SGA Insta-rec: Until Love Can Find Me
Mar. 7th, 2009 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
out_thereThere are certain stories I fall hard for. I love the ones that stretch over time, that start with the character feeling isolated and more than a little broken, and show them living and experiencing the thrill of attraction and the scared-excitement of letting someone new in and trying something different, and end all hopeful. It possibly says a bit about my personality but when I'm feeling upbeat, I love the hopefulness of these stories (and when I'm feeling down, I *completely* understand and personalise the touch of angst, and that eventually happy-ending is exactly what I need).
Now, okay, this is a long-winded lead-up, but I'm getting to the rec. It's Until Love Can Find Me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isagel (although I could now call her [Bad username or site: isagel title= @ livejournal.com] thanks to that new LJ code!). It's set in the Vegas-AU (episode 5.19) and it really is lovely.
The descriptions are gorgeous and very personal. They're clear and clean, and the phrasing makes you feel like you're right inside John's head, feeling the confusion, the slight disconnect from the world around him, the tenuous link to Rodney growing stronger and then the jittery, frightening excitement of something brand new starting.
His new apartment is small and dingy, the air stifling before he opens the window. He settles on the old wooden floor beneath it, his back against the wall, and looks at his empty bedroom. Outside, night-time rain is falling, finger-picking its chords on the window-ledge. The lights of passing cars sweep across his Johnny Cash poster, just pinned to the opposite wall.
It's the type of story I fall hard for -- feeling the character go through their life, living the slight shifts that add up to big important changes in the long run, tasting that optimistic hope for better things that the story ends with -- and it was a fantastic read.
"I didn't intend this," he says. "I pushed for something to break, but this wasn't what I wanted."
"Yeah," John says. His voice sounds choked to his own ears. He doesn't say, maybe that's where the fracture had to be, for the bone to be set right.
Now, okay, this is a long-winded lead-up, but I'm getting to the rec. It's Until Love Can Find Me by
isagel (although I could now call her [Bad username or site: isagel title= @ livejournal.com] thanks to that new LJ code!). It's set in the Vegas-AU (episode 5.19) and it really is lovely.The descriptions are gorgeous and very personal. They're clear and clean, and the phrasing makes you feel like you're right inside John's head, feeling the confusion, the slight disconnect from the world around him, the tenuous link to Rodney growing stronger and then the jittery, frightening excitement of something brand new starting.
His new apartment is small and dingy, the air stifling before he opens the window. He settles on the old wooden floor beneath it, his back against the wall, and looks at his empty bedroom. Outside, night-time rain is falling, finger-picking its chords on the window-ledge. The lights of passing cars sweep across his Johnny Cash poster, just pinned to the opposite wall.
It's the type of story I fall hard for -- feeling the character go through their life, living the slight shifts that add up to big important changes in the long run, tasting that optimistic hope for better things that the story ends with -- and it was a fantastic read.
"I didn't intend this," he says. "I pushed for something to break, but this wasn't what I wanted."
"Yeah," John says. His voice sounds choked to his own ears. He doesn't say, maybe that's where the fracture had to be, for the bone to be set right.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 04:23 pm (UTC)I think you've pretty much hit on everything I wanted this story to be, and I'm so glad it worked so well for you, that you got all those things out of it. Especially the part about how it's about John going through his life, as you put it. There's a huge temptation with "Vegas" to fix the brokenness of that universe for John by "whisking him off to a fairytale world", as another commenter expressed it, having Rodney sweep him off and "carry [him] across Atlantis' threshold" (I'm loving how various people are phrasing these things, so I'm quoting) and make everything okay, but I wanted this to be a story about the reality of the life he's leading, a story about how he takes the inspiration Rodney gives him and uses it to slowly make the small changes that gradually turn his world into a better place. This John will never be a Big Damn Space Hero, but maybe he can do his best to be a hero in the everyday, in the small-scale and ordinary, and maybe that is enough, maybe in the long run it's more than enough. It's a story about doing the best with what you've got, about daring to let yourself live and feel, and it seems I very much needed to tell such a story.
Anyway, it means a lot to me that you enjoyed it so much. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 05:48 pm (UTC)I have a rule. If a story is so good that I have to open a seperate program -- before I've finished it -- to start recording all the things I want to say in feedback (out of a fear of forgetting where all the awesome bits were hiding!), it really should be recced to others. *laughs*
This John will never be a Big Damn Space Hero, but maybe he can do his best to be a hero in the everyday, in the small-scale and ordinary, and maybe that is enough, maybe in the long run it's more than enough.
It really is. Sometimes, the Big Damn Hero thing is great but to me, managing the little stuff -- the everyday stuff of suffering and stumbling and getting yourself back to your feet to try it all again and to keep contributing to the world around you -- is the real sign of heroics. In some ways, it's easy to read about Big Damn Heroes because they're mythic, they're larger-than-life, they're epic in a way that makes them just a little unreal (in an enjoyable way, true, but still). These days, I find myself attracted to the everyday stories around the Big Damn Heroics, because it's the little stuff that's genuinely inspiring. Failing and trying again, hurting and healing, this is the stuff that everyone deals with and not everyone deals with it well.
It's a story about doing the best with what you've got, about daring to let yourself live and feel
That's what I love about it. Because that's a challenge in life that sounds so easy, and in reality, it's so hard to do.