Epic Recs - Sepulcher Mountain by Sara (NC-17)

Sepulcher Mountain by Sara (NC-17)

Sep. 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 AM

jane-elliot.livejournal.com

For those, like me, who think there's no such thing as too many Magnificent Seven recs...

Title: Sepulcher Mountain
Fandom: Magnificent Seven
Pairing: Chris/Vin
Categories: Angst, Yellowstone AU
Length: Medium
Warnings: n/a

Author on LJ:

sara_merry99
Website: n/a

Review:
One night, Chris visits Vin to drink and forget about Sarah and Adam. One thing leads to another and, well, you get the idea. The next morning, Chris is gone and Vin realizes that he'd just been used. He goes off hiking in the mountains to forget Chris, but his heart just doesn't seem to be interested in letting go...

This is the best Mag 7 fic I've read to date. Chris and Vin (but mostly Chris) are flawed, realistic, painfully human men and their struggle to come to terms with their own hearts and with each other is a difficult yet ultimately rewarding one. Read this when you're in the mood for intense, powerful writing.

Sepulcher Mountain

Comments

( Leave a comment )

gwendolynflight.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 22nd, 2008 10:47 pm (UTC)

Sweet! One I haven't read yet! ::runs off to devour::

Link | Reply | Thread

jane-elliot.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 22nd, 2008 10:52 pm (UTC)

And it's a good one! Enjoy:)

Link | Reply | Parent

boogieshoes.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 23rd, 2008 03:26 pm (UTC)

um, yes. this AU didn't grab me the way some of them do, but the story-telling, yes. me likey. :-D

-bs

Link | Reply | Thread

jane-elliot.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 23rd, 2008 03:34 pm (UTC)

There are so many darn AUs in this fandom that I've given up on getting attached to any one of them. (Plus, I kind of prefer the original Old West anyway.) As a result, I read stories almost entirely for their writing and less for the details of the AUs. Hopefully that will appeal to our readers:)

Thanks for the comment!

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

boogieshoes.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 23rd, 2008 10:24 pm (UTC)

have you read Tale of a Deed? it's Old West. it's awesome. and long and meaty.

but yeah, Mag7 is like, the AU-spawner of fandoms. it's like 'you want what? yeah, we've got that (AU).'

-bs

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

jane-elliot.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 23rd, 2008 10:27 pm (UTC)

Ooo, link? I probably have it already (I spent the whole weekend downloading every single C/V, C/E, and V/E at blackraptor and am now sitting on seven hundred stories), but just in case I don't...

Normally I love AUs, but M7 AUs just don't seem to spark much interest for me. Maybe there are just too many of them?

Thanks!

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

boogieshoes.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 23rd, 2008 10:45 pm (UTC)

ah, here it is:

http://www.eternalvox.net/~auburn/fiction.html#other-fic

it's about midway down the first page - you don't have to scroll to see it. there are a few missing words here and there - to regular to be distracted typing, so i'm thinking it's an uploading artifact. but it's long and meaty and damned good so far.

i like AUs in some fandoms - well, ok, i have different rules for AUs in the fandoms i read. like Highlander, 'Richie isn't dead, Archangel didn't happen' is an AU i'm totally happy to read. forever. but it's harder to read Highlander characters as morphed into Two-Bloods, for example.

The Sentinel, i love 'Sentinels Are Known' AUs, but i dislike kiddie AUs there.

in Mag7, i like seeing how their personalities change in different circumstances, but i dislike AUs that are specifically time-shifted from either the ATF universe or the Old West by an appreciable degree. i like them as kids in either place, or Two-Blood, or gender-f*cked... but i don't like them in Viet Nam, or WW2, or regency london or flying with Star Trek.... no, i don't know why. although the radiation mutation thing i read some time ago seemed to work... damned if i can remember the name right now - you probably have it in your stockpile. it was C/V, and on blackraptor.

at any rate, i'm always amused at how many AUs Mag7 spawns. :-)

-bs

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

jane-elliot.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 24th, 2008 03:05 pm (UTC)

Thank you!

Heh -- our tastes are *totally* different in this regard. Personally I'm okay with Highlander AUs as long as I can't tell that they are AU (and I choose to believe that demon nonsense never happened, as the show went so far downhill after that that it was hard to see the bottom), but since I only read Duncan/Methos fic anyway, it hardly matters in the long run. (However, Joe Must Not Be Dead. Period.)

