thefourthvine | 212: To Love and Be Wise

212: To Love and Be Wise

Wow. It's been a long time since I did this. I'm recommending fan fiction! Weird. I'm hoping it will come back to me as I go along. (It had better. The backlog has become even more alarmingly like a fantasy series written by G. R. R. Martin than usual. Although with far fewer deaths, fortunately.)

So I think it would be highly appropriate to start off with as much love as we can manage, don't you? Or stories about as much love as the characters can manage, anyway.

The One in Which We Learn That a Really Good Secretary Can Change the Flow of Traffic for You. Suddenly, I Want a Really Good Secretary So Much. The World That You Need Series, by

dira. Vorkosigan Saga, Aral Vorkosigan/Cordelia Vorkosigan, Aral Vorkosigan/Arkady Jole. (If you haven't read the Vorkosigan books, I think you can still read this, but having read the books will help.)

I don't even know why I read this. (Okay, I do - it's Dira. But go with me for the sake of a - it's not a narrative device, exactly. Recommending device?) It is so wrong for me. Wrong fandom, wrong pairing, wrong everything.

The Vorkosigan books were significant for me: they were the right books at the right time. There could not have been a righter time for me to read Warrior's Apprentice, and it slotted into my life and mind so perfectly that I have been afraid to re-read it for years and years. (I've learned the hard way that some books don't stay perfect, or even lovable, forever, and there are certain books I'd prefer to love in memory than risk losing.) I mean, Lois McMaster Bujold has certainly had her misses as well as her hits with me, and she's no longer writing precisely what I want to read, but I still bought her latest book in hardcover, mostly out of gratitude for having written the right book at the right time. Warrior's Apprentice was that right for me.

So, obviously, this story had a huge negative against it before I even started it. It wasn't altering a beloved canon; it was working against my fuzzy, nostalgic memory of a canon and the unreasonable and unassailable love I hope I'll always have for this world.

And then there's the pairing, which - well, I do not like big age differences and I squirm away from power imbalances. Older Prime Minister/his young and hero-worshipping secretary is a pairing designed to hit this squick of mine. (And yet it somehow does not, which I had not even believed possible. Dira is amazing.) Also, of course, the older Prime Minister is Aral Vorkosigan, who is married. To Cordelia, a definite fictional beloved of mine. I do not like pairings that disrupt marriages. Seriously, I can't even count how many things this series had stacked against it before I read the first word.

But none of that matters, because this story is perfect. Perfectly navigated, perfectly done, perfectly right. It doesn't just slot into canon - it extends it in an absolutely appropriate way, giving us a look at what the adults were doing while the canon was off keeping an eye on Miles at the Academy. And it expands the canon world in a wholly necessary way; the background on homosexuality on Barrayar is fascinating, and absolutely right. (My spellchecker knows Barrayar, by the way. I find that odd.) Just, wow. This story: wow.

This is one of those stories that will become my internal canon, not just because I believe it, but because now that I've read it, canon alone would seem just a little bit hollow, with a missing piece exactly the shape of this story.

The One Which Paints a Much More Realistic Picture of the Burkes' Dining Room Than the One on the Show. (Why Are Houses on US TV Always So Tidy? Surely Somewhere There's a Show Where People Have Piles of Crap Everywhere.) And Anyone Who's Ever Had a Heart, by

liviapenn. White Collar, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey.

I love Elizabeth Burke. In fact, I watched (most of the first season of) White Collar because of her. I just couldn't get over how much all the stories I read in the fandom and all the people watching the show seemed to like her. I kept not finding the story where it turns out Elizabeth is a scheming evil bitch - and bitch is surely the term that would be used to describe her - who has sex with, like, all of Peter's enemies, and also secretly gets Neal sent back to prison because he's too interesting to her husband and too pretty or loyal or whatever, but then fortunately Peter finds out and pushes her under a subway train and fucks Neal right there in the station while they're watched by the glassy eyes of her severed head. (If that story exists I DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT, please. Or any version of it. Let me stay in my happy everyone-loves-Elizabeth world, okay? Please?) Eventually, I had to find out more about this show, where half of the main slash pairing could be married to a woman and the fannish result was not a lot of She's Dead, Let's Fuck stories, but rather a lot of She's Awesome, Let's All Fuck stories.

