RareWomen 2013 Recommendations

[brightknightie]

Weeks ago, I promised recommendations from the rarewomen fest, when I'd read enough to know what I was talking about. Naturally, I poked around only in my own fandoms, but from them, here are my own favorites:

• Young Blades: "What isn't Being Said" by
  lady_ragnall (3K words, gen, PG), starring Jacqueline and Queen Anne. This is the story written for my request in the game. As previously discussed, this brave author ventured into the tiniest of fandoms and deserves much love and support for her canon-aware journey through the series, establishing a series of perceptive "missing scenes" in which Jacqueline and Queen Anne dance around their respective secrets of identity, until a satisfying insert into the "we'll say it all links up here" finale. (I still owe her extensive comments, and I will yet deliver them.)
• Castle: "Come (Back) Saturday Morning" by
  Gray_Cardinal (4K words, gen, G), starring Martha, with original characters and cameos by the usual suspects. Set in Martha's world, this fun, canon-like romp serves up red herrings and deductive banter - sans murder, but plus cartoons and a fan con! I don't read much Castle, but I watch it, and this one rang true, from motives to passing pop-culture references.
• Star Trek: "Waiting" by
  zarabithia (2K words, gen, PG), starring Saavik, with T'Pol, Number One and Amanda Grayson. The author gives Spock a flash of brilliant insight, having him bring Enterprise's T'Pol to Saavik to convey a lesson perhaps no other Vulcan could. Similarly, the use of Number One satisfies deep symmetries in the spirit of the fest.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: "One's Best" by
  coralysendria (6K words, gen, PG), starring Alyssa Ogawa, with Lwaxana Troi and Beverly Crusher. This is a TNG "B-plot," straight up. It brings all the appropriate, familiar characters and resonances, and nestles down in Ogawa's neglected corner of canon to knit together some loose ends and tie a tidy, Trekly-unsubtle moral on top.
• Ivanhoe: "Apart Yet Not Afar" by
  Zdenka (5K words, gen, PG13), starring Rebecca of York. Blooming out of the time constraints of a pinch-hit, this coda adventure achieves enchanting fidelity in tone, canon and narrative voice, with effective (yet unintrusive) identification of the inexcusable in canon and history.

My own contribution was the sole Highlander entry, "Yet There Are Many by
brightknightie (3K words, gen, PG13), starring Michelle Webster (from "Rite of Passage"); I should have found time to write the anecdotes ("tell") as proper flashbacks ("show"). However, I also got to beta the sole Being Human (North America) entry, "Ghosts in the Corridors" by
skieswideopen (4K words, gen, PG), which was very interesting, as I know only the UK incarnation of that series.

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