delga | { Sarah Connor Chronicles: fic recs etc. }

I didn't know whether to do this by fandom or by author so I'm doing a mix of both. First up, Sarah Connor Chronicles. I'm actually posting all the fics that I liked enough to keep on my del.icio.us account, and not just the ones I've marked as recs because, well, I'd only have three. Also, I'd like to point out scc_fic, a comm for your ficcing needs. There's a range of stories available, and I found all of the below, bar two, via that comm. You may enjoy some of the things I was less enamoured of. (Note: UK viewers, the next episode to air will be 1x05, Queen's Gambit; I've marked spoilers on fics.)

primary recs.

in the border fires by trollprincess (Terminator/Supernatural, John/Sarah)

Her name is Sarah Connor, and when he tells her his name she gets that twinkle of amusement in her eyes that anyone who's ever handled a weapon tends to get. But instead of asking, "Like the gun?", she leans back on the small couch as her long light brown hair spills over her shoulder, then says, "Same name as my kid. Must be a sign."

John highly doubts that, because he believes in a lot of signs but not the kind that lead to this.

I know I've recced this before, but some of you won't have seen it. It was written pre-SCC but it fits both Hamilton and Headey's Sarah Connors. No spoilers for Supernatural. It's a story about parents of fated children; John Winchester has his secrets, but Sarah Connor has more. Their meeting is quick, heady and fragile. I found this fic whilst looking for Papa-Winchester-centric stories and read it without really knowing who the hell Sarah Connor was. I loved it then, and I love it even more now that I have a full grasp of canon. Wonderful idea, skilfully executed, and a wholly satisfying read.

how to change the world without even trying by bangles (pre-T2: Judgment Day, John Connor)

One of the SWAT cops has his mother pinned face down on the ground. The second cop handcuffs her. All the rest, except for one, keep their guns trained on her. Only one cop is holding John, and he doesn't use handcuffs, and no one's really looking at them, except of course for his mother. But she signaled to John to do nothing. So he does nothing. He has to just let them take her.

This fic is set a couple of years before T2: Judgment Day, following John from his mother's arrest and incarceration in Pescadero State Hospital to his life just before the second movie begins. It looks at how he went from a child who believed in everything his mother said to a child who thought she was as crazy as every one else seemed to think she was. It's quite a sad story, well-written, and embraces both the John we meet in T2 and the John we know in SCC.

ivory and ebony by

the_grynne (Sarah Connor Chronicles, future!fic, Cameron and John)

I did not hate, I did not fear. This I remember. I followed orders without question. If I am deceitful now, if I feel the strange uplifting of joy in victory, it is your work in me.

Cameron and future!John, paying chess, and learning; chess as a metaphor is established early on in Sarah Connor Chronicles.

the_grynne takes the idea of Cameron's hidden agenda and turns it into something reverential. There is something beautiful and haunting about Cameron's voice in this ficlet in which she is the product of both John's direct and indirect machinations.

thank god, it's fatal by

hackthis (Sarah Connor Chronicles)

The first thing Derek remembers about the post-apocalypse is the running. There was a lot of running. Mostly at night, mostly in the dark. It's hard to runover wreckage when there are massive planes and dead bodies scaring the crap out of you. Besides, Derek was a wrestler; he wasn't built for running. Kyle was though. Kyle was built for everything.

This fic can be described as "a short history of Derek Reese". It's the story of how normalcy was destroyed by the apocalypse; it's also a story about Derek and his brother, Derek and the machines. There are some wonderful moments in here, in line with the Derek we meet in the series finale, and also some wonderful lines which make you stop and think about Derek Reese as we know him.

the further I fall, I'm beside you by

kalesbohan (Sarah Connor Chronicles, future!fic, Cameron and John)

John knew, like he'd always known, that nothing he did to the timeline would make Cameron human or born of a mother. That didn't mean he cared less, invested less in her; it meant the opposite. Cameron was a bomb and catalyst thrown into his own past, her every fibre from long hair to tone of voice calculated to get a precise reaction and loyalty from his own self. She was calculated to devastate him.

