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sga_flashfic-title- Lead Casket
-author- Sophonisba (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Crossover. Philosophy. Unreliable narrator. Literary references.
-spoilers- For "Sanctuary," "Before I Sleep," and for "The Siege," parts 2 and 3. Also, technically there are spoilers for the other shows involved, but if you don't recognize them you probably wouldn't notice them anyway. Prequel to my story "Chuang Chou menq tye," which is only relevant for one line.
-characters- Sheppard, other
-disclaimer- Neither of these guys are mine. Neither of their worlds are mine. The plot concept isn't exactly mine, either.
-word count- 2062
-summary- "I've come to offer you a choice."
Lead Casket
"Weapon is armed and ready," Sheppard announced. "I'm going in."
And the world narrowed, and flying was almost all that he had ever wanted out of it, and he was the puddlejumper and the puddlejumper was him and he sailed in gently, the back of his mind automatically noting T minus thirty and counting... minus fifteen and counting... minus five. Four. Three. Two. One --
-- and he was soaring through the high infinite blue of the sky, sunlight reflecting off of clouds beneath him like the echo of a paean, a new display informing him that the Bergenholms were operating at 90% of inertial neutralization and holding a shield-shape that looked something like a Wraith dart even as he felt the wind screaming past him with his entire body, second-best rush ever combined with the best and wow, he should have tried seeing whether they could go part-inert before...
"Well, that's different," the man in the copilot's seat remarked, and John turned his head to look at him.
He looked vaguely familiar, although John couldn't quite place him: graying dark wavy hair gone entirely white in one spot, a pleasant smile that reached his eyes, same apparent age as John, and something of a Midwest accent. An academic gown, which John hadn't even realized he'd missed seeing until there it was again.
"How so?" John asked.
The scholar shrugged. "This place isn't actually here -- "
"It's what, a thought you're having in the stratosphere of some planet?" John offered, remembering A Wind In The Door.
"Something like that, although this is your thought. Mine is a bar. Dr. Jackson's was a diner. Major Carter's was a video arcade, and I thought that was odd enough -- but I think you're the first person to choose an aircraft."
John shrugged. "I like it here."
His copilot nodded. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."
"So," John said eventually. "not that I don't appreciate the company, but would you mind telling me what you're doing here?"
The scholar smiled compassionately. Compassionate smiles were never a good sign.
"I've come to offer you a choice."
And his granther and gramma had told him enough stories in his childhood, and Chaya had known them, Chaya had lived them --
"One of the Undying Ten Thousand is fading away," Sheppard said dully. At least he'd gotten to fly as himself once more.
"Not really," the... Undying next to him said. "Not the way you're thinking of, at least. There are considerably more than ten thousand Ascended Alterans-and-allies floating on the planes, and many of them would be willing to take up the ward if needed." His smile turned amused. "It'd at least be something to do."
"Then what...?" He'd known since Elizabeth offered him Atlantis that there was a chance he'd die with the Lost City or in its stead -- an even chance, if his childhood tales held true. He'd known since the other Elizabeth told her tale and proved that time travel was quite possible (as long as you gave up all hope of stepping twice into the same river) that his old bedtime stories of days gone by were almost certainly faded memories of his and his people's own present and future, that the resemblances he had drawn between his new comrades and fabled Liss and Tegan, Furd and Meredith, should rather operate in reverse. (Although, honestly, Meredith? That made as much sense as the Volsungasaga deriving "Gudrun" from "Krimhild.") It took neither a brilliant mathematician nor a talent for reckoning to deduce that, short of an unexpected statistically significant pattern of disturbance or the tales of a latter-day Euripides, he was fast coming up on the end of his life; and he'd made his peace with that. He'd understood that. He'd far rather that than its contrapositive, and he'd anticipated making the Wraith pay through their flat noses for it.
In a way, for the past two weeks he'd been freer than he'd ever been, with half the variables of his life reduced to a single constant.
If it were not the call-to-ward -- and that wouldn't really have been a choice, either, at least not one he'd already made over and over again long since -- why was he here in a puddlejumper in a thought-given-form when he ought to be dead?
Just as his thoughts had gotten that far, John was told, "You have two -- well, three, really -- choices. You can Ascend. See the wonders of the universe, think on many different levels, be everywhere and everywhere is you."
No. No, no, no. He realized he was shaking his head, and turned his revulsion into speech. "No. There are -- I would -- if they..." The words caught in his throat, and he tried again at an angle, in his native tongue. "Undying and unliving and unmindful of what living's for, and seeing everything but unable to do anything about it -- that's... not me. I couldn't. I'd go crazy and eat planets or something. How do they stand it?"
"Many of them are... not scared, exactly, but removing any temptation that they'll ever demand worship. Many of the rest are unwilling to disobey the others. Most of what's left just don't care -- what happens when a Zen master ascends?"
"I don't know," John said, recognizing this as a joke. "What?"
"He doesn't notice."
They both laughed harder than the joke probably really deserved.
"And then," the scholar said, "you can always do what I do."
"What's that?"
"Cheat."
John was startled into another burst of laughter.
"They'll notice anything big, like poor Athar's grand gesture, and come down on you like a ton of bricks."
Yes. He remembered that.
