timepiececlock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timepiececlock) wrote2003-01-30 03:32 pm
timepiececlock) wrote2003-01-30 03:32 pm
LOTR: In Wonderland by OverCastDay
Cold symptoms still running strong, but voice is starting to come back.
Stayed up late last night both watching Buffy vids after makign my list (previous post) and getting nostalgic, and reading a really long fic.
What fic? Well, thank you, I'm glad you all asked. In Wonderland, by OverCastDay. It was an LotR fic, sort of about Legolas, sort of about an original character. By far the best and most interesting LotR fic I've read to date. Long, dark, dramatic, complex and tightly plotted. Reading the summary, I expected it to be a Mary Sue fic that I would drop after 3 paragraphs, but I was surprised to see it wasn't at all.
Is it possible to have a girl/woman-from-real!earth fic that a major canon characters falls in love with and it NOT be a Mary Sue? Yes. When it's a romance fic that's not about romance at all, but about one great big heapin' pile of angst and issues and intoxicating problems. When the OFC is about as far from a conventional Mary Sue as is possible. When there's a (can't believe I'm saying this) actually wonderfully thorough and believable (within canon) reason for her being there, and its done without ruining the canon character but actually explaining and ret-conning them. When the fic is not about saving Middle Earth, but about understanding the earth woman's story, and the mystery in that--and the fic is written so damn interesting you don't care.
I was up hours trying to finish this. I stayed up till FOUR FUCKING A.M. I was so hooked. This woman form earth is found by the Mirkwood elves, but they soon realize she's stuck with no memory, the mind of a child, and significantly less than stable mental capacity. Why is this woman there? Why does she speak their language perfectly? Why does she have no memory, and go into fits of mental breakdown when she tries? Why does she think like a small child? Why is it that the only things that she CAN remember is random verse about a white rabbit & Alice, or the Lord's prayer said at funeral services--which she can't explain and the elves think to be mumbles of encroaching madness?
It's very hard to explain what I found so enthralling about this story and try to get across at the same time that it's not a Mary Sue, or a self-insertion at all. Well... it's 88,000 words, and 400 reviews. So someone besides me must have liked it a lot.
Stayed up late last night both watching Buffy vids after makign my list (previous post) and getting nostalgic, and reading a really long fic.
What fic? Well, thank you, I'm glad you all asked. In Wonderland, by OverCastDay. It was an LotR fic, sort of about Legolas, sort of about an original character. By far the best and most interesting LotR fic I've read to date. Long, dark, dramatic, complex and tightly plotted. Reading the summary, I expected it to be a Mary Sue fic that I would drop after 3 paragraphs, but I was surprised to see it wasn't at all.
Is it possible to have a girl/woman-from-real!earth fic that a major canon characters falls in love with and it NOT be a Mary Sue? Yes. When it's a romance fic that's not about romance at all, but about one great big heapin' pile of angst and issues and intoxicating problems. When the OFC is about as far from a conventional Mary Sue as is possible. When there's a (can't believe I'm saying this) actually wonderfully thorough and believable (within canon) reason for her being there, and its done without ruining the canon character but actually explaining and ret-conning them. When the fic is not about saving Middle Earth, but about understanding the earth woman's story, and the mystery in that--and the fic is written so damn interesting you don't care.
I was up hours trying to finish this. I stayed up till FOUR FUCKING A.M. I was so hooked. This woman form earth is found by the Mirkwood elves, but they soon realize she's stuck with no memory, the mind of a child, and significantly less than stable mental capacity. Why is this woman there? Why does she speak their language perfectly? Why does she have no memory, and go into fits of mental breakdown when she tries? Why does she think like a small child? Why is it that the only things that she CAN remember is random verse about a white rabbit & Alice, or the Lord's prayer said at funeral services--which she can't explain and the elves think to be mumbles of encroaching madness?
It's very hard to explain what I found so enthralling about this story and try to get across at the same time that it's not a Mary Sue, or a self-insertion at all. Well... it's 88,000 words, and 400 reviews. So someone besides me must have liked it a lot.