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author's commentary on the Bra'tac story 'The God of Poets (etc)'
I've been meaning to post this for a while, and a technical difficulty this morning has me waiting an hour or so for data I should already have in hand. Thus, therefore, as a result: rather than continue to comment all over the three of you posting this morning, I shall post myself.
Title: The God of Poets Has Two Hands -- Author's Commentary
Fandom: Stargate SG-1, spoilers for S10, Line in the Sand
Warnings: Navel-gazing, patting of self on shoulder.
Word count: nearly twice the original story's count (~5,000 words now)
Authors Note: great thanks, as always, to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rydra_wong for discussion and beta. Thanks also to synecdochic and paian for discussions and encouragement.
Prompt: the burdens of leadership - [I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. (MLK Jr)
Story without the authorial intent inserted into it may be found here: The story at Choc_Fic.
*
“Master Bra’tac?” The human spoke respectfully, but the enthusiasm in his voice was of one who had not seen many winters.
Bra’tac turns from the conversation that is ending and gives the boy his attention; he is dressed in spun fabric, though with a warm enough looking cloak, especially in the heat of the day. It is still a little surprising to Bra’tac sometimes that he is petitioned this way. Even in the company of the current meeting, the informality of wooden buildings, warm dirt roads.
“My name is Suniel, I am a ravi from Nisset Mara,” he says, eyes going wide as he swallows. A new bard, perhaps. “My master and I have a song to sing at the meeting tonight, after. I wondered if you would give us your approval to sing it?”
[I almost used ‘aoidos’ as the Bard’s title, being the classical Greek word for singer. Homer specifically refered to aoidos, and used song/poem interchangeably. I went with ‘ravi’ instead, though, the Arabic word for bard or reciter, because it carries the connotation of a student/mentor relationship. The word for the song writer mentor in Arabic is the gorgeous Sha’ir. I couldn’t figure out how to gratuitously work my wikipedia finds into the story, though, and not lose people. Suniel is a friend of mine; the name change was a last minute edit when I realized I’d named everything since the dawn of time with names that started with M.]
“Why would you require my permission?” Bra’tac asks him, kindly enough, “Humans do not require the Jaffa’s approval to sing a story, certainly.” At least, not any more. Time was, of course, but that time is long past now.
[So this is the time when I would like to discuss the impracticality of isolating a particular class from an interdependent caste system:
The Jaffa, as far as we know, form a warrior caste. On the upper end, you also have some priests (presumably) and priestesses (canonically), on the lower end, you have women and children, who have no clear profession or purpose other than to create more warriors. Warriors themselves are meant to run off and die as appropriate, but they also may have had some merchant roles in the Goa’uld multi-race feudal-type system (it really doesn’t appear that humans were encouraged to use the gate system particularly, where the Jaffa came and went on their own fairly often. This is consistent with the Jaffa also being placed in much more extensive overseer roles in general, but in a merchant sense, I suspect they were dealing out negative violence currency rather than any just payment for services rendered.)
That established, let us notice for a moment that no one in the Jaffa caste grows food or seems to create anything with their hands. The problem inherent in the concept of the Free Jaffa, as I see it, is that they will still be wildly dependant on humans and others for rather substantial trade. And what will they trade the farmers and the laborers? You got me, people, but it’s clear that relations between Jaffa and Humans can’t have been severed completely. Not even a symbiote can keep a Jaffa from needing to eat.]
“It concerns the Jaffa,” the boy says, turning to give way as a merchant of some kind jostles to get by him. Bra’tac does not yield his position, and the merchant walks around him without even letting his carried parcels touch Bra’tac’s cloak. The young bard shuffles his feet, lets his eyes follow anyone moving in the street. “And our leader.”
What a human boy, or a human leader, for that matter, might know of Jaffa, Bra’tac cannot guess. He does not know why he himself has been singled out to render permission, and wonders whether the song will have any merit whatsoever. “Who is your leader?” Bra’tac prompts, thinking perhaps that the man is at the conference.
[Which is not to say that there aren’t prejudices inherent in the system. What I liked particularly about 882, though, is that their leader was a young, black, human, woman, no husband or children in sight. To fully appreciate the awesomeness that is Thilana, though, let us appreciate the awesomeness and occasional shortcomings of Bra’tac.
Bra’tac is from a caste system; he assumes that humans know nothing of the Jaffa and doesn’t expect much. Bra’tac is also from a culture with dramatically delineated gender roles. Remember when he first met SG-1? His reaction to Carter was to say, with incredulity ‘A human woman? This is a great warrior?’ He may like Carter well enough now, he may spend a lot of time hanging out with Ishta and her folk, he may have married Ry’ac to a founding member of the Jaffa Feminist Movement, he may accept Teal’c’s preference for hanging with his Tau’ri friends, but he still has his ways, the old coot. This is that guy. That guy is fascinated by Thilana, a little bit.]
“Thilana, Marot’s wife,” the young bard continues, standing straight as he turns away from the bustle of the street, “who convinced the Jaffa to leave during the emancipation.”
[I shafted Thilana in the first draft of this story. This is one of my shortcomings that my wonderful beta is always so obliging about pointing out. It’s very interesting to me that Thilana has no visible mate in her village, and it’s interesting that she has no children and it’s fascinating that she is a young woman leading this village. In my invented backstory for her, the Goa’uld via the Jaffa probably tried to officially call her the speaker for the village once upon a time, but I think Thilana refused, in a complicated situation that some might have thought would have been better served by her standing up and being the voice. I think she didn’t want it, though, didn’t want anything to do with it, until a time came when the Jaffa needed to go, because the village needed a fresh start. The removal of the Goa’uld promises of luxury and power made it, ironically, an easier choice to step forward and lead, but she has always tried to lead using pacifist ideals, I think. She is wildly idealistic, I suspect that makes her a difficult practical partner, but I kind of adore her anyway.
Giving Thilana a husband, even a seemingly irrelevant one (although, I wouldn’t object to the read of Marot as a woman) is a nod to the fact that people who were owned frequently were obligated to create more people to be owned. Bra’tac may have skated by as a bachelor all his life (my opinion on whether Bra’tac ever loved or married varies, but it was certainly not a long relationship regardless, he’s a determined bachelor and he’s never really been trained to be otherwise. Bra’tac can be fiercely uncompromising.) I don’t think Thilana could have escaped marriage, though.
I do think that Thilana’s husband is gone, either fighting, or, I think more appealingly, learning to explore the gate system, stretching his legs with the new freedom to travel. I think he went through the gate one day, ostensibly looking for trading partners, and never came back. Thilana herself doesn’t know if he would have chosen not to come back, but the man he was with wouldn’t have; so the fact that the second man has not returned speaks to something going wrong. I bet she’s worried, but I don’t know that she has trouble living alone.]
“And it is this victory over the Jaffa in your village that you wish to sing?” Bra’tac said, marshalling his words to reprimand with appropriate vehemence. The bard’s eyes widen as he remembers his audience, it is a mistake bards might not be forgiven.
