ext_72244 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
millari.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
crack_van2009-01-28 12:41 pm
millari.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2009-01-28 12:41 pm
Entry tags:
Against All Others, by prolix_allie. Rated PG.
Fandom: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 2003
Pairing: Cally/Chief Tyrol
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prolix_allie
Author's website: Author's LJ
Why this must be read: After the Kobol Arc in Season 2, I was never as much of a fan of Cally. In my eyes, she had stopped being a spunky firecracker and more of a ticking time-bomb of fury that I would not trust with my teeth, dental school or no. :) Really, after she shot Boomer, I felt she was written as more slavishly tied to the Chief and full of anger I found hard to digest, much less sympathize with. This fic, written just about a year ago for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bsg_hiatusthon, made me take a second look at Cally.
It's a study on Cally and Galen's marriage, but really mostly about Cally, with some very believable created backstory about her lost family on Aerelon (which we know nothing about) that explains a lot about her perspective and personality. Here, Cally's pugnacious attitude makes sense when you cast her as the youngest child (and only girl) in a tight-knit, working-class family of eight children. As someone who has had to tussle for every scrap divided amongst her and her seven brothers, who learned fighting as a technique for drawing boundaries around her own self-identity, fighting has become an irrevocable part of Cally's landscape and in her mind, doesn't affect the basic stability of trusted relationships. This fic quietly posits that part of Galen and Cally's marriage troubles probably originates from this essential difference in how they view familial conflict.
What sucked me into this fic was how it made Cally's fiercer qualities seem more understandable and even at times admirable. Still, it doesn't pull punches about Cally's priorities, about her black-and-white thinking, or the choices she's made since the Apocalypse. Also, hanging over this fic is the elephant in the room that Cally doesn't yet know about: Her husband is a Cylon. This gives the fic an extra cringing irony and pathos, as Cally reflects on the troubled satisfaction she gets from the little family she's carved out with Tyrol, not knowing it will be soon ripped away from her.
The universe might be a hard place, but she'd never face it alone. And then the Cylons had done in a few hours what fate and nature on their own could never have managed, and Cally thought she'd never have that feeling of being on the inside again. The deck crew was a kind of family. Hell, the human race was a kind of family now. But it wasn't the same. And then she had stared at the Chief through a haze of pain and drugs and heard him say that what he'd done was unforgivable, and had the wind knocked out of her again when she realized that he was right, and she forgave him anyway, and realized that she had found it again.
So first there was her family, her husband and son, against everyone else.
Against All Others
Pairing: Cally/Chief Tyrol
Author on LJ:
prolix_allieAuthor's website: Author's LJ
Why this must be read: After the Kobol Arc in Season 2, I was never as much of a fan of Cally. In my eyes, she had stopped being a spunky firecracker and more of a ticking time-bomb of fury that I would not trust with my teeth, dental school or no. :) Really, after she shot Boomer, I felt she was written as more slavishly tied to the Chief and full of anger I found hard to digest, much less sympathize with. This fic, written just about a year ago for
bsg_hiatusthon, made me take a second look at Cally. It's a study on Cally and Galen's marriage, but really mostly about Cally, with some very believable created backstory about her lost family on Aerelon (which we know nothing about) that explains a lot about her perspective and personality. Here, Cally's pugnacious attitude makes sense when you cast her as the youngest child (and only girl) in a tight-knit, working-class family of eight children. As someone who has had to tussle for every scrap divided amongst her and her seven brothers, who learned fighting as a technique for drawing boundaries around her own self-identity, fighting has become an irrevocable part of Cally's landscape and in her mind, doesn't affect the basic stability of trusted relationships. This fic quietly posits that part of Galen and Cally's marriage troubles probably originates from this essential difference in how they view familial conflict.
What sucked me into this fic was how it made Cally's fiercer qualities seem more understandable and even at times admirable. Still, it doesn't pull punches about Cally's priorities, about her black-and-white thinking, or the choices she's made since the Apocalypse. Also, hanging over this fic is the elephant in the room that Cally doesn't yet know about: Her husband is a Cylon. This gives the fic an extra cringing irony and pathos, as Cally reflects on the troubled satisfaction she gets from the little family she's carved out with Tyrol, not knowing it will be soon ripped away from her.
The universe might be a hard place, but she'd never face it alone. And then the Cylons had done in a few hours what fate and nature on their own could never have managed, and Cally thought she'd never have that feeling of being on the inside again. The deck crew was a kind of family. Hell, the human race was a kind of family now. But it wasn't the same. And then she had stared at the Chief through a haze of pain and drugs and heard him say that what he'd done was unforgivable, and had the wind knocked out of her again when she realized that he was right, and she forgave him anyway, and realized that she had found it again.
So first there was her family, her husband and son, against everyone else.
Against All Others