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Fic: Leather by Phoenix414
Fandom: NCIS
NCIS is my fandom du jor, and for good reason. The TV show itself has characters and plots that are rich enough to be entertaining and captivating while still shallow enough to allow for massive fan speculation. The fact that Mark Harmon spends an inordinate amount of time slapping Michael Weatherly upside the head and that Michael Weatherly obviously likes it, just means that lots of HAWT KINKY MAN SECKS is written, and usually said HAWT KINKY MAN SECKS is actually well written because the NCIS viewer-ship tends to be in the twenties and thirties, as opposed to, let's say, Naruto, for which the viewer/reader-ship is about ten.
That being said, NCIS like all fandoms has it’s share of turds, and while Leather isn’t the biggest or the stinkiest (for that, you must go here), it is the one that pissed me off enough to find a community where I could rip it a big, distended new one because Ficbitches is gone and I needed a place to vent. For me, this fic is like the Goldilocks and the Three Bears of bad!fic. It didn’t suck so bad that it became a morbid self parody that is actually amusing to read, and it didn’t suck so little that it was annoying, but not really worth the aggravation. No, Leather was juuuuust right, if by ‘just’ you mean beyond forgiveness and by ‘right’ you mean a worthless mass of ones and zeros that cyberspace wishes it could vomit up.
The fic starts off with Special Agent Gibbs whining like a little girl about a tension headache instead of dealing with it like the hardened ex-marine he is. We soon learn that his headache is because of a nasty case involving drugs being dealt in an ‘experimental’ club that caters to poly, pan-sexual, sadomasochistic Goth petty officers, because evidently there are so many of those running around DC that a club like that actually needs to exist. Only that’s a lie because Gibbs’s real reason for his headache is the blue balls he has from not being able to hump the leather clad leg of his second in command who is dressed like a slightly gothy bar scene extra from Queer as Folk. There is some mention of a wedding band, but the twew wuv of DiNozzo (the second in command) and Gibbs is obviously only a ploy to get the only hot male characters in the TV show to fuck each other. DiNozzo (who in cannon is straighter than John Wayne) is going undercover to catch the evil baddy drug dealer and is taking the lab tech Abby (WHO IS NOT A FIELD AGENT AND WOULD NEVER IN A HUNDRED BAZILLION YEARS BE ALLOWED TO DO THIS) with him, because she for some reason that is never fully explained, she is the only one who knows what the drug dealer looks like. It’s not as if Abby, being the genius forensic scientist she is, could create a digital sketch and then run facial matching software to find an actual photo like they do in cannon, because that would mean the author wouldn’t have an excuse to turn her into an obnoxious fag hag. Actually, since this is slash, let’s just assume that the author is a woman and that she’s decided to murder Abby’s personality so she could insert herself into the story without the stigma of an OFC.
Skip the second chapter because it’s just a retelling of the first chapter from DiNozzo’s point of view, with the added bonus of a flashback to DiNozzo’s pre-NCIS days where he witnesses the horrific murder of a little girl by her own, abusive father. This naturally causes DiNozzo to have a flashback (yes, a mini!flashback inside of a big!flashback) to how his own father used to beat him because the NCIS fandom seems to really get off on DiNozzo being abused as a child.
And if I may just digress for a moment, chapter two opens with an authors note informing us that she has no idea what the actual police scanner code for a domestic disturbance is, so she just made one up. Come the fuck on! Besides, even if she was too lazy to spend five minutes on google doing research, the least she could have done is not tell us. I’m willing to bet that less than one percent of NCIS slash readers actually know that a 212 doesn’t exist, so if she hadn’t said anything, no one would have known and her fic would have had a slightly thicker veneer of legitimacy.
Sooooooo, moving on. Ignore chapters 3-5 because it’s nothing but filler and long, dry, third person narrative explaining what is going on when it really should have been shown through the dialog and actions of the characters. There is a brief exchange where DiNozzo decides the op might be going a little too smoothly and wants to call it off, but Director Sheppard magically appears to fulfill her role of Queen Cunt of NCIS and demands that everything continues as planned, because evidently catching one dirt-bag drug dealer is worth risking the life of one of her best agents and a civilian. Now I can understand why the NCIS fandom likes dumping on Director Sheppard so much, because she does have a rather bad tendency to fuck things up beyond all recognition and then run crying to Gibbs to fix it. Additionally, she and Gibbs have a ‘history’, which gets in the way of writing hawt kinky man secks, and the easiest way to get around that is by dismissing her entirely as an evil bitch. But if you’re going to do that, please at least build up her evil bitchiness so it’s somewhat believable. Don’t just dump it on us in the middle of a narrative because you need a convenient scapegoat when your fic, whoops, I mean when the mission goes to hell in a hand basket.
The last chapters involves DiNozzo getting shot, Abby acting so pathetic you can’t even really hate her anymore for being a spineless, fag hag pod person, Director Sheppard getting ripped a new one by Gibbs in front of everyone, which in cannon would result in Gibbs’ ass getting fired like he sat on the sun, and DiNozzo magically healing fast enough to suck on Gibb’s neck in the hospital so the fic can think about being smutty in the same way Sports Illustrated thinks about being Playboy when the swimsuit addition is issued.
I was going to go on to critique the spelling and grammar, but not only do I have no place to talk since I start sentences with prepositions like no one’s business, but I’ve already gone on for over 1000 words, so I’ll just rip off Zero Punctuation and say that, in short, it’s bad. In long, it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
But hell, if anyone else wants to read it and then go to town on the insane lack of spell checking, sentence fragments, the your/you’re misuses, and the scads of comma abuse, be my guest!
