Chapter Text
Forward Momentum by Bracketyjack
"When he took Chandler’s call in—he glanced at his chrono—two hours, something new would start. The kitten tried to eat his thumb, and he looked down at it in mild admonition. Chandler’s genie was about to leave its bottle." - Forward Momentum, Chapter 2.
Timeline: Shortly after "Winterfair Gifts"; AU to Diplomatic Immunity
Setup: After "Winterfair Gifts" (but before Diplomatic Immunity) a Terran scientist brings to Miles the technology which allows, among other things, real-time communication with anybody in the Nexus. It would be a disruptive technology in anybody's hands. But in Miles' hands, 'disruptive' is an understatement.
Structure: I am pulling a random paragraph from the story (okay, not completely random - I made sure it contained no spoilers), since it is a easier to present a sample than to try to describe the writing style:
Wandering round the house he was both mildly horrified and rather admiring to find at the side-door, where guests would enter, Captain Khourakis, in unexceptionable mufti but nevertheless at something very like parade rest, and on a nearby bench Nikki and Arthur Pym, suspiciously neatly turned out. Both greeted him politely as Khourakis nodded a mufti salute. Suppressing both a squawk and a grin he gave greetings back and went to lean against the wall by Khourakis. After a moment the boys resumed a muttered conversation both adults could hear perfectly well, and they listened together in, Miles thought, mutual fascination to Arthur’s colourfully indignant commentary on a young Jankowski hoyden in the village. He already had something of his father’s turns of phrase but without the senior Armsman’s range of nuance and banked-up tact, producing a sometimes compelling effect. Miles’s crystallising thought was that Miss Jankowski sounded an ideal candidate for ImpSec training in a few years, for the women’s squad in the protection detail. A true niece of her uncle, belike. When he caught the captain’s eye at the end of the tale he knew his thoughts were shared. Miles smiled to himself but had to swallow a groan as Arthur guilelessly continued another fascinating conversation he and Nikki must have been having.
My impression is that more than a third of this fanfic is characters discussing events which happen in canon (granted, I have not done a statistiscal analysis to confirm whether this really is 33% of the content). Also, a lot of the fanfic is like the paragraph above, going into lots of details about various things. The pace in the beginning is glacial (it takes forever even to get to the first explanation of the frames), yet speeds up in the second half.
Reaction: The first time I tried to read it, I got a few chapters in before I gave up. I did manage to get as far as the explanation of the frames, which I found to be an interesting idea, but I did not find the style enjoyable enough to continue.
My attitude is that, when I want to re-visit canon events, I would much prefer re-reading canon itself than reading about characters talking about the same canon events in past tense, especially if I feel that the characters who are talking about the canon events have very little to add which cannot be obviously inferred from canon itself. And most of the other details that the fanfic goes into (for example, the paragraph above) strike me as a) irrelevant to the story and b) not interesting on its own. It was even more irritating to me that a lot of the dialogue seemed to be like 'You did this [explains a bunch of stuff which happened in canon in much more detail than necessary] and you are so awesome.' I don't want to read about Vorkosiverse characters telling other Vorkosiverse characters that they are awesome - I would much rather watch them actually do awesome stuff.
To be clear, I don't insist that all of the (fan)fiction I read be fast-paced. For example, one of my favorite fanfics in any fandom is The Mouse of Konoha, which is very wordy and slow. However, even though TMoK is verbose, it generally does not repeat information which readers already know from canon too much, and almost all of those details do move the plot (very slowly) forward, or at least are entertaining in their own right, even though it sometimes takes me a long time to figure out where the writer is going.
I also feel like some characters in Forward Momentum swallowed some ideas too easily, and that it was unrealistic that their minds were changed with so little resistance. Or rather, that sometimes the writer was so determined to make good things happened, good things were forced to happen even when it was unrealistic and contrived for things to happen that way.
That said, there are parts which I do like. For example, I liked the discussions Nikki had about Lord Vortalon and ethics (and even if one doesn't want to read the whole fic, it might be worthwhile just to read the Nikki/Vortalon parts). And I do prefer the second half, since the ratio of fresh material to repetitive material is better. Nonetheless, it was very frustrating to have to wade through so much material which bored me to find parts which interested me. If I did not crave the satisfaction of READING ALL THE VK FANFIC NOVELS WITHOUT SKIMMING, I would have been better off never giving this a second chance.
I think that, if all of the stuff which seems irrelevant or repetitious to me were cut out, this would be 60,000 words or less, and it would be much easier for me to appreciate the essential ideas of this fanfic.
However, YOU are not me. It is obvious from the comments that some readers really love this fic, and I don't want to discourage people who are into this kind of fic from reading it. Just as I prefer the second half because I think it has less irrelevant stuff, some readers prefer the first half because to them the second half feels too much like a summary. To each their own. Finally, I have to give this fic credit for being unique. Therefore, in spite of my reaction, I recommend giving this fanfic a shot. I also recommend dropping it like a hot coal if one isn't enjoying it by end of the first or second chapter.
Next Time: Moving On by ana