Fic recs: mostly long-form

[raspberryhunter]

*SGU: So I recently discovered the whole SGU show/fandom (uh, obviously), and the huge freakily amazing thing going on in that fandom is CleanWhiteRoom's fics, especially Force Over Distance. This is a master of the long-form, here. (395k!) I must append here that I'm a bit of a comma stickler, and I'm of the camp that does not accept that "alright" is a word (though I am informed that The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style says it is fine ;) ), and even though CWR and I have agreed to disagree on "alright" I am still super-recommending this fic (and this gives you an idea of how amazing it must be, because usually that kind of thing makes me stop reading the fic, and what actually happened is that I dropped everything to read 395k). In fact, even if you don't know the SGU show, I'm informed that it's still possible to read this and enjoy it. It's got it all -- a tight plot, humor, worldbuilding, awesome characters. IT EVEN HAS A TIME LOOP CHAPTER. I am also so psyched by CWR's clear love of and knowledge of the hard sciences (D-branes! YANG-MILLS THEORY. "The universe doesn't have an edge that one can travel to. It's spatially infinite." YES). There are also two other AUs in the works (EDIT 7-31-12: THIS MEANS THEY ARE WIPs. Sorry!): Ad Noctum (which I love) and Mathematique (which is a huge crossover with SG-1 and SG-A, and which I like very much but will probably like more once I watch those).

*In Once Upon a Time, there are two major things going on in that fandom on AO3:

-Fyre is writing the heck out of it. My favorite is her Home Before Midnight, which has two sequels. This was the one that started it all, I believe. It focuses on and has a deep compassion for all the characters, like OUAT itself. She's currently writing a season 1 AU WIP that is rather interesting.

-THE Rumpel/Belle-AU fic, and I say this as someone who maxed out on Rumpel/Belle quite a long time ago, is a WIP, A Bed of Thorns. It is quite possibly the only explicit fic I will ever rec, because it is that rare beast: a fic where the sex is actually there as character development. (Okay, honestly, it's a bit more indulgent than that, and I've started skipping some of the sex parts, but it's way better about it than most of the explicit stuff I read.) It is also an extremely rare beast in that it doesn't gloss over Rumpel's evil side. As an AU, this is very possible to read even if you know nothing about canon.

*I recommended this a while back on my media-rant journal before I got this one, but since I'm talking about the long form, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, alas, another WIP, but worth every chapter even if he never does finish it, is flipping fantastic. From my rec there:

What would happen if a) Harry were brought up in a loving super-rational super-academic household, and b) everyone and everything in the HP universe was, well... more-or-less reasonable? (Not necessarily sane, mind you -- just not holding the Idiot Ball.)... Harry starts out by explaining things like observer bias to various people at Hogwart, and decides to run experiments to figure out how magic works! He explains Punnett squares to Draco in the context of blood purity! The first several chapters are a little one-note like that, but I don't care because I love that note! I would have loved it had it all been riffs on that, but as it progresses it also acquires a really interesting plot, layers on layers of hints to be explained, I think maybe every character in the entire fic is now involved in at least one secret plot, and I find the relationship between Harry and Draco extremely moving (and no, not in that way; it's gen/het).

Comments

[raspberryhunter]

(...okay, I sort of feel like I wrote this already, but maybe I just wrote it in my head? Apologies if I ended up somehow posting this twice?)

...You haven't heard aboutOnce Upon a Time? Well. It's fantasy, probably obviously, a world where the denizens of Fairyland are transported to our world("Storybrooke, Maine") and their memories wiped, as part of a curse. The narrative cuts between backstory in Fairyland and present-day Storybrooke under the curse; Carlyle is Rumpelstiltskin in Fairyland and the pawnbroker-and-all-around-shady-business-guy Mr. Gold in Storybrooke, and he blows both parts away (I didn't even realize it was the same actor playing both roles until reading the recaps).

The show is interesting. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it... it's only gone through one season, and has had a few growing pains: the pacing is kind of terrible and the characterization of at least one major character is a bit all over the place, and the portrayal of adoption/fostering MAKES ME STABBITY. But the arc is exciting, it appears to have the courage of its convictions (can't say more without spoiling) and I looooove how many strong women it has, and that the women are the movers of the action, and that it's the relationships between women that are important, and that familial/parental relationships are given priority over True Love. So there you have it. I suspect you will like it, if only because Carlyle is soooo awesome :)

I know that they cut a LOT from this show - can't wait to get my hands on the DVDs

...this explains a LOT. OK, I might have to get the DVDs, if there's a lot of cut material in them! (I don't want to say goodbye to all these characters yet!)

...really beautiful use of dark

THIS. The aesthetic, I really liked. (Though the jittery camera I could have done without, thanks!)

Re the writing for the ensemble cast: Yeah, I can imagine it's difficult to write for such a large cast (and the ensemble is why I love SGU -- I LOVE ensemble TV, as I've said!) And this, as I've said before, ended up being so very consistent -- So one of the places where I was pleased both by myself and by the writing was -- I had this idea of TJ (and wrote the vast majority of "Laws of Motion") before watching "The Hunt," which was TJ-centric, and I was so very pleased that my conception hit exactly the conception the writers had :)