Otter's Rock

Dasha was and still is one of my favorite Stargate Atlantis authors, and I was always sad they kinda fell out of fandom.  They pop up now and then to add some of their old fic to AO3, and here's one that just got uploaded.  The character voices are spot on, and it's lots of fun.

Free 'Verse (3603 words) by Dasha
Fandom: Stargate - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rodney McKay, Samantha "Sam" Carter, Daniel Jackson
Additional Tags: Poetry, Physics
Summary: Rodney. Sam. Gardening instructions. Physics. Oh, and also muggers.

teh_helenables just posted an awesome Ronon and Teyla ficlet called The Pegasus Conditioning.  It's short but wonderful, you should all go read!

Meme stolen from ljc :

1. The Watchmen/BSG crossover about Doctor Manhattan, going off to explore the universe and create life. All this has happened before, all this will happen again. He doesn't like being called God.
2. The BSG AU where, when Kara jumps them using the coordinates from that song at the end of the last episode, they wind up back in time in the colonies just before the Cylon attack.
3. The Criminal Minds/SG-1 crossover where the SGC is negotiating with a planet that doesn't really want any of the standard trade goods, but they've got a high-profile serial killer but no law enforcement types with the psychological training to catch him/her. So someone suggests that hey, maybe we should lend them a BAU team for a few weeks, catch the serial killer, and give them a start on developing their own profilers.
4. The Stargate Goes Public story that focuses on the reactions of the US military peeps who weren't in on the program. Navy guys complaining about the Air Force having starships. Special forces guys pointing out that having four-person teams is really stupid; six is a much more tactically flexible number, and if they hadn't given the Stargate to the Chair Force maybe they'd have had fewer screwups like that. JAG lawyers trying to figure out how to fit the de facto decisions made by the SGC over the years because they face situations nobody's ever thought of before into the UCMJ. Marines being ooo-rah. Etc.
5. The Stargate story that focuses on the diplomatic teams: how they figure out what to trade with each world, and the person who noticed that most worlds are resource-rich and manpower-poor, and that the thing most useful to most worlds is technology just a leetle more advanced than whatever they've got--still within their manufacturing capabilities, but just a little more energy efficient. Cotton gins. Spinning jennies. Better plows. Better mettalurgy. Etc. Or some worlds want sheep with better wool, or larger horses, or other agricultural things. And then having to figure out how to convince General Hammond that what they really need is for the engineers (who want to be studying Ancient or Goa'uld or Asgard technology) to figure out how to build these things and teach the locals how to make and use them. Or convince General Hammond that the SGC needs to buy Merino sheep or what have you. And then figure out how to get them through the Stargate.
6. Babylon 5. The one about the Centauri princeling in The Lost Tales that Sheridan takes home to Minbar to keep him from turning into the monster Galen says he will.
7. Doctor Who/Atlantis. The sequel to Survivors.
8. BSG AU. The stories hinted at in Five AUs I Will Never Write.
9. Batman Beyond. The one where Terry's in college, still Batman, but moonlighting with the Justice League when they really need him. And they've got a list, really heavily encrypted somewhere, of family members of JL heroes, so that they can whisk them away to a secure location if necessary, and of course Terry's mom and brother are on that list but they still don't know he's Batman, and consequently are sure someone's made a mistake when they get kidnapped to a safehouse with superhero families. The security people guarding them are all, no, you're on the list, Mrs. McGinnis.
10. Star Trek Reboot. Away team beams down, locals don't like Spock because of his brother, and Spock's all, I don't have a brother, but what's Sybok done? And it turns out that he had forced a telepathic marriage bond on one of the women in town and raped her during his Pon Farr, and now she's pregnant, and Spock has to deal with figuring out how to help her and track down his brother to bring him to justice (which traditionally would be putting him to death, but so many Vulcans have died already, but on the other hand Vulcan doesn't have the resources to deal with a prisoner and most other Federation worlds don't have prisons designed to hold such powerful telepaths as Sybok). Also, Spock has to deal with his friends and crewmates now that part of the story about Pon Farr has come out in the worst possible way.

Title: A Burden Shared
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/Atlantis
Notes: Sequel to “Reflexes” and “Back in Atlantis”

( A Burden Shared )


Title: Potential Problems
Author:beatrice_otter 
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/Sound of Music
Notes: Sequel to “A Problem Like Maria,” “Georg’s Surprise,” and “Freedom”

( Potential Problems )


Title: A Superhero Team
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/DC Comics

( A Superhero Team )


Title: All This Has Happened Before
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: PG
Word Count: 200
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/Battlestar Galactica

( All This Has Happened Before )


Title: Duty
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/Shakespeare (Henry V)

( Duty )

Title: Play-time with Sweetums
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Challenge: #095—swifter, higher, stronger
Fandom: BtVS/The Muppet Show

( Play-time with Sweetums )

So, if you're in the Stargate fandom you've probably heard about the massive amounts of fail (multiple different kinds, no less!) inherent in the casting sides for an episode of Stargate: Universe, and the defense from Gateworld, and all that. sheafrotherdon has an excellent rebuttal to Gateworld's defense of the fail, and cereta has an older post on living in a systematically misogynistic society and why don't "nice" men take a stand which then links to khalinche's post on the levels of harassment your average woman experiences on a daily basis, and why men don't really get it. And someone in the comments mentioned the Vagina Monologues, which I've never seen.

