thefourthvine | Slashy Nominations 66: History Is Little Else Than a Picture of Human Crimes and Misfortunes

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Slashy Nominations 66: History Is Little Else Than a Picture of Human Crimes and Misfortunes

(Note: my apologies for the whole two-posts-in-one-day thing. I was in the mood, and I'd had both of these entries kicking around for a while and wanted them done. Plus, it's not like I'm usually guilty of anything even approximating regular posting, let alone flist spamming, so I'm thinking I can be forgiven this once.)

I have a special weakness for fill-in-the-blanks fic. This probably started in my misspent youth, when I spent a lot of time bitterly resenting books that ended too soon or didn't tell the whole story or left out the first part. (Thinking back on it, I was apparently a FF reader born, not made.) The only book I ever felt really covered everything sufficiently was David Copperfield, but in that case, what was mostly covered was whining. (Memo to David: Life sucks, yes, we know, especially when Dickens has hold of you. Get over yourself. You could be wearing a decaying wedding dress, you know.)

So I love those fan fiction authors that apparently share my need to get the whole story, and when getting it is impossible, to make it up. Go obsessives! (Because, hey, isn't that what fandom is really all about?)

Best FF That Shows Us What Mountie Training Is Really Good for*: Instilling Sufficient Poise to Watch Your Adolescent Fuck-Buddy Interact with Your Current Lover Without a Single Flinch: Passion, by Speranza, aka

cesperanza. Due South, Benton Fraser/assorted, but I promise a Certain Person that it ends as it should, with all due (*snerk*) pairing correctness. I think we can agree that it's pretty much canon that Fraser's life has been a) sucky and b) remarkably loveless. But it takes a

cesperanza to show us just how much that hurts. I love the little things in this - 12-year-old Ben's fury with himself over his inability to talk to his father, or 38-year-old Ben's fury with himself when he once again gets overwhelmed by passion. (Overwhelmed by Passion, by Roan Strober, from Harlequin: when young, cultured Cordelia Markham's ship founders at sea, she accepts rescue from the least-likely source - the dread pirate Bartholomew Bradley. He's a bad, bad man, but he's all man. Soon, she'll be...overwhelmed by passion!) Special added bonus for readers (of "Passion," not Overwhelmed by Passion, which does not exist but which I confidently predict contains no bonuses at all aside from a euphemism-filled heterosexual sex scene on page 79): the brilliant original characters in this story. Think OC = disaster? Doesn't. Here's proof.

Best FF That Shows the Hidden Horror of American Family Holidays Better Than 3 Million Student Films (or Ang Lee Films, for That Matter) Ever Could: Triskaideka: A Door Closing, by Luna, aka Violet, aka

tangleofthorns. Homicide: Life on the Streets. Warning: this story is implicitly but extremely disturbing. Do not read if you are easily disturbed. By anything at all. And, yes, I do mean implicitly disturbing - there's nothing stated, but what isn't stated is so awful it's...well, I wish I could say beyond imagining, but the truth is it's all too easy to imagine. That's the problem. This story is about 13-year-old Tim Bayliss having a Magical Family Thanksgiving (tm), and I love the way Luna manages to overlay the sweet, wholesome images of this Great American Holiday (tm) with such horror. (

shellmidwife or anyone else who watched the TV show - is what Luna's implying here canon? Did this really happen to him?) "A Door Closing" is part of Luna's "Triskaideka" series, and I love this series concept. (I also love the series, of course.) I want to get a look at the 13-year-old version of every single character in every single one of my fandoms (excepting of course those in which the canon shows us the characters at 13), and I want it now, and I'm going to spend a lot of today whining because I can't have it. (Come on, people. Tell me you don't want to read about 13-year-old Casey McCall watching a baseball game by himself, announcing it under his breath, occasionally trying out 18 different inflections to get that one perfect one, or 13-year-old Ray Kowalski learning to tune a carburetor and failing to have a conversation with his father, or anything involving Midshipman Aubrey learning the, um, ropes, or freshman Danny Ocean hiding a smile while conning the senior jocks who thought they were going to kick his ass, or 13-year-old Logan listening to the declaration of WWII on the radio in some cruddy shack, wondering how many years it'll be 'til he can join up, or...look, stopping now. But you see the temptation, don't you? Tell me I'm not alone in this.)

Best FF That Shows That All's Fair When You're Helping War with Her Love Problems: Holiday in Spain, by Cimorene, aka

minkhollow. Good Omens, implied War/Pestilence. Pollution learns a secret (this story is from

therealjae's Secrets Challenge) and gives War some career advice. And, look, for personal reasons I am not typically fond of light-hearted stories on this particular topic (not spelled out because a) I want you guys to read the story, and you won't if I tell you and b) it'll spoil it but good), but Cimorene makes it work here, somehow. (Originally mistyped as "somewow," which seems like a - I don't want to say Freudian - Jungian slip?) Possibly because this story just sounds right. The little details help - the wine, Pollution's psychobabble (because psychobabble is pollution, people), the setting. I just really like this, and if that makes me wrong...no, wait. This is my LJ. I like this story, and that makes it right. (Yes, those years of assertiveness training have finally paid a dividend! My parents will be delighted.)

