You know I try; sometimes I don't succeed.

[minxy]

And it is decidedly possible that I rec before I feedback. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

troyswann's elegantly petulant and disappointed enemy, facing down an indominable Rodney and a posturing John. There is wittiness; you are warned. Sheppard and Violence, PG, and teh funny.

skooziepants, once apon a time, wrote a Very Smart SGA/Harry Potter crossover, in which everyone is at Hogwarts, but of different generations. Harry and co. are the elder, and John and Co. are the new gang of students tapped to save the world. Bagglevarger's Theory of Inversive Magic. Pre-slash, rate it PG-13 (worksafe). Longer read, completed in two parts, pre-slash.

Also from the annals of the 'fashionably late' recommendations: SGA fic by sprat, in which John looks death in the eye one too many times and outs himself, and Rodney is unexpectedly ticked off about it. It's really a nice little ficlet, and it has a great momentum. Long Way to Fall, probably an R rating for language and references to sex, but nothing really explicit.

holdouttrout wrote a great little Sam/Jack pre-ship apocafic called Year One. Both in character, nice emotional intelligence from Jack, practicality from Sam. Worksafe, rate it PG-13.

kuwdora, who may be keeping pegasus_b active single-handedly, wrote an unusual prose format Daniel/Rodney backstory, with great intimacy and angst, the way that only they can manage. Eureka, worksafe.

The beautiful, lovely and unspeakably talented raqs has posted a Jack/Daniel fic which is of the awesome. Climbing, AU, NC-17. I loved how first appearances deceive in this fic. I also love that raqs has quietly indicated that her head holds more backstory for these two, and that one day she might tell it to us.

janedavitt finished the eclipsed series and is now available to write ficlets (like this one yay!) in that verse, yay! Her boys in this final installment remain admirably themselves while simultanteously being too damn tired to avoid the truth any longer. Stupid boys, letting it come to that. Eclipsed, part 10/10, R rated, maybe, but the whole series is NC-17.

In other news, am home now, having made progress on the dark_gate fic! For those who are interested, it took me 6 bloody (not literally) pages to work up to the smut. Good gracious. Also, am beta-ing. *is proud* Has the slump been broken? Has the muse been dragged back to work, kicking and screaming? We'll know once the betas have their say. Stay tuned for breaking news.

Also, I posted a fic! Granted, it was before I left, but still. In case you missed it, it's here: Footsoldiers on Uneven Ground. Because I'm reccing my own fic, I shall be all cryptic and not tell you what an unusual protagonist I have, or that I created an OC, or that it's the first (and probably only) time this pairing has ever been written, and that it's pretty much a PG story. But that's my perogative as a reccer, so there.

However! There's been a nice little response to this fic (more than I expected, frankly) and Sal said she'd like to see more of Mehr'auc. This isn't exactly more of her, but here is a ficlet for troyswann:

***

"Tell me of your mother." Ishta's gait was still easy, her steps long, and her fingers idly playing with the seeds in a shaft of grain.

"You are nothing but questioning," Teal'c answered, centering himself in the view of the sky, Ishta in his peripheral vision keeping him on course.

"You have told me of your wife, your son, your friends, your father..." He could see that she was glancing at him askance, gauging his reaction. "How did you come to be in the service of Apophis when your father died as First Prime of Kronos?"

"We left Kronos' service in disgrace; sought sanctuary on Chulak in the service of Apophis. I have told you this." He had, he had said much in the last few hours; he could feel it in his voice and throat. It was a pleasant ache.

"No," Ishta said, her pace slowing slightly, "You ought to have become an outcast, doomed to serve and beg, yet you are not. You became First Prime of a different Goa'uld. How is it this came to pass?"

Teal'c brought his eyes down from the skies to rest in the spaces between the trees, the dark hollows.

"My mother made a choice," Teal'c said, the memory old and rusty, "And commended me to Master Bra'tac's care on her death."

"How did she die?" The woman was as stubborn as a mak'tar.

"In the outcast camp, of persistent illness, as many in the camps did." Teal'c had been young, the memory of his father's loss still sharp. He had always blamed Kronos by accessory for his mother's death as well.

"Master Bra'tac would not help her?" Ishta's voice held barely concealed knives.

"He would have. She refused his assistance for herself." This brought a halt to their movement across the field.

"There was romance between them." Ishta spoke as though answering her own question.

"Trust a woman to see romance in any tale," Teal'c said, his voice thick with memories he had not considered in many years.

"You are mistaken, Teal'c," Ishta said, moving into his field of vision and guiding him between the trees, "if you think that all I can see in this story is it's romantic qualities."

It was not the first time that Teal'c thought he might have accidentally underestimated the woman.

***

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

so lovely and poignant to see these layers of teal'c's memories and feelings. and to see that ishta *knows* him on that level.

perfect ending thought on teal'c's part.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Thank you! Always nice to get complimented on those last lines. The whole idea of the fic came about because Teal'c has always fallen for strong, independent women, and that had to come from somewhere, so of course Ishta would get this story in a very personal way, once she got close enought to Teal'c to hear it. And they did connect so fast, those powerful outcasts.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

those are very fine last lines. :)

i love how you've described them here, reminds me of how powerful teal'c is. something that i'm not sure all the folks at the sgc can tolerate *knowing* all the time.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Certainly not. The SGC is the system, and every single member of the military has gone through the training that taught them to subsume who they were for at least a while, and serve first, unquestioningly. To see Teal'c walking the halls might for some be encouraging that we are the good guys, yay! But at the same time, all he would have to do is look at them and raise an eyebrow and it would scream 'I once believed that too' and plaster a big questionmark on everything.

