Otter's Rock

Title: All the Difference (The Brave New World Remix)
Characters: Kara Thrace, Sharon Agathon, Hera Agathon, Kacey, Nicholas Tyrol, Cally Tyrol
Pairing: Kara/Sam, Sharon/Helo, Cally/Tyrol
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicidal thoughts
Original Story: Liminal Fate by lunar47 .  Written for bsg_remix 
Betaed By: lizardbeth and leakypaintpen 
Word Count: 10,650 words

Summary: All this has happened before. What if it doesn't have to happen again?

At AO3

( What if it doesn't have to happen again? )

For various reasons, I have read a lot of Star Wars AUs recently.  And I have many Thoughts on the subject, but here are a few.

First, I know the Prequels are huge targets of opportunity.  There are so many things one could fix!  And think of all the lives one could save by making Anakin not turn to the Dark Side!  BUT.  It would be awesome to see some Original Trilogy AUs, or more AUs that involved Han, Luke, and Leia, because dammit I LOVE THEM.  And if you could get Mara and Lando involved too, that would be great.  I can think of several AUs that would be awesome to read.  Or how about, instead of Obi-Wan time-traveling back, you have the OT group somehow get sent to a parallel universe where Anakin never turned, and things are way different, and they have to figure out how to get back to their own universe.  Something.

Second.  If you are going to write something where Obi-Wan goes back in time to his younger self (there are several where his consciousness from the OT era ends up in his PT era body), please do not make him magically an idiot.  He's back in time to change things, right?  Instead of making up reasons why he can only make small changes for blatantly plot reasons, have him do something really unexpected that changes things so that Palpatine is left going, wait, what?  and scrambling madly to catch up.  All of those reasons why (for one reason or another) things have to happen pretty closely to the way they did in the movies just come across as shoddy writing.  For a particularly egregious example, there is a story where he arrived back in time just before AotC started, and he was going to try to prevent the Battle of Geonosis from starting by capturing Jango Fett so he never had to go to Geonosis, but he failed!  so he went to Geonosis anyway.  I'm like, Dude.  You know where he's going and what you're going to find there.  Send the information to the Council (and maybe other information you know because you are a Time Traveler,) and capture him later!  Or, if you have to go to Geonosis, don't eavesdrop on the SAME MEETING YOU DID BEFORE.  Break into Dooku's office for proof he's a Sith or something!

Third.  I get that Obi-Wan and Anakin have a close relationship.  But if you're having Obi-Wan go back in time from Vader-era to Anakin-era, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be as easy as "oh, sob, he did horrible things, but let's forget about all of that because he's young and cute now and if I let myself love him maybe he won't turn!"  Make them work for it!  It would make for a much better story, and far more interesting.  Anakin murdered all of Obi-Wan's friends.  Personally.  And then went off and did horrible things to the rest of the galaxy.  It may not have happened yet in this galaxy, but in this scenario Obi-Wan remembers it happening, and has to have at least some doubts that it may happen again.  Don't just sweep that under the rug!

Fourth.  If you are going to have Anakin be the one to have his consciousness thrown back in time ... let us not make him completely unrecognizable as a character, mmmkay?  Like, this is a dude with a wicked temper and a taste for killing helpless people he didn't like when he was a good guy.  Instead of him trying to be the Bestest Jedi Evar to make up for his horrible choices in the original timeline, I'm pretty sure it would be a lot more likely for him to, I dunno, try and kill Palpatine and most of his henchmen.  Or do something stupidly and shortsightedly violent and damn the consequences.  It could still be all angsty and stuff!  Think about how Obi-Wan and the Council would react!  Think about how the Senate (which Palpatine has already been priming to distrust Jedi) would react to a Jedi killing the Chancellor!

So, this summer, I am going to be visiting the awesome Cherie Renae Studios and getting a superhero picture done.  I will have wings! ... but I need a costume.  And a superhero name.

My color will be red.  (As you can tell from my icon, it's my favorite color.)  My two favorite superheros are probably Oracle and Wonder woman, though I have soft spots for Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, Superman, and Captain America.  Smarts/detective skills/computer skills would be a cool secondary power to have besides the wings.

So!  What should my superhero name be?  Background?  Am I a mythical creature or an alien?  Do I use technology or magic?  Am I DC or Marvel?  (Despite my yuck factor with New 52 and my love of recent Marvel movies, I am at heart a DC girl ... but if the recent relative awesomeness of the two franchises keeps on as it has been recently, that may change.)

Costume!  I am a very good seamstress, so I can make anything I want.  (There will be no sex-kittening.)  With wings, a cape really doesn't work.  It could be anything from a simple red turtleneck and black cargo pants and black boots to something more elaborate and superhero-y.  (I already have knee-high black boots that I think I will wear because they are practical and look good and I think superheroines don't wear high heels.)  Should I go the traditional spandex-route?  Should I wear my underwear on the outside?  Should I wear a mask?  Should I make some kind of insignia to go on the front of the costume?  (Designing and creating the insignia would be the most difficult part, I think.)

Discuss!

Hey, for all you Stargate fans out there, do we ever learn anything about General Hammond's faith/religion?

If we don't, what Christian groups are a) popular in Texas and b) do Ash Wednesday services?  I mean, I know Lutherans, Catholics, and Episcopalians celebrate Ash Wednesday, but none of them are particularly big among white people in Texas that I know of.

You know, when I was a girl, I loved the movie Gigi.  Great songs, lavish sets and costumes, an all-star cast, pretty much catnip for a girl who loves musicals, as I did and still do.

But watching it as an adult with a more critical eye, wow, is it ever a textbook example of the way privilege works to distort relationships.

