2005 pop SeSa recs -- vol. 2
Gratuity It's hookerfic, only not the normal kind. One of those Sex-in-the-City-esque AUs, which I don't always like, but I don't always dislike, either -- Justin's friends buy him a night with an upscale escort, and who's more luxury-goods than Lance Bass? Some of the dialogue felt slightly off, but some of it was *fantastic,* and Justin trying hard to be a respectful john, puzzling out the etiquette of the situation, was too perfect. About halfway through I started to sense there was a twist to this story, and I thought I had it figured out, but in fact I didn't, quite, so that was fun. The other guys have small but well-done roles: Chris was *irritating* and adorable, rather than the usual fan schtick of him being adorable and secretly smooth and brilliant, and JC was daffy without being, you know, stupid (It's usually best to ignore JC when he starts reminiscing; otherwise you end up talking about the mating habits of ticks or how many slices of Kraft cheese it would take to tile the living room floor is on my ballot for best single line of this year's SeSa.)

Imaginary Boyfriend Ah, magical realism, how we've missed you! The perennial popslash theme of real vs. ideal, in a sweet little story where Chris wakes up one morning and Joey is his boyfriend, and it's just a little too good to be, well, real. Somehow, writing on this theme with Chris and Joey, the least idealized of the guys, makes it feel very fresh and interesting -- it's not about marketing and packaging and media standards and yadda yadda, but just about how you naturally tweak people in your head just a little tiny bit to make them better than they are, and what it feels like to realize you can stop doing that after all.

A Sad Variety of Woe I'm reccing this with some caveats, because I think it was written a little stiffly, and something about the style made it distancing when it should have been intimate and painful. The future-tense didn't help; you can't use two strongly distinctive tricks in one story, and the premise was already strong enough. This is an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind riff, and I loved it for looking at that issue of, what do you do when you know for sure that you've lived through something so remarkable that for the rest of your life, nothing else will really compare? I thought it was particularly interesting that Justin had done the same thing in a sense, putting this vast gap between his old and new lives, and even more interesting that his friends *assumed* his motives were the the same as Chris's, even when they weren't exactly. I particularly loved the semi-meta concept that they're saved by a fangirl who can't quite bear to let go of them; yay, fangirls! I think this story needs a rewrite with the help of a really experienced beta, and that if it got that, it would be fucking amazing. As it is, I like it anyway; it's definitely worth reading.

Hard to Say I'm Sorry: A film about *NSync From the genre of Phantom Fourth Album/Tour stories, and I can't sum it up better than Steve Fatone when he says "Justin Timberlake, former boyband member turned solo artist turned boyband member again turned amateur documentarian. Does he know what he's doing? No, but isn't he cute?" A technically brilliant story, very entertaining with some nice, hot sex at the end, and my only complaint is that I think there was so much gold in the idea that *Justin,* of all people, has decided he needs to film this himself, that the story could really only get around to mining part of it. This is a nearly perfect road-fic/romance, and I'm probably being just difficult and picky to point out that it could have been a genius psychological investigation into Justin, too. How many brilliant stories was I expecting this author to turn out in one sitting? *g* It's great; there's nothing not to like, so read it. (I'm just saying, there's a really interesting remix lurking in there somewhere, too.)