![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
asugar.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
stargateficrecRec Category: Het
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Danielle Jackson, Jack O'Neill/Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson/Danielle Jackson (WAIT!! COME BACK!!)
Category: Het, Daniel Jackson, Quantum mirror universes, Genderswap, Furlings, novel, Jack O'Neill/Danielle Jackson, Jack O'Neill/Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson/Danielle Jackson, Angst, Drama, Apocafic, Episode related, Dark, Long, Time travel, Jack O'Neill, George Hammond, Alternate universes, Samantha Carter, Action-adventure, Mystery
Warning: heterosexual sex, the end of the world several times over, the deaths of many major characters in many universes, wars, nuclear detonations, planetary destruction, inscrutable alien races, imprisonment, challenging philosophical concepts
Author on LJ: http://ivorygates.livejournal.com
Author's Website: http://www.kekkai.org/ivorygates/
Link: http://www.kekkai.org/ivorygates/a_mirror_for_observers.html
Why This Must Be Read: I preface with the enabling clause that I recommend this story with the utmost sincerity, intensity and the belief that reading it will improve your life. I signed up for the Het category just so that I could recommend THIS story; I was that compelled by this powerful, brilliant, original and curiously unknown masterpiece. I will be satisfied that I have paid forward my transcendent reading experience if one person reads it but is my hope that many will read it, be the better for it and pass on the recommendation.
The very long A Mirror For Observers by ivorygates is a (perhaps the) MUST-READ SG-1 story, which centers around Daniel Jackson and his parallel universe equivalent, Danielle Jackson (yes, Daniel as a woman), and those ever elusive and mysterious Furlings(!!!). ivorygates' Danielle Jackson is so memorable, multi-dimensioned and real-feeling that she surpasses for me every other canon and original SG-1 character. It's a powerful read even if one has no familiarity with SG-1 but the greater the knowledge, the richer and more meaningful it becomes. It rebuts any who sneer that there is no point to fanfiction.
The story takes it title from the 1954 Edgar Pangborn novel, winner of the International Fantasy Award, in which he explored the concept that an observer always affects the item being observed, and vice versa. ivorygates elucidates here Pangborn's theme "that love is not a condition or an event or even a state of mind — love is a country, which we are sometimes privileged to visit."
I cannot urge you enough to read this story. It is heart-wrenchingly sad, laugh-out loud funny, completely original, disturbing, hopeful, philosophical, moving and absolutely overwhelming in the many emotions it evokes. I sobbed until my chest hurt, laughed hysterically, and in the end, I was deeply and completely satisfied by every step the author took and the end she reached, even if I doubted her at times along the way. She will drag you kicking and screaming to places you won't want to go and you will thank her for it. To me, this story is about the expansiveness and inexplicability of love, the meaning of identity and the human will to live, survive, thrive that keeps us going when everything that meant anything is gone, which reveals only at life's darkest moments our essential nature under all the trappings.
A Mirror For Observers is unbelievably long and yet ends exactly when it should and in the only way it could, perfectly paced and structured. The character of Danielle and her versions of Sam, Jack etc are so well defined and characterized that I kept reading despite myself although the author goes to places and does things with the characters that would ordinarily turn me off because they felt like the natural and only possible evolution of events. I am not surprised this story received a Stargate Fan Award with such a brilliant and creative AU spun off from a few elements from SG-1 episodes and world-building so meticulous, detailed, thoughtful and complete that one leaves with the impression that this is the source material for SG-1, rather than the reverse.
The author plays with many difficult concepts and I suspect that I will take away something new from every future rereading. Among the ideas I was most intrigued by this time: that what makes someone a hero during wartime is exactly what makes them a liability during peacetime, how the experiences of life as a woman shape someone into so incredibly different a human being than experiencing the same events as a man and whether you can have more than one soul-mate in your life or at the same time. There is much great fanfic out there but not a lot of it that has big things to say about life; this is one of the best of the latter I've ever read. ivorygates entertained me at every moment even as she challenged many of my ideas about love, time, gender, morality, fate, choice, the mutability of identity and the universe.
