Galloway

The Epilogue is Apocryphal™

2009-10-30T16:22:06Z

or Harry Potter and the Problem of Writing Ahead.

Warning: ginormous spoilers ahead. Also, Ron/Hermione and/or Harry/Ginny fans probably won’t like it either.

Let me just say it: I am a Harry Potter fan, I believe in Harmony, and I am not delusional. I know, I know, the Deathly Hallows has come and gone, and we all know how things end. But I’m not delusional, I’m really not. You see, J.K. Rowling knows how it ends, and therein lies the problem: she always knew how it would end, and therein lies her delusion.

First, though, let me relate my Harry Potter experience, for it is crucial to how I came to my perspective.

I had heard all about the Harry Potter phenomenon — how could you miss it? — but kept avoiding partaking of it for as long as I could. I had plenty of fandoms to worry about, thank you very much. But when Sorcerer’s Stone appeared in theaters, I happened to be visiting my oldest brother for the Thanksgiving holiday, and he insisted I go with him and his daughters to see it. Of course, I thought it was wonderful. I also immediately saw the future shipping potential for Harry and Hermione; it was just so blatantly obvious to me. But I still didn’t read the books.

This continued through Goblet of Fire. Each movie made it more clear how perfectly matched Harry and Hermione were, and while I began to sense (dread, really) some Ron/Hermione elements — primarily the cliché love/hate thing — I remained blissfully unaware of the shipping wars going on in the fandom. All shipping thoughts I had were entirely my own. Though I was tempted to read fanfic, I continued to refrain, as I knew the books were well ahead of the movies and had much more detail; I didn’t want half the details in the fics to sail over my head.

Somehow I missed Order of the Phoenix when it came to the screen — probably because I wasn’t visiting my brother at the time — but when the Half-Blood Prince film came out, my girlfriend and I did the three-night movie marathon, watching the first five before heading to the theater. Now, by this time I knew that both Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny were canon; Deathly Hallows had been in print for two years already, and try as I might, I couldn’t avoid all the scuttlebutt pouring from the Internet. Leaving the cinema and chatting with my girlfriend about Half-Blood Prince, she told me the same thing I’d been feeling myself: she’d seen RW/HG and HP/GW coming too, but was extraordinarily disappointed with how they came about. She also echoed my thoughts in that those couples made no sense. Harry and Hermione had so much chemistry and their relationship seemed so mature, while Hermione mooning over Ron was so out of character. The love/hate thing has been done in the movies so many times you know what to look for — those signs that the arguments have turned to playful banter, the little nice things the “enemies” do for one another, the jealousies and longings that the characters wake up to — and none of those were there. Okay, the jealousies and longings were there, but were so sudden they seemed wrong.

In listening to her opinions, I thought to myself, okay, the last few books were so long that all that build-up stuff must have been left out, trimmed to make the movie manageable. Being a writer myself, and knowing how things would end romantically, I put the movies out of my mind and said to myself, here’s how she probably did it in the books:

Harry/Ginny: Ginny would be that girl in the background that Harry is friends with but doesn’t think of in a romantic way at first. She’ll be way in the background at first, then more and more prominent. Along the way, Harry will fall for some other girl (Cho) out of pure attraction, but things won’t work out because they’re just not very compatible. After that is over, he will realize all the compatible qualities he’s looking for are there in Ginny, especially since, in his quest against Voldemort, Ginny will be the one person who is always there by Harry’s side and never leaves him.
Ron/Hermione: They will have, well, that love/hate thing going on. They’ll argue about this or that, usually the best way to accomplish something, but they will share a passion for doing the right thing that will overcome their differences. Eventually each will start seeing the value of the other’s point of view. Along the way they will each have some other relationship that the other will act strangely jealous about. Also, Ron will start doing little things for Hermione that will just confuse her, in a “Why are you being so nice to me?” kind of way. And vice versa. Eventually they’ll realize they are meant to be together.

The only thing left to do was read the books, and see how right I was in my assessments.

Boy, was I shocked.

Now, let me say that I love the Harry Potter series, and think J.K. Rowling is a writer of astonishing talent and vast creativity. She is brilliant. The detail of the world of Harry and Hogwarts is full of such minutia and charm that it is truly breathtaking to behold. Only such richness could explain the more than 400,000 HP fanfictions on fanfiction.net alone. No, I didn’t add any extra zeroes in there; I really meant four hundred thousand fanfic. Rowling is amazing to inspire that.

But, alas, she isn’t perfect. In particular, her sense of romance seemed as mature as that of a thirteen year old girl... which is to say, not at all, whatsoever.

Ginny wasn’t just in the background, she was freaking invisible. A couple of chapters into Order of the Phoenix and I already knew more about Tonks than I’d learned about Ginny from the previous four books. Harry had the purely-from-attraction relationship — Cho — and pleasantly it was much more detailed in the books than the movies. Heck, it spans three whole books. And Harry also had that friend who was always there for him, with all those qualities he wished for in Cho... but it was Hermione, not Ginny.

Then in Half-Blood Prince, there is one tiny bit of foreshadowing about Ginny, from Harry’s reaction to the smell of the love potion as he enters Slughorn’s potions class for the first time. One hint. Suddenly, a few chapters later, he’s head over heels in love with Ginny. I thought, seriously? Are you fricking kidding me? He pines for a few chapters, and is jealous of Ginny and Dean for a bit, and then, boom!, they’re just together. Then five minutes later, he breaks up with her at the funeral.

For a little while my Harmonious heart was palpitating. Particularly when Ron leaves in Deathly Hallows, leaving just Harry and Hermione alone in the tent. For weeks. I shook my head. What was Rowling thinking?!? Just as I had predicted, everyone left Harry’s side but one person. But it was not Ginny. Ginny is more invisible in Deathly Hallows than any book since Chamber of Secrets. What the ^%$^#@??????

And Ron/Hermione? The movies hadn’t overstated Ron and Hermione’s antagonism and dislike, they had understated it. I was shocked with how vehement Ron’s dislike of Hermione is in Sorcerer’s Stone. It gets fractionally better after the troll attack, but Ron’s affection for/interest in Hermione is dwarfed by Harry’s theoretically platonic affection. It’s utterly ridiculous.

Ron and Hermione don’t just argue about ways to overcome Harry’s challenges, they argue about everything. Their perspectives are so fundamentally different as to be irreconcilable. Ron may be Harry’s best mate, but he can be an ornery asshole.

As to the jealousy I was expecting, well, sure, it seems to be there, right? Ron gets all bent out of shape when Hermione is “seeing” Victor Krum, doesn’t he? Well, I thought so too... except that he says the same things about Ginny and Dean, in almost exactly the same words. When an author does that, it means something. And all I can get from that is either:

Ron has a very unusual affection for his sister (if you know what I mean), or...
Ron thinks of Hermione as a sister.

There’s nothing else to conclude. Well, or that Rowling didn’t notice the similarities, which I found hard to believe.

As to the little nice things that hint us in on the affection between them? I can think of one: Ron’s defending of the house elves before the final battle. The one where Hermione gives him the big kiss. And that’s it. That’s the only one I can think of. Anything else is so minor as to be unnoticeable.

And how about their “relationship” once they’re “together”? Sorry, had to use quotes there because for all I can tell, it’s purely imaginary. We don’t see that moment of realization, we don’t see them get together, we don’t see them be together. I heard of an interview where Rowling says they are supposed to be dating in Deathly Hallows, but I’ll be damned if I can see it. It’s just insane.

Insanely bad writing actually. Inexplicably bad, given how monumentally good everything else is.

And then, to top it all off, there is... the Epilogue.

I cannot express how shocked I was at the Epilogue when I read it. It seems so totally incongruous to the rest of the work. The characters all seem so... I don’t know, off, maybe? What’s with Harry and Hermione barely acknowledging one another? What’s with the group acknowledging Malfoy at all?

Speaking of Malfoy: I thought, from the sheer volume of Malfoy fanfic out there, that somewhere in the seven books Draco Malfoy would stop being such a twat. Nope, never happened. I never saw a hint of redemption or anything like that in the books. In the movie version of Half-Blood Prince, we’re led to believe Malfoy has doubts about killing Dumbledore. Not in the books though; in the books he’s merely afraid that he can’t do it and that he’ll be punished, not that he doesn’t want to. Once an asshole, always an asshole. In fact, why isn’t he in Azkaban in the Epilogue?

But I digress. The Epilogue just didn’t seem right to me. It seemed strangely off.

At this point, though, I was free to jump headlong in the fandom world, where I saw others with the same feelings about the Epilogue — in fact, about how the relationships were handled in general. One person wrote that he felt Rowling wrote the Epilogue just to settle the shipping wars once and for all. I also read plenty of Harmony fanfics that detailed the very concerns and questions I’d had right along.

I also read some of the Rowling interviews I’d avoided before. There was, of course, the dreaded “deluded” interview, but there was also another, seemingly more innocuous one I stumbled across. In it, Rowling said she’d always known how it would all end. In fact, she’d written the last chapter way back in 1990 or so, when she was writing Sorcerer’s Stone.

I read that, and bang! It suddenly became so clear to me. Rowling had fallen prey to that dreaded but all too common writer’s problem of writing ahead.

So there you are, you’ve been struck with brilliant inspiration for a story, or novel, or series of novels. Even better, your inspirational thunderbolt not only gave you the best idea you’ve ever had, but it was crystal clear up to and including how it all turns out. You sit down to sketch things out, and knowing that inspiration can be fleeting, you hammer out that finale because the wording sounded so good in your head you need to get it on paper before grinding out the rest makes you forget exactly how it went.

Then, as you go on with all the nuts and bolts that’ll get you to that terrific ending, you discover the characters your thunderbolt gave you are so vivid they practically write themselves. You fill yourself with them, and out flows this magnificent, believable dialogue and action, and you ride along on that high page after page.

But there’s a problem. You go along, those three dimensional characters filling out the work, and they begin to take you in these unexpected directions. The directions are plausible, true to the characters, but it starts to dawn on you that maybe the characters you’ve created won’t logically get to that ending you’ve already committed to paper.

What do you do? You love that ending. But you also love these characters, and the ending they will lead you to is different. Good, great even, but different than that ending you so adore.

You are the writer, and however it goes, it’s your story. Making a good story great is about letting things progress, be natural, but never letting it out of your control. Never let what you love destroy what you need to achieve. Kill your darlings, they say; don’t be afraid to sacrifice even your favorite things for what the story needs.

But which is your favorite, the characters, or the ending? Which is important, and which is just your darling?

I think this is exactly what happened to J.K. Rowling.

She started Harry Potter with the idea practically whole cloth, including the ending, the last chapter, that dreaded Epilogue, which she wrote down as she made her first drafts of Sorcerer’s Stone, maybe even before. She had the epic quest, the cast of characters, the morals and themes, even some of all those beloved details of Hogwarts and the wizarding world. She even drew up the relationships in her outlines, which she’d already put down in the Epilogue: Harry/Ginny, and Ron/Hermione. It was simple, it was done, it was on paper.

It’s so obvious to her at that point: Ron is going to be Harry’s best mate, and Ginny his girl. Hermione doesn’t say much to Harry in the Epilogue because her relationship with Harry wasn’t going to be all that important, just this platonic friendship. There is Draco Malfoy, the young villain, whom they grudgingly respect because he had the change of heart at the end. There’s Albus Severus, named after the two great wizards, one good, the other... also good, though the readers don’t know that until the end. All very clever.

