I want you to know, I'd gone into full-on lurker mode and it was starting to seem like a permanent ailment, and then the mere act of reading this forced me to break my inexplicable vow of internet silence. Because!! This is fantastic. When I have more time I may go back and quote favorite lines at you from each part, there is SO MUCH about this I adore. It is a terrific, terrific ensemble piece, you've captured what I love about every single character, and then some (you even brought out Pierce's lovable qualities! I am so impressed!), and their voices are just so incredibly vivid and right. Between the pitch-perfect, hilarious, deeply true characterizations and the simultaneously genuinely-engaging and intensely-ridiculous plot, it truly felt like I was reading an episode of the show. Or maybe more like Community: The Movie, based on the awesomely satisfying length and mystery and adventure!!, but my point is, every part of this felt like canon canon canon. Newly funny canon, with fresh character insights and quips and cast-wide development, but canon just the same. SO AMAZING.
Abed is absolutely my favorite part of this; you write a fucking killer Abed, my friend. He's so impenetrable to outsiders, for the most part, this blank-faced, cool, calm, pre-cognitive superhero, but every time we read a section from his POV, or Annie or Troy who know him the best can observe a chip in his armor, it's just so clear how quietly vulnerable he is. How even if others assume he is a cool-if-slightly-awkward cucumber and his social disorder just makes him good at remembering pop culture tidbits and occasionally lack some tact, it IS still something he struggles with, particularly in the relationships that matter to him most (Troooooy), it just doesn't define him. And you never turn that vulnerability maudlin, or try to explain Abed or make him less complicated than he is, and he's still absolutely a strong, brilliant hero here, but you give us just enough to always see him as a person and not a concept. Something that the show itself skimped on for a while (the chicken finger mafia episode of course turned this around, beautifully!, but it was bugging me for a while before then).
I also adore Annie and Troy, the other major players here. You write the MOST adorable Annie, gosh, and one thing I really delighted in was the way she was such a major player, and her friendship with Abed and Troy was incredibly important and meaningful even without her being involved in a romance with either of them. Platonic friendship and romance/sex being given equal weight is remarkably rare in fic, particularly when the friend is a lady and the romance is dudeslash, but Annie was anything but a token female here, and her relationships with Abed and Troy shone so brightly amidst the rest of the A+ ensemble relationships. She and Abed make such an awesome team! And it makes sense that they would be a team, that they'd both go above and beyond for Troy, and get swept away by the detective movie setting (after seeing Annie as a buddy cop, it's epically clear that this girl is as eager and enthusiastic as Abed when it comes to giving herself over to a particular role and genre. SHE IS HIS PERFECT ACTRESS, another reason why they make a great team!). I guess I also like that it's clear that what Annie feels for Troy-who-she-is-going-above-and-beyond-for IS friendship, at this point, that she's not pining for him or doing this out of a hope that he'll want her - she just (platonically) cares that much. Because she's Annie! :DDD
AND THEN TROY, lololol. It is SO clear that you love this character deeply and truly, because you bring out both what's amazingly funny about him (the constant fear of bugs and mice and just about everything under the sun! the melodrama, storming away from home and getting all action movie on his captors! the slightly-embarrassing-but-adorable tendency to act all porn star in his seduction attempts, thank goodness Abed tends more towards confusion and endless Troy-love than ridicule!), and what's strong and lovable, what makes him both his own action-movie-hero (HE WILL CONFRONT HIS FEAR OF CREEPY CRAWLIES WHEN THE NEED IS GREAT ENOUGH! see: Fievel), and a captive who inspires so much love in his friends/partners that they'll drop everything to scour Colorado looking for him. I also love the way you wrote Troy's parents, who we've never met in canon but who just feel so tangibly real here, and his relationship with them, his mother showing her love and concern and acceptance in very taciturn, structured ways, there being realistic tension between the three of them that is really never as dramatic as it feels to Troy, idk. I just love everything about your characterization, really. :D
AND THIS COMMENT IS GETTING EMBARRASSINGLY LONG so I won't do a gigantic paragraph on all the other characters, but seriously, I could HEAR Shirley and Jeff and Britta's voices in my head when I read their dialogue, and I have no idea how you so successfully captured so darn many canon relationships (Jeff-Shirley, Jeff-Annie, Jeff-group, Britta-group, Britta-world), in every single interaction they shared. There were so many little moments between all of them that just swept me away with the funny and the vivid canonicity; when I wasn't completely focused on finding out what was gonna happen, I was reading this with a huge grin on my face the whole time.
