*takes a deep breath*
Okay. I'm going to try for coherence here. I'll probably fail, but here goes.
I just read what is, in fact, the best piece of fanfiction I believe I have ever read, and it certainly ranks up there with all fiction period. You think I am kidding. I, too, was tempted to scoff a little at Mona when she sent me this link and flailed, a LOT, and said "It's one of those works of words that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE." She wasn't kidding, nor exaggerating. Seriously.
To give you some trivial way of measuring this story's impact, it has
25 pages of comments. That's rather extreme, and so very very deserved. It is a
Stargate Atlantis futurefic, with Rodney as the focal point. Set years after the events of the show itself, the Atlantis mission is over and everyone has returned back to Earth. Rodney is a professor at "Flyspeck University," and a much changed man, the result of years of his actions having fatal AND life-saving consequences, of dealing with crises in a distant galaxy where the basics were always in question, of bonding with other human beings on a level it is difficult to comprehend. This is a story about what he does with that history weighing down on his shoulders. He tried to fall completely off the radar, but instead, despite himself, he begins to sculpt a beautiful future, one of hope and promise and wonder, for
others. I don't want to spoil too much, because it is Rodney's evolution, as graceful as the unfolding petals of a new flower, that shapes this story and gives it its life.
I cried, several times. There are parts that stole my breath away, made me ache profoundly. Every word is chosen and crafted with such precision that it's like every sentence is a new revelation. This is just one example, in a story that must be at least 10k words:
Sometimes at night, he looks up into the stars, the patterns that were all he knew for so much of his life and now look like a stranger's face, and wonders what's happening out there. Wonders if they're winning; wonders if he'll wake up one morning and find they've lost. He is surprised at how little he cares. There are things he's done, and there are things he's said he'll never do again, and he knows, now, that the best and only thing he can do to change the world is to set small ripples in motion, because small ripples become large waves and the world, the universe, is a beautiful quantum jewel built from fractals of consequence and conscience.
Please, read this story. It's got mild spoilers for some of SGA, but nothing important. It is good to be familiar with the characters, though, to understand the layered emotional resonances. But even if you simply
plan to watch this show - bookmark this story. You won't regret it.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose by
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synecdochic.
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