woken up by thought

It comes to me that a story, any story, isn't really "real" to me unless it's bittersweet, or sweetlybitter. Or rather, for instance, that I'm totally dry-eyed through most drama's and Schindler's List, though it made me achy, didn't really cause me to cry. Ditto for comedies, I don't usually find things funny unless they're half-serious or morbid.

But like, have a story, where you simultaneously bring on the pain and make me smile all at once and I'm *wrecked*. Serenity got me gutted, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had me in tears, and I'm still trying to process Dead/Not Dead.

Something about laughing on top of ashes, something about hopeless battles fought with joyful abandon, something about the vicious love of life-that-is-death.

I think it partly springs from my thoughts on the "glass half-full/half-empty" problem, which is basically, "Look! There's water!" It's like how I find both taoism and buddhism too...hmm. non-squeeful? Like, I like the part of taoism that says "bounce back", and I agree with buddhism in the "life is inherently bitter", but...there's more than that.

Like, I believe that the world, and life, and people are inherently fucked up, that everything and everybody is inherently traumatized, just in different ways. But out of that comes such beauty, and isn't that just amazing? Astonishingly wonderful things still happen, little bits of kindness, startling bits of joy, quivering bits of happiness.

And like, reality is this, this total absurdity. It's ridiculous and strange and all sorts of cool.

And I think...I think that that's when the reality of any particular narrative I approaches hits. 'Cause it could be dark, but see, it won't *matter* to me, it's not *real*...but make me smile and suddenly I'm crying. It's a safe place, but not, a rest point, the curl of an arm, the heaves between sobs, the breath before relief. It's pru's fic and spike's fic and etben's fic and jenn's fic and really an amazing lot of fic in SGA and it's me reeling from snortling to w00bling at the episodes and it's me getting misty at other people's meta and it's me screaming at Home and it's me crying at Letters From Pegasus and this hasn't happened before.

And this didn't start out being about SGA except of course it went there and I'm just gonna go to sleep now 'cause I'm obviously rambling.

SGA INSTA-REC

(this is the etben's fic I was referring to in the prior post that made me cry)

This is gen, but it has various pairings if you squint, and it's such GOOD gen, such really really good gen with all the character voices just NAILED and it's funny and a bit angsty and intense-in-that-happy way. Like, usually dark!fic gets this intense, but she did it in this happy!fic and it's not especially schmoopy which I find remarkable. And I *like* schmoopy, but this isn't it; it's shadowed and has bits of ashes, but it's bright.

It's reads like a mouthful of sunshine.

Settlement: Five Stories About a Shirt, More Or Less by etben

Go see! ::bounces::