My only warning: this is a very emotional experience and the pacing inexorably marches you forward. You will not be able to stop reading. Save it for a weekend so you can keep reading into the night without consequences. I started reading in late evening and was unable to stop to eat or sleep. When I finished it at 3 AM, I was so incredibly impressed, blown away and exhilarated that I phoned my sister, bristow1941, to demand she start reading it that instant so I could rave about it with someone. She screens her calls (LOL) so please ping me back when you finish as I'm still dying to discuss the story.
Danielle's fierce intelligence and intellectual curiosity pulls she and the reader so strongly into the riptide of the central mystery that it becomes hard to separate yourself from her. I lack ivorygates' elegance and originality of phrasing and I can only sum up the feelings of inevitability and recognition that made me weep at the end by relying on the following from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
PLEASE NOTE: The author was recently the victim of horrible RL trolls so her fic website now asks for a username and password and her LJ is friends only. When I asked her if I could recommend this story, she welcomed new readers and suggested the following procedure if you are not already one of her many friends and fans:
(1) Friend the author at her LJ, http://ivorygates.livejournal.com, and leave a comment at http://ivorygates.livejournal.com/99493.html, asking the author to friend you back so that you may read her work. I would suggest including why you want to read her work and are a SG fan (This is a MUST if you have a blank or brand new LJ)
(2) She will then verify that giving you access will not leave her vulnerable to an exercise of personal jurisdiction, an untimely death or the cost of filing restraining orders. She just wants to make sure that you are not Charles Manson on yard time, her boss, a member of MGM's legal group, "an axe-murderer, a crazy internet stalker, or a Terminator from the future." If you are the latter, I think it will be enough to note in your comment that you are a fan and that you only plan to kill John and Sarah Connor, not wildly talented authors like herself. She will then friend you back, giving you access to her LJ and the magic passwords. In my experience, she responds quickly, within a day or two.
Trust me, this story is absolutely worth the rigamarole and it's only one of many incredible stories on the site. Think of the experience like that of visiting a speakeasy during Prohibition. Access is tightly controlled but gaining it means you are cream of the crop.
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Danielle Jackson, Jack O'Neill/Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson/Danielle Jackson (WAIT!! COME BACK!!)
Category: Het, Daniel Jackson, Quantum mirror universes, Genderswap, Furlings, novel, Jack O'Neill/Danielle Jackson, Jack O'Neill/Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson/Danielle Jackson, Angst, Drama, Apocafic, Episode related, Dark, Long, Time travel, Jack O'Neill, George Hammond, Alternate universes, Samantha Carter, Action-adventure, Mystery
Warning: heterosexual sex, the end of the world several times over, the deaths of many major characters in many universes, wars, nuclear detonations, planetary destruction, inscrutable alien races, imprisonment, challenging philosophical concepts
Author on LJ: http://ivorygates.livejournal.com
Author's Website: http://www.kekkai.org/ivorygates/
Link: http://www.kekkai.org/ivorygates/a_mirror_for_observers.html
Why This Must Be Read: I preface with the enabling clause that I recommend this story with the utmost sincerity, intensity and the belief that reading it will improve your life. I signed up for the Het category just so that I could recommend THIS story; I was that compelled by this powerful, brilliant, original and curiously unknown masterpiece. I will be satisfied that I have paid forward my transcendent reading experience if one person reads it but is my hope that many will read it, be the better for it and pass on the recommendation.
The very long A Mirror For Observers by ivorygates is a (perhaps the) MUST-READ SG-1 story, which centers around Daniel Jackson and his parallel universe equivalent, Danielle Jackson (yes, Daniel as a woman), and those ever elusive and mysterious Furlings(!!!). ivorygates' Danielle Jackson is so memorable, multi-dimensioned and real-feeling that she surpasses for me every other canon and original SG-1 character. It's a powerful read even if one has no familiarity with SG-1 but the greater the knowledge, the richer and more meaningful it becomes. It rebuts any who sneer that there is no point to fanfiction.
