The New Atlantean Dictionary of Literary Terms, Volume II
Pairings: John/Rodney, Teyla/Heightmeyer, and others.
Rating: NC-17
Words: ~19 000
The New Atlantean Dictionary of Literary Terms: A Complete Reference in Four Volumes
Volume II
H-M
Hyperbole
A Greek word meaning “overshooting.” Bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility.
On Earth, few scientists or lab technicians ever stuck around long enough to really appreciate Rodney McKay’s managerial style.
On Atlantis, the physics and engineering teams, along with the various department heads, have all, for the most part, made their peace with it. The new recruits still get caught out by it sometimes: they hear “Oh my god, we’re all going to die in thirty seconds,” and dive under their desks, even though Miko and Coleman know that this really means, “If I hadn’t caught this problem, something may have had the potential to explode on the west pier next Thursday.” They’ll hear, “If you don’t properly align that circuitry pattern, you will fry your own brain and leave yourself a vegetable,” and they take it seriously, hands shaking as they concentrate on their task. But Esposito and Watson know that this really means, “Do it right or you could receive a mild shock.” The new guys don’t know that “It is not humanly possible for this to be fixed!” is almost always followed by Rodney fixing whatever-it-is before lunch.
The thing is, McKay can sell it: eyes wide with fear, hands gripping the control consoles, throwing things, dropping things, cursing, yelling. He’s really very method, mostly because he believes it himself. So even the old hands, the people who’ve been around since the beginning, can sometimes get caught up in it, find themselves running through corridors at full tilt to fix an inconsequential crossed wire, or working frantically without sleep to finish routine water-system analyses.
So, when the crises do happen, McKay’s barked orders and dire imprecations have a bizarre twofold effect: everyone assumes that it’s not as bad as he says it is, even when it is, and so they work calmly and avoid panic. But they’re so used to acting as if it really is as bad as he says it is, even when it’s not, that they sprint down corridors and work into the night at times when sprinting and sleeplessness are actually necessary to keep the city from blowing up.
Ambrose suspects himself to be the victim of behavioural conditioning of the kind outlawed by all kinds of international law, but he isn’t too broken up about it. He hasn’t done this much good work since grad school, which was, of course, the other time that he was in constant fear for his life.
Miko gets so used to pronouncements of doom that, whenever Rodney is off-world for a few days, she finds herself taking up the slack, dropping things and throwing things and yelling and going wide-eyed with fear a bit herself. Esposito and Coleman seem to appreciate it, picking up their tablet computers and making a dash for those crossed wires like they’re off to save nunneries full of orphans and kittens.
When Rodney gets back from two days of harvesting purple flowers (or, as the science division will hear it, trade negotiations), he watches with delight as his minions scurry about the lab. He really is the best manager ever.
In Medias Res
This phrase, the Latin for “into the middle of things,” has become almost a cliché to describe a common method of beginning a story - in other words, starting in the midst of the action at some crucial point, when a good deal has already happened.
Teyla slides her hands under Kate’s ass and pulls forward, angling her hips upward, getting her own naked body between Kate’s spread thighs. Kate’s muscles are pleasingly strong against Teyla’s hard shoulders. Then Teyla gets her mouth on Kate’s sex, wasting no time, pushing her tongue inside: hot and slick.
It’s been so long since Teyla’s done this, tasted a woman, given in to this urge. Athosian women bear children to raise against the Wraith; they don’t turn to each other except for occasional pleasure or comfort. Teyla has always rationed it out. Kate makes noise as Teyla tongues her, sucks her, gets fingers up inside and begins to stroke against the fluttering clench of her body. Little gasps, little moments of breath lost, but they stoke the fire low in Teyla’s belly: they’re not weighed or considered, not thoughtful or kind. Kate groans low and greedy and her breath stutters and Teyla can’t help but want more, want to wring those throaty sounds out from between her bitten lips.