More future!fic. (Minor spoilers for UK viewers: set post-1x05.) Cameron in canon sometimes does things that we as viewers find suspicious; this fic posits a theory about Cameron's secondary mission. It's an interesting look at future!John's psyche, and is quietly chilling, whilst maintaining the show's dark humour - Cameron's dialogue is especially on point.

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secondary recs.

our passenger by

trollprincess (Terminator/Firefly, Jayne/Sarah)

They pick her up on one of the border planets, a wiry hard-edged woman with a single bag of possessions and a battered hat that's seen better days, probably on the head of someone else. She assesses Serenity like she's looking for weak spots, and Jayne's pretty sure he's the only one aside from Zoe who can tell she's hiding more weapons on her body than he is.

What a pairing, seriously. Sarah finds herself in the 'verse and takes passage on Serenity. Her fleeting presence on board leads to a lusty encounter with Jayne before she leaves, still maintaining her mysterious aura. As with In the Border Fires, Sarah Connor is the mysterious and alluring outsider, leaving silence in her wake. I prefer the other fic because of the ways in which Sarah unknowingly mirrors John Winchester, but this one is also well-written, engaging and also amusing (how could it not be with Jayne?) There is a wonderful scene towards the end when the myth of John Connor comes to life, and surprisingly, the two fandoms come together really well.

double vision by

vaznetti (Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah Connor)

Sarah has not always found weapons beautiful. She can remember the early days, grit in her eyes, bones aching and hands blistered and her teachers shouting again and do it right, this time, and for fuck's sake, she was just a waitress, not some kind of hero. But there was John, and she didn't have time to care that she was tired, or couldn't get it right: she had to.

A tiny ficlet about Sarah Connor. The transformation of Sarah between The Terminator and Judgment Day is dramatic, and her trust of weapons is always polarised with her fear and hatred of the machines. Can she afford to trust Cameron?

What this fic doesn't quite do - possibly because it's about Sarah, and not about John - is take the next step in this thinking: Sarah doesn't trust the machines, but John does, and his affinity towards them may be the reason why he becomes the man people believe he will become.

maybe tomorrow by

hackthis (Cameron Phillips)

Terminators do not prevaricate. There are no half-truths. And yet, she is Cameron Philips and she is not. She is the soul of Cameron Philips; she is Cameron Phillips' brain. She looks like Cameron; she has seen the photos. She has had this conversation many times with John -- her John, not this John. She meant what she said to Sarah Connor -- this is not her John. Her John is different. Her John created her when she died.

This fic plays with the line between human machine as presented in Cameron Phillips, taking the idea that Cameron as a personality is something created by John Connor. In some ways it's similar to

the_grynne's fic that I recced above: Cameron as a product of John, and having pride in those origins. But in other ways, it's much looser.

hackthis's Cameron is humanised to a greater degree, is less majestic and awesome than

the_grynne's, and I think that's why I ultimately preferred the other fic. That said there's a lot going on here, and it's a good story with a satisfying end.

and so it went by

indiefic (Sarah Connor Chronicles)

Derek had his own non-Connor-sanctioned agenda – tracking down Andy Goode before he fucked the future for the entire human race. Billy Wisher had never been great at subterfuge. Andy Goode might as well have had a bullseye tattooed to his chest. Finding him, tracking him and - when it became apparent Sarah wasn't going to do it - killing him, was no obstacle. In fact, Andy was such an accommodating target, Derek barely needed to keep an eye on him. Which left him with a lot of free time.

I actually find aspects of this narration really creepy, and I don't know if that's a reflection of Derek's voice, or if it's just an unintentional by-product of how the author has written him. It follows Derek after he makes the jump back, through to the events of 1x07, and sets up a dark relationship between him and Sarah. The narrative swings between Derek's appreciation for the time he has jumped into (that's a wonderful section, a strong part of the fic) and his reaction to Sarah Connor.

