Fic recs!
Title: Hypothetically: Wolfsbane, by JenNova
Author: JenNova
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7086
Summary: “So,” Stiles says, resting his elbows on his knees and settling his chin in his hands. “Hypothetical then: one of you guys gets dosed with some sex wolfsbane - how do we deal with it?”
AO3
I found this fic by happenstance, and man. There are a lot of things I loved about this fic, and the wicked hot sex isn't even top of the list. First up, man, I adored how incredibly concerned both Derek and Stiles were about consent in this fic. First, in deciding on their "sex buddy" system to try to ameliorate any concerns about consent, and then in the second half, when the hypothetical becomes actual, and they both spend the whole encounter checking in with each other about whether what they're doing is okay, and they're still consenting to it. Consent is sexy, and this fic proves it.
There's also a really quiet dynamic to this pairing that I really enjoyed. They reflect at one point about the trust that's built between them canonically -- about Stiles nearly cutting Derek's arm off because Derek asked him to, about Stiles treading water with Derek in the pool for hours in order to keep him above water, about the numerous times Derek's saved Stiles's life in the course of the show. There's a respect and a fondness between them in this fic that I really loved. They feel like friends, and that's refreshing in the tide of fics that just have Derek and Stiles at characters that gripe at and then want each other.
There's also a one-line mention about Lydia creating cans of wolfsbane mace for the whole gang to use to keep themselves safe than made me flail with delight. I love when Lydia is written as genius and competent and badass as she is. I love fics that focus on Lyda and her own special brand of fabulousness, but when that isn't possible and isn't the point of a fic, I really love when her badassery is still mentioned the way this is, off-hand, like it's so routine that it's not even worth spending time on, because of course Lydia is genius and competent and badass. Love love love.
And lastly -- oh my god, the geekiness. This fic isn't ostentatious about it, it does it like it does much of the other things I loved -- quietly, naturally. But holy cow, both Stiles and Derek are such geeks in this fic, and I adore it. From Stiles and Derek both using kryptonite as a shared metaphor to discuss the way that different kinds of wolfsbane have different kinds of effects, to Stiles's awareness of fanfiction and its tropes, to Stiles being a Merlin fan, to deciding that the sex pollen kryptonite should be code named "red kryptonite" (because it's the kind that turns Superman into a dick, oh my god, Derek), Stiles is huge, huge geek in this, and my favorite part is the way that Derek absolutely keeps pace with him and catches all (okay, most) of his references, and there isn't even a big deal made of it. Man, I love secretly-a-geek!Derek.
Title: The Elizabeth Bennet Experience
Author: zeen
Fandom: Lost in Austen
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 3602
Summary: Elizabeth Bennet becomes a blogger. This is her story. (No, her other story.)
AO3
Meta fic is a difficult sell for me -- it has to strike a fine balance between crack and seriousness, and this fic dances back and forth across that line but at the end of the day, it really works for me. There's a lot of charm in Lost in Austen, and Zeen gets that charm across while looking at the opposite side of the story -- Elizabeth Bennet's self-narrated discovery of the modern world and modern culture. It really made me wish that we got a miniseries showing this half of the story, too.
It's written in the form of LiveJournal entries, and Lizzie's voice is fantastic. I really love how the author stayed faithful to the same tone and word choice and diction that's inherent to Pride and Prejudice, it gave a wonderful feel to the story. And I particularly love that even as Lizzie became more and more acclimated to modern life, she still kept a lot of her same patterns of speech! I love the language of Austen's era, and I'd have been sad if Lizzie had abandoned it completely in favor of "speaking" like a modern woman. Instead, we get a delightful mix of the two -- and I will pretty much never get over Lizzie signing off one of her blog posts with C u l8ers.
As Lizzie would say -- it slays me. (And boy, was that another exchange that made me literally laugh out loud. There are so many little moments in this fic that are just delightful. I'd cite them all here, but I'm afraid I'd just end up quoting the whole thing in its entirety.)
