sholio | Completed WIP: The Light of a Fading Sun

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fanfic:sga

Completed WIP: The Light of a Fading Sun

It's done. THANK GOODNESS. And thank you so much to

kodiak_bear for beta-editing and general hand-holding. They really went above and beyond the call of beta duty on this one, particularly when I started going into stressed-out OMG I WILL STILL BE WRITING THIS STORY WHEN I'M 95 mode towards the end.

Title: The Light of a Fading Sun
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: A strong T/PG-13 (language, violence)
Spoilers: Through "Sunday". Huge ones for that episode, several big ones for previous eps from all three seasons.
Summary: Perhaps the only thing worse than blowing up 5/6 of a solar system is not blowing it up at all. A long, somewhat dark AU in which the characters drift apart following the Siege -- but the events on Doranda will have far-ranging and unexpected consequences. And theirs will not be the only universe affected.

This is a trifle bleaker than my usual fare ... but give it a chance; you may be surprised.

Link to my website: http://friendshipper.laylalawlor.com/fadingsun.shtml
Link to ff.net: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3407293/1/

ETA:

alena_malfoy made FADING SUN FANART! *squees* It is here! No spoilers for the story (but lots of pretty).

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I'm already on chapter 6 and *wibble* oh John! oh Rodney! oh John! oh Rodney!

I should totally be hauled in for gratuitous John and Rodney abuse in this story! Multiple counts too!

Thanks; glad you're enjoying it! (if "enjoying" is quite the right word for what I put them through in this one...)

JOHN'S HAIR!!! You beast!

I always get a little leary when I see those 'dark AU' warnings, but this is fantastic. You led up to the reveal about the alternate universe really well and presented a frightening but absolutely conceivable exploration of how things might have gone wrong, if just a few things had gone differently along the way.

I absolutely love your Sheppard and Rodney. You've really captured their canon relationship - they care so much about each other but would really rather eat shards of glass than admit it to anyone, let alone each other. But their actions show the truth, time and again. :D

It'll grow back! I swear!

Thank you so much! I wasn't quite sure how to describe the story accurately without scaring people away, because it *is* dark and it *is* bleak ... but it doesn't exactly stay that way.

"would rather eat shards of broken glass" ... SO TRUE! But they're willing to do pretty much anything for each other, regardless. And we love them for it!

Words can't express how much I loved it, I thought the alt-sheppard was kind of creepy actually, but then he redeemed himself :D Also, I loved the Rodney/Ronon bits to pieces, and the Doranda twist made me hurt for poor Rodney *clutch him to chest*

I have to admit I read the first chapter a while ago, and stopped. Then, a friend of mine, who is not as flighty as me, finished reading it then proceeded to hit me over the head and make me read it too, and man am I glad she did :) I then read the whole thing in one go then went and made a fanart *blinks blearily at screen*

Anyway, I'll be going to sleep now, seeing as it's 1:00am and I have to be up in 6 hours :) Also, I've posted the fanart to my journal here (http://alena-malfoy.livejournal.com/4061.html#cutid1), if you want to take a look :)

OMG FANART! *squees* That's gorgeous! And awesome! Thank you so much! *squees again* I hope you don't mind if I edit in a link to it?

I'm glad you went ahead and read it -- and liked it! I was worried that people wouldn't be able to make it past the depressing first couple of chapters to the less depressing part. Thank you for reading, and for letting me know. And for the art! *squees some more*

Just finished reading this.
IT.HAD.EVERYTHING.
PLOT.
CHARACTERISATION.
PACE.

Perfect.
As a slashaholic, I could hve done with some McKay/Sheppard action :)
but, apart from that gap....Perfect.

This has got to be in the top 20 best SGA fics written.
You are one hell of a talented writer.

More epics like this, please!

Yinka
(Donning a 'friendshipper rools!' t-shirt)

Nope, I don't mind at all! I'm so glad you liked it, as I was pretty nervous about it *relieved sigh*

It's true that the first chapters can be a little off-putting at first, especially if you don't like that kind of thing, but the rest is just great :D

So...*innocent whistle* When's the next one? :D

That was just an amazing story.

