SGA Fic: Rodney's Poetry Months
Apr. 9th, 2008 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadesfireThis story is something of a labour of love, and has had input from some very generous people.
It started with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bironic, who wrote Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rodney, based on these poems by Wallace Stevens. For reasons that are still not entirely clear, I decided it would be really fun to translate them into Latin. Except then I started thinking why would someone do that?. Someone who isn't me, I mean. And so the story below was born. I'm not sure if it's an expansion, a remix or a misuse of the original, but I had fun putting it together, and have learnt a lot along the way.
Huge thanks must go to:
bironic for writing the poems in the first place, and letting me play with them.
sepia_words who checked my grammar and made incredibly helpful suggestions for translation.
greyias who introduced me to the mysteries of Photoshop and then solved them for me.
donutsweeper who is always encouraging and stopped me drowning in commas.
All remaining deficiencies, howlers and logic-holes are my own.
Title: Rodney's Poetry Months
Author:jadesfire2808
Rating: G
Warnings: Only for gratuitous use of the Latin Language.
Spoilers: From The Tao of Rodney through to Lifeline.
Notes: Contains small images. Transliterations available by hovering over the pictures. Translations at the end.
The full set of 13 poems can be found here: Tresdecim Modi ut Rodneius Videri Posset
Summary: Someone's leaving Rodney notes. Now all he has to do is work out how to read them.
Rodney's Poetry Months
April 1st
Rodney blinked at the note sitting on top of his laptop, squinting at the handwritten squiggles, and trying not to spill today's precious first cup of coffee. Of course, it could also have been yesterday's precious last cup of coffee, seeing as how he hadn't actually made it to bed yet. What with Simpson deciding that the occupants of the main tower really needed the temperature turning up to Saharan levels, Miko deciding that she could, in fact, make two and two equal five and Radek suddenly taking it upon himself to run a whole swathe of ZPM diagnostics just when they were opening the wormhole for the weekly report to Earth, it had not been Rodney's best twenty-four hours ever. If he didn't know better, he would've said they were doing it in honor of the date, but he didn't think even his team hated him that much. Probably.
Once he'd finished yelling at Simpson over the radio, untangling Miko's math so that it was at least close to making sense, and yelling at Radek over the radio, in person, in the control room, in the mess hall and in all four of the engineering labs, it had been too late to go to bed. So he'd hunkered down with a not-too-stale sandwich and his laptop, and spent what remained of the night making yet more adjustments to the gatebridge macro.
He'd only stepped away from his desk for five minutes, to get the first good coffee from the mess hall, and he'd come back to…this. It vaguely resembled Ancient, and one of the words could possibly have been his name, almost, but he couldn't make sense of it.
Instead, he glared, unstuck it from his screen and settled back down to work, inhaling the coffee fumes gratefully. Sheppard could mock his 'rocket fuel' all he liked, but it had always been a good friend to Rodney.
May 1st
Even with the Daedalus making more regular supply trips, it didn't take long for the inhabitants of Atlantis to run low on coffee. Apparently, the Marines, the engineers, the medics, and for some reason the linguists all featured in the top ten greatest users, but no one could match the physicists for sheer caffeine consumption. Whether they were masquerading as electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, astronomers or naquadah generator experts, the Mess had worked out that someone with a physics degree was most likely to consume more than their fair share.
Of course, Rodney considered as he reached for the file that hid his secret stash, that all depended on what you considered your fair share to be. As he lifted the file, a small piece of paper fluttered down, nearly making him drop the precious bag of grounds that he'd, er, liberated from Stores. Getting his priorities in order, he put the bag down, replaced the file, then bent to pick up the piece of paper.
It made no more sense to him than the other one had, although he thought that was his name again. Apparently someone thought it was fun to taunt him with incomprehensible Ancient on a day when his stress levels were already too high, even for him.