"But if you can calculate the probabilities enough -- and you have a mind that can do that, once you can think in higher dimensions at once -- you can leap back to somewhen they aren't looking and... tap things a little, so that eventually they work out closer to the way you want them. Things get disturbed all the time in the backwash of their sightseeing, and you can't observe the particle and its direction at once, even if it takes you several tries to get it right." His face crinkled. "There've been a few times when I screwed things up so much I had to drop back to before I started and keep the times when I changed things from happening; it's a good thing reality's more resilient than classic science fiction would have you believe. Cumulative recurrence is vastly, vastly underestimated.
"They'll eventually start suspecting, of course, and it makes it harder when they're looking at places -- some of them have been watching Atlantis ever since your expedition walked into it -- but they won't act without proof. All you have to do is learn to be more patient and sneakier."
Oh. And oh, of course he recognized who or at least what the scholar, the doctor, was; not any of the seven he recognized, of course, and he'd blocked that travesty claiming to be the movie from his mind (although he thought he'd have remembered the white forelock) and never seen the casting for the revival, but television shows weren't precisely reality anyway even if they echoed it... "But if they're watching, what are you doing here? Rodney said you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend. Chaya knew you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend." Nor would John have thought of him as that sort of Undying...
"Teach, no, but you've known since she shared it with you." The gentle, compassionate smile, the smile of a doctor delivering uncomfortable truths, was back. "I couldn't have caught you if you hadn't been half-there yourself, any more than Ælwine could have caught me when I finally rewrote myself out of existence -- even though he'd hijacked my project and been bouncing me around to his tune for several years elapsed without a by-your-leave." The angry crease that had risen between his brows on the last phrase eased. "And they're watching the second siege of Atlantis, while we are in your thought, currently taking place at the day and the hour of your birth."
"Why birth?" John wondered, diverted. "Why not twenty years ago, or quickening, or... "
"It has to do with the part of you that exists in six dimensions. If you rise a little farther, you'll understand perfectly, and if you don't, it'd take me three days to explain it."
"So, Doctor, you're saying I should ascend?"
"I'm explaining your second choice -- you could ascend or part-ascend and -- " he shrugged -- "take a sad song and make it better. You could leap on your own, or... there are places they'd watch for me but not for you, and places they'd watch for you but not for me. You'd have your hands tied every inch of the way until you descended or faded away or slipped up and were cast out, but you'd be able to see the people you care about before they're dead and now and then be able to do something for them.
"Or, should you choose the third option... I'd ask you for your permission to nudge you into making changes I don't dare be caught making, and whatever your answer would be, I'd leap back and tweak the Daedalus so that it's just that much faster."
"So that it would arrive in time to save my people?" Major Sheppard demanded.
"So that it would arrive in -- transporter range -- a minute and a half before the time when you loosed your body and I caught you before you went on to... wherever... rather than three minutes and forty seconds afterwards, and this whole conversation would never have happened," the man he now thought of as the Doctor told him, visibly hanging onto his temper. "I don't play those sorts of games."
"I'm sorry," Sheppard said. Three minutes and forty seconds. Three minutes and forty seconds. Surely that would be enough time to... he'd probably bought that much time in Wraith disorganization, and possibly the Daedalus would have a longer weapons range than -- transporters, honest to goodness transporters, not the matter-mitters that Rodney had labeled transporters, and he'd miss seeing something that cool. If he missed them.
Three minutes and forty seconds, and Ford would understand, and Teyla would never forgive the Wraith, and Rodney would never forgive him. Or, worse, himself.
But even that --
"So if I went with you, they'd be all right? They've got the chain of command, they'll have the reinforcements, and they'll be able to go on managing -- "
"I can't, at the moment, tell you what would happen," the Doctor sighed. "I know right where you are, you see."
"Can you tell me what's likely to happen?"
"A ninety-eight percent chance that some of them will survive. The percentiles vary for whom specifically and in what combinations. If you go with me, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving. If you go back to them, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving." He shrugged again. "Sorry I can't be more helpful."
"I could ascend and then descend into Atlantis right after I left." And that if anything would seem the creation of a disciple of Garrick or Disney working in the best Morgensternian tradition, but should it work...
"Or you could do that -- but the others tend to watch people who pull that one off very carefully for a long time, and I'd be unlikely to be able to help you and yours for quite some time afterwards."
"What you're saying, basically, is that I get to pick a box and hope I haven't chosen the one that'll dump iratus bugs all over me."
"Pretty much. I never much liked the idea of the one that poured gold and silver coins over the girl, either; she'd probably have been black and blue by the time it was done."
"I always thought the right box was the one that had lunch in it," he confessed. "Maybe your grandma told it differently."
"Maybe."
They flew on for a little longer, the clouds below them parting and revealing a Mediterranean-blue sea, before John Sheppard at last made his choice.
Am I the only person who thinks that at least half of A. E. Housman's Last Poems seem to be all about John Sheppard?
-author- Sophonisba (
saphanibaal)-warnings- Gen. Crossover. Philosophy. Unreliable narrator. Literary references.
-spoilers- For "Sanctuary," "Before I Sleep," and for "The Siege," parts 2 and 3. Also, technically there are spoilers for the other shows involved, but if you don't recognize them you probably wouldn't notice them anyway. Prequel to my story "Chuang Chou menq tye," which is only relevant for one line.
-characters- Sheppard, other
-disclaimer- Neither of these guys are mine. Neither of their worlds are mine. The plot concept isn't exactly mine, either.
-word count- 2062
-summary- "I've come to offer you a choice."
Lead Casket
"Weapon is armed and ready," Sheppard announced. "I'm going in."
