Teal'c recs
May. 20th, 2009 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineI had an attack of total randomness and watched "Men With Brooms" today. It turns out that 1. Paul Gross can indeed make curling seem intense and passionate and beautiful and poetic (that man just shines. He shines. He makes me believe in auras), 2. I find Molly Parker stunningly hot, with her freckles and her dimples and her laugh, when she's not playing a wan opium addict, and 3. Wacky Canadian humor does indeed win.
Seriously, that's more cheese than I've consumed in movie form... possibly ever, and it was fun.
I am a day late and a dollar short- actually, I am going on a week late- but there was some fabulous stuff at the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teal_ficathon this year and I need to rec.
There is an untitled Teal'c/Cam fic that I think was written byprehistoric_sea. It's established relationship, and... calm and quiet and solid and restful. I like it when Cam realizes that Teal'c has been a soldier longer than Cam has been alive- I like it when Cam realizes he's basically an SG1 groupie. I like it when an author can acknowledge these things and make me believe that Cam has something to offer Teal'c in his own right.
Then there is Mothers of Teenagers Know Why Animals Eat Their Young, which, title aside, is actually an incredibly cute funny sweet gen thing with Janet and Cassie and Teal'c.
There's Let's Leave While We're Happy, which is lovely Teal'c and Sam friendship set in that horribly sad gap between seasons 8 and 9, right when I most need to imagine the friendship and connection and support lasting through that readjustment.
Last and my favorite isprincessofg's Earth Girls, Amazon Women, and Other Space Creatures, which is Teal'c/Sam in a series of vignettes that span the series and perfectly capture Teal'c POV, his process of understanding the rather fraught issues of gender in the military and Tauri society in general, the very careful and dispassionate and clear-sighted way he collects and collates that evidence. It's a long time before Sam is finally at a place where she can stop thinking about what she can afford to do as a woman and an officer, but when it comes at last, Sam finds that this friendship has grown quiet and steady and strong and solid and real. I adore this.
I'd also like to point to a fic from the '06 ficathon.paian's Speak the Living does beautiful backstory and emotion and anthropology with Teal'c, and speaks to perhaps his most powerful moment in all of canon, when he comes to Sam in Heroes (Seriously. This moment, more than any others, is the moment the show realizes and recognizes how quietly and unshakably Teal'c has always been the bedrock of SG1).
But I'd like to digress (and this is just meta babble I didn't want to indulge in in her comments, feel free to skip), because, oddly, the thing that moves me most is the moment Teal'c contemplates Sto'Vo'Kor.
I've never seen a fic engage with the inept Jaffa-as-Klingons crap that SG1 pulled before. But if you take the Jaffa seriously as shown, can't you just imagine that moment Teal'c thinks, "if my people hadn't been enslaved, we might have looked something like that?" Daniel suggests Valhalla, and while it's a reasonable approximation, Sto'Vo'Kor is closer. The similarities between Jaffa and Klingons are obvious (I did mention that I think the show was inept about this, right? Jaffa culture-building was never properly done), but what makes this truly moving are the differences.
Klingons were, for all their authoritarian hierarchy, almost ludicrously individualistic and liberty obsessed, and they melded a militaristic culture Teal'c would recognize with an absolute refusal to be subordinate to anyone but their own meritocratic best. You can craft at least one version of Jaffa culture and Teal'c where seeing that would have been one hell of an experience for him, especially if (as in this fic) he feels adrift and at a loss without models of what his people and his culture are without the Goauld. A Klingon's honor was utterly and without doubt his own, and didn't spring from any loyalty to an outside source, and his right to that honor and integrity - and his right to act to preserve it - without question superseded his obligation to the command structure. I think that would be a compelling model for Teal'c, trying to redefine his own personal criteria for integrity now that he has committed this great betrayal and has only shaky recourse to his cultural models for honor. This is the first time I've seen anybody spin something I see as positive or... real out of that Jaffa-as-Klingons crap. It's a throwaway line in the fic, but it just knocked me back.
