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Come away, o human child
This has been sitting on my hard drive waiting to get posted for over a week. So, I suppose, if not now, when? If I can spend all day arguing with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stellar_dust about how Stargate coordinates work, surely I have nothing to be afraid of in wibbling about Daniel.
I don't know why I'm so very Stargate-focussed right now. But I've been thinking about Daniel, and the last two story-arcs of Season 8, and how there's lots of good Moebius-fic out there already, but I almost think "Threads" is even *more* evocative and full of Daniel-pain-and-world-warpingness. Of course, taking the two events one-after-the-other makes it even worse, but the Daniel that will be in Season 9 didn't get years of alone-time in Egypt to deal with the emotional fallout of "Threads". And there's been lots of lovely woobie!Daniel fic about Moebius, but I haven't seen anything referencing "Threads."
I tried to say most of this in Alchemy, but of course that fic was so excessively cold-and-prickly that you pretty much would have to be reading my mind to get the whole point.julad's Cold Prickly vs. Warm Fuzzy theory and the following discussions has really helped me define a lot about the way I write, because I'm so far on the CP side most of the time that you need a polarizing microscope just to *see* the emotion. So let this be a demonstration of the way my mind works: I shall unpack a small part of the emotional intensity that was meant to come through in a thousand-word ficlet into 1500 words of meta, and still manage to not say anything explicit about feelings.
Usually, you see, I try to write my character-thoughts into fic, but that becomes a problem when you're cold-prickly and a central point of your characterization is that the character would *never* talk about it. Because my Daniel doesn't talk about feelings or relationships, except in two ways. He'll talk about his own emotions in the same way as *every* fictional foster-kid I've ever encountered, which is to say just enough to convince all concerned parties that he's fine, really; and he'll talk about other people's feelings, or psychology in the abstract, as long as it's with the clear understanding that it's not about him1. Actually, I'd love to see Moebius!Daniel making friends with Dorkverse!Jack, because the only place I can really believe him opening up at this point in his arc, short of a deus-ex-cliche, is talking with a Jack who partakes of the essential Jackness that brought them together, but doesn't carry all their history and baggage, and isn't so badly in need of healing himself, and is safely married to Sam, and therefore won't get *too* attached.
Because Daniel doesn't get attached. He can drop everything on a moment's notice, leave everyone, never come back. That's what he *does*-- I mean, obviously that's what he does by choosing to stay on Abydos with Shau'ri, but he made the same choice when he went with Catherine, and even the same choice when he gave his original paper about the pyramids. You see it again and again in the early episodes, from "Torment of Tantalus" to "The Serpent's Lair," to "Forever in a Day." He's very *loyal*-- once he's made an oath or pledge of friendship to someone, even implicit, he'll move heavens and earths for them, literally-- but he really won't miss them terribly if he chooses to move on. Or if *they* choose to. (cf "Crystal Skull". Actually I could go on for ages about Crystal Skulls and Daddy issues and Anna Mitchell-Hedges, but I won't).
As the seasons go on and the story progresses, he does the wanting-to-leave thing less and less. Maybe it started with Sha're and Kasuf and Abydos, and his guilt over what happened, when he left them behind after they had formally adoped him; it's definitely at least part Jack, who has no problem whatever with showing his feelings, trying to teach Daniel over and over that he's needed where he is, and that normal people don't decide on a day's notice to strand themselves the other side of the galaxy. That's a large part of the Jack&Daniel arc, I think most of us would agree, Jack trying to tie Daniel more securely to Earth, and the team, and him; it's something that's been worked over ad absurdum in fanfic. Daniel says, "Of course I love you, Jack, but I'll still love you even if I'm half a galaxy away and I never see you again, why are you getting upset?" and Jack says "I need you *here*," without bothering to turn his head, and Daniel blinks and says "O-kay," and stays. Because he does love Jack. And he wants to need Jack and the team the same way they need him. But he doesn't really get it.