And the world narrowed, and flying was almost all that he had ever wanted out of it, and he was the puddlejumper and the puddlejumper was him and he sailed in gently, the back of his mind automatically noting T minus thirty and counting... minus fifteen and counting... minus five. Four. Three. Two. One --
-- and he was soaring through the high infinite blue of the sky, sunlight reflecting off of clouds beneath him like the echo of a paean, a new display informing him that the Bergenholms were operating at 90% of inertial neutralization and holding a shield-shape that looked something like a Wraith dart even as he felt the wind screaming past him with his entire body, second-best rush ever combined with the best and wow, he should have tried seeing whether they could go part-inert before...
"Well, that's different," the man in the copilot's seat remarked, and John turned his head to look at him.
He looked vaguely familiar, although John couldn't quite place him: graying dark wavy hair gone entirely white in one spot, a pleasant smile that reached his eyes, same apparent age as John, and something of a Midwest accent. An academic gown, which John hadn't even realized he'd missed seeing until there it was again.
"How so?" John asked.
The scholar shrugged. "This place isn't actually here -- "
"It's what, a thought you're having in the stratosphere of some planet?" John offered, remembering A Wind In The Door.
"Something like that, although this is your thought. Mine is a bar. Dr. Jackson's was a diner. Major Carter's was a video arcade, and I thought that was odd enough -- but I think you're the first person to choose an aircraft."
John shrugged. "I like it here."
His copilot nodded. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."
"So," John said eventually. "not that I don't appreciate the company, but would you mind telling me what you're doing here?"
The scholar smiled compassionately. Compassionate smiles were never a good sign.
"I've come to offer you a choice."
And his granther and gramma had told him enough stories in his childhood, and Chaya had known them, Chaya had lived them --
"One of the Undying Ten Thousand is fading away," Sheppard said dully. At least he'd gotten to fly as himself once more.
"Not really," the... Undying next to him said. "Not the way you're thinking of, at least. There are considerably more than ten thousand Ascended Alterans-and-allies floating on the planes, and many of them would be willing to take up the ward if needed." His smile turned amused. "It'd at least be something to do."
"Then what...?" He'd known since Elizabeth offered him Atlantis that there was a chance he'd die with the Lost City or in its stead -- an even chance, if his childhood tales held true. He'd known since the other Elizabeth told her tale and proved that time travel was quite possible (as long as you gave up all hope of stepping twice into the same river) that his old bedtime stories of days gone by were almost certainly faded memories of his and his people's own present and future, that the resemblances he had drawn between his new comrades and fabled Liss and Tegan, Furd and Meredith, should rather operate in reverse. (Although, honestly, Meredith? That made as much sense as the Volsungasaga deriving "Gudrun" from "Krimhild.") It took neither a brilliant mathematician nor a talent for reckoning to deduce that, short of an unexpected statistically significant pattern of disturbance or the tales of a latter-day Euripides, he was fast coming up on the end of his life; and he'd made his peace with that. He'd understood that. He'd far rather that than its contrapositive, and he'd anticipated making the Wraith pay through their flat noses for it.
In a way, for the past two weeks he'd been freer than he'd ever been, with half the variables of his life reduced to a single constant.
If it were not the call-to-ward -- and that wouldn't really have been a choice, either, at least not one he'd already made over and over again long since -- why was he here in a puddlejumper in a thought-given-form when he ought to be dead?
Just as his thoughts had gotten that far, John was told, "You have two -- well, three, really -- choices. You can Ascend. See the wonders of the universe, think on many different levels, be everywhere and everywhere is you."
No. No, no, no. He realized he was shaking his head, and turned his revulsion into speech. "No. There are -- I would -- if they..." The words caught in his throat, and he tried again at an angle, in his native tongue. "Undying and unliving and unmindful of what living's for, and seeing everything but unable to do anything about it -- that's... not me. I couldn't. I'd go crazy and eat planets or something. How do they stand it?"
"Many of them are... not scared, exactly, but removing any temptation that they'll ever demand worship. Many of the rest are unwilling to disobey the others. Most of what's left just don't care -- what happens when a Zen master ascends?"
"I don't know," John said, recognizing this as a joke. "What?"
"He doesn't notice."
They both laughed harder than the joke probably really deserved.
"And then," the scholar said, "you can always do what I do."
"What's that?"
"Cheat."
John was startled into another burst of laughter.
"They'll notice anything big, like poor Athar's grand gesture, and come down on you like a ton of bricks."
Yes. He remembered that.
"But if you can calculate the probabilities enough -- and you have a mind that can do that, once you can think in higher dimensions at once -- you can leap back to somewhen they aren't looking and... tap things a little, so that eventually they work out closer to the way you want them. Things get disturbed all the time in the backwash of their sightseeing, and you can't observe the particle and its direction at once, even if it takes you several tries to get it right." His face crinkled. "There've been a few times when I screwed things up so much I had to drop back to before I started and keep the times when I changed things from happening; it's a good thing reality's more resilient than classic science fiction would have you believe. Cumulative recurrence is vastly, vastly underestimated.
"They'll eventually start suspecting, of course, and it makes it harder when they're looking at places -- some of them have been watching Atlantis ever since your expedition walked into it -- but they won't act without proof. All you have to do is learn to be more patient and sneakier."
