A Civil Contract, by Sophonisba (Culture Clash/Harlequin Challenge|Amnesty 2006)

[saphanibaal]

-title- A Civil Contract
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-challenges- Culture Clash challenge, Harlequin challenge
-warnings- Gen. One of the oldest schlocky romance plots EVAR, and I manage to come up with a gen interpretation. Feel free to imagine all the future bodice-ripping sex you like, though. Also contains my assumption as to why nearly everyone in

Comments

[grey_bard]

Hah! I love it! Ringspeech - oh, how it makes things deceptively easy and sneakily difficult. Poor Teyla, what will she do when she finds her husbands aren't expecting to sleep with her?

[saphanibaal]

Thank you so much!

Homonyms can cause untold confusion. ^_^

And Teyla doesn't exactly expect to sleep with any of her husbands in the near future, either; trying to forge new relationships is tricky enough without adding sex into the mix, although she would if it turned out they were expecting her to -- she really wants to make this work.

[burntcopper]

Oh, *nice* one. Just that subtle difference in how the 'Gate translates speech, plus the fact that Teyla's expecting them to ask recompense for saving her people... :g: wonder how long it'll take her to figure out that the Urthers' family units aren't exactly the same. :muses: Mind you, thinking about it, she could just be the one they chose to manage Ford and later Ronon. Sort of glorified babysitter and guard while Shep and Rodney are the bonded pair. 'Course, this does nothing to dispel the OT4 that later happens. :g:

[saphanibaal]

Thank you!

She's already fairly sure that the Tellurian family units aren't a one-to-one match -- if they were, there'd be a lot fewer surnames among them -- but all she really needs is something close enough for government work, since the most important thing here is how her people will perceive it. It doesn't really change anything -- the Athosians are still living in Atlantis, eating Atlantean food, waiting on Tellurian vaccine cultures to be vaccinated -- but everything will look different in its light.

And since I'm writing the Athosians as believing that who one has in one's family and who one has sex with have nothing to do with each other (as long as you're not having sex within the forbidden degrees of blood kinship), this really wouldn't confirm or deny any possible matchup for any of the people involved. ^_^

[flamingsword]

Some parts of the poly community are trying out these sorts of alternate-structure family groupings. It gets complicated, trying to keep track, so fun new words have been invented. For reference and research purposes, link is here.

[vipersweb]

very lovely; I like how you interpret the whole language thing, showing that despite the Ring giving translation, it is not perfect.

[saphanibaal]

Thank you very much.

Just because you speak the same language doesn't mean you mean the same things by it; one only has to look at the many flavors of English to realize that.

[seekergeek]

I have much, much love for this and would gratefully worship at your feet if you felt the need to write a sequel to this. *prostrates self in front of your divine immanence*

[saphanibaal]

This is actually a prequel to " The Three Laws of Arthur C. Clarke (and corollaries thereof)"; I didn't really have enough room in that to develop the B-plot as I'd have liked, so I turned around and went at it more directly here.

For what it's worth, nearly all my SGA ideas have this or something very like this in the background assumptions, whether or not it's specifically mentioned.

[kiezh]

I really like this, and I'd be delighted if you chose to continue it. Great use of POV and cultural assumptions. Athosian worldbuilding = yay!

(I am definitely going to a John/Teyla and OT4 place in my head, but I'd find more of this fascinating if it stays gen, too.)

[saphanibaal]

Thank you very much. So little has been done with the Athosians, and so much *could* be done; I love building cultures.

(That's the nice thing about ending it here; people can go to whatever happy place they like best.)

And, as I said above, most of the SGA story ideas I'm currently working on could be loosely defined as "more of this"; on the other hand, something directly related might wander by.