Anything by RivaT is aces with me, and my opinion of this bravely conceived adventure is very high. I like the dry distance with which she regards her characters,
This.
I've always really liked RivkaT's fanfic, even though she's a looong way from my usual taste, and it has a lot to do with that, as you say, dry distance. Her writing is dark but not mirthless, exploratory but direct, and provocative but never entirely outrageous. Her stories are comprised of these striking and cinematic leaps of imagination, and then the matter of how to get canon to bend to those imaginings, in a way that will be pleasing, if unnerving, to the reader. This is something she seems to have a particular skill in doing.
It's just an impression, but I feel that the ship and the remarkable bee-and-alien casefile strive against each other a little.
Yes, I think you're right. I like the over all M/S dynamic in UTL, but whenever the fic does something that caters directly to the development of their relationship, it feels a bit tacked on.
But as you say, this is an old school fic. Things which seem clunky today often had a lot more novelty in early 1997. I tend to think of everything written before 1998 as being "first wave XF fanfic", and in that sense the fic writers who were producing during that time were pioneers. They were making our future fanon for us.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 09:04 pm (UTC)This.
I've always really liked RivkaT's fanfic, even though she's a looong way from my usual taste, and it has a lot to do with that, as you say, dry distance. Her writing is dark but not mirthless, exploratory but direct, and provocative but never entirely outrageous. Her stories are comprised of these striking and cinematic leaps of imagination, and then the matter of how to get canon to bend to those imaginings, in a way that will be pleasing, if unnerving, to the reader. This is something she seems to have a particular skill in doing.
It's just an impression, but I feel that the ship and the remarkable bee-and-alien casefile strive against each other a little.
Yes, I think you're right. I like the over all M/S dynamic in UTL, but whenever the fic does something that caters directly to the development of their relationship, it feels a bit tacked on.
But as you say, this is an old school fic. Things which seem clunky today often had a lot more novelty in early 1997. I tend to think of everything written before 1998 as being "first wave XF fanfic", and in that sense the fic writers who were producing during that time were pioneers. They were making our future fanon for us.