I like She's Awesome, Let's All Fuck stories. And not just because I have an aversion to sex in close proximity to severed heads.

And I'm not the only one, obviously; White Collar fandom, at least the parts I hang out in, is rich with people saying, "But why can't we have the episode where we learn that Elizabeth is really a superhero? Because I think she might be a superhero!" I like that. (Don't get your hopes up, by the way - this is not the one where Elizabeth is a superhero. At least, not in the sense of wearing spandex.) I also like Elizabeth. (And I richly appreciate the rule of the show that appears to dictate that no matter what, there has to be a scene with Peter, Elizabeth, and Neal being cheerfully domestic and bickering. A+++ choice, showrunners! Soon you can show them buying a really big bed!) And in this story, she is awesome. And I am entirely sure fucking occurs immediately after the story ends.

For me, the heart of this story is definitely the Elizabeth/Neal interactions. I love how the first scene of this story completely balances the triangle. I love how it all works out. I love how effortlessly Elizabeth, on one of the worst days of her life, pwns Neal Caffrey.

And I really, really love the image of Elizabeth in sexy librarian glasses. (If there is fanart of that, oh god link me now.)

The One in Which We Learn that Sherlock Holmes's Cries for Help Are Just As Over the Top As the Rest of Him. A Terribly Poor Understanding of Love, by

candle_beck. A Sherlock Holmes fandom of some kind, John Watson/Mary Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson. (I think this is the movie, but in all honesty tracking Sherlock Holmes fandoms is now beyond my capacity; I can do everything else in my life, or I can figure out all the Holmes permutations. In this story, there's a Holmes and a Watson and they're both men, and there's carriages rather than cars or airships. And no one is a robot. That's the best I can do for you in terms of identifying the fandom.)

A little bit ago, I was talking with

sinensis about an AU she is not writing BUT SHOULD, and she brought up the concept of slash fan blackmail. (Like, "Sometimes I think TV shows have too much gay subtext." If you had a screenshot of a slash fan saying that, maybe you could get her to write you the Holmes robot AU!) And now I am going to share with you one of my slash fan secrets, which you could totally use to blackmail me except I'm telling people of my own free will.

I never shipped Holmes and Watson in the original Conan Doyle stories. (I never shipped Jeeves and Wooster, either, despite my preteen years of obsessive fannish love for them. Judge at will.) I preferred to think of Holmes as not being really, you know, human, in the sense of having actual needs unrelated to cocaine and crime. But I still valued the Holmes and Watson relationship intensely, to the degree that I had to de-canonize Watson's marriage. He couldn't leave Holmes! It wasn't right! Holmes needed Watson! (I was, like, 14, and thus did not consider whether Watson needed Holmes, although I'd say the text makes a good case that he does.) Obviously, terrible things would happen if Watson got married and wasn't there for Holmes. (Apparently, if I'd been in Holmes fandom at 14, I would have been writing smarm. It would not have been pretty.)

This story makes it clear that terrible things do indeed happen when Watson leaves Holmes; it's everything I inchoately feared as a teenager, put into black and white. Fortunately, this story also solves the whole problem. Or, I should say, Mary Watson solves the problem, since both Holmes and Watson are too stupid and blind and generally incompetent to manage it. (Yes, I take great pleasure in this. It's always a delight when Mary is like, "Oh my GOD, how can the two of you solve crimes together? How can you even put your pants on in the morning without getting your heads stuck in one of the legs? You are the most pathetic people ever, but I will fix this because I am just that good, and also I care about you.")

So there's awesome Mary and all the agony that made teenaged-me hate Watson for getting married and Holmes and Watson making it work despite themselves, and I love all that more than I can tell you. But I also love the nature of the solution, which involves one partner saying, in essence, "You want him and I'm happy for you to have him. I'll even help make that happen! I have my own things to do. Have fun, darling! I won't wait up." It's so - grown up. Like they're all real people!

