beatrice_otter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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crack_van2010-06-16 07:13 pm
beatrice_otter) wrote in crack_van2010-06-16 07:13 pm
Entry tags:
and besides you breathe differently down here by inlovewithnight (G)
Fandom: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Pairing: Six
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inlovewithnight
Author Website: Fic Index
Why this must be read:
This is, bar none, my absolute favorite BSG fic ever. It's about a Six (which one, we're never told) who is sent to study Human stories, two years before the end of the world. It's about the dangers of literature. It's about the power of language. It's about having your world turned upside down. It's about growing beyond what you could have understood before. And it's about the creepy downside of Cylon unity and love, the threat of boxing that hangs over anyone who might wish to break with the status quo. It is a powerful story, told with elegance and understatement.
For her part toward victory, she sits in endless lectures and bends her head over countless books. Certain classes are required, most of them pointless. The human grasp of history is rooted in perversions and lies. Their politics are incomprehensible, meaningless, or appalling, depending on the text she reads and the tone the instructor takes. Their science, their mathematics, both can be dismissed out of hand. And their religion--the falsehoods and absurdities there are simply too much to be borne, and she quickly stops attending. She doesn't actually require the degree, after all. And within a few years this will all be rendered equally meaningless, their false gods and cruel ideas all wiped clean from the universe.
The classes that she permits to hold her attention are those relevant to her assignment; the human culture, their stories, the things they tell one another to keep the dark back and pretend there is significance to their lives. Their literature, poetry, drama, art. These are puzzling things--lies that are called lies, unlike the history and politics shelved alongside them, and yet valued just as much.
Valued more, to some. She sits far in the back of one of the drafty classrooms, the collar of her uniform turned up high, and watches the instructor pace back and forth. "This is what we will be remembered for," he declares, raising a book high above his head. "Not our laws, not our buildings, not our military, not the frakking Pyramid scores. Use your minds! Open them! Open your eyes! In a dozen generations, this is what your descendents will think of when they think of our time! This! These words!"
She looks down at the text in her hands, a copy of the one he praises so highly. It is a slim volume, bound in blue, unremarkable. Poetry, and a few prose essays, the work of a woman from Tauron. An unremarkable woman, as far as she knows, born and died without fanfare, this book a posthumous legacy. The assignment is to read it for the subsequent class. She hasn't yet opened the cover. It must be remarkable indeed if it could last a dozen generations from now.
Except that there won't be a dozen more generations, she reminds herself, dropping the book to her lap again. There will not even be a single generation. There will be fiery death, and God's plan, only those. These words will be forgotten, whatever they are.
and besides you breathe differently down here
Pairing: Six
Author on LJ:
inlovewithnight Author Website: Fic Index
Why this must be read:
This is, bar none, my absolute favorite BSG fic ever. It's about a Six (which one, we're never told) who is sent to study Human stories, two years before the end of the world. It's about the dangers of literature. It's about the power of language. It's about having your world turned upside down. It's about growing beyond what you could have understood before. And it's about the creepy downside of Cylon unity and love, the threat of boxing that hangs over anyone who might wish to break with the status quo. It is a powerful story, told with elegance and understatement.
For her part toward victory, she sits in endless lectures and bends her head over countless books. Certain classes are required, most of them pointless. The human grasp of history is rooted in perversions and lies. Their politics are incomprehensible, meaningless, or appalling, depending on the text she reads and the tone the instructor takes. Their science, their mathematics, both can be dismissed out of hand. And their religion--the falsehoods and absurdities there are simply too much to be borne, and she quickly stops attending. She doesn't actually require the degree, after all. And within a few years this will all be rendered equally meaningless, their false gods and cruel ideas all wiped clean from the universe.
The classes that she permits to hold her attention are those relevant to her assignment; the human culture, their stories, the things they tell one another to keep the dark back and pretend there is significance to their lives. Their literature, poetry, drama, art. These are puzzling things--lies that are called lies, unlike the history and politics shelved alongside them, and yet valued just as much.
Valued more, to some. She sits far in the back of one of the drafty classrooms, the collar of her uniform turned up high, and watches the instructor pace back and forth. "This is what we will be remembered for," he declares, raising a book high above his head. "Not our laws, not our buildings, not our military, not the frakking Pyramid scores. Use your minds! Open them! Open your eyes! In a dozen generations, this is what your descendents will think of when they think of our time! This! These words!"
She looks down at the text in her hands, a copy of the one he praises so highly. It is a slim volume, bound in blue, unremarkable. Poetry, and a few prose essays, the work of a woman from Tauron. An unremarkable woman, as far as she knows, born and died without fanfare, this book a posthumous legacy. The assignment is to read it for the subsequent class. She hasn't yet opened the cover. It must be remarkable indeed if it could last a dozen generations from now.
Except that there won't be a dozen more generations, she reminds herself, dropping the book to her lap again. There will not even be a single generation. There will be fiery death, and God's plan, only those. These words will be forgotten, whatever they are.
and besides you breathe differently down here