Kate showed up at Teyla’s door with a bottle of wine and a gleam in her eye; Teyla’s participated in enough seductions that she understood Kate’s meaning immediately, though she did not understand what had changed to lead Kate to this decision - why now, why this night. Perhaps Kate has been rationing herself, too. They’d sipped the wine, and talked their usual talk while Kate toed off her shoes and touched Teyla’s shoulder casually, and then Teyla leaned over and kissed her throat, slowly, with precision.
Custom dictates that days should pass between the declaration and the act, that formal words be said by both parties, that everyone should make their intentions clear. Teyla had set her lips into the dip between Kate’s collarbones and forgotten each custom in turn as she tasted the sweet-salt of her freckled skin.
As Kate comes under Teyla’s mouth, around her fingers, Teyla gives up thoughts of rationing, gives up on taking things slowly, on doing this in stages: she will take it all now, here, every noise and shudder and drop of sweat that Kate has to give. The roughened heel of Kate’s foot scrapes against the smooth skin of Teyla’s back as her whole body shudders and releases, her muscles trembling. Teyla squeezes her eyes shut, living in the taste and smell and feel of her, hot and slippery beneath her mouth.
Eventually, Teyla eases off, gentling her hand as Kate comes back down, allowing herself one last chaste kiss to the soft flesh of her sex before sliding back up Kate’s body and kissing her, kissing her, kissing her.
Juxtaposition
A placing or being placed in nearness or contiguity, or side by side, often done in order to compare and contrast the two, to show similarities or differences. In literature, a contrast in register or style; in logic, a observational fallacy in which two items placed next to each other seem to have a correlation when none is actually claimed.
“What do you want me to do?” Kate asks, her thumb on Teyla’s nipple, her thigh pressing hard between Teyla’s legs.
“Just touch me,” Teyla answers, squirming under her hands.
“Like this?”
“Yes, oh - ”
Kate runs her other hand down Teyla’s bicep, over her soft belly and down to find her clit, pushing her body against Teyla’s, lips hands thighs tongue, sliding skin on skin, their eyes locked as Teyla’s orgasm rushes through her, as Teyla arches and gasps against her.
Kate slows her fingers and is about to pull her hand back up when Teyla’s fingers close on her wrist.
“Just, if you will just, a little more.” Teyla guides Kate’s fingers back over her clit, their hands working in tandem against Teyla’s bare flesh. Kate watches as Teyla closes her eyes against her second orgasm.
Kate finds herself collapsed on top of her, their limbs akimbo, her breasts against Teyla’s belly. Teyla is gorgeous beneath her, hair damp against her temples, nipples tight and flushed dark. Kate pushes herself off the bed and finds her underwear.
“You are leaving?” Teyla’s tone is light and easy; not accusatory at all. Kate is grateful for the relaxed attitude that the Athosians take to lesbian sex; it’s been too long since she’s had this kind of release. Looking over her shoulder as she hooks her bra, Kate notices the inviting expanse of rumpled sheets next to Teyla on the bed, the space where she could curl her body against Teyla’s warmth.
“I have an early-morning client, I’m afraid,” Kate says.
“Will we do this again?”
Kate imagines doing this every night, imagines frantic fucking and long evenings of slow exploration, imagines her hands spanning Teyla’s body in time, coming to know every inch of her skin. Kate imagines the feel of Teyla’s fingers in her ass, the way she could rub herself off against Teyla’s thigh, imagines those white teeth scraping her nipples.
“Maybe,” Kate answers, smiling openly as she buttons her fly. “I had such a good time tonight, but I also really value you as a friend, and I don’t want that to change. Sometimes it’s best for everyone to keep these things at a casual level.”
Teyla nods slowly. “Perhaps,” she says.
Kate picks up the empty wine bottle from earlier in the evening. “You want me to take this to the recycling for you?”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
Kate pauses before the bed. Teyla’s still naked amid the folds of the sheets, skin glowing dark and golden in the soft lamplight. She could be posing for a Greek statue, one knee drawn up slightly, resting back on her elbows, hair falling over her bare shoulders. Kate could go back, at least, could kiss her soft mouth again before she leaves, could let the gesture say: you’re so beautiful, I loved doing this with you, I can’t wait to see you again tomorrow.
