Rush I still love you, my shady scientist. You were the principal reason that I followed this series. I could feel more broken-hearted every time you got hit if Robert Carlyle did not suffer so beautifully.
I believe Eli had a very consistent development. And I keep wanting to protect him. I appreciate his jokes. I love his innocence. And I almost got hoarse from screaming at my computer screen when 1x15 happened.
I’ve had my heart pumping many times over because Rush, though nothing is compared to what the writers did with TJ. What the hell. It looks like the writers simply decided to put TJ under the worst possible plot points. I don’t understand. Plese someone hugs this woman.
I’m ashamed to say I took too long to appreciate Greer. I hope everyone accepts my apologies, he is fascinating and with a noble heart. I still crying for him. Please let him be happy.
And finally Camile. She feels so real to me. She is trapped in a ship with military and no way to return home. I understand her despair.
Rush never endangered the crew ‘for the sake of his own curiosity’, nor did he ever show himself as a ‘shit’ that had any lack of regard for their lives. Quite the opposite. Maybe I’m just taking this too seriously. Maybe.
Rush isn’t particularly warm and fuzzy, and will retreat into ruthless numbers game when stressed, but he does value the crew. He just know that the good of the many does usually outweigh the good of the few, and that they can’t count on last second miracles forever.
Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed. It matters that you don’t just give up.
- Stephen Hawking
Thoughts about the 10. Chapter of "The End of Silence"
Chapter 10: Things That Never Change
The story:
Telford visits the first time after the three years in stasis, Destiny to tell Young and Wray what the negotiations with the Langarans had brought. He talks about the latest situation with Rush, to whom Telford is still wary and told both, Wray and Young to visit their respective superiors. In the end, he also told them, they plan to establish a supply line between Destiny and Langara, which is more than welcomed by the Destiny crew.
After a travel about four weeks they are shortly before Destiny will reach the planet, Rush was marooned two months ago. Young informs the crew what he’d learned from SGC about Rush’s decision that brought all of them to Destiny. To his surprise SGC told him that this decision actually saved all of their lives, although it is not clear whether an evacuation address as far away from earth as possible but still in the reach of SGC would have saved them as well. However, he declares himself in favor of Rush and all of them bring up a plan to rescue Rush by forming five mixed teams formed from soldiers and scientists for the best result.
Meanwhile on the planet Rush awakes first in the ‘House of memories’. He reflects about his relationship to his late wife and Lísā. He knows he’s in the traditional meaning not experiencing sexual interests and closeness to people, even to those he considers as very close to himself, as Gloria has been, or Mandy could have been, and asks himself whether that might have been the reason Destiny refused to run Amanda’s simulation, since her way to love must be fundamentally different from his.
A few weeks later Lísā’s brother Bān, a human-trafficker, and his friends visit the farm to supply them with new workers. A dispute about Rush eventually escalates, which results in a drastic punishment.
After this event Lísā and her father Dāíl decided to tell Rush what this dispute was really about. She explains that Bān is her brother and that he and his comrades are responsible for the necessary worker supply and with it make sure the best genetic diversity within the human gene pool. Further she tells that Rush’s case made the round among the dealers and Dāíl and Tēmá were therefore ridiculed. And to top all of this, when her brother came back to his house, he found this person (Rush) doing women’s work, instead of the work men are meant to do. But since the men acted in accordance to their law, she was not able to do anything about that.
During a second meeting in the ‘House of memories’ Rush learns finally how it happened that those people ended up on this planet. It turns out that they are indeed the descendants of Futura, and that the head of the farm which is Dāíl for his late wife, Lísā and her daughter Tēmá, and all matriarchs of the families all over the world know who Rush is. Adverse conditions made their ancestors a forced landing on one of their neighboring planets and a prophecy announced them the coming back of Rush in a far future. The prophecy told them too to stay away from technology and metal and go back to their roots on Tenara. To fulfil this prophecy, they decided to change to another planet with better environmental conditions within the reach of their stargate and started to build a society there by working closely together, using the resources they had as good as possible and increase their population by using a natural family planning, forcing a good part of their men to change their living place at least once in their life. This leads to a hard and primitive life that enabled them to survive and feed all of them well enough.