Another part I particularly adored was Lizzie's appreciation of a curly-haired boy who made her feel homesick for Longbourne, and her observation that "these moderns care not a bit for a good curl." As a person who both has curly hair and loves it on attractive men (*cough*George Blagden*cough*), that little aside really spoke to my soul. We need more boys with curls!
If there was anything I didn't like, I'd have to say that it's the appearance of Fitz D'Arcy and the implication of future romance between him and Lizzie. It felt a little heavy-handed and predictable -- as soon as he showed up and introduced himself as Fitz, I knew where it was going, and it made me sigh. Considering how the whole of Lost in Austen revolves around Amanda expecting Lizzie and Darcy to get together, and working to make that happen, and how the story foils her at every turn, I felt like having Lizzie match up with a descendant of Darcy's negated some of that, which is a shame, because I'd thought it was a refreshing change.
Still, though, it's a minor gripe, and a small portion of the fic, and the rest of the story is more than delightful enough to make up for that one complaint! I really love this glimpse of a period Lizzie who embraces modern life wholeheartedly and falls in love with it, the same way that Amanda has fallen in love with Longbourne and the world of Austen.
Title: les amis Collective
Author: Ark
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Grantaire
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 11125
Summary: Enjolras is the leader of les amis, a notorious team of anarchist computer hackers. Grantaire is an artist living in New York City. The prank online dating profile in Enjolras' name is probably Courfeyrac's fault.
AO3
In which Les Amis is a group of anarchist computer hackers taking down corrupt politicians, Enjolras is their workaholic leader, someone makes him a profile on a dating site for a prank, and Grantaire is an artist who the site's algorithms say is Enjolras's absolute worst match possible. So of course they decide to try a date.
Okay, so. THIS FIC. Holy crap, this fic. (Actually, to be honest, this whole series. They are all absolutely fabulous and I wait with bated breath for every new update.) I really really love the idea of Les Amis as an Anonymous-esque group of hacker activists, and the characterization of Enjolras in this is just phenomenal. I love his dedication, his single-mindedness, the way he lets his obsession with work overtake absolutely everything else -- and I love the way that, when "absolutely everything else" starts to include the rest of the Amis, they stick up for themselves and call them on his bullshit.
And then make him a profile on a dating site. Just for laughs. Oh darlings.
I love the fact that the password for the profile is "relax". I love that Grantaire is the sort of person who'd decide to rebel against the algorithm and reach out to the person who the algorithms say is his least-compatible match. I love his rambly, personable letter to this complete stranger, and it fits perfectly with his characterization later in the fic, when he actually shows up on-screen. And I love how Enjolras is charmed despite himself, how he has almost a third-person viewpoint on his actions, as though watching himself respond to Grantaire's overture from a distance.
And that Enjolras thinks he is "underwear-model hot". It's pretty standard to get Grantaire mooning over Enjolras's hotness, but it's less ubiquitous to get the reverse, and I really enjoyed that! It's a nice setup for the wicked-hot sex coming up later in the fic...
Other things I particularly appreciated: How well the author established how thoroughly different Enjolras and Grantaire are. The way that Grantaire's instinct to flaunt the algorithm is to reach out, where Enjolras's is to pull it apart and analyze the code and run statistics. The way that Grantaire is open and honest and earnest, and Enjolras is all about secrets and being emotionally guarded. The way that Enjolras lives on the computer, and Grantaire is a complete luddite. (And that aspect is a refreshing change, too! I don't know that I've ever read Grantaire written as a technophile, but I've never seen him written as this much of a technophobe, either, and I quite loved it.)
And I love that when they first get together, they don't get along at all. They clash and spark exactly the way that you would expect complete opposites to do so, and it's almost a disaster, until they decide to say fuck the small talk and grab onto their sexual chemistry with both hands. Because boy howdy, have they got that in spades. And the sex is wickedly, ridiculously hot, and I love that they're able to find common ground through that, that in this case, it's sexual chemistry that leads to figuring out how to work their emotional compatibility.
Also, considering later installments, I love Grantaire's assertion that he's "kinda vanilla". Oh honey.