The boy quickly says, “No, it was no fight, it was peaceful. Thilana is a peace-maker. There are no ruins to begin within.”
['Standing in the ruins' is a term in pre-Islamic Arabic love poetry in which you begin a tragic story by asking the audience to stand with you and survey the ruins of the relationship. Very uplifting.]
Bra’tac hesitates, his reprimand fading from his mind. He asks, “Of what then will you sing?”
“Of when she invited the Jaffa back,” the young bard says, trying to stand tall, “well, one Jaffa, called Master Teal’c, in the company of other humans from the first world.”
He is tall enough for a bard, and focused, when he wishes to be. The timbre of his speaking voice holds promise, but he offers no further explanation of his story.
Bra’tac decides. “Ravi Suniel,” he says formally, “Would you sing me this song, that I might offer my informed approval?”
The young bard smiles with half his mouth, looks at the thinning crowd around him, and backs up a step into the crossroads. His posture changes, and his shoulders look strong enough to holding a staff weapon, or to hold the breath to sing.
Bra’tac realizes that he has never heard a human song from beginning to end.
[Or, possibly, come across someone who is a bard by profession. In one version of this story, I had Rac’nor and Bra’tac send a promising singer to be apprenticed to the human master singer, but ultimately it didn’t serve the character stories.]
“Warriors, of great renown,” the bard says,
“Warriors walked the water road.
At the welcome of Thilana, open-handed,
On the threshold of the fire-throwers.
Friends they entered, five a’company.
To find familiar enemies from foreign skies.
Mighty Teal’c and his thanes, first arm to each other.
Together they bear unstable weapons for an unstable war,
Easy as companions, confident shield-carriers
Each to be challenged on changing fronts,
Fighting changeling demons, with few allies.
[So this poetic structure is patterned loosely on Beowulf, with the kennings (fire-throwers, shield-carriers) and the alliteration (in lines 3 and 4, Thilana, threshold and throwers.) There’s also repetition of sound (renown and road) and the kinds of metaphors that let you fill out the rhythm and alliteration (water road.) The later listing of lineages comes from this tradition too. It matched well with the traveling of those old stories, and the supernatural demons the heroes faced. The 4/3/4 stanza structure is my conceit.
This is a human poem, though. I think the Jaffa would have a somewhat more complicated rhythm structure and way more lineage, battle scenes and epic declamations of honor and victory. Possibly quarter tones. I had some great conversations with Synedochic about this. But, as Katie M said, Sangeeta isn't a professional poet either, so that gives us hope.
Thank God I didn’t have to write Jaffa poetry. I do include it in a lot of Jaffa stories, though, it just makes *sense* that this culture would have an oral tradition; but I think of it as being rather opaque. Tons and tons of lineages, for example, and I don’t doubt a great deal of standing at the ruins, which is a tradition in Arabic love poetry of calling the audience to stand with the speaker in the ruins of his love at the beginning, just so everyone is clear how well it all worked out.
As to the story in the poem, it evolved to be more and more Thilana centric version of Line in the Sand, for all she shows up only obliquely in the prose sections. The bard is human, though, and the POV character is Jaffa, so it makes sense that the motivation of the poetry is to cast Thilana as the hero, and the prose section is going to be Jaffa-centric.
I like the motivation of the bard here, actually. I like that he’s all wide-eyed and green until he steps onto the stage; he wants to tell a story he can be proud of, but I like the idea that he is singing a better song than he knows, teaching his audience all kinds of unintended things. I hope his master understood the story, actually, the ravi is a bit wet behind the ears.]
*
“They sang a song about my father,” Ry’ac tells him, when he is still an apprentice warrior in training. His eyes are wide and a vast chasm begging to be filled with confirmation, information. Child on the edge of outcast. Boy on the edge of orphan.
[On reading over this, it occurs to me that it might appear as though I were deliberately writing a story of Bra’tac With Young People, when really it’s about how much of a guide and a teacher and father-figure he is. It’s accidental that the bard and Ry’ac and Teal’c are all teenagers or younger in this story, but they had to be of an age where they would be really romantic about the epic songs sung around them. This whole story, after all, is about losing the romanticized view of things in favor of the possibly more rewarding pragmatic grey areas.]
For a long time, the hero stories told carefully about Teal’c, First Prime of Apophis, Shol’va, Discoverer of the First World, would be most of what Ry’ac knew of his father. Bra’tac understood little enough of Ry’ac’s mother, but he knew she rarely spoke of her resentment around the boy; for this he respects Drey’auc, but he is not sure her fictions about Teal’c’s true path are honorable.
He does not understand much of women’s ways.
[Poor Bra’tac, this is one of those stories where I think he never loved or married. Maybe he was like Queen Elizabeth and didn’t marry before he was First Prime, and couldn’t stand being approached about it afterwards.]
[I really did not mean to conjure Bra’tac in Red Wig with that analogy, sorry.]
[It seems to me, though, that Bra’tac’s prodigious mind has bent itself to several rather challenging concepts, independently and skillfully—deciding the Gods were false, being at the forefront of the rebellion and new age. There is no reason a man with such empathy as a father figure couldn’t find a partner or figure out love (or women, if that’s what he wanted), but I suspect the great tragedy of Bra’tac’s life is that when he focuses on his ideals to understand them, they inevitably turn dark, a wisdom that’s a burden to carry. I suspect that it might be easier to leave himself the hope of love, the ideal of it, rather than risk disillusionment.]
Bra’tac is not sure what his role must be, caught between Drey’auc and Teal’c and their son. He trains Ry’ac in the only manner he knows, unsure how much to tell him of his father.
Ry’ac will learn soon enough, in his own way, Bra’tac is sure; and perhaps that is the only way.
*
Freedom-giver Teal’c, stands among would-be enemies.
Two-armed, fighting before and behind.
Those he may, he brings weapons upon them,
Metal and force, storms in his voice.
Mighty Teal’c, sky-traveller, is brought to knee
An enemy’s weapon through leather and girth.
Defiantly, grey-eyed Thilana stands beside him, ring-giver.
Leaning upon the village cornerstone
Proud Teal’c, son of noble fierceness,
Finds an orator-guide, in self-same robes.
Mighty Teal’c, great of arm, rests on Thilana’s shoulder.
[Another Beowulf-y thing I’ve blatantly adopted here is the idea that higher on the body-arms, shoulders, are honorable. Anything about feet or toes or knees is lowly.
Also, yes I realize that Thilana has brown eyes; I’m being metaphorical. Have you read the Odyssey? Remember how Athena is grey-eyed? I’ve always thought that was an awesome descriptor.]
*
“Why is it, Master Bra’tac,” Rak’nor begins, as he often does, “Why is it that humans from a near meaningless planet can tell us more of our heroes than we can tell them?”