Oh. And oh, of course he recognized who or at least what the scholar, the doctor, was; not any of the seven he recognized, of course, and he'd blocked that travesty claiming to be the movie from his mind (although he thought he'd have remembered the white forelock) and never seen the casting for the revival, but television shows weren't precisely reality anyway even if they echoed it... "But if they're watching, what are you doing here? Rodney said you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend. Chaya knew you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend." Nor would John have thought of him as that sort of Undying...
"Teach, no, but you've known since she shared it with you." The gentle, compassionate smile, the smile of a doctor delivering uncomfortable truths, was back. "I couldn't have caught you if you hadn't been half-there yourself, any more than Ælwine could have caught me when I finally rewrote myself out of existence -- even though he'd hijacked my project and been bouncing me around to his tune for several years elapsed without a by-your-leave." The angry crease that had risen between his brows on the last phrase eased. "And they're watching the second siege of Atlantis, while we are in your thought, currently taking place at the day and the hour of your birth."
"Why birth?" John wondered, diverted. "Why not twenty years ago, or quickening, or... "
"It has to do with the part of you that exists in six dimensions. If you rise a little farther, you'll understand perfectly, and if you don't, it'd take me three days to explain it."
"So, Doctor, you're saying I should ascend?"
"I'm explaining your second choice -- you could ascend or part-ascend and -- " he shrugged -- "take a sad song and make it better. You could leap on your own, or... there are places they'd watch for me but not for you, and places they'd watch for you but not for me. You'd have your hands tied every inch of the way until you descended or faded away or slipped up and were cast out, but you'd be able to see the people you care about before they're dead and now and then be able to do something for them.
"Or, should you choose the third option... I'd ask you for your permission to nudge you into making changes I don't dare be caught making, and whatever your answer would be, I'd leap back and tweak the Daedalus so that it's just that much faster."
"So that it would arrive in time to save my people?" Major Sheppard demanded.
"So that it would arrive in -- transporter range -- a minute and a half before the time when you loosed your body and I caught you before you went on to... wherever... rather than three minutes and forty seconds afterwards, and this whole conversation would never have happened," the man he now thought of as the Doctor told him, visibly hanging onto his temper. "I don't play those sorts of games."
"I'm sorry," Sheppard said. Three minutes and forty seconds. Three minutes and forty seconds. Surely that would be enough time to... he'd probably bought that much time in Wraith disorganization, and possibly the Daedalus would have a longer weapons range than -- transporters, honest to goodness transporters, not the matter-mitters that Rodney had labeled transporters, and he'd miss seeing something that cool. If he missed them.
Three minutes and forty seconds, and Ford would understand, and Teyla would never forgive the Wraith, and Rodney would never forgive him. Or, worse, himself.
But even that --
"So if I went with you, they'd be all right? They've got the chain of command, they'll have the reinforcements, and they'll be able to go on managing -- "
"I can't, at the moment, tell you what would happen," the Doctor sighed. "I know right where you are, you see."
"Can you tell me what's likely to happen?"
"A ninety-eight percent chance that some of them will survive. The percentiles vary for whom specifically and in what combinations. If you go with me, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving. If you go back to them, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving." He shrugged again. "Sorry I can't be more helpful."
"I could ascend and then descend into Atlantis right after I left." And that if anything would seem the creation of a disciple of Garrick or Disney working in the best Morgensternian tradition, but should it work...
"Or you could do that -- but the others tend to watch people who pull that one off very carefully for a long time, and I'd be unlikely to be able to help you and yours for quite some time afterwards."
"What you're saying, basically, is that I get to pick a box and hope I haven't chosen the one that'll dump iratus bugs all over me."
"Pretty much. I never much liked the idea of the one that poured gold and silver coins over the girl, either; she'd probably have been black and blue by the time it was done."
"I always thought the right box was the one that had lunch in it," he confessed. "Maybe your grandma told it differently."
"Maybe."
They flew on for a little longer, the clouds below them parting and revealing a Mediterranean-blue sea, before John Sheppard at last made his choice.
Am I the only person who thinks that at least half of A. E. Housman's Last Poems seem to be all about John Sheppard?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 01:21 pm (UTC)"Pretty much. I never much liked the idea of the one that poured gold and silver coins over the girl, either; she'd probably have been black and blue by the time it was done."
"I always thought the right box was the one that had lunch in it," he confessed. "Maybe your grandma told it differently."
I love that, because really, who wouldn't prefer a sandwich most of the time? And the image of John being told stories by his grandparents is lovely. Too often it seems like writers forget that he'd have some kind of family beyond just his parents.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 09:51 pm (UTC)There's a version from South America -- I want to say Peru, but I might be wrong -- where the hero is offered a gold casket (containing flesh and blood), a silver (containing bones), and a lead (containing a loaf of bread).
//Too often it seems like writers forget that he'd have some kind of family beyond just his parents.//
And it seems to me that his behavior is equally consonant with having no family, having a family he's estranged from, or having had and lost a large family and being once-burned-twice-shy.
Thank you for the compliments!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 04:14 pm (UTC)Pity I couldn't get the references for at least half of it. Could you please explain what it is you're crossing over with?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 11:04 am (UTC)//Could you please explain what it is you're crossing over with?//
Here, noticeably, Stargate: SG-1 and Quantum Leap. (John thinks it's Doctor Who. This is why he's an unreliable narrator.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 05:13 pm (UTC)Metron Ariston - A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle?
Undying Ten Thousand - Cable (comic) by Marvel?
Liss - ???
Tegan - Doctor Who?
Furd - ???
Meredith - Rodney?
