Daily Pilots Post

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the contributions yesterday! I will unscreen comments and compile results shortly, but I wanted to get today's post up first. There were also a couple of drabbles, which have already been unscreened, if you'd like to check them out.

Today's prompt, to be interpreted as liberally or literally as you like, is:

dark matter

Do with it what you will. :)

A couple of days ago, I asked for recs of other people's work. Today, I'd like to know which of your own fannish creations (to do with Kara and Lee, of course) you're most proud of. It might be a story, a drabble, an icon, a graphic (any artists here?) or something entirely different. If you only write long fic, feel free to recommend either one long fic or a chapter/scene.

If you're not a writer, artist or icon maker, please don't feel left out! Have a look through the prompts for this week, and I encourage you to put together something of your own. You don't have to post it (although I'd love it if you did), but do have a go! It may not be as scary as you think.

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to hearing what others will choose as their favorite creations. For me, I think the four act filk script for "Kara & Lee: The Musical" was definitely the most fun to do, but I'm actually prouder of my short stories because I wrote every line of them and they feel more like they're mine.

I don't really have a favorite among my BSG stories, but I think the one I'd recommend is Eagle-Eye View (http://rachelindeed.livejournal.com/5692.html) because it's got an odd mixture of fun and serious, and it's the only story I've written that attempts to reflect a character's voice in its narrative style (and Colonel Tigh has quite a fun voice). It focuses on Lee and Kara/Lee, of course.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Heh. My favorite is always the one I'm currently working on/just finished. So ice!pilots it is!

[acsgrlie.livejournal.com]

I'm not the strongest writer but I've started playing around with graphics.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is gorgeous! Thank you for sharing it!

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Haha, I'm like that, as well. There's something so great about being "in the moment" with a story.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Ooh, other characters' viewpoints on Kara/Lee are always interesting. Will check that out - thank you!

[lyras.livejournal.com]

! I agree with Rachel - that's gorgeous! Thank you for posting it.

[acsgrlie.livejournal.com]

Thanks hun! :)

[acsgrlie.livejournal.com]

Aw thanks! I hope to do more soon!

Playing Favorites

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Though I love all of my writing, I'm going to choose the trailer mash-up for The Officers' Club. I haven't been in the fandom for a particularly long time, but I haven't really seen too many others like it. Enjoy! K

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isC7PNZ297Y

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

I have a really hard time picking just one, as I'm rather attached to just about all of my stories, but for now I'll go with The Breath Between (http://shah-of-blah.livejournal.com/49966.html). Maybe just because it's the most recent, so it's closest to me. Doesn't hurt that it's my first completed multi-chapter fic in years.

[kag523.livejournal.com]

I really, really love that story of yours. Wow! :>)

[kag523.livejournal.com]

*phfft* Liar. This is just to get me to read it against my will. *flounces off* ;>)

[kag523.livejournal.com]

*thumbs up*

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hello ~ I went to Wikipedia to look up the meaning of "dark matter," and I decided to use some excerpts from that article as prompts for little drabbles about Kara and Lee from outsiders' points of view. I gather that the key to dark matter is that it cannot be directly observed, but its existence can be deduced because of the traces of attraction it leaves within galactic formations.

I have three little drabbles at the moment - I have to post the last one separately for length. Hope you enjoy!

~~

Dark Matter

As important as dark matter is believed to be in the universe, direct evidence of its existence and a concrete understanding of its nature have remained elusive.

Kara had been Sharon’s first real friend on Galactica. They’d come aboard only a month apart and learned the ropes together. With Starbuck, even getting lost in corridors for the fifth time could seem exciting. She had a fire inside that never quite burned out, but she’d been oddly subdued those first few months and something in Sharon’s silence had attracted her. There were no questions between them, after the first time. Three weeks in, Sharon had botched another landing and come to Kara for advice. Her face had gone completely white, and she’d stuttered, “I can’t help you.”

Instinctively, Sharon had caught her hand and whispered, “Hey, that’s okay. It’s okay.”

