Stephan Sokolow's Blog

It’s been a busy week and I didn’t have time to do my usual “go back and re-read something which stuck with me as good” routine, so here’s something reasonably worthwhile from my fresh reads:

Infinity Box by HMaxMarius

It’s a response to to Zaion’s Ship of the Line challenge and, for those not familiar with it, the challenge has to do with writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction in which, rather than just some knowledge of the French language, some kind of sci-fi ship sticks around when everything is over. …such fics are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.

While I don’t have time to build a recommendation list, Infinity Box is one I happened to read over the weekend which is complete enough and decent enough to serve as a good sampler. (If you want more, the challenge page contains a listing of responses.)

As with all Ship of the Line stories, it begins with the events of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 6 (“Halloween”), in which everyone gets temporarily turned into their costumes by Ethan Rayne’s idea of a prank. In this story, however, the relevant characters decided to dress to a Star Trek: The Next Generation theme instead.

The fic then does two things which aren’t specified in the challenge, but most fics seem to wind up doing:

• What exists feels like just the first act in a longer story, though, unlike so many, it’s actually complete.
• It’s a crossover with Stargate: SG-1 in which they ally themselves with the SGC while maintaining political independence.

Notice that I said most fics wind up doing that. If you want something more complete, there are a handful of things that progressed further and you can can choose the “Length (Desc)” sort order on the listing to find them.

The writing in Infinity Box one is generally good as far as Halloween fics go (they have a whole filterable tag to themselves on Twisting the Hellmouth), HMaxMarius is smart enough to do as little rehashing of canon events as possible, and I’d give it a 4 out of 5, which would be equivalent to +1 on a scale from -2 to +2.

In other words, it’s about average for what I’d find on the Fanfiction.net favourites list of someone like me. (Someone who has taste but also isn’t stingy with their faves.)

On a related note, given that this and alternative Mass Effect first contact fics (which don’t waste time following boring human soliders on the ground) are both guilty pleasures of mine, can anyone suggest another class of fic I might enjoy?

I hereby declare this Wednesday to be “chuckle Wednesday”.

Shirou Emiya: Erogame Protagonist by gabriel blessing is a semi-serious fic which asks the question “How amusing can you make things if you cast the protagonist of a more decorous visual novel as the protagonist for an erogame and then don’t tell him what’s going on?”

In this case, Shirou as the hero, being too skilled and principled to be shoe-horned into the intended narrative, yet with his own set of skills that substitute humorously well when the setting manages to bend them somewhat.

That’s where the chuckles come in… for all the sweatdrop-worthy reactions Shirou has to the setting around him, he is effectively the straight man AND the joke for the rest of the cast, as he constantly succeeds… but not in the intended ways. (eg. Unintentionally accumulating a harem of female monsters, not through sex, but because he’s just that good a cook.)

While I haven’t played the erogame that he’s been crossed into, the characters are definitely entertaining as the author has portrayed them.

Now, as I said, it is a semi-serious fic. (The balance wavers.) For example, the writing mentions, on more than one occasion, that Shirou’s favourite things are “saving people”, “swords”, and “cooking” (in that order) and it’s just taken for granted that Shirou’s skill at cooking is good enough to improve even the greatest of dishes. That said, I’ve definitely seen worse. Stylistically, it reminds me of the anime Gokudo.)

I also like the running joke of the building misconceptions around what the Shinto religion entails.

The editing on this is generally very good… though one glaring annoyance is how, several times in chapter 2, blessing is too eager to break in with a parenthesized paragraph to explicitly say “I skipped over …” when the formatting disqualifies it from passing as a fourth-wall joke and an author of his skill could easily hand-wave such skipped-over scenes properly.

It does also sometimes have fourth wall jokes, which I’m not overly fond of, but I’m willing to put up with them. Also, when they do start to fly thick and fast in the final chapter, the quality the story would have achieved without them rises to compensate.

All in all, I’d give it a 4 out of 5. Nothing special, but solidly entertaining. A completed 93,099-word fic (even if it isn’t marked as such) and worth a read. If you watched Gokudo and liked it, you’ll probably like this. If you like this, give Gokudo a try.

The Scaly Raptor by Harry Leferts

First, let me admit that I’ve only ever seen the first Jurassic Park movie and read the first two books. That said, it certainly seems like Leferts hasn’t cut corners on his Jurassic World crossover… and he’s the one who lured me into the My Little Pony fandom with the work he put into a Harry Potter crossover.