She smiles gently and doesn’t kiss Teyla. “You are so beautiful. I loved this.” She pauses. “See you for lunch tomorrow?”
Teyla smiles back at her and nods her assent.
Kate leaves.
Kunstlerroman
A German term for a novel which has an artist (in any creative art) as the central character and which shows the development of the artist from childhood to maturity and later.
Even as a kid, Evan knew that it wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about. The art classes that his mom taught at the community college were full of eager young men and women with experimental hair who took it seriously, but the art classes in his school were full of stoners who couldn’t be trusted in the automotive shop. If anyone had learned that Evan liked painting, it would’ve been the end of his cool and the beginning of his getting-beaten-up. His mom always assured him that the other kids would be impressed if they could just see how good he was, but that was its own set of problems: his paintings weren’t exactly the kind you can show the guys on the football team.
Since his mom taught on Saturday afternoons when Evan didn’t have school, he would go in to the college with her and paint at her teaching studio with her students. The problem was, the only thing she ever seemed to teach was figure drawing. As a result, by the time Evan was fifteen, he had dozens of portraits of naked men in his closet dating back years: charcoal and oil and mixed media on the top, with watercolours just below them, and, if he digs far enough, canvasses covered in non-toxic fingerpaints. There’s one of a particularly well-endowed middle-aged man done in crayon that his mother was always especially proud of. Evan was in high school before he convinced her to take it off the fridge.
His first year in college, he talks a girl he’s in love with into letting him paint her, her nervous giggles and messy hair a stark contrast to the professional models he’d painted in his mother’s studio. She’s not the first naked woman he’s ever painted, but she’s the first person he’s ever seen like this, beautiful and familiar under his soft brushstrokes. They date for almost a year before they break up in one of those famous screaming matches that everyone in the dorm gets to listen in on. At the time, Evan wanted to destroy his paintings of her, but they remain pristine, stacked neatly at the back of his closet.
He paints a lot, after that, a few nudes, but mostly clothed models: women he dates, best friends, and when he’s home for Christmas, one of his mother. He only tells the people he trusts, and he only paints the people he tells. Every now and then, he tries a landscape or a still life, but it comes out all wrong, every time. He can’t paint without the meanings that bodies hold in their angles, in their lines of muscle and their yielding curves.
He joins the Air Force on the same day he graduates from college, and he never looks back. There are no easels or brushes in OTC, nor are there flurries of art appreciation societies. Sometimes he wants to tell his fellow cadets, I wish I could paint you, but there’s no way to explain it. Still, these men (and Cadet O’Riley, their female recruit) are closer to him than anyone else in his life, and so sometimes, at night, he lies in his bed in the barracks and sketches secretly, charcoal between his fingers, capturing the faces of the sleeping cadets around him.
His first week in Atlantis, he walks into Colonel Sheppard’s office to find him sitting on his desk - on a stack of forms to be submitted to the SGC, actually - practicing intently with a yo-yo. He coughs.
“Oh, hey, Major, what’s up?” Sheppard doesn’t stop yo-yoing.
“Sir, far be it from me to say, but aren’t you worried about sending the wrong, ah, professional impression?” He glances at the yo-yo (which is bright red and lights up when it’s in motion) in what he hopes is a meaningful manner.
“Oh, right, all that stuff. You know, Major, we do things a little differently on Atlantis. I know you’re new, but really,” the Colonel grins blindingly while he takes the yo-yo round-the-world (Lorne’s finger’s itch for charcoal), “it’s better if you relax. Get a feel for the people around here. We’ve got enough to worry about with the Wraith on our doorstep every Friday night. I say, if you have a yo-yo, go ahead and yo-yo to your heart’s content.”
Lorne smiles a little nervously. “Of course, sir.”
He doesn’t understand it at the time, but over the next years he sees a lot of metaphorical yo-yos on Atlantis, and gets to liking it: it’s as if all the world’s yo-yoers converged on this one spot. Then one day there’s some sort of sentient vegetable attack, and Lorne finds himself suddenly hooked into the brains of his jumper squadron and also the brains of everyone else in Atlantis. Afterwards, he can’t shake the feeling, the sense that he already knows everything about these people, that they already know him; that maybe they knew about him all along.