The starship ‘New Hope’ that brought them to this place of the universe was left at the other planet and with it all the technology, aside from a few memento items. These items were hold in the ‘houses of memories’ kept as secret and passed from one matriarch of each family to the next generation. And although the new society was built on gender equality, with woman as the lead of their families, the system also established with time a male parallel society, where men ruled sometimes with inequity and wrongfulness over other men. An important issue for the culture was also to hand down all of their theoretical knowledge, although not needed for their life, from one generation to the next to save it for the day when it would be needed again.
In the end, Rush is taken by his own past, and Bān and his friends corner him, in a moment where he’s without protection from his sister Lísā. They badly abused and raped him to crush him as a human being and therefore destroy Lísā’s new plaything, utterly.
My intentions:
The chapter is the last one that deals with Rush’s destiny on the planet and it is also the darkest one of the whole story. But aside from that, it resolves also the mystery how the inhabitants of the planet ended there and let the crew of Destiny come together again to set up a rescue plan for Rush. Another important element is the decision SGC made about the supply line. Telford, who’s alongside with the leading persons of SGC back at earth, is the one who brings not only the good news but also an invitation for Wray and Young to explain to SGC what exactly happened with Rush while they were busy doing the negotiations.
To start with the last aspect: while SGU was on Air it’s been a big discussion whether Rush outright lied about dialling Destiny or if the explanation Rush gave to O’Neill was actually correct. And while I still think TPTB left this deliberately open, I decided to give a positive answer to the first part, means: what Rush told O'Neill and Young was the truth, it would have ended in a disaster, but I left open at the end whether another address within the reach of SGC would have save them as well.
The second point here is Telford’s reaction to the whole issue. First I intended him to be in favour of the outcome, but two people said this blatant behaviour would be too uncharacteristic for him, so I decided to change some lines of the dialogue, which still let him be sceptic, but less openly hostile.
The result of both meetings is that Young is even more convinced to rescue Rush than he was before, and now he has something to add for those who still may not completely agree to his plan.
The chapter opens with Rush reflecting about his relationship to Gloria and how he sees himself being different when it comes to closeness, romance and sex. And although he likes Lísā, is thankful for what she did for him and doesn’t feel wronged by her about the night they’d spend together, he’s neither attracted by her, nor interested in being closer to her by continuing a sexual or/and romantic relationship with her. Finally, he realised this is simply, who he is and who he always has been. And although he is sure he loved Amanda, which is not the case with Lísā, he asks himself now whether his lack of being attracted or more interested could have been one of the reasons why Destiny didn’t accept his version of love in comparison to Amanda’s. There might have been a ton of different aspects why the computer did not accept his version of love compared to Amanda’s, but I think this could have been one of them. A lot of people believe that love is restricted to romance and sex, that love cannot exist if there’s no sex and romance between two people, regardless whether they are f/f, m/m or f/m. And that is the point I want to make here, love is not exclusively connected to romance and sex, it can also exist without them, and still be love.
The society the descendants from Futura build in their new home is if it comes to women better than what we know and have on earth. They stopped for example demanding for men and woman determined outlooks in clothes and hairstyle, which I think could be a first step in making a society a little bit more equal. Think about a society, where everybody regardless of their gender is allowed to be like they want to be, wouldn’t that be perfect?
But back to the story: the necessity to keep the gene pool as diverse as possible, lead to a split in society, where a part of the men be traded by other men. And those traders are the ones that are in power whereas the men they trade have no power or rights at all. The traders are the dodgy point of this society. And although the women held all the power if it comes to decisions in their families, the associated traders are responsible for the workers and they also have the power to decide what happens with them. This doesn’t mean all traders are necessary bad people and abuse their subordinates, but the law neglects the right of those men and therefore makes it possible that workers are exposed to be abused. And in Rush’s case the trader, who’s in command is also Lísā’s brother, and Dāíl’s son, and doesn’t understand why all of a sudden, this Rush-guy is to be treated in a different way than all the other workers. And since the family heads refused to explain this to Bān, he thinks he’s right in what he does and makes clear who’s in charge of the men and who not. This ended in a power struggle that leads to a very bad outcome for Rush.
