Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to be mocked

[speakr2customrs]

Happy birthday to melancthe

Belated happy birthday to higlearn

I have been vaguely thinking about doing a poll asking what people thought was the all-time best Buffyverse fanfic. Perhaps ‘The Last Tin Soldier’ by liz_marcs? shadowscast’s ‘Fragments’ series, or her ‘Sock Puppet’? rahirah’s ‘Necessary Evils’? The short story ‘I, Bot’ that used to be hosted on Valerie X’s site (but which,

Comments

[peasant_]

I would nominate eliade's Season Noir for best fic. Sadly unfinished, but it is writing at a level beyond anything else I have ever seen in the fandom, and I've seen a lot of people whose opinion I respect say the same thing.

It is an interesting comment on the breadth of our fandom that I have actually never heard of any of the fics you mention except for Necessary Evils.

I totally agree on the wolves thing. It is just so daft because I would have said the fact that there are no wolves is terribly well known. It is the sort of factoid that people know - the last wolf in Scotland was shot in the eighteenth century. And then you can have pub-quiz type disputes about the last wolf in England.

[speakr2customrs]

I'm surprised that you rate "Season Noir" so highly. I liked it enough that I would have read the rest if she'd ever finished it but I don't rate it as anything out of the ordinary. Certainly I don't think that it can stand comparison with Shadowscast (Spike/Xander, which is a pairing that usually I won't read, but I'd crawl over broken glass to get to a monitor to read her stories), or Liz Marcs, or julia_here's "Ballad of Ira Hayes" - now that's a story that is probably unmatched for sheer quality of writing.

[peasant_]

Haven't read any of the authors you mention, I'm afraid.

The point is highly moot anyway - we all have different ideas of what is good writing. Even if you could somehow force every member of fandom to cast a vote for 'best ever fic' there would be no consensus. And I think you and I may have some fundamental difference in our tastes because when you posted it brought to mind a fic I once saw you (and others) praise very highly, whereas my own opinion is that while it is well written in one way it lacks a fundamental something at the heart which leaves it utterly empty for me. It doesn't surprise me that you in turn aren't hugely impressed with something I like.

I just like Season Noir, it works for me at a very high level. But I have always freely admitted that my judgement of writing is uninformed and entirely instinctive. I have though seen many people who are informed rate SN highly.

Hee!

[selinde2]

Oh, and Dawn is going to die soon if they don’t find a way to reverse her curse. The Scots have a word for people who sleep outdoors in a Scottish winter. It’s ‘corpse’.
Hah. Well put. Although in the writers' defence they may be assuming that Dawn's enormous body mass will now keep her warm enough - it's the Whale/ mammoth principle apparently. OTOH, should we assume that people who don't care about the extinction of the wolf in Scotland are calculating body mass by temperature. Hm. That would be a no, then.

Re: Hee!

[speakr2customrs]

Mammoths and whales don't just have mass; they have lots of subcutaneous fat. Dawn doesn't even have socks.

Re: Hee!

[gillo]

She probably has subcutaneous socks.

What? It's as likely as any of the other explanations they've come up with.

Re: Hee!

[speakr2customrs]

Invisible thermal undies?

[frenchani]

The comic world is not our world. It’s Earth-C, otherwise known as ‘The World With Scottish Wolves’.

I wonder if they have shrimp?

As for the ‘big revelation’ - I’m paralysed with not caring. I don’t give a toss who Buffy-C, the Badly Drawn Girl, chooses to sleep with.

Oh, and Dawn is going to die soon if they don’t find a way to reverse her curse. The Scots have a word for people who sleep outdoors in a Scottish winter. It’s ‘corpse’.

I like your take on it! :- )

[speakr2customrs]

Thank you!

[desdemonaspace]

...the ending was so utterly dire that it turned apparent brilliance into dross worse than the most dreadful Mary-Sue tale...

Eeep. I think I know which fic this is.

[speakr2customrs]

Don't worry, it's not yours! Far from it.

[desdemonaspace]

Dammit, now I want to know which one it is. Send me a mail, willya? :P magnusk_98@yahoo.com , if you can spare the few seconds.

Magnus

[speakr2customrs]

Sent, with link.

[rahirah]

Perhaps it's set in the same universe as The Wolves of Willowby Chase?

[ffutures]

Beat me to it - so there was an early 19th century channel tunnel (forget the exact date) which must have been very convenient for vampires. As well as letting the wolves back in.

And the climate thing is obviously down to global warming, everyone knows we're a tropical paradise these days...

[ffutures]

Oh, and I love the idea of an Olaf / Discworld story. Detritus may finally meet his match...

[speakr2customrs]

There won't be any Detritus; it's a part of the Disc only seen in one book (and a brief scene at the end of a preceding book).