Fic: "Or Else This Heat Might Turn To Frost"

[redbrunja]

Title: Or Else This Heat Might Turn To Frost
Author: redbrunja
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: R
Author’s Note: Written for zutara100, prompt 001 "Beginnings"
Summary: “This was the true beginning: the heat of her skin, the taste of saline and sweetness."

This was the beginning.

This, Katara’s skin under his lips, her nails scraping down his back, her hips bucking against his. She muffled her cries in his shoulder, biting on his neck as his fingers and mouth and cock made her writhe and twist.

This was the beginning.  Not when he first met her and threatened to destroy her village, not when he bound her to a tree, not under Ba Sing Se: this.

The heat of her skin, the taste of saline and sweetness as he licked into her and she dug her heels into his back and bit her lip and broke apart under his ministrations.

He imagined he could use the sound of her cries, the slow smile she always got after, and erase his mistakes, or at least ameliorate them, that he had found the beginning of a path after years of stumbling half-blind, in dark forests.

This was the end: Katara harshly yanking her hair back, hiding the dishevelment that his hands had wrought, and saying, voice cool, “This was a mistake, and it’s over.”

Comments

Re: cold, Katara

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I saw that vid a long time ago, it was well-made but my enjoyment was handicapped that neither Kara nor Lee are in the tiny tiny "characters I don't hate on BSG" circle.

Oh, ouch. Burn. *snicker* I love Starbuck beyond reason, and Lee... was rather awesome when he was playing the square-jawed hero to Kara's reckless frack-up self, but 2 1/2 season in, that show decided to rape both their characters.

In my head, the show ended around the time they killed off Cain.

*nods*

And if you don't mind my asking, why don't you like Starbuck? (I'm just curious, don't feel you have to hold back.) And which are the few characters that you like?

The metaphors for sex and for emotions and complexities in the relationship suit them very well, especially since neither the song nor drabble ends on a happy-lovey-dovey note.

Well said.

Re: cold, Katara

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

my thoughts on BSG: Season 2 was when BSG went from "entirely ridiculous and nonsensical but still pretty dramatic and entertaining" to a spiral of suck. It has eeked its way half-way out of that whirlpool of badness, but for every bright moment or great thing there's two things that are so unbelievable I have to physically wince.

It's like-- no, it is-- the act of watching beautiful cinematography, fantastic art design, a decent script, and stellar acting that's crippled by painfully inconsistent characterization, crap sense of continuity, pop psychology, and the fact that everything the Cylons do as a group is stupid, and since the whole show is based on what the Cylons keep doing to the humans the stupid only gets stupider as they go. I want to pull my hair out, often. And the only way I don't is that I try to enjoy the little sideplots and look at the pretty pictures of spaceships and exploding stars.

I get annoyed by Kara a lot of the time, though more because I get annoyed at the writers. I find Kara somewhat more entertaining than Lee, but I can't really relate to Kara at all; even though I admire that she is a strong female character, she does a lot of things that would make me disrespect her if I knew her in person. Also, I get SO FUCKING TIRED of Adama/Lee/Kara bullshit EVERY OTHER FUCKING SCENE. I was never that much into Lee's drama in the first place because try as I might I just can't sympathize or care about him at all, and the times when Kara is wrapped up in that are the times I like her least. With her husband she's palatable and with her cylon / prophecy issues she's almost interesting to watch, but every scene with any two of those three characters turns into Unresolved Parental Issues / I Just Don't Love You Like I Loved Your Brother Or Even That Guy I Married, Sorry.

A lot of the characters on this show just bug me after a while.

Characters I do like:

The President (she wins)
The terrorist leader/politician
The Chief
Baltar (more "appreciate" than "like as a person")
Kara's husband
Athena
Helo/Halo (whatever his name is... I haven't watched the show in 6 months...)

And the really cute one who was a spy in the work camps, with the dog bowl.

Re: cold, Katara

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Thought of a succinct way of saying what I don't like about Lee: he's boring. His issues are things I've seen a million times in a million male protagonists, and he never rises above a level of mediocre type. He's a type more than a character or a person. Though I am sometimes repulsed by Kara's choices and personality, she is more original and more interesting than Lee is, by spades. Lee just BORES me. Adama bores me any time he's talking to or about Lee, too. As does Kara. It's like his character is a walking infection of lame dullness that spreads to other people in the scene.

Re: cold, Katara

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I've heard a lot of people have that reaction. Since I was/am a sucker for Kara's season 1 ear angst and Adama's father figureness, I could grove with it (plus, Jaime Bamber is preeeetttttyyyyy) but I can totally see why lots of people disliked him.

Re: cold, Katara

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

my thoughts on BSG: Season 2 was when BSG went from "entirely ridiculous and nonsensical but stil

*nods* I was literally forcing myself to finish season three, and after the crap they pulled towards the end there... I broke up with BSG, which wasn't fun, believe you me.

the fact that everything the Cylons do as a group is stupid, and since the whole show is based on what the Cylons keep doing to the humans the stupid only gets stupider as they go. I want to pull my hair out, often

So much word. And I like most of the other characters you do, with the exception of Baltar, who I want to shank so freaking badly. I hate him with his twitchiness, and his sliminess, and the fact that he has the writer's golden touch on him, and will thus never die.

Re: cold, Katara

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I get the same twisted amusement out of him that the writers do, I'm sure, but there have been plenty of times I have wished him dead. For me his annoyance factor/sliminess is balanced by the entertainment I get from him, though I wouldn't shed a tear if they did kill him off. They've already passed up a few prime opportunities. Still, I liked him better when he used to be all-out crazy than when he's merely self-serving. I miss him talking to walls and shouting "NO MORE MR. NICE GAIUS!" That phase has passed, I'm afraid, and I don't like his new religious fervor, affectation though it may be.

I haven't totally broken up with BSG, but I don't watch it with a lot of expectation either. I wait long weeks and watch several episodes at once to catch up, then go another few months without. This system works for me. I had mixed feelings when the series began, and I never loved it, but what entertainment I did get has dropped significantly. Season 3 is better than the second half of season 2, but only because I stopped paying attention to anything the cylons said or did. The whole premise of them in this show is based on bad logic and nonsense in the first place, because the way they've behaved up until now doesn't make sense for even their own self-professed goals. And the religion thing... it just hurts to think about it. Why have a race of killer robots if you're going to make them behave like fanatical humans? Why not just have fanatical humans? The whole point of killer robots, even the pretty ones, is to act like killer robots. If they're not going to, then pick some other plot device. It's the logic trap-- robots need logic to make them robots. If you're going to make them use logic, then just make them aliens. Aliens can be explained away without a pretense of logic. A pretense that a child could find gaping loopholes in.

What does shank mean?

Die, Die!

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

See, I never found Gauis amusing, which meant that so, so much screen time was just painful to me. And shank is prison slang for stabbing someone with a (usually homemake) knife.