According to the Mess, they only had five days' worth of coffee left, and the Daedalus wouldn't get here for a week. Absently putting the note in his pocket, Rodney rearranged the file again, wondering if he should find a more secure location for his emergency supplies. His room would be the first place anyone would look, and there were altogether too many people in this city who knew how to override door locks. Maybe he'd ask Sheppard to hold onto it – the man seemed to run mostly on hair gel and Athosian home brew. The coffee would probably be safe with him, as long as Rodney promised to share. Seventy-thirty sounded fair.
June 1st
Okay, now that was just annoying. Twenty-four hours ago, Rodney wouldn't have had a problem reading the shakily written words. Now, they might as well have been Hieroglyphs for all the sense he could make of them, although he was fairly sure his name had cropped up again.
He rubbed at his eyes, promising himself that he'd make one last run at the hyperdrive calculations then call it a night. It was so frustrating, to have everything on the tip of his brain, just beyond his understanding now. For a while there, he'd known everything, seen everything. There were holes in his mind where the knowledge should have been, math and physics and language and art, all bound up together so that he couldn't tell where one had ended and the other began.
Taking another swipe at his eyes, he carefully folded the note and put it in his pocket. Then he went over and retrieved the first, crumpled one from under a pile of employee evaluations that looked like they were never actually going to make it off his desk. The second was in his quarters somewhere. This, at least, had to be a puzzle he could get to the bottom of.
He waved a hand over the light array, glancing back at the whiteboards in the half-dark lab. Somewhere in there, he'd lost the key to the universe. He hoped they didn't need it any time soon.
July 1st
The little note was oddly comforting, if baffling. He'd spent most of the past four days hiding in a lab at the end of the East Pier, not snarling into his radio, mostly because he hadn't answered it at all. Teyla and Ronon had both dropped by with supplies of food, coffee and comfort. Well, Ronon had folded his arms, glowered down at him and asked how many more MREs he was going to need, but Rodney was fairly sure that was Ronon's version of sympathetic.
Sheppard had come by once, bringing a spare laptop battery, a couple of comics and a frown. He'd eyed the pile of food that Rodney had only got halfway through, and threatened to report Rodney to Carson if he didn't start eating again soon. Neither of them had been able to meet the other's eye after that, Sheppard staring at the floor, his face flushed and lips pressed together, Rodney not wanting to say it didn't matter, because it did. It had to.
The note had been tucked in among the pile of DVDs that Ronon had said Teyla had said Elizabeth had sent for him. Apparently someone thought he deserved some compassionate leave, at least until the expedition came into mortal danger again, which would probably be any minute.
Laying it down next to his laptop, Rodney fished in one of the piles of papers he'd brought with him and found the other three. It wasn't like he was getting anywhere with the Jumper engine modifications at the moment. He might as well brush up his language skills.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a low voice with a lilting accent was mocking him for taking on the soft sciences. Rodney smiled, and started to delve into the database.
August 1st
It hadn't been much of a deduction, but Rodney doubted anyone else could have made it. The control room, still with fragments of glass embedded in walls and consoles, was quiet at this time of night, and even the technicians didn't acknowledge him as he made his way towards the balcony. Of course, he didn't acknowledge them either, but then he had other things on his mind.
Stepping into the fresh night air of their new planet felt strange, familiar and alien all at once. In the light shining from the control room, he could make out a tall figure, a dark shape against the horizon. The other man hadn't turned.
"Does the Air Force approve of poetry writing?" Rodney asked, holding up the latest note.
He heard Sheppard snort, possibly with laughter. "I didn't write it."
"Yeah, of course not." Coming over to lean against the balcony as well, Rodney gazed up at the new night sky. He let his shoulder bump against Sheppard's. "Just a coincidence, was it?"
"I may, possibly, have copied something that someone else wrote." That was probably as close to an admission as Rodney was going to get, so it was a good job that he'd applied his considerable brain power to the problem.
"Only you could make an April Fool last five months," he said. "That was the idea, wasn't it?"
Sheppard shrugged, but Rodney was pretty sure he could hear the smile in his voice. "Jenny in linguistics has a thing for poetry and for Ancient."