Gudrun-from-Krimhild - Norse Mythology
Euripides - Greek playwright (tragedian)
'not any of the seven he recognized' - Highlander? Almost sounds like Methos, but... ?? Only it seems to be the Doctor from Doctor Who, so now I'm more confused.
Ælwine - ???
... Why yes, I do have homework that I should be doing. *whistles innocently and continues procrastinating* ^_~
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 11:36 am (UTC)I think I managed to make one more obvious, but as for the rest -- John doesn't want to *talk*. Argh.
I've been assuming that, as the puddlejumpers seem to have inertial dampeners, the geeks would long since have nicknamed the devices "Bergenholms."
You're absolutely correct about Metron Ariston.
The Undying Ten Thousand are loosely, loosely based on the Jewish legend of a hundred righteous men that keep the world from being destroyed. I picked ten thousand because it's a nice round number and the largest one Ancient Greek has a word for, undying because it sounds more poetic than immortal, and, um... the worst thing you could do in the face of a god that wasn't godly would be to believe in it. The Ten Thousand spend their time disbelieving in it for you, so anything within their sphere of influence that claims to be a god and isn't godly is a big fat liar and doesn't have the powers of a god. This takes a lot of time and effort, particularly in the face of all the things that want to exist, so the Ten Thousand get to do nothing else until they fade away -- they're Ascended, so they can't exactly *die*.
I tried to imply all that, but obviously it didn't exactly work.
The I was trying to say that with Elizabeth's example to prove that time travel is possible, John's more and more certain that the reason Elizabeth, Teyla, Ford and Rodney act like the Liss, Tegan, Furd, and Meredith who were occasional characters in his bedtime stories about the lost city on the sea -- and that a few times something has happened that he recognizes from the stories, although usually he either only recognizes it after the fact or can't really explain it to anyone else without having to get into explanations that he desperately doesn't want to have to make -- is that they are the Liss, Tegan, Furd, and Meredith of the tales. (And while I thought three of those names were fairly obvious, there really is no good way to intuit "Rodney" from "Meredith" without specialized knowledge; somewhat the way that in the Germanic tales about Sigfrid/Sigurd/Siegfried, while his wife's name is usually some version of Krimhild/Kremhilde/Kriemhild, in the Norse he marries Gudrun, daughter of Grimhild. Where'd that come from?)
Euripides wrote Iphigenia in Tauris.
I was trying to establish that John thinks he's talking to the Doctor from Doctor Who. (He isn't.) One of the better-known elements of DW canon is that when the Doctor takes a mortal wound, he turns into another actor. He went through seven actors in the television series. Then there was a long hiatus, during which a movie was made with an Eighth Doctor. Most of the fans hated it, but the series started up again a couple years ago with a Ninth Doctor, so the movie might need to be canon. But preferably not. (They're on their tenth actor now, and he's only supposed to have ten possible forms, so I'm not sure what they're going to do...)
Ælwine is an Ascended being. I needed an old-sounding name that could plausibly be abbreviated to Al (it'd probably be Alwyn or Alwin or Alvin these days) since the guy in the bar was canonically called "Al." (The only excuse for that episode is so that you can believably have crossovers with Stargate TV. Seriously.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 12:51 pm (UTC)"that he recognizes from the stories": The problem with the Liss, Tegan, Furd, and Meredith part is not that the reader doesn't understand that Sheppard has recognized the similarities (that aspect seems quite clear). It's that the reader is led to believe they're from a story that should be familiar to the reader (and that the show's writers are alluding to something). So off we go to the encyclopedias--and can't find these characters. Myself, I thought Tegan must be a character from folklore, because I couldn't see a Doctor Who connection.
It isn't clear yet that Sheppard thinks he's talking to the Doctor. As a fan of the original series I of course reacted to the name, but I saw so many things that didn't fit that I figured it wasn't in fact a Doctor Who reference. The reference to the seven and the movie and the revival went completely over my head.
Re your note here: A Time Lord can have thirteen incarnations (twelve regenerations), not ten.
I didn't pick up on any of the Quantum Leap either. I thought Ælwine might be some kind of Arthurian legend-type character named Alwyn or the like. I assume the Al you're referring to was the bartender in "Mirror Image" played by Bruce McGill, not Al (Albert Calavicci) the hologram played by Dean Stockwell?
BTW if the visitor is in fact Sam from Quantum Leap, a stronger clue might (or might not...) be given if the bar was clarified as a bar in a mining town. Some early uses of words that are fixures of the series might give the reader the right idea too: leap, Ziggy, hologram...
I think it's cool that Sheppard's methaphor of understanding doesn't have to be precise (Doctor Who vs Quantum Leap) so long as it's *sufficient*.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 05:05 am (UTC)(Doctor Who is one of the things that I'd check a story arc of out of the library every now and then as I was growing up, which makes for fond recollections but not the actual familiarity I have with, oh, Star Trek or Lois & Clark.)
Some of the problems with this story -- and with some of my others -- have been that the flashfic challenges often throw me ideas for stories taking place in The AU Which Ate My Brain, which started life as The QL Continuation Which Ate My Brain and has accreted six fictons, not to mention two more that keep making seductive noises at me. I want to write them so that they make sense to, you know, people who are not me, but I also want them to *fit* into my universe, so I don't have to go back and rewrite them later.