[This is the guy, for those of you who didn’t lust after the tall Jaffa in a recurring role, whose father was so inspired by Teal’c’s betrayal of Apophis in the early days that he raised Rak’nor to believe revolution was imminent and the God’s were false. In true teenage (though he didn’t look like a teenager, he looked really attractive) wisdom, he rejected his father’s teachings when the revolution didn’t come fast enough, and joined the community in general worship of the Goa’uld as Gods. Only when he met Teal’c properly and saw his determination, heard his arguments and had some time to think about it did he reconsider, but then he committed rather wholeheartedly, risking quite a bit to rescue only Teal’c. Then again, Teal’c was a figurehead even then. And Rak’nor was a questioner and a thinker. And very tall.]
Bra’tac says, “We might tell them a great deal of Teal’c, if we chose to sing.” He listens with one ear to the unfamiliar rhythms of the bard and one ear to his friend and student, “I don’t doubt that they would be as telling as this one, to people unfamiliar with our ways.”
Bra’tac, though, is learning of a human leader, a woman, who refused honors from the Goa’uld and yet stepped forward under the barest of luxuries after the Goa’uld fell. He wonders if there is something about human women that allows them to become leaders with less strife in the transition than the Jaffa must withstand.
Perhaps it is simply that he knows little of how this woman came to her position.
[Bra’tac is such a bachelor, man. From a gender delineated society. I do think that feminism will have a different flavor among the Jaffa; it’s too bad the writers themselves were so determined to write Ishta and her folk as rather clear heirs to the American Feminism School of Thought. I’m not sure it’s as effective as some other schools might be in this context. Western Feminism is not the only way, after all. The Qua’ran allows a woman to divorce her husband for the failure to provide coffee in the morning, and wouldn’t that have been interesting to see interpreted into an Arabic-influenced Jaffa culture?]
Rak’nor makes a frustrated sound but does not make to leave the recitation. The frustration is a sign of weakness unwarranted by the day’s negotiations—and he is not usually as fatigued by the machinations of politics as Bra’tac is.
Bra’tac probably could leave the greater part of political negotiations to him at this point in time, but Rak’nor continues to request his presence, and Bra’tac suspects his home on Chulak would be too quiet. Rak’nor will always require a significant team of councilors; Bra’tac usually finds this an admirable quality.
[If Rac’nor is a questioner, he is also a collaborator. Acting on his own, he sometimes draws the wrong conclusions, but put him among a group of smart councilors and he could be amazing. He is also much, much better than Teal’c at listening to council, and staying in the heart of the Free Jaffa, either at the alpha site when they were there, or in the political stickiness at Dakara.]
Sometimes Bra’tac wonders if Teal’c will ever really forgive him for pressuring him into the political arena; he sometimes wonders if Rak’nor would have discovered his political savant if Teal’c had not relied on him so heavily.
“I thought I understood something of Master Teal’c,” Rak’nor says, and in any other voice it would sound far more arrogant, “I thought I knew something of duty. I do not understand why Teal’c stands alone in petty battles to save a few dozen humans when he could be leading the entirety of the Free Jaffa against the same enemy. I do not understand why I must learn of his actions in this way.”
[And here we have Rak’nor’s motivation in this story: it’s part quest to understand, but it’s also a subtle condemnation of what he sees as Teal’c’s failure to do the rest of his duty to the Free Jaffa—namely to stand up and be a celebrity politician, thereby brilliantly leading the Jaffa into a golden age of enlightenment. Or something. It was never going to happen with Teal’c.
What’s interesting about Rak’nor expressing dissatisfaction with Teal’c and Earth, is that it plays as backdrop for Bra’tac’s much more liberal view of it. He’s not, by any means, really down with humans, or over his inherent surprise at the newfound society of equals that weren’t, but he understands that Teal’c is not going to conform to expectation, and that his role in the revolution is to fight. I think it’s interesting to set Rak’nor up as the next generation, who will move beyond fighting to negotiating and diplomacy and rebuilding. Considering that Rak’nor has this obstacle, at this point, of not thinking of the humans as terribly worthy.
I also think Teal’c has a lot more going on than just fighting, but it’s the Jaffa assumptions we’re working from, here.]
Rak’nor speaks with face towards the performer, his voice pitched only for Bra’tac to hear. He is thinking, Bra’tac knows, working through thoughts and unsure what the outcome will be. The voice of the bard winds around them.
Bra’tac is confident that Rak’nor will someday forgive him for presenting the political arena as duty; he is not sure Rak’nor will ever forgive Teal’c.
He has been wrong before, though. On many occasions.
The singer has captured the attention of the crowd, they mill around easily, but stay carefully low as they cross other’s lines of vision, keep their voices low so as not to compete. Strange for such a mixed gathering to be so universally rapt.
There are more skills in the universe, Bra’tac thinks, than he has even dreamt of acquiring. But he has never been a singer; neither has Teal’c. Then again, he was never meant to feature in hero tales, as Teal’c has, redefining the story’s traditions. Perhaps these, like so many other traditions brought out of hiding, will adapt to the freedom of expression.
He is not yet sure what shape the songs sung of Rak’nor will take.
[He has not yet realized that he is the unusual hero of this unusual story. But we won’t tell him because that would be drawing attention to how far the author has strayed from her original prompt. Also Bra’tac will move mountains to avoid the limelight. True fact. You’ve got to come at him sideways if you want him committed to a story.]
Bra’tac says, “It is my understanding that great heroes are often set greatly apart, even from those they fight to protect.”
He is not sure if this dogma holds true for great leaders as well.
[It would be a necessary first step, don’t you agree, for Jaffa to decide that dying epic-ly is not necessarily a good leadership skill? I think Bra’tac will be remembered as a great thinker. And leader.]
*
Brave Teal’c, god-slayer, betrayed in sanctuary.
He has no sharp weapons for bald threats.
Rest disturbed, he stands, storm-shaken.
Hand heavy on slight Thilana’s shoulder.
The canyon-walkers hear wind in their ears,
Wayward honor, long worn-down,
Succumbs to chasm depths.
The dirt-digger, dust on his feet faces dastan Thilana
The shield-arm, world-singer, wary guide, speaks:
“The old ways are not the only ways,” she says,
“We may fall to evil, but we will not wield its weapons.”
[Dastan is an ornate oral history in Central Asia; it conveys value systems through generations. Sufi leader Ahmet Yesevi wrote “Let the scholars hear my wisdom/Treating my word as a dastan, attain their desires.” So a dastan might be a national anthem, religion and record.
I really don’t think that the village of ‘882 (did I mention that I had to name them? I named them in a quasi-African way, taking the term Mara from the landscape formation in the savannah. Dastan being an Asian (though not excusively) concept, I feel like it’s right in line with molding their oral traditions after the Middle English. And there’s canonical Arabic influence in the early seasons. I suppose there would be some cultural meshing going on in general, especially with language, but really I just liked the conceptual idea. And anything implying something other than Western European Before the Industrial Revolution is interesting, in my book.]
*
“Master Bra’tac!” Young warriors have such energy, Bra’tac thinks to himself. This one has height already that belays his young age, but his energy speaks to a near readiness for training. Or the hyperactivity of a child up past his bedtime on a celebration night.