An important issue in this chapter is what happens to Rush in the end of the chapter. Bān and his friends did not only mistreat him in a terrible way but also wanted to crush him by raping him. The question that could be asked here is, was it really necessary to go that far? No, it was not necessary, but there are reasons why I decided to add this aspect into the story.
The reason is not to make my readers feel sorry for him, since those who are still here, feel most likely already sorry for him and the situation he’s in. The reason is also not because I wanted to use the rape to bring a little bit of kink into this story. I think, I made clear with the description, it’s not in the story to give my readers some explicit sex.
The reason actually has not that much to do with SGU, but is my reaction to a way a character in another series was treated by the fandom, which felt somehow wrong for me. That character was usually put in a relationship with another man, who abused him in many different ways. The problem I had with it was the view of the fandom, which cheered up the permanent putting down of the so called bad guy by the so called good guy, and saw this as something good and right thing to do. And whereas the SGU fandom cheers a little bit less if it comes to an abusive sexual relationship between Young and Rush, some stories go quite far into that realm with Young as the one who’s right, by using every possible means to bring Rush down. However, this part of the story is my way to deal with the question, to name it and to make clear for myself, it’s not meant to question other people’s stories. When I have written this chapter, I was aware that I may lose some of my readers for good, by going there, but I felt the need to do it anyway, because it was important for me.
Reactions from readers:
As I said above readers pointed the too blatant way out Telford reacted to getting rid of Rush, and therefore corrected it, without changing too much of the dialogue he has with Wray and Young.
I got only one review on the German fan page where a reader asked whether it was really necessary, others may have told me by stopping to read and review the story. I’ll leave that here as it is.
One reviewer pointed out that Lísā should be heard in her own words, and that’s something that will come in the following chapters.
Positive mentioned was also Young’s progress in his view of Rush and the way he worked together with Wray.
Thoughts about the 9. Chapter of "The End of Silence"
Chapter 9: A New Home
The story:
Rush has a flashback from his time with the Nakai, where he remembers killing himself and brought back by them to be tortured again. When he awakes, he sees the woman, who brought the branding iron. She takes care and helps him to get settled in the new place. At that time, he’s too weak to change into his former strategy of survival to build up walls around himself, so he let go and let happen what he’s not able to change.
Rush is now 33 days on the planet and he’s recovered from his former exhausting journey to the farm he lives on now. It’s 10 days since he’s a member of the farm people and although they are still very strange to him, it works better than he anticipated before. A lexicostatistical research gives him a date when those people split from the English-speaking Novus inhabitants, and it turned out to be more than 2000 years. He also assumed they must live since long on the new planet since their degree of adjustment into this environment is astonishing high. On this day, he went through a rite of passage, that will change his life completely by gaining a telepathic ability, all people and beings on this planet have.
A side effect of the potion he drinks is that he is for the first time in his life able to really feel what sexual attraction is, and how powerful that feeling can be. Lost and drunken in this sensation, he sleeps with Lísā, without being able to think about anything else.
My intentions:
Young’s approach to his crewmates has changed as a result of Camile’s therapy. He was not coaxed into that, but went along because she was able to convince him. Rush on the other side didn’t really change his behaviour, he continued to do what he always did, maybe a little bit more carefully than before. He’s still driven by his need for knowledge and to gain that he’ll do what is necessary. But since Young tried to handle him in a different way, the permanent need to act was no longer there.
Living now on the planet, in a society with a complete different structure than he came from and realising that he’s one of the weakest members of that society, too, he had to make the decision whether he wants to cope and live or don’t cope and die. He decided to live. In this society, he’s not able to manipulate people to do what he wants them to do. To a certain degree, anyway. He’s a nobody at is new home and although the people are kind to him, they also don’t let him doubt where his place is. In a long time, it’s a first for him to let things happen without trying to interfere. And since he’s finally time to think about his late wife, he’s finally able to make peace with his part in their mutual life shortly before she died.