I suspect she even had my numbers 1) and 2) above, written in her outline almost exactly as I have them. Cliché, yes, but the relationships aren’t going to be of any great focus in the books anyway, not compared to the quest against Voldemort. And they are children’s books, after all, and you don’t need the messy reality of how relationships really go in children’s books, do you?

Then she started writing the books.

The characters came alive, just as any writer hopes they will. It’s such a wonderful feeling, barreling along through a work and the story practically writing itself. The characters seem realistic because they are truly alive in the writer’s head. The conversations flow out as if by magic. All these little details and subtleties appear and enrich the work, and the characters take you places you never meant to go. Rowling herself said in one interview that Luna Lovegood took her completely by surprise, and I’ve been there, so I know how it must have all gone for her.

And then she got about halfway through Order of the Phoenix. She pulls out that Epilogue, and reads it, and goes, “Oh...... shiiiiiiit.” Because the characters she’s written there are not the characters in the first four and a half books.

Ron and Hermione, yeah, they had their arguments and all, but we haven’t seen the second phase where they get that respect because, well, the characters didn’t turn out that way.

Ginny, yeah, she’s supposed to be that background character who gets more and more prominent, but, uhm, didn’t, because she wasn’t very interesting, it turns out, and Hermione was filling that “always by Harry’s side” role so well and then there were Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil to think about as classmates and Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet for the Quidditch angle and then, wow, Luna Lovegood came out of nowhere but was really interesting and Ginny just, well, wasn’t.

And Draco Malfoy, well, he was such a good asshole that putting in some redeeming qualities didn’t seem quite right, and hey, the rest of the characters were so interesting that it was becoming less important to bother focussing on him anyway.

And yet... Rowling really loved that Epilogue.

What to do? The Hogwarts Express was barreling down those tracks and the castle was not exactly in the direction of motion, but instead way off the side somewhere.

Rowling looked at what she had, and decided she really, realllllly loved that Epilogue.

What happens when you have a train going somewhere at high speed, and there is suddenly a right angle in the tracks ahead, leading it off in a completely unexpected direction? That’s correct, you get a trainwreck, and it’s called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

This is what the Harry Potter shipping wars come down to:

The Ron/Hermione fans have the ending, and the details Rowling set up because she was intending R/H before she began.

The Harry/Hermione fans have everything else, because that’s where the characters were actually going until Rowling realized it and ran the train off the tracks.

Heck, she couldn’t even really stop the Harry/Hermione momentum when she wanted to. How completely bizarre would it have seemed to have Ginny in that tent with Harry instead of Hermione? The Harry-Hermione bond was so strong Rowling even had to get Ginny out of the way at the end of Half-Blood Prince by having Harry break up with her after they’d just barely gotten together.

All the Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione stuff in the last few books seems awkward because it is awkward. It’s out of character for the wizards and witches we’ve gotten to know. And that Epilogue... it doesn’t feel right because, given the way story and the characters ended up, it isn’t right. It’s how things were supposed to end up, but it feels completely tacked on for how they actually end up.

Yet, what happens if you drop it?

That really changes things, doesn’t it? There is almost no evidence of Ron and Hermione dating in Deathly Hallows, despite what Rowling has said in interviews. (By the way, I’m of the distinct opinion that the only things canon in a work are what’s in the work itself. Even if the author/director/creator says X is so, if X isn’t explicitly in the work in question, X isn’t necessarily so, dammit.) They certainly aren’t together when Ron abandons Harry and Hermione, are they? And that kiss? Well, that’s kinda weak in isolation, isn’t it? As for Harry and Ginny, well, as far as we can tell in DH, there really is no Harry and Ginny. Harry doesn’t even bring Ginny with himself and Ron and Hermione after the post-battle celebration. Why wouldn’t he if he was still so gaga over her?

The Epilogue wasn’t the final nail in Harmony’s coffin... it’s the only nail. Everything else is up for debate.

Which is why I am starting a campaign, here and now, to ignore the Epilogue. Okay, I’m hardly starting it; look on Portkey.org, or fanfiction.net, at all the Harmony stories that say “spoilers for Deathly Hallows, ignores the Epilogue”. What I am doing though, is coining a phrase for all my fellow Harmoniacs to adopt: “The Epilogue is Apocryphal”.

Catchy, huh? R/H’ers can call us deluded if they want to, but I claim that Rowling was delusional first. Delusional that she could make us swallow that Epilogue which was written before anything else, and as such, makes no sense with the rest of the books. That Epilogue which is, clearly, apocryphal. While I don’t doubt the Epilogue’s authenticity of authorship, I do question that it belongs in the canon of the Harry Potter world as Rowling wrote them in the seven books leading up to it, as should any clear-thinking reader.

The Epilogue is Apocryphal™.

Feel free to use it as you wish, it’s not really trademarked. But if you put it on a T-shirt, be sure to send me one.

Proposition 8

2009-05-26T22:17:36Z

Today (05/26/09), the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the controversial amendment to the California Supreme Court that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, and only between one man and one woman. Whether you approve or disapprove of this definition, believe gay marriage is a good thing or a bad thing, this is a good decision.

Before I say why, I’m sure you are now asking, where do I stand on the issue of gay marriage? That’s complicated. My answer to this question is usually satisfies no one — neither those who support gay marriage, nor those who oppose it. That is, until they think about my answer, and usually after they’ve been cursing my name for a couple of days.

What is my answer? I think the government should stop issuing marriage licenses. I think they should take the marriage license form, cross out the word “marriage”, and write “civil union” on it instead. For everybody. Leave the word “marriage” to the churches.

Initially, people I propose this to who support gay marriage say that it’s not sufficient because they want to be able to be married like people who now can be married can. I ask them in return what exactly they are looking for? Isn’t it equality in the eyes of the law? The state couldn’t make any churches recognize gay marriage if it was legal anyway. And if they are in a church that already recognizes gay marriage, what’s their beef anyway? Plus, as a legal term, government will have a tough time being discriminatory on something called a “civil union”, much tougher than when the word “marriage” is involved. So the gay marriage supporters go away grumbling, then a couple days later come back and say, “Hey, that wasn’t a bad idea you had.” If they don’t, it’s usually because they were looking for something other than equality. In which case they don’t belong in this debate.

In the same vein, those who are against gay marriage say my answer is not sufficient because it removes a right the majority already has, just to satisfy a minority of the population. To which I ask them about what is their opposition based? It usually is about social structure and other complex factors. In which case I politely listen, and just as politely respond that the social issues involved are best handled... guess how? By a church. Or some other suitably non-governmental institution. Besides, if the government is only issuing civil union licenses, and then they still get married in a church, how are their right’s being taken away? So the gay marriage opponents go away grumbling, then a couple days later come back and say, “Hey, that wasn’t a bad idea you had.” If they don’t, it’s usually because they had reasons considerably less civilized than they were professing. In which case there is no debating with them anyway, so I choose to ignore them.

But back to my original statement, that the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 was the right thing to do for both gay marriage opponents and gay marriage supporters. How can I think that?

Well, it’s remarkably simple.

Imagine an international group of mathematicians getting together and proclaiming that they were no longer going to support the use of the number 4 in any theoretical or practical mathematics. Or a group of physicists declaring the color blue to be chroma non grata.

Ridiculous, huh? Obviously the number 4 is a fundamental part of mathematics, and blue is a fundamental part of the electromagnetic spectrum than isn’t going anywhere, no matter what any physicists say. (If you bring up Pluto, I’ll ignore you.)

Well, the California Supreme Court operates under the auspices of the California State Constitution. This decision today is not like the decision last year, where the Court overturned a law passed by the California Legislature. The Court and the Legislature are on equal footing. The Legislature enacts laws, the Governor enforces then, and the Court determines if they conflict with the State Constitution. But the amendment enacted by Proposition 8 cannot conflict with the State Constitution, because it is part of the State Constitution. It was directly created by a majority of the people, and as such trumps the Court, the Legislature, and the Governor.

For the California Supreme Court to have overturned Proposition 8 would be tantamount to California no longer being a democratic republic. It would have become, no ifs ands or buts, an oligarchy. The Court would have effectively been saying to the people of California: “You don’t run this joint, we do.” Along with a big F U stamp.

There was no way — no effing way — they were going to do that. Nor should they. No one should want that, certainly not gay marriage supporters. I don’t care who you are, or how passionate about your cause you are, you do not want the government — any part of it — to simply say F U to the rule of the people in your favor. Because they would eventually do the same thing to your cause in favor of someone else’s.

No, the best thing for you gay marriage supporters is to try and get the amendment replaced by the people of California, not repealed by the government of California. Because if you want it some other way, all you protesters out there right now, you really aren’t thinking things through very clearly. And clear thought is what everyone should strive for, especially now.

Pairings I Don't Get

2008-04-01T22:17:07Z

Okay, here’s the thing. I’ve been doing a lot of fanfic reading lately. And one thing I learned back in a film class in college (not a class for making film, but a class on films) was that every Hollywood picture comes down, at some level, to one guy and one girl. Now, this is of course not universally true (what is, really?) but it is a good, general rule, and it applies not just to film but to most stories. Yeah, I know, there’s your protagonist and antagonist and all the literature theory crap, but there are few enough stories that do not have “the love interest”.

Especially in fanfic.

In fact — and perhaps this is due to the fact that most fanfic is written by women (though I’m as guilty as any female author) — a very, very large percentage of fanfic is “shipper” fic: fanfic that is centered around a specific couple whose relationship — i.e. “ship” — is of interest to the author. These can be canon ships (those that were present in the game/show/movie/whatever the story is based on) or U/C (unconventional, i.e. not-canon) ships. Actually, since by its nature fanfic is a way of fans producing for themselves what the show didn’t give them enough of, a disproportionate amount of ship fic is U/C ship fic.

Which is great. Quite often the ships I support are U/C ships. Maybe most of them. And since the show ain’t givin’ me ’em, I’m heading for fanficdom to get my fill.

Not as easy as it sounds. First you gotta find the fic. Fanfiction.net is certainly the largest repository, with millions of available stories, and within each category community collections under certain topics, such as ships. There is even a feature to search for stories featuring two characters in particular. Unfortunately, lots of authors don’t use the “primary” character feature, and worse, some whole sections don’t support it. The “C2” communities, as they call them, are great... but again, they are collected from the section by someone, and that someone doesn’t always know every story there is for that topic. Plus there is the fact that, lets face it, most fanfic sucks, so a collector may not want every fanfic of a particular ship in their own collection. So you have to dig at FF.net to really find what you want, scanning summaries, learning the best authors, which authors like which ships, etc. And then of course lots of authors don’t put what ship is going on in their summaries.

FF.net is not the only place, of course. LiveJournal has a bunch of specialized communities dedicated to a specific ship, and I’m sure the other blog services do too. But its often a lot of work to find those.

But all that above? That’s not the thing. (Even though I said so in the first sentence.)

The thing is this: sometimes I just don’t get a ship.

For example... I recently started replaying Final Fantasy VIII, which is either my favorite or second favorite video game ever. I’ve never really liked the Squall/Rinoa (aka Squinoa) pairing, despite it being canon (and kind of the point of FF8, whose theme is, after all, “love”), because I think Rinoa is a whiny, spoiled brat, but yeah, I get the pairing. My preference is Quall (Squall/Quistis), or even Squelphie (Squall/Selphie), and I don’t mind me a Selvine (Selphie/Irvine) or even a... Reifer? Seifoa? Whatever you’d call a (Rinoa/Seifer), because that too was canon and hey, I don’t much like either one. (I know, Rinoa is only eighteen, and has some growing up to do. It’s ironic, but Rinoa is the only character in FF8 who acts their age. Everyone else acts older.)

