raspberryhunter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raspberryhunter) wrote2012-07-16 12:53 pm
raspberryhunter) wrote2012-07-16 12:53 pm
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Fic recs: mostly long-form
*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:
*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).
Re: Force Over Distance
Which gets back to my fundamental SGU stumbling-block, it's coming with lots of SG-verse baggage. If one filed off the serial numbers, I might enjoy it rather more.
...so Amazon's streaming service has the entire series for $8 ($4/season). Talk about temptation!
I feel like when a fic is marked slash (or het, for that matter), the expectation is that it will be ALL romance/sex, ALL the time, and that the characters will have no interests other than the romance bit.
Yes, there's genre expectations when there's a slash label on the box. FOD fit some but not all of those expectations: m/m relationship, check; significant to story, check; deep emotional bond, hi mental link; erotica no check. I want to say the relationship dynamics are almost old-school zine slash? Filtered through second-hand accounts and in FOD's case wedged into a heck of a lot more plot.
Tangentially, at one point people were suggesting "bob" as a tag for "(slash or het or other) relationship present but not the focus of this story". I don't know if it caught on outside cofax et al's circle, but I think it fills a niche.
I kind of adore the AI. What can I say, I am a sucker for the romance of technology, or something? But yes, Young's attitude towards it was rather, um, speciesist? organicist?
I'll go with speciesist. (I sort of want to see what happens if Young ever meets the Tok'ra, other than reflexive angry o_O face.) But the AI! It's trying so hard, and it is so very screwed from the minute Young decided it was a threat. So between Young treating it like the red-haired stepchild, and Rush's probably erratic guidance, it's a miracle it's not even more messed up. You probably have more background to assess the comp sci behind the scenes, but what I saw was plausible enough to suspend my disbelief. And make me want to give the AI hugs and chocolate. (Or whatever AIs get. Awesome math proofs?)
Young's attitude is actually in keeping with the SG-verse relationship with non-organic intelligence - wait, CWR managed to write 350k+ with an intelligent spaceship without invoking the replicator arc(s)? Okay, short version, spider-shaped Lego nanotech with a grudge from that time SG-1 lied and locked it/them in a time-dilation bubble - as well as his own tendency to let his emotions do the first evaluation. One of the good things about the fic is how organi- uh, intrinsic the Young-AI conflict feels, even when I want Young to ask more questions instead of flouncing out of the room/interface/interaction.
. I certainly did get the impression he was... optimistic... from that episode.
If you want SG1/SGA spoilers, I can cite multiple episodes where McKay failed to demonstrate the level of disaster sensitivity he has in "Sabotage". Seriously.
Re: Force Over Distance
Heh. I didn't realize this was an SG thing, although I suppose the way that Telford and Young are all "okay, here we go again" should have clued me in to that; I figured that one of the things that was going on was that they, unfortunately, figured out that Carlyle looks all woobly when he's tortured (poor Rush really can't get a break in this show). Which is true, but... he also does all kinds of other sorts of acting well, darn it!
Which gets back to my fundamental SGU stumbling-block, it's coming with lots of SG-verse baggage. If one filed off the serial numbers, I might enjoy it rather more.
I really think my SGU-love benefited from watching it first, without knowing anything about SG-verse at all (I literally didn't know anything about it besides that MacGyver was somehow involved -- hard to know how that's even possible, with the huge fandom, but there it is). I think my SG-1 watching, at first, suffered from the reverse effect, but -- I finally got to the end of Children of the Gods Part II -- I think I shall be able to decouple it.
But the AI! It's trying so hard, and it is so very screwed from the minute Young decided it was a threat. So between Young treating it like the red-haired stepchild, and Rush's probably erratic guidance, it's a miracle it's not even more messed up. You probably have more background to assess the comp sci behind the scenes, but what I saw was plausible enough to suspend my disbelief.
Awwwww the AI. One of my favorite characters! I don't think anyone has enough CS to assess what a self-aware AI would be like :) But I loved how it was both vaguely romantic and vaguely parental and -- and kind of hits all those buttons for me the way Mike did in Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- and yes, if the AI had been a human, it would have been slightly skeevy, but it's not a human.
Re: Force Over Distance
There was a really unfortunate SGA episode. Characters in a bind thought torture might force a mole out of hiding, and, um, it didn't work very well. The most charitable reading is a post-Guantanamo Very Special Episode, which backfired.
I think my SG-1 watching, at first, suffered from the reverse effect, but -- I finally got to the end of Children of the Gods Part II -- I think I shall be able to decouple it.
SGU does gritty; SG-1 SG-is a little more... bubbly. Classic Trek-influenced sci-fi drama. If you can calibrate for that, you should be able to adjust.
Depending on how you feel about the rest of S1, there's an old Stargate Primer for the Farscape Fan written when Ben Browder was cast on SG-1. It's very funny, but most importantly it ends with episode recommendations by season. My top three by season aren't her top three, but they're solid eps.
