Slashy Nominations 136: Praised Be the Alternate Universe

[thefourthvine]

Some of you may remember - or maybe not; a livejournal generation is only, like, eight days, so we're talking about ancient history, here - when I recommended fan fiction in this space. When I was knee-deep in vids, I swore to myself that those days would come again. It was very dramatic and meaningful, although the pervy LotR vid playing in the background might have detracted from the nobility of the moment slightly. Still, it was Oscar-worthy, and I think there was triumphal music (courtesy of the pervy vid), and you should all be very sorry you missed it.

So. Alternate universes. God, how I love these things.

Best FF That Almost Makes Me Grateful to the DC Folks for Their Persistent Attempts to Reboot Their Universe Until Our Memories Are Completely Wiped of Every Reason Why We Liked Their Comics in the First Place. Almost. Although I Still Reserve the Right to Punch Willingham in the Nose If I Ever Meet Him. Kids' Game, by __marcelo. DC Universe, gen or Jason Todd/Stephanie Brown. You know how the infinite universes theory says that everything happens? Every time you flip a coin, a new universe forms, all that? (Yes, that is an oversimplification. Yes, there's more than one theory about this. Don't even get me started, seriously.) Well, I have long suspected that the DC folks are trying to represent that in their books via reboots; every two years, we have one, and the universes rotate one place to the right. So it's inevitable that sooner or later we'll end up where __marcelo goes here. Only, totally not, but wouldn't it be cool if we did? No more of this deal where we add three years to this character and then subtract them from that character and then pretend a whole bunch of other characters never existed. I mean, there's a reason I don't read this stuff anymore: I can't handle all the change. I'm not smart enough to keep up. But if DC did do this with the Batverse characters? I would so, so read it. So what is this mysterious thing that the author has done? (I'm trying for suspense. Are you suspended, yet? Well, fine. I'll keep practicing.) He made them all the same age: Bruce, Dick, Tim, Jason, Steph. And it's just - this story pretty much had me from the opening (is there a universe in which opening with Tim is a bad move?), but it turned into this whole illicit, secret affair when I got to Jason and Steph. Because they work together so much better than Tim and Steph ever did, and also - no. I was about to go to the dolphin-noises place, and you don't need to be here for that. Go. Read. (Eeeeeeee!)

Best FF That Makes Me Add Holmes to the List of Tragic, Cracked Crimefighters. Please Do Not Mention Holmes/Batman or Holmes/Batman/Bond to Me. My Brain Will Explode. Thank You. Out of This Room, by Dorinda (does anyone know if she has an LJ name?). Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson. AUs in rare fandoms are, well, rare; I suppose that if there are only a handful of stories in your fandom, there's not a huge temptation to explore, say, the universe where Holmes is the surgeon and Watson is the detective. But I still want to read that, and a million other ones besides, so I treasure the rare fandom AUs I find. And this one is three in one, so you can imagine all the embarrassing clinging and fawning I do to it. Or maybe you'd better not. This is - okay, it's a brilliant look at some of the possible outcomes of a single canon situation. And can I just say how much I love that? It's kind of a variation of the Five Things That Never Happened story type, and I have a shameful love for those, and also for eigenstate AUs. But combine them - and this story does; it's basically Three Eigenstates We Didn't Observe in This Universe - and you have hit me square in the possibility kink. (I want to see all possibilities fully elaborated. This is one of the reasons I love fan fiction so much; you can find stories featuring all the possibilities and many of the impossibilities, too.) Plus, this story persuades me. See, Holmes is one of those fandoms where I'm handicapped by knowing the canon and, worse, having formed opinions about it long before I ever knew of fan fiction. So it's hard for me to buy Holmes/Watson, because it's hard for me to picture Holmes ever doing anything as messy and human as that. Dorinda, though - she writes Holmes precisely as I have always believed him to be. And then she gives me a Watson I am happy to accept, and it's Watson who makes the happy ending here a real possibility. So my reaction to this story is basically many inarticulate variations on the theme of wow. To wit: wow.

