rec sga sheppard/mckay

I just need to rec this one story which I've just finished reading. It's by kaneko and it's called Intersections.

Why this fic is mindblowing

I cannot say how much I love this. It has joined my top four SGA fics and possibly top five fics in any fandom, and I had an inkling it might within the first paragraphs. It is not only a gorgeouos, gorgeous love story and a build-up so slow and sweet it's like swimming and sex that had me squirming and hot in my cane breakfast chair (with my lovely print-out and a cup of coffee), it is also fantastically well put together and written. I kept marvelling and thinking how much can I learn from this fic?

I love the bright clear style, so brisk but able to convey swoony slowness as well. What she did with the flashbacks was very intriguing, two lives built up in parallel. And the line 'they had nothing whatsoever in common' just killed me: this is what I come to slash for, to discover how two guys who are light years apart manage to get together. Also, the entire parallel construction has really already told the reader how much they do, in fact, have in common.

I loved the device of lists and equations (although I had to resort to actual cut and paste, physically with a glue stick, to get the correct formatting into my print-out, *g*). And the repetition of the device 'This is how...' (they met, Rodney heard about..., and so forth). This author is a mistress of ellipsis and summary; it was just such an utter delight to read how she zoomed through the years and dealt with issues in a few sentences. Some of the sentences broke my heart (Rodney's piano, John burying the cans in the yard). Also, the details were so real and so inventive.

The research paid off wonderfully well. I liked reading the note at the end: a village of betas, months of work: fandom is so generous. And it makes me feel better about having agonised away at a fic for two (2) years; maybe something good will come out of it after all...

I also am intrigued by the paragraph construction in this fic. There's a paragraph that starts with: Another time he goes to the mall. Then it's about people buying shoes. Then the universe. Then Earth. And then it ends with It hits him suddenly: he fucked a man. That is so clever, and so effective; it hadn't occurred to me that you could break paragraphs like that. I would probably have moved the 'It hits him suddenly' to the next paragraph but linking it with the mall and the universe makes it such a breathless and surprising paragraph; somehow the non-segue makes a beautiful kind of logic. There were a number of paragraphs like this. It reminds me of Gertrude Stein: A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is. ... It is really powerful what she does with paragraphs.

Anyway, a phenomenal, blew-me-out-of-this-world story I am so grateful it exists.

random thoughts you have when you've been up since 4:30 am

When you drive people to the airport and then get back again at 6:30 am you can't really go back to bed but have to sit at the breakfast table and read beautiful fic (see other post) and then you get to post random thoughts, inspired by commentage.

1. OTP or OTcharacter.
I tend to have one character whom I love, and then I will love seeing that character paired with as many other people as there are. This is because each pairing draws out a different aspect of a character, and if I love a character I want to see all those aspects. In SGA, this is Rodney McKay. Some McKay pairings jump to mind when watching certain episodes; other pairings are more difficult to contrive but if a fic does the contriving well and manoeuvres some unlikely person into bed with McKay in a convincing way, then I love that.

McKay is for me the pepper of SGA. He goes well with anybody. In lotrips, Dominic Monaghan was my pepper. He added spice to any pairing whatsoever, even to characters I usually didn't like (I remember a handful of Dom/Viggos: spine shiveringly good -- and I really didn't like Viggo).

I'm trying to think how OTP works for me. This is normally tied not to fanon or canon but to what I am writing. Once I got into the endless K/D epic in lotrips, I couldn't make my mind fantasise about anyone besides Karl/Dom. And with the HP opus, that's become Draco/Dudley, with a little side-helping of Draco/Harry, although the Draco/Harry is more of the spice variety. I do like Draco a lot but he's not a spice that goes with just anybody (for me); e.g. I don't like him paired with his father or with Snape. He goes with an awful lot of tasty dishes, though.

2. Men at work.
I am married to a workaholic. Maybe that is why I glomp onto McKay with such readiness because here is another workdriven maniac. How they fit in sex is an interesting mystery. *g* They need it, though, to fuel their work, so they tend to like it in bursts in between working.

omg! *falls down*

I wrote April Bingham fic for the sga_flashfic virgin challenge!!