The AI isn't human, and that's actually pretty cool. It wants to understand humans - or it's programmed to try to comprehend the people running around the ship, or something - so I parse it as somewhat kid-like. In addition to romantic and sometimes parental. It wants to fix things, but it doesn't know how, or even that some problems aren't fixable within its capabilities, and it's really bad at coping with that. (One of my favorite parts is when Young and the AI have to cope with Rush off the ship.) I've got my buttons installed in slightly different places, but it's hitting some of those.
Re: Force Over Distance
Classic Trek-influenced sci-fi drama. If you can calibrate for that, you should be able to adjust.
I'm getting that...
Depending on how you feel about the rest of S1, there's an old Stargate Primer for the Farscape Fan written when Ben Browder was cast on SG-1.
This is awesome. Also it helps a lot with orienting myself tone-wise ("oh, okay, RDA is trying to be funny!")
Yeah, sorry, my comment was quite incoherent -- I meant that Rush's relationship with it was parent-like, not the AI's. (Although I guess the AI also has to be parental, with all the trouble its humans are getting themselves into...) Anyway! Awwwww AI! :)
Re: Force Over Distance
The really weird thing about the torture in SGU is that it works, at least with Telford, and Young's all blase about it. I think maybe the point was to set up a correspondence between it working with Telford and not working with Rush, but it didn't come together at all.
Well, SG-1 canon is you can break the brainwashing, but you basically have to flatline the victim to do so. Thus, Telford. It's a strategy. (Except in Rush's body, so it doesn't make much sense to me.) I think Young's choice to cut Wray and Scott out of the loop was spectacularly stupid, but it's part of Young's pattern of poor decision-making. Rush? I got nothing. The writers want to show Kiva and the Lucian Alliance are bad guys? It's the SGU take on Everyone Breaks Eventually? IDK, it's a theme the SGU writers don't handle with tact or sensitivity, but like to pull out of the plot-box anyway.
On a marginally related note, GO PARK for telling Young "no shouting" when Team Science was working on the FTL and pulsar problems. When is Young going to realize you attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
Anyway! Awwwww AI! :)
Aww AI indeed! I'm failing to resist rereading Heinlein after your earlier comment. The change in gears, tones, etc is causing some serious genre-clash for me. (Manny on Destiny, oh my stars and garters.)
Re: Force Over Distance
That's... actually... way better than what I was fearing, which was something along the lines of "This is terrible and you are a bad person for enabling me to watch it!" ;) I feel kind of the same way about it, myself, except maybe slightly more on the "enjoy" side?
I can comment on "Sabotage", "Pain", "Subversion", and "Incursion" 1 & 2.
Huh. I thought "Pain" was... not really worth watching (there's a reason I thought you should begin with Subversion). I liked "Sabotage," although partially for an Eli/Rush moment (I kind of heart Eli-Rush as a mentor/rivalry thing, even though I think part of what I like is the FoD version rather than the actual show version) and partially because I am drawn to Perry EVEN THOUGH SHE CLEARLY NEEDS TO GET OVER HER SCHOOLGIRL CRUSH. (I like that they don't shy away from the fact that this is what it is, but STILL. Am waiting for you to watch "The Greater Good" so I can really complain about her.)
The only other Season 1 I think is worth watching is "Human," but you have to also remember that a) I am a sucker for Carlyle, and b) SHOR'S ALGORITHM. So YMMV. But, hey, Daniel Jackson!
Season 2: "Intervention" is needed to tie up the arc. "Aftermath"... hmmmm... not my favorite, but I do like Riley quite a lot. "Awakening" I actually don't remember if I liked or not -- I think it was OK, and features Telford being decent. "Pathogen" wasn't one of my favorites, but it's Chloe-centric (sort of) and I do very much like the Eli-Wray subplot. "Cloverdale" is really not worth watching unless you want to see the actors do small-town America dreamscape (I thought it was a hoot, myself, and the *acting* is really good, but the whole concept is... eh. I'd advise against it unless you're feeling pretty punchy). "Trial and Error"... is Young acting stupid again. I know how much you love that! Wheeee! From "The Greater Good," as I've said, I think they're pretty much worth watching ("Visitation" has some pretty awful science, but in retrospect is one of my favorites in an incredibly creepy way) -- oh, except for "The Hunt," which was this totally random one-off in a half-season of arc. (I still liked it, because TJ is awesome, but it would be fine if you skipped it.)
Netflix has told me I can't watch SG-1 OR SG-A anymore. What the crap! I may have to go back and resurrect the DVD membership again. Or get amazon prime, which works out to about the same amount and would give me two-day shipping. Hmmmph.
(Manny on Destiny, oh my stars and garters.)
*head explodes*