Reunions Are a Bitch

"A clash of ideologies will cause widespread death and destruction for two races both alike and strange to the other."

—FF.net story summary

What happens when the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and the Tau'ri meet? Well, in the universe of this fanfic, there's only one thing that can happen: they go to war. Reunions are a Bitch by Bob Regent is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Because of restrictions imposed by Fanfiction.Net on language in story titles, it is now indexed under the name "Reunions are a Deleted", although humorously, the actual story text and the URL both retain the original title.

The backstory: two years ago, the Prometheus was on a shakedown run when it ran into the Colonials. Things soon fell off the deep end, and the Prometheus was forced to make a shooting retreat. Now the Colonials have returned, this time in the Solar System with 200 warships and the unmitigated desire to see the Thirteenth Tribe brought back into the fold of their government. A great battle ensues, and that's when things get interesting.

Reunions is famous on Fanfiction.net for these reasons:

1. It popularized the idea of the Colonials of Battlestar Galactica being driven by religious fanaticism to conquer the Earth. Or them just being evil, period, despite little info on whether that's true or not.
2. It is pretty decently written despite countless grammatical errors and an extremely long read.
3. It is one of the more realistic fics on the 'net -- relatively speaking, given the existing BSG and SG canons being worked with.

It has reached 26 chapters, 349,784 words and 976 reviews. It is currently a Dead Fic; its 27th chapter is an author's note from November 2013 blaming months of inactivity on a chronic illness.

Tropes used in Reunions Are a Bitch include:

• Alternate Universe Fic: The big differences between the two universes are solved by Vala never showing up in Stargate SG-1's season 9 (thus, no Ori), Gerak and his supporters attacking Earth, an expanded Daedalus-class production, the Colonials meeting the Prometheus (thus sending all the Cylons' plans out of whack), and Battlestar Galactica not taking place 150,000 years in Earth's past. Also, the Asgard choose to not blow themselves to kingdom come, but rather upload their minds into several giant supercomputers so that they can unravel and rebuild their own genetic structure, a process that will take centuries.
  • This fanfic actually has an alternate universe of itself, called Worldwar: Discovering the Balance, where the big difference between these universes is that in the RAAB storyline, Ra wiped out the Race (From Turtledove's Worldwar series), while in Discovering the Balance, the Race shows up at around the same time the Colonials do.
• Apocalypse How: The Colonials really like to use nuclear weapons, but still wet themselves at the thought of the Tau'ri using theirs.
• Armchair Military: The IOA does is this.
• Badass Boast: A pilot with the RAF proudly and excitedly predicts the Colonials' imminent demise when he finds out that they've been infected with a mild case of Earth influenza and don't have an immunity to it.
• Blatant Lies: Adar, along with a lot of the top-tier Colonial leadership, loves this trope. Sometimes it even dips into blatant Insane Troll Logic territory. One (out of many) notable instances is Adar's answer to a press conference question, where he states that the Tau'ri ships "fired first... without provocation" -- while stating in that same answer that the 200-ship Colonial Crusade Fleet jumped within lunar orbit of Earth and declared their intent to conquer it before any shots were fired, and that the Crusade Fleet heard and intentionally ignored repeated warnings that they were violating Earth space and had 20 seconds to reverse course or be fired upon. None of that, of course, counts as provocation in any way whatsoever.
• Cool Ship: For the Colonials, the Warstar Zeus, a massive ship of incredible strength. For the Tau'ri, the newly christened DSC-304 General George Hammond.
• Curb Stomp Battle: The battle over Earth in the prologue. The Colonials lose 137 ships out of 200 while Earth loses 1 ship out of six.
  • Thor bitchslapping the Wraith hive ship definitely counts as this.
  • The battle above Picon, for the Tau'ri.
• Death From Above: The debris raining down on Picon from the destroyed orbital facilities.
  • The nukes that impacted Earth.
• Doorstopper: The chapters are simply massive in length, and some people still complain that they don't touch on all the multitude of plot threads.
  • The author at one point stated that he had finished the first book of the series, and it topped out at 23 chapters and over three hundred thousand words.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The Americans saved the world from being enslaved by an alien power, so what's the world gonna do now? Why, put the American General who commanded their space forces on trial for war crimes, of course!
  • Which makes sense. The Earth defense fleet was made up of mostly American and Russian built ships since those nations knew about the Star Gate first, and people are looking for a scapegoat.

"People hate the United States on principal. You're just the most visible member of the armed forces. You knew you would get this kind of thing when you took the job. It's not like being on SG1 anymore."