The next day, he’s got a pencil in his hand and a sheet of 8x10 computer paper beneath his palm. He’ll order canvasses and paints on the Daedalus, but he has to do this now. He wonders who he should ask, or who he could draw without them noticing. Some of the scientists sit still a lot. But that’s not really what he wants to capture - or, it’s not that he wants to capture just one person. So he walks out as far as he can on the east pier and sits crosslegged on the dock, salt air in his lungs. Beneath the pencil, the spires of the city fall onto the paper as though they were always meant to be there.
Leitmotif
Used as a literary term to denote a recurrent theme or unit. It is occasionally used in a broader sense to refer to an author’s favourite themes.
“Is it just me, or does this happen a lot?” Rodney shouts, ducking behind a tree.
John lays down some cover fire so that Ronon and Teyla can converge on their position.
“What, you mean, mortal danger, the team in jeopardy, that kind of thing?”
Ronon and Teyla come running up to crouch beside Rodney.
“No, no. Well, yes, that part, but everything else - we arrive, we get along, then there’s some ridiculous miscommunication,” Rodney pauses as the other three fire through the tree cover at the locals who are trying to kill them with Genii-style guns, “and we end up in mortal peril!”
Ronon sights carefully, stunning one of the people taking cover behind another copse of trees. “That’s not all the time,” he says, looking through his sight for another target. “Sometimes there’s a miscommunication, and then we have to do ritual penance.”
“Enemy approaching at nine o’clock,” Teyla warns, turning and firing at the group trying to flank them.
“But, still: miscommunication, followed by disaster,” Rodney insists, as he joins Teyla in covering their nine.
“We go on three,” John says, his fingers quickly pointing out the route they’re about to take. “Down that path to the valley, I’m on our six, Teyla takes point. The gate’s, what, half a klick from the base of the hill?”
“A little less,” Rodney answers.
John counts to three, and they break cover and start down the hill, tumbling and crashing into one another but managing not to fall.
“So, assuming that you’re right,” John says, as they start the sprint to the gate, “what exactly do you suggest?”
“I do not believe that is Rodney’s point,” Teyla grunts a moment later, running ahead of Rodney.
“Down!” Ronon screams suddenly, and they all drop as bullets begin whizzing by. They manage to low-crawl to a nearby rock formation that provides some cover. John and Ronon start scanning the treeline for the sniper.
“Thank you, Teyla, yes,” Rodney puffs, automatically turning to cover their twelve. “The point is, why can’t anyone in this backward galaxy just say what they mean?”
“Oh, this is a complaint,” John realises. “Sorry, I thought we were doing a teambuilding rant.”
Then John stills Ronon with a hand to his shoulder and points carefully at a glint of light in the bushes. Ronon fires his stunner, a sudden grunt from the treeline testifying to his accuracy.
“Well, I guess the galaxy’s more interesting this way,” John says as they get back into crouches, ready to start the last hundred yards to the gate.
Ronon runs backwards, taking over John’s position as John goes up to point. “Besides,” Ronon adds, “you’re all just as bad. I don’t remember the last time either of you said what you meant.”
“Yeah,” Rodney’s out of breath now, but keeping up, “But we never say ‘come have a feast and some dancing’ when we really mean ‘if you say yes, you agree to marry all our sons and daughters and grow beans.’”
Teyla starts dialing the DHD. “It is a question of context, I suppose,” she says, and then, “Atlantis, this is Teyla. We are coming in hot.”
Chuck’s voice crackles in their headsets. “Noted.”
“So, miscommunication and disaster, huh?” John asks as they step into Atlantis, right on schedule.
Rodney shrugs. “I’m just saying.”
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which the name of an attribute of a thing is substituted for the thing itself. Metonymy works by the co-incidence of and contiguity (association) between two concepts, whereas metaphor works by the similarity between them. Metonymy, unlike metaphor, does not bring two things together in order to transfer qualities from one to another, but rather because they tend to be found together. For example, there is nothing crown-like about a monarch, but “the crown” is a common metonym for a king or queen.
