REVIEW - Critical Mass

Topic: From Prussia With Love

Users: @Alexander @Graham @SuzyQ

irc.simpworks.com

[Red_Line]

Here's what I believe to be the very first post-BWABB fan fic, just completed in the wee hours of this morning.

Critical Mass

Genre - Futurama

Rating - G

Summary - An attempt to reconcile some of the events from Bender's Big Score and Beast With A Billion Backs.

[Archonix]

I have had a peek, though I'm just back from holiday and haven't actually seen the film yet... hmm. Hard material to work with I guess. It's well written and the first bit (all I read so far) is quite nicely paced. I can't say more until I know exactly what you're working from, so when I see the film I'll be back.

[Lisabella]

Oh, RL - this is magnifique.  Shippy without being gooey, and it does a good job deconstructing the changing dynamic between Leela and Fry:

My biggest complaint is that Fry feels a tad too eloquent - his emotions are canonically correct, though.  This:

Spoiler (hover to show)

“Time.” Fry said with some heat, turning towards her.  “I've given you six years Leela.  How much time do you need?   You at least found your parents.  I've got nobody.  Nobody ... but you. And you don't even want me.”

was particularly good.  Nice work making Leela feel sympathetic, which is a fact some folks do overlook.  And it ends with the right note of reconcilliation, just pitch-perfect.

Grade: A- .  Make Fry's dialouge a tad more Fry-ish and it should be good to go.

[Archonix]

I enjoyed this. So many lesser writers might have decided to go for the idea of just getting them into bed by the end of the story but you didn't, and it's a lot more realistic as a result. I have to say I particularly liked the dream sequence, and I appreciated that both Fry and Leela were stuck in their own worlds and hadn't really thought about what the other one wanted. And, like missy, I like that you kept Leela in character and made her sympathetic, instead of making her be the one to apologise and grovel like so many other shippy writers seem to do.

Speaking of the dream...

Spoiler (hover to show)

Don't give up on your dreams, Fry. It's easy to fall into the trap of telling ourselves that we have to be realistic, to give up on silly dreams, to start talking down to ourselves. Would you ever tell someone else what you tell yourself? It's harder to be positive and hold on to them, to believe, to dream BIG.

A lot of people need to hear that.

Hey, I'm just a vaporous apparition in your dream, what do I know?

I think that line made the entire fic, personally. Oh how I laughed...

[A Spy in Mancunia]

Typo check: in some places, you have "it's" when it should be "its". ("It's" is a contraction of "it is"; "its" is the genitive of "it". So, for example, "on it's way" should be "on its way".) "Finer" should be "finger"; and "than leaned back" should be "then". Also, when you have a piece of dialogue followed by a dialogue tag (e.g. "he said"), you should have a comma after that dialogue, not a full stop. You might want to go through the fic and check for this.

And factual nitpick: when you say that Zoidberg is their "parrot" in case of air leaks, don't you mean "canary"? (Funny joke, anyway!)

Very well-written, if slightly unmemorable style at times, with many deadpan funny lines to lighten up the drama. Which is good, by the way, never angsty or annoying. And I'm saying this as a non-shipper. Fry and Leela both feel very in character, except for the problem I have with Leela's emotions that I address below. The plot is simple, but the way you develop the emotions here is great. It's not too shippy, either.

The downside? Well, I don't really care for shippy fics, even though this one isn't too much so. Also, this is not your fault, but

Spoiler (hover to show)

I had a problem with Leela's put-down to Fry at the end of "The Beast with a Billion Backs": are we to believe that after years of showing nearly no romantic interest in Fry whatsoever, she would have gone out with him if only he hadn't been together with Colleen? The only way I could reconcile that with her character was to see it more as a general snipe about the fact that he immediately went to her on the rebound: as if she were just his Plan B, so to speak.

Again, this is more of my problem with the film than with your story, and you actually do a good job making Leela's feelings gel with the set-up. I still think it's a bit out of character, though.

That's really my only problem with this story. In short, this is very well written, well characterised, and as Graham said, it doesn't try to force things with the romance. Rather, you bring Fry and Leela back to good terms, and do so excellently.

EDIT: And it's always fun to read something based on the new movies.

My rating: A-

[Red_Line]

Thank you all for the kind comments.    I'm kind of weak at doing "traditional" Futurama humor so I try to compensate by attempting to treat Fry and Leela in a way that I imagine real people might act in similar circumstances (at least in the shippier situations).

@Spy:  Thanks for the typo check.  This fic was pretty much totally written in the evening and wee hours of a Friday night and in the rush to be the first to market with a post BWABB fic it didn't get the usual polish and beta reads.   I've since posted a cleaned up version on Futurama Madhouse in my Fan Fiction area, but I'll have to double check it against your list to make sure I caught everything.

And about the canary, um ... they're extinct in 3000 so they use parrots instead.  Yeah, that's it.