SGA Big Bang and mcshep_match recs

[bironic]

Between the SGA Big Bang novels/novellas that went live on Aug. 7 and the mcshep_match stories going up two a day until Sep. 9, there have been a ton of great McKay/Sheppard stories to wade through lately. These are the ones I've enjoyed most so far.


McShep Match

Like the snarry_games that synn and captain_tulip do each year, mcshep_match features two competing teams, Angst and Romance, who were given the same set of 25 prompts to assign out to their authors. Now, every day, each team's entry for that day's prompt goes up, and you vote on (a) how effectively the story conveys angst or romance, (b) how well it fits the prompt, and (c) how much you enjoyed reading it. All stories are anonymous until the reveal next month.

Though I vowed not to prejudge Team Romance as fluffy (and let's not get started on the artificial and perhaps unfair distinction between "angst" and "romance" to begin with) and have been enjoying many of their entries, so far all but one of my favorites have come from the Angst side. They are:

• Homunculus (prompt: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing; team: Angst; R) – My favorite of the entries so far. An absolutely wonderful sci fi story, riveting and chilling and suffused with dread and dramatic irony, and it's just beautiful. It's about Rodney and John and the team, and the expedition, and Atlantis and the Ancients, and there's science and psychology and a niggling sense that something is (as Rodney would say) wrong, wrong, wrong, and I can't say much else or it'll spoil you.


• Iteration (Catch-22; Angst; PG-13) – Another very creative premise with distressing fallout reminiscent of The Butterfly Effect. Given an alien "reset button," Rodney has to choose between two unacceptable outcomes again and again until it nearly drives him (and Sheppard) mad.


• Acidimia (Absent Without Leave; Angst; PG) – The Wraith make John a Runner. Good action, good sense of what it might be like to be a Runner and for John to be a Runner, and that wonderful warm feeling when everyone works together to save one of their own and bring him home.


• Moments, Coming and Going (Finest Hour; Angst; PG-13) – Memories from John's past intermingle with flashes of reality when he's injured in an accident on Atlantis. Deftly crafted.


• Rock, Paper (No Scissors) (Correspondence; Angst; R) – As much humor as angst in this one. Rodney and John are being held prisoner on an alien world, and each night they pass notes back and forth between their cells. Features emo- and binary poetry and intimacy issues and a prisoner John nicknames Professor Rononface.


• Clear Blue Skies (Absent Without Leave; Romance; R) – A freak encounter with asteroids leaves John and Rodney stranded for a week on a tropical paradise of a planet. Tent-pitching and fishing and sunburn-fear and surfing and ratcheting tensions ensue, and yeah, you know where this is going.

SGA Big Bang

This challenge was for authors to write stories of at least 40,000 words in a certain period of time. Those who finished on deadline were permitted to post their work on the website. Some of them are remarkable, especially considering how little time their authors had to write, while others... you can tell they were going for quantity over quality. Sorry for the plotty descriptions here; it's been a while since I've read some of them, and they're so (wonderfully!) long besides, that I can't remember many of their particularly moving details.

Recommended:

• Aegis by Springwoof and Leah (90,748 words, NC-17) – An incredibly well-realized AU in which some people with the ATA gene have Gifts in addition to/instead of technology activation, such as telekinesis (Markham), precognition (Grodin), empathy (Weir) and charm (Sheppard); the Gifted are envied and feared, and every Gift comes with individual power checks as well as a universal weakness (using the Gift burns the body's glucose so that extensive use can kill you). In addition to skewing canon events in interesting ways and offering insights into other characters we wouldn't normally be allowed (such as empath-Weir cataloguing all the emotions radiating from Sheppard while nothing shows on his face), the Gifts provide windows into the characters' internal struggles, both deepening what we see of them on the show and offering new angles for consideration. Many characters have their shining moments, but above all else, this is a story about John's struggles to love and trust and be loved and trusted and to come to terms with his Gift after some traumatic events in his youth.


• None Can Quite Extinguish by Cate (sheafrotherdon) (45,307 words, R) – Ronon convinces his new acquaintances on Atlantis to take him to Sateda, where they find a group of survivors struggling to live without alerting others to their presence; the Atlanteans try to earn their trust while Rodney plays mentor to their most promising young scientist. One of the only Big Bang stories I've read without speeding up towards the end. A marvelous story that explores the tensions between science as weapon and as helpful progress; brings to life the ragtag survivors of Sateda with their wariness and splintering factions; diverges and converges with canon; gradually develops John and Rodney's relationship; provides a fantastic depiction of John taking charge under siege; and explicitly and hauntingly compares Sateda and the Genii and Doranda to Hiroshima.