The basic plot to this sequel fic is that Owen inherited an amulet from his grandfather which will supposedly allow him to become a better animal trainer.  Following the events of the movie, Owen decides it certainly couldn’t hurt and wakes up as a Velociraptor, capable of speaking English and understanding Dinosaurs.

(Given that his grandfather wasn’t stuck as the animals he trained, it’s realized fairly quickly that, after a week, he’ll be able to take the amulet off and shapeshift back and forth on his own.)

It’s a delightful character piece, but the real fun comes about when Blue decides to use the amulet to become a human. Once that happens, the story graduates from great to being a joy to read.

Like “The Wizard and the Lonely Princess”, it’s primarily a character piece, so it’s hard to summarize much about the plot beyond “Entertaining and satisfying character interactions set against the drama of the movie’s aftermath”. That said, I’ll share an example of one of the more amusing references used for humour:

Now that got a laugh out of Owen as he shook his head. “Well, it is unexpected you know… but why not? I got time to kill after all.”

That caused him to get blank looks from the raptors before they looked at each other. Then Charlie reached up with one claw and scratched the bottom of her jaw like she had learned to after copying some of the various handlers. “{How does one kill time? Time not have body to kill nor blood to spill?}”

In reply, Blue scoffed. “{Just Alpha being stupid with saying stupid confusing things.}”

As the story continues to unfold, the drama starts to build as various concerns come to light, including cloned species that weren’t put into the record and a potential volcanic eruption but, at the same time, the character elements also unfold, with additions such as the discovery of an injured juvenile Ceratosaur while foiling a poaching attempt.

Near the end of what’s been written, it even starts to move along a subplot with a scope and importance which truly acknowledges the philosophical and societal implications of the breakthroughs in the Jurassic Park series. It’s a shame that progress is stalled just as that is starting to really pick up, but at least we got over 160,000 excellent words first.

All in all, I’d give it a full-blown 5 out of 5 since I know I’ll be re-reading this in a couple of years when my memory of it has started to fade. If you want to read a satisfyingly character-oriented story, you like transformation stories, or you enjoy stories about a lovable character learning what it means to be human, definitely give this a read.

P.S. If you want more in this vein, Pack by mjimeyg is a Harry Potter – Jurassic Park crossover that was probably inspired by it. Note quite as brilliantly written, but a great read in its own right.

Raptor by sakurademonalchemist also has commonalities with both stories, though I don’t want to spoil which ones.. It’s not marked complete but it sure feels complete.

Continuing with my efforts to keep things high-quality and varied, this week’s choice is a Stargate: Atlantis fic with a frustratingly rare degree of emotional depth:

Rosemary, for Remembrance by Mhalachai

This completed story starts out with a light, amusing “crisis of the episode” feel to it, then develops into a full-blown mystery, finally adding in a thread of romance with a bittersweet undertone to it, and then ends with, quite literally, “Something like a happy ending”… all in only 21,900-words and without allowing the new threads to push out the old ones. I only wish more fanfiction had this kind of ambition.

I forget how many times I’ve said this but, for anyone new to my blog: I’m quite picky. If I give something a high rating, give it a chance before you judge it on its keywords. (Most of the time, I find attempts at romance in fanfiction to be annoying distractions from the stuff that actually works… it works here. Normally, I find slashy stuff to be immersion-breaking masturbation fodder written by teen girls… the “sort of Sheppard/McKay” pairing works here.)

The summary does a pretty good job of explaining the starting situation, so I’ll just quote it.

And then there was the time John Sheppard turned into a girl and no one thought it was strange but Rodney McKay.

It sounds like the intro to so many of the cheaper, junkier entries which are sitting in the “once I implement filtering” queue for my gender-bending fiction index… but introductions can be deceiving. Just as the summary is overly simplistic, so too is McKay’s first impression of the situation.

As you might suspect, the first aspect  introduced is the mystery: “What the heck is going on?”

However, this is another one of those stories where it’s hard to go into detail without spoiling how the mystery unfolds. Aside from what the mystery is, and who the romance is between, all I really feel safe revealing is the theme hinted at by the title itself:

What would you give to bring back a lost loved one?

Apart from the emotional nuance surrounding that, I love the witty interactions between McKay and Sheppard and the way Mhalachai makes good use of time-skips and well-chosen pacing to keep things fast moving without feeling rushed.

Relatively short but no less sweet for it, I’m very surprised to see that this fic never placed in the “non-Buffy fic” category for the Twisting the Hellmouth community awards. It’s a beautiful example of novella-length fanfiction better than some published works I’ve read.

This was my third time re-reading it and I give it a solid 5.0 out of 5. Even if you don’t watch Stargate: Atlantis, I still recommend giving this a read.