The One in Which We Learn That Pegasus Is Well Ahead of the Milky Way When It Comes to Advancements in Sexual Arts and Sciences. 3 Lovers, by

cesperanza. Stargate: Atlantis, various pairings. Think of it sort of like pairing tapas, okay? You get a taste of everything.

In this story, Teyla Emmagen has a lot of sex.

Okay, wait, maybe that wasn't the best lead-in. See, this is a story about how the team all gets together and has a warrior bonding exp - no. Okay. It's a story about how graduate students are not even remotely healthy - no. It's a story about how the solution to the Ancient equivalent of ramen noodle addiction is sometimes worse than the problem!

Never mind. Can I just not summarize this one?

And this is exactly the problem I had when the story first came out, too. Normally I pounce on each new story

cesperanza posts so quickly that sometimes I accidentally knock my head into my monitor. This story took me about a week to read, and it was entirely because I was like, "...But. I don't... hmmm. That seems..." It wasn't that there was anything unappetizing about the story, you understand. I just wasn't sure.

But obviously that was wholly unnecessary angst (actually, Unnecessary Angst would make a great title for a lot of fan fiction, just not this one; there are whole genres that could effectively be re-titled Unnecessary Angst), because this story is awesome, and I love it. If you tracked how often I re-read

cesperanza's stories, although I would rather you did not, this one would end up in the SGA top three. (It isn't fair to make SGA compete with due South. There's Diefenbaker in due South. SGA's biggest failing, in my opinion, was the absence of a large dog.) It's got Ancient technology sex pollen, it's got an awesome Teyla narrative, and it's got every pairing a person could reasonably hope for. (Note for McKay/Sheppard shippers: this story will make you happy. Note for OT4 fans: this story will make you happy. Note for everyone else: this story will probably make you happy, too, unless you ship, like, Sheppard/Todd, in which case I don't know what to tell you. No one story can be all things to all people! But this one comes close.)

Really, the only thing this story is lacking is the coda where they get a puppy. And I suppose I can't really expect every story to fix the dog-shaped hole in Atlantis.

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*glomps you*

*glomps your recs*

*is all happy and stuff now*

(Are you a reader of Laurie R. King's take on Holmes? And if so, what do you think of her/it/them?)

Not so far, no. Jill Paton Walsh scarred me forever when it comes to published fan fiction, particularly of mystery series; sometimes the wound still pains me in chilly weather. (But if you tell me King's stuff is good, I will have a gander!)

*glomps you right back*

RE: Sherlock Holmes - Did you know there is a "canonical" robot AU?

:D

OMG. On the one hand, ROBOTS. On the other hand - it looks like it could be very, very bad.

But, see, this is why I don't try to pin down the specific flavor of Holmes fandom any more. There are too many canons. (Which is what happens when an awesome source is out of copyright, of course. I am all for transformation, obviously. I just - can't keep up.)

Wow. I know all of these fandoms.

Today I have truly Become a Woman.

AIGH. I initially thought "Oh, God, that was the woman who committed that vile Lord Peter travesty that Dorothy Sayers would have turned atheist rather than condone, wasn't it." And then I thought "no, Q, you are not remembering that correctly, clearly Jill Paton Walsh is someone entirely different of whom you have not heard because you are actually remarkably shallowly read for someone of your age and reasonable intelligence." And then I thought "well, okay then, let's Google her and find out who she really is."

And then I did, and I found her website. Which simultaneously proved that my first guess is occasionally the right one and made me want to fire her web designer (I'd blame her inevitable grandchildren, but they undoubtedly know how to program) AND brought back a host of horrible memories of that rassafrickin' awful book. I had such high hopes for that thing. I loved the original series SO much once I finally read it, and I wanted Thrones, Dominions to be the dreamt-of continuation of marvelousness that I needed it to be. AND IT WASN'T, TFV. *criez again in retrospect*

That said, and knowing without even having to check that any number of good folks whom you trust will think differently and probably have excellent and well-thought-out rational reasons for doing so: I do actually rather adore Laurie R. King's Holmes pastiches. I find them to be well written; I don't warm to her Watson (and I don't think you would, either) but her Sherlock is a remarkable survivor; and I have more than a bit of a crush on the primary character, who is neither Watson nor Holmes but, at the start of the first book, a 15-year-old girl. I am not generally comfortable with big age differences, either - but King makes this one work for me. (I hasten to add that the relationship stays platonic for good reasons and for several years, in case contemplating it doing otherwise squicks you as much as it does me.)