In a story like "Definitions," it really isn't particularly necessary to the plot or the characterization to mention that one of the people in the noisy Anthro and Linguistics round-table discussion over breakfast is Daniel Jackson. The story works perfectly well without it, and when presented in the context of the AU, I expect it would be assumed that he would be in the middle of it; just as, if I were to write John and Teyla having lunch with a mention of the science department having a noisy argument in another corner of the room, it would be assumed that Rodney McKay was in the middle of it unless I'd specifically suggested he wasn't.
In something like this, OTOH, the Undying Ten Thousand is part of the mytharc, even if its mention only serves this story's purposes by:
1 - Establishing relatively soon off the bat that John Sheppard has some sort of cultural/ethnic heritage in addition to that of the guy who saw Star Wars in the theaters and fell in love with the first run of Airwolf, and that said heritage is specifically related to the Ancients;
2 - Affirming that, when offered the choice between desire and duty, it isn't even a choice for John (although "duty" as John perceives it and "orders" obviously need to be related by Venn diagram).
And this, obviously, is the place where I either overexplain or leave too much gapped for fear of bogging down the action.
I didn't remember that it was in a mining town -- until SG-1 gave me a context for it, I spent a great deal of time trying very hard to blot that episode (and large chunks of the last season) out of my mind.
That is a good point about using "leap," too, and I'll go edit that in. (Of course, by this point, he doesn't have Ziggy or hologram-Al, having changed reality to the point where he and the Sam Beckett of the altered timeline can't do a Witch Week-style fusion; the benefits of being Ascended should be that you'd be able to do all that calculation yourself anyway.)
//I think it's cool that Sheppard's metaphor of understanding doesn't have to be precise (Doctor Who vs Quantum Leap) so long as it's *sufficient*.//
And that was one of the things I was trying to show in the story, and I'm very happy you picked up on it. ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 04:00 pm (UTC)I caught "leap" and "project", and I think if I was reading this for the first time I'd have figured out at that point who the visitor was.
It's now pretty clear who Ælwine is and what he has to do with anything. And *now* I get why "the day and the hour of your birth" is mentioned!
The description of the visitor at the beginning of the story rather bugs me. "dark wavy hair" is something I don't match up with Sam Beckett. I seem to remember his hair being rather blond, and "dark" usually implies brunet, so maybe the word "dark" should simply be eliminated. I like the idea of it "graying" because that implies all sorts of things about him and when this takes place in relation to the series. It seems to me that the white forelock ought to be mentioned in this paragraph, even though it's a dead giveaway, because it's not something a person could overlook. (But if you don't want to, he could be looking away at that moment so John doesn't see it yet.) It seems like the "academic gown" is supposed to be significant, but if so I still don't get it.
The downside of the clearer Quantum Leap referencing is that the Doctor Who referencing is almost completely drowned. As it is now the reader is left wondering *what* John is referring to. The first time I read this I was indeed thinking about Time Lords in the preceding paragraph, but completely forgot them in my bewilderment at what the seven, a white forelock, and talk of ascension was referencing. Substituting "what this doctor was" for "what the scholar was" might improve this a little or even a lot. And if the talk of ascension can somehow be broken from the Doctor Who train of thought (or derived from it), that will remove that bit of mental whiplash.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 10:02 pm (UTC)bzuh? I remember it as being darker than mine -- or, say, MacGyver's -- albeit not actually black, so I wrote it that way. (I think Scott Bakula was blond for a while, but not when he was working on this...)
The academic gown... that sort of came out of the part where I can't really remember any sort of clothing (other than the white Leaping-suit) that's really associated with Sam -- he spends all his time wearing everyone else's clothes -- and then I handwaved with the thought that if John was providing the cloud cover and the stratosphere and the G's and the puddlejumper anyway, he might as well provide an outfit that would make him relaxed and comfortable, and the version of John I was writing decided that the trappings of academia were something comfortably familiar that he wouldn't have admitted he missed. (Initially they were both going to be in gowns. Then I realized that even if a master's gown's sleeves couldn't foul the puddlejumper's controls, they'd probably be going counter to John's instincts from years of flying with analogue instrument panels, so I left it out.)
Thank you for your other suggestions; I know that ideally the story should have gone through this process before posting rather than after, and I'm grateful for your input.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 08:58 pm (UTC)You're right. You have major literary blind spots, as well as televisual ones. And even though I've read 'A Wind in the Door', it was a long time ago. I picked up the Doctor Who references on the second read-through, and actually, a lot of Stargate fits in pretty well with Doctor Who - so reading your assertion that John is, in fact, incorrect about that was a little startling.
But now I get the Quantum Leap reference (white forelock), which...no, that actually doesn't help. For me, Doctor Who actually makes better sense in this story. As much as anything in this story makes sense, which it kind of does - but kind of not...
The 'Liss, Tegan, Furd and Meredith' bit was completely confusing - it's not clear at all that John is referencing stories that he was told as a child, especially with the inclusion of the names Tegan and Meredith.
I'm really not sure what to say, except that maybe you need to start putting footnotes in your stories? This isn't the only one that needs them. I like your stories, they're very interesting - but even though I consider myself widely read, I keep getting left wondering what you're alluding to.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 05:37 am (UTC)Televisual ones?
I think, also, it's that I grew up reading older fantasy and the Victorian/Edwardian literature and epic poetry it drew on...
...and nearly all of those tend to hold that if you didn't get that reference, you needn't worry, there'll be another one in five paragraphs.
So I'll draft something, and then I'll go back through and clarify everything that I think I didn't explain well enough...