Fandom: NCIS
NCIS is my fandom du jor, and for good reason. The TV show itself has characters and plots that are rich enough to be entertaining and captivating while still shallow enough to allow for massive fan speculation. The fact that Mark Harmon spends an inordinate amount of time slapping Michael Weatherly upside the head and that Michael Weatherly obviously likes it, just means that lots of HAWT KINKY MAN SECKS is written, and usually said HAWT KINKY MAN SECKS is actually well written because the NCIS viewer-ship tends to be in the twenties and thirties, as opposed to, let's say, Naruto, for which the viewer/reader-ship is about ten.
That being said, NCIS like all fandoms has it’s share of turds, and while Leather isn’t the biggest or the stinkiest (for that, you must go here), it is the one that pissed me off enough to find a community where I could rip it a big, distended new one because Ficbitches is gone and I needed a place to vent. For me, this fic is like the Goldilocks and the Three Bears of bad!fic. It didn’t suck so bad that it became a morbid self parody that is actually amusing to read, and it didn’t suck so little that it was annoying, but not really worth the aggravation. No, Leather was juuuuust right, if by ‘just’ you mean beyond forgiveness and by ‘right’ you mean a worthless mass of ones and zeros that cyberspace wishes it could vomit up.
The fic starts off with Special Agent Gibbs whining like a little girl about a tension headache instead of dealing with it like the hardened ex-marine he is. We soon learn that his headache is because of a nasty case involving drugs being dealt in an ‘experimental’ club that caters to poly, pan-sexual, sadomasochistic Goth petty officers, because evidently there are so many of those running around DC that a club like that actually needs to exist. Only that’s a lie because Gibbs’s real reason for his headache is the blue balls he has from not being able to hump the leather clad leg of his second in command who is dressed like a slightly gothy bar scene extra from Queer as Folk. There is some mention of a wedding band, but the twew wuv of DiNozzo (the second in command) and Gibbs is obviously only a ploy to get the only hot male characters in the TV show to fuck each other. DiNozzo (who in cannon is straighter than John Wayne) is going undercover to catch the evil baddy drug dealer and is taking the lab tech Abby (WHO IS NOT A FIELD AGENT AND WOULD NEVER IN A HUNDRED BAZILLION YEARS BE ALLOWED TO DO THIS) with him, because she for some reason that is never fully explained, she is the only one who knows what the drug dealer looks like. It’s not as if Abby, being the genius forensic scientist she is, could create a digital sketch and then run facial matching software to find an actual photo like they do in cannon, because that would mean the author wouldn’t have an excuse to turn her into an obnoxious fag hag. Actually, since this is slash, let’s just assume that the author is a woman and that she’s decided to murder Abby’s personality so she could insert herself into the story without the stigma of an OFC.
Skip the second chapter because it’s just a retelling of the first chapter from DiNozzo’s point of view, with the added bonus of a flashback to DiNozzo’s pre-NCIS days where he witnesses the horrific murder of a little girl by her own, abusive father. This naturally causes DiNozzo to have a flashback (yes, a mini!flashback inside of a big!flashback) to how his own father used to beat him because the NCIS fandom seems to really get off on DiNozzo being abused as a child.
And if I may just digress for a moment, chapter two opens with an authors note informing us that she has no idea what the actual police scanner code for a domestic disturbance is, so she just made one up. Come the fuck on! Besides, even if she was too lazy to spend five minutes on google doing research, the least she could have done is not tell us. I’m willing to bet that less than one percent of NCIS slash readers actually know that a 212 doesn’t exist, so if she hadn’t said anything, no one would have known and her fic would have had a slightly thicker veneer of legitimacy.
Sooooooo, moving on. Ignore chapters 3-5 because it’s nothing but filler and long, dry, third person narrative explaining what is going on when it really should have been shown through the dialog and actions of the characters. There is a brief exchange where DiNozzo decides the op might be going a little too smoothly and wants to call it off, but Director Sheppard magically appears to fulfill her role of Queen Cunt of NCIS and demands that everything continues as planned, because evidently catching one dirt-bag drug dealer is worth risking the life of one of her best agents and a civilian. Now I can understand why the NCIS fandom likes dumping on Director Sheppard so much, because she does have a rather bad tendency to fuck things up beyond all recognition and then run crying to Gibbs to fix it. Additionally, she and Gibbs have a ‘history’, which gets in the way of writing hawt kinky man secks, and the easiest way to get around that is by dismissing her entirely as an evil bitch. But if you’re going to do that, please at least build up her evil bitchiness so it’s somewhat believable. Don’t just dump it on us in the middle of a narrative because you need a convenient scapegoat when your fic, whoops, I mean when the mission goes to hell in a hand basket.
The last chapters involves DiNozzo getting shot, Abby acting so pathetic you can’t even really hate her anymore for being a spineless, fag hag pod person, Director Sheppard getting ripped a new one by Gibbs in front of everyone, which in cannon would result in Gibbs’ ass getting fired like he sat on the sun, and DiNozzo magically healing fast enough to suck on Gibb’s neck in the hospital so the fic can think about being smutty in the same way Sports Illustrated thinks about being Playboy when the swimsuit addition is issued.
I was going to go on to critique the spelling and grammar, but not only do I have no place to talk since I start sentences with prepositions like no one’s business, but I’ve already gone on for over 1000 words, so I’ll just rip off Zero Punctuation and say that, in short, it’s bad. In long, it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
But hell, if anyone else wants to read it and then go to town on the insane lack of spell checking, sentence fragments, the your/you’re misuses, and the scads of comma abuse, be my guest!