expository ramblings

[alvericff]

I suppose I should use this as more than just a repository for these stories, which are already available at FF.Net, and add some words about motivation. So here goes.

*clears throat*

Before season nine of SG-1 I would have told you my preferred coupling was Sam and Jack. I wasn't fervent about it, I just much preferred Jack to anyone else who had come around as a possible love interest for everyone's favourite theoretical astrophysicist. I wasn't particularly moved by the almost overt subtext thrown out in 'Threads', mostly because by the time of 'Lost City' at the end of season seven, I was firmly of the mind that Jack wasn't interested in moving forward with Sam. 'Threads' just seemed like the writers desperately clawing back the blunder that was Sam and Pete.

Now, at this point in time, Farscape was absotively posilutely my favourite show in all of recorded history (apart from the grandfathered Adventures of Brisco County Jr.). It is still right there at the top along with Firefly and a whole slew of other shows. When I heard Ben Browder was joining the cast of SG-1... well, let's just say I was a little excited. And apart from some early missteps, I was extremely happy with his character. Above all for one thing, his relationship with Sam was just dripping with chemistry and camaraderie and bloody hell what's with all the eye!sex? It was as if our two Lt. Colonels had known each other forever and knew everything about each other and that was all in the space of a three minute scene where they're not even in the same room together! It only got better when they could actually slap and poke at each other.

Instantly, I became an unrepentant Sam/Cam shipper. So I'm sure you can imagine how I felt watching episodes like 'Bounty' and 'Unending' where the writers seemed to be doing everything they could to torpedo anything between them. Though nothing they could do could stop the eye!sex. It was epic.

Cut to 'Ark of Truth', where they devote half the script to showing Sam and Cam working as a team, again not even in the same room together. You just have to pay attention to the little things, like the scene where they get the message from Odyssey that Marrick is up to no good. Sam has the exact same transponder in her arm that Cam does, but she still moves to stand right next to him with her hand on his back when they're beamed aboard. And then there's the macaroon scene. Vindication, as far as I'm concerned.

I very much enjoyed 'Continuum', don't get me wrong. But who can tell me that whole 'One Year Later' thing wasn't the least SG-1-like thing they'd ever seen on screen. It's SG-1! They live and breath arrogance! That left me with a little festering itch which I couldn't do anything about until I actually started reading some fan fics at the beginning of this year. Man, was I confuzzled. Where was all the Sam/Cam shipping? These two were electric. Surely others could see it too. There are some very good oneshots and ficlets out there, they range from the fluffy to the angsty to the steamy and I enjoyed reading them immensely. However, there was a real dearth of anything with real meat to it. A real story.

Then I read ' The Road Taken' by shimmeringstar1 and it had substance, and weight. It skewed towards the more gritty and edgy, but the most important thing it had was a history. It chronicled the story the writers never seemed to want to talk about. When I read those forty thousand words it inspired in me a need to create my own personal canon for Samantha Carter and Cameron Mitchell. So over the next couple of weeks I mulled over various ideas which had bounced around in my brain while I read other fics and poured it all out into what I hoped would be something I could call definitive. At least for myself.

I had some rules:

• what was shown on screen was sacrosanct (with some appropriately explained exceptions allowed)
• respect any backstory already established
• character voice is king
• rework 'Unending' and 'Continuum' as much as possible to my nefarious purposes
• Bring in the SG.Universe events in some way
• make the tone as close to an episode of SG-1 as possible
• Sam is the heart of SG-1

At the time I had been in the process of writing nearly 100k words of a Harry Potter fic, which has still to see the light of day due to a mild case of writer's block and the monster my Sam/Cam fic eventually became. One important feature of this fic, yes, I still intend to finish it, is the structure. I shift between two character POVs and back and forth between continuity and flashbacks. It allowed me to tell the story and establish a past at the same time. It was something I decided to incorporate into my SG-1 fic in an even more complex form. I wanted to do more than merely progress a story through time. I wanted to show Sam and Cam over the years, and I wanted to give a prominent role to 'Unending' and 'Continuum'. So I quickly established a flashback -> pivot -> continuity structure for each chapter and 'The Times That Weren't' was the result. Not the best title in the world, I know, but I think it's evocative anyway. I got better at the naming thing too, I think.

Originally, that was supposed to be it. I was supposed to be done. That last scene of Sam and Cameron walking together through a doorway to explore the darkness beyond was the closing metaphor for the undiscovered country of their future together. Sam and Cam had other ideas however. *Al Pacino voice* "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

That's a story for another time however.