Same. I've not really touched any post-S2 fic, and what I've read has been... I hesitate to say 'unsubstantial', but has tended to be shorter and deal with one issue only.
Yeah, and I find they tend to deal with it in a fairly limited number of ways, too. I'll be honest, I'm kind of missing the post-S1 fic landscape right now. Even the insubstantial fic tended to be insubstantial in ways that were a lot more varied and fun.
Join the club! ^_^ Although I think it really REALLY helps to have an actual pre-Fall Crowley to work with. Not that the characterisation in this wasn't astonishing and incredible, but was building on something we *knew*, not the author's head canon.
Yeah, agreed. Speaking as someone who's written at least a tiny bit of angel!Crowley fic and probably wouldn't have even dreamed of attempting it before S2.
And (imho) it came at the expense of the characters. Not Raphael (of course), but we never saw Crowley deal with Raphael, and also the heart of the story, ship wise, was Chapter 43 (I have re-read that many many times).
Ooh, now, I think I may have almost an exactly opposite take on that, especially when it comes to the finding it wanting a little because you're judging it by show standards thing. Wherever it locates the emotional climax, overall I'd actually say that the characterization and shippiness stuff feels more like the way the show does things than the way fic usually does it, and I find that really refreshing.
Fic usually really, really foregrounds the emotional stuff and just... wallows in it, often to the point of melodrama. It can do that really well and satisfyingly, but I tend to personally be of the "less is more" school when it comes to the fic I really love. (There's a reason why "big feelings getting expressed in small or quiet ways" is in my likes list for every exchange letter I've ever posted, and why I always keep it at the very end of the list in hopes that it'll stick in people's memories better. :)) So I sort of adore the not-very-ficcy-feeling subtlety of this one.
And in the show itself, flashbacks aside (which I realize is a very big aside), the emotional and shippy beats do, I think, tend to be a bit more subtle and more scattered, more interrupted by plot stuff ("sorry to break up an intimate moment!"), and more sparing with the actual Big Dramatic Moments than fic usually is. To me this did feel kind of like that. And, importantly, the emotional and character stuff is still there in the story, it's just very, well, "big feelings getting expressed in small or quiet ways." There are so very many little lines, even just little half-sentences from Aziraphale that make it so clear to me what he's feeling (and how incredibly complex his feelings are) without the author belaboring it or Raphael, as the viewpoint character, quite understanding it. It's like, somehow they've managed to capture the equivalent of how much Michael Sheen's subtle acting choices bring to the show and add huge emotional overtones to lines that might not seem all that significant out of context.
All of which is an approach that took a moment for me to get used to and maybe even needed a conscious recognition that that's what the fic was doing for me to fully appreciate, but once I did, it made me happy.
Could more of Crowley dealing with Raphael and explicitly resolving his own complicated feelings about the person he used to be maybe have been more satisfying? Quite possibly, but for me there are a set of implications in the ending that I think make it work for me quite well as it is. (Note: SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF THE FIC!) Namely, that Crowley should now actually remember the whole experience. He'll remember now what Aziraphale said about falling in love with him as a demon, and he'll remember that the angel he was chose to go back, even chose to have his memories of it all locked away, to ensure that he will become the person Crowley now is. Because he thought that Crowley, the demon, was in fact exactly who he wanted to become. That's huge, and I don't feel like I needed the author to hand-hold me through the psychological implications of that in order for me to appreciate it.
In conclusion: pardon me while I go draw sparkly hearts around this fic, apparently. ;)
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Yeah, and I find they tend to deal with it in a fairly limited number of ways, too. I'll be honest, I'm kind of missing the post-S1 fic landscape right now. Even the insubstantial fic tended to be insubstantial in ways that were a lot more varied and fun.
Join the club! ^_^ Although I think it really REALLY helps to have an actual pre-Fall Crowley to work with. Not that the characterisation in this wasn't astonishing and incredible, but was building on something we *knew*, not the author's head canon.
Yeah, agreed. Speaking as someone who's written at least a tiny bit of angel!Crowley fic and probably wouldn't have even dreamed of attempting it before S2.
And (imho) it came at the expense of the characters. Not Raphael (of course), but we never saw Crowley deal with Raphael, and also the heart of the story, ship wise, was Chapter 43 (I have re-read that many many times).
Ooh, now, I think I may have almost an exactly opposite take on that, especially when it comes to the finding it wanting a little because you're judging it by show standards thing. Wherever it locates the emotional climax, overall I'd actually say that the characterization and shippiness stuff feels more like the way the show does things than the way fic usually does it, and I find that really refreshing.
Fic usually really, really foregrounds the emotional stuff and just... wallows in it, often to the point of melodrama. It can do that really well and satisfyingly, but I tend to personally be of the "less is more" school when it comes to the fic I really love. (There's a reason why "big feelings getting expressed in small or quiet ways" is in my likes list for every exchange letter I've ever posted, and why I always keep it at the very end of the list in hopes that it'll stick in people's memories better. :)) So I sort of adore the not-very-ficcy-feeling subtlety of this one.
And in the show itself, flashbacks aside (which I realize is a very big aside), the emotional and shippy beats do, I think, tend to be a bit more subtle and more scattered, more interrupted by plot stuff ("sorry to break up an intimate moment!"), and more sparing with the actual Big Dramatic Moments than fic usually is. To me this did feel kind of like that. And, importantly, the emotional and character stuff is still there in the story, it's just very, well, "big feelings getting expressed in small or quiet ways." There are so very many little lines, even just little half-sentences from Aziraphale that make it so clear to me what he's feeling (and how incredibly complex his feelings are) without the author belaboring it or Raphael, as the viewpoint character, quite understanding it. It's like, somehow they've managed to capture the equivalent of how much Michael Sheen's subtle acting choices bring to the show and add huge emotional overtones to lines that might not seem all that significant out of context.
All of which is an approach that took a moment for me to get used to and maybe even needed a conscious recognition that that's what the fic was doing for me to fully appreciate, but once I did, it made me happy.
Could more of Crowley dealing with Raphael and explicitly resolving his own complicated feelings about the person he used to be maybe have been more satisfying? Quite possibly, but for me there are a set of implications in the ending that I think make it work for me quite well as it is. (Note: SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF THE FIC!) Namely, that Crowley should now actually remember the whole experience. He'll remember now what Aziraphale said about falling in love with him as a demon, and he'll remember that the angel he was chose to go back, even chose to have his memories of it all locked away, to ensure that he will become the person Crowley now is. Because he thought that Crowley, the demon, was in fact exactly who he wanted to become. That's huge, and I don't feel like I needed the author to hand-hold me through the psychological implications of that in order for me to appreciate it.
In conclusion: pardon me while I go draw sparkly hearts around this fic, apparently. ;)