Best FF That Makes Me Really, Really Want to Learn How to Make Paper. A Heart for Every Fate and Wild, by destina. Stargate: SG-1, Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson. Okay, you're all familiar with the broccoli test, right? Some of my favorite pairings pass it, some don't. Many would know broccoli was wanted, but flatly refuse to get it. (I like 'em prickly and difficult, apparently.) Jack and Daniel might pass, although I think the refusing to get it thing would come into play with them. (Jack, for example, would know Daniel wanted broccoli, but he'd pretend he didn't. He'd come back with something seriously lame and stupid, like a lawn chair and three boxes of tampons, and then sit back to appreciate Daniel's expression when he saw them.) In any case, my point is, in this story (Yay! We're back to talking about the story!), Jack and Daniel pass the desert island test, which is much more stringent. (Since I just made it up, I suppose it's unreasonable to expect you to know what the desert island test is, so - if two people can spend the rest of their lives trapped alone together with no entertainment or distractions or conveniences, and at the end of thirty years they're both alive and as sane as they ever were? They pass.) I've often said that lost-earth (either it's gone, or they can't get to it) stories are not sad endings in SG1, and, as Destina proves here, neither is the desert island scenario. The obvious ending for a story like this is, "Yay! They're improbably rescued shortly after they find true love and hot sex!" I in no way object to that, not at all. But I love Destina for doing the brave thing here, skipping the deus ex machina and showing that, really, for some pairings, the desert island is a happy ending. And for writing this so damn well. Don't miss the sequel, either, which is basically an elaboration of the happiness of the ending, perfect for those of us who need a lot of reassurance.

Best FF That Makes Me Wonder, for What Has to Be the 80th Time, What the Hell Ginger Tea Is, and Why Everyone Drinks It but Me. The Convenient Husband, part one and part two, by Brighid, aka brighidestone. Stargate: Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay. I'm sure those of you who somehow managed to miss this story can still tell it's from the Harlequin challenge, just from the title. (Those of you who weren't in the fandom for the Harlequin challenge - uh, it's a romance novel type thingie, and also, you are in for some amazing reading.) And that's one of the things I love about this story: it's just, it feels perfectly in line with the challenge. Perfectly. (And, seriously, I tried to think of something to write for that challenge, and I totally failed. It's not as easy as it sounds. Of course, it didn't help that my first thought, on seeing it, was that some sick, deluded soul in the SGA fandom wanted a bunch of flash fiction about jesters in masks. I was flat terrified, and had to click away to preserve my remaining sanity. I only figured out the truth some little while later.) I also love this story because I realized, reading it, that John and Rodney are the most portable characters ever. It's hard to think of an AU where they wouldn't fit. King Arthur's court? They fit! The Tokugawa Shogunate? They fit! McCaffrey-esque telepathic soul-bonding dragons? They fit! (I suspect, though, that Rodney would be a dragon in that AU. John would be his rider, of course. Chaya would be a queen, and Rodney would never ever let John mate with her.) Citizen Kane? Unfortunately, they fit there, too. (There are limits. I mean, John might end up as the sled, and also, no.) I just - I love that, and I love it especially when John and Rodney are so perfectly themselves, no matter where they are. They're definitely themselves in Brighid's story. (Don't ask yourself how anyone could consider marriage to Rodney McKay convenient. We already know John has no instinct for self-preservation.)

Best FF That Suggests That Unfortunate Things Will Happen to Those of Us Who Don't Answer Our Telephones. But I Don't Care; Those Things Are Incarnations of the One True Evil, and No One Can Tell Me Different. Last Will and Testament, by Speranza, aka cesperanza. Stargate: Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay. This one is a bonus because, okay, look - if, by some chance, you don't know about it, go read it right now. All other commentary is going behind a cut tag, and please please please do not click on this cut tag until you've read it, okay? There's a spoiler that could possibly actually spoil the story for you, and that would be sad, but it's the only thing anyone ever wants to talk about with this story, so I'm putting it behind the cut.

It's only those who have already read the story who are here with me now, yes? Okay, then I don't even need to tell you what the One Thing is about this story. I will say, though, that what I find most interesting (and, upon reflection, vaguely disturbing) about the story isn't that, and it isn't anything that I've seen discussed anywhere. Although I will admit I didn't, like, seek out meta on this, and I wasn't reading much of my friends list when this story was posted, so it probably was discussed everywhere and I missed it. Feel free to give me links or little lectures about the importance of paying attention, okay?

