[update] Far and Far From Land

[saphanibaal]

I tweaked one of the stories I wrote earlier -- added a scene from another story that fit there better, altered a few lines to bring it more in line with the ficton as it had developed, etc.

Far and Far From Land
-setting- AU more or less tracking canon from the beginning of first season, ending before "The Return" would have happened. Gen.
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Comments

[michelel72]

It's funny, I had seen references to a story in which Rodney turned out to be the product of dubcon between his mother and a selkie, and it was on one of my to-be-read lists, but I came here because of a completely unrelated element being mentioned over at sgastoryfinders (the seeker only remembered the bit about Rodney's great-times-n-grandmother). I saw the length of this and went to put it in the "to be read", but my eye was caught, and then I got sucked in. I started to wonder when Rodney told of the band of Travelers but decided it was an odd coincidence, so it wasn't until Teyla was on the dock that I put it all together.

This is a really interesting story. I didn't see how the bits fit together for the longest time, but the aspects in which Earth culture is seen from outside and the Satedan legends really caught me, since that's one of my favorite underrealized elements of SGA fic. (The scene with Ronon's "hart" story was hysterical.) The separate threads were intriguing but puzzled me until I started to see the little hints tying

[saphanibaal]

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.

//the aspects in which Earth culture is seen from outside and the Satedan legends really caught me, since that's one of my favorite underrealized elements of SGA fic.//

Those are some of my favorite things to play with in SGA, so I'm always glad when somebody else likes them.

And I'm glad you liked the hart opera -- that was one of the bits I was giggling to myself over when writing.

//The separate threads were intriguing but puzzled me until I started to see the little hints tying things together. Seeing that they all in fact do relate was very satisfying.//This is sort of "the story whose backstory exploded"; initially I was just going to write the last scene, and then I thought that it really needed something beforehand to set it up, and then another bit to clarify something that would be referred to, and then another, and another, and before I knew it I had too much text to fit in a single livejournal post

Fic: Far and Far From Land

[secondsilk]

This is brilliant. All the stories (particularly everyone's reactions to Ronon's). Ford! Yay! And trying to explain the history of racism to Teyla, oh boy. All of the stories that they share and have in common. And Carson's "All sea stories are sad."

Re: Fic: Far and Far From Land

[saphanibaal]

Thank you so much!

(Everyone else seems to find Ronon's story as funny as I did. Funny, that. ^_^ )

//Ford! Yay!//

I miss Ford. (This is why I kept him in my AU proper; " The Sun Shines Bright On Every Stone" is a Ford-centric tag to this story, for instance.)

//And trying to explain the history of racism to Teyla, oh boy.//

There's so much of it, and it's nearly all ugly, and so much of it is of the sort that you'd have to either drain half the blood out of your veins and replace it with turpentine or grow up with a ton of unexamined preconceptions for it to begin to make something resembling sense...

... that and Ford's perspective is almost certainly going to be a better picture of the modern situation than Sheppard's or Elizabeth's or Rodney's.

//And Carson's "All sea stories are sad."//They pretty much all are, at least in part, even the most joyous of them. The sea's just too big, and too non-human-suited an environment

[springwoof]

awesome story. as usual, you managed something magical. I liked how the story all fit together, from the storytelling about animal transformation, to the genetic differences, all the way to the end. I really liked Ronon's Opera story--hilarious! and I loved the team at the end, huddled around Rodney, happy they're together. You have a real gift for storytelling. You remind me of Peter Beagle....

now how on earth did I miss this comment?

[saphanibaal]

Thank you so much for all of your kind words! I don't know how I managed not to see that you'd said something at the time, but I'm really glad all of it worked for you -- and the team huddle at the end was sort of the second image I had for this story, so I'm particularly happy to know it worked.

(And now I'm just going to float around all day -- I treasure my copies of The Innkeeper's Song and The Last Unicorn.)

[anonymous]

*blinks* That was.. wow... I don't think I've fully surfaced from the world you've created. It was just absolutely amazing. And I'm curious, what is the other thing that Rodney didn't mention.

[mystroth]

Woops, forgot to sign in.

And another thing, I love how the stories are connected to one another. Even though I hadn't really realised it at the beginning >_

belated comment response

[saphanibaal]

Thank you for all of your kind compliments!

//And another thing, I love how the stories are connected to one another.//

The fact that I started with the last scene and kept writing backwards is probably why the end result turned out as integrated as it did. ^_^