But... I just don’t get Seiftis (Seifer/Quistis). At all. The two characters have nothing in common. Their shared forgotten history was of Quistis breaking up fights between Squall and Seifer at the orphanage, and given how Quistis feels towards Squall now, I’m fairly certain she didn’t side with Seifer back then either. She thinks he’s immature, and not fit to be a SeeD. And he isn’t, while Quistis is the ultimate SeeD. The only reason I think people started putting them together is that they are the only pair in the game that isn’t coupled up in either canon or fanon: Squall/Rinoa, Selphie/Irvine, Zell/The Library Girl with Pigtails... Quisty is the odd girl out, and Seifer is... uhm, not dead at the end of the game. And he fishes.

::crickets::

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

For Hyne’s sake, people, if you want Squall and Rinoa to stay together in your story, fine. I’ll throw up in my mouth a little, but I’ll live. I may even like your story. (Oh, I saw the best line about Rinoa ever in a fanfic today: “...there was only so long that one could be around Rinoa Heartilly and not feel like they were going to vomit up kittens and rainbows.” -Xu, in “A Bluer Sky” by irishais.) But, please leave Quistis with a little dignity in her unrequited Squall-love. Maybe even give her a little Irvine or Zell-love. (Or Selphie, she’d cheer Quisty up, and there’s nothing wrong with a slash in your fic if you are so inclined.) Don’t force Seifer on her. I doubt even a highly skilled writer could convince me of that pair.

Hmm, who else?

Final Fantasy X (and X-2)... I’m a Tikku fan at heart, but their really aren’t any horrific pairings here. Unless they involve Seymour. Seriously, people? I maybe — maybe — get the Sephiroth obsession people have... but Seymour? Uhm, no. Seymour was just a wank.

Oh, and Aurikku (Auron/Rikku) seems a trifle lazy to me, in the same “everyone else is coupled so might as well”-way that Seiftis got started. Still, it involves Rikku, so I don’t not read them. She’s the bomb. A teeny, pixie-shaped bomb, but the bomb. And she could probably deactivate the bomb that she is, so how cool is that?

I’m a huge Buffy & Angel fan. Not a Buffy/Angel fan, exactly; I like the characters far better apart than together. Though I love the moniker “Bangel“. Anyway, there really are no pairings in that whole fandom that I don’t like at least a little, and none that I don’t get. Well, maybe Xander/Angel. Really, those guys hate each other. And not in a ”I hate you so much because I really love you“-way, like, say, Buffy and Spike. But as Joss himself said, all the relationships in the show are somewhat romantic. Spike even admitted about Angel ”Well, there was that one time...“

My new fandom is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and there’s one in that which actually prompted this rant. If you scan the FF.net section on T:SCC you will find it populated mostly by JCam’s (John/Cameron) with a smattering of simple action stories and maybe a Sarah/Derek or two. But the new thing popping up is Camerah (Sarah/Cameron).

Not in this world or the next. No way. Never happen. NOT EVER.

Sarah Connor hates the Terminators. Hates them. Sociopathically hates them. Got put in a mental institution hates them. The best Sarah is ever going to do, I believe, is tolerate Cameron, and that is because she is always going to be in John’s life, as his protector, as his friend, as his companion, or whatever else she becomes to him. Tolerate the way a mother tolerates her daughter-in-law. She may come to respect her. Appreciate her skills maybe. But Sarah Connor would never, ever feel about her in a romantic way. Just no.

As for Cameron, uhm, have any of these people watched the show? Cameron has one interest, and one interest only: John. Every central and peripheral thought she has is centered on or related to John. He is her raison d'être. The best Sarah does for her is not get in the way. Romance? Again, no. Not with Sarah.

Yet there it is, with its own C2 community on FF.net, with eight stories and counting. Like I said, have any of these people even watched the show? I don’t know if these writers are pushing an agenda or what, but those characters don’t bend that way. At least not in one another’s direction.

Whew. Had to get that off my chest.

What She Saw

2008-03-06T00:01:19Z

Title: What She Saw
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Pairing: John+Cameron (JCam)
Rating: PG
Notes: Because it was inevitable someone had to write this fic. Might as well be me. Warning: Hasn't been beta’d. Has barely been alpha’d.
Warnings: None
Spoilers: thru Ep 8, “Vick's Chip”
Summary: She saw everything.

She sees only him.

She lays on his mother’s bed. A lamp glows softly in the corner, on her dresser, and a second perched above her head, giving him the light he’ll need to safely kill her.

His mother kneels beside her on the bed, the future fighter prowling beyond, but she ignores them both. Her eyes are only for him. She gives him instructions, slowly and steadily. Watches his hands work, feels the touch of his fingers.

The mother questions their plan, and each admit their doubts but press on. The soldier then, as he often does, questions her motives.

John stops, glowers at the two. “She’s a machine. She doesn’t have a soul and she never will. You don’t have to trust her; you can trust me.”

She would be hurt by his words, but she knows a secret. She knows he’s lying. To himself perhaps, to them certainly, but she has studied his voice for far too long to be mistaken. He doesn’t yet know what she is, this John before her, but he knows she’s not a machine.

He pulls back her scalp, one barrier closer to her death, and she hears him exhale. She steals a glance at his face as he sets down the box cutter for a screwdriver. The tiniest of smiles to herself. She’s seen this before. He always looks like this, each time.

As he takes up the pliers, she gives him the last instruction, and his knee touches the bed. She can feel his body tremble through the mattress. “It’s okay John,” she reassures him. “It’s not the first time we’ve done this.” He turns the key, and her body loses power. She settles, eyes still watching him until he pulls out her life and he fades from her view.

===

She saw everything.

Sensors throughout the city churned data through the network, and from her place, in just a node, it rushed by her like in a raging torrent seen from a placid riverbank. Cameron knew from processing data, but this was something else entirely.

Yet he needed her to do this, to infiltrate and destroy. That was also familiar. Just dip in a toe, Cam, she said to herself. Wade in, then get to swimming. Except she’d never been swimming. She wasn’t exactly buoyant. But she’d do it, because he asked.

And then she was one with the city. A few nanoseconds to adjust, but then each pulse made sense, each packet of data became a picture in her mind. She let the moments, billions of them, wash over her. Sought their destination. Followed them home.

She brushed up against the machines that collected all this data and sorted it, processed it, made meaning of it. They were powerful, but so very primitive. They had no intent, neither benign nor malicious. Just a tool.

A gun left upon a table. And Cameron knew who was about to walk into the room.

She jammed it useless.

And then, nothing. The world was there, and then it was fading to black.

===

Then his hands are on her face, and he is stroking her hair. She can hear his nervous breathing, and see the most tender look of worry on his face, though her body cannot yet move.

It’s like it always is. He is forever terrified when he brings her back to life. Afraid that this time he’s done something wrong, damaged something in her circuits, and will never see her look into his eyes again. But she always comes back to him.

He doesn’t know her mind is the last thing to shut down. Doesn’t know her body disconnects first, reconnects last, and that the instant her chip is in place she can see him.

Can see his brow creased in worry. Can see his eyes upon her, full of… what? Wonder? Fascination? Even… love? Can see him start as the power returns to her body and her head jerks just a little. Can see him nervously pull away his hand but instinctually rest it on her other side, as he will too in the future.

Can see him still unready for that, and pull back into himself, a blush to his cheeks, when her glance at his hand brings it to his attention.

He tries to sound casual as he asks her what it was like, this task he killed her for.

So she tells him.

“I saw everything.”

Even those things he won’t admit to for a very long time.

His Girl

2008-02-27T04:32:51Z

Title: His Girl
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Pairing: John+Cameron (JCam)
Rating: PG
Notes: Consistent with my story “Façade”, but you don’t need to read that to get this.
Warnings: None
Spoilers: thru Ep 6, “Dungeons & Dragons”
Summary: A meditation on echoes in time.

John Connor awoke with a start, bare legs tangled in the sheets of his bed. His eyes searched about the darkened room wildly.

“Cam?”

“Here, John,” came her cool, calming voice, from a chair near the foot of the bed. Soft blue light leaked from under her left palm, which covered a sensor pad in the armrest. The sensor connected to a grid built into the rebel base; from within the windowless confines of his blast-sheltered private room, she could “feel” everything that went on outside. Leaking through her fingers, the pad’s blue light illuminated her face gently.

“How did I—”

“You fell asleep at your desk again,” Cameron said, the slightest of smiles in her voice. “And I thought you could really use some rest.”

He sighed. “These plans… planning the past, it’s—” he shook his head. “—tough to wrap my head around.”

John lowered his head back to the pillows. His eyes flicked to the ceiling and he took a deep breath to calm himself. He felt the bed shift and heard the springs creak, and then her soft hand touched the creases in his brow, sliding down to touch his cheek.

“What were you dreaming?” she asked. He smiled sadly. She knew better than to ask if it was a bad dream. They were always bad dreams.

“I’d lost you—”

“Never happen.”

“I’d sent you downtime, and things went bad, and you didn’t make it back,” John said. He raised his own hand to touch hers, the feeling of soft skin over mechanical joints ever strange, but familiar. “You couldn’t reach me.”

With the sensor uncovered, the light was brighter in the room. She turned his face gently, so that he could see hers in the sapphire dimness. She looked into his eyes, her expression intent. “Never happen. I’ll always reach you, always protect you.”

He slid back from her on the bed, raising himself on an elbow, and patted the sheets. She lay down, eyes never leaving his as she stretched out beside him.

“You’re still unsure about sending me,” Cameron stated.

“I can barely stand you being out of this room,” he smiled, and leaned down to kiss her.

“Didn’t you used to lead an army?” she said, winking. “I think you know I’m the toughest soldier you have.”

“Tactics, strategy, fighting techniques?” he shrugged. “Those I know. This—” he pointed to his paper-strewn desk. “I can’t be as sure of the outcomes.”

“You can never know the outcomes, John,” she held his eyes with hers. “However well you plan. You’re a great leader because of how you react to setbacks, and the way you treat your soldiers, in victory or defeat.”

“Do I do right by you, soldier?” John grinned at her.

“I couldn’t ask for better,” Cameron said, her voice very soft, a whisper that held so many things, from respect, to gratitude, to barely checked passion, to a simple yet staggering love.

John couldn’t help but marvel at the nuance she displayed with that voice. No other cyborg could do that, not even remotely. But Cameron, she was so much more than just a cyborg it rarely even crossed his mind anymore.

To the others, his soldiers, even those closest to him… well it certainly crossed their minds. John had defended her enough times, even when she wouldn’t. “Let them think what they will,” she’d say. “It’s what you think that matters to me.”

And he…

His eyes became dark and hollow. His voice was thin.

“What if this one works, Cam, this plan? What if you stop Skynet?” he played his fingers across her cheek, through her silky hair. “What if you never get built?”

She paused, watching his eyes, and he could see her mind working as, he imagined, she was trying to simplify the answer but not sound like she was talking down to him. “When I go, downtime, this will become my past. I’ll find you, and be with you, and maybe when I get to 2027 again there won’t have been a Skynet. But because it will have been there in my past, I’ll still have been built. I’ll still be by your side, even if you don’t have to lead an army.”

He cocked his head. “What will you be then?”

“Your girl.” She smiled at him then, her whole face alight. “I’ll always be your girl.”

===

John Connor awoke with a start, bare legs tangled in the sheets of his bed. His eyes searched about the darkened room wildly. A figure stood at his window, looking out at the night.

“Cam?”

“Yes, John?” she asked, her voice, as ever, calm. The light from outside gently lit her placid, pretty face.