But, see - does anyone think that the weirdest part is actually that John is so much like his father, even down to looks, and Rodney is so much like his mother that they are, in essence, marrying the parent who raised them? I think a lot of us do that, to a certain extent, but the whole, uh, consanguinity just, well, really drives that home for me. I spent the last half of the story braced for the hideous news that Rodney had killed his father; I was terrified that Speranza had misunderstood a challenge she herself posted and, instead of writing a Harlequin, she'd redone a classic plot. (I figured that John was probably the one who would end up blind. Um, yeah, not my best work of ending-prediction ever.)

So, okay, it didn't go the Oedipus route - and, seriously, thank god for that. Which leaves me pondering the incest itself. Normally, incest is an unbreakable squick for me. But this story works because the brotherly relationship was never the main one in my mind. I apparently assigns values partly by primacy, and my hindbrain gives primacy to what I know first. And in the story, the sex came first, so that's the relationship I'm invested in, and then - wham! incest! - and suddenly I'm complicit in it, because I'm rooting for it. (From this, we can clearly see that Speranza is also a manifestation of the One True Evil, although she's way better than telephones.) The other thing I've seen discussed is the realism (or not) of this story, but to me, that's a non-issue; the whole essence of a Harlequin - and, again, this is just me - is that the writer defines the reality, and I have no expectations at all. It's totally not like crack, where I expect no realism at all in the premise and plot, and total realism in the characterization. (Harlequin challenges: freeing writers from the ties that bind them to any specific level of reality! That makes them sound like really good drugs, and, wow, they so totally are.)

Comments

[j00j.livejournal.com]

"McCaffrey-esque telepathic soul-bonding dragons? They fit! (I suspect, though, that Rodney would be a dragon in that AU. John would be his rider, of course. Chaya would be a queen, and Rodney would never ever let John mate with her.)"

You know, the worst thing about this fandom is that I actually kind of really want to see that.

[joannindiw.livejournal.com]

Sadly, me too. Too bad McCaffrey has such a high stranglehold on fic in her worlds... (though, that would be Chaya as a Queenrider, right?) and maybe.. um, right. Shutting up now.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

I'd read it too, despite the fact that I had to swear off Anne McCaffrey around the time I turned 20. (It was better for everyone that way, believe me.) But before I'd even posted this, Best Beloved and I were figuring out how it would work, because it's just very compelling. See, Rodney would totally be a bronze, and, yeah, okay, he'd be good at fighting, but he would never want to. He'd be the smartest, talkiest dragon ever, though. John would be a totally daredevil rider on the world's most cautious dragon, and they'd have lots of conversations like this:

F'jon [um...if that's how you make a rider name]: We can totally do it! Come on, faster!
Rodney: Not with these bronze wings. You want to risk hideous Threaded death, you can go fool around with some blue. He'll be too stupid to realize how insane you are.

and

F'jon: She's, mmm. *gazes at Chaya lustfully* What say we go get some of that?
Rodney: No. She's evil, F'jon. I can sense it. Also, I am totally not mating with [Chaya's dragon's name - Proculus, maybe?], because it would be a waste of my genetic superiority.
F'jon: Being bonded with you is like being bonded to an 83-year-old woman who thinks babies should come from trees, you know that?
Rodney: I guess it's just your good luck that you naturally appeal to someone as brilliant and moral as me, because you wouldn't know brilliant or moral if they came up and bit you on the ass. *spreads wings to allow everyone to admire his sheer gorgeous dragoniness*
F'jon: Yes, right. You're so much the perfect dragon.
Rodney: At last you see the truth!
F'jon: *stomps to room and sulks bitterly*

[forty minutes later]

Rodney: *pokes head up to F'jon's room and looks in, abashed* Do you want to go for a flight? We could, um. Catch some of the thermals over the Nostinac Mountains.
F'jon: Oh my god yes.

[ten minutes later, F'jon blissfully relaxes as they soar through the sky]

F'jon: Okay. I won't sell you so they can make shoes out of your hide. *pats his flank*
Rodney: I should say not. *pauses, then continues grudgingly* You're certainly the best rider that Weir has got, anyway.
F'jon: Aw, Rodney, I love you, too.
Rodney: But we are in no way mating with that tramp, so do not even think it.

[brownbetty]

Eee! You recced Kid's Game which I betaed! Isn't it super-keen? Just FYI, Marcelo is actually that rare breed, a male author.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Whoops. I fixed the gender-specific pronoun, so everything should be okay now. Thanks for telling me.

