Customs of Atlantis

From the beginning, religion has never been that big of a deal on Atlantis. Oh, there are occasional debates and disagreements and outright arguments, but the ones about religion are far fewer and less heated than the ones about, say, Star Wars. After all, Atlantis has, from the beginning, been comprised of open-minded individuals (one has to be open-minded to join an expedition to another galaxy) from dozens of countries, with varying levels of faith and differing religions. Some of them were part of the SGC before joining the expedition, with all the dealing with religion that entailed. And once they get to Atlantis, the offworld teams have a tendency to get sucked into strange ceremonies involving gods they've never heard of (and some which they wish they'd never heard of). Once stories of Wraith worshippers start to circulate, the number of arguments about religious differences takes a nosedive. Any religion, or none, is better than that.

It's never clear who starts it, but one day one of the unused rooms near the core of the city has pictures hung on the walls: Colonel Sumner. Carson Beckett. Peter Grodin. Over time, the pictures multiply, not only because of the rising death toll of the expedition but also as pictures of those who'd died Before. Of those whose dying words they'd never heard from a galaxy away. Candles start being left there, despite the fact that Atlantis neither officially trades for them nor gets shipments of them on supply runs. The Hall of Remembrance (as Teyla dubs it, after similar rooms of civilizations the Athosians trade with) begins to see more visitors, at every hour of the day and night, taking comfort in speaking to those who went before.

It's almost like religion.

***

On Atlantis, everybody is a workaholic to some extent. Oh, most of them will seize a holiday if it's offered, but even at their most relaxed (unless chemical substances are involved) they refuse to stray far from their weapons and are ready to spring into action at the drop of a hat. This would, perhaps, be less of a problem if there was ever a holiday on Atlantis when something didn't go wrong. If it's not an invasion, or injury, or bombs, it's the sewage system rupturing all over the living quarters, it's a huge storm out of nowhere, it's the discovery that the animals actually aren't very friendly. It goes unsaid (but understood) that there's no such thing as vacation time on Atlantis, no matter how many memos are sent out reminding people to relax or how injured you are. It barely even matters how many hours you've been awake, even though there isn't a Lantean who doesn't monitor their colleagues' sleep schedules just to be on the safe side (there's a monthly memo from the doctors on the effects of not enough sleep. They know nobody reads it but they send it out in the hope that someday, somebody will). But despite every holiday being interrupted, nobody ever reschedules their holidays when they're ruined. Eventually, most people learn to fit their relaxation in by the minute and the occasional stolen hour, to adjust games and sports for any number of participants, to not take it personally when someone rushes out of the room during the process of being seduced. Those who don't invariably burn out.

This has various results in combination with various other factors. Lanteans work hard, but they know that the five minutes they get to play speed chess or read a couple of pages in a book or join a football game in the hall that balloons from 5 to 20 players in a few moments may be the only 5 minutes they'll have to relax for days. They constantly live with the knowledge that any moment could be their last no matter how innocuous the task they're performing. In short, they play hard too. There isn't a lot of Earth-style dating; there's rarely time to linger over a meal or a sunset or waste time dancing around the issue. First and foremost, Lanteans know when and how to be blunt, at least with other Lanteans, and how to bear others' bluntness.

The offworld teams have mandatory diplomacy lessons.

***

[why kids call parents by last names]

The first time Taro Zelenka is kidnapped, they learn a hard lesson.

He's kidnapped because the kidnapper wants Ancient technology and he's the son of Radek Zelenka, the second in command of the science department. The kidnapper learned this because Taro called his father Táta, which, while not a word that he knew (unless Czech is secretly spoken somewhere in the Pegasus galaxy besides Atlantis), obviously meant Dad. One rescue later, none of the Lantean children would call their parents by anything other than what other people call them, which often amounts to their last names.

To keep everybody safe (or at least less unsafe) they have to sacrifice a level of overt closeness, but nobody's feelings are any less because of it.

***

Gender is one of the least important distinctions on Atlantis; there are a number of women in important positions, and nobody can think that gender makes people any less capable, not with examples like Teyla and Dr. Weir and any number of highly capable women who do their jobs like they're supposed to, like they need to do them. Far more important are the differences between the marines and the scientists, between people who were there from the beginning and those who came later and those who are still experiencing culture shock because they just transferred in; between those who can hack it and those who are going to go back to Earth; between those who are dealing with the stress and those who could use a bit more time with Dr. Heightmeyer before they make some fatal error or snap under the pressure.

They've encountered cultures which refused to speak to women and cultures which refused to speak with men, but they don't change Atlantis. When Jeannie's old enough, there's no more and no less expectation for her to learn how to fight and shoot and think as there is on Taro.

In the Pegasus Galaxy, it doesn't matter if the person who killed a Wraith is male or female anywhere near as much as it matters that they survive.

***

A number of games have made their way to Atlantis: card games, Athosian games, a number of drinking games, and any remembered games which don't require props at first. Eventually board games start to trickle in. Some of them don't fit very well with the Lanteans any more.

Trivial Pursuit seems a bit more…trivial, now. Knowing what color a lobster's blood is is even more pointless when some of the players don't even know what a lobster is. The game is largely disregarded until somebody comes up with the idea of making a Trivial Pursuit Atlantis edition, which turns out to be a huge hit, with the categories of people(s), planets, events & missions, technology, flora fauna & aliens, and miscellaneous. Anybody can submit questions to be considered, and very quickly the number of questions grows. The database of them is kept on the intranet because a) there isn't a lot of paper to spare for printing them, b) the originators of Trivial Pursuit Atlantis wrote a program for it, c) it makes adding questions easier, and d) too many things have been destroyed to risk such a popular form of entertainment.

Chronology is different. All of the Earthborn know the history involved well enough to make at least educated guesses, even if it is Eurocentric, and when there start to be children in Atlantis it's a way to get them to learn a history that they'll need to know at least the broad strokes of if they ever go to Earth, but that they don't see the point of learning because nobody goes back to Earth voluntarily. Since most of the fiction they've read is War and Peace (with explanations of the culture described in it by those who know enough to explain it), their knowledge of history is decidedly lumpy, but at least by playing Chronology they learn about more than Russian and military history.

Lantean gaming is often cutthroat; capture the flag had had to be banned after a few too many people started getting serious injuries from it.