Best FF That Shows Us That Some Traits Persist Right Through Surgical Torture and Mind-Wiping, Leaving Me Wish I Was an Apollo-Type Rather Than a Midnighter-Type (and If That Doesn't Cry out for an Internet Personality Quiz to Determine Your Superhero Type, I Don't Know What Could): The Waiting Room, by Andraste, aka

andrastewhite. The Authority, Apollo/Midnighter. I love this look at who they were before they wore Spandex and capes (well, before they wore them all the time) and had only one name each. In particular, I believe in this look at the man-who-became-Apollo; the man is clearly the father of the superhero, in this case. And I love this line from Midnighter, who can't remember much but sure can deduce based on what he does remember: "Clearly he was a moron in his former life." Normally I don't quote from stories I'm recommending, but I had to quote that, because, really - that's what I'd conclude if I had to judge who I used to be entirely from, well, any of my memories. (Which, um, suggests that I am a moron in my current life, so not the most felicitous of thoughts there. Moving on.)

Best FF That Shows Us That the Best Way to Vacation in Spain is to Visit France. And, One Assumes, Vice Versa.: Euskadi Six Hour, by Sabine, aka

sabine101. Sports Night, Danny Rydell/Casey McCall. (Warning, because a Certain Person has proven to be even more ending-sensitive with Sports Night than with due South: you couldn't exactly call this a happy ending, though I choose to believe that there's an unwritten sequel that is set after the canon that has them work it all out in Spain at the Tour de France.) (Second Warning: this contains infidelity. It didn't trigger my fidelity issues, mostly because I consider that Casey only has to be faithful to Danny, but it could trigger yours. You know, if you have them.) I'm offering a bonus story today for several reasons. First, I am obligated by my new religion to include an SN fic in each set for at least the next month, but I'm feeling pretty guilty about it. Second, I really, really hope that people took my warning about "Triskaideka: A Door Closing" seriously and didn't read it if there was any chance it would bother them, so I'm offering this story as a substitute. Third, there's just too many good history stories out there to limit myself to four. Justifications end now. This story gives us a look at Casey, already grown up, pretty much the Casey we know, but a Casey without Danny, which turns out to be a sad thing. We also get to meet a different flavor of Danny - a Danny who is overage but not really grown up, a Danny who is, at least on the surface, just like most college guys. And yet when the two of them get together, they instantly become the single-word DannyandCasey of Sports Night fame (vaguely intoxicated edition). It's fun. At least while they're still in France.

-Footnote-

* Well, yes, Mountie training is good for that, too. But I figured that went without saying in the dS fandom.

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Re: Homicide - I haven't read that story since I was actively in the fandom, but if it's dealing with what I think it is, then yes, it's canon. Poor timmy. *sigh*

Oh, god. Poor, poor Tim. He's like the H:LotS punching bag.

I was really hoping it wasn't canon. But thanks for letting me know that it is.

NP. Am always willing to instruct people in the ways of Homicide. There's a reason it was my first foray into fanfic (and explains why I'm such an angst slut)

Rami beat me to it, but, yeah, it is canon. Holidays and Tim's Uncle George, starting when he was 5, going on for years, although canon never says exactly when it stops (*not* after he tells his father, because his father calls him a liar).

Poor Tim.

Because it can, apparently, never be said too much: Poor Tim.

And thanks for the details. God, that's awful.

Did his parents ever freakin' believe him? Did he ever get any resolution on any aspect of this? (Shooting Uncle George would be choice.)

No, actually, let me rephrase that. Did anything good ever happen to him?

This man deserves to star in happy ending fan fiction like no other character I can call to mind.

(Please, please tell me he didn't end up in jail after the series ended. I read a story like that a few days ago, and it killed me.)

(Lots of spoilers for the series and the movie in this comment, which I'm guessing you don't mind, but just so you know)

Did anything good ever happen to Tim? Well, bits and pieces, but nothing that ever lasted--he came out as bisexual (and got to date a character played by Peter Gallagher), he also got to date a couple luscious women, he survived being shot despite his heart stopping in the OR, and he found Buddhism. But his descent into depression and anger continued once his partner abandoned him, and at the end of the series he went out and shot Luke Ryland, a murderer (and serial killer in the making) who'd gotten off on a technicality. In the Homicide movie, he confessed this killing to Pembleton, which is where the post-movie stories with him in jail come from.

