Fic recs
Disney Princesses
you’re gonna leave them all behind: nextin (cosmogyral)
The Disney princesses as a league of superheroes, and very capable they are too. Sticks it to the idea of what a girl should aspire to be and offers a much cooler, richer alternative.
ER
Repeat One: anxietygrrl Neela, Neela/Ray season 14 AU.
Neela, slowly coming to realisations about her regrets and feelings, after.
Last year...well, there wasn't really a name for it, was there? You couldn't even call it a bad break-up. Maybe you could finally get over it if you could give it a name. You have to get over it someday, don't you? You can't walk around feeling half-hollow for the rest of your life.
Neela's voice is fabulous.
Pause/Resume: anxietygrrl (Teen for language).
Post season 13 AU. Ray's POV. Three years have passed...this is marvellous, and like all marvellous Ray/Neela fic, reminds me of why I love this ship.
Glee
World Famous Sugar Cookies: cassprincess (rated Teen, but I’d say it’s closer to R, for language and sexual situations) Rachel/Puck crack fic
AU set in a Lima where Rachel Berry and Noah Puckerman first meet in Jewish summer camp aged around 10-11...yes, that’s Rachel and Puck meeting and kind of becoming friends as kids, and the way that affects their lives at McKinley High. Hilarious at times (Puck’s mother is GOLDEN), for me it’s essential crackiness and the laughs made up for issues such as sustaining the link to canon - the reconciliation between canon and the set-up improves in later chapters - and some SPAG errors.
stranger in a strange land: ms_chak
Lovely look at a possible future for Mercedes (commentfic)
if you know you can't beat them, then: ohladybegood Puck and the Glee club. R for language
Puck. Despite himself. This is great.
The Good Wife
without any sense of strategies: mardia Will/Alicia adult
Great characterisation of a post-divorce Will and Alicia.
HP
i just want to feel some sunshine: honey_wheeler
Ron/Hermione, AU end of HBP scene. SO THEM! Lovely.
Brush Strokes: attilatehbun
Dean/Luna post DH. Gorgeous fic about these two, full of acceptance and growth
He covers the hand resting on his chest with his own and waits for her to finish, because he's known her a decently long time and knows how to differentiate between the pauses where she's waiting for someone to say something and the pauses where she's thinking about the rest of her thought. (He can also tell the difference between those and the ones where she's concerned about Wrackspurts. But those are usually accompanied by flailing, so they're a bit easier.)
Inception
Untitled Ariadne/Arthur ficlet: froda-baggins
Says so much about them and their interaction in slivers of vignettes.
virginia woolf: fated-addiction Mal-centric.
Really, really powerful work.
Leverage
Trying Not to Think: meredevachon Elliot/Sophie UST ficlet
Well-characterised look at Elliot NOT thinking about Sophie.
The Underwire Job: emeraldwoman Eliot, Parker/Hardison
Parker inveigles Eliot into helping her to get Hardsion to sleep with her. It is HILARIOUS and awesome and totally in-character (Parker numbering the kittens rather than naming them says it all).
The OC
An Evening of T&A: chazper
T&A being Townsend and Atwood. What's impressive is that this pairs them off before the show did, but echoes what canon went and did beautifully and I think that's as a result of the excellent grasp of the characters. It's hilarious, as Taylor bulldozes Ryan out of his post-season-3 cave as only she could, but also touching. I particularly love that here we have a Ryan who stands up to and for Taylor.
Penelope
When Pigs Spread Their Wings and Fly: yuletidefairy
How Penelope went about discovering all the (pig-related) things she never knew, with the help of Annie and Johnny.
Push
Got Me Walkin A Wire: mercurysbard
Nick-centric ficlet with instantly adoptable backstory that nails his voice and does subtle, fab things with his POV of the situation once Cassie marches into his life.
Rilla of Ingleside
Your Voice Like a Trembling Sound: embroiderama
A Rilla/Ken fic that picks up beautifully and thoughtfully from the book as it relates Rilla’s life as a new wife in a new city, in the new post-war world.
Sunshine (Robin McKinley)
Hands and Heart: genarti
A lovely, warming piece of backstory that explores Sunshine's love of baking.
True Grit (2010)
Amazingly, delightfully, there's more fic than I expected for this fandom, and a lot of it long, that captures the distinctive voice of this movie adaptation and decides not to end the Mattie and LaBoeuf relationship where the film did.
We Have No Rodeo Clowns in Yell County: saraht Mattie/LaBoeuf futurefic.
"As I grew into a young lady, I was not much troubled with suitors."
This nails Mattie's voice, her way of telling it like she sees it, but, a few years after she came home, having avenged her father and lost her arm, that vision may be blighted a little by the realistically limited opportunities for her to make use of her talents in her day (grr). And then LaBoeuf pays a visit...
Great characterisation and writing and a lovely feel to it.
Oh How Bright The Path: xcgirl08
Mattie/LaBoeuf ish
Excellent, absorbing character work, as Mattie, recovering in her bed at the doctor’s house, gets a visitor. (Seriously, it’s excellent. To paraphrase another reviewer, I'm at a loss to explain how excellent it is.)
What a Friend is Mine: prologue: xcgirl08 Mattie/LaBoeuf ish
I don’t normally rec (or read, if I can help it) WIPs, but this prologue is a satisfying read in and of itself and longer than most fics I read these days. It follows on from 'Oh How Bright the Path", and is about the correspondence that springs up between Mattie and LaBoeuf after she returns home and he returns to Texas. The back-and-forth and the way their relationship develops is great, but we also get context; the details, historical and domestic, add richness in an excellent fic (and I can’t wait for the story to continue).
A Long Time Travelling Away From Home: lindentree
Mattie/LaBoeuf (long, this takes you to the first of two parts)
Setting aside my “grudge” with this fic for not leading to the kind of blazing happiness that I sort of want fix-it fics to provide, what it is is wonderful.
I was confounded by Mattie Ross the day I made her acquaintance. She confounds me still.
LaBoeuf is the perfect narrator for this story and the author gets him so right. Great writing.