The author tries very hard to establish Sarah's hard/soft duality but at times it sounds like Derek is making excuses about his attraction to her, or excuses for her. I don't know. There's some sort of mediation between Derek's voice and what we actually know from canon, and I don't know if I find it a redundant description of Sarah, or an inadequate one. (I think

trollprincess does a better job at visualising Sarah Connor as the 'other' in her fics.)

Ultimately, I liked parts of it, and wasn't sold on other parts. But the ideas are certainly compelling.

acting human by

psycholizard (Sarah Connor Chronicles, post-ep)

Cameron. That’s what it called itself. He almost laughed at the absurdity of a machine having such a human attribute as a name. The name itself was ambiguous, neither male nor female much like the machine itself. It may have taken the form of a human girl, but it wasn’t. It was just a cold scrap of metal with a moniker attached to it that meant nothing.

After this episode aired there was a flurry of what was Derek thinking? fics, wholly unsurprising as the closing scene was so beautiful and so intriguing. This is one of the more successful ones, I think, in terms of portraying the continuing distrust that we see in Derek. What it possibly lacks is the strong emotionality of Derek's reaction to the dance, but it's still well-written and executed.

/dev/null by

rez_lo (Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron)

She runs, endoskeleton pushing against the earth with tensile strength that powers the body forward like a bullet chased by expanding gas. With her left hand she shields Him. With her right she grabs at air solid as an iron bar, takes the illusion of torque and uses it to hurl them another stride over the surface. Again. And repeat. Her lungs take in the whole sky and breathe it back out; her heart pumps an ocean of blood.

Cameron, the machine. She's so fascinating precisely because in questioning her construction we're actively questioning what makes us human (hence the new BSG's success, at least partially). The imagery here is sharp and intricate; Cameron is all machine this time around, all mechanics and code. What I found really interesting was the use of Him. There are a lot of biblical parallels to be made with the Terminator franchise, but unlike

the_grynne's fic,

rez_lo's lacks the open reverence. Instead the idea of John as creator is overwhelming, and this fic (for me) strongly evokes the idea of the fall of man. Well worth your time. I can't remember why this isn't marked as a primary rec. Possibly I felt it too intricate on first reading, but looking at it again, I think that intricacy is essential. So.

binary sounds like morse code by

fryadvocate (Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron)

She understood time as something that occurred all at once. Everything that occurred after John sent back the T-800 had already occurred as soon as, before, after he sent the machine back.

John said, "Now we see what changes."

The bunker shook and someone came in with a report, didn't even glance at her. She was void. Time did not move linearly, she understood. Time shifted like a wave, all molecules moving at once and subsiding. Sending Reese back had not stopped the war, it had guaranteed it.

This one is difficult to read but I recommend persevering with the 'code' format because it's quite important. It's a striking piece, powerful in its implications for Cameron's ability to learn and adapt. Following Cameron in her trajectory from future to past and then forwards to the future again, we watch as she adapts to circumstance, and how she comes to trust John (which is contrary to nearly every other fic on their relationship).

The only reason this is in the secondary recs rather than the primary ones is because conceptually it's a little tough. But I think that it's worth the effort.

and the things that keep us alive keep us alone by

arewewinning (

stateofsoul) (pre-T2: Judgment Day through past Sarah Connor Chronicles; Sarah, John.)

Later that night, she asked him why he wandered off and her son tilted his head against his pillow, met her gaze, and rolled his eyes in her general direction even as sleep worked to pull him away from her.

"I didn't. I couldn't find you so I had to wait until you found me."

And past the tears she hadn't shed yet, she was smiling.

A fic about John Connor and his life as he knows it. The John we know, the one we're introduced to in Sarah Connor Chronicles is in many ways plagued by inadequacy and by the burden of his future, his supposed destiny, and it makes for a tired figure. I don't know if I'm the only one but I think that future!John, far from being all-knowing and finally accepting of his role, is probably still scared shitless and so, so tired. Whilst some of the resistance fighters probably wonder at his secrecy (thus buoying the myth of John Connor) the man himself must be an exhausted figure, at times trapped by his past. John Connor, like his mother, only goes forward.