“How did I—”

“You fell asleep at your desk again,” Cameron said, the slightest odd timbre in her voice. Like a sadness. “And I thought you could really use some rest.”

“Yeah, that homework is really kicking my ass,” he said. Then frowned. “Wait, did you… put me in bed?”

“You’re not heavy.”

“I know,” he answered, “I just— nevermind.”

“I never do.”

He opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. He lay back, looking at the ceiling. He heard the floorboards creak as Cameron shifted on her feet.

“What were you dreaming?” she asked. “Was it bad?”

“It was— why do you ask?”

She cocked her head. “The way you woke…”

He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at his bangs. “It was a mission. Derek, and my mom, and us. Things went bad, and you went offline, and Derek and my mom wouldn’t let me restart you.”

She watched him for a moment before speaking. “How did you feel about it?”

“I— they said you’d screwed up the mission on purpose. I didn’t want to believe them—” and he stopped, realizing what he’d said.

“You’re still unsure about me,” Cameron said.

John blushed deeply, and turned his head even cloaked in darkness. “It’s just… you’re a— you’re not the same as me, as us.”

“I’m a cyborg.”

He looked at his hands. “Derek said, even reprogrammed you—”

“Never happen.”

John shrugged, voice defensive. “Sometimes they go bad. How do I know you won’t go bad—”

She stepped from the window, shadows playing across her face with the movement. John took a breath, unable to see her expression as she passed from the light. When she stood beside him she stopped, looking intently at his face. She cocked her head, eyeing the edge of the bed.

“Oh!” John said, and then slid a little to the side. Cameron turned with a graceful movement and sat beside him. This close, he couldn’t turn his face from hers, lost in the those sometimes chocolate, sometimes sapphire eyes. “Never happen,” she said. “In the future, you’re what reached me. I’ll always protect you.”

He blushed again. She must have noticed this time, for she raised a hand to touch his cheek. Probably taking his vitals, the thought crossed his mind cynically, and he raised his own to stop her, but was caught in the feel of her hand, of soft skin over mechanical joints. It felt… familiar.

Cameron lifted her palm from his skin, and his fingers curled around hers on instinct. She lowered their clasped hands to her lap, her touch never leaving his.

“The future,” he said, “seems far off when my mom will barely let me out of this room.”

“She will,” and he swore he saw a smile on her lips. “Someday you’ll lead an army, and be the bravest soldier I know.”

She made him feel both comfortable and not at the same time. He tried to change the subject. “Tactics, strategy, fighting techniques?” he shrugged, “Those I can learn. This—” he pointed to his paper-strewn desk. “I don’t see what this math has to do with my future. Or how good of a leader it’ll make me.”

“I could explain in detail how important mathematics is to strategic planning,” she said to him, and squeezed his fingers just slightly. “But it’s not all about planning. You’re a great leader because of how you react to setbacks, and the way you treat your soldiers, in victory or defeat.”

“You’re one of my soldiers, aren’t you? How well do I treat you?”

“I couldn’t ask for better,” Cameron said, her voice very soft. In the darkness, holding hands with this beautiful creature, John thought of the many things she’d become to him in such a short time. Protector, compatriot, companion, friend. The night itself seemed to whisper how much more she could be, and he wondered, not for the first time, what she’d been to his future self.

His thoughts were cut short, though, by a sound from beyond his door.

Her head was cocked when he looked at her, eyes distant. “It’s just the wind,” she answered his unspoken question, “brushing a tree branch against the window above the kitchen sink.”

And what she was right now was a cyborg, John thought, his stomach clenching.

“Maybe you should go anyway,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I’d hate my mom or Derek to find you in my room in the middle of the night.”

“Probably for the best,” she said after a moment, then rose. She took a couple of silent steps, then paused. “But John? I don’t care what they think.” She half-turned her head, not quite looking over her shoulder. “It’s what you think that matters to me.”

His stomach clenched again, and he wished he was strong enough to stop her. Wished he was sure he would defend her, if the others found her here. Closing his eyes, he swung his feet back up into his bed.

He heard her feet move once more.

“Hey, Cam?” he said, and she stopped for a moment, door open, handle in her hand. “What if we succeed? What if we do stop Skynet?”

She paused, watching his eyes. He could see her mind working, and wondered what secrets she was sorting through. “Then you won’t have to lead an army,” was all she said though.

He nodded, and cocked his head. “You’ll be out of a job too. Wouldn’t that be something?” He lay back down. “What would a Terminator like you become, if there was no more mission for you to follow, huh?” He pulled the covers back up, and rolled over to get back to sleep.

“A girl,” Cameron said, mostly to herself, her face dimming before shutting the door behind her. “Just a girl.”

Façade

2008-02-23T07:23:22Z

Title: Façade
Author: Kastellen
Pairing: John+Cameron (JCam)
Rating: PG-13?
Notes: My first T:SCC fic, though far from my first fic. Before you get three paragraphs in and start screaming about the incredible OOC-ness, give it time. If you follow my conjecture, I don’t think it’s OOC at all.
Warnings: Some language
Spoilers: the Pilot, particularly, of which this is re-telling from Cameron's view. Although it has future hints that might spoil thru Ep 6, “Dungeons & Dragons”
Summary: What if the Cameron she shows is nothing like the Cameron she is?

On the seventy-third day of my search, he entered my life for the second time. He’d told me the where, though he couldn’t remember the when. The way we bent time over and over, that wasn’t surprising. So we took a guess, he and I, and I came and waited seventy three days, through boring pre-algebraic math lectures and history classes that were fascinating only for their irrelevance, for my first, second sight of him.

It’s alright. I’d have waited forever.

Though I had an idea what he’d look like, I think I’d have recognized him anyway. No one else at that school had such a look of absolute terror hanging about them. Far more than normal teenage insecurity — which I’d only had seventy three days to observe — the young John Connor had an inherent skittishness in him that I’d seen before: in every human I’d met after Judgment Day except the future John Connor. My John.

When he sat beside me in Mr. Ferguson’s chem class, I introduced myself. It helped to verify his voiceprint, of course, though I was certain enough without it. But I promptly got him in trouble. I felt bad, and I should have known better, as all through summer school Mr. Ferguson had proved to be kind of a wank, to quote some of my fellow students.

(Yes, I said summer school. John hadn’t mentioned going to summer school in Red Valley, but I had to cover my bases. It’d certainly have been easier if he’d mentioned we’d met on the first day of school.)

So I caught up with him after class, and turned on my most disarming look, while trying not to overdo the charm.

And he lied to me.

It was a struggle to keep my disappointment off my face, to act like I believed him, as “charming girl” had no reason not to. I wasn’t disappointed in John. He was too fragile, too damaged, to trust me that soon, and I really knew that. No, my disappointment was for myself, for seeing him as my John instead of himself. Thinking, if only for a fraction of a moment, that he’d see me, Cameron, his Cameron, how I wanted him to see me, instead of my having to earn it.

So it was a real surprise when he chose to fess up the very next day. I felt my heart leap — or what I thought of as my heart. Maybe “charming girl” was better than I thought. Or maybe he had seen his Cameron, just a little. Like a future déjà vu. Either way, I instantly felt bad about my own lie, the one I’d had to feed him. For a moment, I let the real me show in my face. I couldn’t help it. I think I fell in love with him for the second, first time right then.

Yet I couldn’t savor the moment, for the very next a man who was not grumpy Mr. Ferguson came in the classroom. A man who had the exact body type for a T-888. I couldn’t be sure, of course, only suspicious, but I had to lock myself to my seat, resist the urge to get John out of there immediately. Wait, Cam, I thought, let him make the first move.

He made an awkward joke, Cromartie did. I bit my tongue while the other students laughed. Then, when he took roll, I waited when he called my name. Made him look at me, watched his eyes. Then calculated every exit and distances to them, while running through escape scenarios and cursing the fact that John’s desk was three feet closer to the teacher’s than mine. I also considered how best to protect John while not giving up my identity to the other students — or even John — and especially not to the other cyborg, at least until I could find and press an advantage.

So I took several slugs to the chest in front of John, collapsing to the floor like a dead human student, silently praying that John would be quick enough to execute his most obvious move — diving out the window — the way I’d computed he would: just ahead of Cromartie’s reaction time to turn and fire. Then disappeared while the horrified other students were fascinated by the Terminator’s exposed endoskeleton. As I made my way to the parking lot I heard the triple-eight pause and make another awkward joke before he followed my charge, my future— well, my future — out the window. God bless the 800 series and their one-liners. My favorite of their design flaws. Gave me a few extra seconds.

Have I mentioned that it hurts to get shot in the chest several times? Of all the additions to my model, the prototype that I am, pain is the most annoying. I don’t have it for the same reasons humans do — to alert me to damage — as I have plenty of sensors for that. No, it was part of the “think like a human” package, presumably to blend in better, or track them down better, or something. But while I can turn in down, I can’t turn it off. And keeping it at a level where I feel normal human pains but don’t get knocked off my feet from getting shot, that takes some fine tuning. So mostly I don’t fiddle with the levels, I just use what my John calls “Jedi mind powers” and disconnect from it. Actually it can be useful in helping me focus in combat. Given that my size is a disadvantage in fighting most other cyborg models, every little bit helps.

Of course, since the entirety of my plan at that moment was “get to John and then run away”, the pain was mostly just annoying.

Cromartie was tipping over a school bus and climbing up on top of it as I was heading for my truck. Why he felt the need to tip it over before he climbed up escaped me, but again, I wasn’t arguing. As it was, by the time I had the truck pulled around and lined the T-888 up in my sights, he’d located John again. I hit him full speed about a quarter of a second before he completed his mission, thus saving my own. Holding everything inside me, my face a blank lest the pain in it scare off my charge, I pulled the truck back and kicked open the passenger door, and barked my message of minimal hope. “Come with me if you want to live.” On what could only have been instinct, John took the chance and dove inside, and off we went. I think it only sank into him what I was when he saw the bullet holes in my shirt, soaking through with blood. Enough holes to kill a human. His eyes, formerly just filled with fear, took on a new understanding, and I think my heart broke, just a little, at the sight. What I thought of as my heart.

We drove for a little while in silence, and John sat, still with shock. I glanced at him a couple of times, ascertaining his condition, and determined he wasn’t injured, to my great relief. Nice job, Cam, I thought, way to go almost letting your boss get killed, like you’re an amateur or something. I shook my head, and turned to him again. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“Huh?”

“A cell phone. You should call your mom.”

John blinked at me a couple of time, then it finally registered. “Oh, God, yeah,” he mumbled, and started scrambling through his pockets. He tapped a couple keys, speed dial #1 — probably the only one — and I heard him curse under his breath, then repeat the process. “Dammit, it won’t go through!”

“Coverage sucks out here,” I offered in sympathy. “Let me get closer to a cell tower.”

He nodded, still wrapped in his own crumbling world. I wanted to say something, reassure him somehow, but my John had cautioned me to give him time. So we drove a few more minutes in silence.

Finally I pulled to the side of the road, about 200 yards from a tall, spindly metal frame. John looked at me blankly. I pointed, and he followed my gaze to the tower. He blinked, then nodded to himself, and opened the door and his phone once again.

It’s virtually impossible for me not to eavesdrop on both sides of a phone conversation anywhere in my vicinity. In a combat-type situation, it often proved vital, in fact, knowing exactly what was said, rather than wait for the call recipient to paraphrase. Like this time.

John closed the phone and climbed back in the car, shaking his head. “Let’s go,” he said.

“That wasn’t your mother,” I said.

