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crack_van2006-06-07 01:52 am
rynne.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2006-06-07 01:52 am
Entry tags:
The Sith Who Brought Life Day by ophelia (PG)
*waves* Hello, all! I'm Rynne, and I'll be your Star Wars OT driver this month! (Sorry for the delay in starting, but I just got a new job.) Anyway, I've got some nice variety here, some real gems that hopefully aren't very well known yet, but I hope you enjoy them all!
Fandom: STAR WARS: ORIGINAL TRILOGY
Pairing: Gen
Author on LJ: No LJ, as far as I know
Author Website: Her JC forums user profile
Why this must be read: I have always been a fan of the relationship between Luke and Vader, but rarely do we ever get fic with that relationship from an outsider's point of view--especially when that outsider doesn't know that they're father and son. "The Sith Who Brought Life Day" is about Vader discovering Luke's existence, with the help of a hilariously irreverent OC.
Yes, this fic is OC-centric, a thing that I often don't care for, as well as in first-person POV, which I rarely read, but I had to make an exception. Ophelia truly brings her characters to life, original as well as canon, and Lieutenant Vorgartin of the Imperial Navy, who lost a bet and now has to get Lord Vader a present for Life Day, is certainly lively. His observations will continually have you laughing--until he has a thought that is completely sobering and poignant, but the moments of poignancy in this otherwise hilarious fic just add to its appeal. And this fic is filled with supreme irony, which ophelia uses very skillfully; Vorgartin has no idea how ironic the readers will find some of his thoughts, which is just perfect.
But aside from the wonderfully real OCs, characterization for the canon characters are dead on. The naive farmboy of Episode IV is totally apparent in the Luke we see here, and Vader, from all the comments leading up to his appearance to his actually showing up, is spot on as well. But it's the brilliantly-created OC, and how everything comes in from his refreshingly irreverent point of view, that really brings this fic to life.
“I’m trying to find the man who destroyed the Death Star, sir,” I told Wyer, secretly hoping he’d keep his questions to a minimum and let me get to the ‘fresher.
Wyer squinted as he looked across the room at the screen I’d just abandoned. “You’re looking for him in *conscription registrations?*” he asked. The name of every adult male in the galaxy was supposed to be in that registration list, but that left the considerable problem of narrowing the list down. Unless a person went in with a plan of attack, using the registration list was an act of high insanity.
“I’m just following up on a theory of Lord Vader’s, sir,” I answered, hoping that invoking the Dark Lord’s name would be enough to get me off the hook and away from Wyer’s scrutiny.
“Lord Vader wants us to go through the conscription list?” he asked, looking horrified. I made a mental note never to mention that possibility to anyone high up in the chain of command. Vader was famous for his relentlessness, and his complete failure to care whether the demands he made were possible or not. If somebody didn’t find the pilot who destroyed the Death Star soon, we might very well find ourselves going through the entire conscription list, looking for voiceprints one name at a time.
“No, sir,” I said quickly, “he thinks the pilot we’re looking for has been trained in secret by the Jedi. I was looking for possible relatives of Jedi who were unaccounted for after the Purges . . .”
Wyer rolled his eyes. “Vader sees Jedi in his closet at night,” he said softly, between his teeth. Most people thought Vader was more than a little cracked in the head on the subject of Jedi, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you said out loud if you valued your commission, or your life.
“But since he’s coming here, it seemed wisest to--” I began.
“Yes, yes,” Wyer said brusquely, waving me on. “Go ahead and look. At least we’ll have something to tell him if he asks.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” I said, giving him a quick head-bow before getting out of there.
Of course, being me, I was soon back, even though the next shift was coming in. The next shift commander was Captain Geer, a stout, stiff-backed man who had been in a foul mood approximately since the Emperor was in short pants and bashing other tots in the head with a rattle. “What do you want, Vorgartin?” he demanded.
I shot an anxious look at my terminal, where my relief officer was about to sit down and presumably close out all my careful research work. “I . . . was just in the middle of something, sir, and was hoping for a few more minutes to--”
“What have you been doing, looking at pictures of nude Twi’lek girls over there?” Geer bellowed. Everybody in our little Comms station had stopped work in order to stare at me.
Geer stomped over to my console station, and I had to explain the whole thing over again to him. “Fine,” he said at last, and turned to the officer who was to replace me. “Labec, Vorgartin wants your shift this evening. Dismissed.”
Labec blinked in surprise. I was similarly shocked into silence, and before I found words to protest, Labec had bowed to our superior and fled. Geer made an expansive gesture toward the now-vacant comms console. “She’s all yours,” he said. I got the impression that “she” in this case meant the nude Twi’lek girl he was still convinced I’d been looking at.
