Fic recs: mostly long-form
Jul. 16th, 2012 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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:
*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).
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Date: 2012-07-22 03:49 am (UTC)Yeah, the 2000-years arc was... just, unexpectedly, heartbreaking. (I'd been spoiled, by reading FoD if by nothing else, that it occurred, but it was different to watch it...) (And HA Rush, who is so obviously sulking, as Volker points out, that they did it all without him! HEE.
...I wrote that a while back, and then I was thinking about it, and I wonder if what's also going on is that -- all the others' alternate selves have -- a legacy; even Brody, who didn't have kids, had a legacy in the nation he created. The alternate Rush, in contrast, was sterile; all he did was die with the ship, at least to the best of primary!Rush's knowledge. I mean, it's because of him that everyone else is still on the ship and not stranded at Novus, but that's a bit cold comfort, in a way...)
The loop scene where Young slowly and carefully disarms Rush might be one of my favorite moments in the book. There's no doubt that 'service' is one of my biggest kink buttons, and the flavor that gets me the hardest, is 'acute perceptiveness when partner is in extremis.' Also, trust. If you look back at the preceding section, Rush had laid out the whole, "I'll *never* trust you, and you'll *never* trust me," bylaw down just a few scenes before. Then the time loops happen in which Young isn't even experiencing the learning curve of, "How the fuck do I get him to trust me on very short notice??"......and yet they hit that point where Rush is worn down to the point where he has no veneer or defenses and can only ask, "please...." and Young gets up & puts on his boots & tells Rush & Greer that he trusts them both. Lovely.
This. THIS.
And OH Eli. I think what I love about Eli in FoD is that he really assumes the responsibilities (for both crew morale and science) that he's growing towards in canon, but only in those last two episodes does he really reach for it. ELI! LOVE!
So I will make a confession that I simply adored the first two seasons of BSG, and then I really thought it went off the rails -- I don't really do crack plots (Farscape? was not crack plot. Farscape was *brilliant* plot) and I am kind of allergic to TV-show-as-current-politics-commentary. (TV show as general meta commentary, sure! Some of DS9, for example, it's surprising to me that it aired so long ago because the episodes on government control, etc. were so relevant when I watched it several years ago...)
So my list of squee!love is something like
1 Firefly
2 Veronica Mars (I actually think it is much better than Firefly in execution, but not *nearly* as lovable)
3 DS9 (esp later seasons)
4 SGU
5 BSG (vaults up to 3 if I only consider the first two or three seasons)
6 Farscape
...I know. I KNOW. OBVIOUSLY Farscape belongs way up on that list in terms of awesomeness. And I loooove Claudia Black, as I've already said. And Broken!Crichton. And I ship them like crazy. And somehow it doesn't make me squee like the other shows do, and I have no idea why. (One reason, I suspect, is that I watched them on my computer, which tends to make me cranky -- I should watch them on an actual TV, or on my iPad, and see whether that changes my opinion. Weird, stupid things like that can have an effect on me!)
...I haven't seen Sarah Connor! I will put it on my list :) (though I think probably SG-1 and SG-A will be first :) ) (I haven't seen B5 either. I know I need to!)
hee. Yes, self-indulgent gushing for the win! Love it!