primeideal: Shogo Kawada from Battle Royale film (battle royale)
primeideal ([personal profile] primeideal) wrote2022-07-16 08:37 am

Farscape: fic time travel

So, I've been delving into the deep past of FFN (and backdated Ao3 stuff) to find stories that were posted when Farscape was an ongoing fandom, to read stuff that's based on the same canon I'm caught up with. And I have a few recs, but first, some thoughts on the time-travel aspects:

  • I made an effort to at least browse most things, if something was very long/not engaging/clearly unfinished/a crossover with a fandom I didn't know I probably didn't finish. But at least I was curious. (FFN didn't have a "Complete"/"In Progress" toggle when I joined in late 2005, I remember that one being added, so a lot of older stuff that predates that feature you just have to figure whether or not it's "complete.")
  • it looks as if there was once more formatting allowed (different fonts, sizes, people posting their email addresses without it being censored), later updates I think removed those options but left the existing fics backwards-compatible, as long as you don't edit them anyway.
  • there seems to be more (completed, not WIP) longfic, on average, than I'm used to. Obviously it'll vary a lot per fandom.
  • there's also a lot of crack/songfic/baby's first fic, but then again, there are lots of baby's first fic in 2022 as well! I don't want to ding the overall quality just because it's old
  • a lot of this was clearly crossposted from forums, and there's often some "you can archive this on your own site if you want, just give me credit, my e-mail is ..." The concept of a mega-archive like FFN and especially Ao3 wasn't as obvious as it feels now.
  • anyway, feel free to ask for more specific recs if there's some particular theme/mood you're interested in, I took notes, but here were the overall standouts:
"Ask Me Tomorrow" by Kitsah. 29k words. Post-Season 1. John and Aeryn have a chance to go (back) to Earth, but even though it's the real Earth and not a simulation, things don't work out. Since the disappearance of Farscape, the astronaut program has shut down. There's a lot of Washington DC description, and the author clearly knows the city well--I recognized metro stops, etc. from my time there. This was impressive to me because this was written in early 2000, it's not like you could have just gone to Google Maps or Wikipedia to get the places right! So either they lived in DC at some point or are just very methodical. :)

"Between the Worlds" by Ann Brill White. 11k words. Early-S2. After the Gammak base stuff goes down, Aeryn and Zhaan invade John's memory to heal him. John/Aeryn, unsurprisingly, but it does justice to the John/Gilina relationship as well had brings some closure.

"By Any Means Necessary," also by Ann Brill White. 35k words (4 chapters). Post-S2. Zhaan's goddess resurrects Aeryn, but she's now Scorpius' prisoner and being manipulated by him. Lovely imagery of how the goddess metaphorically sees Moya and the crew, and the POV back on Moya of Zhaan checking in on the others (D'Argo being D'Argo, Pilot being Pilot, etc.) was well-done. Note, lots of dub-con.

Anyway, onwards to S3!