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

[ecaterin]

and what actually happened is that I dropped everything to read 395k

rofl - I hear ya :P I pretty much dropped everything and read the hell out of this fic....and then a second time....and now a third time. What can I say, I have a high tolerance for repetition, when something is FUCKING AWEOME. If my Kindle could get dog-eared pages, it would already have them on this fic, as I go back and reread pivotal scenes that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Dayum.

Shall we gush? :D

[ecaterin]

*fistshake* raspberryhunterrrrrrrrrr!!!! I didn't realize that Mathematique and Ad Noctum were WIPs, so when I'd burned FoD into my brain properly, I went and read them each in a flash.....AND I'M NOW DANGLING ON TWO DIFFERENT STORIES - AAAAAAAAAAGH!

I have more rambling to do on FoD....and now on these two stories as well. I shall have to compose myself, and then return to type it all out :D

Enjoying your re-read??

Force Over Distance

[ase]

350k plus interludes, I don't even know where to start. It's not my pairing on not my show and yet I was suckered in before the end of chapter 2. If only because it's an Ancient device, this is going to end badly is a time-honored Stargate fanon trope. As are accidental telepathic links, creepy Ancient genetics, Groundhog Day incidents - seriously, SG-1 did it, I don't know how SGA got through five seasons without one, because fandom hit that so hard - and the tight third PoV helped with suspension of disbelief too.

Good stuff: plot. So much stuff going on. The Nekai, the planet trips, the constant power crises, the lovely way the relationship stuff didn't fix anything. Eli. Eli's note-rant - Number of CRITICAL PIECES OF INFORMATION ... Colonel Young: 5 DNR: Unknown, PROBABLY AT LEAST ONE MILLION ITEMS - Chloe getting to shoot stuff, and disarm bombs, and be a hardcore mathematician in a story where math = very high-value talent (RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS, even I have heard about that one!), the sense of ensemble, enhanced by the interlude fics.

The chewy bits: the trust issues. The backstabbing. For a nominally relationshippy action story with a nominally happy ending, there was an awful lot of lying, misdirection, and questionable consent (or outright pressure tactics, starting with "nice of you to wake up, by the way, telepathic link to your least favorite person on the entire ship and you can't keep them out of your head"). The Telford-Rush-Young tug-of-civilian felt a bit underdeveloped. If this had been posted as a complete piece instead of a WiP, maybe that would have gotten a little more organization/attention in the rewrite.

The Young-Telford dynamic may be a bit opaque to me because I skipped into this after half a season of the show two years ago. It was tough for me to get a bead on Young's character in FOD; if I'd watched more of the show (or, you know, been invested in a reading of the character beyond you abandoned one of your people onplanet, what the heck, the SG unofficial motto is "no one left behind", and that's when I broke up with SGU) I might have a better grounding for how Young evolves through the story.

The last two chapters sort of fell apart for me, because 1.) not that invested in how Young's brain is being colonized from the subconscious up, 2.) Arlington? Arlington? Seriously, wrong for Rush's character and doubly wrong considering what a pain in the neck Arlington burials can be for actual military, 3.) the setup evoked one of my favorite SGA fics, with serious cognitive dissonance. And yet, if you're going to try to sell an OTP, writing out the identity theme in the last section of the last chapter in blazing clarity is a great way to sell it to me.

BTW, I read "Mathematique" (what's up so far), and I am thrilled because the made-up genetics have overlap with SGA trash-talking I did in 2006. Apparently I am not the only person to call shenanigans on bad TV biology, yay!