I had been reading it on FF but for some reason as I finished chapter 14, and it was an evil cliffie I may add, FF decided to not work for me. I just had to come find it and finish it here.

Fantastic story. Loved the ending. Loved how our two helped the other reality get back on track. Great character interaction and dialogue. I am almost sorry it is done. I will just have to read it again and again!

Pocus

Just want to say ... WOW! Great fic!!!

OMG thank you! *pets reviewer happily*

I'm so glad you liked it! And especially as you are slashariffic but liked it anyway -- THANK YOU!

Still contemplating what the next big project will be...

Thank you so much! Yes, I did read your last review on ff.net -- and then the whole site went down for a while. Silly site.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you liked it. Of course they fixed things. ^_^ Sort of.

Thank you so much! Thanks for reading it. :)

Oh wow! That was all kinds of awesome Sholio. I can't say how much I love your writing - you are so talented. Your characters are so real and so true to canon, and your stories are imaginative and incredibly well written. I really loved this fic. Such a rollercoaster ride of emotions - I thought my heart would stop when John and Teyla got shot! And the divisiveness of the team and the image of the Atlantis team falling apart from the inside was just heartbreaking. For a story to engage my interest and my emotions the way this one did, and create such vivid imagery, I have to give full credit to the author. Congratulations, and thank you.

Oh, man. If I didn't know you were going to fix it somehow, I don't think I could have gotten through the first quarter of this story. So painful! But you did fix it and it was awesome. *loves*

I read most of this story on ff.n, but never got around to posting feedback, so I'll tell you now that I love it. You always have such a wonderful balance in your stories - humour and drama and angst, all the best stuff.

Great work, as usual. Looking forward to whatever you come up with next. :)

Wow, I totally loved this. I liked the way you showed such a bleak world Atlantis would be if it wasn't such a family: John pulling away from his friends and becoming that military guy, Rodney's hurt and jealousy completely overwhelming the parts of his personality that make him lovable in spite of himself, Elizabeth slowly losing any control she has over the City and its people.

The best part of this was that while these people should all be totally unlikable, you were able to make them sympathetic. And then by bringing in our John & Rodney, who would die for each other a hundred times over, you really pointed out to the AUs just how much they had lost.

One of my favorite parts was the scene where Ronon takes our Rodney out to the balcony and then falls asleep and how Rodney realizes how important that is.

I found the ending both sad and hopeful. I was sad that Rodney was still off the team even a year later, but hopeful that, eventually, the friendship would be completely mended.

Great job, and a lovely long read. I so adore well-written epics, even of the gen variety. ;P

And now I'm off to see what other gems you have in store for me. :D

I printed this out almost a month ago, and FINALLY had time to start reading it today (a day off and not traveling, finally!). I LOVE long stories, but I didn't want to be interrupted a billion times reading it, so I'm a bit behind in getting to it.

Okay, I'm only halfway through (and I haven't looked at any of the other comments, in case they are spoilers), but I just had to write to say I'm LOVING this! You sneaky devil, you! (g)

I was reading along this morning, and I'll admit I wasn't really loving it at first. It was a rather sad AU I was reading here, and I simply couldn't get my head around John and Rodney being so unhappy with each other. And such a sad look at Atlantis. I realize that authors like to play in different sandboxes, and I'm willing to go along with an author I like, but I was hoping you'd hurry up and get to whatever incident you were planning that would make them start to like each other again, and get them back on track as friends. Then I could enjoy the rest of the story as they learn to trust one another again and rebuild their friendship. And fix Atlantis along the way.

Hmmm, they're building a bridge to another universe. Huh, where's Jeannie? Oh, another change I don't really care for. Oh well,
Rod will probably pop in pretty soon; that should move the plot along a bit. I like it when they meet themselves from other universes. Ah, yes, here's Rod--NOW maybe John will see that Rodney's not all bad?