Two weeks later, in an Entruvian jail cell whose floor seems to be comprised at least partially of animal dung, Rodney holds out for almost ten minutes before breaking out the I-told-you-so.
“I told you so.”
“Fine, McKay, you were right. Now let’s figure a way out of here.” Sheppard is already poking at the bases of the metal bars, trying to find a loose one.
“Okay, but I just want it noted for the record.” Rodney starts on the bars on the other side of the door.
“In the event of your grisly death, I will be sure to tell the world about your prescience,” Sheppard assures him.
“Maybe it’s you,” Rodney says, harsher than he intends. “Maybe it’s because you piss people off, and I just happen to be standing next to you at the time.”
“Yeah, I’m the one who pisses people off,” John mutters, and reaches for the next bar. Rodney blanches.
“You’re the one who got us thrown in here,” he snaps back, gritting his teeth.
There had been a moment when . . . he remembers with fondness the golden time they spent working with Mirla’s people, Sheppard’s thigh next to his as they sat together at the banquet, when they just happened to be sitting next to each other, coincidentally.
“Well, maybe, instead of complaining about it, you could do your actual job and find us a way to escape,” John says, hands pulling at the bars as if to force them out of the concrete by pure will.
After a long time in the cold cell - hours, maybe, they took Rodney’s watch - they’re sitting on the hard, manure-packed ground in silent defeat. The bars aren’t moving, there are no windows, and they have nothing but their hands to dig with.
“Well, maybe Ronon and Teyla got away and will come rescue us.” Rodney attempts an upbeat tone, which never works for him.
Just then, a wiry little man with an eyepatch over one eye shows up at the cell door, flanked by half a dozen armed men. “Which one of you is Atlantis?” he demands, holding up a wicked-looking sword.
Rodney doesn’t like the sound of this.
“Who’s asking?” Sheppard says casually, leaning against the wall like he’s at a party.
“The Throne of Entruvos is asking!” the man snarls.
Sheppard squares off against the guy. “I represent Atlantis. Where, by the way, our leader is probably very angry at you for kidnapping us - ” Sheppard stops talking as the man with the sword unlocks the door, pulls Sheppard out, and gets the sword against his neck while slamming the gate shut again. Rodney grips the bars anxiously.
“You’ll do,” the man says, as he hauls Sheppard off.
-
Hours later, Sheppard is returned, covered in sweat and dirt, with a gash on one arm that oozes blood.
“Jesus, Sheppard, what happened?” Rodney demands as he helps him to sit.
“Pretty much that movie with Russell Crowe and the slavery and the Colosseum,” John answers, wincing.
“A gladiator ring? Are you serious?”
Sheppard spares some energy to glare at him. “I didn’t get into this state playing Monopoly, Rodney.”
“We need to get out of here,” Rodney grits out. But it’s stone and metal: too low-tech for him to work any miracles.
-
The next day, the same guy with the eyepatch shows up at their cell, with the same toughs backing him up.
“Which one of you is Atlantis?” he demands.
John is on his feet, wincing as yesterday’s bruises and pulled muscles make themselves known. “I am,” he says quickly, and is dragged away.
Rodney waits to see if he comes back.
-
On the fourth day, when Sheppard is tossed back into the cell, there’s a nasty puncture wound in his thigh.
On the fifth day, Rodney is ready.
“Which one of you is Atlantis?” Eyepatch asks.
John, feverish and still bleeding, struggles to get up. “I am,” he grinds out.
“No,” Rodney says, approaching the bars. “I am.”
The man on the other side of the bars grins at him, his teeth perfect and white. “You don’t look like much of a fighter,” he says, pulling Rodney out of the cell and ignoring Sheppard’s protests in the background. “You’re not like your friend.”
“No,” Rodney mutters, half to himself, as he’s pushed down the musty corridors and given a sword. “I’m just the guy who stands next to him.”
-
Volume III