• Mirror Dance by trinityofone (45,000 words, NC-17) – Carson's ATA gene therapy mutates Rodney's DNA into John's, leaving them looking like identical twins. A fascinating re-imagining of John and Rodney's relationship starting very close to the beginning of the series, including an exploration of how Rodney's appearance wears down John's resistance to intimacy (and complicates things, since for a while they feel a fraternal rather than a romantic connection). The strong points are tempered only by the necessity of revisiting so many canon events along the way—though there are enough twists to keep things interesting, such as Kolya thinking Rodney is John during his attempted takeover in "The Storm"/"The Eye."


• Theory of Evolution by lavvyan (41,993 words, NC-17) – In the tradition of many post-"Conversion" fics, John can't stand what he's been turned into. Here, however, Carson isn't able to restore John's superficial features to the way they were, and John retreats from everyone in anger and disgust, physically and emotionally, including Rodney, with whom he has a fairly new relationship. It takes months of anguish and soul-searching, not to mention the events of "Grace Under Pressure," for John to reach out again.


• All Falls Down by justbreathe60 (45,616 words, NC-17) – This story broke my heart, leaving me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes for pages and pages. Rodney Ascends in "The Tao of Rodney," but he can't help interfering in small ways to protect those he left behind and comfort a deeply grieving John, and as their friendship becomes something more and the Atlanteans face their worst opposition yet, he risks everything to save them. The author really hits you over the head with John's grief and Rodney's epiphanies about his love for John and Atlantis and their love for him, but it's all worth it for the emotional gut-punch that comes about two-thirds of the way through when the Ascended Ancients mete out Rodney's punishment.

(More of a note-to-self, but) others I have read:

• Critical Error by Tarlan (48,071 words, NC-17) – They don't figure out that Caldwell is the Goa'uld in "Critical Mass." The Goa'uld takes over Atlantis, imprisoning the skeleton crew not evacuated to the alpha site and making Rodney his sex slave. I skimmed it due to poor writing and characterization. It featured Goa'uld-in-Caldwell/Rodney and Goa'uld-in-John/Rodney non-con, which I'm all for, but it was portrayed too unevenly to really satisfy. Best part was the Goa'uld taking advantage of John's and Rodney's unconsummated desires for each other while assaulting them (John's mind, Rodney's body) and leaving them to talk it over in the aftermath.


• Every Day in Every Way by velocitygrass (58,476 words, NC-17) – "I'm here to propose an arrangement. Between us. I assume you remember our talk from earlier today and how... challenging dating can be on Atlantis. And since we've established that you're attracted to me, I think it would be mutually beneficial for us to have sex." After some inadvertent frottage while being held hostage tied together, John and Rodney begin a mutually agreeable arrangement; of course, it develops that each of them wants more but thinks the other doesn't. Mostly, what I remember is a lot of sex scenes tied together into a story that could have been told in far fewer words. Which isn't to say it wasn't enjoyable.


• The Return to Normalcy by Cypher (61,900 words, R) – Atlantis is not attacked; they stay on Earth in "The Return I/II." The three month anniversary of the exile--as John thinks of it--falls on a three-day weekend. Started out great, with the right mix of displacement and depression and clinging to familiar people that comes with many back-to-Earth fics. Unfortunately, the story developed an SG-1 plot that lost my interest, and I ended up skimming most of it for the John/Rodney parts.


• View From An Occupation by Chensuu (48,667 words, NC-17) – The Genii take over the Atlantis in The Storm/The Eye and John and Rodney form a half-hazard, insane plan to take the city back that may end up destroying the both of them in the process. I liked this best for getting to watch Rodney try to hold himself and his plans together while Kolya and his goons torture John.

There's a link at the bottom of each post for leaving feedback over at sgabigbangfb. Hint hint.

*blink* Though I've only read one actual printed book this month, a quick count here shows that I've read at least 440,000 words in the last few weeks on Big Bang stories alone. Yipes.

Whew—and that's not counting the fics I want to rec from outside these two communities. Next time...

Comments

[bell]

Unrelated to SGA, I used to want to organize a BigBang event for House as well. The ideal time would have been over the summer, for obvious reasons, but that's when I went into my NO MOOOORE lapse and had no desire whatsover to run it. Alas. ^^;;

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Alas indeed. That could've been fun. Someone else was considering doing a House-only remix-a-thon over the summer, which would've been great too. Not enough time and/or energy in the world.

