(no subject)
Driving home from dinner at my parents' there was lightning every three seconds. Yes, I counted. No, I am not exaggerating. Weirdly, it was only barely raining, though, so after I got used to the flashes it wasn't too bad.
Criminal Minds
Knock on Coffins (gen)
--> A casefile, about a man who is murdering homosexual couples. It's a well-constructed casefile, clever and quick, but it's all the little side details of the people, both on the team and not, that make this story (much the way they make the show itself).
Lucky (gen)
--> This is a casefile fic from the ruler of CM casefiles fics, centered around the women of the BAU, with a case that is really, genuinely, disturbingly creepy. It's also brilliantly written, and I'd say that it's not any more triggery than Criminal Minds ever is and is probably a great deal less, but the bombshell of the pathology hits your brain like a rock in a still pond and the ripples spread throughout the rest of the story.
School Daze (gen)
--> This is a gen casefile story, that deals with queer themes and high school, two great tastes that taste like everybody's bad memories together. It's a story about Spencer's percieved self-weakness, and how bad Emily is at keeping secrets, and how much of a team they are even when they piss each other off, because they're always there for each other. The casefile is brilliant, and Emily and Spencer both shine in this, but the little bits of Morgan (and, at the very end, Hotch) being oh-so-very human are what really makes it for me, along with the tiny snapshots of each team member throughout the story.
Supernatural
Before Your Time Has Run Astray (gen)
--> This is a combination of touching and hilarious, mostly hilarious. Post-Swan Song, Adam and Sam both come back, only Sam refuses to go back to Dean so instead he stalks Adam, who just wants to be left the hell alone. Adam's POV in this is killer, just utterly bitchy and cutting and brilliant, especially when paired against Sam's misguided earnestness. I love, love, love the ending, especially. They'll make a Winchester out of him yet.
but thank the stars we are entwined (Sam/Dean)
--> A story about Dean and tattoos, starting from the anti-possession and going on from there. Sam keeps obsessively picking out new tattoos for Dean, and Dean keeps getting a little sad because he wants cool tattoos to show off to hot bartenders (of either gender) and Sam won't let him, and he's just basically epically clueless about Sam's intentions. Sweet, hot, smile-inducing.
Desired (Sam/Dean)
--> This is porn that's all about the intricate nuts and bolts of the functionality of their shared kink; it's about how regular sex (admittedly: incest) can develop into the unique patterns of these two particular people in a sexual relationship. The kink isn't really anything in particular, it's more about the headspace for both of them, the way their issues interlock and occasionally become compatible: Sam wants to give Dean what he needs, and Dean wants Sam to provide it. The "what" is less important than the "how," which is why brain!porn always works so much better for me than simple tab A, slot B.
Don't look back (it's a funeral) (Sam/Dean)
-->Oh man, a post-Swan Song story that's just absolutely killer. I like the bit about Dean continuing to go to church just so he could be angry at God, and the bits about his relationship with Lisa and being a dad for Ben, but then Sam shows back up. And Dean is just utterly ignoring Sam's presence, won't talk about him, anything, and the punchline of why is just bittersweet and awesome. It's a very Dean kind of story.
Immigrant Song (Dean/Castiel)
--> This is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, a BigBang story that's structured into episode format following the start of a hypothetical season six where Castiel is fallen and Anna and Gabriel are both brought back. It's a look at a premise offered, briefly, in Hammer of the Gods: there are other pantheons out there, waned but still powerful, and now that Heaven and Hell have both retreated, they're staging a comeback. There are parts that don't hang as well together as I would have liked, but I think that's more the format, the way the episodic stuff works better as weekly visual medium and doesn't hold up quite as well read in one chunk, but I loved everything she did enough that I genuinely didn't care. Dean has a crisis of sexuality (oddly absent from most SPN fanfic) and Castiel isn't as patient as he appears, and Sam just wants to get on with their lives and for everything, for once, to work out for them. The plot of the last chapter just killed me, because I caught the hints going on but I TOTALLY didn't see where she was going with it, and it was so, so worth the ride. The ending was just a perfect circle for the entire story, and I am a sucker for stories that tie themselves together like that. Just, so much love.
Nutshell (Sam/Dean)
--> Post-Swan Song, Dean tries, really hard, to adjust to real life, but even he knows that he's mostly doing it so that he doesn't give in and kill himself. Then Sam is back, and all Dean wants is for him to release his promise, so Dean doesn't have to leave him again. Sad, a little achy, sweet and heartfelt.
Right Behind Me As Before (Sam/Dean)
--> Post-Point of No Return, Dean goes off into the junkyard to think and Sam follows him. Dean's headspace is what got to me here, the ways he's finally feeling like he's coming back to life after everything that went wrong, and the ways that all of that is centered around Sam. Lovely.
The incestuous courtship of the antichrist's bride (Sam/Dean)
--> What can I say about this that hasn't already been said? This made the rounds of the fandom and recieved all the praise that it so richly deserves a year ago, and I lost it in the wasteland of my to-read folder until just recently. It's absolutely, hysterically, laugh-out-loud and choke-for-air funny. It has Uriel as the wedding planner of the apocalypse, and Sam getting drunk and rambling about his epic love for Dean to a very patient Lucifer, and Ruby is his best man, and Sam keeps getting summoned naked by his adoring cults (which schismed in order to better schedule some WoW raiding on Tuesday nights) and it's just, yeah. But underneath all the hilarity, the bit that makes it all work, is the fact that when Lucifer asks who sam loves most, Dean's name is the first on his list, and even throughout everything, that doesn't change.