The story takes it title from the 1954 Edgar Pangborn novel, winner of the International Fantasy Award, in which he explored the concept that an observer always affects the item being observed, and vice versa. ivorygates elucidates here Pangborn's theme "that love is not a condition or an event or even a state of mind — love is a country, which we are sometimes privileged to visit."
I cannot urge you enough to read this story. It is heart-wrenchingly sad, laugh-out loud funny, completely original, disturbing, hopeful, philosophical, moving and absolutely overwhelming in the many emotions it evokes. I sobbed until my chest hurt, laughed hysterically, and in the end, I was deeply and completely satisfied by every step the author took and the end she reached, even if I doubted her at times along the way. She will drag you kicking and screaming to places you won't want to go and you will thank her for it. To me, this story is about the expansiveness and inexplicability of love, the meaning of identity and the human will to live, survive, thrive that keeps us going when everything that meant anything is gone, which reveals only at life's darkest moments our essential nature under all the trappings.
A Mirror For Observers is unbelievably long and yet ends exactly when it should and in the only way it could, perfectly paced and structured. The character of Danielle and her versions of Sam, Jack etc are so well defined and characterized that I kept reading despite myself although the author goes to places and does things with the characters that would ordinarily turn me off because they felt like the natural and only possible evolution of events. I am not surprised this story received a Stargate Fan Award with such a brilliant and creative AU spun off from a few elements from SG-1 episodes and world-building so meticulous, detailed, thoughtful and complete that one leaves with the impression that this is the source material for SG-1, rather than the reverse.
The author plays with many difficult concepts and I suspect that I will take away something new from every future rereading. Among the ideas I was most intrigued by this time: that what makes someone a hero during wartime is exactly what makes them a liability during peacetime, how the experiences of life as a woman shape someone into so incredibly different a human being than experiencing the same events as a man and whether you can have more than one soul-mate in your life or at the same time. There is much great fanfic out there but not a lot of it that has big things to say about life; this is one of the best of the latter I've ever read. ivorygates entertained me at every moment even as she challenged many of my ideas about love, time, gender, morality, fate, choice, the mutability of identity and the universe.
My only warning: this is a very emotional experience and the pacing inexorably marches you forward. You will not be able to stop reading. Save it for a weekend so you can keep reading into the night without consequences. I started reading in late evening and was unable to stop to eat or sleep. When I finished it at 3 AM, I was so incredibly impressed, blown away and exhilarated that I phoned my sister, bristow1941, to demand she start reading it that instant so I could rave about it with someone. She screens her calls (LOL) so please ping me back when you finish as I'm still dying to discuss the story.
Danielle's fierce intelligence and intellectual curiosity pulls she and the reader so strongly into the riptide of the central mystery that it becomes hard to separate yourself from her. I lack ivorygates' elegance and originality of phrasing and I can only sum up the feelings of inevitability and recognition that made me weep at the end by relying on the following from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
PLEASE NOTE: The author was recently the victim of horrible RL trolls so her fic website now asks for a username and password and her LJ is friends only. When I asked her if I could recommend this story, she welcomed new readers and suggested the following procedure if you are not already one of her many friends and fans:
(1) Friend the author at her LJ, http://ivorygates.livejournal.com, and leave a comment at http://ivorygates.livejournal.com/99493.html, asking the author to friend you back so that you may read her work. I would suggest including why you want to read her work and are a SG fan (This is a MUST if you have a blank or brand new LJ)
(2) She will then verify that giving you access will not leave her vulnerable to an exercise of personal jurisdiction, an untimely death or the cost of filing restraining orders. She just wants to make sure that you are not Charles Manson on yard time, her boss, a member of MGM's legal group, "an axe-murderer, a crazy internet stalker, or a Terminator from the future." If you are the latter, I think it will be enough to note in your comment that you are a fan and that you only plan to kill John and Sarah Connor, not wildly talented authors like herself. She will then friend you back, giving you access to her LJ and the magic passwords. In my experience, she responds quickly, within a day or two.
Trust me, this story is absolutely worth the rigamarole and it's only one of many incredible stories on the site. Think of the experience like that of visiting a speakeasy during Prohibition. Access is tightly controlled but gaining it means you are cream of the crop.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}