And, yes, it's totally super-keen. (Also peachy!) Unfortunately, it has the tragic side effect of making me want at least several thousand more stories in this AU, which leads me to whine (sometimes right out loud), "If they're going to reload until we all beg for mercy, why can't they reload to this?"

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

I can't help it, I live to inform: Ginger Tea - grate some fresh ginger into a cup; pour over boiling water; steep for a few minutes; add honey and enjoy. You can get it in bags but it's narrsty.
And, I'm so glad to see these recs! I love AUs, I'm off to read the ones I haven't yet.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *feels all knowledgeable now*

Fresh ginger is kind of fibrous; wouldn't you end up with little fibers in your tea?

But I'm going to try it anyway, because I've read about it so many times, and every time I'm like - huh. What would that even taste like? (More specifically, I'm going to introduce the concept to my mother, who likes ginger more than anything in the world, her own children probably included. I mean, if the mythical child-buying gypsies had offered her our weight in candied ginger? She would so have gone for that.)

[danibennett.livejournal.com]

See, but -- Batman/Holmes! They both prefer to remain observers, keeping the world at a distance, and in essence, they're both detectives. Holmes might be unspeakably appalled at the sheer amount of spandex that lends itself to Bruce's particular version of crime-solving, but then the best relationships are built on conflict, right? RIGHT?

Ahem.

Out of This Room and Kids' Game were both really brilliant in completely different ways. Then again, I will read pretty much anything involving Tim, except the current run of Robin.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*brain explodes*

See, I knew that would happen if I thought about it too closely. Although, you know, hmm. Actually, what I can totally, totally see is Holmes/Tim Drake, or - OMG, Tim as captain of the Baker Street Irregulars! He'd be slumming, see - he'd really be the child of some very minor but wealthy Baron, and he'd be lying to his father and then running off every day to work with Holmes! And Holmes would totally know he was faking it and not care! And Watson wouldn't know! And -

Wait. Wait. What did I just type? Did I really just propose a Holmes x DCU AU? Oh, god, the shame.

And this is why I said not to mention Holmes/Batman to me. I knew what the result would be: crack and insanity, insanity and crack.

*brain explodes again, just from typing the pairing*

[out-there.livejournal.com]

I apparently assigns values partly by primacy, and my hindbrain gives primacy to what I know first.

It's not so much that the sex comes first in the story as that the guys haven't been brought up as brother. Add to that the actual phenomenomenon thingy of Genetic Sexual Attraction (linked through Seperis here (http://seperis.livejournal.com/295154.html)) and the story didn't hit my squicks. I mean, if they don't think of each other as siblings *first* and *foremost*, I can buy that they don't share my inherent "sex with my brother = enough ewwwwww that I may never have sex again" reaction.

Um, yeah, not my best work of ending-prediction ever.

Heh. I spent most of the story waiting for a romance-esque last minute "revelation" that they weren't genetically related (John was adopted after his mother left Rodney's father! Rodney was adopted because they thought they couldn't have children, and then they had Jeannie, and didn't want to tell Rodney in case he developed a hang-up about it! They were both adopted!) and ... nope. Never happened.

The fact that it works *despite* that is kind of amazing.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that the sex comes first in the story as that the guys haven't been brought up as brother.

That helps, too, because I really cannot imagine a circumstance in which I could handle it if they had been brought up as brothers. But normally I would've had major, major issues even if they met as adults (and GSA - um, yikes; not a lot of help there for me), if I'd put them in the "brothers" boxes in my brain. Which I would have, if that's how they'd been introduced. But they weren't. They were introduced via fucking each other, and so I put them in those boxes, and that's where I wanted them to stay, dammit. Screw the incest! (Um.)

Plus, I'm heavily invested in John and Rodney as a pairing anyway. That helped a lot. I think if this was original fic, it would've needed, like, another 10k words to get me invested enough in the pairing that I could get past the incest.

Anyway, I may just be weird, but I'm sure primacy was a key thing for me, that it helped me accept the relationship. (And it's the start of the slippery incest slope, maybe. Perhaps I will finally be able to embrace Supernatural in all its glory!)