And then we come to "Meridian". And it probably warps my interpretation here that I've never actually seen Meridian (or, in fact, most of Daniel's ascension arc - the luck of the Sci-Fi channel means I've seen pretty much everything up through "Summit", and everything after "Heroes", but almost nothing in between), although I've read all the relevant transcripts. So I'm free to imagine Daniel's death of radiation sickness as being exactly like Spock's, right down to the touching scene through the glass wall. But unlike Spock, he chooses to move on (instead of clinging desperately to his T'hy'la at the risk of driving them both mad, like Spock did): and Jack *lets him go*.
So, yay. He gets to swan around and be glowy and detached for awhile and do meaning-of-life stuff and help people without ever actually, you know, *touching* them. And then he gets de-Ascended and loses his memory and they find him living among nomads on a faraway planet, and nobody knows *why*.
Here's where I run into my lack-of-canon-experience, because I'm not sure how much this was brought out in the show and how much of it is fanon, but it seems to have been assumed by everyone that the reason he came back was that he found out that he couldn't *do* that clinically-detached look-but-don't-touch thing. That he kept trying and needing to help his teammates and be with his family and he was willing to break rules right and left to do it, and in the end he chose to give up Ascension because he could not leave his team behind, because he realized that he had made a mistake in trying to move on alone, because he *needed* to be with them.
Which is, after all, both the simplest and happiest explanation. And I think that is what he believed, or at least convinced himself he believed, and it's what the others believed, too. And I think he liked knowing that, that he finally had *proof* that he loved them as much as they loved him, that he wasn't going to choose to leave any more. By the time I came in on S7, he seemed so much more comfortable with his place than, really, he ever had before, and it comes out especially in S8, especially with the they-are-so-married routine that everybody's commented on. (Particularly in "Prometheus Unbound"-- is it even possible to watch that episode without getting that Jack and Daniel are married?) The ongoing banter about Daniel wanting to go to Atlantis is a good example, I think: they're both confident that no matter how much Daniel wants to go, he's going to stay with Jack, because he made his choice in "Fallen". Earlier neither of them would have been blase enough to joke about Daniel leaving.
And then we come to "Threads", and Daniel finally learns the real reason he came down from Ascension. And, as Jim said (and oh my it amuses me endlessly that Anubis's avatar is basically Jim Andrews from Doonesbury), he gave up "all the knowledge and power in the galaxy" not "to fight for humanity any way he could", or to be with his friends again, or even as punishment for breaking the rules-- he chose to leave, to leave all that behind, just because he was really pissed off at Oma, for hiding things and breaking the rules. And letting her own massive personal issues get in the way of doing what had to be done, which is something that *never* stopped him. He didn't come back because he loved his friends, he came back because the Ancients are a bunch of sanctimonious hypocritical bastards and Daniel is already better with doing the helpful noninterference thing than they are, because he doesn't get attached.2 He's still the same guy who decided to leave Jack in "Meridian". Suddenly, he no longer has the proof he thought he had that he loves them enough. The knowledge that let him integrate back into his place at the SGC so easily, the proof that he belonged, was based on a false assumption all along.
That's the Daniel we're left with at the end of S8. That's also the Daniel who survived years alone in Egypt with his team dead and his world gone, and was able to greet the return of his dead friends with nothing but competence and dry sarcasm. We haven't seen much of post-Threads Daniel in our timeline yet, but I'm interested to see how it plays out. Especially since it probably won't play out in canon in any obvious way-- *Daniel* sure as heck isn't going to talk about it voluntarily, and Jack's not going to be around much to draw it out of him, but I'm expecting that we'll see him becoming more and more distant again as the old SG1 falls apart. (Of course, I liked xf s9, too.)
I can't bring any of that out in fic, because my Daniel is afraid that if he tries to deal with any of it, he'll lose it altogether. So I can only talk about through a short, heavily elided piece like "Alchemy", or something very long and involved, which takes me forever. Which I guess is why I really want somebody to write some nice fuzzy fanfic and fix him for me. Please?