I have to force myself to read Sentinels are known AUs, because most of them have a slavery aspect that I'm not at all comfortable with. And the Sentinel is the only fandom where I actually enjoy kiddie AUs:)

In Mag 7, I think a lot of the authors don't put much thought into their AUs -- Vin always talks with the most egregious, uneducated accent, even when he is in the ATF universe (and thus had to have completed at least high school to meet employment requirements), every single iteration has all seven men working in one group (even if it doesn't make sense), and no one ever seems to know what to do with Nathan. Actually, that brings up another point -- in every story you have all seven characters (except for OW fics, which is just another point in OW's favor), even when it doesn't make sense for the story or when the extra characters aren't needed. Now, if all of the fics were epic in length, that would be fine, but when the fics are shorter, authors usually meet their M7 quota by having one character consider what every...single...other character would think about a situation. If I have to read another four pages of roll call as Vin or Ezra contemplates what every person on his team will think about their relationship (or how the characters behave, or how they all joined the group, or their current lifestyles), I'm going to scream.

Hm. Looking at my comments, I think it's clear that I should've gotten more sleep last night. Also, that I should take a break from the Mag 7 fandom:)

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

boogieshoes.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 24th, 2008 10:38 pm (UTC)

re mag7 fics, not all of the AU stories are that bad, but there's that 'getting rid of the 90% that's crap' factor. i suspect you're not into the Little Britches stuff, but if you can handle the extreme sap-factor, most of those are pretty good at showing, not telling, the other's reactions, while they're told mostly from the POV of chris or little!vin.

i do think all seven should be working together in some sort of manner on a regular basis, or else it's not really a 'Magnificent 7' piece. but i do understand that it's not always easy to translate roles from the Old West original to, say, a 'Star Trek' fusion or the Yellowstone AU.

coupled with that, i think in general most people don't handle a large cast particularly well. this may come from the 'learning to write' process. i suspect most people learn to write, or imagine scenes to write, between two people, first. they figure that out, and that works for most things because a lot of pieces are buddy-buddy, or concentrate on just one or two POVs. and maybe they get really good at it - but when you add the third person in, things start to change, and that's not as easy as it seems it should be to handle. it falls apart on the fourth, and the easy 'this is how the story should go' flow is gone completely by the fifth. by the time you add in #6 or #7, you have a chaos, not a cast. and i think a lot of authors are fooled into it being easy to handle a large cast by the cast chemistry *on the show*. but if you look at the show itself, the story is always told in interactions between smaller groups, except the big hollywood scenes - topping the rise at the beginning, galloping across the plains, that sort of thing.

i'll, uh, stop rambling now - but darn, that was a short honeymoon period! :-D

-bs

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

jane-elliot.livejournal.com wrote:

Sep. 24th, 2008 10:44 pm (UTC)

" that was a short honeymoon period! "

Totally my own fault -- usually when I enter a fandom I read every story that's been recced by anyone. Once I run out of those, I start going through every other story in the fandom, hoping to find a few hidden gems.

With the Mag 7 fandom, I went straight to downloading every story in the fandom, so rather than starting off with just the good stuff, I'm slogging through everything I can find, good and bad (but, as is the usual case with fanfic, mostly bad). It's making me a bit cynical, I'm afraid:)

Still, I know there are good stories out there! I just have to keep at it...

Link | Reply | Parent

seremela2.livejournal.com wrote:

Jan. 8th, 2010 02:45 am (UTC)

(yep, me again, found these recs through rant and now going through them to see if there are stories I've missed)

You've already discovered Sara's stories, I see. And she wrote OW stories as well. She has a rare grasp of the characters and what's even more refreshing, in her pairings the two paired are equal story wise; she doesn't sacrifice one up to showcase the other. I especially love Tracker (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic-40/xm7fic-40x/tracker.htm) (finally someone who truly gets into Vin's tracker capacities), but I love them all. Her stories are on this page (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic/xm7ficx/contents/adultauthors-s.htm#sara) and on her lj, but wasn't your latest rant about reading on lj being difficult?

Anyway, since I'm busy reccing now anyway, these are also very good slash OW stories IMO:

Wind change (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic-13/xm7fic-13x/windchange1.htm) by Blackbird and the stories by TrueEnough (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic/xm7ficx/contents/adultauthors-t.htm#true). I especially love her This hard land (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic-36/xm7fic-36x/thishardland.htm).

There truly are great M7 stories out there in between the rest! Okay, one more, because it's such a great and bittersweet link between canon and ATF: Duende (http://www.blackraptor.net/m7fic-31/xm7fic-31x/duende.htm) by Cattraine.

Sadly I don't have these as word docs for you.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

Sepulcher Mountain by Sara (NC-17)

Tags:

Comments

Profile

Links

Length Guidelines

Tags