Fanfic Spotlights #5: He Kissed Me First
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis & "A Farm In Iowa" by @sheafrotherdon
One of the great things about fanfiction is how people create these really rich and in-depth alternate universes. I found them so engaging and immersive.
I often found these AUs as fanfic-inducing/inspiring as the canon media text. I designed sets (in my actual class in uni) for an AU where SGA is a galactic story-cycle, imagined alternate-ALTERNATE tales, and in the case of SGA, wondering what would happen if Canon stepped back into this AU. I learned three things from the A Farm In Iowa AU - firstly, the power of the right thing happening at the right moment both in the character's lives, and in the plot. The moment one of the romantic lead's tire blows out, leading to the meet-cute, is so perfectly placed both in the MC's life, and in the text. It's further along in the prose than I had expected, and that made it even more of an "ah-ha!" moment because it was literally as late as it could be and thus shines out of the narrative like a diamond winking in a perfectly constructed brick wall. Secondly, how to structure a romance. Oh MAN, reading this series taught me the joy of the slowburn and how to show the reader that the characters are falling in love before they know it themselves. It's freaking masterful. I took NOTES. And thirdly, how to really PAINT a scene with word choice, sentence length, etc. Sheafrotherdon is an absolute ARCHITECT of text. Every sentence is carefully, and purposefully crafted, like Michelangelo chipping away at marble to reveal the angel it feels like Sheafrotherdon REVEALED their prose instead of writing it. It is a lesson I really took to heart and pushed as far as I could with TheAccidentalTurnSeries. So it's a no brainer that in order to hammer these lessons home, I assigned myself some homework. I decided to try to emulate Sheafrotherdon by writing in her world, in her way. I fanficced a fanfic and did my best to stay true to Shea's style. I think the readership liked it. I don't know how this was received on Shea's part, but I know I always liked it when people dabbled in my AU worlds, so I hope it was welcome.