... and if I ever get around to posting non-flashfic SGAfic, I will so need to hunt down a prereader or three.
I've tried to clarify it a little; the one problem with writing to deadlines is that I usually wind up posting just in time and with far too little sleep, and that's a really superb way to not be capable of noticing obvious flaws. I'm trying to train myself to do better.
And I'd be happy to put footnotes in, if only I knew what I'd need to put them in for.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 07:01 am (UTC)Truthfully, I think this particular fic, while interesting, is so very chockful of references that, if you planned to revise it, you'd do better to try and pull some of them out altogether - particularly since some of the specific allusions are really only a word or a phrase. Yes, there are conceptual references as well - but I think those would work better if you actually explicate them rather than relying on the allusion to bring them into the story.
You must have a phenomenal memory for things you've read and seen, because with quite a few of your fics I end up sitting there thinking 'I know I read/saw that, but I don't recall that particular aspect/episode of it'.
You're an excellent writer, honestly. I just think that you tend to write more for yourself than for an audience, and it would help your audience if you could take a step back to see what you write the way others - who don't have your memory and breadth of knowledge - will see it.
Yeah, I know flashfic doesn't lend itself to having the time (or alertness of mind) to do that, and it's one of the hardest things to do in writing - but seriously, it would improve your writing.
Hope I wasn't too forward in this, but you seem to be receptive to concrit - and I find it frustrating to read your stories and think 'this is so cool, if only all these allusions were better explained, or understanding this didn't depend on my having read/seen this or that thing'.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 04:13 pm (UTC)It only falls down with the few of your stories that are *so* hard to understand that a reader may not know where to start so doesn't say anything. I remember two of those offhand....
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 08:50 am (UTC)//I end up sitting there thinking 'I know I read/saw that, but I don't recall that particular aspect/episode of it'.//
Also, people tend to remember different aspects of complicated things, sort of like a demented version of the blind men and the elephant, so some of that might also be at play -- every so often I'll read a reference to an aspect of something that I'd entirely forgotten, but if I check sure enough there it was.
I was trying, also, to write so that the story would make sense even if you didn't recognize the other guy as Sam Beckett -- that the point of the story is the choice John's offered, but that if you happen to recognize the man offering it to him as Sam it's yet cooler. There're a few bits in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that parody -- that filk what at the time were very popular sententious poems; but even if you're unfamiliar with the originals, "You are old, Father William" and "How doth the little crocodile" are still funny.
//and it would help your audience if you could take a step back to see what you write the way others [...] will see it.//
The really depressing thing is that I'm trying to.
I know it's one of the things that gets better with practice, so here I am, practicing. Sigh.
I like concrit. I used to live near friends who'd read my stuff over and tell me what worked and what didn't, and then I moved away. ;_;
And it's -- I really do try to write so that understanding a fanfic for one show doesn't depend on being familiar with some other canon, no matter how it might be bedizened with references or cameos. I just wish I could succeed.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 05:25 pm (UTC)"Why not twenty years ago, or quickening, or... ". I'm guessing now you meant conception? 'Quickening' is a red flag for Highlander, which is why myself and others thought you were referencing that fandom as well.
Personally, I thought the TV series was better than any of the movies, but the first Highlander movie is worth seeing once.
Reading in another comment that your 'Doctor Who' viewing has been somewhat erratic, I think I should point out that Tegan was the name of one of the 5th Doctor's companions. By mentioning that name, you kind of reinforced my view that Sheppard's visitor was the Doctor. But rereading, I can see how much you were tapping into Quantum Leap.
I find it's a good idea to mention right at the beginning of a story if you're crossing fandoms. Just saying on this one that you were crossing SGA, Quantum Leap, and Doctor Who (sort of) would have helped a lot! I can see that you were trying to make things clear enough that a reader wouldn't need to be familiar with Quantum Leap to understand this, but in this particular instance, I don't think it works. There's just too much meaning lost without at least a basic familiarity with the premise of that show.
I understand that you want to make your stories accessible for readers who aren't familiar with the fandoms you're using, but that's incredibly hard. Go ahead and try it, by all means, but I still think you should mention in an author's note what fandoms you're playing in. There are some people who will hit the back button if they aren't familiar with those fandoms, and some who will give it a try anyways. I certainly never would have found all the lovely 'Magnificent Seven' stories out there if I hadn't taken a chance on a fandom I was unfamiliar with.
Okay...going back and rereading 'Lead Casket' from beginning to end, it makes a lot more sense now. I do think that you should remove the 'Gudrun from Krimhild' bit altogether - it confuses the issue...and oh god. I just got it. How dumb am I? Liss=Elizabeth, Furd=Ford, Tegan=Teyla, and Meredith, of course, is Rodney.
Tegan, which I had referenced back to Doctor Who, led me so far astray...
Was John himself not in those tales told by his grandparents?
Also, I think the Euripides reference isn't really necessary, but if you feel it should stay, then you really need to explain it. Offhand, I don't recall the story of Euripides, although I'm sure I've read it.
The Undying Ten Thousand thing I got through the context - I think that worked out okay as just a concept of people/beings who guard the universe.
So...there's your beta for this story, because I really do love it, and it's so damn good, but it could be - how do I put it - more accessible.
And oh, I know, I know how hard it is to take that step back and try to read your own work from the POV of your audience. Oddly, I have more success at that with my own serious stories than the funny ones. I never think what I've written is funny.
