intrigueing

In a new post, list ten FICS that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” works, or even all the same pairing or fandom, just the fics that have touched you or that stuck with you somehow.

I swiped this from moetushie , whose answer to the meme is here, way back in March, started it, forgot about it, rediscovered it a week or so ago, and finished it. It's rambly unfiltered musing and I have made a conscious effort to excise as much critical thinking and journalistic argumentation out of it as I can, and just write down what these fics are in my head and the imprint they left in my memory, rather than what they may be in reality.

Well, I spent much more than a few minutes on these. And they all got so long that I had to put cuts in all the "What Stuck with me and Why" bits so people's eyes don't glaze over while scrolling over it. Though I DID jot the list of fics down pretty fast, though, because if I didn't it would be impossible to choose just ten. So if anyone swipes this from me, moetushie's approach to the meme is probably closer to what it's meant to look like. ;)

As the description implies, these are not recs. Not in the sense of "read this, this is so good!" They're personal why-this-fic-stuck-with-me musings. However, in my opinion, they all do qualify at least as this-was-a-pretty-interesting-story recs.

I do recognize that a couple of them would not affect me the same way if I first read them today instead of reading them when I did read them, so any overpraising belongs to the fic's personal impact, not my critical analysis. But here goes:



1. Prison Of Glass by LuipaardJack (Futurama, Fry-centric)

Summary: "Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him." - George Santayana

Context: Read when I was 16, deeply embroiled in Futurama and other cartoon fanfic.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

2. Sick Home by Lance Ruhiru (South Park, Scott Tenormen-centric)

Summary: When time makes it worse. (Scott Tenormen's thoughts about Cartman, South Park, and the nature of reality and fiction, years after Scott Tenormen Must Die).

Context: Written years before 200 and 201 aired, so retroactively AU yet eerily prophetic. Read when I was 15 in my several months-long nothing-but-South-Park craze, during which I inhaled almost the entire ff.net archive.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

3. Nothing Compares by Cszemis (South Park, gen, Stan & Kyle, Kyle & Cartman, death-fic)

Summary: "His fingers traced over the shadow of Stan. “When we are dead and gone nobody will care about these pictures. No one will remember how happy we were. How much it all meant.” How much he meant to me…"

Context: Continuing the dark fics for goofy shows trend. Read when I was 15, yada yada see above.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

4. Mystery Kirk/Spock Slash Story of Awesomesauce by Mystery Kirk/Spock Slash Writer of Awesomesauce (Star Trek: TOS, Kirk/Spock)

Summary: I don't know and can't remember and cannot (and will not) find it again. If anyone recognizes this fic, don't tell me or link me or I will hunt you down for wrecking my childhood memories.

Context: I was 15 years old, and TOS was one of my very first and primary fandoms. I had read some smut, in the form of triofic in Harry Potter, but not much slash except some lame OOC stuff that belonged in a teen drama. I was also at that point in sexual development where encyclopedia descriptions of sexual acts were wildly titillating to me. From what I recall of the writing style and attitude, I am pretty sure this story was written in the '70s or '80s.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

5. No Means No by idioticonion (How I Met Your Mother, Barney/Robin, domestic violence, dub-con, rape(?))

Summary: "Barney is accused of raping Robin. This a single, fractured story told in one hundred drabbles going back and forwards in time. Spoilers up to The Goat. Written for the HIMYM DarkFic Livejournal Comm. Warning: Very dark."

Context: In 2011, How I Met Your Mother single-handedly dragged me out of the worst summer of my entire life, the only time in my life I can remember being depressed for longer than a few days. I leapt into the fandom in gratitude, which was a bad idea because it jilted me horribly a few months later (season 7, what a nightmare). However, unlike 99% of sitcoms, HIMYM has a fantastic fandom. This is partly because of its extensive and detailed continuity, and partly because of one writer, idioticonion, who wrote around 200 HIMYM fics, many of them extremely dark, ranging from ludicrous ~edginess~ to genuinely chilling what-ifs. This fic, while technically OOC, is mostly towards the latter.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

6. The Snow Queen by elspethdixon  (Marvel/Captain America Comicsverse, Steve/Tony, fairy tale fusion)

Summary: A fairy-tale fusion between The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, and the characters of the Marvel 616 comics universe (i.e., putting the Marvel characters and ideas into the roles of the fairy tale's plot), with Steve Rogers (named the Soldier) in the part of Gerda, and Tony Stark (named the Smith) in the part of Kay.

Context: I read this in 2010 during my great Marvel and DC comics craze. Even more specifically, during my rabid comicsverse!Steve/Tony shipping craze, which kind of went dormant shortly prior to the release of The Avengers, (and thank god it did because movieverse!Steve/Tony has not a single shred of commonality with comicsverse!Steve/Tony, and being an active comicsverse shipper during the MCU explosion would have made me tear my hair out.) There are innumerable non-canon pairings (especially slash pairings) that I like and enjoy reading, but there are very few pairings I like as much as (let alone more than) the platonic friendship interpretation present in the canon source. And there are even fewer that I actively ship. Comicsverse!Steve/Tony is one of those few.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

7. Just a Face on a Train by katheryne (Spider-Man movies (Tobey Maguire), Peter Parker, OFC, gen)

Summary: "After rescuing a train from Doc Ock's attack, Peter Parker found himself unmasked and indebted to those he had just saved. 4 months later, a train passenger again crosses paths with the young hero. Based on events from Spider-Man 2."

