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fic rec (SGA): Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose by synecdochic
Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
synecdochic
Spoilers: Through Season 2 and conjecture for the future.
Summary: SGC finally stops calling him by December. Rodney celebrates by writing a final exam for his relativity class so difficult that it reduces four students to tears in the exam hall. Upon reflection, he decides to be merciful and offer partial credit.
19,350 words
Achingly beautiful, this is one of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever read, across fandoms. I saw this story rec'd in several places but was at first hesitant to read it, because I knew it involved major character death. But that's not what this story is about. For me, it's about hope (if I want to put it in one word, which I really can't because it wouldn't do it justice). The prose is clear and perfect, and the plot drew me in right from the first paragraph. I had a knot in my stomach the entire time while reading it, and was incapable of putting it down.
synecdochicSpoilers: Through Season 2 and conjecture for the future.
Summary: SGC finally stops calling him by December. Rodney celebrates by writing a final exam for his relativity class so difficult that it reduces four students to tears in the exam hall. Upon reflection, he decides to be merciful and offer partial credit.
19,350 words
Achingly beautiful, this is one of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever read, across fandoms. I saw this story rec'd in several places but was at first hesitant to read it, because I knew it involved major character death. But that's not what this story is about. For me, it's about hope (if I want to put it in one word, which I really can't because it wouldn't do it justice). The prose is clear and perfect, and the plot drew me in right from the first paragraph. I had a knot in my stomach the entire time while reading it, and was incapable of putting it down.
no subject
Don't forget to watch LIM's vid, Us, which IIRC, was linked at synecdochic's site.
no subject
Re: Us... dude, I've watched that one at least two dozen times. Each time I discover another detail. I've never seen it better expressed what it is we do here, what this community means. And that song - it's like it was written about, well, us. I was trying to imagine what it could've been about originally but can't come up with anything that makes sense. My reading is irrevocably colored by that vid.
Hey, it will be fun to rewatch the vid and spot the SGA parts, which I couldn't place before. :)
no subject
Us is about Soviet Russia and the US, AFAIK. Regina Spektor is a Russian emigre (she emigrated to New York at nine or ten). If you imagine the two parts as being two characters looking at the 20th century, from both ends of it? You can possibly characterise the "rummaging for answers" chorus as the post-communist US immigrant experience and the "they named a city after us" verses as being from the Bolshevik POV. Is one way to read that song, anyway. Personally I heard it and went, omg, it's US. *grins* Er, obviously.
However! Actually I did make a vid about Syne's Freedom... and possibly this is what MakD was referring to (I dunno, but it seems likely), which uses another Spektor song, On the Radio: This is How it Works (http://www.kekkai.org/lim/index.html#tihiw) (don't feel obliged to watch it).
no subject
Okay, I never would've guessed that.
which uses another Spektor song, On the Radio: This is How it Works (don't feel obliged to watch it).
I swear, I was just about to email you about that vid. Actually this is how I came across "Freedom" in the first place... I'd watched "My brilliant idea" and saw TIHIW at your site, so I thought I'd try another SGA vid. I didn't understand it, not having read the fic or watched the show. But I took note of what fic it was about and it was nagging in the back of my head. So after I'd finally read the story, I dl'ed the vid and the text of the song. Wow. It's absolutely amazing, how the sentiment of the story is echoed in the vid. Like this part:
But he's not. He's really not, because he submerged himself in all of it with his eyes wide open, and it might be romantic to say something like a piece of his heart was ripped away, but it would also be wrong. He has the memory of seven years of working side-by-side, of five and a half years of some of the happiest days of his life even interspersed with the moments, the days, the weeks of sheer terror, and in the end, it's enough. It always was.
Five and a half years of loving someone, of being loved, as much as you can love in the city on the edge of forever, which is sometimes too much and sometimes not enough at all. They'd both known how it could end at the very beginning, and Rodney had made his choices and let everything change him without once looking back. To say it was all worth it trivializes something so profound he knows he will never have the words to articulate it.
So when the song got to this part:
this is how it works
you're young until you're not
you love until you don't
you try until you can't
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath
this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like
and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some--
someone else's heart
pumping someone else's blood
... all the feelings I felt when reading the story came rushing back. It's very powerful, and visually interesting as well. (Just one question... what do the numbers mean?)
no subject
*dies* You know, I still have (http://lim.livejournal.com/413.html?thread=139421#t139421) no good answer (http://kekkai.org/lim/vidnotes.html#tihiw) to that question. I'm very very bad at explaining myself. I can't translate.
Thanks for these comments, though, mate. They're golden. *loves them*
no subject
Actually, no, that makes sense. "Math, Music, and Physics"... It's an fascinating relationship. Not one I can claim to understand, mind. But I've kind of been intrigued by the idea since I read Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'.
(I wish our music class at school hadn't sucked so bad.)