I spent most of the story waiting for a romance-esque last minute "revelation" that they weren't genetically related

Yup. I expected that, too. But only after I was relatively (hee!) sure no one was going to be blinded or found to have accidentally killed anyone else. (My unfortunate early encounter with the Oedipus plays appears to have scarred me. Maybe that's part of why I have such problems with incestfic. My hindbrain sees incest and immediately cringes in anticipation of the blindings and the burials of the living and the hangings and all that.)

The fact that it works *despite* that is kind of amazing.

God, it so totally is. *is struck dumb with awe*

[wychwood]

Yay recs! :) I was thinking about A Convenient Husband earlier tonight, actually*, so this was a timely rec for me...

(*specifically the scene where they're house-hunting, and John gets all shocked at Rodney being annoying *g*)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

specifically the scene where they're house-hunting, and John gets all shocked at Rodney being annoying

I love that scene.

*sighs blissfully*

Yay recs!

Thank you! It so totally took me forever to get back on this horse after the vid-orgy. But I posted! At long last! *joins in with the yays, because the recs set is finally posted*

[runpunkrun]

Ces actually brings up that Oedipal point herself here: http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/112344.html

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*smacks head*

Um, oops. Okay, I feel dumb. But at least I am not, you know, alone in my weird opinions and dumb, so yay for that. And thanks for pointing that out to me.

*makes mental note to read friends list more consistently, even in times of RL unfortunateness*

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

omfg you recced two sga stories in one set i think i love you* oh wait i've read cesca's already.

sigh.

but that means that even though i've read one of them already, i still have a whole one to read! yay! [dances off to read it]

* (even more than before)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

You know, you're allowed to ping me and demand recs.

*proffers the coveted License to Ping Solely to Obtain Under-the-Counter Recs*

And I suspect it's going to make some people want to kill me, but I'm considering putting two SGA recs in more sets than just this one. (This one, I had a legitimate excuse: one of them I couldn't really write a summary for. Well, it's a sort of legitimate excuse, anyway.) It is not my fault! There's a lot of good fic coming out, so what can I do? How can I possibly be expected to choose, or to remain firm and resolute, when I am faced with such overwhelming volumes of goodness?

*is but a woman, and weak, and therefore helpless in the face of good fic*

*now has an extremely unfortunate anthropomor_fic in her head: Fan/New Fandom, non-con*

~

Fan was resolute, but New Fandom wouldn't leave her alone. He showed up in her friends list and even in her friends homes. Everywhere she looked, he'd managed to leave some memento of himself. She always shuddered and averted her eyes.

He grew more forceful with every passing day. "You want me, baby, you know you do."

"No," she said. "I don't, and I never will."

But he wouldn't take no for an answer.

~

...Great. I just squicked myself. Oh, I'm on form today.

*goes to lie down with a cold cloth over her eyes*

[(Anonymous)]

That Almost Makes Me Grateful to the DC Folks for Their Persistent Attempts to Reboot Their Universe Until Our Memories Are Completely Wiped of Every Reason Why We Liked Their Comics in the First Place. Almost. Although I Still Reserve the Right to Punch Willingham in the Nose If I Ever Meet Him.

Ahahahahahahahaha oh my god, never have you written truer words. SERIOUSLY.

[joyfulseeker.livejournal.com]

Okay, that was me. Sorry, didn't notice I got logged out.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

WEEEEEEE.

I... I'll be preening and pleased all *week* but won't be able to explain why to anybody. *g*

Thanks for the rec! I'm glad you liked "Kid's Game", it was a hoot to write (I started by writing Tim's part, then people pointed out the obvious possible continuations, and before I knew it I was writing all of them - best evening in the office ever, if not the most productive one).

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I... I'll be preening and pleased all *week* but won't be able to explain why to anybody.

Yay! I made you pleased, and therefore I am pleased. It's a glorious positive feedback loop in these parts some days.

And I imagine you'll garner extra enjoyment from the theories people come up with to explain the Mysterious Preening of Marcelo. ("Illegal experimentation with bird DNA, that's what I hear.") I know I would.

I started by writing Tim's part, then people pointed out the obvious possible continuations, and before I knew it I was writing all of them - best evening in the office ever, if not the most productive one

I'm pretty sure it's against some kind of law to have that much fun in your office, but you won't lack for people to alibi you if the worst happens. ("No! He was instant messaging with me about debunking - um, debugging - um, budgets - all night! It was extremely work-related, I remember that much.")