But anyway, this fic is a series of 'scenes' from throughout John's life, charting his development. There are moments of doubt, there are moments of clarity; John is a character in flux, regardless of what he's told the future will be. I like the idea a lot, and I enjoyed the fic.

There's an implicit idea that Sarah's absence is filled by Cameron, but it's not taken anywhere, and I felt that whilst the fic is very good as it stands, it's ending was lacking in some way. Not because it's quiet open - I don't mind that at all - but because I don't know what I was supposed to take away from it. I think it's one that people will like, though, because the vignette-style is neatly executed, and it's emotionally compelling.

--

There's this wonderful line in Heavy Metal when Sarah is losing her nut over John's escapades and Cameron offers, "John does these things sometimes." John does these things. Part of his skill, then, his charm maybe, is his ability to take risks. There are some powerful moments in the episode, and the re-watch was beneficial.

One of the things that makes Cameron especially difficult, I think, and that the show takes pains to remind us is that she is actually a concept that we as viewers - as humans - have devised. We have a concept of Cameron onto which we project narrative whilst Cameron is actually just the skin that covers the TOK715. And we, like John, become attached to that skin. The show is clever, though, because it doesn't really let us forget that machine aspect of the character. (Well, until it's useful to them.) That scene in The Demon Hand where Cameron walks away from the dancer and her brother is a sharp reminder that we are more invested in Cameron than the TOK715 is in us (or, you know, John). What I wanted to convey in Tin Girl wasn't just a rationalisation of Cameron's change in behaviour but also her lack of emotionality towards John beyond her objective. Future!John is reluctant to send her back; Cameron only knows that that's what she has to do. I really wanted to bring up the duality between human and machine in her but I wasn't too successful, both due to my own inability to convey my intentions, and the word limit. There was supposed to be a scene where future!John actually starts constructing Cameron's 'cover' the way they do in Spooks but I had to cut it for the word count. The intention was to show that Cameron, as we know her, exists only because she is created by us. We respond to her as a human and not as a piece of machinery because she is designed to produce empathy in us. Even in writing her we forget that. A lot of the fandom is invested in making Cameron more than a machine. Which is great, actually, I love that a hell of a lot, but I think a lot of the time we're deceiving ourselves and buying into 'her' deceit, an idea which - when I can actually get my head around it - is wonderfully ironic.

The beauty of Sarah - what makes her the mother and not the saviour - is that she cannot bridge that gap between human and machine, but it doesn't stop her. To some extent she is defined by the human/machine dichotomy, and because she - like John - can only ever go forward, she is somewhat trapped in the cycle of the next eventuality. John can bridge that gap and it is both his gift and his destruction (see the exposition in T3: Rise of the Machines). But Sarah's strength is in faith. She loves her son, yes, but she has faith in what Kyle Reese told her. She's buoying between inevitables - flexible inevitbles, but that's the paradox of her life. The T-100, T-101, T-800, T-888, Derek, Cameron, the resistance fighters, Kyle - all these characters go forwards to come back, come back to go forwards, and they exercise influence on destinies beyond their own. They're tapped in the rubric of their quest. But Sarah is trapped in the rubric of her son's mythology which she eventually becomes a part of. And I don't know, I love her for it, because she doesn't know what's coming next. She doesn't get to the destination until she's living it, and there's no reset button for her. I think, paradoxically, Sarah and John are the only ones with any real control over their conditions because they are the only ones who are walking into the unknown. The ones that come back, there's a sense in which they don't really understand what they're doing. Kyle Reese is the only one to even come close: One possible future. From your point of view. They're not going forward into a known: it's just much clearer to Sarah and John, and it makes them more flexible. It makes John more flexible.

Alternatively, the above is bollocks, but I wanted to talk it through somewhere.

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New New Amsterdam today. Hurrah!

planning the revolution

(crying about it)

{ Sarah Connor Chronicles: fic recs etc. }

{ Sarah Connor Chronicles: fic recs etc. }

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