It's *not* canon that he went to jail--the movie ends just after he confesses to Frank. Some folks go in that direction (some to a horrifying degree, IMO, like one that was written for

yuletide that has him doing some really awful shit to Kellerman), but I've always gone the other way, saying Frank couldn't turn him in once they found out Gee was dead, and finding various ways to write happy endings for him (just as I've written happy endings for Billy Tallent), although I try to keep true to all the guy goes through, so there's lots of angst....

But I definitely agree that Tim Bayliss, of *anyone*, deserves a happy ending, despite how conflicted I am about how Fontana wrote him out of the series (which would have happened with the shooting of Ryland if the series hadn't been cancelled at that point)--I've come to terms with it as being believable based on the whole seven seasons, but it does move the character in a direction I dislike and felt was OOC when they did hints of it in earlier seasons.

(See? This is why you need to see the show! ;-))

I don't think I'm smart enough to watch that show. Seriously.

Nor do I think I have the fortitude to watch that happen to poor, sweet Tim. However, I'm glad to have the summary, and especially glad to hear that jail isn't canon for Tim. Thank you. (And I am stunned to hear that they managed to justify all these weird character switches for Tim, no matter how tenuously.)

Wait. Fontana. Is this the same Fontana people mention in conjunction with OZ? Because if so, that's an odd sort of symmetry - first cops, then jail. Maybe his next show will involve a criminal court.

Also, if it is the same Fontana, man is disturbed. He's got a sadomasochistic relationship with his own viewers.

Yeah, Fontana is definitely disturbed. He really does have a twisted relationship not only with his viewers, but with his characters as well--he was pissed off at Jon Polito, who played Crosetti, and when Polito quit he made Crosetti commit suicide and had them dredge his bloated body out of the harbor because he a) wanted to make sure Polito couldn't come back and b) wanted Crosetti's end to be disrespectful of the character, as there'd been absolutely no hints in the first two seasons that the guy was depressed. Of course, it ended up making for one of the best episodes the series ever had, thanks to the writing genius of James Yoshimura.

Then there's the fact that Fontana was quoted as saying he wanted Michael Michele on the show because she was "fuckable"--gah.

Ha! I'm reading back, and yes indeed, Fontana's next show was in a criminal court. It's called The Jury, it played over the summer, and it's just been cancelled, if I have my information straight.

What happened to Tim made perfect sense to me as I watched the show. He was always a jittery type, uncomfortable in his own skin, so the various ways he shook himself out are perfectly reasonable to me.

Oh, and his parents never believe him (I don't think he ever tells his mother), but he does tell Pembleton, who does believe him, and he also actually confronts his uncle, only to find out the man is dying, at which point Tim starts *taking care of him*. I always wished they'd spent more time on that particular story arc than they did...

OK. I do not see how those two things are compatible within one character. (Well, except for Harvey Dent, but then...) He chooses mercy and altruism rather than vengeance and justice for his uncle, but goes the vengeance route for Ryland?

I'm actually sort of surprised they managed a story arc like that at all, given TV's arcane standards. It wasn't on a cable station, right?

Well, the first six seasons are all about his growth as a character, although you do get bits and pieces here and there that hint at his capacity for violence--he tells Pembleton about his father in season 5, he comes out in season 6 (after caring for his uncle, who presumably dies, although it's never explicitly stated), and at the end of season 6 he's a confident, self-assured, at least somewhat content man--and then he takes a bullet for Pembleton (who's a lousy shot), Pembleton quits, and the whole seventh season is about Fontana fucking with him.

Basically, within about six weeks of season 7, Tim is outed to the whole department by Luke Ryland, who uses his website on Buddhism and bisexuality to stage one of his internet murders, then is called a faggot in public by a fellow gay cop he had dated (the cop doesn't want any of his colleagues to know *he's* gay), is ordered by the bosses to shut down his website, then solves the murder of a Buddhist monk he knew and respected and ends up having to kill the murderer in self-defense, which leads Tim to believe he can't be a Buddhist anymore. Six weeks after that, Ryland gets released on a technicality and it's all too much, especially without Pembleton there (they've only talked twice in the year since Tim took a bullet for him), and Tim loses it, big time.

And, yeah, it was on NBC.

I just wanted to drop you a line and tell you how much I adore your reccomendations. I don't even read half the fandoms you rec, but I love how excited you are about the stories and how much thought you put into your entries. I always smile when I see you've posted something.

I'd like to second that -- I read just about everything recced on this journal for which I know the fandom, and occasionally things for which I don't. The recs themselves are entertaining reading enough -- and then they point to good fic!

Oh, wow. My rec comments are good enough to read by themselves? I am so flattered.

If I had a tail, it would be wagging.

(You know, I have now conflated your black kitten icon with

fanofall's flaming balls of twine icon. Those two blend to make an extremely frightening whole.)