If you like, I will send you the first one, whereupon you can experiment risk-free and toss the book away through an open window if it doesn't work for you.

I feel like I should be giving you Advil, but I trust that this kind of Becoming a Woman is better than the kind that makes you want to weep at the thought of doing this EVERY MONTH until you are FIFTY. Right? Right?

One reason I ADORE White Collar is that the main pairing? Is a threesome. Full stop. It just IS, and this fandom is not one where people whine about it (which never makes sense to me, embrace the threesome), instead we get awesome stories. Because, Elizabeth IS utterly wonderful, and both Neal and Peter are wonderful, and they all take such delight in each other.

For me, this fandom is a happy threesome place and I haven't read a fic that says anything different.

I watched it when I was tiny. Sadly, I cannot tell you how good or bad it is off the top of my head. /goes to hunt it down on Youtube

/returns

... it's ... well, the first episode isn't as awful as I expected, and in fact I quite like it in some ways, but it's definitely edutainment and it's definitely Blade Runner Lite in terms of science fiction and ... no, I can't possibly recommend watching it to anyone, sob.

I suppose I can't really expect every story to fix the dog-shaped hole in Atlantis.

When I was sixteen, my favourite Voyager fic (I'm afraid I don't have a link for it any more) was a gen story in which Tom Paris breaks into Janeway's quarters. He's caught, and refuses to explain why, so Janeway restricts him to quarters and takes him off away missions, etc, etc, etc, and there's a lot of angst until finally, she finds out that Paris was part of a conspiracy to steal her civvies and vacuum the dog hair off them, to clone her red setter so she could have a dog. And he endured all that punishment rather than spoil the surprise when Chakotay and the rest of the crew presented her with the puppy.

I preferred to think of Holmes as not being really, you know, human

I wonder if that's why I didn't ship Kirk/Spock when I was that age. I was really fixated on them being Very Good Friends with no sex. Eh.

Thank you for the recs, I read the whole Holmes one and I think I love the movieverse more now.

I just couldn't get over how much all the stories I read in the fandom and all the people watching the show seemed to like her. That really has been one of the most awesome things ever since the show started. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. :) I was really kind of floored from the first episode at how the writers kept making her awesome.

I preferred to think of Holmes as not being really, you know, human, in the sense of having actual needs unrelated to cocaine and crime.

That's kind of where the community

asexy_sherlock comes in - it's really focused on the recent BBC adaption (no Mary, in other words), but there's been some really interesting explorations of the nature of asexuality and Sherlock in particular.

3 Lovers is one of my favorite SGA stories, too. I weirdly loved Teyla and Rodney's relationship, because they just seemed so married. They even made the jokes about their affairs with sexy young things! It was pretty great.

I *enthusiastically* endorse all your recs! (Except for the Holmes one, but only because I haven't read the story & am not into the fandom.) Especially the part about Dira being awesome. And the part about Elizabeth being awesome. And about Teyla being awesome. And Cesperanza being awesome. (Why yes, I *am* gushing about both fictional and actual women in the same breath. What of it?)

And I *completely agree* that SGA would have been helped *immensely* if Elizabeth Weir had been allowed to bring her dog with her to Atlantis! (and McKay his cat, of course) The doggie & kittie wouldn't even need to have had the obligatory overly-cutesy "pet's day on Atlantis" episode. They could have stayed wagging and purring in the background & I would have been immensely content.

I also happen to agree with you that the only thing that story needs is the coda where they get a puppy. That family *needs* a puppy! On the other hand....she *did* write that coda where the SGA family in this story meets the "Eggroll" family in her Due South 'verse, so, theoretically, Dief could turn up and fix everything (as he does) by donating one of his pups to the cause, as it were....

