A word is worth a thousand pictures...
Jul. 7th, 2010 01:10 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
rachelindeed.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no_takebacksGood morning, everyone! Today, I’d like to talk for a second about one of the things I find most challenging about writing: coming up with interesting descriptions. I’m not at all a copious writer, but even in my short stories, I’ve discovered that characters can always have different conversations, but they will essentially always look the same and they will have a limited repertoire of gestures and expressions. Finding new ways to describe them, both physically and emotionally, is a challenge, but it can also feel really rewarding to write something and think – ‘that’s really captured this person. I *saw* them in that line.’ So I would like to invite you all to think about your favorite striking little descriptions of Kara and Lee in fanfic, or meta, or in dialogue from the show itself. Share with us the lines that made you think – ‘That’s it. That sums up something about this person and/or this relationship concisely and beautifully.’ And if you are a writer yourself, could you choose one of your favorite descriptive lines, one that you’re proud to have written?
Here are just a few of the ones that have stuck with me:
Gesture that sums up Kara/Lee, from mercurial_wit’s “Amateur”:
“Briefing in five, Kara.” As Lee walks past his hand rests on her shoulder, just for a moment, and Anders doesn’t think she even realises that her own hand comes up in a silent tactile response, brushing the place where his fingers lay.
Character sketch that sums up Kara/Lee, from mercurial_wit’s “Our Pataphysical Divigation”:
“We’re fine, aren’t we?” he whispers, and relief falls over her face like a gush of water. All of a sudden it’s his best friend sitting there, not just Starbuck and not just the stripped-wire emotional tangle that is Kara Thrace. His roles are too big for him, but she could drown herself in hers, and he’s not going to let that happen.
Self-description that sums up something important about Lee, from settler’s “Polish the Stars”:
"I'm going to try not to be an ass. And when I fail and am anyway, I'm going to feel really, really bad."
Movements that tell a larger story, from CatsonMars’ “Aerilon Girls Are Easy”:
Once when the three of them went to a concert together, Kara was almost too exhausted to stay on her feet as they were slowly making their way out with the rest of the congested crowd after the show. At one point she sighed heavily and started to lean back against Lee without realizing it was him and not Zak standing directly behind her. He held her waist to steady her but then instantly drew his hands back away and said softly, "Teller," sounding just slightly uncomfortable, so that she blinked and stood up straight again. It's me.
Careful.
~~
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 05:15 am (UTC)But, for me the quintessential K/L moment in the series where they are truly there, present, emotionally bare is the scene in the memorial hallway where Lee tells Kara that he's just Lee and she's just Kara and that's all that matters. For that all-too brief moment, all of their shit is set aside and they are in fact, just Kara & Lee.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:03 pm (UTC)It was at the moment that Kara spat, “Keep it,” and turned her back on him that Lee realized something was really wrong with her, something beyond her usual cocktail of smug insecurity and desperate megalomania. Her pyramid ball fell back into his hands and he squeezed it too hard, angry at her for somehow being the damaged one when his father was shot, when he’d been the one locked in a cell with blood still on his hands, when he’d been forced to choose between what he loved and what he believed in. And she’d managed to leave a traitor and return a hero, her tarnished halo glowing brighter than before.
I just love that phrase "her usual cocktail of smug insecurity and desperate megalomania."
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 02:08 pm (UTC)Since we're being forced to choose here ;), I'll go with this paragraph about Kara from
Kara has always believed in debts and obligations. For everything given, a sacrifice is due. Sometimes she feels like she’s still paying for the fact of having been born. She prays every day for the souls of comrades who died when she did not. She likes to say she’s alive because of luck or skill, but in her deepest heart she thinks it’s because she hasn’t yet settled her debts. According to this math, her relations with Lee ought to keep her breathing well into the next century, because of all the things she’s ever had, Adamas cost the most. She’s handed over her heart (more than once), her honor (such as it was), and she feels pieces of her soul tear away every time he touches her. She tries to balance what she owes him against what she owes Sam, the gods, the Fleet, a juggling act it’s possible to maintain only as long as she never quite thinks about it. It’s a long time before she stops to consider what she might owe to herself.
And this from
And the only thing that broke was you.
Another favorite Kara descriptor comes from a fic I can't recall. It's told from Anders' POV (at least partially) and it's an observation about Kara's penchant for bravado, something about how she wears her heart on her sleeve so openly and so often, that it takes time to realize she's shown you nothing of substance.