Yes, so, apparently

hackthis and I share a brain, because I was just going to leave you a note saying the same thing she just said, and I'm so not surprised she got here first. So yeah, What She Said.

heh.

Well, you picked a good person for cranial time sharing. (If in fact you got to pick.)

And I am totally flustered and delighted by all this random ego-stroking. Thank you!

*happy dance*

Oooo! I got random ego-boosting!

I am all kinds of happy. Thank you!

(You actually read in half the fandoms I rec? That's very interesting; I always wonder if people skip through most of my recs looking for ones in their fandoms, or what. I'm seriously considering doing a poll to find out what the heck the readers of this LJ actually read.)

NO APOLOGIES OTP!!! MORE IS BETTER.

More is better is, like, your motto. You should totally have an icon featuring an orgy pic and that slogan.

(OMG, indeed!)

I choose to believe that there's an unwritten sequel that is set after the canon

Actually, there is a sqeuel (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1511072/1/) of sorts.

Tell me you don't want to read about 13-year-old Casey McCall watching a baseball game by himself, announcing it under his breath, occasionally trying out 18 different inflections to get that one perfect one, or 13-year-old Ray Kowalski learning to tune a carburetor and failing to have a conversation with his father, or anything involving Midshipman Aubrey learning the, um, ropes, or freshman Danny Ocean hiding a smile while conning the senior jocks who thought they were going to kick his ass, or 13-year-old Logan listening to the declaration of WWII on the radio in some cruddy shack, wondering how many years it'll be 'til he can join up, or...look, stopping now. But you see the temptation, don't you? Tell me I'm not alone in this.)

Dude, this is actually one of my secret big huge honking buttons -- the wee!character backstory thing. It makes me crazy amount of happy. Little tiny Fraser! Thus one of the reasons Passion, up there, is one of my favorites in due South.

Dude, this is actually one of my secret big huge honking buttons -- the wee!character backstory thing.

Oh, thank god. I was afraid I needed to see every single character at 13 because I'm addicted to schadenfreude and wanted to see them suffer. Because that is the age o' suffering, is it not?

(Note: I have realized I don't want to see every character at 13. Magneto, for example, whose 13th year was probably gruesome and depressing enough to cause temporary blindness. Xavier, though - that'd be excellent. And, oh, I need to see 13-year-old Aragorn suffering through all the agonies of early puberty under the perfect vision of the perfect elves, whose voices probably change without a single break. And, oh, oh, I want to see 13-year-old Giles. And Ethan Rayne. And Angel, who must've been the moodiest, sulkiest teenager ever to infest the seventeenth century. And, ooo, I need to see the Sex Talk that Naomi gave Blair. And

And god help me. I can't stop. It's a disease.

I wonder if I can bribe someone to run a Triskaideka All Fandoms Challenge and get these bunnies off my back.)

Thus one of the reasons Passion, up there, is one of my favorites in due South.

You have excellent taste. Got a list of other favorites?

Uh, nothing out of the ordinary -- lots of

cesperanza and

resonant8; a lot of the stories by

shrift and

kormantic

katallison's gloriously painful "End of the Road" and just glorious "Heavy Bag";

_aerye_'s lovely brand new F/K from last weekend;

shayheyred's "It Was a Very Good Year", which is actually het (Frannie/Turnbull), but that shouldn't put you off at all.

Also, you know, 80 million others.

! I've been recced!
(In my defense, the lighthearted isn't so much my opinion as what comes with writing Horsepersons fic. I think the reversal of opinion is why I like writing about 'em so much. XD)
Glad you enjoyed it, and thought it was worth reccing.

In my defense, the lighthearted isn't so much my opinion as what comes with writing Horsepersons fic.

Oh, no, no defense necessary. Writing in a light-hearted and humorous fashion about things that are traditionally considered neither - for example, the end of the world - is a major part of the Good Omens mystique. I was just impressed that you managed to do that, because, hey, how often does WWII serve as the foundation for brisk, cheery stories?

(Also, I wanted to include a subtle warning. It had to be subtle, because a flat-out warning would have spoiled the story, but I still try to caution readers if there's something in there I'd want to know about.)

Finally, I must apologize: at first I attributed your story to an entirely different Cimorene. Took me several hours to notice and fix the mistake. Um, sorry about that.

>>how often does WWII serve as the foundation for brisk, cheery stories?<<
Well, the first GO fic I wrote had to do with the Manhattan project, so... at least two? XD
I just like writing Horsepersons fic, I guess. Like I said, the reversal of opinion might be most of the appeal (but I have the hardest time writing from Famine's POV). That and it's a little variety in amongst all the Crowley-and-Aziraphale.
'Salright. I can see where you'd make the mistake.

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Slashy Nominations 66: History Is Little Else Than a Picture of Human Crimes and Misfortunes

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