“Master Bra’tac! They sang a song about you!” The boy skidded to a halt with his shoulder slightly turned and one hand cast sideways to balance. He has some agility; it would be interesting to see if he could be taught grace before his size abrogated the necessity.
[Teal’c was once small and agile and hyper! Isn’t that an adorable thought?]
“Did they, now?” Bra’tac says, smiling easily amid familiar buildings, his staff weapon set aside. It was traditional to sing the exploits and braveries of the returning warriors as they reentered the village, but it was also customary to practice the song excessively on the return voyage. Bra’tac would not have gone out of his way to hear the inflated tale again unless accompanied by one who would entertain on his own merits by listening. “Shall we go and hear it?”
“It’s finished. They’re singing women’s songs now.” The boy’s face remained upturned and open, but his dismissal of the women’s songs was already evident. “You were very brave,” he said with open admiration.
“Songs make a great drama out of things far less impressive in the moment,” Bra’tac says, watching the boy bounce in excitement of understanding the complex poetry he has heard.
“You were! You were mighty and strong and you cast down the enemy on the fields of Mak’re!” He grins openly, and Bra’tac smiles back at him.
[It occured to me writing this that every time I name something, or someone, I choose to name it something that starts with M. It was so blatant in this fic that I had to go back and frelling rename stuff. The bard started out Mettieu.]
“I am no fit hero for their songs,” Bra’tac says with mock earnestness, “I have not the stature. Now you, you may indeed grow tall enough one day. Would that suit you?”
[And this right here is why I loved writing Bra’tac in this story. He just tried so hard to have any and every other character upstage him; he just does not want to be the hero of a story. He is, though, it’s his nature; Bra’tac is awesome. Guaranteed to add 30% more awesome to any scene that you are writing, Rydra Wong tells me.]
“I hope they will sing songs about me,” he says with his child’s voice, long limbs suddenly still with the seriousness of children’s truth.
[There is no doubt in my mind that Teal’c has firmly and completely changed his opinion on this topic. He can’t escape the celebrity now, though, the deed is done. Or, rather, the many deeds have been done. I suspect he hates it as much as Bra’tac does, but endures a little more stoically than Bra’tac does—when he’s not running away and living with the Tau’ri, obviously.]
“Have you planned them out already?” Bra’tac says, sitting on a nearby rock wall. His formal armour is heavy, and the boy Teal’c was not yet so tall that sitting did not bring them closer to eye-level. “I expect they will have to be especially magnificent songs.”
“Full of battles and fighting!” Teal’c says, “They’ll exclaim how I hated the enemy and brought down great ha’tak with just my staff weapon from a hilltop!”
The boy was getting older, but Bra’tac could still see the instinct to act out the theater he described (probably just heard in the warrior’s song—there had indeed been a ha’tak, and a hilltop, though neither were especially notable,) in twitches of the shoulder and a widening of the stance. In short order, this boy would begin his life as a warrior, to last longer than this short childhood by many hundreds of years. He would forget innocence too quickly; there was no need to rush headlong into the hatred of servitude.
“Better to be the hero of the women’s songs,” Bra’tac says, turning his face out to the familiar landscape. He had brought fire down from the sky on the other village, it’s destruction lost in the victory songs. Bra’tac says to the boy Teal’c, “It is always preferable to be a warrior who returns home.”
[More with the women’s songs, and Bra’tac’s respect for the wisdom there, even if it’s kind-of-sort-of-repressed. He’s not a bad guy, he just grew up in a culture of misogyny, perhaps. The references to women, Teal’c’s wife, the women’s songs, etc, also reference Thilana, I hope. It was a way of keeping her in the prose sections of the story, and with the theme of women’s songs etc throughout, I’m hoping that her presence feels enmeshed in the story.]
“But it’s better to die in battle,” Teal’c says, trying to comfort, “and the women’s songs are boring; all love and mourning and standing in the ruins.” He pulls a face.
“Love could be quite a worthy challenge, I should imagine,” Bra’tac says, leaving aside the challenges of coming home, or remembering the dead. He turns his face back to the near-warrior before him, “And I have known far too much of hate; better the alternative.”
[My prompt was Teal’c and Thilana from Line In the Sand (well, I tried) the theme of the burdens of leadership (it’s kind of one of the themes) and the Martin Luther King, Jr., quote, “[I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate.” If anyone can speak wisdom the way MLK, Jr. spoke wisdom, it’s Bra’tac. Also, paian was the one who suggested that I try this prompt and do something interesting with it—I hope by interesting she meant something to the effect of ‘not what anyone was expecting,’ because I am not entirely sure I’ve stayed true to the letter of the prompt. I loved the spirit, though.]
But he gets up, and takes the boy into the songs and community by the fire. If they do not appreciate the wisdom of women’s songs, at least they will not get cold.
*
God-branded Teal’c, heir to Bra’tac,
Son of Mehr’auc, Ronac, and Chulak,
Father of Ry’ac, freedom-fighter,
Friend to Tau’ri and Tok’ra. Alliance-maker.
Most trusted, who brought Goa’uld wisdom
To the free peoples on the water road;
Brave Teal’c chooses Thilana as wisdom-speaker.
Riding the trails of the light-walkers,
With peace and friendship we resist old evils,
Great of wind-soul, greater even than his actions,
We who remain, shout his works to the worlds.
[That penultimate line there came from Samuel Gardner’s quote “And how shall the soul of a man/ Be larger than the life he has lived?” If anyone can, I think it would be Teal’c; he is an extraordinarily heroic character. I have, I kid you not, four pages of poetry written out, most of which didn’t serve the story (or wasn’t very good). I have pages on Beowulf, Homer and Arabic oral traditions.
So some of the things I hope this story dealt with were: Teal’c as heir to Bra’tac, Bra’tac being such a power in the forces that shape the emerging culture of the Free Jaffa, the notion that leaders are different than heroes and perhaps there can be songs about a leader, or a different kind of hero. I hope Thilana emerges as a hero and a leader and skilled orator; I hope her contrast with Teal’c as sort of a ying/yang of skills (and stances on pacifism) conveys some notion that you lead as your skills allow, and you release the burden of leadership to others when the need extends beyond your skill set. I like the notions of alliance building, that in refusing the duty of politicking, Teal’c is actually acting as diplomat to the human populations of the galaxy simply by walking with Taur’i, and that he continues to serve to his best (which is substantial) ability, for all he might feel tremendous guilt for failing as a politician. I like the idea that the Jaffa have enough depth to diversify their skills and professions within a generation, and I like the notion of seeing the very attractive Rak’nor as often as possible in the spotlight.
I loved playing with Arabic and Greek and Middle English oral traditions. I love the idea of the Jaffa and poetry, and have since I read Sal’s The Water Moon. I recommend that if you’d like further reading. Or Katie M's Sangata I had one more traditional Arabic phrase (all of which, of course, lose a great deal in the alphabet translation) that I so wanted to use and couldn’t work in, so I’ll use it here since it’s got such a great alliteration itself.