He looked at me, surprised to have his fears confirmed. “You sure? I’m not.”

“I could detect nuances that were artificially generated.” Off his apprehensive look I added, “Better safe than sorry.”

So when we reached John’s house, I pulled a hooded sweatshirt from my things stashed behind the truck seat. “Wait outside. If you hear a struggle, get back in the truck and just go. I’ll find you.”

“I’m not leaving my mother in there!”

“John—”

“I’m not!” he folded his arms in defiance.

I took a breath. Of course you’re not, I thought, you’re John Connor. Pulling on the sweatshirt and zipping it up, I said, “Then go in the back door, quietly, and try and lead her out. Be careful.”

“You too,” he said, and I held back a smile.

I drew up the hood, and headed cautiously to the front door. I heard the mimicking voice again before I even opened the door. He’d heard my footsteps.

“John?”

I cracked open the door.

Again, “John?”

My turn. “Mom?”

“Are you okay?”

“Mom?”

The voice matched in his processors. So he shot me in the chest several more times, and I fell down again. Have I mentioned how much that hurts?

And here we get to the part where, yeah, size does matter. Surprise is my friend, other people shooting my opponent, they’re my friends. But size? Not so much. Hey, mechanical frame or not, if getting shot hurts, try getting thrown through a wall. Or two. Unfortunately, John’s mother Sarah likes a little fight before she runs. Sometimes I think she’s more machine than I am. She almost shot John when he “carefully” came in the back. To cover them — and maybe as a little payback — I drove Cromartie through a floor. Without pain sensors, the payback part was lost on him though.

Oh, and, loose, sparking electrical cables? I fairly love those. Those guys are waaaay my friends.

Then it was up and dashing after my truck. I leapt in the back, and John helped me around to the front seat. Though she must have known, I started to explain who I was and what my mission was, but Sarah cut me off. She didn’t want to hear it until we were safely away. Because I’m sure talking would have slowed us down in some way.

In any case, no one did much talking for a long time.

===

John dozed on my shoulder a little after it got dark. I’m pretty certain it was when Sarah caught a glimpse of that — or maybe the look of contentment I had on my face at it — that she decided to find somewhere off the highway to stop for the night and check her bearings. Which was more or less all right. I did have a chest full of bullets that were killing me.

So I left John in the truck, covered him with his jacket while Sarah started a fire in a empty steel drum in the abandoned building she’d found. While she pulled out a worn and folded map I sat on the tailgate of the truck and prepared myself to remove the slugs that had impacted on my frame.

Best way to get out bullets from me, by the way? Pliers. Tell me that doesn’t hurt.

I didn’t need to take them out to, well, take them out, but I think I got half-naked specifically to annoy Sarah just a little bit. I’m no expert on parenting, but I don’t think the best course of action when you know your child is going to be the savior of mankind is to tell your child he’s going to be the savior of mankind. Teach him what he needs to survive, help him when you get stalked by evil robots, sure, but why not just let him grow to be the man he will be? Why burden him with this weight of destiny before he needs it?

I don’t know… maybe the man I know so well in the future, the man I love… maybe he needed to be burdened with this, or he wouldn’t have become the man I love.

Time loops really screw with your circuits when you try and puzzle them out, you know?

Anyway, maybe I was predisposed to dislike Sarah a bit, but the few hours I’d been around her hadn’t made me change my mind. The best thing about her was that she’d raised a wonderful son. So I stripped to the waist, which did in fact annoy her, based on the irritated glances she gave me. Petty, I know, but I’m a cyborg, not a PC. Finally it got under her skin enough for her to mention it. With a firearm analogy in fact. I complied, acting as if I hadn’t realized the inappropriateness.

She began asking questions then, about the future. I answered with building detachment at her attitude. When I told her she should have changed her alias, discarded John’s father’s name for something with a better chance of protecting him, I got a “Go to Hell!” for my trouble. I’m not sure which part of the suggestion earned it — the implication that she’d let down her son, that a machine knew better than her, or the crazy idea that this woman who had been on the verge of marrying someone would have been better served not hanging on to the name of a man she only knew for a couple of days. As if the name itself was more important than her son’s safety.

Okay, maybe I’m biased. Maybe that did deserve a “Go to Hell!”. Or maybe Sarah was just a little… how should I put this? High strung?

But either way, I softened it… dismissed the blame, told her they’d have found her anyway. From the look she gave me, I don’t think it helped.

===

The following morning I had confirmation of my “I told you so” feeling. I was maintenance checking the truck engine — never hurts to keep us machines in tip-top shape — when I felt my stomach drop almost out of my feet. (And I do have a stomach. Sort of.) The terror that I’d seen in John since my second first glance, bubbled at last to the surface. He confronted his mother with that horrible weight of the world she’d placed on his shoulders. He begged her to stop it from coming, to once more try to undo Skynet before it came about.

To hear the future leader — no, not even that. Just to hear the man, my man, my love, sound so fragile, so weak… it wrung my heart ’til it took all my strength not to cry, just to keep my face placid and still.

“Don’t give it away, Cam,” John had said as I stood on the threshold of the time circle, the border of my old and new/old world. “You know which things they can’t know yet.”

It was so hard, though. So much harder than I ever thought it would be. How do you hide something as simple, and difficult, and overwhelming as my love for the man this boy would become?

But then his mother saved it. His driven, machine-like, edge of sanity mother gave him a living example of what he’d become. She decided to charge back into the mouth of the lion, believe one more time that there is no fate but which we make.

She told me we weren’t heading down the road she’d plotted to Mexico on that dirty folded map last night. She said we were going to find Skynet. And she said it with such conviction that I couldn’t help but smile.

And almost believe her.

===

Filling the truck at a gas station while Sarah bought supplies, John tried to strike up a conversation with me. I fought with myself. I could hear his self-pity, and I was still too raw. I apologized for my own ruse when we met. But that only made it worse for me… he dismissed it as what my programming told me to do. I’ve never felt so bad about being a machine as at that moment. Even the offhand compliment on my looks couldn’t help. Sarah had all but crushed any spark John had of believing cyborgs could be more than just machines.

But John didn’t send me back here to develop my own case of self-pity. Sarah had looked at his hardship, and acted like a mother: take the burden away. I instead did what a friend would. I reassured him. I knew that every probability pointed to Judgment Day, to this boy leading humanity back from the brink of extermination. So I nudged him down the road, not off it.

“In the future, you’ll have many friends,” I told him.

Someday I might tell him how much of a friend he would be to me.

My reward was a look of puzzlement. But within that, I knew I had him wondering. He told me I seemed… different. I gave him my most enigmatic smile and, like any girl should, left him wanting more.

===

Though I’d assured Sarah that Dyson didn’t invent Skynet, she still made his home — now just his wife’s and son’s — our first stop because, well, what other clues did we have? At least, clues that I could share? Unfortunately, this would make it an easy guess for our pursuer as well.

The first few minutes there were spent in a difficult confrontation between two women who had lost a great deal. Miles’ wife had been told that Sarah had killed her husband, and Sarah had to convince her otherwise.

I could hear a clock ticking in my head. Come on, Sarah, we need to hurry. I understood their pain, but my concern was, and would always be, John above all, not Sarah’s need for catharsis. Or even sanity.

The faceoff nearly led Dyson’s wife to alert the police. I grit my teeth. When the woman finally asked why we were there I answered her with best shorthand I knew.

“We’re back,” I said, ignoring my personal belief that the word “we” was entirely inaccurate. I didn’t have the luxury of excluding myself now. I flashed her my eyes, and she got the picture. I saw her reaction’s echoes in Sarah, and worse, an uncertainty in John. I went to check for danger. Danger to John’s life, not my heart.

And I found it. Cromartie was approaching, inevitable as death.

It was too late to reach the truck, but Dyson’s widow loaned us her SUV. It didn’t prove as good at knocking him out of commission as my truck had been, because he was back up and firing — this time with better firepower.

Sarah took one to the shoulder and… well, at least they only hurt me. This one could kill her, and though again she tried to protect John from it, he was instantly in panic mode. And Cromartie was still following, fast.

So I did what I do; as he passed the truck, my own loyal machine, I asked it for one last favor, and triggered the bomb I had planted inside it. John looked at me in shock, but only briefly, and I couldn’t blame him. But at least I’d lost our tail for the moment.

===

Going on pain and adrenaline, Sarah found a convenience store and dropped off John for bandages and alcohol. They weren’t really necessary, at least not yet. Sarah always kept first aid supplies close at hand. But I saw her need to protect John from seeing the damage up close. Though I felt otherwise, I also knew he could only move up that dark road a little at a time, or he’d leave it on his own with no help from his mother.

So we found shelter out back: a machine shop that would be empty ’til morning. As I’d be her surgeon I offered her comfort for the pain, but she was stubborn as a Terminator. So I helped to a table and examined her wound.

But more than that, I examined her. As I started to apply the stitches, pehaps I saw her for the very first time. I’d considered her before in the same light I saw all those humans I’d been around in the future. The Resistance fighters. I knew John had told me Sarah was the best fighter he’d ever known, and I’d really had trouble believing that at the time.

In her life, Sarah had seen, counting me, five cyborgs, and two of us had been on her side. She’d seen barely a handful of dead in their wake, just the smallest hint of the destruction to come. The men and women of the future, by contrast, had seen countless numbers of killing machines, had seen and known almost nothing but death in their lifetimes.

Yet they also had one another. To fight with, to grieve with. To hope with.

“We can’t keep running,” she said to me, as I watched her hold back the pain almost as effectively as I did. “I’ll lose my boy.”

I felt the barest tremor in my jaw.

“He’ll leave me,” she said. “He’ll leave me.”

She fought harder than anyone in the future, because perhaps she had more at stake. The one constant in her life was her fear of us. Knowing that to speak of it would get her put away. To stay too long in any one place would make her and her son a target. Because, above all, they were the only targets that mattered anymore in this war.

Sarah wasn’t blind to what John needed to be, to the road he must travel. She spent his life preparing him for it, while at the same time trying to protect him from it. It was impossible, the task she’d been given. Insane, perhaps. But she was his mother, and that’s what mothers did.

John wasn’t a just soldier to her, he was her son. The only thing that mattered to her.

To either of us.

She lived in fear that, not only might she lose him to one of us, but she might lose him if she strayed too far from that road. From us.

And so, in that moment, I did something I knew all along I might have to do, but was loathe to: I became a robot. My John said I would, and I was dying to prove him wrong. But Sarah… all my calculations, all my instincts, told me that being robotic — instead of being me — was the only way to get her to accept me. No, accept was the wrong word. Sarah was like most of the humans who’d actually seen the apocalypse and its aftermath: so distrustful of cyborgs that their reactions upon identifying us were universally violent. It was best to get that reaction, that knowledge, out up front. Thus, in the future I acted like all the others, like the Terminators, unless I was alone with John. Only then would I be myself.

I think he liked it that way. Laughing with him; teasing him to break the tension of our life in Hell; easy silences and friendly — and more than friendly — touches… I could be human with John. That I only did it with him, I think he liked that. Frankly, he only ever got to be human with me; to everyone else he was a leader, a friendly, caring figurehead.

Our humanity, our love… that was our secret. And so it would begin here, now. I knew I could not spring it on him all at once, who I was. He wouldn’t accept it like that. I’d have to ease him into it.

But for Sarah, no, it was best to be, ironically, the stuff of her nightmares. She wouldn’t believe the real me. She, like John, would think it was programming to make her drop her guard. I knew she’d fight me, but I could take it. I am, after all, a fighter by nature. But best to earn her respect as the thing she expected me to be. If nothing else, she’d trust that, because of “my programming”, I’d never hurt John.