Speaking of my eagerness to know what would happen next - I want to emphasize how utterly absorbing and perfectly Community-esque I found the plot! A mundane case of college football sabotage, taken to an action-detective movie extreme, with twists and turns and ridonkulosities like a whole weed grove ready for Britta's taking and a character named Pluckenpole who no one can stop laughing at. It was just simultaneously so tight and so FUN, so entertaining and so human, and there were just as many wonderful little details and fast-paced moments of humor coming at the reader in a constant stream as any episode of Community. I love this fic to delightful little pieces. *___*
(IF I ACTUALLY GET MYSELF TO POST I WILL BE RECCING THIS. FYI. lol, I'm telling you so that if I don't post you'll at least know I loved this enough to WANT to rec it ;___;)
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Abed is absolutely my favorite part of this; you write a fucking killer Abed, my friend. He's so impenetrable to outsiders, for the most part, this blank-faced, cool, calm, pre-cognitive superhero, but every time we read a section from his POV, or Annie or Troy who know him the best can observe a chip in his armor, it's just so clear how quietly vulnerable he is. How even if others assume he is a cool-if-slightly-awkward cucumber and his social disorder just makes him good at remembering pop culture tidbits and occasionally lack some tact, it IS still something he struggles with, particularly in the relationships that matter to him most (Troooooy), it just doesn't define him. And you never turn that vulnerability maudlin, or try to explain Abed or make him less complicated than he is, and he's still absolutely a strong, brilliant hero here, but you give us just enough to always see him as a person and not a concept. Something that the show itself skimped on for a while (the chicken finger mafia episode of course turned this around, beautifully!, but it was bugging me for a while before then).
I also adore Annie and Troy, the other major players here. You write the MOST adorable Annie, gosh, and one thing I really delighted in was the way she was such a major player, and her friendship with Abed and Troy was incredibly important and meaningful even without her being involved in a romance with either of them. Platonic friendship and romance/sex being given equal weight is remarkably rare in fic, particularly when the friend is a lady and the romance is dudeslash, but Annie was anything but a token female here, and her relationships with Abed and Troy shone so brightly amidst the rest of the A+ ensemble relationships. She and Abed make such an awesome team! And it makes sense that they would be a team, that they'd both go above and beyond for Troy, and get swept away by the detective movie setting (after seeing Annie as a buddy cop, it's epically clear that this girl is as eager and enthusiastic as Abed when it comes to giving herself over to a particular role and genre. SHE IS HIS PERFECT ACTRESS, another reason why they make a great team!). I guess I also like that it's clear that what Annie feels for Troy-who-she-is-going-above-and-beyond-for IS friendship, at this point, that she's not pining for him or doing this out of a hope that he'll want her - she just (platonically) cares that much. Because she's Annie! :DDD
AND THEN TROY, lololol. It is SO clear that you love this character deeply and truly, because you bring out both what's amazingly funny about him (the constant fear of bugs and mice and just about everything under the sun! the melodrama, storming away from home and getting all action movie on his captors! the slightly-embarrassing-but-adorable tendency to act all porn star in his seduction attempts, thank goodness Abed tends more towards confusion and endless Troy-love than ridicule!), and what's strong and lovable, what makes him both his own action-movie-hero (HE WILL CONFRONT HIS FEAR OF CREEPY CRAWLIES WHEN THE NEED IS GREAT ENOUGH! see: Fievel), and a captive who inspires so much love in his friends/partners that they'll drop everything to scour Colorado looking for him. I also love the way you wrote Troy's parents, who we've never met in canon but who just feel so tangibly real here, and his relationship with them, his mother showing her love and concern and acceptance in very taciturn, structured ways, there being realistic tension between the three of them that is really never as dramatic as it feels to Troy, idk. I just love everything about your characterization, really. :D
AND THIS COMMENT IS GETTING EMBARRASSINGLY LONG so I won't do a gigantic paragraph on all the other characters, but seriously, I could HEAR Shirley and Jeff and Britta's voices in my head when I read their dialogue, and I have no idea how you so successfully captured so darn many canon relationships (Jeff-Shirley, Jeff-Annie, Jeff-group, Britta-group, Britta-world), in every single interaction they shared. There were so many little moments between all of them that just swept me away with the funny and the vivid canonicity; when I wasn't completely focused on finding out what was gonna happen, I was reading this with a huge grin on my face the whole time.
Speaking of my eagerness to know what would happen next - I want to emphasize how utterly absorbing and perfectly Community-esque I found the plot! A mundane case of college football sabotage, taken to an action-detective movie extreme, with twists and turns and ridonkulosities like a whole weed grove ready for Britta's taking and a character named Pluckenpole who no one can stop laughing at. It was just simultaneously so tight and so FUN, so entertaining and so human, and there were just as many wonderful little details and fast-paced moments of humor coming at the reader in a constant stream as any episode of Community. I love this fic to delightful little pieces. *___*
(IF I ACTUALLY GET MYSELF TO POST I WILL BE RECCING THIS. FYI. lol, I'm telling you so that if I don't post you'll at least know I loved this enough to WANT to rec it ;___;)