Kan ya ma kan.
It means, effectively, ‘once upon a time…’
Thanks for staying with me.]
**
end
**
Title: The God of Poets Has Two Hands -- Author's Commentary
Fandom: Stargate SG-1, spoilers for S10, Line in the Sand
Warnings: Navel-gazing, patting of self on shoulder.
Word count: nearly twice the original story's count (~5,000 words now)
Authors Note: great thanks, as always, to
rydra_wong for discussion and beta. Thanks also to synecdochic and paian for discussions and encouragement.Prompt: the burdens of leadership - [I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. (MLK Jr)
Story without the authorial intent inserted into it may be found here: The story at Choc_Fic.
*
“Master Bra’tac?” The human spoke respectfully, but the enthusiasm in his voice was of one who had not seen many winters.
Bra’tac turns from the conversation that is ending and gives the boy his attention; he is dressed in spun fabric, though with a warm enough looking cloak, especially in the heat of the day. It is still a little surprising to Bra’tac sometimes that he is petitioned this way. Even in the company of the current meeting, the informality of wooden buildings, warm dirt roads.
“My name is Suniel, I am a ravi from Nisset Mara,” he says, eyes going wide as he swallows. A new bard, perhaps. “My master and I have a song to sing at the meeting tonight, after. I wondered if you would give us your approval to sing it?”
[I almost used ‘aoidos’ as the Bard’s title, being the classical Greek word for singer. Homer specifically refered to aoidos, and used song/poem interchangeably. I went with ‘ravi’ instead, though, the Arabic word for bard or reciter, because it carries the connotation of a student/mentor relationship. The word for the song writer mentor in Arabic is the gorgeous Sha’ir. I couldn’t figure out how to gratuitously work my wikipedia finds into the story, though, and not lose people. Suniel is a friend of mine; the name change was a last minute edit when I realized I’d named everything since the dawn of time with names that started with M.]
“Why would you require my permission?” Bra’tac asks him, kindly enough, “Humans do not require the Jaffa’s approval to sing a story, certainly.” At least, not any more. Time was, of course, but that time is long past now.
[So this is the time when I would like to discuss the impracticality of isolating a particular class from an interdependent caste system:
The Jaffa, as far as we know, form a warrior caste. On the upper end, you also have some priests (presumably) and priestesses (canonically), on the lower end, you have women and children, who have no clear profession or purpose other than to create more warriors. Warriors themselves are meant to run off and die as appropriate, but they also may have had some merchant roles in the Goa’uld multi-race feudal-type system (it really doesn’t appear that humans were encouraged to use the gate system particularly, where the Jaffa came and went on their own fairly often. This is consistent with the Jaffa also being placed in much more extensive overseer roles in general, but in a merchant sense, I suspect they were dealing out negative violence currency rather than any just payment for services rendered.)
That established, let us notice for a moment that no one in the Jaffa caste grows food or seems to create anything with their hands. The problem inherent in the concept of the Free Jaffa, as I see it, is that they will still be wildly dependant on humans and others for rather substantial trade. And what will they trade the farmers and the laborers? You got me, people, but it’s clear that relations between Jaffa and Humans can’t have been severed completely. Not even a symbiote can keep a Jaffa from needing to eat.]
“It concerns the Jaffa,” the boy says, turning to give way as a merchant of some kind jostles to get by him. Bra’tac does not yield his position, and the merchant walks around him without even letting his carried parcels touch Bra’tac’s cloak. The young bard shuffles his feet, lets his eyes follow anyone moving in the street. “And our leader.”
What a human boy, or a human leader, for that matter, might know of Jaffa, Bra’tac cannot guess. He does not know why he himself has been singled out to render permission, and wonders whether the song will have any merit whatsoever. “Who is your leader?” Bra’tac prompts, thinking perhaps that the man is at the conference.
[Which is not to say that there aren’t prejudices inherent in the system. What I liked particularly about 882, though, is that their leader was a young, black, human, woman, no husband or children in sight. To fully appreciate the awesomeness that is Thilana, though, let us appreciate the awesomeness and occasional shortcomings of Bra’tac.
Bra’tac is from a caste system; he assumes that humans know nothing of the Jaffa and doesn’t expect much. Bra’tac is also from a culture with dramatically delineated gender roles. Remember when he first met SG-1? His reaction to Carter was to say, with incredulity ‘A human woman? This is a great warrior?’ He may like Carter well enough now, he may spend a lot of time hanging out with Ishta and her folk, he may have married Ry’ac to a founding member of the Jaffa Feminist Movement, he may accept Teal’c’s preference for hanging with his Tau’ri friends, but he still has his ways, the old coot. This is that guy. That guy is fascinated by Thilana, a little bit.]
“Thilana, Marot’s wife,” the young bard continues, standing straight as he turns away from the bustle of the street, “who convinced the Jaffa to leave during the emancipation.”
[I shafted Thilana in the first draft of this story. This is one of my shortcomings that my wonderful beta is always so obliging about pointing out. It’s very interesting to me that Thilana has no visible mate in her village, and it’s interesting that she has no children and it’s fascinating that she is a young woman leading this village. In my invented backstory for her, the Goa’uld via the Jaffa probably tried to officially call her the speaker for the village once upon a time, but I think Thilana refused, in a complicated situation that some might have thought would have been better served by her standing up and being the voice. I think she didn’t want it, though, didn’t want anything to do with it, until a time came when the Jaffa needed to go, because the village needed a fresh start. The removal of the Goa’uld promises of luxury and power made it, ironically, an easier choice to step forward and lead, but she has always tried to lead using pacifist ideals, I think. She is wildly idealistic, I suspect that makes her a difficult practical partner, but I kind of adore her anyway.
Giving Thilana a husband, even a seemingly irrelevant one (although, I wouldn’t object to the read of Marot as a woman) is a nod to the fact that people who were owned frequently were obligated to create more people to be owned. Bra’tac may have skated by as a bachelor all his life (my opinion on whether Bra’tac ever loved or married varies, but it was certainly not a long relationship regardless, he’s a determined bachelor and he’s never really been trained to be otherwise. Bra’tac can be fiercely uncompromising.) I don’t think Thilana could have escaped marriage, though.
I do think that Thilana’s husband is gone, either fighting, or, I think more appealingly, learning to explore the gate system, stretching his legs with the new freedom to travel. I think he went through the gate one day, ostensibly looking for trading partners, and never came back. Thilana herself doesn’t know if he would have chosen not to come back, but the man he was with wouldn’t have; so the fact that the second man has not returned speaks to something going wrong. I bet she’s worried, but I don’t know that she has trouble living alone.]
“And it is this victory over the Jaffa in your village that you wish to sing?” Bra’tac said, marshalling his words to reprimand with appropriate vehemence. The bard’s eyes widen as he remembers his audience, it is a mistake bards might not be forgiven.
The boy quickly says, “No, it was no fight, it was peaceful. Thilana is a peace-maker. There are no ruins to begin within.”
