ColumnistFicRec: BSG IS NOT DEAD!

FatApolloLove
We the Forgotten - Rated R
AU
10 Chapters, 37,774 Words
04/02/2009 - WIP
[ Twilighted ]

Part 1.10 "His arms were still a cage around me, and I was careful not to touch them as I moved. Slowly, deliberately, I brought my hand up to his face and let my fingertips brush lightly against the line of his jaw. "His skin was smooth and hard and I wondered if I burned him the same way he burned me."

Pastiche Pen

So, I’d been on fic fail extravaganza—reading two chapters in and stopping—reading two chapters in and stopping—that is, until I came across this heart-bruising little masterpiece by FatApolloLove, We the Forgotten. ‘Tis not a daffodil fic. The Fats explains that you will be experiencing calamitous woe from the get-go:

“I just feel the need to warn you. Just because this story....it's messed. I mean, I'm writing it, and I'll just stop all of a sudden and be like, ‘This....this is MESSED.’ And then I keep writing.”

(Side note: I opine that Fats’s author notes deserve their own Bellie.)

So, back to the story…We the Forgotten, I’ll have you know, is a tragedy. That’s right—in our happily-ever-after and My-Little-Pony fandom, someone wrote a TRAGEDY. The story begins with Bella and Edward awaiting their doom. They are going to DIE! Here are the final words of the story, even though they are also the final words of the first chapter:

"Bella?"
"Yeah, Edward?"
"I always knew it would end with you and me."
"Me, too."

Now, I myself have a general distaste for tragedy as a genre, because tragedies (besides being unhappy) often tend to be whopper cop-outs by the author. Often, it feels like the author just wanted to go "against the grain" and be (pseudo)

intellectual, and thus they're like, "AHAHAH, fuckers! Bella and Edward die! die! die!" Yeah, YIPEE. *Pastiche spins finger* That's about as cool as people who hate the Beatles just cuz they're popular. Anyway, great tragedy isn't like that. It's about celebrating the decline and the fall. It's about wallowing in the pain and taking in gasp after gasp as you process the horror of it all. Cathartic.We the Forgotten is like that. Good tragedy.

The story is non-linear. We start at the end, given a handful of confusing facts: Alice is in a jail cell. Edward never “touched” Bella—she always fought him off. (!!!???) Vampire-soldiers are coming after them. Bella is married to JASPER?! None of this makes any sense at first, but as we return to the beginning of it all—when Bella met Edward—the truth begins to take shape.

What makes this particular dystopian mind-fuck so intriguing is the mystery of how Bella could have possibly come to terms with Edward—a vampire—in light of the events surrounding her mother’s death. Despite Bella’s “issues,” Edward’s attachment to Bella is obvious. Bella is a master cellist and composer, and it is first through her music that Edward comes to know and fall in love with Bella—and the way that Fats describes the connection… Uh, GAH. Well, I quote:

When they locked with mine I felt an uncomfortable jolt in my stomach which disrupted my apathy completely. The dark eyes of vampires, usually so flat and cold—even through their emotions—were not the same on him. In them was a fire, a pain, an intense amount of feeling that I had never seen on any face; human or otherwise. With no minor amount of discomfort I realized at once the source of the smoldering in his eyes.

He had heard my music.

Heard it in the way that few ever could. He heard it with all the passion that I had written it with. He had felt it, felt me within it, and he was looking at me in the way I had longed for someone to look at me one day: with an understanding that went deeper than affection.

He KNEW me.

And yet Bella does not deal well with Edward’s obsession with her. When he “saves” her and whisks her away to a remote Rocky Mountain hideaway—Bella responds by repeatedly attacking him with an eclectic and endlessly creative variety of musical instruments and sharp objects. (Bella really, really does not like vampires.) And yet, she keeps finding herself drawn to Edward. She, like the curious reader, wants to understand hot, devoted, and endlessly self-sacrificing Edward.

We DO NOT understand him—but that’s why we read! So, take a fluff break, and go check out this twisty, little knife-in-the-eye tale.

(Also, for you BSG-ers it’s very Kara x Leobinish sorta hot . Now all of you are going “OOOH” and nodding your heads, cuz you get it. Good. Now go frackin’ read it.)

***Other important note, for some technical reason that Fats explains in her author’s note on Twilighted, she had issues posting the prologue on FanFiction.net—so it is not posted there. I am of the strong opinion that you should read the prologue first, so even if you really loathe the black background, go read and review the prologue on Twilighted before skipping over to FF for the rest.

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Pastiche Pen is a propagator of fanfic reader and writer love and a fellow believer in fandom hippie values. You can find her here. Go review her. Become her friend and others, because she would agree that it's all about spreading the love. But not that big, grossly gratifying inbred orgy love. That's just wrong.