"And for you?" Rodney went on quickly, "Actually, don't answer that. Just tell her from me that if she wants a career as the next Walt Whitman, she's got it. This one even had a clue in it. Not quite 'x marks the spot' and Atlantis has rather a lot of balconies but it wasn't that hard to figure out. Of course, she won't be able to publish any of her Ancient poetry until the program is declassified, so she might have to wait a while for fame and fortune, but if she wants to waste her time playing pranks for the expedition head-"
"Rodney."
It was still too close. Sheppard had been back in charge for less than twenty-four hours, and while Rodney wasn't about to admit that the man would do a half-decent job of it, with Rodney doing the other half, of course, he knew that it weighed heavily on the other man. On both of them.
So he closed his mouth, folded the slip of paper and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Together, they stood on Elizabeth's balcony and watched the moons rise over their new home.
The End
The poems are:
It started with
bironic, who wrote Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rodney, based on these poems by Wallace Stevens. For reasons that are still not entirely clear, I decided it would be really fun to translate them into Latin. Except then I started thinking why would someone do that?. Someone who isn't me, I mean. And so the story below was born. I'm not sure if it's an expansion, a remix or a misuse of the original, but I had fun putting it together, and have learnt a lot along the way.Huge thanks must go to:
bironic for writing the poems in the first place, and letting me play with them.sepia_words who checked my grammar and made incredibly helpful suggestions for translation.greyias who introduced me to the mysteries of Photoshop and then solved them for me.donutsweeper who is always encouraging and stopped me drowning in commas. All remaining deficiencies, howlers and logic-holes are my own.
Title: Rodney's Poetry Months
Author:
jadesfire2808Rating: G
Warnings: Only for gratuitous use of the Latin Language.
Spoilers: From The Tao of Rodney through to Lifeline.
Notes: Contains small images. Transliterations available by hovering over the pictures. Translations at the end.
The full set of 13 poems can be found here: Tresdecim Modi ut Rodneius Videri Posset
Summary: Someone's leaving Rodney notes. Now all he has to do is work out how to read them.
Rodney blinked at the note sitting on top of his laptop, squinting at the handwritten squiggles, and trying not to spill today's precious first cup of coffee. Of course, it could also have been yesterday's precious last cup of coffee, seeing as how he hadn't actually made it to bed yet. What with Simpson deciding that the occupants of the main tower really needed the temperature turning up to Saharan levels, Miko deciding that she could, in fact, make two and two equal five and Radek suddenly taking it upon himself to run a whole swathe of ZPM diagnostics just when they were opening the wormhole for the weekly report to Earth, it had not been Rodney's best twenty-four hours ever. If he didn't know better, he would've said they were doing it in honor of the date, but he didn't think even his team hated him that much. Probably.
Once he'd finished yelling at Simpson over the radio, untangling Miko's math so that it was at least close to making sense, and yelling at Radek over the radio, in person, in the control room, in the mess hall and in all four of the engineering labs, it had been too late to go to bed. So he'd hunkered down with a not-too-stale sandwich and his laptop, and spent what remained of the night making yet more adjustments to the gatebridge macro.
He'd only stepped away from his desk for five minutes, to get the first good coffee from the mess hall, and he'd come back to…this. It vaguely resembled Ancient, and one of the words could possibly have been his name, almost, but he couldn't make sense of it.
Instead, he glared, unstuck it from his screen and settled back down to work, inhaling the coffee fumes gratefully. Sheppard could mock his 'rocket fuel' all he liked, but it had always been a good friend to Rodney.
Even with the Daedalus making more regular supply trips, it didn't take long for the inhabitants of Atlantis to run low on coffee. Apparently, the Marines, the engineers, the medics, and for some reason the linguists all featured in the top ten greatest users, but no one could match the physicists for sheer caffeine consumption. Whether they were masquerading as electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, astronomers or naquadah generator experts, the Mess had worked out that someone with a physics degree was most likely to consume more than their fair share.
Of course, Rodney considered as he reached for the file that hid his secret stash, that all depended on what you considered your fair share to be. As he lifted the file, a small piece of paper fluttered down, nearly making him drop the precious bag of grounds that he'd, er, liberated from Stores. Getting his priorities in order, he put the bag down, replaced the file, then bent to pick up the piece of paper.