You know how it goes: it's always easier for someone else to see what's wrong and how to fix it than it is for yourself. That's what beta-readers are for, and I freely admit that I could stand to have my own stories beta-read more often.
The fun thing about flashfic is that you get to try things, and see what works and what doesn't without feeling too much pressure to get it right the first time. At least, that's the way I feel about flashfic.
Are you going to come back to the concepts visited in this story? I think you should. Don't toss this out and say 'oh well, it didn't work out the way I wanted it to'. I would love to read more about the stories John's grandparents told him, and how they parallel his adult experiences. And what happens after this story? Does John remember the offer? Does he meet Sam again, or another like him? Does he figure out that the person he met isn't the Doctor or an analogue of the Doctor? And maybe, since John thinks that his visitor is the Doctor, might he find that there is some ring of truth in that, as well?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-07 02:16 am (UTC)...but I wouldn't expect that jargon meaning, which I expect to be derived from the older traditional belief that quickening is also when the soul descends into the body, to be the first to leap to mind in a non-Highlander story. I had thought that its apposition to "birth" and "twenty years ago" would show that John's thinking of the moment when his mother first felt him move within her, rather than something related to acceleration.
//Was John himself not in those tales told by his grandparents?//
Well, yes, if more by function than by name -- I was trying to imply that in at least one of them, his analogue died defending Liss and her people, and so even if he was named for the Djón-who-came-back-from-the-dead-in-the-story, that's more likely to be somebody retelling with a happy ending or the result of several people named variants-of-John getting conflated than anything to hope for, so he's been expecting to die. (With a side note of "there were more stories about Liss/Tegan/Furd/Meredith, so presumably they'll survive, but given the other Elizabeth's experience I could still fuck this up if I'm stupid about it.")
And I certainly intend to come back to this -- although not directly, since part of the effects of Choice #3 would be that, since the Daedalus arrived earlier, the whole conversation never happened. ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-07 02:52 am (UTC)But John is such an integral part of Atlantis, I'd think he'd play a bigger part in the Liss/Tegan/Furd/Meredith stories - even if he died as soon as 'The Siege' and there were subsequent adventures told. I'd like to see a specific mention of the John analogue, with something to the effect that John finds his own resemblance to the fictional Djón more than a little disturbing - which would reinforce the notion of the childhood stories being a mirror of John's experiences on Atlantis.
I'm guessing that to you, this may seem too obvious - like hitting your reader over the head with a log to make a point about twigs - but when you're combining not only real fandoms but your own backstories, obvious is good. I get the impression that you're trying not to come right out and say 'this thing and this thing go together in this fashion' - but I actually think that that's the way you need to go. Be unsubtle and obvious first, and then start to smooth out the seams between your connections. You only have to be obvious the first time or two, until your audience gets the hang of things.
I don't know, does any of this help? I'm trying to be more helpful, and not so much critical. I usually beta mainly for grammar/punctuation/spelling/sentence structure, but I'm so intrigued by what you're trying to do that I've been thinking it over a lot.
I have now read 'Lead Casket' a total of 5 times from beginning to end, not counting glances at specific parts. Whew! I need to go read something more lightweight now!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 08:48 pm (UTC)May I suggest that you put more space or a decorative break or something between the end of your story, and your note? It was a bit jarring to think the story wasn't quite over yet -- but yes, it was.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 11:38 am (UTC)I stuck in a horizontal line; does that help?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-04 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-03 11:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 05:23 am (UTC)For what it's worth, I spent most of my first readthrough of MrsHamill's And There Was War In Heaven going "Mryargh, she beat me to it and she did it justice" in between devouring it madly; if you haven't read it, you probably should.
I've tried to make some of them clearer, if any of them are...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 03:45 am (UTC)hmm, i'm just not up on my obscure references, lol. also, i see a few people have pointed out dr. who, but i've never watched any of the dr. who series, so i'm sure i'm missing some things on that alone, lol.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-22 03:35 am (UTC)I got the Quantum Leap references right away, as well as the fact that John thought Sam was more-or-less the Doctor (i.e. Doctor Who) despite never having seen the latter series. Y'know, it's a fandom thing; when you got to the seven doctors bit I thought *weren't there *ten*?* and I have *never seen an episode*.
I also got that John's people somehow knew what John would be going through and made his story into a heroic myth, or that John's exploits were somehow simultaneously the past and the future; the hints of John's 'native tongue' as well as some others speak to a deeper backstory and an entire 'Lantean culture that has survived down the years.
I got that Sam was an Ancient, or at least descended from one and that he was offering John the choice to do something similar to what he was doing, and help tweak the timelines.
I wonder... am I reading version 2.0 of this story?
However: some stuff is still tantalizingly unclear. I want to hear more about how John grew up; I want to see what decision John makes, and what its consequences are; I want to hear the original stories of Furd, Meredith, Liss and Teygan. (And... I see there is a sequel? Coolness.)
I enjoyed this - but it also seems that you gave us a tiny taste of a banquet, or maybe even a glimpse of one, a whiff of one. I want to see so much more that I'm tempted to write it myself.
-K
Love this
Date: 2008-12-05 06:10 pm (UTC)The challenge of piecing things together- probabaly a bit harder for me, becuase I haven't read or seen a lot of the stuff you're referring to- is still quite enjoyable.
Footnotes might be helpful, potentially really helpful, but I would never ask you to cut back on the references. They make me squee!
Awesome fic, (all of them are awesome) and I can't wait to find out about Rodney's secret.