The Sith Who Brought Life Day
Fandom: STAR WARS: ORIGINAL TRILOGY
Pairing: Gen
Author on LJ: No LJ, as far as I know
Author Website: Her JC forums user profile
Why this must be read: I have always been a fan of the relationship between Luke and Vader, but rarely do we ever get fic with that relationship from an outsider's point of view--especially when that outsider doesn't know that they're father and son. "The Sith Who Brought Life Day" is about Vader discovering Luke's existence, with the help of a hilariously irreverent OC.
Yes, this fic is OC-centric, a thing that I often don't care for, as well as in first-person POV, which I rarely read, but I had to make an exception. Ophelia truly brings her characters to life, original as well as canon, and Lieutenant Vorgartin of the Imperial Navy, who lost a bet and now has to get Lord Vader a present for Life Day, is certainly lively. His observations will continually have you laughing--until he has a thought that is completely sobering and poignant, but the moments of poignancy in this otherwise hilarious fic just add to its appeal. And this fic is filled with supreme irony, which ophelia uses very skillfully; Vorgartin has no idea how ironic the readers will find some of his thoughts, which is just perfect.
But aside from the wonderfully real OCs, characterization for the canon characters are dead on. The naive farmboy of Episode IV is totally apparent in the Luke we see here, and Vader, from all the comments leading up to his appearance to his actually showing up, is spot on as well. But it's the brilliantly-created OC, and how everything comes in from his refreshingly irreverent point of view, that really brings this fic to life.
“I’m trying to find the man who destroyed the Death Star, sir,” I told Wyer, secretly hoping he’d keep his questions to a minimum and let me get to the ‘fresher.
Wyer squinted as he looked across the room at the screen I’d just abandoned. “You’re looking for him in *conscription registrations?*” he asked. The name of every adult male in the galaxy was supposed to be in that registration list, but that left the considerable problem of narrowing the list down. Unless a person went in with a plan of attack, using the registration list was an act of high insanity.
“I’m just following up on a theory of Lord Vader’s, sir,” I answered, hoping that invoking the Dark Lord’s name would be enough to get me off the hook and away from Wyer’s scrutiny.
“Lord Vader wants us to go through the conscription list?” he asked, looking horrified. I made a mental note never to mention that possibility to anyone high up in the chain of command. Vader was famous for his relentlessness, and his complete failure to care whether the demands he made were possible or not. If somebody didn’t find the pilot who destroyed the Death Star soon, we might very well find ourselves going through the entire conscription list, looking for voiceprints one name at a time.
“No, sir,” I said quickly, “he thinks the pilot we’re looking for has been trained in secret by the Jedi. I was looking for possible relatives of Jedi who were unaccounted for after the Purges . . .”
Wyer rolled his eyes. “Vader sees Jedi in his closet at night,” he said softly, between his teeth. Most people thought Vader was more than a little cracked in the head on the subject of Jedi, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you said out loud if you valued your commission, or your life.
“But since he’s coming here, it seemed wisest to--” I began.
“Yes, yes,” Wyer said brusquely, waving me on. “Go ahead and look. At least we’ll have something to tell him if he asks.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” I said, giving him a quick head-bow before getting out of there.
Of course, being me, I was soon back, even though the next shift was coming in. The next shift commander was Captain Geer, a stout, stiff-backed man who had been in a foul mood approximately since the Emperor was in short pants and bashing other tots in the head with a rattle. “What do you want, Vorgartin?” he demanded.
I shot an anxious look at my terminal, where my relief officer was about to sit down and presumably close out all my careful research work. “I . . . was just in the middle of something, sir, and was hoping for a few more minutes to--”
“What have you been doing, looking at pictures of nude Twi’lek girls over there?” Geer bellowed. Everybody in our little Comms station had stopped work in order to stare at me.
Geer stomped over to my console station, and I had to explain the whole thing over again to him. “Fine,” he said at last, and turned to the officer who was to replace me. “Labec, Vorgartin wants your shift this evening. Dismissed.”
Labec blinked in surprise. I was similarly shocked into silence, and before I found words to protest, Labec had bowed to our superior and fled. Geer made an expansive gesture toward the now-vacant comms console. “She’s all yours,” he said. I got the impression that “she” in this case meant the nude Twi’lek girl he was still convinced I’d been looking at.
The Sith Who Brought Life Day
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I completely agree. :D
I just wish it was archived somewhere more accessible than the TFN's fanfic boards. Ah well.
So do I. *sigh* If I'd been able to find an alternate link, I would have used it, but it needed to be recced too much for me to let the archive stop me.
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