[bell]

Not enough time and/or energy in the world.

I'd say! There's always the winter break, though. XD;

Speaking of remixes, do you know when the next remix challenge will be?

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Musesfool's multifandom Remix_Redux is usually once a year in spring, although I don't know if she's going to continue, given the admin headaches that apparently get worse each year. We'll see if she hosts or co-hosts again or, if not, if someone else takes up the reins. It was a lot of fun to do this year and I'd certainly like a chance to participate again.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

HEY LOOK!

http://community.livejournal.com/house_bigbang/

[bell]

...Coincidence? XD;;;

[bell]

...And now I'm tempted to ACTUALLY JOIN (since I do happen to be working on a long!fic, burn-out or no >_>;;) and am waffling because of a) burnout; b) a kind of DDDD: sadness that someone who's signed up has an idea similar to mine.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

DOOOO IT! No penalty if you don't finish, and even if someone else seems to have a similar premise, they're not going to be the same story when they're written at all, because they'll be by different people. Hey -- SGA Big Bang stories were all written from a very few prompts. There were two "they didn't return during The Return" and two "Rodney Ascended" stories, for example, and they were all distinctive on their own.

[bell]

O, okay. ._. *signs up*

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the summaries, I've barely skimmed the bigbang fics, but totally agree that Aegis is wonderful, its a great concept overlaid perfectly on the core characters (Everyday is well-written, but its basically a fun piece of extended smut).

Haven't even started on the angst fics, but when you're in the mood for fluffy, the romance fics have been quite fun bedtime reading ;D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I've read all the mcshep_match stories except today's, usually the pairs together. I've liked the Romance ones -- some of them have been great, others just kind of "meh," but I've read them all through to the end. But my favorites have been mostly from the other team, and overall I think Angst is coming out far ahead, although maybe that's my bias showing.

"Everyday," huh? I'm all about the extended fun smut. Mayhap I shall go for that one next. :) Thanks!

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're into the angst, though ;D Have you read Auburn's recently finished In the City of Seven Walls? I've been measuring all the angst I read against that of late.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

O rly? That's great news! Must remember to check it out after work tonight.

Sounds like you're into the angst, though

Good smut trumps genre, methinks.

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

Easiest link is this, 17 (yup 17) chapters of angst (includes smut, but read the warnings). The only thing that maybe rings a bit untrue in this is the unsympathetic Elizabeth at the end. Its maybe not the best thing Auburn's written (I've a couple of things I like better on my rec list), but its up there for sheer creativity.

http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=12047&warning=12

Have to find you some good smut recs then ;D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I read up to the part where ** SPOILER WARNING FOR PEOPLE WHO CARE ** they tumble back into Atlantis and about crack in half with reverse culture shock. So there's more after that, now? (Aside from the sequels/companion pieces linked elsewhere on her site?) Very cool; I've looked forward to the conclusion. And yes, it's not her strongest piece ("The Taste of Apples," was it, with the fungus? was sheer brilliance), but it's definitely striking.

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

Yup, there's three long chapters after they get back to Atlantis & how they integrate (or don't). Warning, the last chapt has character deaths too (there's a timeline jump, but the time span runs an additional 50? years).

Loved "Taste of Apples" & its sequel too (Sacrificial Drift) but also "The Last Walk Home", which is such a contrast, incredibly powerful & compact - I think of Auburn as usually giving us these wondrous long epics.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thank you again for letting me know the story was complete. I've just finished it and am really impressed at the depth of emotions the concluding chapters touched in me -- from silly moments like "I brought you a tigerzelle!" to the hot healing sex to action-adventure sequences to the thought that they can never go home to the team's reunion and deep, deep bond. Weir and Caldwell did come across as too harsh during the Atlantis chapters -- I was hoping for a while that they were acting that way deliberately so Rodney and John would have no regrets about escaping, because the SGC was insisting that they be broken up -- and there were some character developments I didn't necessarily believe at points and passages of Selketi history that felt extraneous -- but honestly, by the time I got to the end, I'd forgotten about the flaws. That epilogue! So, so very sad.

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I don't know many SGA folks, so its nice to share ;D

ITA that the last chapters are so affecting & sad; much as I love House & H/W, a lot of John/Rodney fic somehow catches a very different set of emotions for me.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

"Everyday," huh? I'm all about the extended fun smut. Mayhap I shall go for that one next. :) Thanks!

Yeah, that was me not realizing that you were talking about a story I'd already reviewed. *facepalm* I'll just be picking the next one at random, then.