—Daniel Jackson (to Gen. O'Neil)

• Earthshattering Kaboom: Very numerous. The nuking of Hong Kong, Venice, St. Petersburg, Johannesberg, and Memphis. The destruction of the Apollo. The detonation of the Mark IX off the bow of the Olympus.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Crucible is one. The Colonial Presidential Bunker on Caprica, and the Colonial Military HQ on Picon.
• Enemy Mine: The Tau'ri and some of their Colonial POWs team up to fight the Wraith.
• EMP: A probe's detonation causes this over Caprica.
• Energy Weapon: The Daedalus, Odyssey, Korolev, and Ajax get Asgard weapons. Felger also perfects his plasma cannon, last seen in "Avenger 2.0."
• False Reassurance: Adar mentions that the battle over Earth cost the Tau'ri 40 percent of their fleet. He conveniently left out that Earth had six ships.
  • Also, only one Earth Ship, the Apollo, was destroyed, so it was more like only 16 to 17 percent. To make matters worse, the main reason it was destroyed (or rather, the Colonials' attempts to destroy it were successful) was because it was incomplete. One of the other seriously damaged ships was also incomplete, and suffered much of its damage because of that. Adar later states that, in the attack on the Picon shipyards, two or three Tau'ri ships were destroyed -- but leaves out that those "ships" were just a few F302's (which are actually "craft", not "ships"). Curiously, in this case, it's unclear if Adar was just plain lying in an attempt to improve morale (implying that capital ships were destroyed) or lying about the fact that the "ships" destroyed were in fact "craft" (fighters), and just mixed up the numbers of craft destroyed and pilots killed.
• Government Conspiracy: Adar, the religious leaders, military leaders, and industrialists all support taking Earth for various reasons that they don't wish to disclose including lying about what happened at the Katlean Base. Adar and company stated that the Prometheus destroyed the base, however it actually suffered a life support failure two weeks before the Prometheus even showed up in the Cyrannus system.

"'You can't blame the will of the gods; it's our faith that's weak, not their will'. That's what they always say, and then they walk away, with their hands clean. Not this time. Livia wanted this liberation -- ha! -- as much as I did." Adar leaned back. The entire college wanted the Tau'ri brought to heel. They couldn't wait for the new converts and their money to start flowing into their coffers. I wanted to be remembered as the man to reunite all the worlds in our war. The military and industrialists wanted that so-called primitive FTL drive and the energy shield technology. And all of the resources present on that planet! Everybody had a stake in this gamble. Now look at us, eleven worlds, one destroyed and one looking to destroy everything we stand for. Damn, I frakked this one up. But if I go down, I'm taking them down with me, especially Livia.

• Heroic Sacrifice: Flight Lieutenant Fitzgerald does this so that the French F-302 pilot can make it back to the Odyssey.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: The Earthlings, particularly America and her allied nations, have faced one media debacle after another over the course of the story, usually as a consequence of their trying to keep their advantages secret.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Chapter 16 could be considered an essay on the subject, and is downright hilarious, as the Colonials are mainly basing their speculation and conclusions off of fictional material, and are incapable of distinguishing fiction from nonfiction. In particular, they believe the events of Star Trek (the original series and Next Generation, at least) as likely accurate, and Earth's present lack of colonies and ships is because they were nearly wiped out, or devastated, sometime in the past.
• Follow the Leader: This fic has kicked off a multitude of different stories involving the Colonials before the BSG miniseries being complete Jerkasses.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: the Stargate Verse and Battlestar Galactica.
• Jerkass: How do you know when a Colonial is a sympathetic character? When they hate Adar. How do you know when Adar is a sympathetic character? When he hates someone who's an even bigger wanker then he is.
• Knight Templar: A lot of the Colonials could qualify as this, or at least the guys in charge. Also, to no one's surprise, Admiral Helena Cain.
• Loads and Loads of Characters
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The railguns on Earth's ships started at the 1-inch caliber and are at the 5-inch caliber. They also now fire naquadah/potassium rounds.
• Misguided Missile: In Chapter 5, a colonial nuclear missile is headed to Virginia, however it gets damaged and detonates over Memphis.
• Moral Dissonance: The Colonials' idea of liberation is a little bit different from that of most people. In particular, they seem to think that a great way to liberate the population of Earth is by launching hundreds of large nukes at its surface. And when that doesn't work very well, do it again.
• Naming Your Colony World: Planet Helo.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Influenza. While the strain that was released into the Colonies isn't that bad on Earth, the Colonials have no immunity to it. As of chapter 23, Picon (in addition to the bombardment of the base's wreckage) and Saggitaron have both been devastated by what the colonies call "the Picon Plague."
  • The Tau'ri, actually, to the Colonials. However, countering the typical effects of this trope is the fact that Earth has so little of their high tech assets, and little capability to make more of it quickly. For a little while, at least.
• Nuke'Em: Nukes are thrown around like snowballs in this fic.
• Ramming Always Works: A battlestar rams the incomplete Apollo, after said ship had already taken dozens of nuclear detonations to its incomplete shielding and hull, destroying it. The Dionysus rams a Wraith cruiser and destroys it in Chapter Fourteen.
• Reality Ensues
• Shown Their Work: The authors actually did quite a bit of work studying in preparation for what was being written in story... usually. In particular, badly damaged nuclear missiles don't go nuclear, especially not at full yield. And the effects of the four nuclear warheads that hit Earth in the first battle are much worse than they realistically would be -- 20 megaton nukes (Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons) should not do anywhere near that kind of damage, and the resulting tsunamis should not be able to somehow ignore physics and geography.
• Tear Jerker: General Hammond's funeral.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Colonial media and most of the population of the Twelve Colonies of Kobal absolutely adore Adar, usually as a consequence of him lying through his teeth.
• War Fic: Considering that the story kicks off with a massive space battle, this is pretty much a given.