What? Science yellow? Command blue? What the...?

I LOVE it when I am completely surprised and the surprise makes everything so much better! You did a great job of keeping them close enough to "our" J&R that I thought it was them--just a very sad AU version I was having a hard time enjoying. I had no clue what was going on until the reveal. All the REALLY out of character stuff is happening now that we know it's not actually them.

My FAVORITE type of story is when OUR characters (SGA or SG-1) meet their counterparts from other universes, and great hijinks then ensue. For a second there you had me going again, though, with our Sheppard being dead. I see you wrote this as a WIP, with the requisite mean cliffhangers. (That's one of the reasons I don't read many WIP--the other reason is that sometimes they never get finished.)

Anyway, I'm REALLY enjoying the story now. Poor Rodney, trapped in his room and emailing Elizabeth 57 times. Poor John, trying to figure out what the heck is going on--and realizing that Atlantis isn't talking to him (a very interesting twist). And the nefarious aliens, who will end up trying to kill them all, and therefore bring them all closer together--as it should be in ALL universes!

Whoo-hoo! Back to reading now. I can't wait to finish. But then I may have to read it all over again, once I know where it's going.

I've finished now, and I can tell you this is one of my all-time favorite SGA stories ever. It just kept getting better and better. You did a fantastic job of reminding the AU Atlanteans of how things used to be, and a glimpse of how it could be again, if they could simply work through the hurt feelings and move on.

But you also showed that Sheppard was really the catalyst for the change, with him becoming the type of commander he'd always hated, in order to try to protect himself (from feelings) and his people (from danger). It demonstrated how our somewhat easygoing Sheppard is a link between the science and the military and allows a much better dynamic.

I really think this story could be made into a really great (two-part) episode of the show, and I'd love to see it there in front of me with the actors and all. It would be fascinating to see if Joe Flanigan could pull off the harder military leader, yet show the vulnerability that Sheppard was trying to hide. And I'm sure David Hewlett could pull off the even-more-caustic Rodney who's wondering what the heck happened to his ex-good friend.

My biggest "complaint" is that it ended! (g) From a good storytelling POV, it was best to end it where you did, wrapping it up on a high note from each universe. But I would love to read another story showing alt-John and alt-Rodney, and all the alt-Atlantis personnel, learning to trust each other again. I liked that you showed it wasn't a quick fix, with Rodney still not on the team, even a year later. And, who knows, perhaps that's the best way it should be in that universe--as long as the Atlantis family is there, I could be happy with it.

Thank you for another wonderful long read!

Oh, and PS, I LOVED all the wonderful h/c. As a total h/c junkie, I couldn't leave that out!

Thank you so much for the awesome feedback! And I'm sorry it's taken me awhile to reply. I was out of town for a couple of weeks and have been very slow at catching up on older LJ posts. This was a difficult story to write, due to the emotional roller-coaster of it, but I'm so glad that in the end, it worked. :)

*grin* Thank you so much! Sorry for the belated reply; I am sloowwwwww. But I'm glad you enjoyed it. The first few chapters were very hurty; I'm glad you stuck with it to the less hurty parts. :)

Thank you so much! I was nervous about reader response to this one, since (at least in the beginning) it's a bit depressing and different from what I normally write. I'm glad you liked it!

Thank you so much!

This was a hard story to write; especially in the beginning, it was so hard to write a version of them where they had drifted so far apart. I tried to postulate a plausible alternate Atlantis, where they were still the same people but with their less positive, more antisocial traits becoming magnified by circumstance; it makes me feel glowingly happy that it sounds like it worked as I had hoped.

And we do love our John and Rodney. *squeak*

Yeah ... I went back and forth while I was writing it on how to end it, but given everything that had transpired, it seemed like a slow fix would be more likely than a quick fix. But, yes, they are very slowly patching up everything that had gone wrong ... and, in the end, they have Carson *and* the Dorandans too.

Thank you again for the feedback!

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Completed WIP: The Light of a Fading Sun

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INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Re: INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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