Fanfic Author Appreciation Week
Apparently it's Fanfic Author Appreciation Week, and I've just discovered someone new (to me) to appreciate.
This is a rec, eventually, but to do justice to it you need the backstory.
I'm not very adventurous as far as slash pairings go. I like the obvious ones, the ones supported by as much canon evidence as possible. Within those pairings, I like first-times, established relationships, very-long-term relationships, death stories, relationship-doesn't-work-out stories - pretty much anything with good characterisation and emotional intensity. Put one of my preferred pairing with someone else, and I don't like any kind of story.
So, here I am in a *very* shiny new fandom, with a wonderful obvious pairing that has oodles of canon evidence. I'm just scratching the surface of this pairing, completely happy, delightedly sampling and enthusing about excellent stories/vids/art and discussing the canon evidence with anyone I can get to talk to me. Admittedly this is a very strange fandom, one with multiple pairings and a high prevalence of AUs, but I've honed in on the "Old West" Chris/Vin writers and am having a wonderful time. I plan to carry on like this for at least the next month or two.
Then, my Favourite Fanfic Author Of All Time, otherwise known as killabeez, casually tosses me a pointer to a Chris/Ezra writer, Zeke Black or zekiel.
Hmm, I think, how strange to prefer Chris/Ezra to Chris/Vin. killabeez and I generally have somewhat similar tastes (not surprisingly, or she wouldn't be my Favourite Fanfic Author Of All Time). Not this time, clearly.
Still, I'm interested in any M7 discussion I can find right now, so I go over to zekiel's journal and read all her M7-related entries. Detailed, eloquent and interesting, but how odd! How is it possible that anyone could watch the M7 pilot and zero in on the Chris/Ezra interaction? Didn't you see this and this and this and this and especially the way that Chris was going to leave with Vin?? I get the feeling from some of her entries that she doesn't like Vin very much, and I'm torn between feeling defensive and incredulous, neither of which is at all appropriate.
I re-watch the pilot, just in case I had it all wrong. Nope. No way, no how.
In fact, I'm so utterly convinced of C/V that my consternation over C/E is nagging away at me. I just can't see how anyone could write C/E and deal convincingly with the Chris-Vin relationship. Painful as it might be, I feel like I have to find out. Plus, there's the weight of killabeez's opinion - just how wrong could she be?
I decide to take a peek at zekiel's website. The summary for one of the stories, Of Lakes and Rivers, mentions Vin in an enticing way. It's 137K, a manageable length. I decide to try it, just to see how the author handles the Vin question.
How does she handle the Vin question? By writing a Vin who loves Chris as much as he clearly does in the show. By writing the Chris-Vin friendship so well that it left me certain I'd be re-reading the story over and over just for that. She makes Chris/Ezra seem a good thing and writes Ezra so that I sympathise with him. I enjoyed it doubly since it's set about 15 years post-canon - something I developed a taste for in The Sentinel and can't get enough of now. It's a seriously good story.
Still... she did it that once, but what about all those other stories on her website? How did she get to C/E in those cases? Three stories later, with a great Vin in all of them, I'm won over - not to the C/E pairing, but to the author. I now have no less than five six of her C/E stories saved to my hard drive, in every case because I love the way she portrayed Vin, and/or Chris's feelings for Vin - and Vin's name isn't even mentioned in one of them.
Of Lakes and Rivers completely interrupted my C/V musings. If you accept that this Vin is 100% heterosexual - which I did - it makes perfect sense and is a great, maximum-happiness solution. 24 hours later I've got my own (beginner's) interpretation back, but this story overrode my own thinking for quite a long time.
As I drove down the highway this morning, I got an unhappy feeling as I got further away from home. I thought "The distance between me and that story is not good... I wish I had it in the car with me so I could read it at the traffic lights."
I'm off to read more C/V, but the detour was well worth taking. I'd never have believed I could enjoy not-my-pairing stories so much.
This is a rec, eventually, but to do justice to it you need the backstory.
I'm not very adventurous as far as slash pairings go. I like the obvious ones, the ones supported by as much canon evidence as possible. Within those pairings, I like first-times, established relationships, very-long-term relationships, death stories, relationship-doesn't-work-out stories - pretty much anything with good characterisation and emotional intensity. Put one of my preferred pairing with someone else, and I don't like any kind of story.
So, here I am in a *very* shiny new fandom, with a wonderful obvious pairing that has oodles of canon evidence. I'm just scratching the surface of this pairing, completely happy, delightedly sampling and enthusing about excellent stories/vids/art and discussing the canon evidence with anyone I can get to talk to me. Admittedly this is a very strange fandom, one with multiple pairings and a high prevalence of AUs, but I've honed in on the "Old West" Chris/Vin writers and am having a wonderful time. I plan to carry on like this for at least the next month or two.
Then, my Favourite Fanfic Author Of All Time, otherwise known as killabeez, casually tosses me a pointer to a Chris/Ezra writer, Zeke Black or zekiel.
Hmm, I think, how strange to prefer Chris/Ezra to Chris/Vin. killabeez and I generally have somewhat similar tastes (not surprisingly, or she wouldn't be my Favourite Fanfic Author Of All Time). Not this time, clearly.
Still, I'm interested in any M7 discussion I can find right now, so I go over to zekiel's journal and read all her M7-related entries. Detailed, eloquent and interesting, but how odd! How is it possible that anyone could watch the M7 pilot and zero in on the Chris/Ezra interaction? Didn't you see this and this and this and this and especially the way that Chris was going to leave with Vin?? I get the feeling from some of her entries that she doesn't like Vin very much, and I'm torn between feeling defensive and incredulous, neither of which is at all appropriate.
I re-watch the pilot, just in case I had it all wrong. Nope. No way, no how.
In fact, I'm so utterly convinced of C/V that my consternation over C/E is nagging away at me. I just can't see how anyone could write C/E and deal convincingly with the Chris-Vin relationship. Painful as it might be, I feel like I have to find out. Plus, there's the weight of killabeez's opinion - just how wrong could she be?
I decide to take a peek at zekiel's website. The summary for one of the stories, Of Lakes and Rivers, mentions Vin in an enticing way. It's 137K, a manageable length. I decide to try it, just to see how the author handles the Vin question.
How does she handle the Vin question? By writing a Vin who loves Chris as much as he clearly does in the show. By writing the Chris-Vin friendship so well that it left me certain I'd be re-reading the story over and over just for that. She makes Chris/Ezra seem a good thing and writes Ezra so that I sympathise with him. I enjoyed it doubly since it's set about 15 years post-canon - something I developed a taste for in The Sentinel and can't get enough of now. It's a seriously good story.
Still... she did it that once, but what about all those other stories on her website? How did she get to C/E in those cases? Three stories later, with a great Vin in all of them, I'm won over - not to the C/E pairing, but to the author. I now have no less than five six of her C/E stories saved to my hard drive, in every case because I love the way she portrayed Vin, and/or Chris's feelings for Vin - and Vin's name isn't even mentioned in one of them.
Of Lakes and Rivers completely interrupted my C/V musings. If you accept that this Vin is 100% heterosexual - which I did - it makes perfect sense and is a great, maximum-happiness solution. 24 hours later I've got my own (beginner's) interpretation back, but this story overrode my own thinking for quite a long time.
As I drove down the highway this morning, I got an unhappy feeling as I got further away from home. I thought "The distance between me and that story is not good... I wish I had it in the car with me so I could read it at the traffic lights."
I'm off to read more C/V, but the detour was well worth taking. I'd never have believed I could enjoy not-my-pairing stories so much.