1The extent to which this essay is me acting out the same tendency is a judgement left to the reader q:
2I should probably note here as a PSA that I 'ship Moebius!Daniel with pre-Ascended Oma.
stellar_dust about how Stargate coordinates work, surely I have nothing to be afraid of in wibbling about Daniel.I don't know why I'm so very Stargate-focussed right now. But I've been thinking about Daniel, and the last two story-arcs of Season 8, and how there's lots of good Moebius-fic out there already, but I almost think "Threads" is even *more* evocative and full of Daniel-pain-and-world-warpingness. Of course, taking the two events one-after-the-other makes it even worse, but the Daniel that will be in Season 9 didn't get years of alone-time in Egypt to deal with the emotional fallout of "Threads". And there's been lots of lovely woobie!Daniel fic about Moebius, but I haven't seen anything referencing "Threads."
I tried to say most of this in Alchemy, but of course that fic was so excessively cold-and-prickly that you pretty much would have to be reading my mind to get the whole point.
julad's Cold Prickly vs. Warm Fuzzy theory and the following discussions has really helped me define a lot about the way I write, because I'm so far on the CP side most of the time that you need a polarizing microscope just to *see* the emotion. So let this be a demonstration of the way my mind works: I shall unpack a small part of the emotional intensity that was meant to come through in a thousand-word ficlet into 1500 words of meta, and still manage to not say anything explicit about feelings.Usually, you see, I try to write my character-thoughts into fic, but that becomes a problem when you're cold-prickly and a central point of your characterization is that the character would *never* talk about it. Because my Daniel doesn't talk about feelings or relationships, except in two ways. He'll talk about his own emotions in the same way as *every* fictional foster-kid I've ever encountered, which is to say just enough to convince all concerned parties that he's fine, really; and he'll talk about other people's feelings, or psychology in the abstract, as long as it's with the clear understanding that it's not about him1. Actually, I'd love to see Moebius!Daniel making friends with Dorkverse!Jack, because the only place I can really believe him opening up at this point in his arc, short of a deus-ex-cliche, is talking with a Jack who partakes of the essential Jackness that brought them together, but doesn't carry all their history and baggage, and isn't so badly in need of healing himself, and is safely married to Sam, and therefore won't get *too* attached.
Because Daniel doesn't get attached. He can drop everything on a moment's notice, leave everyone, never come back. That's what he *does*-- I mean, obviously that's what he does by choosing to stay on Abydos with Shau'ri, but he made the same choice when he went with Catherine, and even the same choice when he gave his original paper about the pyramids. You see it again and again in the early episodes, from "Torment of Tantalus" to "The Serpent's Lair," to "Forever in a Day." He's very *loyal*-- once he's made an oath or pledge of friendship to someone, even implicit, he'll move heavens and earths for them, literally-- but he really won't miss them terribly if he chooses to move on. Or if *they* choose to. (cf "Crystal Skull". Actually I could go on for ages about Crystal Skulls and Daddy issues and Anna Mitchell-Hedges, but I won't).
As the seasons go on and the story progresses, he does the wanting-to-leave thing less and less. Maybe it started with Sha're and Kasuf and Abydos, and his guilt over what happened, when he left them behind after they had formally adoped him; it's definitely at least part Jack, who has no problem whatever with showing his feelings, trying to teach Daniel over and over that he's needed where he is, and that normal people don't decide on a day's notice to strand themselves the other side of the galaxy. That's a large part of the Jack&Daniel arc, I think most of us would agree, Jack trying to tie Daniel more securely to Earth, and the team, and him; it's something that's been worked over ad absurdum in fanfic. Daniel says, "Of course I love you, Jack, but I'll still love you even if I'm half a galaxy away and I never see you again, why are you getting upset?" and Jack says "I need you *here*," without bothering to turn his head, and Daniel blinks and says "O-kay," and stays. Because he does love Jack. And he wants to need Jack and the team the same way they need him. But he doesn't really get it.
And then we come to "Meridian". And it probably warps my interpretation here that I've never actually seen Meridian (or, in fact, most of Daniel's ascension arc - the luck of the Sci-Fi channel means I've seen pretty much everything up through "Summit", and everything after "Heroes", but almost nothing in between), although I've read all the relevant transcripts. So I'm free to imagine Daniel's death of radiation sickness as being exactly like Spock's, right down to the touching scene through the glass wall. But unlike Spock, he chooses to move on (instead of clinging desperately to his T'hy'la at the risk of driving them both mad, like Spock did): and Jack *lets him go*.
