ext_342914 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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crack_van2012-10-18 10:14 pm
sekrit-omg.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2012-10-18 10:14 pm
Entry tags:
Lex Talionis by Foodstamp (M)
Fandom: SOUTH PARK
Pairing: Stan/Kyle, Craig/Thomas, Pip/Damien ("others are secret, or minor")
Length: 70K
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imaginaaation
Author Website: Here on FF.net
Why this must be read: I no longer find this to be that great a story. I hate recommending stories I don't find that great because, well, what's the point? But I think this is essential reading because it looms so large over the SP fandom as it is today. It's a mystery in the mode of a police procedural, and features meaty cameos for basically every character. Most of them are written out-of-character, and I take real offense at how the story purports to be about Stan and Kyle but, instead, follows Kenny's investigation into the mystery of who murdered Eric Cartman. Kenny himself, though the narrator through whom the plot flows, is barely a presence, affecting little and characterized as having no life or internal working of his own. I've had friends tell me that they're annoyed by how hard the story works to shoehorn in other characters, or annoyed with how sensationalist and impossible the story's main injustice feels.
But -- and this is the enormous but that makes me want to rec this story -- when it was first published, in early 2008, nothing like this had been done. Lex Talionis is an insanely ambitious story, often cited as the best of the fandom. It's the only SP fanfic with its own page on TV Tropes. It's missing a promised epilogue, though the main plot is concluded and it reads complete. Is, for all intents and purposes, complete. This is the story that, for many, changes opinions on what SP fanfic is or what it can do. It is, in that sense, a game-changer. People still speculate about Foodstamp, wondering what happened to her. The myth of this story is insurrmountable. In a certain sense everything that's come after has been a kind of response to this fic. So I think the only right thing to do is to rec the thing and put it out there.
Lex Talionis
Pairing: Stan/Kyle, Craig/Thomas, Pip/Damien ("others are secret, or minor")
Length: 70K
Author on LJ:
imaginaaationAuthor Website: Here on FF.net
Why this must be read: I no longer find this to be that great a story. I hate recommending stories I don't find that great because, well, what's the point? But I think this is essential reading because it looms so large over the SP fandom as it is today. It's a mystery in the mode of a police procedural, and features meaty cameos for basically every character. Most of them are written out-of-character, and I take real offense at how the story purports to be about Stan and Kyle but, instead, follows Kenny's investigation into the mystery of who murdered Eric Cartman. Kenny himself, though the narrator through whom the plot flows, is barely a presence, affecting little and characterized as having no life or internal working of his own. I've had friends tell me that they're annoyed by how hard the story works to shoehorn in other characters, or annoyed with how sensationalist and impossible the story's main injustice feels.
But -- and this is the enormous but that makes me want to rec this story -- when it was first published, in early 2008, nothing like this had been done. Lex Talionis is an insanely ambitious story, often cited as the best of the fandom. It's the only SP fanfic with its own page on TV Tropes. It's missing a promised epilogue, though the main plot is concluded and it reads complete. Is, for all intents and purposes, complete. This is the story that, for many, changes opinions on what SP fanfic is or what it can do. It is, in that sense, a game-changer. People still speculate about Foodstamp, wondering what happened to her. The myth of this story is insurrmountable. In a certain sense everything that's come after has been a kind of response to this fic. So I think the only right thing to do is to rec the thing and put it out there.
Lex Talionis