. "Fulford was a much better bird-guy, even if he garbled the lyrics."
"I guess," Lorne said.
"That would be because they were singing in English," Chuck said at the same time. "What's this about an opera project? Is it a performance?"
"Were they? I couldn't tell."
"It might be," Lorne answered the technician. "All we got was that it's some kind of co-production involving a number of Satedan refugees, including Mr. Rhenn, some refugees from the world of Hoff -- "
"There were survivors on Hoff?!" Rodney said.
"We did not know of them," Teyla echoed.
"I'd never heard of any of them, at any rate," Lorne added.
"I'm not familiar with Hoffan opera," Ronon said. "Except d'Arla, but everyone's heard of her. But Vashok Rhenn. Maybe singing. You don't know."
"... and the Genii," Lorne finished quickly.
"Well," Elizabeth said, "the next time we have a summit we can ask Ladon what it is, and if it is a performance of some kind... "
"And anyway," John put in, "in the meantime, can you get those things to play?"
"Shouldn't be too hard," Rodney said, looking thoughtfully at the player. "The question will be whether we can adapt the audio and video out to play whatever these are on something with a decent-sized screen."
*
The answer to that question, unsurprisingly, was yes.
"No one particularly appreciates us any more," Zelenka said dryly as soon as one of the slabs -- something in black-and-white involving two people, in improbable costumes, arguing about a flower bush -- sprung to life on one of the common-room screens. "They all say 'Ho hum, another miracle.'"
John rolled his eyes and dutifully clapped, in which he was jointed by several of the other potential viewers.
"Thank you, thank you, it would have been much more impressive if it'd been spontaneous," Rodney said. "Now! Never mind that," he scowled at the flower bush arguers, who had now graduated to pulling off their hats and throwing them at each other before stalking off in opposite directions, "I want to see the Satedan thing."
Lorne dutifully handed him another of the slabs, and Rodney popped the first slab out and it in.
The picture that appeared on the screen -- after text declaring it to be a production of Pan-Satedan Studios -- was a relatively poor-quality color image of a ruined city. It looked vaguely familiar.
Ronon sucked in a sudden, shocked breath.
"The Wraith came, as they do," a man spoke over the pan shot of the ruins. "Thinking that they would destroy our cities, and our people, and everything that made us Sateda. But we ARE Sateda, for all we're telling you this now in the language that you offworlders will understand. And if all our works are to be shattered, it is we who will shatter them. If it is made by the hands of man, the last of it will be destroyed the only way we know how, by our hands and sinews alone."
Ronon was on his feet now, as the camera cut between still-standing buildings and the occasional randomly-preserved statue or fountain.
"If we leave anything in this place for the Wraith to come back and find," a second baritone declared, "it'll only be because the last of us have made it out already and we want this to come with us, to help tell you what we were, and who we were, and why we won't give the Wraith the satisfaction of sounding our death gong."
The screen dissolved to a medium shot of two tired, superficially abraded, and solidly muscular barrel-chested men, both with their hair matted into dreadlocks, one with a full dreadlocked beard and another with something of a receding chin.
"We're Dyne -- " the second went on.
" -- and Jasher Norvik -- " the one with the beard, who had begun the narration, continued as the two of them charged the camera --
-- and Dyne chorused with him, as they started paired flying kicks, while in the audience Ronon shouted along, " -- and WE BREAK SHIT!"