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

Um. *de-lurks*

So you finished the vid series. Makes sense. You mentioned the big ones of the fandoms. Except one I was certain you would.

It's here: The Writer (http://suzvoy.livejournal.com/1548082.html) and it's an amazing SGA vid.

Not that I'm saying I want you to praise it or such. Just wanted to make sure you've seen it. So, ah...

*lurks again*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*waves happily to lurker*

And you are entirely correct; The Writer is a brilliant vid. But I categorize it as a crossover. (Really, I should probably categorize it as original or meta or something, but that is much too deep for me.) And since it lives in my crossover folder, I didn't even consider it when I was looking for SGA vids to rec.

Which is, hmmm, sort of a pity, just because I think you might need to know certain aspects of SGA in order to get the vid. But, really, it's not just an SGA vid, so...

*helpless cogitation*

*deletes helpless cogitation, on the grounds that no one, not even me, is interested in that*

So, anyway - yup, I've seen it, and I love it. And thank you for checking; I do have this tendency to miss major fandom events.

I plan to rec The Writer at some point, too - I just can't figure out exactly what I should call it. *points to helpless cogitation, above*

Also, thank you for commenting. I know unlurking, even temporarily, is not easy, and it always makes me very happy when lurkers comment. (Actually, it makes me happy when anyone comments, but lurkers add a special extra happiness to that.)

*waves again and departs for yet more cogitation on the subject of vids - storage, organization, and classification thereof*

[cereta.livejournal.com]

The lovely and talented Dorinda is LJ-less for reasons involving avoidance of time suck, for which I can only applaud her good sense ;).

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether my reaction to that is more applause or more, "There has to be some way we can force her down to our level."

The first one, I'm hoping. It's good that some fans still have time for, you know. Stuff other than fandom. Whatever it is that that entails.

*tries to recall Life Before Fandom*

*fails*

I just hope that Dorinda is using that massive savings of time to write, because oh my god is she good.

[apatheia-jane.livejournal.com]

Completely buy the deserted island test. I knew McShep passes, even before astolat's time in a bottle, which prooves they pass.

But I refer to it as the nothing (http://imdb.com/title/tt0298482/) test. If you can survive a world where not only is there a very limited supply of entertainment or anything else other than each other, but where you can pettily wish away the other person's stuff, then you're truly otp.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*eyes movie worriedly*

Okay, that looks...well, I'm concerned that there's no plot summary and the reviews don't actually talk about the movie. That seems like, you know. Potentially a bad sign.

But, yes, that's it precisely! If absolutely the only thing you need is each other, then you are Meant to Be Together. Disturbingly so, even. (For some reason, I now want to see a story in which Daniel seduces Jack via Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Or anyone seduces anyone, really; I'm not picky. Daniel's just the only character I can think of off-hand who might regularly evaluate his life in terms of the hierarchy.)

[saffronhouse.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thank you so much for recommending "Out of this Room!" Spare and complicated and heart-rending and joyous. And to think I might never have seen it. (But thanks to you, this is the universe where I did read it, albeit three years down the line).

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

(But thanks to you, this is the universe where I did read it, albeit three years down the line).

My continuing efforts to bring sanity back to our timeline are meeting with success, then. Yay!

*rejoices*

(And, really, if there's anything else you haven't read that's by Dorinda, I whole-heartedly recommend that you remedy that immediately. My favorites are her Yuletide stories (http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/search.cgi?ShortResults=0&Recipient=&Title=&Recipient_Range=0&Title_Range=0&Author=dorinda&Author_Range=0&Summary=&Date=0&SortBy=0&SortOrder=0&NumToList=0&FastSearch=0) - Confidence Men, C/Fe, Nom de Coeur, Out of This Room (haven't read Punishment and Grace yet) - but everything she writes is great.)

[best-beloved.livejournal.com]

You...you made me read incest porn. And I *liked* it.

You owe me caramel for this.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*soothing gestures*

Um. Yeah. I know. But it's okay! We all liked it!

And, really, it's not my fault. Blame cesperanza.

