I'm coming back to you...
I'm coming back to you...I warned you I had a backlog:
The Years In Between by True Enough (Mag 7 - slash but not really the whole focus)
I feel fairly confident in reccing True Enough's work without reservation. Her first offering The Hours of Separation (Mag 7-OW) pretty much blew my socks off for the narrative style and the intensely lyrical imagery. Much of it's impact came from the matching of style to time period.
In her latest The Years In Between, she brings the same style to a very different time period and she still makes it work. This is a Chris/Vin story but mostly it's Vin (and I have nothing to complain about there) with a slightly different twist on his back story (And Vin's back story has been speculated on by nearly every Mag 7 author out there at one time or another.) It's a modern day alternative fic -- i.e. Not ATF, but the feel is similar for those who like that universe.
What I liked: The plot itself, as it weaves around and through Vin's life is pretty interesting. Partially because it's a new take and partially because it doesn’t rush itself. Some sections are longer than others but each is just long enough. And True Enough takes the time to build the version of Vin we see, without actually turning him into someone we barely recognize. But also, style. The narrative voice is almost hypnotic, which is kind of an earmark of her work. It's not for everyone but it works very well for me.
What was less than perfect: Kind of the flip side of this style of writing is that there's a certain distance wedged between the story and the reader. You're very much aware that you are observing rather than experiencing something -- in that respect, it's not unlike watching a film. But there's just enough of a gap there to make sure you don't ever forget you are reading. There's also a couple of minor details/interactions, that while interesting, never seem to have much significance, or the significance escaped me -- but I'm pretty sure that's because I can be easily distracted by things that other people would consider texture.
One Day Out West by ZorroRojo. (Slash for M7, not so for SG1 particularly)
This story has been recced a lot, relatively speaking. It's a crossover between The Magnificent 7 set in the old west and Stargate: SG-1. Now, I'm the first to admit that Stargate would seem to lend itself to a lot of crossovers, but really it doesn't. Or it doesn't do them well in my experience, primarily because Stargate, despite being science fiction, has a pretty consistent canon -- i.e. the worlds they visit are derivative and parallel cultures. Yes, the show has toyed with time travel but not to the extent that the series has become the modern day version of the old 60's TV show called "Time Tunnel" (Mmm. James Darren. Early crush.) To do an actual crossover out of time actually takes some work to convince me.
What I like: One consistent thing about ZorroRojo's stories is that she doesn’t soften up the men in them. In this one, you never really forget that Jack is a Colonel in the Air Force. You never forget that Daniel is a civilian contractor, and you never really forget that the Magnifcent 7, in terms of modern day ethics and morality, would be considered stone-cold and often savage killers. And they don't forget their own places in history without being totally annoying about it. Personally, I think some of the scenes between Jack and Chris are the best written ones. Also, Jack and Daniel shopping? Too funny.
What was less than perfect: By the same token, the savagery of the M7 boys, especially Vin, while there's allusions to the underlying cause of it, is almost too pointed. There's no doubt that Vin (or Chris or any of them) could not be as savage as they are portrayed given reason, but it's not their default mode. It wasn't that it threw me out of the story, only that I noticed it as being not so much out of character, but out of synch if that makes sense.
Grass Don't Grow by Lithium Doll (Supernatural - Gen)
In the cemetery:
“You said you and dad found one.”
“Right. And then dad called in a specialist and there was coffee. Well, coffee and a werewolf. But that was unrelated.”
“We’re so dead.”
Dean looked amused. “At least we’re in the right place.”
There's a distressing lack of alterna-episode fic in this fandom. It's entirely possible that it's because the series is still in production and the canon for the underlying themes is still being written and also, the slash contingent is pretty strong, as well as issue fic (because, yes, our heroes have some serious issues) That being said, most of the alterna-episodes being written are really fun and dead on. Grass Don't Grow is one of those stories, where the dialogue is snappy, the actual plot consistency of the story probably exceeds that of the show itself and yes, the underlying themes are all present and accounted for.
What I like: OMG, I laughed. Not so much at the story but at the byplay. The ending bit had me hooting with laughter. Seriously though, Sam and Dean are dead on, the ancillary characters are interesting without overwhelming the story and the actual threat is complex enough to actually be a little worrisome.
What was less than perfect: Minor quibble in that the ultimate cause of the problem they've come to solve is pretty obscure and while we know Dean has a vast amount of experience in dealing with the supernatural (and Sam as well) the actual causation wasn't something you could intuit from the story entirely. That's not a requirement certainly, but as caught up as I was in the rest of the story, not being able to get there from what clues there were was a little (a very little) disappointing -- primarily because I knew of the phenomena being written about (or variations of it) which, I totally admit, might not be true of every reader. But overall? One of my favorite stories and I've reread it a dozen times.
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