Hey y’all. It’s another review.
This one is “Drag Me To Hell,” an in-progress fic by my friend @thatshipcat. It started out as a light-hearted concept about Hidan and Kakuzu as escaped convicts, but as the concept matured and grew it quickly went from O Brother, Where Art Thou to Deliverance to Welcome to Night Vale. Hope that draws you in, because that’s what did it for me.
We follow Hidan and Kakuzu through the desert shortly after a prison breakout. They’re tailed by the law intermittently; when it’s not the police helicopters chasing them down, it’s the scorpions, rattlesnakes and threats of starvation, dehydration and sunstroke. I hate to say it, but it’s a treat to watch their plans break down.
Right from the start, “Drag Me To Hell” is full of fantastic images. Shipcat offers up a wealth of Southwest visuals, rife with skittering lizards, clear midnight skies made hazy by sweat and unholy, unsettling vacancy. And it’s not just the visuals that are vivid; there’s some prime dialogue (particularly in the opening paragraphs of part 1), complete with spot-on voicing and just enough eye dialect to make the characters breathe.
And, as with all Shipcat’s works, there’s a constant temptation of love, however twisted it presents itself. It’s not so much the contrived will-they-won’t-they, but much more a how-long-will-they-still. This is a couple that’s not quite lovers, but they’ve strayed too far from mere bedmates, and it’s hard to say how long their tenuous romance will last as they move from captivity to wilderness.
Here’s what I love most about Shipcat’s work, and what I sincerely hope you will too: it’s unpredictable. She doesn’t write a standard romance, or a standard prison break or a standard starvation narrative. There’s always some element of something else bleeding through—there’s the romance that bleeds into the breakout that stains the desert survivalism that, in turn, informs the romance once again. I turned to fan writing the first time for predictability, for stories of people I already loved doing things I knew I wanted to see, but I stayed because writers like Shipcat made me crave the questioning, complicated narratives that brought me to fandom in the first place.
That’s not to say Shipcat’s without her problems. Her narratives can be overcomplicated when it counts, like when Hidan’s in a sun-induced haze, but sometimes they meander in the most mundane parts, leaving me to wonder if I should be searching for a deeper meaning or keeping track of who’s standing where. And if you’re used to the intense romances that fan writing is known for, you might be left in the lurch; Shipcat doesn’t do heart-ache, stomach flips or tingling hands, but rather outsider views of people who can’t place the sensations they’re feeling. It’s refreshing, but it can be a hard transition the first time you read her work.
My biggest complaint about this story is that, so far (again, this story is unfinished), I never get to see into the parts I want to see the most. There’s no juicy flashbacks of the cell that Hidan and Kakuzu shared, no sleepy half-dream of their agreement to escape together, no examination of just what those hallucinations mean beyond Hidan’s heat exhaustion, if they mean anything at all. Shipcat is the gods, and I’m Tantalus, reaching for the grapes. Give me the grapes, Shipcat.
Anyway, if you’re looking for something out of the ordinary, an AU that doesn’t involve squeaky-clean coffee shops or offensive depictions of real careers or overcooked fantasy worlds, take a gander at “Drag Me To Hell.” And if you like being Tantalus in the pool, begging for Hidan and Kakuzu to finally confess their love, check out her other work, too, on her AO3 page or on tumblr.
(Drag Me To Hell, part 1)
(Drag Me To Hell, part 2)