A Thousand Stars

Fanfiction
Title:	A Thousand Stars
Author(s):	Dorothy Marley
Date(s):
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Stargate SG-1
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A Thousand Stars is a Jack/Daniel story by Dorothy Marley.

Reactions and Reviews

"A Thousand Stars" by Dorothy Marley is a very romantic story which is set directly after the events of "There But For The Grace Of God". It takes the typical Stargate mission scenario and gives it a subtle twist: instead of their usual mission to another world, SG-1 is ordered to explore different alternate universes through the mirror device. What happens when Jack and Daniel try to take a trip through the mirror makes for an interesting, if unexpected, story. Essentially a first time relationship story between Jack and Daniel, the author approaches the whole subject from an unexpected angle, and the lack of serious angst is a pleasant change from the more typical Jack/Daniel first time scenario in Stargate fiction.

I like the presentation of Jack in this story very much and I think Dorothy Marley has a good grasp of his character and motivations. I was less pleased with the characterisation of Daniel, although in many ways his treatment in this story is a welcome surprise. There is no Saint!Daniel, for example, and no feminisation of him in any way in this story. In fact, in many ways he is the one to take charge of his changing relationship with Jack, the one who is able to cope better with the changes and surprises that occur within the text – and I think this reflects the strong, courageous and emotionally flexible Daniel I see in canon. There really wasn't enough Sam or Teal'c to garner much of a judgement of their characterisatioon, which was pretty much limited to the general view of the pair: Sam as science geek and Teal'c as stoic soldier. Hammond and Janet also appear briefly but are not fleshed out or rounded in any way.

The story structure consists of a first person Daniel point of view, in the form of excerpts from Daniel's journal (set after his return from the AU where Earth was destroyed), and alternates these with a narrative that is told from a tight third person Jack point of view that covers the general action of the story. Unfortunately, the journal entries don't work very well for me and it's here I have problems with Daniel's characterisation. The Daniel "voice" in the journal entries isn't quite the one I hear in canon. I really can't hear Daniel saying things like "have at a crack at" or "God, I suck", the latter sounding more like a fan phrase that has escaped into the story to infest Daniel than anything he would come out with naturally. What is written also seems to me to reflect more the thoughts that might be crossing a person's mind at any given moment - something verbal and off the cuff – rather than the planned and less spontaneous entries of a journal. For example, in the opening paragraph of the story, Daniel refers to himself by his full title - obviously to alert the reader that we are in Daniel's POV - but this seems an unnatural thing for Daniel to do in his personal journal. Even the content of the journal entries jars on me at times. Consider, for example, the following extract:

"I'm having a hard time accepting that the other Dr. Jackson is--was--me. On one level, I understand--or at least I think I do--about the quantum realities and how different choices shape our lives in those realities, etc., etc. But that doesn't mean that I can understand how any person that's still fundamentally me could have done what he did, could have chosen to turn away from the opportunity to work on the Stargate. The fact that he did tells me that we were *not* the same person. And yet, we are. Were."

I realise that this sort of first person format is notoriously hard to do well but, since his job as a cultural anthropologist with SG-1 is to be able to understand quite disparate cultures and motivations, I have trouble seeing a Daniel who can't understand how small changes to his own personal history could alter his pivotal decision to join the Stargate program. The journal entries also have, at times, a sense of distance and disconnection from their subject matter that, for me, made it harder to believe that this was Daniel talking about his own life. These entries came across to me much more like an external narration summing up Daniel's experiences in the alternate reality he visited in "There But For The Grace Of God", rather than Daniel's personal reactions to his experiences there. And that, to me, is a weakness in this area of the story.

The third person general narration that makes up the bulk of the story in Jack's POV is, however, done very well, and I like it much better than the journal entries. There is a great deal of recapping past history - Jack's relationship with Daniel, the history of SG-1, Daniel's relationship with Sha're, blah blah blah – that I could have done without, but I think my major problem with this is the amount of back information that is given through tell not show. Jack's view of Daniel is pretty much the generally accepted fanon one - "stubborn, incomprehensible, impractical, and way too smart for his own good", while Jack is presented as on first view as a man so wedded to his work that he's unable to cope with too much downtime, which I found a little irritating. I like a Jack who is not so limited that he can't cope if left to his own devices for more than five minutes at a time and luckily the story evolves from this point so that the portrayal of Jack opens up to incorporate his humour and an interesting view of him as a complicated, unique human being. I ended up liking the Jack portrayed in "A Thousand Stars" very much.

What else is there to like about this story? There's quite a lot of humourous dialogue to appreciate: "...it was one thing having two Carters underfoot, but what if something really screws up and we get two Maybournes?...I don't think we could take it" and "The Chiefs have spoken, Major...They say, 'Jump,' and we say 'Into which wildly bizarre alternate universe, sirs?' " I like the matter-of-fact way that Daniel realises he loves Jack and the practical way he resolves to do something about it. I like the way the author deals with the problem of Daniel's marriage to Sha're: she doesn't ignore it's value or importance but manages to balance both important relationship in Daniel's life without denigrating either, which is a significant improvement over the Sha're-bashing in some fanfiction. I like that Jack is the "bottom" when they finally have sex and that he's not bothered about that or that Daniel is in control of most of the sex. I like it that the author has Jack talk about Daniel's "cozy bulk" rather than some gumph about his "slender frame" and "angelic looks" that other stories are nauseatingly obsessive about. I like it that this Jack is the one that thinks about Daniel "keeping him warm. Keeping him safe." And I really like the sweet, sexy, yet entirely realistic scene in which Jack and Daniel admit how they feel about each other, which is one of my favourite scenes to re-read again and again. I'd recommend this story to anyone based soley on how very much I enjoyed this scene. Unfortunately, this scene is so good it creates it's own problem for the story as a whole. Structurally I think "A Thousand Stars" is a little lopsided and it's the the love scene that unbalances it for me. This scene is so sweet, so nice, and so powerfull in it's lingering emotional effect that it's presence in the middle of the story means that the final section is, for me, a bit of a let down. The story ends, as it began, with an excerpt from Daniel's diary. Perhaps my disappointment is due to the fact that I prefer the author's handling of Jack's POV but I still felt let down by the ending and the failure of the author to actually describe the final pivotal sex scene of the story. Without giving away the plot, this scene is equally as important as the first sex scene between the two and, IMO, it needed to be described within the framework of the story, not just referred to obliquely in Daniel's journal.

However, despite the problems I had with the story, I liked "A Thousand Stars" very much and I only wish there was more of it. The situation described would create any number of complications for those involved and I wished the author had examined them in more detail, rather than gloss over them as is the case in this story, but that's a minor quibble as the focus of the story is clearly on the romantic complications rather than anything else. It is, I think, a compliment to the author that I wanted to read more about my favourite characters in this particular unique universe she has created. It's a rare story indeed that is so complete within itself that it doesn't leave me wanting more, if I enjoyed it at all. I would definitely recommend "A Thousand Stars" to anyone who enjoys Stargate fiction. It has something for most readers, I believe, and most fans of the Daniel/Jack relationship will find something to enjoy in this very sweet, romantic story.

Warning: Daniel rambles in his journal and you're overwhelmed with a Jack-like urge to gag him or take away his pen. But that, irritating as it may be, is completely in character and this story has a fantastic plot. Yes, oh rarity of rarities, this is a fine slash story that's both highly original and Stargate-compliant.