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graycardinalHave been madly busy with family Christmas and writing projects (of course the non-Yuletide project's plot bunnies chose to jump in front of the Yuletide ones), but am now more or less caught up...just in time to go on vacation -- and most likely Internet-free -- for a week. [There will be a potentially borrow-able computer where I'm going, but I'm not at all sure of the 'Net access.]
However, some thanks are overdue already.
The Writer's Block Sleeps Tonight (Castle, Alexis-centric) was written for me in Yuletide proper, and is a wise and clever and funny story with a great many subtle in-jokes, bonus Martha/theater material, and much sensible writing advice. I'm very pleased with and grateful for it, and look forward to thanking my writer properly when I get back next year. :-)
A Facade of Stone (Gargoyles, Xanatos & Owen (and Puck)) was my Yuletide Madness treat -- it's a post-episode tag to "The Price", in which Xanatos had acquired a magical cauldron and needed Owen to test it for him. I can hear Jonathan Frakes and Jeff Burnett (and Brent Spiner) delivering the dialogue for this one...and would not be surprised if something like this turned up on an outtake reel somewhere. Highly amusing, and a welcome treat indeed.
Castle in general did very well out of Yuletide this year; I'll give a blanket "thumbs up" to all 30 stories in the fandom. There's also a handful of other very worthwhile Gargoyles fic in the archive, with a particular nod toward Checksum (Anastasia/Halcyon) -- sometimes you only need 100 words to draw a relationship.
I will also jump on a couple of bandwagons. I hope to do more recs after I get back, and especially to do more obscure ones, but time considerations have had me mostly following others' trails of breadcrumbs in the early stages of Yuletide reading.
The Cable & Deadpool Yuletide Special (Marvelverse) bids fair to jump right into the top tier of legendary epic crackfics -- Carrot Juice, Earl Grey. Hot (aka Bugs Bunny vs. the Borg) still ranks highest on my all-time scale (and wonder of wonders, is now actually up on the 'Net), but this is easily in the top three both for utter wackiness and actual artistic depth.
And But Rather Darkness Visible ("Young Wizards"/Duane; Doctor Who) is way over on the opposite end of the scale, a quiet yet daring crossover that's admirably compact, strongly characterized, and completely believable as near-canon (right up to the use of Dairine as dispenser-of-wisdom, which is not a position that canon usually assigns her).
Not quite as widely noted is Another Rainbow in Another Sky (My Little Pony), a thoughtfully executed...I'd term it a "reawakening" rather than a reboot or re-imagining of the franchise that starts with Megan just arrived at college and ends on a moment that satisfies...and holds the promise of much more. This is a story I'd like to see its author carry forward, and as good as Yuletide fic usually is, one doesn't see a lot of work with that kind of potential.
More later -- I hope!
However, some thanks are overdue already.
The Writer's Block Sleeps Tonight (Castle, Alexis-centric) was written for me in Yuletide proper, and is a wise and clever and funny story with a great many subtle in-jokes, bonus Martha/theater material, and much sensible writing advice. I'm very pleased with and grateful for it, and look forward to thanking my writer properly when I get back next year. :-)
A Facade of Stone (Gargoyles, Xanatos & Owen (and Puck)) was my Yuletide Madness treat -- it's a post-episode tag to "The Price", in which Xanatos had acquired a magical cauldron and needed Owen to test it for him. I can hear Jonathan Frakes and Jeff Burnett (and Brent Spiner) delivering the dialogue for this one...and would not be surprised if something like this turned up on an outtake reel somewhere. Highly amusing, and a welcome treat indeed.
Castle in general did very well out of Yuletide this year; I'll give a blanket "thumbs up" to all 30 stories in the fandom. There's also a handful of other very worthwhile Gargoyles fic in the archive, with a particular nod toward Checksum (Anastasia/Halcyon) -- sometimes you only need 100 words to draw a relationship.
I will also jump on a couple of bandwagons. I hope to do more recs after I get back, and especially to do more obscure ones, but time considerations have had me mostly following others' trails of breadcrumbs in the early stages of Yuletide reading.