It made no more sense to him than the other one had, although he thought that was his name again. Apparently someone thought it was fun to taunt him with incomprehensible Ancient on a day when his stress levels were already too high, even for him.
According to the Mess, they only had five days' worth of coffee left, and the Daedalus wouldn't get here for a week. Absently putting the note in his pocket, Rodney rearranged the file again, wondering if he should find a more secure location for his emergency supplies. His room would be the first place anyone would look, and there were altogether too many people in this city who knew how to override door locks. Maybe he'd ask Sheppard to hold onto it – the man seemed to run mostly on hair gel and Athosian home brew. The coffee would probably be safe with him, as long as Rodney promised to share. Seventy-thirty sounded fair.
Okay, now that was just annoying. Twenty-four hours ago, Rodney wouldn't have had a problem reading the shakily written words. Now, they might as well have been Hieroglyphs for all the sense he could make of them, although he was fairly sure his name had cropped up again.
He rubbed at his eyes, promising himself that he'd make one last run at the hyperdrive calculations then call it a night. It was so frustrating, to have everything on the tip of his brain, just beyond his understanding now. For a while there, he'd known everything, seen everything. There were holes in his mind where the knowledge should have been, math and physics and language and art, all bound up together so that he couldn't tell where one had ended and the other began.
Taking another swipe at his eyes, he carefully folded the note and put it in his pocket. Then he went over and retrieved the first, crumpled one from under a pile of employee evaluations that looked like they were never actually going to make it off his desk. The second was in his quarters somewhere. This, at least, had to be a puzzle he could get to the bottom of.
He waved a hand over the light array, glancing back at the whiteboards in the half-dark lab. Somewhere in there, he'd lost the key to the universe. He hoped they didn't need it any time soon.
The little note was oddly comforting, if baffling. He'd spent most of the past four days hiding in a lab at the end of the East Pier, not snarling into his radio, mostly because he hadn't answered it at all. Teyla and Ronon had both dropped by with supplies of food, coffee and comfort. Well, Ronon had folded his arms, glowered down at him and asked how many more MREs he was going to need, but Rodney was fairly sure that was Ronon's version of sympathetic.
Sheppard had come by once, bringing a spare laptop battery, a couple of comics and a frown. He'd eyed the pile of food that Rodney had only got halfway through, and threatened to report Rodney to Carson if he didn't start eating again soon. Neither of them had been able to meet the other's eye after that, Sheppard staring at the floor, his face flushed and lips pressed together, Rodney not wanting to say it didn't matter, because it did. It had to.
The note had been tucked in among the pile of DVDs that Ronon had said Teyla had said Elizabeth had sent for him. Apparently someone thought he deserved some compassionate leave, at least until the expedition came into mortal danger again, which would probably be any minute.
Laying it down next to his laptop, Rodney fished in one of the piles of papers he'd brought with him and found the other three. It wasn't like he was getting anywhere with the Jumper engine modifications at the moment. He might as well brush up his language skills.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a low voice with a lilting accent was mocking him for taking on the soft sciences. Rodney smiled, and started to delve into the database.
It hadn't been much of a deduction, but Rodney doubted anyone else could have made it. The control room, still with fragments of glass embedded in walls and consoles, was quiet at this time of night, and even the technicians didn't acknowledge him as he made his way towards the balcony. Of course, he didn't acknowledge them either, but then he had other things on his mind.
Stepping into the fresh night air of their new planet felt strange, familiar and alien all at once. In the light shining from the control room, he could make out a tall figure, a dark shape against the horizon. The other man hadn't turned.
"Does the Air Force approve of poetry writing?" Rodney asked, holding up the latest note.
He heard Sheppard snort, possibly with laughter. "I didn't write it."
"Yeah, of course not." Coming over to lean against the balcony as well, Rodney gazed up at the new night sky. He let his shoulder bump against Sheppard's. "Just a coincidence, was it?"
"I may, possibly, have copied something that someone else wrote." That was probably as close to an admission as Rodney was going to get, so it was a good job that he'd applied his considerable brain power to the problem.
