Keep Hoping Machine Running

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. ( I mean it. Read it now. If you hate it, feel free to tell me that I suck. )

I promised an entry totally free of due South, Sports Night, and The Sentinel. And this is it. I feel myself twitching from withdrawal already.

(Secret message to everyone in the whole world: I've got serious, possibly permanent server problems, so I'm getting my mail in drips and drabs and way late. If I haven't responded to an email or a comment, I haven't gotten it yet. I'm going to check the comments to this entry rather than just waiting for LJ notifications, so if you want or need to talk to me, or if I missed something important, leave a comment here.

Secret message, part two: I've just come out of a period of sleep deprivation of the kind that leaves a person incoherent, twitchy, and very possibly insane, so if I recently left a comment in your LJ or sent you an email that sounds, um, seriously weird, please ignore it. I promise not to take to the internet in the future unless I have had at least six hours of sleep out of the last 36. No, wait; that means I'll never be here again. Well, maybe I'll install a program that tests my lucidity before it lets me interact with the world. Anyone know of one?)

Best FF Featuring Percy Weasley and Adrian Pucey Working to the Same End, Which Would Probably Kill Them Both If They Knew About It. Hee! True But Not Nice, by V, aka deepsix. Harry Potter, Marcus Flint/Oliver Wood. This story really had me at the first paragraph, which is so perfectly high school that I had to obtain alcoholic refreshment before I could continue reading. (Yes, memories of high school do make me want chemical oblivion. Or maybe it's that I'm hoping I'll manage to destroy the brain cells responsible for said memories. Really, given what I can recall of that period of my life, either explanation seems likely.) The story carries on feeling just like adolescence, too, from the incredible rumor-mongering (really, don't these boys have spells to practice or blowjobs to give or something?) to the remarkable maturity displayed by all concerned (kindergartners have more instinctive grace and empathy than Pucey as writen by V) to the obsession with other people's love lives. Well, wait. I'm actually more obsessed with other people's love lives now than I was then, provided I'm allowed to count characters as people (and, hey, I know some of them better than my own sister, so I hope like hell I can count them as people). Scratch that last one. So, this story: very true, not especially nice, but with an ending that reminds you why you bothered to grow up. Plus, it's got Oliver Wood in it, and my Best Beloved feels strongly that there should be more stories about him. An all-round winner, in other words.

Best FF Featuring the Best Summary Ever of the Entire Batverse: "A Lifetime of Secrets, Angst, and Danger." What Fun They Do Have, Those Batties. Go Down Knowing, by Te, aka thete1. D.C. Universe, Tim Drake/Bernard Dowd*. So. You'd think Tim would already know everything there is to know about the difficulty of having multiple lives. But no, the Batworld can always think of something new to throw at him. How do Bats handle relationships with normal humans? Extensive experimentation (see Batman, issues 1 - infinity, for example) would indicate that they don't. Can't. And Tim is a good boy. He follows the rules. And if he leaves himself an out? Well, hey; he found the Batclan with his phenomenal research skills and stubbornness and methodical insanity. (Which all proved he was so right for the clan that they had to recruit him before the bad guys did, but that's another story.) Maybe someone else can figure it out that way, too, and wouldn't that be a sign from above. This is one of those stories that leaves me longing for a sequel every time I read it, and grouchily muttering under my breath when I discover it's still a stand alone.

Best FF That Proves That Giving in to Your Baser Impulses Leads to Embarrassment. And Hot Sex. So Give in to Your Baser Impulses Today! The Maiden Voyage of the Tiresias, by Shalott, aka astolat. Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson. Have I mentioned how I tremble in fear every time I visit Shalott's page? Because I do. The woman can make me read Aubrey/Maturin genderswitch babyfic, for Christ's sake, and like it. When she acquires a new fandom, it seems like only a matter of time before I do, too. (Still holding out on Stargate, though, by god.) In this story we have - something really quite indescribable, actually, so I'll skip describing it (there's cross-dressing, though, and Watson being Watson, and some surprisingly touching, um, touching). Instead, I'll talk about Holmes/Watson. This is a pairing I just started reading (any recs, anyone?) after avoiding it for my entire time in fandom. And I avoided it because it made no sense; I just couldn't picture Holmes ever voluntarily getting that messy or involved with people, except in pursuit of a case. What I forgot was the other side of Holmes, the one that seeks out socially unacceptable mess (opium dens and docks and slums) and clings to Watson as a balance for his self-destructive tendencies and an anchor to, you know, the real world, which is not necessarily something Holmes has much direct personal contact with. Shalott reminded me of all that with this story, which would have killed Sir Artie, and which is so perfectly in character and in canon that I almost believed Sir Artie wrote it. Damn it all, I've got a new fandom. Another one. At least it's a very, very small one.

Best FF That Features Explicit Sexual Fantasies in the Presence of an Observant Nun, and Yet Doesn't Make My Flesh Crawl. Pattern Recognition, by actizera. Oz, Tobias Beecher/Christopher Keller. Thank god I didn't offer to do this set without Oz, too, because there just can't be a secrets and lies set that doesn't include Oz, the fandom of secrets and lies. This story shows the side of Beecher that's so damn good at self-analysis, so good at it and yet so incapable of taking action based on it, and so facile that he can lie to himself even as he's thinking about the truth, which is an impressive skill, I think you'll admit. And it also illustrates the biggest problem that Beecher/Keller faced, which is, in essence, secrets and lies. When they were together, there were nine thousand strings pulling them apart; everyone had a reason for opposition, and everyone also had a real reason, the reason they didn't tell, the reason they covered up. In this story, it's Sister Pete, who cares about Beecher and who wants the best for him. Unless the best involves Keller, because she just fucking cannot stand Keller. (Not to say that she doesn't have reason, mind you. She's one of the many blades of grass Keller tromped down in his single-minded Beecherquest, and she can't forget it.) Moral of this story? Don't piss off a nun, I guess, although I would hope you all already knew that, because nuns are really damn scary.

* Thanks, Te! I now know one more thing than I did before. And that thing is that someone at DC has a wicked sense of humor when it comes to names.