Atlantis fic: De Profundis

[hth]

De Profundis
by Hth

My journey into OT4 continues. Not as porny as "Works and Plays Well With Others," not as musical as "Headbanger's Ball." This actually...didn't go at all where I expected it to.

There was no set of circumstances where that particular configuration of fire, electricity, cultists, gravity, and sociopolitical upheval was going to give anyone a good feeling, but worse this time than normal, because by that point Rodney had gotten used to all three of them and also kind of more or less fallen in love.

Comments

[linabean.livejournal.com]

This is just fabulous. I'm still trying to figure out my reaction to it, because I got into it in a different way than I do most fanfic stories. I tend to think of fanfic as a place where I get to see familiar characters do stuff I want them to--I'm used to thinking of fanfic as like playing with paper dolls, basically. And, for me, good fanfic authors are generally ones who come up with interesting back-stories and insightful motivations for our shared dolls and then put them in creative and well-structured situations, and use a lot of skill in writing about all those things--but it still feels, on a certain level, like playing with dolls, deliberately using the characters for our gratification. And I really like that about fanfic! It's something I can't get from pro-fic, where the authors and readers don't share the characters the same way, so it can be uniquely satisfying.

With a story like this, though, it was so obvious that the characters had separate lives of their own, ones that overlapped in some ways and not in others--I couldn't feel, like with most fanfic, that the characters were focused on each other and on the events of the plot to guarantee a satisfying outcome for the reader and author because I believed completely that they were each immersed in their own worlds. And that made me ache for them, in a way I usually don't for the characters in most fanfic--there were parts where I just wanted to shake Rodney and tell him, "Stop letting yourself think of Ronon as Sheppard 2.0!" or "Teyla is not the pretty sidekick!" But, of course, all that made me feel so involved in watching how they started to surface and see each other better, and, though I couldn't feel like that or any ending was inevitable for them because they seemed more like real people who might end up doing any damned thing at random, I really appreciated all the clever technical/structural things you did with the story to help make that ending inevitable, so--yes. Very well done indeed.

(And, you know, it's a little strange to me, but even stories about missed chances usually really gets to me, I didn't really ache for how Rodney and John missed their ship--I was much more caught up in seeing them all realize how they loved each other, and their figuring out what that meant they'd do.)

Other things that struck me: I was so glad that Rodney knows how well Teyla sings, and that he's spent nights stargazing with her. And it's so great that you have people on Atlantis regularly using some Ancient words (because, come on, show-writers--why wouldn't they?). Oh, and I love how you made explicit Ronon's need for family; I think it makes great use of the newer canon from Season 3.

And, well, now I'm remembering part of the reason I don't really like trying to leave feedback, since I feel like I'm on the verge of just saying something like, "This is a good story, with many themes and developments....", so I'm just gonna finish up by saying that Rodney wanting to have been an American Idol fan because "He enjoyed music, and judgment" is my new favorite thing.

Thanks so much for sharing!