Author: JenNova
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7086
Summary: “So,” Stiles says, resting his elbows on his knees and settling his chin in his hands. “Hypothetical then: one of you guys gets dosed with some sex wolfsbane - how do we deal with it?”
AO3
I found this fic by happenstance, and man. There are a lot of things I loved about this fic, and the wicked hot sex isn't even top of the list. First up, man, I adored how incredibly concerned both Derek and Stiles were about consent in this fic. First, in deciding on their "sex buddy" system to try to ameliorate any concerns about consent, and then in the second half, when the hypothetical becomes actual, and they both spend the whole encounter checking in with each other about whether what they're doing is okay, and they're still consenting to it. Consent is sexy, and this fic proves it.
There's also a really quiet dynamic to this pairing that I really enjoyed. They reflect at one point about the trust that's built between them canonically -- about Stiles nearly cutting Derek's arm off because Derek asked him to, about Stiles treading water with Derek in the pool for hours in order to keep him above water, about the numerous times Derek's saved Stiles's life in the course of the show. There's a respect and a fondness between them in this fic that I really loved. They feel like friends, and that's refreshing in the tide of fics that just have Derek and Stiles at characters that gripe at and then want each other.
There's also a one-line mention about Lydia creating cans of wolfsbane mace for the whole gang to use to keep themselves safe than made me flail with delight. I love when Lydia is written as genius and competent and badass as she is. I love fics that focus on Lyda and her own special brand of fabulousness, but when that isn't possible and isn't the point of a fic, I really love when her badassery is still mentioned the way this is, off-hand, like it's so routine that it's not even worth spending time on, because of course Lydia is genius and competent and badass. Love love love.
And lastly -- oh my god, the geekiness. This fic isn't ostentatious about it, it does it like it does much of the other things I loved -- quietly, naturally. But holy cow, both Stiles and Derek are such geeks in this fic, and I adore it. From Stiles and Derek both using kryptonite as a shared metaphor to discuss the way that different kinds of wolfsbane have different kinds of effects, to Stiles's awareness of fanfiction and its tropes, to Stiles being a Merlin fan, to deciding that the sex pollen kryptonite should be code named "red kryptonite" (because it's the kind that turns Superman into a dick, oh my god, Derek), Stiles is huge, huge geek in this, and my favorite part is the way that Derek absolutely keeps pace with him and catches all (okay, most) of his references, and there isn't even a big deal made of it. Man, I love secretly-a-geek!Derek.
Title: The Elizabeth Bennet Experience
Author: zeen
Fandom: Lost in Austen
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 3602
Summary: Elizabeth Bennet becomes a blogger. This is her story. (No, her other story.)
AO3
Meta fic is a difficult sell for me -- it has to strike a fine balance between crack and seriousness, and this fic dances back and forth across that line but at the end of the day, it really works for me. There's a lot of charm in Lost in Austen, and Zeen gets that charm across while looking at the opposite side of the story -- Elizabeth Bennet's self-narrated discovery of the modern world and modern culture. It really made me wish that we got a miniseries showing this half of the story, too.
It's written in the form of LiveJournal entries, and Lizzie's voice is fantastic. I really love how the author stayed faithful to the same tone and word choice and diction that's inherent to Pride and Prejudice, it gave a wonderful feel to the story. And I particularly love that even as Lizzie became more and more acclimated to modern life, she still kept a lot of her same patterns of speech! I love the language of Austen's era, and I'd have been sad if Lizzie had abandoned it completely in favor of "speaking" like a modern woman. Instead, we get a delightful mix of the two -- and I will pretty much never get over Lizzie signing off one of her blog posts with C u l8ers.
As Lizzie would say -- it slays me. (And boy, was that another exchange that made me literally laugh out loud. There are so many little moments in this fic that are just delightful. I'd cite them all here, but I'm afraid I'd just end up quoting the whole thing in its entirety.)
