Comments | thefourthvine: Slashy Nominations 136: Praised Be the Alternate Universe

thefourthvine

Slashy Nominations 136: Praised Be the Alternate Universe

Feb 05, 2006 16:17

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 ( Read more... )

stargate: atlantis, stargate: sg-1, dcu, holmes, [rec theme: alternate universe]

Comments 79

j00j February 5 2006, 16:22:32 UTC

"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 February 5 2006, 16:30:29 UTC

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 February 5 2006, 17:09:44 UTC

*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 ( ... )

diluvian February 5 2006, 17:17:33 UTC

Oh god, that totally *does* work.
::boggle::

Thread 23

brown_betty February 5 2006, 16:23:08 UTC

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 February 5 2006, 16:50:30 UTC

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 February 5 2006, 16:23:20 UTC

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 February 5 2006, 17:18:54 UTC

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.)

buddleia February 6 2006, 01:32:11 UTC

The little fibres are very nice to eat with a spoon after, or you can strain them out if you don't like that.
I'm with your mother on ginger. I chose an ecological brand fabric conditioner because the smell reminded me of sushi pickled ginger.

rydra_wong February 6 2006, 02:45:14 UTC

Adding in some lemon juice can also be very good. And a spoonful of honey if you have a cold.

Ginger tea is wonderful, and good for you, and a traditional remedy for many ills.

If you get really into it, there are Japanese ceramic ginger graters which make the whole process much easier and tend to leave many of the fibres behind.

danibennett February 5 2006, 16:40:47 UTC

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 February 5 2006, 17:27:07 UTC

*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*

notpoetry February 5 2006, 17:45:41 UTC

Did I really just propose a Holmes x DCU AU?

Hey, that made me think of this AU I read...it's not exactly Holmes, but it's Holmesian because let's face it, Greg House is OBVIOUSLY modeled as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes...

But there's an AU (put in motion by _marcelo, surprise surprise) where Greg House is actually Tim Drake and Batman needs his help but Tim/House is like ... oh man, it's just. I hope you've read it and I'm just flailing my arms and repeating things you already know, because this fic just makes me incoherent with happiness. I love this fandom's crack.

thefourthvine February 5 2006, 18:42:25 UTC

You mean marag's Change Is the Only Constant? Because if so, oh my god yes. I love that one so much. And I'm pretty sure that I rec'd it, um. A couple sets back, maybe? (Of course, that means it was, like, at least two months ago, because of the intervening vid orgy and RL badness.)

put in motion by __marcelo, surprise surprise

*is impressed*

I can see I need to start reading Marcelo's LJ. Apparently he brings good AUs to the DCU's yard. (<-- Is using quaint modern lingo to appear "hip" and "with it.")

I love this fandom's crack.

Oh, yes. My theory is that DCU FF writers have an advantage: they are continually exposed to a high grade of crack in their canon, which means they can consume amazing doses of it for fic production. (This explains a lot about SGA, too, come to think of it.)

And you should know. Weren't you one of that illustrious duo who got Tim pregnant with an alien babything? (I nominate you two to be the Crackridden Crusaders, with spandex costumes and capes and a mission to bring the crack to everyone. "Wherever a fan needs ( ... )

Thread 5

out_there February 5 2006, 16:41:44 UTC

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) 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 ( ... )

thefourthvine February 5 2006, 17:42:29 UTC

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 ( ... )