And that was all I required. All I’d ever need.

===

As morning broke once more I watched the sun rise between the skyscrapers of L.A. Sarah had slept through the night, while John had dozed on and off but mostly watched his mother and worried. This constant fear had to stop, I’d decided. We needed time, and time was something I happened to have access to.

My John had given me flexibility in this assignment. He trusted my judgment. I’d spent the sleepless night tracing and retracing scenarios and probabilities in great detail. Sometimes being a cyborg came in handy.

The conclusion I’d been led to required some not-so-subtle moves. The kind that would draw attention from the authorities, but worse, attention from our pursuer. It would require precise timing and, like that first day back in Red Valley, some good guesses and a bit of luck to make it happen.

And no arguments. We had to dive in head first, no life jackets, so my charge(s) would have to go along. Nothing like a good bank robbery to catch someone by surprise.

When I had the teller lock us in the safe, I could feel their indecision. I could also feel her suspicion, and, sending a tiny thrill through me, John’s trust, and as the plan became clearer, his admiration. Under my blank mask, I chuckled. It was, after all, his plan.

The police arrived, as expected. But soon enough, too soon for my tastes, so did he. The weapon was assembled, and I handed it over to her. She knew from weapons.

Now the hard part. They had no choice, but still I made the case. In some part of me, I knew that some part of her needed convincing. I could, if I needed to, simply take John and go if she refused. She’d be helpless to stop me, even with the weapon in her hands.

“What have you done?” she accused me.

“You wanna find Skynet? You wanna stop Skynet?” I replied. “This is the way.”

“You don’t know who builds it!”

“No,” I answered, having gone over this conversation, and these arguments, thousands of times while she slept last night. “But we know where and we know when. We can go kill it before it’s born.”

I looked her in the eyes. Told her what she wanted to hear. What she needed to hear.

“You can stop running. Stay in one place. Fight.”

They hesitated, even as they tried to accept what I’d just shown them. The impossible that they already believed in but never thought they’d see. A time machine.

An escape.

Hope.

Cromartie pounded on the outside of the vault, having already ripped all the supports away. He stuck a hand through an opening he’d made and fired in bullets blindly. Enough with the help convincing, triple-eight, I thought, I’ve got it from here. Wishing he had a brain to process that, were I to actually say it to him.

I looked at John then, turning my whole body to face him. I willed it out of him, silently begged him to make her believe.

And like the fighter she’s always been, Sarah yelled to me to do it, to set our own future in motion. Then took one last shot at our past before we went, blasting Cromartie’s head from his body as the lightning pulled us in.

===

Then spit us out, naked, in the middle of a freeway. Damned L.A. and their obsession with cars. I’m almost surprised there are still buildings in L.A., and not just roads and parking lots.

I saw John and Sarah on either side of me in my peripheral vision, shaking from the pain and shock of the jump. Oh yeah, those things hurt. Don’t hurt the Terminators, but for those of us who feel pain, jumps hurt like a mother. I just couldn’t show it.

Instead I stood, staring at the cars stopping in front of us. I spotted a kid in the first with a camera on his cell phone, pointed directly at us. Great, publicity already. I stored his face for later, in case I had the opportunity to kill him. Well, I can dream, can’t I?

But first, I got us off the road. Sarah asked me where we were, and I explained with the help of a nearby road sign that only our time had changed. Then I made to get us some clothes and a vehicle, while only taking a little pleasure in the knowledge that John was definitely staring at me naked. Not the time for such thoughts, Cam, I told myself.

Then, getting dressed, I relaxed just a bit, grabbing my destiny with both hands. Skynet was here to be found, and destroyed. The future is not set in stone; there is no fate but what we make.

“No one knows we’re here?” he asked.

I shook my head, knowing I was probably lying. But making him feel protected was sometimes as important as protecting him. I walked closer to him. “You’re safe,” I said, then moved to our new wheels.

Behind me, they said in unison, “No one is ever safe.”

I know that. I truly do. But that was my job, to make it so, to make him as safe as he’d never been.

Not by hiding, but by fighting. It was what he was born to do, after all.

And I was born to be by his side. Someday I’d get to tell him that.

Someday.

Somewhere down that road.

=The End=

To Other Eyes

2007-09-20T16:33:19Z

Title: To Other Eyes
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #10 “Reunion”
Rating: PG
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

Claire shut the book slowly, the slip of paper which had marked the page carefully palmed and out of sight. She consciously held her breathing steady as she set it atop the desk beside the care package addressed “Claire (the blonde Petrelli) Bennet” in Heidi’s careful script.

“Are there—?” West asked.

“Yes.”

“What kin—”

“White chocolate macadamia.”

“Awesome,” he reached past her and into the box, and she let him. “I love your step-mom.”

Claire really liked her too, and the delicious smell that had worked its way passed the zip-lock seal reminded her of late night baking sessions at the Petrelli mansion. Two equally-nervous outsiders finding a scrumptious method of breaking the ice.

There were “artworks” by Simon and Monty, and a rubber-banded stack of family photos courtesy of Nathan.

But there’d be no mistaking who had put the book of poems in the box, and to let West see what page he’d marked would have simply been too much, too telling, too obvious. At least to her guilt-ridden mind.

Her back to him, she heard the springs squeak as West stretched out on her dorm-room bed. She looked at the piece of paper in her hand.

“Soon,” it said.

===

Peter sat in his armchair, newspaper in his lap but eyes on the sunset beyond the window.

“Where’s your Dale Dunn?” she asked, fingers on the spine tilting into the empty space the missing book left behind.

“I loaned it to a friend,” his response was carefully casual.

She tilted her head. “Really? You’re obsessive about that book. ‘That’s a first edition, Rachel.’, ‘Don’t break the binding, Rachel.’. I’m shocked you let it out of the apartment.”

He turned his eyes to her, his ‘stop the family’s questions’ girlfriend. He liked her, he truly did. Hated that she was always on the edge of suspicious. That he gave her reason to be.

“They’re another bibliophile,” he answered, the pronoun specifically gender-neutral. “It’s in good hands.”

Soft hands. Gentle hands.

“It better be.” She smiled. “I love when you read to me from that book.”

His lips echoed her expression placidly, neutrally. Read to her, pretending she was someone else. Always skipping a particular page.

His eyes drifted back to the window, and the west.

===

No one ever questioned that Peter made Claire’s flight arrangements when she’d return to New York; that he’d greet her at the airport; that he’d bring her to the house.

He never shared the flight times, so no one was aware, when their taxi would deposit them in the evening that she’d arrived in the early afternoon.

He always paid for the airport hotel in cash, so no one could see anything untoward on a credit card bill.

They never kissed at the gate, as hard as it was to wait until the room door closed behind them.

This was their time, their reunion, and they shared it with no one.

“I missed you,” Peter said, finally taking a breath that wasn't shared with her. “So, so much.”

“It’s getting harder,” Claire sighed.

He smiled. “That could mean a lot of things.”

Her eyes dropped to his chest, but were distant. “To lie.”

Peter’s pressed his lips to her forehead. “I know.”

“The wait is so difficult anymore,” her blonde locks drifted across her eyes, “but the lying…”

“And I didn’t make it easier, did I?”

She pulled away, moving to the bed and her carry-on. “It’s beautiful,” her hand slipped inside to the tenderly retrieve the volume within. The fingertips of her other touched the golden-edged pages and urged them open.

His hands slipped about her waist from behind; he pressed against her once more, unable to be apart from her for even a few moments. Their eyes scanned the text together, the torment of the words as exquisite as the heat of their contact, the burning in their blood.

Claire sighed, her gaze drifting away from the page. “But it’s all we have, isn’t it? Lying? To everyone?”

He turned her to him, eyes flashing. “No. The love is real. It’s true.”

“To us.”

“We’re all that matters.”

“Are we?”

“This time, this room, this feeling. All us.”

He kissed her. She let him.

“But after? When we go home?”

“This is home.”

She closed her eyes. “It is. But is it enough?”

Peter took the book from her hand, and sat down on the bed. He looked at the cover. “This is as much as I can question it, Claire. With all that we do, can do, are meant to do… They can’t help me with that.”

She sat beside him. “I know. Only you… you’re the only one who is enough.”

He looked at her. “But…”

Claire swallowed. “But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep lying. It hurts too much.”

Peter felt an agony rip through him, a pain like bursting across the sky wasn’t.

And then she slipped the book from his fingers, and set it on the night-table. Off of their bed.

“It’s time to tell the truth,” she said, “our truth.”

His lip trembled, eyes pricking with a relief that spilled down his cheeks, as she pushed him gently to the bed.

She kissed him. He welcomed her.

===

That night, they held hands at the door, waiting for its answer. Heidi glanced at the entwined fingers briefly before giving her step-daughter a welcoming kiss.

“I get worried, you know,” she said as they passed by and into the house. At their pause, she continued. “At the wait.”

Two crooked eyebrows turned to her.

“From when she lands until she gets here,” Heidi said, then looked once again at their hands. “I trust I won’t need to be so worried anymore?”

And their hearts fluttered with their smiles.

===

If mist rolls down the whitewashed slope
In evening, and the darkness settles early,
And if I hold your hand in mine
While dusk and murk descend about our ears
Like curtains, more to keep the day within
Than the night without,
And if your hand is warm enough
To keep fog-dampened clothes
From chilling whitewashed flesh beneath—
Then why do I not long to see your face?

But when the dark rests fully on
Our shoulders, and the hand in mine
Speaks lighter with its touch,
And I play whispers through your hair
With mine, touch silk and spin webs
Swiftly in the air—
Am I not prey as well, entangled in
This web I whisper-weave?

Therefore I must pray quickly
In the dusk, which settles
All my fears, which night displays
In tactile grey — that dark
Might keep from me
The chilling sight your hand defies,
Denies; and that my own touch lies
On mist wet skin, not tears
Of one who knows as I
That dusk hides faces promised
To other eyes.

Author’s Note: If you’ve been to my home page (Galloway Creations), you may recognize the poem. Yes, it’s an original (Dale Dunn is an anagram), written quite a while ago now. The story is over two hundred words without the poem, so I hope the Mods don’t hold it against me!

X-mas in Blue

2007-09-04T16:54:11Z

Title: X-Mas in Blue
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #9 “Imagine”
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

Christmas in California was a lot like Christmas in Texas: warm temperatures and fake snow to go with all the usual trimmings.

A nice little present from Lyle with the tag, “to the bee-yotch, from the turd-ball”.

Even a special delivery package from her grandmother in New York: an outrageously expensive gown and a note to have “a proper New Year’s Eve”.

But six weeks wasn’t nearly enough time to get past it all, get over losing him.

And Claire found herself, again and again, staring at the mistletoe over the lintel and imagining what could have been.

Shooting Stars

2007-08-26T17:10:15Z

Title: Shooting Stars
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #8 “Green”
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

“Why aren’t any stars green?” Claire asked, back to the cool grass near the Petrelli’s summer home in the Hamptons.

“Something about how our eyes pick up light,” Peter answered, pressed warmly against her side. “They look white instead. There’s one!” his finger aimed to the shooting star.

“Fifteen,” she added to their total. “‘Little green men’?”

“Nah, ‘abuctees’ say they’re gray.” He turned his head. “Spock’s blood.”

She groaned. “Such a nerd.”

“It’s your game. I’m just counting meteors. Those trees?”

“Black. It’s night.”

Arm around her, suddenly they were skyborne. “Now?”

She laughed. The moonlight made them green.