So, yay. He gets to swan around and be glowy and detached for awhile and do meaning-of-life stuff and help people without ever actually, you know, *touching* them. And then he gets de-Ascended and loses his memory and they find him living among nomads on a faraway planet, and nobody knows *why*.
Here's where I run into my lack-of-canon-experience, because I'm not sure how much this was brought out in the show and how much of it is fanon, but it seems to have been assumed by everyone that the reason he came back was that he found out that he couldn't *do* that clinically-detached look-but-don't-touch thing. That he kept trying and needing to help his teammates and be with his family and he was willing to break rules right and left to do it, and in the end he chose to give up Ascension because he could not leave his team behind, because he realized that he had made a mistake in trying to move on alone, because he *needed* to be with them.
Which is, after all, both the simplest and happiest explanation. And I think that is what he believed, or at least convinced himself he believed, and it's what the others believed, too. And I think he liked knowing that, that he finally had *proof* that he loved them as much as they loved him, that he wasn't going to choose to leave any more. By the time I came in on S7, he seemed so much more comfortable with his place than, really, he ever had before, and it comes out especially in S8, especially with the they-are-so-married routine that everybody's commented on. (Particularly in "Prometheus Unbound"-- is it even possible to watch that episode without getting that Jack and Daniel are married?) The ongoing banter about Daniel wanting to go to Atlantis is a good example, I think: they're both confident that no matter how much Daniel wants to go, he's going to stay with Jack, because he made his choice in "Fallen". Earlier neither of them would have been blase enough to joke about Daniel leaving.
And then we come to "Threads", and Daniel finally learns the real reason he came down from Ascension. And, as Jim said (and oh my it amuses me endlessly that Anubis's avatar is basically Jim Andrews from Doonesbury), he gave up "all the knowledge and power in the galaxy" not "to fight for humanity any way he could", or to be with his friends again, or even as punishment for breaking the rules-- he chose to leave, to leave all that behind, just because he was really pissed off at Oma, for hiding things and breaking the rules. And letting her own massive personal issues get in the way of doing what had to be done, which is something that *never* stopped him. He didn't come back because he loved his friends, he came back because the Ancients are a bunch of sanctimonious hypocritical bastards and Daniel is already better with doing the helpful noninterference thing than they are, because he doesn't get attached.2 He's still the same guy who decided to leave Jack in "Meridian". Suddenly, he no longer has the proof he thought he had that he loves them enough. The knowledge that let him integrate back into his place at the SGC so easily, the proof that he belonged, was based on a false assumption all along.
That's the Daniel we're left with at the end of S8. That's also the Daniel who survived years alone in Egypt with his team dead and his world gone, and was able to greet the return of his dead friends with nothing but competence and dry sarcasm. We haven't seen much of post-Threads Daniel in our timeline yet, but I'm interested to see how it plays out. Especially since it probably won't play out in canon in any obvious way-- *Daniel* sure as heck isn't going to talk about it voluntarily, and Jack's not going to be around much to draw it out of him, but I'm expecting that we'll see him becoming more and more distant again as the old SG1 falls apart. (Of course, I liked xf s9, too.)
I can't bring any of that out in fic, because my Daniel is afraid that if he tries to deal with any of it, he'll lose it altogether. So I can only talk about through a short, heavily elided piece like "Alchemy", or something very long and involved, which takes me forever. Which I guess is why I really want somebody to write some nice fuzzy fanfic and fix him for me. Please?
1The extent to which this essay is me acting out the same tendency is a judgement left to the reader q:
2I should probably note here as a PSA that I 'ship Moebius!Daniel with pre-Ascended Oma.
no subject
And I'm particularly fond of cold/prickly writing.
Wow - now I know exactly which eps to show you first when you get here, the Ascension arc and the replicator origin. Cool! Because I was going to make you choose. d-:
*ponder* I think you should friend