Reviews and Accidents

I review fan fiction. Yup. Send in anything you want me to review, bearing in mind that if you send me something with a word count with over 30 zeros in it, it might take me a while to read. Please check out the "ground rules" before submitting fics, and don't expect me to enjoy everything you send me. Man this makes me sound fun at parties.

[ireviewficsyou]

Quit Playing Games With My Heart

A Bandom, Panic! at the Disco, rise to fame story. Very cannon. Unnervingly cannon actually... http://archiveofourown.org/works/323053#main <--- Quit Playing Games With My Heart by miss_begonia. Oh, and it's all set to Backstreet Boys music.

OH GOD WHY.

I finished this fic about a minute ago, and I'm still not sure how to feel. I've read some other things by this author in the past, and I know how close to cannon she likes to be, but jeepers. This is... wow.

I'm not usually a fan of anything rpf that comes past a certain line into cannon teritory. If it cuts the line so close that it could have actually happened, I tend to find it a little too creepy, and my worries about rpf and the people it's about and what they'd think of it come out to play. This is one of those stories. Ryan's backstory was so detailed it felt intrusive and I didn't like it. And yet, I kept reading. Part of me thinks it's the readers curse - we have to find out what happens at the end - but the rest of me recognises good story writing when I see it.

I got sucked in. This story was really well written. Even though it makes me feel a little uncomfortable looking this closely at people real-life, actual problems (In Ryan's case, the real Ryan Ross's father died and now people write soties about it.), this was too good to turn away. It's an interesting balance of how close do we come to manipulating someone's real emotions, and how well can we write it. Because it somehow seems less awful if it's well written. Either way, this was so well written I'm going to have to forget about the whole issue to do the review because this deserves a good one.

The story starts with nine and ten year old Spencer and Ryan going to a Backstreet Boys concert. It's adorable. They're just old enough to be interested in the opposite sex, except it isn't the opposite sex they're ineresed in. Otherwise there'd be no story. Anyway, the whole theme of the Backstreet Boys going all the way through the piece made me disproportionatly happy. I'm pretty sure I actually clapped my hands at one point. It was adorable, and it worked at a motiff. I cannot describe how much I loved it.

But the thing is, it was about the only happy thing in the fic. This fic, from Spencer's POV, just oes from bad to worse. He's completely under Ryan's thumb, but Ryan doesn't really reciprocate. Not in the way Spence wants. They're kind of fuck buddies, but then Brendon comes along and ruins everything by being basicaly perfect for Ryan. I won't spoil anything more, but essentially, this just gets worse and worse and worse until the very end, when this get so bad I almost cried. It finishes with the revelation that Ryan's dad is dead (does this count as spoilers since IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED???), and we're just sort of dropped off at the end of the story wondering what the hell is ging to happen. We do kind of get the idea that things are getting better, but we all know that the band split in two and I feel like this fic was left open to that realisation on purpose. There is even some almost foreshadowing of the fact. Basicaly the ending does nothing to stop the feels, hence me having to start this whole review with my first though upon finishing the fic: OH GOD WHY, as in, OH GOD WHY IS THIS SO GOOD, or, OH GOD WHY NO THIS CAN'T BE THE END, or most importantly, OH GOD WHY NO EVERYONE IS TOO SAD I CAN'T TAKE IT MY HEART IS BEING RIPPED OUT OF MY CHEST WITH THE BACK END OF A HAMMER OH GOD.

This fic is an amazing story, very short in comparrison with some of the other stuff I've been reading latelly, and a great way to spend half an hour if you don't mind the pain of a sad story. I don't do stars, but if I did, this would be about a 6 out of 10.

[ireviewficsyou]

Addicted

This is a story I found a couple of days ago and it's a work in progress. Mixed feelings about it. http://www.mibba.com/Stories/Read/518937/Addicted/ <--- Addicted by StrikeFast

So this is a story written by someone who's first language is not english. This is immidiatly apparent and a little annoying, but then, my own spelling is pretty bad. It's just the fact that there are little syntax errors everywhere, but the type that it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with the sentence - it just doesn't sound right. Grammar aside however, this has a lot of promise, even if it's still not exactly shakespear.

Addicted is a blatant self insert and I like the fact that it's not pretending to be anything else. The protagonist has an alcohal problem and ends up in a clinic surrounded by crazy people, one of whom is Pete Wentz, the craziest of them all, but in an intoxicatingly bad way. He's just so interesting. And boy is he interestied in our protagonist! Already I'm sure you can see where I get some of my problems with this story - it's got all the usual self insert crap. Honestly, if it weren't for the authors surprisingly good sense of narrative, I would be giving this about 1 star out of ten. As it is, I found there were some things I wasn't expecting and genuinely liked about what's there so far.

Firstly, the fact that Pete is immidiatly into Julia would normally have really really annoyed me, but for some reason, it feels natural here. Well, of course it doesn't really feel natural, but the characterisation kind of works. He's crazy, impulsive and ok, annoyingly quick to fall for Julia, but hey, could be much worse. Julia, to her credit, at least pretends to resist him in the first couple of chapters. Chapter three is up as I write, and at this point she seems to have changed her mind. Of course.

The main redeeming feature though, the reason I'm genuinly going to stick with this until either the end or I actually do get frustrated with the cliches and leave, is that, ironically, there aren't that many cliches. There are a lot of the basic ones, but this fic actually did somethng I wasn't expecting. It surprised me. And it's not often a fic of this type can do that. I was impressed. Without spoiling, there's a scene in which it seems that something is going to happen between them, and then one of them zonks out. For the type of fic this is, and the way the story has been written, this showed surprisingly good knowledge of storytelling. I was impressed, and I hope that keeps happening.