['Standing in the ruins' is a term in pre-Islamic Arabic love poetry in which you begin a tragic story by asking the audience to stand with you and survey the ruins of the relationship. Very uplifting.]
Bra’tac hesitates, his reprimand fading from his mind. He asks, “Of what then will you sing?”
“Of when she invited the Jaffa back,” the young bard says, trying to stand tall, “well, one Jaffa, called Master Teal’c, in the company of other humans from the first world.”
He is tall enough for a bard, and focused, when he wishes to be. The timbre of his speaking voice holds promise, but he offers no further explanation of his story.
Bra’tac decides. “Ravi Suniel,” he says formally, “Would you sing me this song, that I might offer my informed approval?”
The young bard smiles with half his mouth, looks at the thinning crowd around him, and backs up a step into the crossroads. His posture changes, and his shoulders look strong enough to holding a staff weapon, or to hold the breath to sing.
Bra’tac realizes that he has never heard a human song from beginning to end.
[Or, possibly, come across someone who is a bard by profession. In one version of this story, I had Rac’nor and Bra’tac send a promising singer to be apprenticed to the human master singer, but ultimately it didn’t serve the character stories.]
“Warriors, of great renown,” the bard says,
“Warriors walked the water road.
At the welcome of Thilana, open-handed,
On the threshold of the fire-throwers.
Friends they entered, five a’company.
To find familiar enemies from foreign skies.
Mighty Teal’c and his thanes, first arm to each other.
Together they bear unstable weapons for an unstable war,
Easy as companions, confident shield-carriers
Each to be challenged on changing fronts,
Fighting changeling demons, with few allies.
[So this poetic structure is patterned loosely on Beowulf, with the kennings (fire-throwers, shield-carriers) and the alliteration (in lines 3 and 4, Thilana, threshold and throwers.) There’s also repetition of sound (renown and road) and the kinds of metaphors that let you fill out the rhythm and alliteration (water road.) The later listing of lineages comes from this tradition too. It matched well with the traveling of those old stories, and the supernatural demons the heroes faced. The 4/3/4 stanza structure is my conceit.
This is a human poem, though. I think the Jaffa would have a somewhat more complicated rhythm structure and way more lineage, battle scenes and epic declamations of honor and victory. Possibly quarter tones. I had some great conversations with Synedochic about this. But, as Katie M said, Sangeeta isn't a professional poet either, so that gives us hope.
Thank God I didn’t have to write Jaffa poetry. I do include it in a lot of Jaffa stories, though, it just makes *sense* that this culture would have an oral tradition; but I think of it as being rather opaque. Tons and tons of lineages, for example, and I don’t doubt a great deal of standing at the ruins, which is a tradition in Arabic love poetry of calling the audience to stand with the speaker in the ruins of his love at the beginning, just so everyone is clear how well it all worked out.
As to the story in the poem, it evolved to be more and more Thilana centric version of Line in the Sand, for all she shows up only obliquely in the prose sections. The bard is human, though, and the POV character is Jaffa, so it makes sense that the motivation of the poetry is to cast Thilana as the hero, and the prose section is going to be Jaffa-centric.
I like the motivation of the bard here, actually. I like that he’s all wide-eyed and green until he steps onto the stage; he wants to tell a story he can be proud of, but I like the idea that he is singing a better song than he knows, teaching his audience all kinds of unintended things. I hope his master understood the story, actually, the ravi is a bit wet behind the ears.]
*
“They sang a song about my father,” Ry’ac tells him, when he is still an apprentice warrior in training. His eyes are wide and a vast chasm begging to be filled with confirmation, information. Child on the edge of outcast. Boy on the edge of orphan.
[On reading over this, it occurs to me that it might appear as though I were deliberately writing a story of Bra’tac With Young People, when really it’s about how much of a guide and a teacher and father-figure he is. It’s accidental that the bard and Ry’ac and Teal’c are all teenagers or younger in this story, but they had to be of an age where they would be really romantic about the epic songs sung around them. This whole story, after all, is about losing the romanticized view of things in favor of the possibly more rewarding pragmatic grey areas.]
For a long time, the hero stories told carefully about Teal’c, First Prime of Apophis, Shol’va, Discoverer of the First World, would be most of what Ry’ac knew of his father. Bra’tac understood little enough of Ry’ac’s mother, but he knew she rarely spoke of her resentment around the boy; for this he respects Drey’auc, but he is not sure her fictions about Teal’c’s true path are honorable.
He does not understand much of women’s ways.
[Poor Bra’tac, this is one of those stories where I think he never loved or married. Maybe he was like Queen Elizabeth and didn’t marry before he was First Prime, and couldn’t stand being approached about it afterwards.]
[I really did not mean to conjure Bra’tac in Red Wig with that analogy, sorry.]
[It seems to me, though, that Bra’tac’s prodigious mind has bent itself to several rather challenging concepts, independently and skillfully—deciding the Gods were false, being at the forefront of the rebellion and new age. There is no reason a man with such empathy as a father figure couldn’t find a partner or figure out love (or women, if that’s what he wanted), but I suspect the great tragedy of Bra’tac’s life is that when he focuses on his ideals to understand them, they inevitably turn dark, a wisdom that’s a burden to carry. I suspect that it might be easier to leave himself the hope of love, the ideal of it, rather than risk disillusionment.]
Bra’tac is not sure what his role must be, caught between Drey’auc and Teal’c and their son. He trains Ry’ac in the only manner he knows, unsure how much to tell him of his father.
Ry’ac will learn soon enough, in his own way, Bra’tac is sure; and perhaps that is the only way.
*
Freedom-giver Teal’c, stands among would-be enemies.
Two-armed, fighting before and behind.
Those he may, he brings weapons upon them,
Metal and force, storms in his voice.
Mighty Teal’c, sky-traveller, is brought to knee
An enemy’s weapon through leather and girth.
Defiantly, grey-eyed Thilana stands beside him, ring-giver.
Leaning upon the village cornerstone
Proud Teal’c, son of noble fierceness,
Finds an orator-guide, in self-same robes.
Mighty Teal’c, great of arm, rests on Thilana’s shoulder.
[Another Beowulf-y thing I’ve blatantly adopted here is the idea that higher on the body-arms, shoulders, are honorable. Anything about feet or toes or knees is lowly.
Also, yes I realize that Thilana has brown eyes; I’m being metaphorical. Have you read the Odyssey? Remember how Athena is grey-eyed? I’ve always thought that was an awesome descriptor.]
*
“Why is it, Master Bra’tac,” Rak’nor begins, as he often does, “Why is it that humans from a near meaningless planet can tell us more of our heroes than we can tell them?”
