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]

Oh, man, I have MORE TO SAY but I've got to get some work done so I'm not going to be able to do this justice until tonight or tomorrow morning -- until then lemme just reply to this one -- YES. Have you seen Carlyle in Once Upon a Time? I got to SGU by way of him because his portrayal of Gold/Rumpel is so intense. And the amazing thing about Rush is that they may have the same face and the same Scottish accent, but the portrayal is so very different that it took me surprisingly little time to respond to Rush as an entirely different character. And yes, interview!Carlyle is a THIRD character entirely, someone very different! (And, as far as I've heard, really very nice, which is totally funny given the characters he plays. Perhaps he gets all his negative emotions out in his acting?)

I found the directing excellent. The cinematography... I thought evolved. (The ubiquituous montages, for example, in first season, I could have done without. Thankfully those went away in second season.) The large-scale writing in both first and part of second season frustrated me -- I thought there was entirely too much of telling instead of showing, telling us we were supposed to care about relationships and actions when they didn't give us enough background to do so (like in one scene Eli is supposed to be all cut up over Riley's death, and yeah, "Riley" is just code for "Ginn," but still -- I think we saw Eli and Riley talk ONCE. Maybe TWICE. It just didn't gel for me) -- but the small-scale character writing, THAT was always brilliant -- like how (in the same episode) Rush is just consistently, ever since the pilot, The Most Terrible at Saying Comforting Things Ever. HEE.

That's very interesting, about the voices. I do think they did a FANTASTIC job with casting, and ALL THE ACTORS ROCKED so hard.

[ecaterin]

Oh, man, I have MORE TO SAY but I've got to get some work done

Work schmerk!!!! Oh, wait, food & rent are good. Carry on!

so I'm not going to be able to do this justice until tonight or tomorrow morning -- until then lemme just reply to this one -- YES. Have you seen Carlyle in Once Upon a Time? I got to SGU by way of him because his portrayal of Gold/Rumpel is so intense. And the amazing thing about Rush is that they may have the same face and the same Scottish accent, but the portrayal is so very different that it took me surprisingly little time to respond to Rush as an entirely different character.

Oooo I love that kind of plasticity in an actor :D Never heard of it! I will *definitely* follow a fantastic actor or writer or director into a previously untested genre or whatever....so, I'll look it up....


And yes, interview!Carlyle is a THIRD character entirely, someone very different! (And, as far as I've heard, really very nice, which is totally funny given the characters he plays. Perhaps he gets all his negative emotions out in his acting?)

LOL!! He wouldn't be the first :D Yes, he comes across as (and is regarded by his fellows as) a very genuine person.

I found the directing excellent. The cinematography... I thought evolved. (The ubiquituous montages, for example, in first season, I could have done without. Thankfully those went away in second season.)

LOL - I *think* we're saying the same thing :P In my brain 'cinematography' covers lighting, lens choices, camera angles and movement....directing & editing cover things like the montages (which became endearing to me even though they are pure schmaltz....), pacing, blocking/actor directing choices etc. (thinking about it, I bet the directive came down from on high to LIGHTEN IT UP and thus the montages, which let them have light moments without disturbing the arc or even changing those episodes very much.....)

The look of the show was well established from the start - the palette, the colors, the aggressive use of almost completely black blacks, willingness to put the actors into a totally dark room with partial lighting for the face only....really beautiful use of dark. As if Firefly was shot with a less saturated, cooler palette and a less sympathtic lighting esthetic :D

The large-scale writing in both first and part of second season frustrated me -- I thought there was entirely too much of telling instead of showing, telling us we were supposed to care about relationships and actions when they didn't give us enough background to do so (like in one scene Eli is supposed to be all cut up over Riley's death, and yeah, "Riley" is just code for "Ginn," but still -- I think we saw Eli and Riley talk ONCE. Maybe TWICE. It just didn't gel for me)

Yeah, they cast around a bit, trying to juggle such a huge ensemble cast, a huge arc and so many different settings (both on the ship and on Earth), and it showed in the writing short-cuts. Knowing the pressure that's on writing teams to put a show on the screen that a completely naive audience can waltz right into and understand, I'm sympathetic to the kind of mistakes you're writing about. They jar me, but I'm willing to overlook them in the first season into the second. And true to good arc-TV form, they finally got all the "tell" outta the way by early season 2 and were well into the SHOW :D There was very little throw away and really no fluff episodes, which really differentiated SGU from SGA and SG1....and that's undoubtedly where they lost the SG fandom. The SG fandom really hated SGU - and I understand why, because it's a show in an entirely different mold. Mah favorite mold :P

That stuff with Eli and Riley was so, 'huh?' that I have to wonder if there's a scene or three on the cutting room floor that filled out that grief beyond 'Ginn-surrogate.' I know that they cut a LOT from this show - can't wait to get my hands on the DVDs :D

-- but the small-scale character writing, THAT was always brilliant -- like how (in the same episode) Rush is just consistently, ever since the pilot, The Most Terrible at Saying Comforting Things Ever. HEE.

I've been rewatching the show with my oldest (who hasn't seen it at all) and I'd forgotten how dreadful Rush is at that stuff right from the start LOL! They did an exceptional job with character consistency right from the beginning. Scifi as a genre has *finally* learned its lessons about internal consistency - scifi fans remember eeeeverything! So don't fuck around or you'll piss your audience off! At the same time, there's nothing we scifi geeks love so much as a seamless retcon, so with some clever writing you can re-cast your show, character etc. and we'll all praise you for it :D I wonder if Telford was always intended to be a brainwashed spy or if that was a beautiful retcon to bring his character into better balance between Rush and Young?

That's very interesting, about the voices. I do think they did a FANTASTIC job with casting, and ALL THE ACTORS ROCKED so hard.

YES. Character was god, on this show. They maximized every chance to show backstory, relationship, conflict, quiet moments....within the purview of scifi/action-y genre, they gave us all the character they could. And the actors never missed a chance to give us non-verbal character stuff either! I loved that :D If they were on camera, they were telling the story, whether they had dialog or action or not.

Okay, must go get ready to sell a cello....I hope! :D

[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 :)

[ecaterin]

Rush is just consistently, ever since the pilot, The Most Terrible at Saying Comforting Things Ever. HEE.

omg, Rush in "Stage Three" trying to assure Tamara that Carmen was truly okay, that she hadn't just imagined it or wished it...but that it had truly happened. He was SO BAD AT THAT that it was making me laugh at the same time it was making me cry :)