[prepare for comma abuse, run-on torments and other degradations of the English language, as my gushing exceeds my grammar...]
I did want to wait until my FEELINGS on the first read-through had settled down just a bit, to see if it was as good as I remembered. IT IS
It really is :D It's standing up gracefully to the kind of saturation re-reads I'm inflicting on it as well. <--- is a brute!
Going back to your previous comment -- it just completely boggles my mind how CWR takes tropes that could so easily be done completely wrong and does them right. Like H/C, as you say. Like the Rush/AI/Young threesome -- even just writing that down that sounds horrible, right? Like something out of a bad PWP?
LOLOL!!! Yes! I *do* have a h/c + service kink for sure....and I almost never get to indulge it, because h/c stories are so universally formulaic and tiresome. Repeated torment of our favorite characters ends up feeling like the story itself is a time-loop :P It's almost impossible to get variety in situations, in character reactions and interactions....and almost by definition no one can GROW and relationships can't change. If they do, the h/c is resolved, and there goes your format! But CWR really pulls it off, doesn't she. The damage is both cumulative and on an upward spiral of ever higher stakes and drastic devastation to body, mind and relationship. The inherent structure of the canon story (DISCOVER THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE) means that you can ratchet the tension as high as you want - it'll never feel disproportionate :D So it makes sense that Rush is further and further damaged, more and more difficult to reach, to help and to heal. It makes sense that Young goes deeper and deeper into this relationship, to the point of becoming Rush in a tangental but fundamental way. Even if he can recover from these events, Young will never recover from this relationship and he knows it.....and it's entirely worth it any way.
Added to that, she handled the slooooooow build of Young/Rush with a very deft touch. "Our characters are telepathically linked, now they will automatically fall in loff!" is such a worn out trope. She circumvented the usual issues so well - close contact intensifies the hatred and ups the claustrophobic close-quarters conflict.... and that obscures the latent attraction for a good long while :) Even once they start connecting, their explosive relationship never loses its fragile quality. You believe they really are the defining relationship of each other's lives, and at the same time that they never become less who they are. Which is (imo) a critical criteria of any genuine love - love should make you *more* yourself, not less.
But CWR makes it into this amazing thing where now I think part of my headcanon is Rush/AI, at least. And it's even more amazing because we never, in a sense, see the AI as itself -- it's always filtered through their perceptions. (And it killed me when Young finally, finally admitted that Destiny was in love with Rush, almost at the very end. AGH.)
The point at which Rush begins to refer to the AI as 'Sweetheart,' I knew, I knew their relationship had transcended "confused with Gloria" or simply "interconnected" and moved into a true love relationship....even though the AI was still struggling to figure out WTF all the CONCERN loops and WANT loops and OUTCOME DOES NOT EQUAL DESIRED OUTCOME loops - even though it couldn't define what it was feeling, it was feeling it. Ahem, can't relate to that at all *cough* :P
And the handling of the long form is, as you say, spectacular. I simply don't know of anyone else who handles the overall long arc so well -- the HP fic above might, but it's hard to tell since it's a WIP right now, and I suspect it's a little more diffuse than FoD.
HERE HERE. I grab every long-form fic I can get my hands on (I read fast...longer fics make me happeh!), and nothing I've read does it better than FoD. Hell, FoD makes published multi-book serieses look scattered and without focus by comparison :P Part of that is inherent in the structure of the story - it's very linear, driving to a discrete conclusion. But CWR doesn't rest on that nice tidy structure - this is a whole season of television here, with lots of episodes of BAD, all our character vignettes that fit seamlessly into the narrative (I have them all in their respective places within the kindle document, they work great that way)....and STILL the story telling is completely tight.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-07-17 07:17 pm (UTC)I did want to wait until my FEELINGS on the first read-through had settled down just a bit, to see if it was as good as I remembered. IT IS
It really is :D It's standing up gracefully to the kind of saturation re-reads I'm inflicting on it as well.
<--- is a brute!
Going back to your previous comment -- it just completely boggles my mind how CWR takes tropes that could so easily be done completely wrong and does them right. Like H/C, as you say. Like the Rush/AI/Young threesome -- even just writing that down that sounds horrible, right? Like something out of a bad PWP?
LOLOL!!! Yes! I *do* have a h/c + service kink for sure....and I almost never get to indulge it, because h/c stories are so universally formulaic and tiresome. Repeated torment of our favorite characters ends up feeling like the story itself is a time-loop :P It's almost impossible to get variety in situations, in character reactions and interactions....and almost by definition no one can GROW and relationships can't change. If they do, the h/c is resolved, and there goes your format! But CWR really pulls it off, doesn't she. The damage is both cumulative and on an upward spiral of ever higher stakes and drastic devastation to body, mind and relationship. The inherent structure of the canon story (DISCOVER THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE) means that you can ratchet the tension as high as you want - it'll never feel disproportionate :D So it makes sense that Rush is further and further damaged, more and more difficult to reach, to help and to heal. It makes sense that Young goes deeper and deeper into this relationship, to the point of becoming Rush in a tangental but fundamental way. Even if he can recover from these events, Young will never recover from this relationship and he knows it.....and it's entirely worth it any way.
Added to that, she handled the slooooooow build of Young/Rush with a very deft touch. "Our characters are telepathically linked, now they will automatically fall in loff!" is such a worn out trope. She circumvented the usual issues so well - close contact intensifies the hatred and ups the claustrophobic close-quarters conflict.... and that obscures the latent attraction for a good long while :) Even once they start connecting, their explosive relationship never loses its fragile quality. You believe they really are the defining relationship of each other's lives, and at the same time that they never become less who they are. Which is (imo) a critical criteria of any genuine love - love should make you *more* yourself, not less.
But CWR makes it into this amazing thing where now I think part of my headcanon is Rush/AI, at least. And it's even more amazing because we never, in a sense, see the AI as itself -- it's always filtered through their perceptions. (And it killed me when Young finally, finally admitted that Destiny was in love with Rush, almost at the very end. AGH.)
The point at which Rush begins to refer to the AI as 'Sweetheart,' I knew, I knew their relationship had transcended "confused with Gloria" or simply "interconnected" and moved into a true love relationship....even though the AI was still struggling to figure out WTF all the CONCERN loops and WANT loops and OUTCOME DOES NOT EQUAL DESIRED OUTCOME loops - even though it couldn't define what it was feeling, it was feeling it. Ahem, can't relate to that at all *cough* :P
And the handling of the long form is, as you say, spectacular. I simply don't know of anyone else who handles the overall long arc so well -- the HP fic above might, but it's hard to tell since it's a WIP right now, and I suspect it's a little more diffuse than FoD.
HERE HERE. I grab every long-form fic I can get my hands on (I read fast...longer fics make me happeh!), and nothing I've read does it better than FoD. Hell, FoD makes published multi-book serieses look scattered and without focus by comparison :P Part of that is inherent in the structure of the story - it's very linear, driving to a discrete conclusion. But CWR doesn't rest on that nice tidy structure - this is a whole season of television here, with lots of episodes of BAD, all our character vignettes that fit seamlessly into the narrative (I have them all in their respective places within the kindle document, they work great that way)....and STILL the story telling is completely tight.
(speaking of long-form and HP, surely you've read Resonant's Transfigurations, and Copperbadge's Stealing Harry & Cartographer's Craft yes? (on those last 2 links, chapters are in reverse order - scroll down for the beginning)
[continued below....]