A Feast of Fanfic 06
jordan
A Feast of Fanfic 06
A tragic computer crash, a brief memorial
service for my lost feedback, and I turn my
head away for one minute and miss a couple
million stories whizzing by like those comets
in "Armageddon." Well, armageddon caught
up now, though I had to trek deep into Deja
News land to find some things that slipped by,
and sadly let pass a few gems that just came in.
One gem I couldn't let pass was "The Chosen One,"
by Meg, at Margu...@swbell.net.
This is an example of an X-File true to the original
spirit of the show. It recalls a terrible real life horror
worse than any reticulan nightmare takeover: the
Holocaust. Is there anything the oileans could
possibly do to the human race that we haven't done
to each other? Exterminate us, perhaps. But that
was the whole point of the German Holocaust of
World War II, the takeover and extermination of a race.
Scary parallels underscore this tale of destiny and love,
honor and loss, and all the BIG themes of human
existence. Meg has an amazing ability to capture
the mannerisms of the characters as we see them
on television:
Mulder pulled away from Scully's attempted caress.
"I'm not telling you this to get your pity," he said.
"I just wanted you to know why I was acting so
strangely a little while ago."
The story is tight and absorbing, no wasted motion
here, everything leading to a climax, and along the
way explaining things about Mulder's ethnic back-
ground, his fear of fire, and a few other things you
may have always wondered about. The flashbacks
to a concentration camp in 1944 are bone chilling,
and the "box" is as creepy as that Hellraiser thing
that shuttled demons from one world to the next.
Read it well before bedtime, with all the lights on.
Then go slap a skinhead silly.
But not MY skinhead! He's busy being parodied
in the funniest story of the week, "The Confessions
of Mary Sue."
Bored? Wondering if people give you feedback
for your name or for your work? Hop on over to
aol, get yourself a new identity to match your
story, and call yourself
marys...@aol.com (Marysuewho)
Of course, if you then write something as cute
and funny as "The Confessions of Mary Sue,"
all will be forgiven:
" It was as if my thoughts and actions were being
controlled by an outside force. Oh. One change
did take place - the odd odor of my sweat. Under
extreme pressure, I exuded the faint smell of
bananas. For this I paid a psychotherapist one
hundred and twenty dollars an hour, three times
a week. Can you believe it?"
I can believe it, just the way I "believe" this is
the first story from this author. There are so
many funny lines here you'll have to put
down all liquids; we know what path they tend
to take in these situations. It's almost too original
to be a true parody, but the sexual situations
--aplenty!--
are hilariously familiar. What I liked best was
the underlying fondness of the writer for her subjects;
it was teasing without being bitter or mean about it.
I agree with Red Valerian's observation on this
story: We.Must.Have.More.
More is never going to be enough with "Iolokus,"
which for some reason I was slow to start. Once
inside, I literally couldn't stop reading. The
constant stream of tropes is as dazzling as an all
day fireworks display at a 4th of July picnic;
you reel from one vivid description to another in
a kind of drunken ecstacy. (Of COURSE if the sky
was cut open it would bleed the color of Scully's
eyes. Why did I never see that before?)
Juxtaposing POVS (Scully's and Mulder's) give a
panoramic view of events freighted with enormous
meaning, like a long, long train leading from a rape
(off stage, thank you) to a moment when Scully does
something out of character but totally believable,
something that ironically saves her life. I even loved
the Mooselet, an endearment that perfectly describes
"an armful of hot heavy baby." Mulder is tough, but so
deeply in love that for the first time I am convinced
he is capable of loving something outside of himself,
and because he cares so much, we care, too.
There's not enough good things to say about
these two killer writers, Mustang Sally and Rivka T.
Suffice to say that I spent a whole afternoon devouring
everything on their site the day before the Great
Crash, utterly amazed at the consistent quality of their
writing and the maturity of their vision. Why I waited
so long to discover this, I don't know. Hopefully the
rest of you are laughing at my tardiness, but if not,
get with it. It would be criminal to miss this one.
riv...@aol.com awaits. (And though I didn't review
it here, those Pretty Smart Dogs also knocked my socks
off.)
A vision a bit beyond this, to the future that might yet
be, is explored further in Meredith's hard edged, razor
sharp drama: "A Show of Strength." She manages to
render her central character sympathetic at the same
time as she scares the hell out of you with her
imitation of humanity, making you wonder what's real
and what's not (and a pre-Truman story, at that!).
When I first wrote Meredith I compared this story to
losing your balance on a flight of stairs, so you're almost
falling forward, but still just in control. That's how the
action makes you feel, propelled by intriguing ideas and
a barely contained rage that energizes every paragraph.
Fall, crawl, or just scroll on over and find her at:
<mered...@hotmail.com
And then wander off to India, at least as far as Kyber
Pass, for "Heresy" by Khyber and Alanna Baker
khybe...@geocities.com (who I am sure will
forward or otherwise share feedback with Alanna)
This one is short enough to gobble down like ice
cream, but don't think it doesn't have any
nutritive value just because it goes down so
cool and sweet:
"Minutes before, their words had slid around each
other, trying to touch while avoiding, to reach
around the fragile dark web of unspoken things
between them."
Yum! It's a Pine Bluff variant variant, if my
spellchecker will let that term pass by. The
intensity between Mulder and Scully is palpable,
and even when the characters sleep, you sense
their hearts beating a little faster for their passion.
What do our heroes really want?
"Not to prevent Armageddon, not to serve justice.
Only to share the life given back to me in this
ragged place where trees drip tears onto the
ground."