This Fortress Made of Us (Sam/Dean)
--> This is post-Mystery Spot fic done right, with Sam being utterly freaked and kind of clingy, and Dean kind of bemused and easygoing about it. The tension between them builds slow and sweet, and I especially like Dean in this, just sort of patient and affectionate and waiting for Sam to catch up.
This thing of ours (Sam/Dean)
--> This is an AU where instead of being a family of demon hunters, the Winchesters are one of the most notorious crime families in the US. What works so well here is that Sam is still, basically, Sam, there's very little change, which is sort of fascinating and revealing about how canon!Sam views hunting in the first season. Dean, however, is what really shines in this, because he's charming and brutal and loyal and loving and cruel, and it doesn't seem like he could possibly contain all these contradictions but he can. He's still the Dean Winchester who hunts, and he's still the Dean Winchester who loves his brother more than anything; it's just that he's no longer the Dean Winchester who saves people. What a killer story.
Under Hill (Sam/Dean)
--> This is an old favorite that must have gotten lost somewhere in bookmarks wasteland. Fairies make Dean and Sam lose their memories, and Sam decides that due to circumstances (their hotel room with only one bed) they must be a couple. While working the case and fulfilling three tasks to get their memories back, Dean slowly gives in, because the emotions are there, he feels like he loves this person more than anyone else in the world. You know they're going to get their memories back, and maybe the ending isn't that surprising, but it's getting there that's more than half the fun, it's Dean's headspace and the awful, terrible feeling you get watching him decide it's okay to be happy and knowing how he's going to feel about it when he remembers.
Glee
sick and tired of being sick and tired (gen)
--> This is Rachel who gets diagnosed with fibromyalgia, right on the cusp of her big breakthrough into Broadway. It's a multimedia story, the whole thing done in text messages and emails and journal posts and facebook and so on, and it just barely touches around the edges of everybody's lives, but it packs a wallop. And the ending makes me smile.
Stargate: Atlantis
Happy (McKay/Sheppard)
--> Rodney touches a device that's supposed to just release "unhappy memories," and he forgets things like Wraith encounters, and his citrust allergy- and John. No one else, just John. There are so many harsh edges between them here, John grieving and Rodney suspicious as everyone's trying to figure out why Rodney forgot his ebst friend, and, okay, it's kind of obvious to the reader from really early on, but getting to the reveal is half the fun. And it takes them forever to get anywhere, and the story sucked me in and became a lot more sincere than I was predicting, and the scene where Rodney has the option of getting his memory back but forgetting everything that happened in the last two weeks is just desperately poignant. The one line that really sums it all up, for me, is when John tells him that Rodney was still him, and Rodney shouts back that he didn't remember John, how the hell could he still be the same? The final happy ending, though, is just awesome, with so much awkwardness and differing memories and stuff between them, until they can finally just cut through the crap and be, well, happy.
Star Trek: TOS
only logical (Kirk/Spock)
--> This is a really fantastic story, just sort of slow and sweet, about Kirk hitting his forty-fifth birthday, teaching at the Academy, and trying to force himself to adjust to the fact that he doesn't necessarily have first claim to Spock anymore. There's a really fantastic OC in a cadet that Kirk basically adopts, and it reminds me a lot of the very best of Doyleist Holmes fanfic, where all the conversations are just so smooth and clever and bantery with a lot of emotion underneath. Just, fantastic.
unintended (Kirk/Spock)
--> Weirdly, this is the kind of story that I always wanted from Trek and (personally) was always left wanting. It showcases Kirk and Spock being excellent both at their jobs and as people, and it really captures the epic nature of their relationship in the little details. Essentially, Spock is starting to feel distracted by Captain, and Kirk is worrying that he's not giving Spock his entire trust the way Spock so clearly deserves, and when the two of them settle in for Vulcan yoga that includes a very brief mind-meld, things get out of hand. This is Kirk and Spock exactly as I want them to be, just exactly like this, highly intelligent and capable and devoted and, well, epic.
CSI: NY
The Scientific Method (Mac/Danny)
--> I'm a total sucker for an unreliable narrator, and this story therefore works for me because this is a story in which Danny is very, very dense. Everyone around him understands Mac's motives except him, but it works nonetheless. It's about the aftermath of the Tangelwood case, and Danny pining kind of obviously, and just going along, but slowly things are changing between him and Mac. And when he finally figures it out, at the very end, it's the "I love you" without actually needing to say the words, which is another literary kink of mine.
Smallville
Hideaway (Clark/Lex)
--> A futurefic in which Lex forces Clark to take a vacation, and Clark forces Lex to come with him to make sure he doesn't do anything sinister while he's gone. While on their little island they spend a while absolutely failing to laze around, but uniting to take down an unexpected threat changes the entire tenor of the piece, pulling it into sharp longing that eventually snaps. A story to put a smile on my face, with a happy ending.
DCU
Down to Zero (Dick/Roy)
--> Deathstroke takes Roy captive, and Dick has to consider some bad options in order to get him back. Afterward, they find themselves alone, carving out a little space for peace, and address a lot of the problems that went wrong for DIck in the last year or two. I can only wish that something like this had happened in canon, honestly. