Excellent Use of Theme (Coincidentally None Of These End Remotely Well For Any Of The Characters)
Spoilers for all these fics.
Rec 1:I Can Barely Sleep In This Casino Team: John/Rose Creator: Round 1 entry Why I'm recommending it: The flash animation was really well done for something so short--way to work within the limitations. But I love that they took gambling and got past the trappings or even the first metaphorical use of gambling (take a chance!) and actually got into what happens when two people start taking chances with each other's emotions and secrets and then, of course, LIVES. Also this was fucking heartbreaking and it destroyed me, etc.
Rec 2:The Princess, the Prince and the Beekeeper Team: Eridan♥Feferi♥Sollux♠Eridan Creator: Round 2 entry Why I'm recommending it: This has been recced already (on this page!!) but I'm singling it out not just for its art, which is superb, or its writing, which is satisfyingly unreal, but the way it is genuinely monstrous. Not only is Feferi a horrible tentacle beast who devours the guilty, but she's a horrible tentacle beast in a way that's almost canon-compliant. I am probably most impressed by the fact that this remains convincingly red towards both Eridan and Sollux.
Rec 3:Never or Later Team: Bro<3Grandpa Creator: Round 3 entry Why I'm recommending it: This is a GREAT use of the splitscreen format, both contrasting two very different stories and telling a single time-loopy one. Taking the "same relationship from two points of view" idea and making it so that the observer changes not just the emotional content of that relationship, but also the progress and facts of that relationship was very smart. Also Jade and Dave are just cute as the dickens in the pictures.
Rec 4:Gather Up Its Harm And Gods Team: Rose<3Roxy Creator: Collab round entry Why I'm recommending it: Again this wins because the whole thing is about aberration, from the aberrations between various attempts at this dreambubble, from the vivid wrongness in all the pictures (look at Roxy's shadow in the first one!!) to the overarching Very Very Wrongness of the premise. My favorite use of aberration is probably the way small things change to get through to Roxy, the stuff she ignores on the way to the plot-- the "no lamb," and then she gets handed a lamb anyway, that kind of thing. Team Rose<3Roxy has owned at conveying the potential desperate fucked-up wrongness of the pairing throughout the Olympics and this is one more excellent example of that.
FILL: TEAM DIRK<3JAKE<3JANE<3ROXY
Spoilers for all these fics.
Rec 1: I Can Barely Sleep In This Casino
Team: John/Rose
Creator: Round 1 entry
Why I'm recommending it: The flash animation was really well done for something so short--way to work within the limitations. But I love that they took gambling and got past the trappings or even the first metaphorical use of gambling (take a chance!) and actually got into what happens when two people start taking chances with each other's emotions and secrets and then, of course, LIVES. Also this was fucking heartbreaking and it destroyed me, etc.
Rec 2: The Princess, the Prince and the Beekeeper
Team: Eridan♥Feferi♥Sollux♠Eridan
Creator: Round 2 entry
Why I'm recommending it: This has been recced already (on this page!!) but I'm singling it out not just for its art, which is superb, or its writing, which is satisfyingly unreal, but the way it is genuinely monstrous. Not only is Feferi a horrible tentacle beast who devours the guilty, but she's a horrible tentacle beast in a way that's almost canon-compliant. I am probably most impressed by the fact that this remains convincingly red towards both Eridan and Sollux.
Rec 3: Never or Later
Team: Bro<3Grandpa
Creator: Round 3 entry
Why I'm recommending it: This is a GREAT use of the splitscreen format, both contrasting two very different stories and telling a single time-loopy one. Taking the "same relationship from two points of view" idea and making it so that the observer changes not just the emotional content of that relationship, but also the progress and facts of that relationship was very smart. Also Jade and Dave are just cute as the dickens in the pictures.
Rec 4: Gather Up Its Harm And Gods
Team: Rose<3Roxy
Creator: Collab round entry
Why I'm recommending it: Again this wins because the whole thing is about aberration, from the aberrations between various attempts at this dreambubble, from the vivid wrongness in all the pictures (look at Roxy's shadow in the first one!!) to the overarching Very Very Wrongness of the premise. My favorite use of aberration is probably the way small things change to get through to Roxy, the stuff she ignores on the way to the plot-- the "no lamb," and then she gets handed a lamb anyway, that kind of thing. Team Rose<3Roxy has owned at conveying the potential desperate fucked-up wrongness of the pairing throughout the Olympics and this is one more excellent example of that.