Well, you might reconsider that preventing Armageddon
thing, but it's still a beautiful line...
I see some feedback posts on the news group, but
I say give them more, more, more, to keep them
writing like this.
Moving on to the next course, I found "Five
Senses: Taste" by Susanne Barringer
(sbarr...@usa.net)
"Mulder's meatloaf is truly paranormal. I think
it is some kind of alien/ground-beef hybrid,
engineered by a mysterious cabal to
destroy the planet."
Barringer's little "five sense" series has been fun
so far, and for some reason I like this one the best
so far. It's tasty humor, easy to digest, and you
can read it between the time your boss calls you to
tell you she's coming down to talk to you about
something and the time she actually arrives. Trust
me on this. Barringer has a quirky sense of humor
and nice timing, too. After you read this one you'll
have to go back and catch the others if you've missed
them so far.
And finally, only because I'm running out of my
pre-defined space limitations and can only do one
more, an angsty little Scully piece called "Margins"
by Denise A. Agnew at wri...@agnewdt.demon.co.uk.
It's just a vignette, a few hours in Scully's life when
she indulges in a little pms type introspection, but
we've all been there:
" She kicked off her shoes and heard the clunking
sound like punctuation. As if her every action needed
to be validated..."
Sound familiar? Scully's self doubts are painfully
realistic, in a world where validation is so damn hard
to find. It's not like MULDER is going to give it to her,
but the author skillfully avoids making Mulder the bad
guy in this, which I admire.
I hadn't read anything by Agnew before and was
pleasantly surprised to see that she had a nice style,
portraying Scully at a bad time, but not in a bad
way. The prose has kind of a new feel to it, as if
she's just starting out (shoot me if I'm wrong, Agnew),
but it's sweet and I liked it. I can see this writer
going places. Check it out and see if you think so, too.
*******************
Remember that in the Feasts I try not to mention
the same authors more than once, though I guess
eventually I'm going to have to, because they just
keep turning out such excellent work that private
feedback doesn't seem compensation enough. If
we want more entertainment, there's just that one
little teeny tiny
pricetag involved: gotta pay 'em in feedback and
they'll just write and write their little hearts
out. Then we can all feast to our hearts' content.
thanks for writing,
jordan
jordan
oops--forgot to mention that all the Feasts
are available at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/1063
jordan
jenroses
I have a horrible confession to make.
<deep breath>
I haven't read much fanfic in about two weeks.
I haven't touched Janus in almost a month.
But I read every *other* post on this board.
How strange is that?
It must be that damn movie. Focused, my @ss.
Normally I read just about every fanfic that comes down the pipe. But
this past month I just *can't*.
I have a feeling that this will change June 19. Like a lot of other
people, I'm going alone to the Noon showing. I'll take my sister along
later.
Then I'll go with friends on Sunday.
Maybe *then* I can get back to a *normal* level of Phile activity.
Maybe then my book will be done too. (A non-XF real book, nonfiction,
I'm only writing a dozen pages or so of it, but about 7 or 8 sections of
the book are mine and will have a spine and my name and an ISBN and
everything. And we're in the final editing, rewrite, pasteup process
right now and I"m up to my neck in database and data entry and we just
had a conference and suddenly it seems completely reasonable that I
haven't had time to think let alone read fanfiction. I won't even think
about t-shirts.)
JenRose
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jenrose/janus.htm>
_________________________________________________________________
"Complex systems thrive at the thin edge of chaos."
__________________________________________________________________
jordan wrote in message <3580C417...@jetson.uh.edu>...
Adrian.D.Ives
jenroses wrote in message ...
>It must be that damn movie. Focused, my @ss.
>
>Normally I read just about every fanfic that comes down the pipe. But
>this past month I just *can't*.
>
>I have a feeling that this will change June 19. Like a lot of other
>people, I'm going alone to the Noon showing. I'll take my sister along
>later.
>
<grumble> <groan> At least you'll get to see it in a week's time.
Over in the UK we've got another TWO MONTHS to wait !!!!! :)
Anyway, enjoy.
Adrian
lynisme
jenroses <jenr...@email.msn.com> confessed: (with snipping<g>)
> I haven't touched Janus in almost a month.
aaahhhhhhhhhhhhh. oh the toils of being an obssessed
reader. my soul screeched in agony as i read this...
j/k. =)
jen, i'm very diappointed in you <vbg>
go write...i'm not kidding young lady...
hey you come back here... i'm not done yet...
=)
lyn
~~~~~~~~~~
"I don't sleep anymore."
-Mulder from '3'
jenroses
Honey, I just can't do it right now....
This book I'm working on for my job is a little more vital to my
existance. But I am *still* pretty determined that Facing Janus will
have another chapter up June 30.
Even if I have to disobey my editor.
<looking around furtively>
JenRose
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jenrose/janus.htm>
_________________________________________________________________
"Complex systems thrive at the thin edge of chaos."
__________________________________________________________________
lynisme wrote in message <6lt5hd$n...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>...
lynisme
jenroses <jenr...@email.msn.com> reasoned:
> Honey, I just can't do it right now....
>
> This book I'm working on for my job is a little more vital to my
> existance. But I am *still* pretty determined that Facing Janus will
> have another chapter up June 30.
>
> Even if I have to disobey my editor.
> <looking around furtively>
we i suppose we'll let this slid this once <G>
i do need some time to go back a refresh my
memory of the story ...
good luck with the book
lyn
~~~~~~~~~
that's it. i'm calling the mother ship.
-as seen on a button