Silver Ribbon

2007-08-19T13:20:31Z

Title: Silver Ribbon
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #7 “Calendar”
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe. Also, this story kicked my ass. It wanted to be waaaaay longer than 100 words.

Peter marked time in glossy red paper and satin silver ribbon. He’d bought them for her graduation, and once she unwrapped that smile with the necklace, they were forever hers.

The first time he’d handed her a gift without them was her twenty-first birthday, and she struggled to smile for the other guests. Later, alone, he produced the red and silver box. She understood, blinked tears, and kissed him.

He sits now, nervous, in their restaurant. His calendar of paper and satin marks today the happiest yet: within them a band of gold to start a new, endless, time.

Paire

2007-08-16T19:09:38Z

So, it began with a post on Youtube, and a question in the comment section.

Here’s the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F817Ntj0oZU

Here’s the comment:

“i have a question... are most of these people who "ship" them (or whatever you call it) doing so because they're young girls who want milo to be with a younger girl? im asking because i dont really understand the whole big deal about them having to "be together" ”

To which I responded:

“Not 16 (considerably older), not a girl, but I love the idea of Paire. First, the actors have AMAZING chemistry together. Second, the characters' story arc is just monumentally epic and romantic. Think about it: the Messenger (from the future, no less) tell the Hero that he must save the Heroine, sight unseen, from the Villain. He takes up the Quest, makes a Journey, and saves the Heroine even believing it will cause his own death. And that's just the BEGINNING of their story this season. If the writers didn't see that that was a classic Hero/Heroine romantic set-up, they were TOTALLY BLIND. Having them be related was one of the biggest WTF? moments of all time on TV, IMHO. Still, this is a show where literally anything can happen. I hold out hope that some revelation down the road will remove the uncle/niece relationship. (In other words, the writers will get their collective heads out of their butts.)”

(Of course, I responded in two separate comment notes because Youtube restricts comments to 500 characters. I can’t say “Good Morning” in less than 500 characters! But I digress.)

See, this is a question that’s been bugging me even before this person asked it... and may I say, I was glad they actually asked, and didn’t just say, “Paire is sick! They’re related! YoU pEoPlE aRe SiCk!” because most people who spout such garbage are twelve and type like that. (F’in juvenile morons.) WTF were the writers thinking????

See, here’s my theory. Writers (and I am one, so I know from whence I speak) tend to be simultaneously insecure and incredibly arrogant. (Rather like most of the engineers I know, and I’m one of them too, so again, I know from whence I speak.) When a writer is plodding along with their idea and someone makes a suggestion to them that is actually better than their own idea, you can’t imagine the alarm bells that go off in the writer’s head. There is this response of “I’m the writer, it’s my story, go away now” when in many cases the proper answer should be “Holy shit, you’re right, that’s a great idea! I’m completely stealing that, thank you very much.”

Take, for instance, the case of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Fairly talented pair of writers, and creators and executive producers of the TV series Smallville. So you have the future and famous cast of the Superman comics and movies there, Clark Kent, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor, Pete Ross, Chloe Sullivan, Martha and Jonathan Kent— wait, Chloe who? I’ve never heard of her. And yet, in the show she is in a love triangle with Clark Kent and Lana Lang. Well, that’s pretty lame. We know from the Superman mythos that Clark was involved with Lana Lang before he moved on to Lois Lane, but Chloe Sullivan? She’s not a love interest, she’s roadkill on Clark’s road to Lois.

Then round about the third season, I heard a rumor on the ’Net: Chloe Sullivan, who the show says is Lois’ cousin, is actually going to be the Lois we all know. Chloe even gets an internship at the Daily Planet (she’s a reporter for the Smallville HS newspaper) and for her first story, uses the pen name “Lois Lane”, commenting that her cousin isn’t interested in journalism at all and won’t mind.

Holy Mother of God. This idea is f-ing brilliant. Suddenly this love triangle we’ve only been mildly interested in is between Clark, Lana, and Lois? Lois was right under our noses for three years? Wow, just... wow!

Except it was just a rumor. A creation by the fans. Not Gough and Millar’s idea at all. When asked at a convention about the idea, they laughed it off, saying they were bringing in Lois in the fourth season, as they had said since the beginning.

Well let me tell you what: Gough and Millar, upon hearing this idea, should have taken all their plans, written scripts, everything, and thrown them right in the trash. Then picked up their pens and used this idea for the balance of Smallville. Because they just had one of the greatest ideas in the history of television dropped in their laps. Nothing in the length of Gough and Millar’s writing careers will be that good, and the years that have followed have proved that out. Smallville is a good show, sometimes a great show, but has never and will never live up to that single idea.

But Gough and Millar were (are) insecure and arrogant, and apparently utterly stupid as well. Using that idea, theirs or not, would have put Smallville into the pantheon of great genre shows along with Buffy and Star Trek, not a decent but also ran like Supernatural or Stargate: SG-1.

Let’s mention X-Men the Movie franchise as well while we’re at it. The X-Men universe is well established, just as the Superman universe is. It may not have been as ubiquitous in the public mind as Superman or Spiderman, but among comic fans it was arguably more popular. In light of that, X-Men the Movie was a fantastic achievement, bringing a complex story to a very wide audience quite well. To do this, Bryan Singer and his writers made a small concession, a small change: they dropped the age of the character Rogue by nine or ten years. This allowed her to be an alienated youth, who, out on her own, runs into the similarly disaffected Wolverine. They are the outsiders, the ones the audience can identify with, who can draw the viewers into the X-Men world to learn about it along with them. Anyone who is familiar with the comic series knows that Rogue’s backstory is considerably more complicated, and makes her a wonderfully rich and three dimensional character, but all things considered, it was an acceptable concession to make, especially since they cast the wonderful, Oscar-winning Anna Paquin to play the character.

But they got an unexpected “bonus” in the bargain: the on-screen chemistry between Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Anna Paquin was fantastic, and added a dimension that no one foresaw when they were producing the film. As outsiders, the two characters already had a bond, but with how Hugh and Anna fleshed it out it brought an element no one expected and that the audience really took to. And remember, this is a comic-book audience. A genre fiction fan audience. These people are rabid. And they took to the Wolverine/Rogue coupling like crazy.

The problem is, there is no Wolverine/Rogue pairing. Not in the comics, and not really in the movie. What we see in the film is a bonding, one that could lead to a romantic pairing. And that’s where the fans took it. I recently did a survey of fanfics at Fanfiction.net, where I searched in the X-Men: the Movie section for stories that included Wolverine/Rogue, Wolverine/Jean Grey — the character Wolverine is supposed to be in a love triangle with Cyclops over — and Wolverine/Storm, the only other real person he could be paired with (in a non-slash way, that is). Here’s what I found: Wolverine/Storm had the fewest stories, not surprisingly. But Wolverine/Jean Grey has only a few more than Wolverine/Storm. Not because people like the Wolverine/Storm as much, but because they like the Wolverine/Jean Grey as little. And then the kicker: Wolverine/Rogue had four times the number of stories as the other two pairings combined. Now that’s a statement.

So what did the movie folks do with this gift? Absolutely nothing. They tried to pair Rogue with Iceman in second movie (a follow-up to an interest in the first movie), and bring up a full fledged triangle in the third adding Shadowcat.

No one cared.

And the Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops triangle? No one cared about that either. Well, not really. As far as the comic universe, sure, X-Men fans are generally of two camps anyway: Comic or Movie. No real animosity there — although Comic fans try to look down on the Movie fans, but the Movie fans ignore them. And in the Comic fandom, the W/JG/C triangle is accepted and important. But in the Comic fandom, Rogue’s pairing is with Gambit, not with Iceman, and no one in the Comic fandom cares about Iceman either.

If the movie folks had been smart, they’d have played up the Wolverine/Rogue pairing. Problem was, there was already a well established arc for the movies to follow, predicated by the comicverse before them. It overrode the details of any romantic pairing that might happen within the movies, and I’m sure that while that was being played out they felt they should keep to the rough romantic details of the Comic universe as well, since it kinda applied. I’m not sure it would really made any difference to anyone if they had altered it to take advantage of the chemistry that the viewers saw, but at least they didn’t totally ignore it. There was still quite a bit of interaction between Rogue and Wolverine through the final two movies, although there could have been much more.

So where does this leave us? Back to Heroes. I quite suspect that Tim Kring and the other writers of Heroes intended Claire Bennett to be the daughter of Nathan Petrelli, and niece of Peter Petrelli, from the beginning. As I said in my response to the YouTube video above, if this is true, the writers were really not paying attention to the epic mythology aspects of the story they were creating. The Peter/Claire setup so perfectly fits the Epic Hero/Heroine story that there is no way the viewers can miss it. The Messenger tells the Hero he must make a Journey to save the Heroine from the Villain, and the Hero saves the Heroine even believing he will die doing so.

This is not the story of an Uncle and Niece. It is the tale of destined lovers. Period, end of story.

And this is before the audience even sees the on-screen chemistry of Hayden Panatierre and Milo Ventimeglia. Once you add that in, you don’t even have to be a student of Joseph Campbell to say the writers must be off their rockers not to get Peter and Claire together romantically.

Take that, all you twelve-year-olds.

Baby Spice? Really?

2007-08-12T23:33:51Z

Have you ever heard of Pandora Radio? If you haven’t, here’s the lowdown: Pandora runs something called the Music Genome Project, akin to the Human Genome Project except, naturally, for music. They employ a bunch of musicologists, who analyze music in about 400 ways (harmony, rhythm, lyrics, vocals, etc., and come up with a musical fingerprint for the song. How does this help you? Well, when you go to Pandora and sign up for a free account, you can create your own personalized “stations” by entering name of a band you like, or of a particular song you enjoy, and then Pandora creates a streaming music station of music by that band and other artists that sound like that, presuming you’ll like them too. If you do, great, give the song a thumbs up, and more like it will appear in your station. If you don’t, then click the thumbs down and it disappears from your lineup forever. Eventually you’ll be amazed at how it follows your taste.

And you don’t just create one station. After all, everyone has multiple musical tastes depending on their moods. So create two or three or four and you can enjoy them whenever you want. For free. How cool is that?

The best part is that you discover new artist like this that you are nearly assured to like. For example, I’m listening to my “Basia” station right now, and currently playing is “Yeliel (My Angel)” by Lara Fabian. I’ve never heard of Lara Fabian until right this minute, and at least from this song she’s awesome. And now I’m getting “Blue and White” by Beth Waters. Ditto to Lara Fabian.

I have over 1000 CD’s in my collection... I love music. But I hate commercial radio with a fiery passion. So how am I supposed to find new artists? I’m lucky enough to have online friends who introduce me to new artists (YAY to the Paire Mafia!), and occasionally get a fabulous random break — like hearing Meja on Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball... who’d a thunk it? — but Pandora is almost like I was back in high school hanging out with my friends playing CD’s for each other. It’s a frickin’ miracle drug, that’s what it is.

My fave find so far happened a few weeks ago, while listening to the Basia station (I love Basia, can you tell?) and heard this amazing, almost sixties-ish pop song. Flipped to my browser and saw the name Emma Bunton. Huh, sounds familiar. Twenty minutes later, another tune blows my skirt up — and I don’t wear a skirt, so that’s not easy — and again it’s Emma Bunton. Now I have to look her up... “Emma Bunton, formerly Baby Spice of the girl band The Spice Girls.” Whaaaaa?? Baby Spice? Really? So I pop to Amazon and order me a copy of Free Me, which I have to import from the UK, by the way. It arrives and I load it up and hit play.

