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redfiona99The two ficlets I've written for the 'female characters fest' - http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html
She'll never come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses. She knows she should, that it's expected of her as commander of the mission, but still. She knows this is what Sumner meant when he objected to having a civilian leader.
She grants him this much, he objected far more to that than to her being a woman.
Sheppard, John, is less easy to deal with, his folder wasn't lying where it said 'doesn't take well to orders,' and yet she knows he doesn't want this command, doesn't want any command, which makes him less troublesome than Sumner.
They, and she'll have to stop seeing of the military parts of her command as 'they' for this to work, they think that her background makes her weak. She must be an ivory tower academic, Georgetown and the UN. They haven't seen the reports she's read, the reports she's had to gather the data for and write, of the evil men do in times of war, declared or undeclared. She speaks five languages and it's never enough, she has to drag interpreters in, which hurts them, and hurts the people telling their stories to them.
She's mopped up the messes of the world, tried to cauterise its wounds with accords and agreements.
There are no acceptable losses, not on their side, and not on their opponents's side, Wraith not included. She doesn't know what to make of the Wraith. She has seen the results of wars where one side are feverish with unstoppable rage, but never with unstoppable hunger. If there is a slippery slope to understanding the idea of acceptable losses, they're probably the start of it.
Stopping the Wraith will cost lives. She thinks that's what the military part of her command doesn't understand. She knows that there will be deaths; she doesn't consider them acceptable.
Every time she sends a team out, and every team is hers, she wants to tell them all to come back safely, and knows she can't, because they won't, because it will make her look weak and she needs to be strong to keep them alive.
Of course, they're close. Their houses back onto each other, and when they were younger, they ran away together and hid up plum trees.
He's her first most things. First kiss, first shag, first boy to break her heart. And mend it again.
She's about to leave for university to study history and politics when he decides, for no good reason that she can see, to join the army. He ships out while she's revising for her January exams.
She throws herself into her university life, meets new people, interesting in ways she couldn't have imagined before. She graduates and goes to work for an NGO. Some people question if she's wasting her degree, but she knows she isn't. Her father agrees, and, while she'd like to believe she doesn't need his approval for anything anymore, she's the first to admit she's still daddy's little girl in most ways, so it feels good to know that someone supports her.
She uses his contacts shamelessly to help the charity she works for. Families in poverty, it's not exactly a headline-grabber, but it's a constant problem.
Then Robin comes back. And he's not the same man he was. He's even more cocksure, if that was possible, but he's frazzled round his edges. Now he wants to save the world to, and he comes storming in, setting up a charity with his father's money, blindly trying to fix things without a plan.
He swears that his way is the right way, all the time, and holds his experiences in the war over his head. She wants to yell at him, tell him there's more than one way of learning, more than one way to save the world. Except, she's known him for long enough to know he won't listen, so she carries on her work, and leaves him to his. She'll bail him out when he needs help, but not any sooner.
She'll never come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses. She knows she should, that it's expected of her as commander of the mission, but still. She knows this is what Sumner meant when he objected to having a civilian leader.
She grants him this much, he objected far more to that than to her being a woman.
Sheppard, John, is less easy to deal with, his folder wasn't lying where it said 'doesn't take well to orders,' and yet she knows he doesn't want this command, doesn't want any command, which makes him less troublesome than Sumner.
They, and she'll have to stop seeing of the military parts of her command as 'they' for this to work, they think that her background makes her weak. She must be an ivory tower academic, Georgetown and the UN. They haven't seen the reports she's read, the reports she's had to gather the data for and write, of the evil men do in times of war, declared or undeclared. She speaks five languages and it's never enough, she has to drag interpreters in, which hurts them, and hurts the people telling their stories to them.
She's mopped up the messes of the world, tried to cauterise its wounds with accords and agreements.
There are no acceptable losses, not on their side, and not on their opponents's side, Wraith not included. She doesn't know what to make of the Wraith. She has seen the results of wars where one side are feverish with unstoppable rage, but never with unstoppable hunger. If there is a slippery slope to understanding the idea of acceptable losses, they're probably the start of it.
Stopping the Wraith will cost lives. She thinks that's what the military part of her command doesn't understand. She knows that there will be deaths; she doesn't consider them acceptable.
Every time she sends a team out, and every team is hers, she wants to tell them all to come back safely, and knows she can't, because they won't, because it will make her look weak and she needs to be strong to keep them alive.
Of course, they're close. Their houses back onto each other, and when they were younger, they ran away together and hid up plum trees.
He's her first most things. First kiss, first shag, first boy to break her heart. And mend it again.
She's about to leave for university to study history and politics when he decides, for no good reason that she can see, to join the army. He ships out while she's revising for her January exams.
She throws herself into her university life, meets new people, interesting in ways she couldn't have imagined before. She graduates and goes to work for an NGO. Some people question if she's wasting her degree, but she knows she isn't. Her father agrees, and, while she'd like to believe she doesn't need his approval for anything anymore, she's the first to admit she's still daddy's little girl in most ways, so it feels good to know that someone supports her.
She uses his contacts shamelessly to help the charity she works for. Families in poverty, it's not exactly a headline-grabber, but it's a constant problem.
Then Robin comes back. And he's not the same man he was. He's even more cocksure, if that was possible, but he's frazzled round his edges. Now he wants to save the world to, and he comes storming in, setting up a charity with his father's money, blindly trying to fix things without a plan.
He swears that his way is the right way, all the time, and holds his experiences in the war over his head. She wants to yell at him, tell him there's more than one way of learning, more than one way to save the world. Except, she's known him for long enough to know he won't listen, so she carries on her work, and leaves him to his. She'll bail him out when he needs help, but not any sooner.
