Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2005

[tinturtle]

Click to view

It's 2005. James Blunt is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. New terms coined include: butt-dial, glamping, locavore, microblogging, paleo, rage quit, ransomware, sexting, and truther

Comments

[dancingpony]

I love lee_the_t stories, but I always wondered by, in Oubliette (one of my all time favorites) Napoleon was kidnapped and held captive for months by an evil Thrushie playing with his mind, and after he was rescued the attitude was “take the weekend off and we’ll see you Monday.” But when Illya was captured by an evil Thrushie who played with his mind, there was serious consideration of permanently terminating him. It seemed a bit unfair.

I generally enjoy Lady Ra’s stories, too, because she has such an engaging writing style. But I never completely buy in to the “Illya has always been gay, and Napoleon has always been straight until he falls for Illya” theme that almost all of her MFU stories follow. This one has some really nice moments … but the mission part kind of bothers me. Locusts are so devastating because they eat and eat and eat. But mechanical locusts obviously don’t eat at all … and it was never explained why they’re dangerous.

[tinturtle]

Heh. I'm also a fan of Oubliette, but that parallel didn't occur to me. Maybe Christmas spirit was working for Napoleon.

A hero's never having been interested in other men until falling for his partner is definitely not my favorite slash story element. (For one thing, as a lesbian*, I don't particularly like the implication that all you need to change your sexual orientation is to meet the right person.) As long as it's not both heroes, though, I can tolerate it. There are some people for whom it does happen that way. It's rare enough, though, that I doubt there are many pairs of people for whom it happens that way. That set-up is what really breaks my immersion in the story.

I'm pretty sure the idea was that the mechanical locusts would shred the plants as if they were really eating them.

*(It's complicated.)

[dancingpony]

I figured it was probably because Illya was the mistrusted Soviet, but I could be reading far more into it than was intended.

I can’t really buy into the “sudden change of sexual orientation” idea either. I can buy into them having bisexual urges they didn’t explore earlier because the 50s and 60s were a dangerous time to explore such urges, even as an American but especially as a Soviet. But sudden changes of orientation, not so much.

I suppose the mechanical locusts could be damaging … it’s just hard to picture someone being able to control all those tiny mechanical mouths, getting them to aim for the grain and somehow “chew it up” without clogging the tiny little machines with debris, since the “debris”;isn’t being consumed. 🙂

[lee_the_t]

I appreciate that you both can imagine I put that much thought into the two different reactions (Oubliette and Lily of the Valley)! Truth was, I did what came to me and what served the plot. :-) Unless there's an explicit connection between my stories, each one sleeps clean, as they say.

[queenafoster]

Good heavens, 2005 was a good year! You got Lacey McBain, Lady Ra, and Lee the T in the same year! (I loved 'Locust'. That was the first fic I read by Lady Ra.)