By the time the worlds ended, they knew each other pretty well. War changed everyone, but it didn’t change Kara in the ways Sharon would have expected. The constant rise and crash of adrenaline was there, of course, for all of them, bringing bad nights and drunk mornings and black-eyed exhaustion. But the battle seemed to bring healing alongside destruction – it was awakening Kara.

He was awakening Kara.

Lee Adama was hard to read, and from what Galen said he was a bit of a jerk. She hadn’t seen enough to decide for herself yet, but as a first impression, he reminded her of Starbuck. They both gave off an indefinable sense of lives lived beneath the surface. But not in a creepy way; whatever they kept under wraps was good. It just wasn’t something many would be allowed to see.

When they looked at each other, she could tell that they weren’t waiting for permission. Sharon didn’t know what Kara saw in him, but she knew it was keeping her friend alive – more alive than she’d ever been.

It was a comfort to believe in unseen beauty. Especially when every day she looked into the mirror she recognized less of her own reflection.

An important property of all dark matter is that it does not have any internal resistance.

“Were you close to Lieutenant Thrace?” Roslin asked.

“I’m close to all my pilots,” he said flatly.

That was the first time she realized.

She went aboard the Adamas’ ship to break their hearts and their resistance. She made them face the truth, and for the sake of the fleet they found the strength to lose.

When the time came to stage her own rebellion, she turned to the girl they couldn’t bear to leave behind and sent her away again. She prayed that she still had enough truth on her side to win this battle one more time. When Lee drew his sidearm and stepped alongside her, she finally felt certain she’d made the right choice. It gave her the courage to surrender.

An hour later, watching him scrub at the blood on his hands, she tried to apologize for all she’d taken from him.

“I didn’t do it for you,” he said, and she believed him.

When Lieutenant Thrace finally returned, she watched the first touch between them, warm and vital.

It gave her hope for the future she would never see.

~~

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hot and warm dark matter moves too quickly to stay together.

When Kara woke him, Sam snorted in a lungful of sand and spent the next few minutes trying to stop his convulsive coughs from escalating to something worse. He was hungover and sunburned and Kara was pulling at him and she wouldn’t stop talking. It was shaping up to be the worst morning since Caprica.

Then the phrase “marry me” bled through the haze, and nothing else mattered. He couldn’t believe it, but he never asked questions. They stumbled down to the river and she was clutching his hand so tight it made him think this was something she actually needed. He promised her everything, not quite sure he was really awake. She looked scared, but he figured that might be a good thing. Despite the crazy rush, this thing was for real.

He figured they didn’t need rings, but she capped that first weird week of aggressive affection with a trip to some artist friend with a set of dyes. She designed the tats herself, gorgeous arches of feather that looped into wings as they embraced.

It wasn’t until much later that he realized the symbol of their marriage should not have been flight.

By the time he saw who she’d been flying from, she’d left them both behind.

~~

Re: Playing Favorites

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, that is fantastic! What a great way to advertise your fic, too.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool, now I know where to start with Pilots Big Bang. Thank you. :)

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

That last line just about killed me. Wonderful.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Yay! Thank you :)

[lyras.livejournal.com]

When they looked at each other, she could tell that they weren’t waiting for permission.

Such an acute observation about their relationship. With each other, they don't wait.

These are all lovely! It's so interesting to think about how Lee and Kara might have been perceived, separately and together, by other characters.

Also, you have a way with last lines - they always pack a punch.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I'm so pleased you liked it, and I really enjoy outsider POVs, too.

Thanks for your comment on last lines! That's where I started with each of these, because I was hoping to tie the quotations to each individual narrator as well as to Kara and Lee. So I wanted to hint that Sharon's underlying nature remained elusive, as well as K/L's. And that Roslin's internal resistance, though strong in action (she led the mutiny) was weak individually (she was dying and K/L was part of a future she wouldn't see). And of course poor Sam couldn't keep up with Kara any more than Lee could.