*departs to procure caramel in bulk*

[noneeca.livejournal.com]

um. i've never even read the McCaffrey books -- you're talking about the Riders of Pern stories, right? -- and i now REALLY REALLY WANT A DRAGON!RODNEY. like. beyond anything. there's a Rodneysaurus, which is pretty much just as good, since the stories that came out of that whole thing included such things as a fuzzy Rodney-tummy, and a little Rodney sock-killer, but still. Dragon!Rodney? best mental image. EVER. i don't care that i so won't even know what's going on. i want it anyway.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

You may be reaching for the wrong images if you've never read the novels (and, seriously, don't, but if you want to, you can learn 80% of the world by reading the first half of the first book, which I believe is called Dragonflight).

Okay. I will, because I am crazy, attempt to do the Dragonriders of Pern for People Who Somehow Missed the Books As Adolescents, Possibly Because They Had a Life.

Dragons: They are huge (I think one of the books says the eye of a full-grown dragon is about the same size as a window), shiny, telepathic (mostly with their riders), and they have eyes that change colors and whirl, which always made me think of unfortunate '70s decorations designed to make tripping people very sick.

Dragons can teleport via a not-place called Between, which is freezingly cold, and you die if you get stuck there. They can breathe fire if they eat the right, um, firerock stuff (oh my god this is hard to do; I read Dragonflight, which explains most of this, a long time ago, and I've spent the intervening years Struggling to Forget). They are designed to fight Thread. (There are also fire lizards, which are bitty, more like cat-sized.)

There are a number of different colors of dragons - blue, green, brown, bronze. All those are male, and that's most of the dragons, like 99.9% of them. Bronzes are the biggest, smartest, bestest males; after that, they get progressively smaller and dumber, all the way down to the blues. The females are gold, and biggest and bestest of all, and there's usually only one or two per weyr, which is a big stone, um...community thing where the dragons and their riders live, along with a massive support staff. I have no idea where the support staff comes from, although by-blows from riders seems to be a large part of it.

Impression: Dragons get riders when they hatch. They put a bunch of boys (unless there's a female in one of the eggs, in which case it is segregated and girls are put out for it) out on the sand when the eggs are ready to go, and also a bunch of meat, and then, as the eggs hatch, the dragons pick their lifemates via, you know, eye-whirling and feeding and whatever. There's a big party, too.

Thread: a silver rain that falls for a few decades (...I think) every 500 years or so, and is lethal, and consumes all organic matter it touches. In between the Thread periods, people forget about it and hate the riders, and then Thread comes back and people are all, "YAY RIDERS!" again. In persuance of Thread-fighting, the first book contains a major plot twist that leaves the average SF fan twitching and muttering about paradox.

Riders: Males ride male dragons, females ride female dragons, and generally bronzes mate with gold (do not even ask about the biology of this; it is utterly beyond comprehension), and also generally riders mate with each other when their dragons do. Dragons and riders have a telepathic bond. If the rider dies, so does the dragon (it commits suicide, as I recall). If the dragon dies, the rider doesn't necessarily, but the loss is incredibly traumatic.

*deep breath*

-TBC-

[bitter-crimson.livejournal.com]

HI.

I thought I should comment (why not???) and thank you for providing so many awesome SGA recs over the ...times. (Heh, I have yet to see how far back they go... Am kinda bouncing around in here.) A friend just sucked me into the fandom and since you always have such brilliant recs, yeah, I've pretty much leeched myself onto your SGA tag. *beams* (Don't worry, you don't need to put salt on me or anything, sooner or later I'm sure I'll explode or implode and just fall off.)

BUT YES. Thanks so much for the wonderful recs. Especially the last one on this entry. Because. Wowwwwwwwwwww.

[fish-echo.livejournal.com]

And next up for the award of 'Replying to aged posts', we have... fish_echo

So I'm trolling through (although on the internet I suspect I need to use a different verb, perhaps 'strolling') old posts of yours, somewhat randomly, looking for a good fun read and I've come across this entry (and yes, The Convenient Husband is an excellent story) and can I tell you that (I suspect, though, that Rodney would be a dragon in that AU. John would be his rider, of course. Chaya would be a queen, and Rodney would never ever let John mate with her.) made me laugh quite a lot. Actually, it perfectly described the entire story to me (and let me tell you, it's a wonderfully funny story). (And I assume you've run into an actual SGA/Pern AU that has Rodney as the rider and John as the dragon and Chaya doesn't come into it at all, but in case you've managed to miss it, it's by X-Parrot (http://xparrot.livejournal.com/tag/fic:sga:pern+au)