I wouldn't really recomend this fic as such, it's not something I'd give more than maybe 5 starts out of ten, but it's the most recent thing I've read, and after being in China for nearly 3 weeks I thought I'd better do a review.

Ok I just reread it (It is really short at the moment) and those syntax era are really bugging me now I actually know the story already. When you first read it they don't matter so much but, boy, they get annoying. Still, for someone born in Sweden, it's really not that bad. Ok maybe it is.

[somethingsomeonesaidonce]

What if there actually isn’t a song called “The Pheonix” though?

[ireviewficsyou]

Even in retrospect I'm not sure why I'm laughing so much.

[ireviewficsyou]

The Mouse And The Spider

So this is a Sherlock fanfic, and it's not from the perspective of either Sherlock or John. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, it's very very close to being cannon. I acually spent a while right after reading this trying to remember what was cannon and what wasn't. Another good review then.

Mostly this is told from Molly's perspective, about her being in love with both Sherlock and Moriarty, although parts are also told by Moriarty and the story follows the series, fitting in perfectly with anything and everything cannon. It is part romance, part action and mostly just very good writing.

If you're not a fan of het, this isn't for you as it spends a lot of time centring on Molly and Moriarty's relationship. There's a fair bit of artistic licence involved in this, but again, it could all be perfectly cannon. I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free, but I will say that the relationship does just about EVERYTHING, from unrequited, to one-sided, to angry and destructive, to surprisingly adorable. Which will be funnier after you've read the fic.

You'd think that since it's 40 bloody chapters I'd be able to say lots and keep it free of spoilers, but it's all so cleverly interwoven that if I give one thing away it could spoil a whole section. Which is definatly a bonus in a lot of places actually. I can talk about my favorite thing though - characterisation.

Good characterisation is something I HAVE to have in a fic or book or movie or anything. This fic takes a lot of artistic licence here. Molly is quite dark. There are new characters all together. Moriarty has inner thoughts that take his character to new places. It's really nothing like the original. And it's perfect. Especially Molly. In the show, she's almost one dimentional, a small role. Here she in central and has backstory and family and thoughts and dreams and a cat and it just works so well.

The only thing I was dissapointed by was the lack of sexy-times, but the author explains she would feel uncomfortable about writing it and the fic doesn't realy need it anyway. There's just this whole biuld-up so that if you're used to getting sex scenes it can be a bit of a let down to get there and have the door closed behind them as they get into the bedroom. On the other hand, it's, like a said, not neccisary, and there's someting great about that. It's a brilliant, clever, intelligent fanfic that doesn't need any sex scenes. So often even the best fanfic seems to think it needs porn in it, and you end up with (admitadly, usually wonderful) sex scenes that seem almost completelly unnescisary in hindsight.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a review, not a novel - this is one of the best fanfictions I've ever read, and there's even a sequal that's currently updating. Read this. You won't regret it.

[ireviewficsyou]

Time To Dance

So, the first thing that has to be said about TTD is that is found a REALLY GOOD way around the whole SUDDENLY EVERYONE IS GAY thing that so many fics with real people (especially Bandom fics) have, which I found particularly great, because I really hate that trope. Even if I know that it’s all fiction, it’s still using real people templates and you can’t just suddenly turn them all gay - it just doesn’t even make sense half the time. This fic though, fixed that completelly because it’s set in a world where almost all the males are in fact, gay. Not all of them (and not all of the males WERE gay, something else refreshing), but a large proportion. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a cute gay couple as much as the next tumblrer, but so often, no matter how good the fic is, the premise just doesn’t acually make sense, and the author gets carried away with making up gay couples, so it ends up really unrealistic. This particular fic was really great about that. Sure the two main Characters - Brendon and Spencer - were gay as a picnic, but for once Pete wasn’t. He and Ashley were a couple and Patrick didn’t even feature. It just… worked.

The other thing that was really great to see in a Bandom fic, was females! And females who weren’t just sextoys. Well, ok they kind of were, but they were also dancers on the show. They were talked about in the same way as a lot of the other male characters and sure, none of them were exactly MAIN chracters except Maja in the first (and kind of second) part, but it was nice to have a lot of them there.

So aside from the things that I liked because they soothed my pet peeves for an evening, there was some genuine good writing and characterisation going on. She manages to write a real arsehole character in Ryan, but have you not hate him completely and make it believable. Ryan is often used for him arseholeness in Brendon/Spencer fics, but here he’s also a real character. In short all the characterisation was wonderful, or at least, very good. Plus, the author clearly knows her shit about dancing. Theres a lot of jargon in there, but it’s not the sort of jargon you throw into a fic because oh god you have no idea how to write this thing that you’ve started writing so maybe if you keep throwing in buzzwords no-one will notice - no, this girl really knew her stuff. If you read the primer (which can be found above the story), she’s watched a crapload of So You Think You Can Dance, and it shows. The atmosphere feels real and you get invested not just in the characters, but in the actual compeition. It becomes obvious by the end what’s going to happen (not that I’m going to spoil), but you still want to read it and find out.

Basically, if you like reading about dancing, Bandom, sexy-dancey-boy things, and lets face it there’s some crack in there, this is a great fic for you. It’s not an Epic, so you can read it in a night. The world is believable and it’s got some nice touches about criticisms of homophobia in the dance world. Which is a bit ironic isn’t it?

And if that didn’t convince you, try to imagine Pete Wentz doing hip-hop.

Exactly.