And I've been thinking. I love Stargate, but not the fail, and it seems like the fail has been growing over time, and the way they consistently play issues of rape and torture and such for titilation/humor or in other ways abuse white male privilege.

And lo, at 2 o'clock in the morning, an idea has formed for a story I will never write but which would be Made of Awesome if someone else would do it:

Teal'c is sensitive to power issues as they relate to the whole Jaffa/slave thing, but not so much (which is to say, not at all) as they relate to male/female relationships. He's very secure in his male privilege, and uses it, particularly with Jaffa women. He has great respect for Sam, treats her like an equal as a warrior, true, but look at how he treated the Jaffa women he was with. It's not that he's a bad guy, he just responds as his culture has taught him and doesn't really seem to think about the issue that much. And then in the episode Family Ties, Teal'c gets given tickets to The Vagina Monologues.

I want to know what Teal'c's reaction was. I want it to be done seriously, not played for laughs. I want to know how he related that to his experiences of Jaffa life and working with Sam for ten years. I want to explore Jaffa culture and Teal'c's perspective on it beyond the 'Jaffa revenge thing.' I want to see him talk about it with Sam, and with Ishta, and maybe his daughter-in-law Kar'yn. I don't want him to turn into an enlightened feminist Western male, but I do want him to understand.

( a WTF? episode if ever there was one )

It wouldn't have bothered me anywhere near as much if this had been somewhere in the middle of the series, with time for episodes featuring other characters and space battles and running-for-the-gate etc. around it. But as the second-to-last episode? It really sucked. I tend to be a lot more charitable than a lot of fans, and I've never suffered the delusion that my personal vision is the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY THE SHOW SHOULD GO as some fans do. Avoiding that kind of thinking is why I largely avoid Gateworld and communities other than pure fic communities. But this was crossing the line, for me.

grumble, grumble, grumble.

*icon shows what kind of show I would have rather had.

Is there anyone who would be able to beta an Atlantis/Doctor Who crossover, and get it back to me tomorrow if I sent it to them today? It mostly needs help with plot and characterization, and a double check to see if I'm being too wordy.

It's for the Multiverse 5000, and it's due the 30th. I can get the first draft done, but it doesn't feel like it's "clicked," to me. I don't know if it just needs some polishing or if there's something that needs to be fixed. Or if I'm being a nervous writer panicking over a deadline.

There's going to be an all-girl recon team! Headed by Dax from DS9! OMGYAY isn't that awsome!!11!!eleventy!

Please, please please please, tell me there is some glimmer of a reason for this besides someone wanted to put more women on the show. I mean, I'm all for having lots of strong women characters ... but there's got to be a reason for it in the plot. And an all-female team? I can find no logical, in-universe reason for it. Not considering the higher ratio of men to women on Atlantis, combined with its relatively small population, a relatively small amount of whom are on regular gate teams. There are more men in the military and more men in the sciences and engineering, both very realistic real-world skews; I may not like them (particularly the sciences one, as there's actually some reason besides prejudice for the military skew--there's still a lot of prejudice, but not exclusively so), but they are facts of life in the real world. One of the reasons I like Stargate is that it deals with a "real world" that could be ours. This ... this just feels like a Hollywood publicity stunt.

If they're only there to be an all-girl team, I hope they're there to be strong female characters, not Atlantis' answer to Seven of Nine. And I really hope they don't take away from Teyla and Ronon's screen time. (Sheppard and McKay get enough screen time we don't really have to worry about them.)

Anybody got a floor plan to Weir's office? I don't have my DVDs handy, and considering how much time she spends there it's kind of important. And how far is the Jumper bay from the control room?

title: A Problem Like Maria
word count: 100
fandoms: The Sound of Music/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
challenge: #73: favorite things
notes: Given the challenge, I couldn't resist.

( The Reverend mother looked down at the letter onher desk and sighed. )

title: Georg's surprise
word count: 100
fandoms: The Sound of Music/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
challenge: #73: favorite things
notes: Sequel to the above, but can stand alone

( Georg's surprise )



title: Back in Atlantis
word count: 100
fandoms: Stargate: Atlantis/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
challenge: #73: favorite things
notes: Sequel to Reflexes, but can stand alone

( When she got back to her quarters, Jennifer Keller took a deep breath. )