[This is the guy, for those of you who didn’t lust after the tall Jaffa in a recurring role, whose father was so inspired by Teal’c’s betrayal of Apophis in the early days that he raised Rak’nor to believe revolution was imminent and the God’s were false. In true teenage (though he didn’t look like a teenager, he looked really attractive) wisdom, he rejected his father’s teachings when the revolution didn’t come fast enough, and joined the community in general worship of the Goa’uld as Gods. Only when he met Teal’c properly and saw his determination, heard his arguments and had some time to think about it did he reconsider, but then he committed rather wholeheartedly, risking quite a bit to rescue only Teal’c. Then again, Teal’c was a figurehead even then. And Rak’nor was a questioner and a thinker. And very tall.]
Bra’tac says, “We might tell them a great deal of Teal’c, if we chose to sing.” He listens with one ear to the unfamiliar rhythms of the bard and one ear to his friend and student, “I don’t doubt that they would be as telling as this one, to people unfamiliar with our ways.”
Bra’tac, though, is learning of a human leader, a woman, who refused honors from the Goa’uld and yet stepped forward under the barest of luxuries after the Goa’uld fell. He wonders if there is something about human women that allows them to become leaders with less strife in the transition than the Jaffa must withstand.
Perhaps it is simply that he knows little of how this woman came to her position.
[Bra’tac is such a bachelor, man. From a gender delineated society. I do think that feminism will have a different flavor among the Jaffa; it’s too bad the writers themselves were so determined to write Ishta and her folk as rather clear heirs to the American Feminism School of Thought. I’m not sure it’s as effective as some other schools might be in this context. Western Feminism is not the only way, after all. The Qua’ran allows a woman to divorce her husband for the failure to provide coffee in the morning, and wouldn’t that have been interesting to see interpreted into an Arabic-influenced Jaffa culture?]
Rak’nor makes a frustrated sound but does not make to leave the recitation. The frustration is a sign of weakness unwarranted by the day’s negotiations—and he is not usually as fatigued by the machinations of politics as Bra’tac is.
Bra’tac probably could leave the greater part of political negotiations to him at this point in time, but Rak’nor continues to request his presence, and Bra’tac suspects his home on Chulak would be too quiet. Rak’nor will always require a significant team of councilors; Bra’tac usually finds this an admirable quality.
[If Rac’nor is a questioner, he is also a collaborator. Acting on his own, he sometimes draws the wrong conclusions, but put him among a group of smart councilors and he could be amazing. He is also much, much better than Teal’c at listening to council, and staying in the heart of the Free Jaffa, either at the alpha site when they were there, or in the political stickiness at Dakara.]
Sometimes Bra’tac wonders if Teal’c will ever really forgive him for pressuring him into the political arena; he sometimes wonders if Rak’nor would have discovered his political savant if Teal’c had not relied on him so heavily.
“I thought I understood something of Master Teal’c,” Rak’nor says, and in any other voice it would sound far more arrogant, “I thought I knew something of duty. I do not understand why Teal’c stands alone in petty battles to save a few dozen humans when he could be leading the entirety of the Free Jaffa against the same enemy. I do not understand why I must learn of his actions in this way.”
[And here we have Rak’nor’s motivation in this story: it’s part quest to understand, but it’s also a subtle condemnation of what he sees as Teal’c’s failure to do the rest of his duty to the Free Jaffa—namely to stand up and be a celebrity politician, thereby brilliantly leading the Jaffa into a golden age of enlightenment. Or something. It was never going to happen with Teal’c.
What’s interesting about Rak’nor expressing dissatisfaction with Teal’c and Earth, is that it plays as backdrop for Bra’tac’s much more liberal view of it. He’s not, by any means, really down with humans, or over his inherent surprise at the newfound society of equals that weren’t, but he understands that Teal’c is not going to conform to expectation, and that his role in the revolution is to fight. I think it’s interesting to set Rak’nor up as the next generation, who will move beyond fighting to negotiating and diplomacy and rebuilding. Considering that Rak’nor has this obstacle, at this point, of not thinking of the humans as terribly worthy.
I also think Teal’c has a lot more going on than just fighting, but it’s the Jaffa assumptions we’re working from, here.]
Rak’nor speaks with face towards the performer, his voice pitched only for Bra’tac to hear. He is thinking, Bra’tac knows, working through thoughts and unsure what the outcome will be. The voice of the bard winds around them.
Bra’tac is confident that Rak’nor will someday forgive him for presenting the political arena as duty; he is not sure Rak’nor will ever forgive Teal’c.
He has been wrong before, though. On many occasions.
The singer has captured the attention of the crowd, they mill around easily, but stay carefully low as they cross other’s lines of vision, keep their voices low so as not to compete. Strange for such a mixed gathering to be so universally rapt.
There are more skills in the universe, Bra’tac thinks, than he has even dreamt of acquiring. But he has never been a singer; neither has Teal’c. Then again, he was never meant to feature in hero tales, as Teal’c has, redefining the story’s traditions. Perhaps these, like so many other traditions brought out of hiding, will adapt to the freedom of expression.
He is not yet sure what shape the songs sung of Rak’nor will take.
[He has not yet realized that he is the unusual hero of this unusual story. But we won’t tell him because that would be drawing attention to how far the author has strayed from her original prompt. Also Bra’tac will move mountains to avoid the limelight. True fact. You’ve got to come at him sideways if you want him committed to a story.]
Bra’tac says, “It is my understanding that great heroes are often set greatly apart, even from those they fight to protect.”
He is not sure if this dogma holds true for great leaders as well.
[It would be a necessary first step, don’t you agree, for Jaffa to decide that dying epic-ly is not necessarily a good leadership skill? I think Bra’tac will be remembered as a great thinker. And leader.]
*
Brave Teal’c, god-slayer, betrayed in sanctuary.
He has no sharp weapons for bald threats.
Rest disturbed, he stands, storm-shaken.
Hand heavy on slight Thilana’s shoulder.
The canyon-walkers hear wind in their ears,
Wayward honor, long worn-down,
Succumbs to chasm depths.
The dirt-digger, dust on his feet faces dastan Thilana
The shield-arm, world-singer, wary guide, speaks:
“The old ways are not the only ways,” she says,
“We may fall to evil, but we will not wield its weapons.”
[Dastan is an ornate oral history in Central Asia; it conveys value systems through generations. Sufi leader Ahmet Yesevi wrote “Let the scholars hear my wisdom/Treating my word as a dastan, attain their desires.” So a dastan might be a national anthem, religion and record.
I really don’t think that the village of ‘882 (did I mention that I had to name them? I named them in a quasi-African way, taking the term Mara from the landscape formation in the savannah. Dastan being an Asian (though not excusively) concept, I feel like it’s right in line with molding their oral traditions after the Middle English. And there’s canonical Arabic influence in the early seasons. I suppose there would be some cultural meshing going on in general, especially with language, but really I just liked the conceptual idea. And anything implying something other than Western European Before the Industrial Revolution is interesting, in my book.]
*
“Master Bra’tac!” Young warriors have such energy, Bra’tac thinks to himself. This one has height already that belays his young age, but his energy speaks to a near readiness for training. Or the hyperactivity of a child up past his bedtime on a celebration night.
“Master Bra’tac! They sang a song about you!” The boy skidded to a halt with his shoulder slightly turned and one hand cast sideways to balance. He has some agility; it would be interesting to see if he could be taught grace before his size abrogated the necessity.