Another part I particularly adored was Lizzie's appreciation of a curly-haired boy who made her feel homesick for Longbourne, and her observation that "these moderns care not a bit for a good curl." As a person who both has curly hair and loves it on attractive men (*cough*George Blagden*cough*), that little aside really spoke to my soul. We need more boys with curls!
If there was anything I didn't like, I'd have to say that it's the appearance of Fitz D'Arcy and the implication of future romance between him and Lizzie. It felt a little heavy-handed and predictable -- as soon as he showed up and introduced himself as Fitz, I knew where it was going, and it made me sigh. Considering how the whole of Lost in Austen revolves around Amanda expecting Lizzie and Darcy to get together, and working to make that happen, and how the story foils her at every turn, I felt like having Lizzie match up with a descendant of Darcy's negated some of that, which is a shame, because I'd thought it was a refreshing change.
Still, though, it's a minor gripe, and a small portion of the fic, and the rest of the story is more than delightful enough to make up for that one complaint! I really love this glimpse of a period Lizzie who embraces modern life wholeheartedly and falls in love with it, the same way that Amanda has fallen in love with Longbourne and the world of Austen.
Title: les amis Collective
Author: Ark
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Grantaire
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 11125
Summary: Enjolras is the leader of les amis, a notorious team of anarchist computer hackers. Grantaire is an artist living in New York City. The prank online dating profile in Enjolras' name is probably Courfeyrac's fault.
AO3
In which Les Amis is a group of anarchist computer hackers taking down corrupt politicians, Enjolras is their workaholic leader, someone makes him a profile on a dating site for a prank, and Grantaire is an artist who the site's algorithms say is Enjolras's absolute worst match possible. So of course they decide to try a date.
Okay, so. THIS FIC. Holy crap, this fic. (Actually, to be honest, this whole series. They are all absolutely fabulous and I wait with bated breath for every new update.) I really really love the idea of Les Amis as an Anonymous-esque group of hacker activists, and the characterization of Enjolras in this is just phenomenal. I love his dedication, his single-mindedness, the way he lets his obsession with work overtake absolutely everything else -- and I love the way that, when "absolutely everything else" starts to include the rest of the Amis, they stick up for themselves and call them on his bullshit.
And then make him a profile on a dating site. Just for laughs. Oh darlings.
I love the fact that the password for the profile is "relax". I love that Grantaire is the sort of person who'd decide to rebel against the algorithm and reach out to the person who the algorithms say is his least-compatible match. I love his rambly, personable letter to this complete stranger, and it fits perfectly with his characterization later in the fic, when he actually shows up on-screen. And I love how Enjolras is charmed despite himself, how he has almost a third-person viewpoint on his actions, as though watching himself respond to Grantaire's overture from a distance.
And that Enjolras thinks he is "underwear-model hot". It's pretty standard to get Grantaire mooning over Enjolras's hotness, but it's less ubiquitous to get the reverse, and I really enjoyed that! It's a nice setup for the wicked-hot sex coming up later in the fic...
Other things I particularly appreciated: How well the author established how thoroughly different Enjolras and Grantaire are. The way that Grantaire's instinct to flaunt the algorithm is to reach out, where Enjolras's is to pull it apart and analyze the code and run statistics. The way that Grantaire is open and honest and earnest, and Enjolras is all about secrets and being emotionally guarded. The way that Enjolras lives on the computer, and Grantaire is a complete luddite. (And that aspect is a refreshing change, too! I don't know that I've ever read Grantaire written as a technophile, but I've never seen him written as this much of a technophobe, either, and I quite loved it.)
And I love that when they first get together, they don't get along at all. They clash and spark exactly the way that you would expect complete opposites to do so, and it's almost a disaster, until they decide to say fuck the small talk and grab onto their sexual chemistry with both hands. Because boy howdy, have they got that in spades. And the sex is wickedly, ridiculously hot, and I love that they're able to find common ground through that, that in this case, it's sexual chemistry that leads to figuring out how to work their emotional compatibility.
Also, considering later installments, I love Grantaire's assertion that he's "kinda vanilla". Oh honey.