I see FoD as an example of slash at its most skillful - it's not only a same sex pairing, it's a pairing that is brought together despite a fairly unrelenting reading of the canon dynamic of intense conflict.
It's a great story, which trumps pairing for me. Or limited interest in the canon, in this case!
And there's no WAY you can read Rush/Young in FoD as anything other than love, even though the extremity of their situation keeps them from having the time or energy to do much romance :)
Eh, I think I have a different reading, at least at the beginning and partway through. There's love and then there's romantic love. And then there's lust. And need. By the end of FOD, I'd parse their relationship as probably in love, but I'm hedging my bets with integrated personality that doesn't hate itself (For FOD!Rush, forgiveness is a big step up!). I'm out of date on SGU canon, so I'm not sure where Young's head is starts on the romance/lust/need sliders, and that's messing with my reading of what CWR's doing with the romance.
A big piece of FOD seems to be how Rush and Young change: Rush because of the AI and the Ancient genetic overwrite; Young because of the link and Rush's neurological scaffolding. They're highly, I don't know, congruent by the end of the story? But they sure don't start there. The unstable dynamic - trust, need, affection, competing goals - is bulletproof awesome emotional storytelling. It can beromantic, but if at the end of this Young had walked away kind of shattered and pulled himself together (after two to five years) I would've understood that reading too. I didn't get the OTP vibe, but there was something very interesting going on with an identity theme flirting through the entire story, and it felt like chapters 48 - 50 really laid those cards on the table, especially the very end of 50.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Force Over Distance
Date: 2012-08-07 04:19 am (UTC)It's a great story, which trumps pairing for me. Or limited interest in the canon, in this case!
And there's no WAY you can read Rush/Young in FoD as anything other than love, even though the extremity of their situation keeps them from having the time or energy to do much romance :)
Eh, I think I have a different reading, at least at the beginning and partway through. There's love and then there's romantic love. And then there's lust. And need. By the end of FOD, I'd parse their relationship as probably in love, but I'm hedging my bets with integrated personality that doesn't hate itself (For FOD!Rush, forgiveness is a big step up!). I'm out of date on SGU canon, so I'm not sure where Young's head is starts on the romance/lust/need sliders, and that's messing with my reading of what CWR's doing with the romance.
A big piece of FOD seems to be how Rush and Young change: Rush because of the AI and the Ancient genetic overwrite; Young because of the link and Rush's neurological scaffolding. They're highly, I don't know, congruent by the end of the story? But they sure don't start there. The unstable dynamic - trust, need, affection, competing goals - is bulletproof awesome emotional storytelling. It can beromantic, but if at the end of this Young had walked away kind of shattered and pulled himself together (after two to five years) I would've understood that reading too. I didn't get the OTP vibe, but there was something very interesting going on with an identity theme flirting through the entire story, and it felt like chapters 48 - 50 really laid those cards on the table, especially the very end of 50.