Comments | sga_flashfic: Pegasus Ethics, by the

fiercelydreamed in sga_flashfic

Pegasus Ethics, by the_drifter (criminal challenge)

Oct 02, 2007 22:59

Title: Pegasus Ethics
Author: the_drifter (fiercelydreamed)
Summary: Survival is a criminal act. Seven people, six conversations.
Notes: 5300 words, spoilers through S3, mild language. Many thanks to secrethappiness for betaing.

( Two nights after Richard Woolsey gated back to Earth to give his report to the I.O.A., Elizabeth turned to John and asked, 'Have you ever read the Geneva Conventions?' )

author: fiercelydreamed, challenge: criminal

Comments 99

bluflamingo October 3 2007, 10:57:52 UTC

I love these, especially Lorne and Horton discussing family, and Teyla wondering whether she should be leaving the Athosians. Also, the question of what it says that the world wouldn't think they'd done anything wrong, in the first section, which is a depresingly accurate assumption for Elizabeth to make.

fiercelydreamed October 6 2007, 02:05:21 UTC

Also, the question of what it says that the world wouldn't think they'd done anything wrong, in the first section, which is a depresingly accurate assumption for Elizabeth to make.

Yeah, exactly -- I mean, the writers have ignored the significance of this on multiple occasions, and I don't think they're stupid people. I think they're writing for the expected perceptiveness of their assumed audience (cf. all the pointless expositionary speeches, especially in S1-2), and it's pretty clear that a lot of people wouldn't bat an eye at that kind of a war-time act, especially when your enemy comes pre-dehumanized.

Thanks for reading -- I'm glad you liked these.

seekergeek October 3 2007, 11:04:33 UTC

This was all kinds of awesome. It's a well thought out look at what Pegasus ethics would really be like - all sloppy and murky with no clear easy path. Loved this a bunch.

fiercelydreamed October 6 2007, 02:05:34 UTC

Thanks so much!

rishabree October 3 2007, 11:56:35 UTC

Wow, this was wonderful. Smart and insightful; moral, but not making any negative judgments about the characters' opinions and decisions. Plus a darn good read.

fiercelydreamed October 6 2007, 02:07:13 UTC

Thank you! (And thanks for the rec too, by the by -- very kind of you.) I honestly don't know who I think is right in a few of these conversations, which made it easier in some ways to keep my own judgments out. I can see both sides.

kassrachel October 3 2007, 12:49:15 UTC

Oh, this is AWESOME.

Seriously, fantastic, from the very first line. I love these conversations; I love everyone who's having them; I love the very hard questions they're all wrestling with. Your Elizabeth is spot-on. So's your Rodney. And your John. And Teyla and Ronon and Lorne -- I love Lorne thinking about being a second-waver, and what it means when the place gets to be home! Oh, really, this is jut fabulous.

fiercelydreamed October 6 2007, 02:09:48 UTC

Thank you! To me, fanfic (especially when it clings close to canon) is a lot about taking the structures we get from the source text and trying to flesh them out. I'd like to believe that if these characters were real, this is what they'd be wrestling with -- that they wouldn't be as easy with their choices as they sometimes appear. And it's good to see S4 starting with some tough calls, where neither party is clearly in the right. I hope we'll get more of that this season.

bironic October 3 2007, 14:49:51 UTC

This is wonderful -- tightly written, thought-provoking, troubling yet hopeful. It does a great job of highlighting how many different ethical dilemmas the characters face in Pegasus that have no easy answers, not even a certain set of standards or beliefs to judge them by, with so many cultures and individuals involved. You touch on a number of conflicts I wish the show would address in greater detail (the "war crimes" Elizabeth and Sheppard and Carson and McKay are responsible for, Ronon's unwillingness to relax between encounters with the Wraith, Teyla's liminal role as not-quite Atlantean and not-quite Athosian, the fact that hamstringing Rodney just might end up killing them all) as well as some that appear in fanfic that I *wish* the show would address (Atlantis not as military protecting scientists but as an adopted family far from home, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails). Your character voices and the observations various people make about others are excellent as well.

fiercelydreamed October 7 2007, 04:18:58 UTC

Hurrah! That's a lot of what I was trying to do. Really, I'm starting to get the sense that over-engaging in canon is actually more fun than writing over it, which may or may not bode well for my fic-writing future. *g* It was also fun to have an excuse to try and write from so many different POVs and shift gears without being too wordy.

Thanks for reading -- I'm glad you liked this. :)