Btw, regarding what you say in that comment about bandwidth... would you prefer if I only link to your imeem site when I rec a vid? I've included the download links because I like to watch vids from my own computer, but I can edit them out; just let me know.
no subject
Oh, it's ok to link to that site, I think (you know, in fandom circles). kekkai/lim is from after that conversation. It's not really mine-mine (no way could I afford bandwidth!). Syne hosts me and she has loads of bandwidth. But thanks for asking; it's really considerate of you.
no subject
Of course thats just about the cosmetics. The characterization was fantastic -- Rodney's alienation and bitterness as well as the way hes torn with regret for his old life (even though it was too much). Again, one of those stories which transcends the show upon which its based.
IMO, it also transcends what the author originally intended {I read some of the commentary} which, funny enough, strikes me as the one small flaw in it: the slash element.
Everything else, and I mean *everything* is/feels so real, so perfect, that the slash bits (in the background as they are) took me out of the story a little bit. Not sure if I'm making any sense, but Rodney's trajectory here is about *him* and is soooo much bigger than slashy grief for Shepard -- and IMO would have worked just as well with [canonical] platonic mourning.
Reading the authors notes, I know something about what she/he felt like with the story becoming somewhat unexpectedly "bigger" and ultimately better than you were planning/hoping.
Again, great rec.
no subject
A lot of it felt so real to me, being a instructor (though not professor) myself, as well as having taken some extra physics courses at higher levels than anyone *not* a physics major usually bothers with.
*nod* I don't know anything about the author but the ambiance felt so real, she certainly knows what she's talking about. Or she's really, really good at research. And it's more than cosmetics, I think... all the detail of physics coursework and administrative paper-pushing, they're an integral part of the story.
and IMO would have worked just as well with [canonical] platonic mourning.
Possibly... I'm not sure though if the emotional impact would've been quite the same. For me, I don't think so. It boils down to taste, I suppose. I'm predominantly a gen reader but I also read plenty of slash, and I'm buying into the McKay/Sheppard pairing in a heartbeat, no convincing or build-up needed. But if you're not used to reading slash, I can see how it might take you out of a fic.
its highly unlikely TPTB would ever do anything truly substantial with these characters.
No question. I watched the S1 finale after having read "Freedom", and soon realized that, still under the influence of the story, I was expecting a level of emotional depth that the show itself just can't (or won't) deliver.
no subject
The meat of the story IMO, is Rodney emerging from licking his wounds in self-imposed exile to fight back in his own way by making sure the real legacy of Atlantis - the knowledge they learned - is shared with humanity, even if the whole story of the scarifices it took to get it can never be told.
Trust me, as someone for whom R/S slash has zero resonance, the above take is an incredibly powerful story in its own right.
Loss of innocence, loss of comrades and camaraderie, loss of wonder, loss of their home, are so much more powerful themes than the mourning for Shepard-as-lover. Enough that IMO the distraction of the latter could have been left out entirely.
As to Rodney/Shep and slash in general, I've realized a couple of [heretical] things:
1) A lot of slash writers actually, in a backhanded way, have swallowed the traditional steretypes about male friendships. What the hell does that mean? Well, when they see the portrayal of a close, complex male platonic relationship that doesn't fit the stereotypes of typically [apparently] shallow masculine friendship, why hey, they must really be gay underneath!!
Bah, humbug.
And that's wholly apart from the strain of slashers who were being very deliberately subversive of the original story.
[I think Buffy/Angel is a bit of a special case -- the whole vampire thing has often been a bit androgynous, plus, from what I understand, TPTB saw what the fans were doing and then actively pandered to it in an unusual feedback loop.]
2) Look at the opposite case: what would be the *honest* opinion about male writers slashing female characters left and right? Even where it wasn't merely an excuse for pr0n, it would generally be seen as somehow 'exploiting' or degrading. And where it actually really was better than that, it would still be seen as a quirky spinoff niche, something lesser and not high art.
no subject
It's like fanfic, in a way. Either you get it or you don't. If someone doesn't have the fic gene, it's very hard to convince them of the appeal (though not impossible!)
no subject
But I think the double standard of my number 2 point, while circumstantial and not definitive, certainly carries a LOT of weight as evinced by the apparent [admittedly anecdotal] gender/political views of many, many slashers (readers as well as writers).
I won't at all deny that slashfic can be real "art" (whatever THAT is, LOL), but if the shoe were on the other foot wrt genders, I confidently believe that, as a class, male written femslash would be on the same pedestal.
And for anyone to say the point is moot because there aren't many male fic writers is to attempt to sidestep it.
I think anyone who tried to insist that no such double standard as raised in my #2 would exist, I'd be very inclined to think that they didn't really believe it (either personally, or about the rest of the female fic community at large), and would only be saying so to artificially try to maintain the appearance of logical consistency.
no subject
should have read:
"if the shoe were on the other foot wrt genders, I confidently believe that, as a class, male written femslash would NOT be on the same pedestal"
no subject