[Teal’c was once small and agile and hyper! Isn’t that an adorable thought?]
“Did they, now?” Bra’tac says, smiling easily amid familiar buildings, his staff weapon set aside. It was traditional to sing the exploits and braveries of the returning warriors as they reentered the village, but it was also customary to practice the song excessively on the return voyage. Bra’tac would not have gone out of his way to hear the inflated tale again unless accompanied by one who would entertain on his own merits by listening. “Shall we go and hear it?”
“It’s finished. They’re singing women’s songs now.” The boy’s face remained upturned and open, but his dismissal of the women’s songs was already evident. “You were very brave,” he said with open admiration.
“Songs make a great drama out of things far less impressive in the moment,” Bra’tac says, watching the boy bounce in excitement of understanding the complex poetry he has heard.
“You were! You were mighty and strong and you cast down the enemy on the fields of Mak’re!” He grins openly, and Bra’tac smiles back at him.
[It occured to me writing this that every time I name something, or someone, I choose to name it something that starts with M. It was so blatant in this fic that I had to go back and frelling rename stuff. The bard started out Mettieu.]
“I am no fit hero for their songs,” Bra’tac says with mock earnestness, “I have not the stature. Now you, you may indeed grow tall enough one day. Would that suit you?”
[And this right here is why I loved writing Bra’tac in this story. He just tried so hard to have any and every other character upstage him; he just does not want to be the hero of a story. He is, though, it’s his nature; Bra’tac is awesome. Guaranteed to add 30% more awesome to any scene that you are writing, Rydra Wong tells me.]
“I hope they will sing songs about me,” he says with his child’s voice, long limbs suddenly still with the seriousness of children’s truth.
[There is no doubt in my mind that Teal’c has firmly and completely changed his opinion on this topic. He can’t escape the celebrity now, though, the deed is done. Or, rather, the many deeds have been done. I suspect he hates it as much as Bra’tac does, but endures a little more stoically than Bra’tac does—when he’s not running away and living with the Tau’ri, obviously.]
“Have you planned them out already?” Bra’tac says, sitting on a nearby rock wall. His formal armour is heavy, and the boy Teal’c was not yet so tall that sitting did not bring them closer to eye-level. “I expect they will have to be especially magnificent songs.”
“Full of battles and fighting!” Teal’c says, “They’ll exclaim how I hated the enemy and brought down great ha’tak with just my staff weapon from a hilltop!”
The boy was getting older, but Bra’tac could still see the instinct to act out the theater he described (probably just heard in the warrior’s song—there had indeed been a ha’tak, and a hilltop, though neither were especially notable,) in twitches of the shoulder and a widening of the stance. In short order, this boy would begin his life as a warrior, to last longer than this short childhood by many hundreds of years. He would forget innocence too quickly; there was no need to rush headlong into the hatred of servitude.
“Better to be the hero of the women’s songs,” Bra’tac says, turning his face out to the familiar landscape. He had brought fire down from the sky on the other village, it’s destruction lost in the victory songs. Bra’tac says to the boy Teal’c, “It is always preferable to be a warrior who returns home.”
[More with the women’s songs, and Bra’tac’s respect for the wisdom there, even if it’s kind-of-sort-of-repressed. He’s not a bad guy, he just grew up in a culture of misogyny, perhaps. The references to women, Teal’c’s wife, the women’s songs, etc, also reference Thilana, I hope. It was a way of keeping her in the prose sections of the story, and with the theme of women’s songs etc throughout, I’m hoping that her presence feels enmeshed in the story.]
“But it’s better to die in battle,” Teal’c says, trying to comfort, “and the women’s songs are boring; all love and mourning and standing in the ruins.” He pulls a face.
“Love could be quite a worthy challenge, I should imagine,” Bra’tac says, leaving aside the challenges of coming home, or remembering the dead. He turns his face back to the near-warrior before him, “And I have known far too much of hate; better the alternative.”
[My prompt was Teal’c and Thilana from Line In the Sand (well, I tried) the theme of the burdens of leadership (it’s kind of one of the themes) and the Martin Luther King, Jr., quote, “[I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate.” If anyone can speak wisdom the way MLK, Jr. spoke wisdom, it’s Bra’tac. Also, paian was the one who suggested that I try this prompt and do something interesting with it—I hope by interesting she meant something to the effect of ‘not what anyone was expecting,’ because I am not entirely sure I’ve stayed true to the letter of the prompt. I loved the spirit, though.]
But he gets up, and takes the boy into the songs and community by the fire. If they do not appreciate the wisdom of women’s songs, at least they will not get cold.
*
God-branded Teal’c, heir to Bra’tac,
Son of Mehr’auc, Ronac, and Chulak,
Father of Ry’ac, freedom-fighter,
Friend to Tau’ri and Tok’ra. Alliance-maker.
Most trusted, who brought Goa’uld wisdom
To the free peoples on the water road;
Brave Teal’c chooses Thilana as wisdom-speaker.
Riding the trails of the light-walkers,
With peace and friendship we resist old evils,
Great of wind-soul, greater even than his actions,
We who remain, shout his works to the worlds.
[That penultimate line there came from Samuel Gardner’s quote “And how shall the soul of a man/ Be larger than the life he has lived?” If anyone can, I think it would be Teal’c; he is an extraordinarily heroic character. I have, I kid you not, four pages of poetry written out, most of which didn’t serve the story (or wasn’t very good). I have pages on Beowulf, Homer and Arabic oral traditions.
So some of the things I hope this story dealt with were: Teal’c as heir to Bra’tac, Bra’tac being such a power in the forces that shape the emerging culture of the Free Jaffa, the notion that leaders are different than heroes and perhaps there can be songs about a leader, or a different kind of hero. I hope Thilana emerges as a hero and a leader and skilled orator; I hope her contrast with Teal’c as sort of a ying/yang of skills (and stances on pacifism) conveys some notion that you lead as your skills allow, and you release the burden of leadership to others when the need extends beyond your skill set. I like the notions of alliance building, that in refusing the duty of politicking, Teal’c is actually acting as diplomat to the human populations of the galaxy simply by walking with Taur’i, and that he continues to serve to his best (which is substantial) ability, for all he might feel tremendous guilt for failing as a politician. I like the idea that the Jaffa have enough depth to diversify their skills and professions within a generation, and I like the notion of seeing the very attractive Rak’nor as often as possible in the spotlight.
I loved playing with Arabic and Greek and Middle English oral traditions. I love the idea of the Jaffa and poetry, and have since I read Sal’s The Water Moon. I recommend that if you’d like further reading. Or Katie M's Sangata I had one more traditional Arabic phrase (all of which, of course, lose a great deal in the alphabet translation) that I so wanted to use and couldn’t work in, so I’ll use it here since it’s got such a great alliteration itself.
Kan ya ma kan.
It means, effectively, ‘once upon a time…’
Thanks for staying with me.]
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