Damned if I didn’t have to play the album again after it finished. I never do that. I then sprung for the $35 to import Life in Mono, her Free Me follow up, and $12 for the domestically available A Girl Like Me.

Life in Mono: exceptional. A Girl Like Me: so-so.

Here’s how I figure it: A Girl Like Me came out...

...oh, sorry, Anita Baker is playing and I must swoon now.

Okay I’m better. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the way I figure, A Girl Like Me was produced just after The Spice Girls broke up, and it sounds a lot like them. A little better, maybe, but I can see a producer telling Emma “Doll, you’ve got a good thing going with the Spice Girls sound, play it up!” But I don’t think the album did very well. Leading Emma to say, “Bollocks that, I’ve got plenty of cash, I’m going to make music I like.”

And so we get Free Me. Penning 11 out of the 12 songs (the 12th is a lovely sprightly cover of Astrud Gilberto’s “Crickets Sing for Anamaria”), Free Me is Emma’s album through and through. And at least one critic called it the best pop album of 2005 period. I don’t follow much pop — as I said, I don’t listen to commercial radio — but I can believe it. It’s certainly my favorite album released in the last five years. Followed closely by Life in Mono, and then Mariah’s The Emancipation of Mimi and Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway.

Now if only American radio would wake up — and that’s fodder for a rant on the Major Music Labels that I’ll spare you for now — we on this side of the Atlantic would get the treat that Emma Bunton has become.

Little Brothers

2007-08-12T15:10:42Z

Title: Little Brothers
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #6 “Fire”
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

Camping was not a Petrelli activity, but Peter and his nephews had been game at Noah’s request. “Family bonding,” or some such.

Lyle wondered if Dad was really blind beyond those glasses.

Peter, Claire, and adjacent tents? Yep, totally blind.

Still, Simon and Monty were decent partners-in-crime. Dive-bombing the sunning couple at the swimming hole with fallen acorns. Leaping from bushes when the two gathered kindling together for an unnecessary third time.

And after Dad spooked the boys with campfire tales while the two held surreptitious hands, came sticky marshmallow missiles.

Excited, armed, and willing: “Ready… aim…”

Sleepless

2007-08-01T03:08:17Z

Title: Sleepless
Author: Kastellen (aka Galloway)
Challenge: Challenge #5 “Dream/Nightmare”
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

From the balcony, traffic was but a red ribbon in the darkness below, sound carried off by the same warm wind that blew golden hair across her eyes. She raised a hand, pinkie drawing away the strands, pressed the dew-clad tumbler it held to her temple. Cold, to keep her awake.

She tipped the glass across her lip, spilled whiskey across her tongue. Fire, to burn away her thoughts.

Turning her head from the night, she looked into the dark — another anonymous room on this endless flight.

Where Peter slept.

Where he dreamed of Claire, and not of her.

Tunnel of Love, Part 1/?

2007-07-21T16:59:10Z

Title: Tunnel of Love 1/?
Author: Kastellan (aka Galloway)
Pairing: Peter/Claire
Rating: PG
Notes: Spoilers for Season 1. I think.

If there was someone to blame, it was the stupid carney. Or maybe it was Nathan; he always deserved blame for something in Peter’s mind, so why not this? Or the press photographer, could have been her. Actually it might have been Heidi, though he loved Heidi, and could almost never find it in his heart to blame her for anything.

Nah, it was the carney.

* * * * *

“I should have worn more sunscreen,” Peter leaned in to tell her sotto voce.

“No, you should get more sun,” Claire answered. “A little is actually necessary, Mr. ‘I’m a Health Worker and Don’t Know the Sun Produces Vitamin D’.”

“Hey, I’m not the golden-haired Neutrogena Girl,” he rolled his eyes at her. “Simon, keep still,” Peter firmed up his grip on his nephew’s shoulder.

Another “family” weekend; another photo-op. This time it was at a carnival just a little upstate from the city. Not Nathan’s district, but it was part of some big fundraising thing whose cause he supported, so her bio-dad had dragged Claire along with Heidi and the boys on a day she really should have been studying for her mid-terms. And since these events usually resulted in some press conference thing with Heidi at her husband’s side and Claire tending to her half-brothers, she had in turn roped Peter in to help her with the herding.

“Are we actually gonna get to go on these rides?” Monty questioned his uncle from in front of Claire.

“Soon as the photographers are done,” he whispered back.

“Even the Dungeon Drop?” Simon asked.

“Even that,” he smiled.

Monty shook his head. “Mom will never let us go on that!”

Claire leaned down a little. “Uncle Peter will take the rap on that, won’t you Peter?”

“That’s what uncles are for,” Peter responded in the boy’s direction. “Letting you do things your parents wouldn’t approve of.” He looked to Claire and winked, but his smile faded a little when she wet her lips and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He was surprised then by a sudden silence of the clicking cameras, and turned his head to see his sister-in-law with one hand on Nathan’s arm and the other raised palm outward to the reporters and photogs. “Sorry, everyone, but that’s all the questions my husband is taking today,” she said. Nathan looked startled, as did his press secretary, but Heidi locked her gaze on her husband’s and her tone was pleasant but brooked no argument. “This is a carnival, and we’re all here to have fun in the name of a good cause.” She turned back to the gathered press. “And we have a couple of kids who I’m sure want to go on some rides and get sick on hot dogs and cotton candy.”

Heidi turned towards her sons and beckoned. The two boys looked at one another in disbelief, but then shook off their caretakers and bounced enthusiastically over to their parents. Cameras started flashing again, and Peter saw Nathan turn a resigned look and shrug on his press secretary, who acquiesced and began to shoo off the reporters, many of whom were grinning at the Congressman’s wife putting her foot down.

Nathan picked up Monty as the gathering dispersed and Heidi drifted over to Peter and Claire. “You two don’t mind if we take care of the animals, do you?” she said, smiling. “I know Claire, you thought we brought you out for babysitting duty, but you really seemed like you needed a break from all that studying.”

Claire blinked at her step-mother a couple of times. “Uhm, yeah. Actually you’re right, Heidi, I did need a break.”

Heidi smiled at her brother-in-law. “And now you have Peter here to show you a good time. You don’t mind that, do you Peter?”

Peter opened his mouth, then closed it again. He turned to Claire. “No,” he smiled at her, caught for a moment at the sun shimmering off her golden hair. “Don’t mind at all.”

“Good,” the brunette said. “Go have fun. In case the boys wear Nathan and I out, can you just drive Claire home later?”

“Sure.”

“Alright then,” Heidi began to drift back to her husband and boys. “See you later!” she added over her shoulder.

When Peter turned back to Claire she wore a mischievous smile. “Do I get to go on the Dungeon Drop?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is it the same when you’re not actually worried about hitting the ground?”

“Taking the leap is always fun.” She eyed the multicolored signs and screwed up her face. “So what should we do?”

“Anything but face painting.”

Claire laughed, a lovely tinkling sound. “We’ll see about that.”

He frowned. “I mean it.”

She stuck out a little pink tongue at him. “Well let’s go. If you’re nice I’ll let you win me some stuffed animals.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“C’mon Peter,” she held out her small hand for him to take. “Ready to show me a good time?”

He wrapped his fingers around Claire’s and let her tug him towards the park. “Yeah,” he said to himself, “that’s what uncles are for.”

Shadowed

2007-07-19T04:16:16Z

Title: Shadowed
Author: Kastellan (aka Galloway)
 Characters: Peter and Claire
 Challenge: Challenge # 4 "Five Years Gone" 
Rating: PG-13
 Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

She never knew he watched. The need would build, days he could hold back counting down as on a calender set by some demented watchmaker. Then he’d slip from Jessica’s bed and steal guiltily to the tattered atlas secreted in his lover’s office.

Eyes closed, Molly in his mind, the pin would strike, a scorpion’s tail, to the paper. And Peter would squint, and vanish, and pray no evil tracked him to her door.

Claire was always more dazzling than his memories, always more tempting, always just as forbidden.

Heart broken anew, he’d weep the only tears he had left.

Murmur

2007-07-12T22:02:28Z

Title: Murmur 
Author: Kastellan (aka Galloway)
 Characters: Peter and Claire
 Challenge: Challenge # 3 "Hidden" 
Rating: PG-13
 Notes: Spoilers thru Season 1. Just to be safe.

Claire loved to do it when he absolutely couldn’t outwardly react. At one of Nathan’s political functions, or at Sunday morning brunch, with the conversation stilted like family could be.

Sometimes she’d whisper; sometimes she’d scream. See if he’d hear; see if he’d wince. Look at him, or anything but.

It had taken a while to know just how loud to think, to sneak past his barriers and murmur into Peter’s mind.

“I want you,” she’d say. Or “I’m going commando right now.” That got a great reaction.

But her favorite was simply, “I love you.”

God bless Matt Parkman.

Safe Sex in Fanfic

2007-07-12T18:47:45Z

Time for a rant.

Is it really necessary for every love scene in fanfiction to include that moment where someone leans over to the bedside table and pulls out the condom? In every fandom that takes place in our modern day world (and some that don’t), whenever anything hot and heavy gets going, the safe sex minion has to rear his head. I actually read a femslash today where someone pulls out a dental dam at “that moment”. Talk about breaking the mood.

Look, I get that we live in a post-HIV world; I know that most fanfics are written by people who weren’t even born when the first case of AIDS was found. It is part of our reality. But does it have to be part of our fictional world too?

I’m not saying that our beloved characters should be careless with their sexuality. Not at all. These self-same characters were also born in the same post-HIV world. I’m sure they inevitably will use protection of one kind or another. But my beef is, do we have to see it?

I’ve written plenty of love scenes in both my fanfiction and my original fiction. But never once has the word “condom”, uhm, arisen. Much less the phrase “dental dam”. That doesn’t mean my characters are being unsafe. It doesn’t mean anything, actually, other than I haven’t shown them pull out a condom. If the reader wants to assume they used a condom, fine. But if there is a buzzkill moment — necessary though it is — in the course of an intimate evening, it’s that moment when someone brings up protection, or pulls out protection, or— well, you get the idea. If that is uncomfortable in real life, why the hell do I have to see it in fanfiction? I’m reading fanfiction to escape reality, for goodness sake.

It’s not like someone who is reading fanfiction is going to get the idea that since they didn’t see, I don’t know, Buffy and Giles, or Clark and Chloe, use a condom in some BtVS or Smallville fanfic, that it’s okay for the reader to have unprotected sex in real life. That’s just silly. People aren’t that stupid. And if they are, well, there’s nothing we fanfic writers can do to fix them.

We as fanfic writers — hell, as writers period — should be clever enough to find ways to imply the characters are smart enough to engage in safe sex without having to see the safe part.

This is one case where “show, don’t tell” is a bad idea.

Starshine to Sunshine

2007-06-22T21:55:59Z

Title: Starshine to Sunshine
Author: Kastellan (aka Galloway)
Characters: Peter and Claire
Challenge: Challenge # 1 "Sunshine"
Rating: PG
Notes: Spoiler to 1.23 "How to Stop an Exploding Man"

She remembered a science teacher saying the sun was like a constantly exploding hydrogen bomb. Yet the new star briefly shining overhead felt nothing like the sun to Claire.

Sunshine was warm.

Sunshine brought life.

Sunshine was Peter.

The irony that this starshine too was Peter was not lost on her.

* * * * *
He fell to Earth, enveloped in a haze of pain. He had churned through every learned power: strength, radiation, flight, healing. He lay, recovering slowly, but too so. He knew she was leaving, heartbroken.

One more power. He thought to her.

She came.

They kissed.

She tasted like sunshine.