schneefink

I don't want to talk about how stupid I am that I still haven't made much progress with my stupid paper and instead found a new fandom ~~because I am lazy and pathetic and wtf am I even doing this is so embarrassing.~~

I'm not sure why I started watching "Generation Kill", and I'm not sure I can explain why I like it so much even though I didn't expect it, except that it's a very good show. Maybe some other time. Now I want to talk about some things I've seen in the fandom and two fics in particular (because pirates and dragons are cool.)

Random things:
There's not enough gen fic in the fandom. Or, to be more accurate, there's less gen than I want there to be. I don't ship any pairing except as best friends (though I'm fine with reading almost everything), and I want all the gen loyalty kink. I want more willing-to-sacrifice-for-each-other, I love that trope.

How many times do writers have to emphasize that Nate's eyes are so very green? I didn't even notice when watching. Are there any fandoms that don't have an obsession with eye colour?

There's not a ton of dialogue between the main characters in 7 episodes, so everything they say gets repeated a lot. Nate says "I'm assured of this" once iirc (repetition doesn't count), and to me it seemed that the difference between that and "I'm sure" (as much as I can tell as an ESL speaker) was deliberate. That doesn't mean he always says "I'm assured" instead of "I'm sure" in everyday life.

I like the fandom trope of super!competent!Nate, and competent everyone. It's sometimes exaggerated, but I don't mind at all.

One of my favorite fics is Rules of Engagement by novembersmith, a fusion with Pirates of the Caribbean; go read. A large part of it is probably the power dynamics. So many interesting things you can do in this fandom with power dynamics! Here we have pirate captain Ray and Navy lieutenant Nate.
At first I was almost surprised that Ray is the pirate captain and Brad his first mate, but actually it makes perfect sense. I don't think Brad wants to be "The Man", he's perfectly happy running the ship from the background and making sure Ray doesn't overdo it (by throwing him overboard if necessary.) Carrying Dangerous Goods, a Temeraire fusion/crossover also by novembersmith (huh), spells it out much more clearly, with Brad deliberately letting Ray become captain even though Ray originally doesn't even want to and didn't expect it at all. And then you can explore how Brad's and Ray's relationship changes if Ray has the higher rank - obviously this didn't fit in "Rules of Engagement" , but there's more of it in "Carrying Dangerous Goods".
So it'll be very intriguing in "Rules of Engagement" how that dynamic will change when Nate joins them! Usually the line Nate has to straddle between command and his men is more implicit, here it's spelled out as Navy vs. pirates. The Bravo equivalent on the Navy is missing: Nate would have men on his own on the ship that he's leaving behind under McGraw and Schwetje when he joins the pirates, he doesn't think of them in this fic even though I think he'd also have become protective of them, but that would have made it too complicated. Yet it's still hard and painful for him to switch sides, because he's idealistic like that, and I really love the scene where he finally gives in.
Of course his position in Ray's crew is uncertain: even if Ray is convinced Brad will want Nate to prove himself, Nate'll be unsure of the environment, not know exactly what authority he has, it's great to imagine.
"Carrying Dangerous Goods" has Nate more clearly as an outsider. It's also longer, plottier, has more romance, and has dragons. The only bigger thing that disappointed me was that the resolution to the romance plot was because A overheard B talking to C, something that I'm really tired of in romance stories.
Obviously there are also stories where Brad runs an organisation, Ray is part of it (usually joined later), and Nate is somewhere else, and it also works somehow. Brad can be a leader if he has to, but there's a reason he's not an officer. There is even one by the same author, In A Strange Land, a Wild West AU, and Brad is a different kind of leader than Nate. (I didn't mean to only use examples from one author, but whatever, if it fits and I like it.)

I might do some more recs, but hopefully not soon because I'll be working on my paper instead. (Ha.Ha.Ha.)