It's set in turn-of-the-century Paris, and it's about a young extremely rich man named Gaston and a teen girl named Gigi, and their families.  The young man's lecherous-but-cheerful uncle Honore is played by Maurice Chevalier.  Honore's world is one of constant womanizing.  He finds a girl/young woman he likes, he sets her up in a house and lavishes her with presents in exchange for sex until he tires of her or she cheats on him, at which point the girl is out (and now has no chance of getting married or much opportunities for gainful employment, so she's pretty much trapped into being a courtesan for the rest of her life whether or not that's what she wants).  Life for Honore is pretty much an endless party with everything set up to go his way.  Despite the fact that Gaston often and repeatedly says he's bored by/doesn't like that sort of lifestyle, Honore pushes him into it for the honor of men everywhere and as his patriotic duty to France.  The escapades of Honore and Gaston include at least one cast-off woman attempting unsuccessfully to commit suicide, which is treated almost as a joke--what did she expect, after all?

Meanwhile, Gaston has one place he actually enjoys being.  It's a small apartment occupied by a middle-aged woman (a former courtesan herself played by Hermione Gingold) and her granddaughter Gigi (played by Leslie Caron).  Gigi is a teenager still in school, who receives regular lessons from her great-aunt (who was a far more succesful courtesan than her grandmother) about all the necessary social graces to capture a man's attention.  How to take tea and coffee, how to choose cigars, how to eat, how to tell real jewels from fake ones, how to sit and how to stand, etc.  Despite this, Gigi is fresh and forthright and honest, and although sweet she tells things like they are.  She and Gaston have lots of fun playing cards and other such games in their apartment while her Grandmama fawns over Gaston.  Any time Gigi says something that might upset Gaston, she gets scolded for it, whether it's true or not--and that includes sticking up for herself when he gets mad at her.

Gigi gets older, and her great aunt says she's ready to be a courtesan despite the fact that she has no interest in being one, and who better than the rich dude who already knows and likes her?  So next time Gaston comes by and wants to take Gigi out in a ride in his motor car, Grandmama says she can't--she'll be labeled if she does that.  Gaston storms out--how dare she point out that he has a reputation!  How dare she point out that anything he likes might have unpleasant consequences for anyone else!  He realizes, though, that if Gigi is getting old enough for that sort of thing to be a problem, well, she's old enough, and he loves her.  So he offers to make her his next mistress, and
Grandmama is thrilled, as is the aunt.  But not Gigi, and she explains quite logically and coherently why she doesn't want to be a mistress, particularly one in the public eye.  Why can't they go on as they have?  Well, he says he loves her, to which she breaks out in tears because how can he force a woman he thinks he loves into that kind of life?  At which point he storms out, because how dare she say stuff like that?  How dare she cheapen a deep emotion by pointing out the reality of what it means for her?  And initially, Grandmama is on Gaston's side.  (Gigi gets called backwards because she's not focused on love and men.)

Anyway, Gigi relents (we're both miserable this way, and I'd rather be miserable alone together).  They go out on a public date, Uncle Honore says something crass about her, and Gaston gets mad.  And then he notices that Gigi has been very well instructed by her aunt, she knows exactly what the mistress of Gaston should be like.  She's just like all the other women he knows.  He realizes that she was right all along about what being his mistress would do to her, and decides to marry her instead, the end.

But the entire movie, everyone except Gigi does everything in their power to cater to Gaston and suck up to him, such that he has no clue what life is like for other people or the consequences his actions have on them, and everybody thinks that is absolutely 100% the way it should be.

I still love the music and the costumes and such (though, wow, Thank Heaven for Little Girls is way creepier than I realized as a child), and Gigi the character is fun to watch, but wow do I wanna drop-kick everyone else in the movie.  I would pay money for an AU in which Gaston told Honore "Look, I love you, but this is really screwed up, seeya" about five minutes into the film.  Or, at least, "I'm not going to waste my time with this, I don't think toying with women and throwing away money like it's water is fun."

John Lennard is an Oxford grad who's taught at Cambridge, and who is also a fanfic author (bracketyjack ).  He's written a very thoughtful essay on just why Fifty Shades is problmatic by explaining all the various and sundry ways the author is trampling all over fanfic, feminism, and bdsm while profiting from them.  It's both readable and well-researched, and you can pick it up for a couple of bucks at Amazon.

As you know, Bob, using Word's internal convert-to-html widget often has ... unique and unintended results.  But most places to post fics require posting fics with html for italics and such!  What is one to do?  I, personally, find that writing with html tags makes it much harder to read and edit my fics, and always results in a dropped tag here and there.  So what is a ficcer to do?

Fear not, there is a solution.  Word's search-and-replace function, with a little knowledge, can be used to code your fics!  Here's how:

Ctrl-F brings up the search box.  It should be on the "Find" tab.  Switch to the "Replace" tab.

Clicking "More>>" brings up more options.  With your cursor in the "Find What" box, click "Format" and select "Font" from the dropdown list.

If you wish to html code italics, select "Italics" under "Font Style.  It will now say "Font: Italic" under the "Find What" box.

Place your cursor in the "Replace With" box.  Type in the open html tag ( < em > or < i >, except without spaces, obvs.)  Click "Special" and select "Find What Text" from the dropdown list.  ^& will appear in the "Replace With" box to the right of the html tag.  Type in the close html tag ( < / em > or < / i > ).  The ^& will now be enclosed in the html coding for italics.

Click replace all.  Your computer will ding and a box will appear, telling you how many replacements it's made.

Ta da!  Any italics in your story are now enclosed in proper html coding!

This works just as well with bold or other html codes.

If ever you need a song for a creepy-stalker guy who does not get that he is totally Creepy Stalker Guy (vid?  ringtone?  fanmix?), "Such A Crime by Tory Cassis would be perfect.