"Only you could make an April Fool last five months," he said. "That was the idea, wasn't it?"
Sheppard shrugged, but Rodney was pretty sure he could hear the smile in his voice. "Jenny in linguistics has a thing for poetry and for Ancient."
"And for you?" Rodney went on quickly, "Actually, don't answer that. Just tell her from me that if she wants a career as the next Walt Whitman, she's got it. This one even had a clue in it. Not quite 'x marks the spot' and Atlantis has rather a lot of balconies but it wasn't that hard to figure out. Of course, she won't be able to publish any of her Ancient poetry until the program is declassified, so she might have to wait a while for fame and fortune, but if she wants to waste her time playing pranks for the expedition head-"
"Rodney."
It was still too close. Sheppard had been back in charge for less than twenty-four hours, and while Rodney wasn't about to admit that the man would do a half-decent job of it, with Rodney doing the other half, of course, he knew that it weighed heavily on the other man. On both of them.
So he closed his mouth, folded the slip of paper and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Together, they stood on Elizabeth's balcony and watched the moons rise over their new home.
The poems are:
April Inter viginti physicos castigatos solum manus Rodneii movebant. Among twenty chastised scientists, The only moving things Were Rodney's hands. |
May cafaeum et physica sunt unum. cafaeum et physica et Rodneius sunt unum. Coffee and physics Are one. Coffee and physics and Rodney Are one. |
June cum Rodneius ad Ascensium accederet, marginum significavit unum multorum circulorum. When Rodney neared Ascension, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. |
July urbs quieta est. certe Rodneius excubat. The city is quiet. Rodney must be keeping watch. |
August vesper erat totum postmeridianum. pluebat pluetque. Rodneius sursum intuitus est ab podie. It was evening all afternoon. It was raining And it was going to rain. Rodney gazed up From the balcony. |
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 10:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 11:45 am (UTC)It's gorgeous and cute and funny and has visuals with sticky notes and Ancient and it makes me love Rodney and John so much. So much. I'd like to think they play at little pranks like this on normal days and quietly heal rifts after crises and fights.
p.s. I can link to this from my LJ and website, right? Right? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 11:49 am (UTC)Thank you so much :D
I can link to this from my LJ and website, right? Right? :)
Oooh, gosh, I'll have to think about that one...
*half a nano-second later*
That'd be awesome, thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:13 pm (UTC)The letters are based on the font used in the show for Ancient - there are various messages scattered around the set! The originals are too blocky to handwrite, so I developed a version I could scribble down. It's surprisingly useful when people are trying to read over your shoulder on the bus :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:43 pm (UTC)um, so you've designed your own font/letter system? really? that's SO cool!! would you mind writing your alphabet onto a piece of paper and slip it to me? I'd be so so so so grateful and happy! =)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:54 pm (UTC)I take sermon notes in it on a Sunday to keep practising...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 02:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:45 pm (UTC)I remember you talking awhile back about teaching yourself to write in Ancient. This was a wonderful way to use the skill!
the man seemed to run mostly on hair gel and Athosian home brew
Heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:54 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed, thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 02:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:06 pm (UTC)Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:33 pm (UTC)Yay! Thanks! For everything :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:27 pm (UTC)As a fellow coffee freak, I love how "Coffee and physics and Rodney
Are one." And Rodney fretting about hiding his stash of coffee, Sheppard running on hair gel and homebrew, and all the humor and friendship and work with the drama woven into the background.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:36 pm (UTC)The translation for caffiene actually came from a 'modern Latin' website that I had too much fun playing with. And when I get going on the Rodney POV, the insults just seem to roll off the tongue :)
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 04:39 pm (UTC)(edited to correct the spelling of Rodney)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-10 09:23 am (UTC)Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 06:04 pm (UTC)AncientLatin!(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-10 09:23 am (UTC)And mad but happy :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-10 06:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-10 09:24 am (UTC)Your wish is my command (http://jadesfire2808.livejournal.com/206658.html) :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-02 01:41 pm (UTC)::claps hands in glee::
Fabulous!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-02 01:54 pm (UTC)