Context: I don't really remember when I read this or why, or how I found it, since I was never in this fandom (though I loved the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies). It was a couple years ago, though, and I am glad I did.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

8. Who's Afraid of the GI Bogeyman? by Curley Green (M*A*S*H, gen ensemble)

Summary: "Naïveté has its advantages. Radar is afraid of the dark, but it's the rest of the 4077th who truly have uncontrollable fears. A series of short vignettes, c. season 7. One-shot."

Context: M*A*S*H was one of my first fandoms, and the first really in-depth one. I read this fic when I was 14, in 2006. If I recall correctly, my fic-reading method in M*A*S*H fandom was mainly to filter the entire ff.net archive by a character combo or genre -- in this case, horror -- and read everything listed there that pricked my ears up.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

9. World In Your Eyes by jamjar (DC Comics/Superman comics, gen with background Clark Kent/Lois Lane)

Summary: "The first time Clark had looked at the world from above, he almost thought he was dying."

Context: I read this maybe in 2013, a year or two after my Marvel and DC Comics superhero binge which was abruptly killed stone cold dead by the Nu 52 over in DC. I never lost my love for superhero comics, though, nor superhero fanfic, as in evidence here. Superman is and always has been my favorite superhero of all time, even if he wasn't one of the ones I was most interested in reading about.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

 

10. The Thousandth Man by Suzan Lovett (Starsky & Hutch, gen, post-Starsky vs Hutch)

Summary: This was written before the days of summary boxes, so in brief: the ending tag was nothing but a performance, Hutch offers no explanation of his actions nor any attempt to fix things, Starsky kicks him to the curb in a fury, and the two of them spend the next several weeks estranged until the plot finally puts them face-to-face once again.

Context: Every S&H fan and their dog has written a post-"Starsky vs Hutch" Fix-It Fic. The Fix-It Fic is that panfandom fic genre designed to explain and resolve baffling and outrageous canon events -- in this case, it's Hutch sleeping with Starsky's girlfriend, an act whose seriousness has zilch to do with conflict, and everything to do with a betrayal of trust, the cornerstone of their friendship, and the absence of either motive or onscreen reconciliation. The Thousandth Man is much longer and more complicated than most fix-its. It's one of the earlier ones too, written in 1985. I read this during a kick I'm sure some other S&H fans have had -- consuming every post-SvH fic I could lay my hands on and marveling at the S&H fandom's unparalleled reality-weaving powers as it collectively constructed, out of the resonating patterns of the common denominators of a hundred wildly varying fanfics and observations, a shadow-arc for season 4 that the canon never quite articulated. Out of all those innumerable fix-it fics, no one single story ever satisfied me like this one.

( What Stuck With Me and Why )

Now I'm thinking up all the other fics that stayed with me but which didn't make the cut of the first ten such fics to cross my mind. Perhaps I'll do this meme again in a few months...

So, like several people on my flist, I'm jumping on the "when you see this, post 3 lines from 3 WIPs" bandwagon. This has the added benefit of motivating me to finish them faster, because I don't want to go around for months with those lines out in the open without posting the fic that goes with it. And of course, not exactly random selections, but lines that hopefully make a bit of sense in context.

1. The West Wing, prequel fic, Jed and Leo-centric

He made a stab at pulling himself to his feet on a nearby shopping cart before Jed's voice got any louder, but forgot to take the cart's wheels into account. He found himself deposited back on his stomach as the cart rolled out from under him with a half-hearted clatter, rolled a few parking spaces away, and came to a squeaky halt.

"Jesus Christ," growled Jed. He walked back, grabbed the back of Leo's belt, hauled him up like a duffel bag and propped him diagonally against the base of the streetlight. "I said just sit still. You got that through your fucking head?"

"Sorry," Leo sat still, feeling bad and then progressively worse about letting Jed down. He desperately wanted to ask Jed to get him a drink so he could stop feeling bad about it, which made him start laughing.


2. Starsky & Hutch, long decades-spanning snapshot series

"You kiddin'?" Starsky's eyes were dancing, and either didn't know or didn't care that Hutch could see it in the mirror's reflection. "Listen, Blintz, you better get all your romancin' in now, because if you're seen around with me after I'm back in shape, there ain't a woman with a lick of taste who's gonna take a second look at your ugly mug. On the beach, next summer? Who's gonna go for some balding chump with a mustache like that over a gorgeous guy who's clearly the biggest badass in California, and got the scars to prove it? Chicks can't resist the sight of 'em."

"Right," said Hutch, appraising Starsky's reflection with one raised eyebrow over the top of his newspaper, "I forgot that it's every woman's dream to sleep with a guy with only one nipple."

"Hey, that's one and a half nipples," muttered Starsky, frowning mournfully at his chest. "The doc said I'm gonna be able to see most of this one again once all the stitches come out."


3. Harry Potter, several decades post-epilogue

But at the end of the high table, Potter had his glasses tilted so that only one eye was covered, and was holding a piece of treacle tart aloft in one wizened hand. He was closing first one eye, then the other, as though he was taking turns between gazing at it like he'd never seen food before, and letting it go blurry.

"Well, they wouldn't let him teach if he was a complete nutter, would they?" said Neil, "My granddad was in the war, there's some times where he starts talking about stuff and can't stop, but he knows he's doing it."

Sean shook his head. "Nah, not like that. I don't mean he loses his grip or anything, it's just...well," Sean jabbed his fork in Potter's direction. "He always acts like he's just taken a swig of Felix Felices."