The Cable & Deadpool Yuletide Special (Marvelverse) bids fair to jump right into the top tier of legendary epic crackfics -- Carrot Juice, Earl Grey. Hot (aka Bugs Bunny vs. the Borg) still ranks highest on my all-time scale (and wonder of wonders, is now actually up on the 'Net), but this is easily in the top three both for utter wackiness and actual artistic depth.
And But Rather Darkness Visible ("Young Wizards"/Duane; Doctor Who) is way over on the opposite end of the scale, a quiet yet daring crossover that's admirably compact, strongly characterized, and completely believable as near-canon (right up to the use of Dairine as dispenser-of-wisdom, which is not a position that canon usually assigns her).
Not quite as widely noted is Another Rainbow in Another Sky (My Little Pony), a thoughtfully executed...I'd term it a "reawakening" rather than a reboot or re-imagining of the franchise that starts with Megan just arrived at college and ends on a moment that satisfies...and holds the promise of much more. This is a story I'd like to see its author carry forward, and as good as Yuletide fic usually is, one doesn't see a lot of work with that kind of potential.
More later -- I hope!
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Date: December 27th, 2009 08:26 pm (UTC)Attempt to withdraw foot from mouth
Date: December 28th, 2009 02:40 am (UTC)I can see why this sounds like a left-handed compliment, but I definitely don't mean it that way. And a point I should have noted upstream is that Carrot Juice, Earl Grey. Hot was a large-scale collaborative effort, whereas Cable & Deadpool is a single-author work (albeit with remixes), so that one can't really do a straight apples-to-apples comparison from a craft POV.
As the foregoing shows, I'm also guilty of under-explaining just what Carrot Juice... was, since it predates the present-day Internet and a lot of folks may not have run across it before. The epic originated on GEnie (one of the smaller online services competing with Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, etc. back when each was its own private space and one didn't cross from one to the other save via email. GEnie, out of all the online services, had two particular advantages -- high visibility among the SF/F communities, both pro and fan -- and a singularly compartmentalized non-threaded bulletin board structure that turned out to be uniquely well suited to group-written storytelling. Some of this, mostly among the pros, manifested as epics that would look now like a sort of text-based version of Second Life. But on the Star Trek section of the SFRT (or Science Fiction RoundTable), a liberal handful of writers set up an open story-topic, tossed the Warner toons into the opening moments of TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds"...and it grew. Before the dust finally settled, the collective (there were about three prime movers, but many more folk than that contributed) had pulled in nearly every animated being then known to Western humanity and raised the stakes by a number of notches. As far as I know, there's been nothing quite like it created on that large a scale before or since.
Anyhow. Bottom line, Cable & Deadpool is, no qualifiers, dead flat brilliant. So is Carrot Juice..., if in a slightly different way. And neither one dsiminishes the worth of the other.
Re: Attempt to withdraw foot from mouth
Date: December 28th, 2009 02:55 am (UTC)*is honestly not mad, just trying to help you not unintentionally annoy someone whose work you like*
Re: Attempt to withdraw foot from mouth
Date: December 28th, 2009 04:44 am (UTC)It's a completely valid reaction, and I need to have another look at both those AO3 bookmarks (though possibly not till I get back on my own computer, which will be a few days). I've been something of a Carrot Juice evangelist over the years, but I ought not let it get away from me.
no subject
Date: December 28th, 2009 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: January 3rd, 2010 12:44 am (UTC)Merry Yule-mas ;>
Date: January 3rd, 2010 04:22 am (UTC)The day was excruciating! All day long Alexis had to pretend she cared even a little bit about her classes. Tonight was one of Dad’s Events. Grandma had promised to introduce her to some female writers having proclaimed dad’s writing buddies an “Old Boys Network that needed some goosing up!” and she couldn’t WAIT!
the rest is in your email - as it was FAR too long for this venue ;>
Re: Merry Yule-mas ;>
Date: January 4th, 2010 03:03 am (UTC)Hmmm. Not showing up in either of my primary mailboxes, or any of the associated junkmail folders. If I didn't know better, I'd think it had been eaten by a grue.
- as it was FAR too long for this venue ;>
Too long for LJ commentspace, I can well beileve. OTOH, too long for AO3? Surely not. And we wouldn't want to deprive the masses of your genius, now would we? [And last I looked, the relevant prompt is still alive and well on the NYR list.]