thefourthvine | Slashy Nominations 136: Praised Be the Alternate Universe

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.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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-

-Continued-

Um. I think I bit off more than I can type, here, and definitely more than the comment limit can take. Because the sad part is, I've just gotten started, and I've forgotten a lot of it, and I've probably got some of it wrong.

This is why the series is addictive to world-building freaks (which I totally am); unfortunately, the writing and characterization starts out like a mediocre romance novel and then get progressively worse until you want to die. (Caveat: I despised the main character of the first book. If you like her, and most people do, the first book may actually be pretty good; I believe it won a Hugo. But she does something I found absolutely unacceptable when I read the book, and then, as far as I'm concerned, she just gets worse. In later novels, she's very Mary Sue, only more so. Sort of a cross between Mary Sue and the Virgin Mary, really.) (Further caveat: These novels are beloved by many. They are probably right. I'm kind of bitchy and persnickety about my reading material.)

If you want to read the stories, I advise you to check Dragonflight, Dragonsong, and Dragonsinger out of the library; the latter two are YA books set in the same world (there's also a third, Dragon Drums), and they expand the less dragon-intensive parts of the world quite a bit. Plus, in my recollection, they are a lot better than the other books, or maybe I have different expectations for YA books.

Anne McCaffrey is notorious for three things. One, she does the major legal smackdown on anyone who writes FF in her universe; apparently, she doesn't want her son to have any competitors. Two, she will give a positive cover blurb to any novel in SF/F, or at least she used to; I think she's too crazy these days (she, uh, reportedly believes dragons are real - that's the rumor I've heard). Three, she's pretty dedicated to selling her name; she'll "co-write" with anyone, and in many cases her contribution appears to be, um. Mostly on the front cover. Obviously, the first one is what dictates that the SGA x dragon crossover Must Never Be.

At least, not where Google can find it.

*stunned speechless* wow. um. thanks! i think what you posted before intrigued me because i'm a serious dragon-lover when it comes to scifi/fantasy... and now that you've explained the books to me, it sounds like i should actually steer clear of them. i, too, am a very picky reader. that paradox you mentioned? regardless of the fact i don't actually know the plot details, if you say it made you grumpy, trust me -- i'd be ranting about it three seconds after reading. possibly on lj, then phone, and then a rude letter to the author. which, you know. not really of the good.

so thank you so much for the info! and although it sounds, in theory, like it could be a fun 'verse to write in, looks like i'll be keeping my distance.

... however, if you ARE actually looking for a good dragon universe in which to get your feet wet, might i recommend Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen? now THAT was a good dragon book.

*runs off to see if a copy still exists somewhere in the house*

You know, it might be worth reading at least Dragonflight if you're that into dragons generally. Because, okay, it's not the greatest, but maybe if you go into it with low expectations it won't be so bad.

And the thing is, it's, like, seminal; it's the one dragon-related fantasy series everyone has read, and most later dragon fantasy novels reference it in some way. (One of Terry Pratchett's early books contains a wonderful skewering of the series, in fact.) But, basically, it's like...if you loved vampire stories, you'd kind of need to read at least the first two Anne Rice vampire novels, because they so heavily influenced how we think and write about vampires today. Same sort of thing.

And, really, I'm biased; it's a famous book, and many, many people love it, so ignore my smart-ass opinions.

Or, here's an idea: do a poll. Ask your friends list if you should read it. I bet most people who have read it will say yes.

Just, even if you love the books beyond all mention, exercise great caution if you read beyond the first two trilogies (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and the White Dragon, and the YA trilogy). The writing gets markedly worse, like, to the point of real physical pain; fame did not help her at all.

(And if you don't like it? I, for one, would totally read your LJ rant with great pleasure.)

Oh. And you have read Temeraire, right? I haven't yet, but I fully plan to; everyone on my friends list who has says it's great. And it's got dragons!

Slashy Nominations 136: Praised Be the Alternate Universe

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