Lifetime Fic Bingo: 1987

[tinturtle]

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It's 1987. Michael Jackson is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Three Men and a Baby. New terms coined include: acid-washed, emoticon, Generation X, paintball, patient zero, selective serotonin reuptake inhibiter, techno, thirtysomething, and virtual reality.

I read five fics from 1987: two Man from U.N.C.L.E., one Professionals, one Sherlock Holmes, and one original series Battlestar Galactica.

(Five fics will likely be my standard for these posts. I've got a selection of at least seven fics ready for every year I plan to cover. Sometimes I may read more than five; I've decided to institute a new rule that multiple fics in a series will count as one fic if they were published in the same zine issue.)

The first Man from U.N.C.L.E. fic was The Never Too Late Affair by Debra Hicks. This is a short piece that contextualizes the reunion movie and also provides a coda to it. It was a good fic, though I didn't feel especially strongly about it. 1,441 words. Illya/Napoleon slash.

The second Man from U.N.C.L.E. fic, the novella The Traitor Within the Gates Affair by D. H. Bryn, came from my small collection of four hard copy zines. For most of its length, this was an absorbing, plotty story. I thought that it dragged a little at the end and I have the couple of quibbles outlined in the spoiler section, but I still enjoyed it a lot overall. Around 34,000 words (69 pages). Illya/OFC het. Particularly recommended.
Comments with spoilers:

Illya spends a good chunk of this story in a Soviet prison camp in Siberia. I was a bit disappointed by the way the camp and its staff were depicted. It seems too easy to cast the foot soldiers of the Soviet system as evil sadists in the service of the hurt portion of your hurt/comfort plot. The more difficult, and I think, more frightening thing, is to show how inhuman systems can lead even ordinary people to abuse and degrade others. I hoped initially that the author was opting for the latter course, and felt a bit let down when the story veered into the former. (For what I think is a better treatment of this setting in an MFU fic, see The Impossible Mission Affair by Aconitum Napellus (aconitumn).)

I was also slightly put off by the healing sex near the end of the story. There was enough coverage of the rest of Illya's recovery that it wasn't too silly, but it still felt cliched. On the other hand, I thought fic's the bittersweet ending was unexpected and effective. It also made Emily more of an independent character and less purely an innocent and love interest.

(Incidentally, I saved this quote while reading The Traitor Within the Gates Affair:

"Rising he crossed the room and took the dishtowel from her hands so he could hold them. 'And for all of your competence and intelligence, all that professionalism, you are a very lovely woman,' he said quietly. She caught her breath for an instant as he removed her glasses, then tipped her chin upward with his hand so he could kiss her."

I'm not sure if this is good writing of period 1960s sexism or accidental inclusion of 1987 sexism, but it struck me.)

The Professionals fic that I read was Whisper of a Kill by Lois Welling (Ann Barrister). I found this fic very uneven. I liked its canon-divergent premise, as well as the first part of the fic, in which that premise is set up. Later there were some other interesting parts, but what ought to have been the backbone of the story, the growing trust and closeness between Doyle and Bodie, just didn't come through. Without it, I found some parts of the fic pretty boring. There was also one episode that I found very distasteful. At a certain point, I probably would have quit on this fic if I hadn't already sunk so much time into it. 53,978 words. Bodie/Doyle slash.
Comments with spoilers:

The episode I found so distasteful was the one where Bodie assaults Margo Talbot—which is what happened, even if she ended up finding it arousing—and then Bodie and Doyle proceed to have sex with her simultaneously, with the commentary that "she was an inanimate object that both allowed them the freedom to engage in this act, and yet stood safely between them." I know our Lads are not supposed to be white-hat heroes, but the whole thing was just gross.

The Adventure of the Traitorous Lieutenant by Eileen Roy is a short Sherlock Holmes fic. I don't know if it is exactly AU, but if not, it at least adds an unexpected dimension to canon. I found it interesting, but ultimately not convincing. Possibly a longer fic could have developed the idea better. (It's possible this fic was a sequel to such a longer fic, actually.) 1,827 words. Gen.

I also read Brothers in Arms, the Battlestar Galactica fic by Anais (phoebesmum), which was my favorite for this year. This fic relates Apollo and Starbuck's first meeting at the Academy. It's a believable glimpse of our heroes as they might have been as teenagers and provides some insight into the traits they show in the series. 4,099 words. Gen. Particularly recommended.


(I've decided to color each ex on my bingo card according to the fandom of my favorite fic for the year. I'll use the same color code that I did for my Million Word Fanfic Challenge. My favorite fic for 1986 was Night Before the World Ends.)

Check out the Pros vids Alone by Mary Van Deusen, It's a Sin by Cybel, and Land of Confusion by Katharine Scarritt, which uses a hit songs from 1987.

Fics so far:

1986
Double Vision by Pamela Rose (The Professionals; 47,962 words; slash)
Begin Again by Lois Welling (Ann Barrister) (The Professionals; 1,318 words; gen)
*Night Before the World Ends by Lezlie Conch (Lezlie Shell) (The Professionals; 4,355 words; slash)
The Crab Apple Cove Affair by Charlie Kirby (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; 2,301 words; gen)
*In the Belly of Leviathan by Pythia (original series Battlestar Galactica; 13,062 words; gen)

1987
The Never Too Late Affair by Debra Hicks (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; 1,441 words; slash)
*The Traitor Within the Gates Affair by D. H. Bryn (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; ~34,000 words; het)
Whisper of a Kill by Lois Welling (Ann Barrister) (The Professionals; 53,978 words; slash)
The Adventure of the Traitorous Lieutenant by Eileen Roy (Sherlock Holmes; 1,827 words; gen)
*Brothers in Arms by Anais (original series Battlestar Galactica; 4,099 words; gen)

* = Particularly recommended

(Note: I changed the representative song for this year after posting because Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me is just not good. I'm using an assortment of YouTube videos by music enthusiasts to help me choose a representative song for each year, since I'm not very familiar with the popular music of my own lifetime, especially after around 1990. One of the videos identified Pour Some Sugar on Me as the most iconic song of the year 1987, but I find it shapeless and decided I could do better. Of the popular songs from that year that I considered as alternatives, I decided that Michael Jackson evoked the era best.)