Yes to all this. Particularly Elizabeth.

And I am fairly sure that the candle beck story is about the Downey and Law movie, which I ADORE.

I want to read that story.

Could not agree with you more about White Collar. All three leads are beyond awesome (and the supporting cast isn't far behind). And the viable OT3ness just slays me. (One important facet of the SALAF phenomenon as it plays out in White Collar, at least for me: the fact that, as is clear from the very first episode, Elle and Peter have a real, viable, LONG-TERM marriage, without children, that manages to honor both their individual spirits and the soul of what they've created together. I want that marriage. Possibly even with those people.)

Dog-shaped hole filled!

Working dog at rest.

*swoons a bit*

Thank you for the rec! And, ahahaha, I guess you missed all of my flailing posts about OH SHIT WHAT AM I DOING TRYING TO WRITE SLASH PORN ABOUT MY PERSONAL SACRED FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS, since The Vor Game was the third SF book I ever read and the one that convinced me I liked SF When I was twelve. *g*

Anyway, I guess I should get on with stories 6 through mumbleteen in the outline, then.

Oh GOD, Jill Paton Walsh. I read the Sayers books when I was quite wee, so they were formative and, you know, well-loved. And then Thrones, Dominions was coming out, and I was a little dubious. (Also, I had no idea about fan fiction.) But Peter! Harriet! Bunter! And it was supposed to be written from Sayers' notes. So I was also hopeful. (I did mention that I was still youngish and sort of naive at this point, right? At least in certain arenas?) And it was SO AWFUL, Q. I mean, I don't have to tell you, obviously you've been there, but - SO, SO AWFUL. *joins you in shedding tears of bookish WOE*

Seriously, if she'd just set the series on fire, it would have been less painful, you know?

Hmmm. Hmmmm. Maybe I will see if BB can get it from the library, actually, so that I can kind of wiggle up to it slowly. I am a sensitive soul, and the wounds Paton Walsh (is that her last name, or is just Walsh? I honestly cannot bear to look it up, so I will NAME HER WHAT I WANT TO, DAMN IT). As I was saying, the wounds Pissant Walsh gave me mean I must be cautious in my approach. But I will try it! Because I am BRAVE. And I trust you. And there is at least some decent published Holmes fan fiction, which gives me hope.

Yes! Totally! Part of the joy is that they really do seem MARRIED. A lot of on-screen marriages (both TV and movies) are the heterosexual, visual media equivalent of Any Two Guys stories, and I have no reason to believe that the people in question like each other. Investment in their relationship is impossible.

But not in White Collar! Which is glorious.

I never shipped Holmes and Watson in the original Conan Doyle stories. (I never shipped Jeeves and Wooster, either, despite my preteen years of obsessive fannish love for them.)

Ditto. and ditto. (I also never shipped Wolfe and Archie.) Well, this plan is clearly backfiring on us, if we have the same blackmail-able secrets (and proclaim them on the internets ::koff::). We must lure unsuspecting others into our NETS OF DOOM, because I afraid that's the only way that SGA AU is going to get written.

I love Elizabeth Burke more than cake. And I love cake. Elizabeth with Peter is cake with delicious frosting, and Neal is whipped cream and chocolate shavings--a big plate of yummy. It makes me very happy that she was so widely embraced.

I want to read that story really bad.

So, a fic very much like this (http://www.robertduncanmcneill.net/hairdog.html), then?

/random anonymous driveby linking

For me, this fandom is a happy threesome place and I haven't read a fic that says anything different.

Yes! And part of me is worried that surely that story is out there, but mostly I am just extremely pleased not to have found it. (And since the early stories and people in a fandom influence the direction of the fandom disproportionately, perhaps the people who want to write She's Dead, Let's Fuck stories got turned off of WC? Or maybe Elizabeth is just too cute to kill horribly for purposes of sexual facilitation. I would certainly think she is.)

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212: To Love and Be Wise

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