His power just really isn't all about his biceps. I have a theory that there has to be a subset of grunts at the SGC who question, a group of the civilian philosophers who realized Teal'c would train them, not just beat them up, who are groupies for his training classes; hoping that if they just hang out with him long enough, just watch him, that they'll start to understand. I like to think that if anyone tried to take Teal'c away from the SGC under duress now they'd have to go through a wall of 20-somethings standing shoulder to shoulder blocking the elevator.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

oh yes about the question marks. and as much as life at the sgc is about stepping out of the box, they carry their own internal box with them that pushes them to avoid questions sometimes. so yes indeedy to what you've said here.

and good point about how his power is not about the muscles. i love that about him. and i i agree that there's no way he'd be taken from the sgc at this point. heh, just let them try.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I can never tell you often enough how much you rock for your rec posts. They must take AGES to research and code and you always add the personal bits that make me want to track down a story (well, click the link as you did all the hard work!).

And thank you for the Eclipsed mention!

::loves::

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Oooh, yes. Hours of painful, tedious fanfic reading research.... and the porn! Let's not forget the burden of reading smut! Woe!

*g*

*loves you back a lot*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

(and thanks--nothing like a little appreciation)

*warm fuzzies*

You are the best at the appreciation, you know.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

And commenting separately on the fic... I knew she had to have died but oh, it still hurt reading about it. That's a wonderful OC you created in a very few words.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Thank you! Actually had plans for much more drama around her death, but thought it would have a much Teal'cyer impact if it was quiet and understated. Just the idea that a Jaffa with a symbiote died of something simple implies such squalor to me that it hurt more.

I'm glad you loved her a little bit. I loved the grace with which she bore all her burdens and still found energy to effect change.

[lyr]

Cool snippet! This scene between Teal'c and Ishta feels so very canon. Lovely work!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Thank you! I think it's a serious canon oversight that Teal'c's mother has never been mentioned, and I love that Ishta could have been the one to see that.

Feels like canon is a lovely compliment. Thank you.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

"You are mistaken, Teal'c," Ishta said, moving into his field of vision and guiding him between the trees, "if you think that all I can see in this story is it's romantic qualities."

Oh, right on. :)

You know, in addition to the part about Ishta being sharper than Teal'c gets at first, I really really like the way you track Teal'c's vision, his attention to the periphery, his attempt to find his bearings, or, maybe, to lose something in the shadows. Lovely!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Teal'c has layers, man, and one of them is that he's lived in and loved a society that has dramatic separation of the sexes, it would seem, and gender roles very deeply ingrained. Teal'c has also deeply loved at least two women who have transcended what might be limitations to fight for people they love and be incredibly independent in a society that actively discouraged that.

And this third woman, Mehr'auc, may have been all those things as well, may have been the woman who taught him to value these things, but it was 80ish years ago, and maybe this is the first time it's occured to him to think of her like that. Had to have hurt, losing her, had to be something he tried to stop feeling for a while...

One of my favorite things with Teal'c is the notion that freedom brings the potential for owning mistakes, like revisiting old memories that hurt and reexamining them without a religious doctrine to tell you what to feel. It's a tribute to his strength of character that he's the first to do it, but it wouldn't be so impressive if he didn't lose his bearings, or at least risk it.

And it was writing a long winded comment like this to you before that prompted the writing of the snippet in the first place. I stop now. I'm so glad you liked, and that both Teal'c and Ishta were interesting despite neither being the character you actually asked for.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Oooo, that is fabulous. I do see Ishta as constantly forcing Teal'c to reassess his assumptions -- very nice.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Hee! Thank you!

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Best early Christmas present ever is a rec for my fic! Thank you for the compliments on it, too.

And Ishta always seemed like a really interesting character to me, although I haven't read too much with her in it. And Teal'c in this fic has a really good cadence to his words. He's reluctant to say too much but willing to have the stories come out when asked.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I am having such a blast writing Jaffa voice. They have such a beauty to the way the choose words carefully and speak volumes in the silences. Something about this snippet and the fic before it really drew me to characters that aren't written very often but have such brilliant stories. Maybe in the silences too, maybe the Jaffa will never have historians or bards to remember their quiet heroes.

I did like your fic very much, happy to rec!

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

Oh minxy, you make me so ferklempt when you rec me! *hugs you!*

I always liked Ishta. I like her here and I wish we saw more of her in the show. Hooray for living on in fic! :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I liked Ishta too, she was so fierce and so rebellious and she just seemed like she was so tired of fighting, would love the chance to sit down and be safe for a minute before she resumed changing the universe and society and expectations and people. Tough, awesome chick.

MUCH LIKE YOU. I love all this attention to Peg B's anniversary, and I hope it means more folk will join you in posting fic. *hugs you back*

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

MUCH LIKE YOU.

You're so sweet you're making my teeth hurt! *squeezes you*

I love all this attention to Peg B's anniversary, and I hope it means more folk will join you in posting fic. *hugs you back*

Haha, we'll see. I have a backlog of various pegB fic I haven't posted so maybe if I post oodles and oodles of fic people will be like "hey! Neat! I play, too!" (One can dream, at least...) I already posted some pegH. I'll be posting some pegBa'al.. maybe I'll dash off some pegFemme, too. :D There's so many AUs within the AU. I'm surprised we're not to the letter Z yet! PegZ, haa. Pegz.

Once I get some more of my pegH stuff written, I'm sure you'll piddle your pants because I've been sketching out some backstory that includes Sam and Ishta and Jack. Well, not much backstory yet but, oh, I'm sure that's a threesome nobody considered before. *big smile*