Lee stuff doesn't jump out at me as easily. I'll have to think on that.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 09:30 pm (UTC)I think it's this quote from
The thing Sam admires most about Starbuck is her ability to wear every emotion flashing right on her surface, and hide everything about who she is at the same time. Evasion without evasiveness, secrets without secrecy. Something about her is entrancing, and she shows so much with every grin and every scowl that you don't realize that you don't really know her.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 09:46 pm (UTC)It's so true that Kara shows so much, yet gives away so little.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 03:59 pm (UTC)For the first time since setting foot on the Astral Queen, Kara let herself look – really look -- at Lee Adama, and what she saw wasn't pretty. Dark circles hung under his eyes, as much from stress and guilt as from lack of sleep. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen Lee with stubble, let alone any kind of substantial facial hair, and this was one of them. It made him look rough and harried, like some kind of wanton pirate. But that was nothing compared to seeing him out of uniform. She'd seen him in his off-duty gear before, but somehow Lee didn't seem like Lee without the promise of his crisp blue uniform or the slick material of his flight suit. He was wearing camouflage gear – no doubt scrounged from the Galactica -- and it just reinforced how much things had changed in the weeks she'd been gone.
For some reason that made her angry. Certain things weren't supposed to change. Lee was supposed to be the one who played by the book; she was supposed to be the troublemaker. He was supposed to be the one bailing her out of hack, not the one rebelling against authority and splitting the fleet in half. Just when the frak had the universe gone insane? Had it started with the attack on Caprica, or had it always been like this?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 05:15 pm (UTC)He reached up and touched her forehead and she winced a bit but didn't pull away. She used to be uncomfortable when he touched her, or when anyone touched her, really. She covered it up well though, by being quite willing to touch others. It seemed to be fine as long as she initiated contact, as long as she was in control. He traced her hairline, reveling in the fact that she was comfortable, that he was allowed. Then he let his hand drop, and tried not to think of the fact that she had probably never been touched as a child, except in anger, because thinking about it made him want to hurt someone, and Kara’s violent tendencies had already rubbed off on him a bit more than he would have liked, thank you very much.
She gave him one of those sideways looks again, and something clicked into place in Lee's brain. She was sweat-streaked, and bloody, and she smelled a bit, and she wasn't censoring her smirk or her remarks. Clearly, he wasn't the only one who had been thinking of why pilots didn't usually date. Everyone knew the reasoning: too close, knew each other too well, no mystery, no excitement, no romance. Kara was spending more and more time with him on the premise that if he knew her better he'd like her less. Kara was an idiot. Lee had figured that out already, of course, but this hammered it home. It was so monumental that he spent the rest of their study session distracted and out of focus. When Kara called him on it, he looked at her and gaped a bit, because he couldn't work out a way to tell her that he had just realized the full extent of her lunacy, and that smirking and sweating were not, in fact, the best way to get him to stop thinking about her in a romantic light.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 06:00 pm (UTC)http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3539249/1/Polish_the_Stars
Then there are some more parts posted at different places on her LJ that never made it onto fanfiction.net. The chapters are numbered differently on her LJ, but the extra material starts toward the end of Part 8:
http://shuchong.livejournal.com/10237.html#cutid1
Part 9 has been sadly deleted, locked, or otherwise rendered unavailable, which is a shame. But as of now, Chapter 10 remains:
http://shuchong.livejournal.com/11974.html#cutid1
And that's all she wrote. I think the story's incomplete status (which, let's be honest, is never going to change at this point) and the difficulties in accessing the whole thing may have caused some shippers to skip it. But, like Kara herself, it is too wonderful to miss just because it comes with complications :) And the stopping point shuchong reached in the last posted chapter makes for a fine ending, in its own way.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 10:31 pm (UTC)I do enjoy reading their sideway glanced thoughts on each other, you know when the other doesn't know they are being watched. A silent observation.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 11:59 pm (UTC)I love watching Kara and Lee watch each other, too. There are a few moments in the series when I can see them doing it, and I think to myself: "There is an entire story in that gaze." One of the moments on the show that struck me like that was the last scene between Kara and Lee in "Razor." They are being very restrained with each other, and the words coming out of their mouths are about parting and taking separate posts again. But I remember watching their faces and thinking, "You are *so* in love, this is ridiculous. It's written all over you!" Just look at them!:
This look is its own story.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 12:47 pm (UTC)I did love the fact that she was waiting for him.:)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:47 am (UTC)And yes, every one of those glances surely has a story of its own. Can you just imagine if we knew what they were thinking internally during those moments?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:30 am (UTC)