Multifandom recs
Jun. 9th, 2010 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSarah Connor Chronicles:
The Queen: captures both the need of the other characters for Sarah to be something and her own way of creating herself, all those complicated relationships. *insert usual rant about SCC cancellation and what a gorgeous, complex show it was, both in terms of content and visuals*
Working Order: John/Cameron is a pairing that intrigues me but which I find more interesting on the actual show than in most of fanfiction, because, imo as always, fanfic tends to simplify and dispense with much that makes this particular relationship so layered, starting with the fact that Cameron is a machine, no matter what she looks like. Moreover, there is no way John could ever be sure whether any of Cameron's interactions with him are the product of programming or free will. Then there's the whole part where the power balance between them is complicated by the fact there are two of him, and the future version may be a mythical saviour figure but could also be completely crazy and at any rate isn't someone he actually wants to turn into; I've once joked that the whole 16-years-old-John/ Cameron/Future John triad is the dysfunctional, deliberately disturbing version of Clark Kent/ Lois Lane/Superman. With 16 years old John Cameron is actually the one more powerful; she has more information, she may or may not be lying to him at any given point and they both know this (it's brought up between them as early as s1), and of course she's physically infinitely stronger. But one of the few things about Cameron and Future John both the audience and Present Day John can be sure about is that he did reprogramm her, so who does hold the power there? And of course, there is the basic messy premise of John supposed to be Skynet's nemesis but also a human who wouldn't exist without machines (if Skynet hadn't sent a Terminator after his mother, there would be no John) and who keeps forming emotional ties to the machines sent to kill him stronger than his ties with most humans. In the audio commentary for Samson and Delilah, Josh Friedman says that the shattering revelation for John in the climactic scene of the s2 opener isn't so much Cameron saying "I love you" because that can be explained away by her wanting to persuade him to let her live but the next part "...and you love me", because he realizes it's true, and he doesn't want it to be (which informs some of the ensuing relationship with Riley). Much later in the season, the physical and emotional intimacy between John and Cameron circles around the fact she's a machine rather than avoid it, starting with her making him repair her arm (something which as he observes she could do herself, but he does it anyway), via her giving him a device to kill her (or is it?) and using the dead Riley's voice to talk to him (you'd call it cruel in a human, but then again, the show earlier had Cameron make the point that Terminators don't get sadism for sadism's sake) to the scene between in the season finale which manages to look like a sex scene without any human sex happening, and yet Cameron telling John to cut her open (again), guiding his hand inside her so that what he feels are the machine parts of her while what he sees is Cameron's human look, is incredibly intimate. It also ensured that stories where basically they simply kiss and make out feel like a let-down by comparison. Working Order, by contrast, addresses this and the other issues between them head-on while also being one of those stories where the explicit sex is part of the character exploration instead of reading as just being there for its own sake. Really well written.
The West Wing:
Five things Jed Bartlet learned: the "Five Things..." format works great for character exploration, which is what this lovely story is.
Star Trek: The Next Generation:
The truth and nothing but the truth: speaking of character exploration, this AU in which Q stays human post- Deja Q, written for the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lgbtfest, manages to address the on screen lack of human same sex pairings in ST and provides a twist to the usual fanfiction pattern of "X is in love with character of the same gender Y; Y thinks of himself/herself straight but figures out that he/she really loves X as well" which feels right for this particular story. Thoughtful and well-written, as one can expect from alara_r.
The Queen: captures both the need of the other characters for Sarah to be something and her own way of creating herself, all those complicated relationships. *insert usual rant about SCC cancellation and what a gorgeous, complex show it was, both in terms of content and visuals*
Working Order: John/Cameron is a pairing that intrigues me but which I find more interesting on the actual show than in most of fanfiction, because, imo as always, fanfic tends to simplify and dispense with much that makes this particular relationship so layered, starting with the fact that Cameron is a machine, no matter what she looks like. Moreover, there is no way John could ever be sure whether any of Cameron's interactions with him are the product of programming or free will. Then there's the whole part where the power balance between them is complicated by the fact there are two of him, and the future version may be a mythical saviour figure but could also be completely crazy and at any rate isn't someone he actually wants to turn into; I've once joked that the whole 16-years-old-John/ Cameron/Future John triad is the dysfunctional, deliberately disturbing version of Clark Kent/ Lois Lane/Superman. With 16 years old John Cameron is actually the one more powerful; she has more information, she may or may not be lying to him at any given point and they both know this (it's brought up between them as early as s1), and of course she's physically infinitely stronger. But one of the few things about Cameron and Future John both the audience and Present Day John can be sure about is that he did reprogramm her, so who does hold the power there? And of course, there is the basic messy premise of John supposed to be Skynet's nemesis but also a human who wouldn't exist without machines (if Skynet hadn't sent a Terminator after his mother, there would be no John) and who keeps forming emotional ties to the machines sent to kill him stronger than his ties with most humans. In the audio commentary for Samson and Delilah, Josh Friedman says that the shattering revelation for John in the climactic scene of the s2 opener isn't so much Cameron saying "I love you" because that can be explained away by her wanting to persuade him to let her live but the next part "...and you love me", because he realizes it's true, and he doesn't want it to be (which informs some of the ensuing relationship with Riley). Much later in the season, the physical and emotional intimacy between John and Cameron circles around the fact she's a machine rather than avoid it, starting with her making him repair her arm (something which as he observes she could do herself, but he does it anyway), via her giving him a device to kill her (or is it?) and using the dead Riley's voice to talk to him (you'd call it cruel in a human, but then again, the show earlier had Cameron make the point that Terminators don't get sadism for sadism's sake) to the scene between in the season finale which manages to look like a sex scene without any human sex happening, and yet Cameron telling John to cut her open (again), guiding his hand inside her so that what he feels are the machine parts of her while what he sees is Cameron's human look, is incredibly intimate. It also ensured that stories where basically they simply kiss and make out feel like a let-down by comparison. Working Order, by contrast, addresses this and the other issues between them head-on while also being one of those stories where the explicit sex is part of the character exploration instead of reading as just being there for its own sake. Really well written.
The West Wing:
Five things Jed Bartlet learned: the "Five Things..." format works great for character exploration, which is what this lovely story is.
Star Trek: The Next Generation:
The truth and nothing but the truth: speaking of character exploration, this AU in which Q stays human post- Deja Q, written for the
lgbtfest, manages to address the on screen lack of human same sex pairings in ST and provides a twist to the usual fanfiction pattern of "X is in love with character of the same gender Y; Y thinks of himself/herself straight but figures out that he/she really loves X as well" which feels right for this particular story. Thoughtful and well-written, as one can expect from alara_r.
