Well I was reading "Far Beyond Normal", www.tthfanfic.org/story.p...chapter=1, a Buffy/Stargate crossover...
My complaint? Its an almost good story. Almost.
Now, some characters are different from the cannons, which is covered in the reviews. A little annoying, but it happens. The setting is far more dark in places, but its an AU. The author sets up some dimensional equivalents of the Buffyverse characters... then throws them into the woodchipper of one shot background characters.
None of this really bugs me as much as the real issue... the political rant chapters. Its not so much the politics or how the two rant chapters, as of 15, make me skim a bit thinking 'Okay, okay, we get it... shut up and go on with the story already.' Its not so much on how Buffy's views are counter to her own cannon views, I can take that as a self deluded character flaw, it happened to her so its bad now.
No, the issue is that Buffy spends a chapter arguing with Hammond about how its a employing me and keeping Earth from being a nuclear wasteland contract negation, and declares that she'll never work for someone that authorizes Gloobleflarg. After an arguement and a not so subtle channeling of a political arguments, Hammond finally agrees that he'll prevent anyone working for him from performing Gloobleflarg. Then Plot happens and the story continues.
You may be asking, what is a Gloobleflarg and why is it so contested? Its the opposite of what the Turkey City Lexicon calls the "Call a Rabbit a Smeerp" phenomenon. A Gloobleflarg is a word that is important and not really defined in an adequate way that is central to a plot point. In this case 'torture'.
They argue over the Gloobleflarg called 'torture' and just never define what it is that Buffy is so hell-bent on getting banned. Okay, sure they mention some of the horrible ways that Buffy is tortured by a government group... but its pretty clear by how horrified the SG people are that see it are (not to mention the president of the US) that the Home Vivisection game (with the new 'bone cracking' minigame and the classic 'psychotropic drugs and meaningless looping cinema
minigame) that the evil, kidnapping government group is playing is not SOP.
So if SG and the president of the US are sickened and outraged by what the DVD of what happened to Buffy, then its clearly not legal or normal. So WHY did Hammond bother putting up a fight to ban 'torture'? Its like they did practice that in the Stargate program, so it needed to be kept around. But the character interaction made it clear that that wasn't SOP... or sane.
So to summerize, use of a Gloobleflarg, or a previously existant word that is redefined in story, but plays a major role in events anyway.
This is different, though related, to redefining a word so it looses all of it previous meaning, like 'hero' which apparently now means things like, any cop or fireman that bothered to show up at work that morning. As opposed to someone who does something spectacular and brave they didn't need to.
My complaint? Its an almost good story. Almost.
Now, some characters are different from the cannons, which is covered in the reviews. A little annoying, but it happens. The setting is far more dark in places, but its an AU. The author sets up some dimensional equivalents of the Buffyverse characters... then throws them into the woodchipper of one shot background characters.
None of this really bugs me as much as the real issue... the political rant chapters. Its not so much the politics or how the two rant chapters, as of 15, make me skim a bit thinking 'Okay, okay, we get it... shut up and go on with the story already.' Its not so much on how Buffy's views are counter to her own cannon views, I can take that as a self deluded character flaw, it happened to her so its bad now.
No, the issue is that Buffy spends a chapter arguing with Hammond about how its a employing me and keeping Earth from being a nuclear wasteland contract negation, and declares that she'll never work for someone that authorizes Gloobleflarg. After an arguement and a not so subtle channeling of a political arguments, Hammond finally agrees that he'll prevent anyone working for him from performing Gloobleflarg. Then Plot happens and the story continues.
You may be asking, what is a Gloobleflarg and why is it so contested? Its the opposite of what the Turkey City Lexicon calls the "Call a Rabbit a Smeerp" phenomenon. A Gloobleflarg is a word that is important and not really defined in an adequate way that is central to a plot point. In this case 'torture'.
They argue over the Gloobleflarg called 'torture' and just never define what it is that Buffy is so hell-bent on getting banned. Okay, sure they mention some of the horrible ways that Buffy is tortured by a government group... but its pretty clear by how horrified the SG people are that see it are (not to mention the president of the US) that the Home Vivisection game (with the new 'bone cracking' minigame and the classic 'psychotropic drugs and meaningless looping cinema
minigame) that the evil, kidnapping government group is playing is not SOP.
So if SG and the president of the US are sickened and outraged by what the DVD of what happened to Buffy, then its clearly not legal or normal. So WHY did Hammond bother putting up a fight to ban 'torture'? Its like they did practice that in the Stargate program, so it needed to be kept around. But the character interaction made it clear that that wasn't SOP... or sane.
So to summerize, use of a Gloobleflarg, or a previously existant word that is redefined in story, but plays a major role in events anyway.
This is different, though related, to redefining a word so it looses all of it previous meaning, like 'hero' which apparently now means things like, any cop or fireman that bothered to show up at work that morning. As opposed to someone who does something spectacular and brave they didn't need to.