Seriously, that's more cheese than I've consumed in movie form... possibly ever, and it was fun.
I am a day late and a dollar short- actually, I am going on a week late- but there was some fabulous stuff at the
teal_ficathon this year and I need to rec.There is an untitled Teal'c/Cam fic that I think was written by
prehistoric_sea. It's established relationship, and... calm and quiet and solid and restful. I like it when Cam realizes that Teal'c has been a soldier longer than Cam has been alive- I like it when Cam realizes he's basically an SG1 groupie. I like it when an author can acknowledge these things and make me believe that Cam has something to offer Teal'c in his own right.Then there is Mothers of Teenagers Know Why Animals Eat Their Young, which, title aside, is actually an incredibly cute funny sweet gen thing with Janet and Cassie and Teal'c.
There's Let's Leave While We're Happy, which is lovely Teal'c and Sam friendship set in that horribly sad gap between seasons 8 and 9, right when I most need to imagine the friendship and connection and support lasting through that readjustment.
Last and my favorite is
princessofg's Earth Girls, Amazon Women, and Other Space Creatures, which is Teal'c/Sam in a series of vignettes that span the series and perfectly capture Teal'c POV, his process of understanding the rather fraught issues of gender in the military and Tauri society in general, the very careful and dispassionate and clear-sighted way he collects and collates that evidence. It's a long time before Sam is finally at a place where she can stop thinking about what she can afford to do as a woman and an officer, but when it comes at last, Sam finds that this friendship has grown quiet and steady and strong and solid and real. I adore this.I'd also like to point to a fic from the '06 ficathon.
paian's Speak the Living does beautiful backstory and emotion and anthropology with Teal'c, and speaks to perhaps his most powerful moment in all of canon, when he comes to Sam in Heroes (Seriously. This moment, more than any others, is the moment the show realizes and recognizes how quietly and unshakably Teal'c has always been the bedrock of SG1).But I'd like to digress (and this is just meta babble I didn't want to indulge in in her comments, feel free to skip), because, oddly, the thing that moves me most is the moment Teal'c contemplates Sto'Vo'Kor.
I've never seen a fic engage with the inept Jaffa-as-Klingons crap that SG1 pulled before. But if you take the Jaffa seriously as shown, can't you just imagine that moment Teal'c thinks, "if my people hadn't been enslaved, we might have looked something like that?" Daniel suggests Valhalla, and while it's a reasonable approximation, Sto'Vo'Kor is closer. The similarities between Jaffa and Klingons are obvious (I did mention that I think the show was inept about this, right? Jaffa culture-building was never properly done), but what makes this truly moving are the differences.
Klingons were, for all their authoritarian hierarchy, almost ludicrously individualistic and liberty obsessed, and they melded a militaristic culture Teal'c would recognize with an absolute refusal to be subordinate to anyone but their own meritocratic best. You can craft at least one version of Jaffa culture and Teal'c where seeing that would have been one hell of an experience for him, especially if (as in this fic) he feels adrift and at a loss without models of what his people and his culture are without the Goauld. A Klingon's honor was utterly and without doubt his own, and didn't spring from any loyalty to an outside source, and his right to that honor and integrity - and his right to act to preserve it - without question superseded his obligation to the command structure. I think that would be a compelling model for Teal'c, trying to redefine his own personal criteria for integrity now that he has committed this great betrayal and has only shaky recourse to his cultural models for honor. This is the first time I've seen anybody spin something I see as positive or... real out of that Jaffa-as-Klingons crap. It's a throwaway line in the fic, but it just knocked me back.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 11:30 am (UTC)and yes -- Speak the Living is the best Teal'c fic I have ever read. Check out the one where she explores five board games Teal'c learned.... it's a close second.
so glad to see a post from you.
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 06:50 pm (UTC)And you deserve the rec!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 02:58 pm (UTC)Also, Teal'c!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 02:13 am (UTC)