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Tuesday, January 07, 2003
to recc or not to recc
Time for this again. Bear with or skip to the reccies. There's some good ones there.
Blind Reccs go up just to give links and remind Ally to go back and read a story. If we love it, we normally re-recc and babble on a bit in semi- to throughly-happy ways. If we don't re-recc it means: a) we're feeling incredibly lazy and the story in question didn't really make us feel all semi- to throughly-happy anyway, did it? or b) we didn't like it and would prefer to forget the link was even there.
Ally recommends fanfiction to be read based entirely on her own personal opinion. That's it.
Fair. Right? After all, the thing is called 'Ally's Fic Pics' -- er, well, it used to be.
Ally doesn't consult a panel of experts, or run the stories by her 12th grade English teacher. It's strictly a 'like it'/'don't like it', kind of thing.
Reasons for 'liking' are usually pretty plain based on the happy babblingtm (see below for samples).
Reasons for 'not liking' range from static to varied. Static reasons for 'not liking' are: a) overused plot devices, b) painful grammatic, spelling, or sentence structure (a really good beta can help immensely with this one). Varied reasons for not liking can be as odd as 'not liking the way the story ended', or 'lack of belief in characterization' (this involves voice more than 'he/she wouldn't do that!' kind of thing.
And, hey, it's not the end of the world. We have 'not liked' because the author used the word "upon" one too many times. Yes. Petty. We know. It's a pet peeve we'd be willing to abandon if anyone could come up with a sentence that uses the word 'upon' when it wouldn't be better served by the use of the word 'on'. This rule, of course, excludes poetry.
On to the fic.
SMALLVILLE:
Freshman Orientation, by Punk::NC17/slash:: Eeeeeeeee! Or, ahem. Very excited. See. We learn quickly. Gotta read. Now.
Punk writes lines that make me go, "Ah!" in a really good way. Absolutely gorgeous prose. Not as throughly beta'd a I've come to expect from someone who obviously cares about what gets out there, but that's just us. Meticulously picky. hehe. We wonder if Punk would like one of our "it's not then, it's than" emails. hehe
Taste this: "Lex's tongue can tie him in knots and his eyes can undo him and Clark wants Lex so bad that he sometimes forgets he has him."
Mm. Gorgeous. God, I could excerpt this one to death... just one last taste: "Lex stretches out next to him, places a hand flat on his chest. Lex is in love even if he doesn't know it. Clark will tell him one day. He'll explain that this is love, that it's deep and powerful and doesn't mean a thing. It's just a word, and there whether named or not."
And, oh damn, make me cry and laugh and all that in between. Hm. Probably email time. Crap. Don'tcha just hate it when an author 'makes' you write an email? *whine*
Gonna say it again. Author. Doesn't. Write. Enough.
We put this up as a blind recc and read it twice since. Set sometime after WWL2 and Promises, Crys does here what she is past master at, defining emotional ties between characters through smartly drawn character observations and interactions, and tying it all together in a focussed environment. John and Chiana's close emotional tie; that brother/little sister thing is drawn sweet and tender without becoming maudlin or overwrought in the narrative. Love this story. It's a keeper. (Pub. 11/17/02)
Character study with more bleakness from the Queen of Angst. It's a bottomless pit, baby!
Author notes this story is in the UR of Sleep While I Drive (which we wrote a book on, btw), and will make more sense if read second. I'd say that if read second you'll get one of the few sweet lip quirks of the story; being on the inside. Soon, John will whisper sweetly in her ear.
While Maayan cops to knowledge of 'tiny TVGuide spoiler', the BBQ can't really sense anything other than that which logical story progression would naturally reveal. Yeah, and, okay, I admit to using 'logical' in assessing Farscape. Firing squad at dawn.
If you are completely sworn off spoilers, please avoid. We were weak and greedily read this. Like we're gonna take a pass with a title like 'that'.
Hm. Well, there's really nothing we can say that won't spoil the story except that this is Maayan's usual extraordinary style, just a bit less surreal and more tangible in plotting. SWID can probably be viewed as the most 'Farscape' Farscape story she's yet given us.
We loved the style choice and the second person POV (Aeryn), an even more interesting undertaking than you'd think once the plot starts revealing. Characterizations are amazing, yet the flip side of the coin tends to be more shadowed, although the payoff is in the character interactions, which occasionally made me grin. Again, we admit to being fairly subject to gallows humor.
I'd love to fling my absolute favorite line of the story but it's a hideous spoiler, so we'll have to live without it.
Another great story. Understanding should come when the object is placed at a personal level. Nothing's more personal than this.