As a part of the rite of passage Lísā guided him through with the help of a liquid potion, he is able to read people’s mind and get a confirmation about something he only suspected before: the people on this planet and all the beings who live with them have telepathic abilities. But before he becomes a full member of this society, the potion makes him drunken with sexual desire, a feeling he never experienced in this way, since it’s not his own but a reflection of Lísā’s feelings towards him. Unable to control the side-effect of the substance, Rush sleeps with Lísā, something he’d not done without the drug.
Although a lot of asexual authors write fictions, and especially Young/Rush fanfiction, I decided not to follow the usual path, which is to establish a romantic and sexual relationship between Rush and a possible partner, whoever that may be. For me it was more important to show what an asexual would think and how he would react if it comes to sex, or what an aromantic would do if someone tries to have a romantic relationship with him. But, and that is of course important, without Rush being aware about those matters. His life always went around his work, that’s what has driven him, not possible sexual adventures or a romantic live with any given partner. This doesn’t mean he’s unable or unwilling to love, because he obviously loved his late wife Gloria, and he cared deeply about Mandy, it just means it’s not in the same way sexual and people who are in romances would experience it.
Reactions from readers:
Several elements were pointed out by readers. One is the short intro into the chapter, where Rush went through the water tank nightmare again. Though, this especially unpleasant tank was mentioned in the series, it was never deeper explored for Rush, as it was for Chloe. Her nightmare (in Divided and his later in Pain) gave us an insight how traumatic these tanks must have been for both of them, and whereas we see how much Chloe was affected, we saw by far less with Rush. Given the time he spent with the Nakai, it has to be assumed they moved everything in their power to break him and get the information they wanted to have. We also know that those devices are very painful, and Rush simply is not the hero who is able to bear such a pain for longer, and given his situation, he may have seen this nightmare scenario as a last desperate move and the only solution to end the pain.
A second point that was mentioned is Camile’s treatment of Young’s depression and anger issues, which is seen as a positive move from both, his and her side.
Further readers commented on the “telepathy brew” and pointed out how unpleasant and intrusive this must have been for him, which is surely what I thought it would have been. However, this was not meant as an intrusion from those people, but what would happen in the moment an unprepared mind would out of nothing be able to catch all the voices that exists around him. And the most important ability he needs to learn is how to lock out the thoughts of other people.
The sex at the end of the story was as, as it was expected, as well mentioned. And although Rush was meant to engage into it by the potion he got, Lìsā was not less affected by the same liquid and didn’t necessary intended to drug him out of his mind so that she could have sex with him. Although it’s what she wanted, she didn’t force him to go along.
I always assumed that the blue aliens found that stone somewhere else and it was just a coincidence that they had it; maybe they got enough information out of Rush to be curious about their stone to explain why one of them was holding it in Space.
I mean, the actual (Doylist) explanation was the props department was a bit careless, but it certainly gives the (Watsonian) impression that Young just throws baseless accusations around when he’s angry.
Thank you for your ideas. It’s always interesting to know about other people’s ideas, and to learn new words (Doylist and Watsonian, LOL).
I think if the writers had in mind Rush took it, then it’s a continuation error, as you said, if they had something else in mind, then they planned to give an explanation later how this happened. However, I go with what I got on the show, and that is, there are five ancient communication stones.
I’m not sure Young was really angry at that moment. It looks more like he’s trying to prove Rush is lying, and since Rush is always lying from Young’s POV, he’s 100% sure it was a lie, because another explanation cannot be, since Young thinks he’s always right, which led him to throw baseless accusations around. But it’s the same result.
Wouldn’t it be a strange coincident if the Nakai got the stone from “somewhere”, since it’s an Ancient artifact? But, yeah, why not?
I already gave you a part of the explanation I had in mind (there will be more later), which is different from yours. Rush had the stone already, before he came to Destiny, and that explains why it was in his backpack, from where the Nakai got it in the end.
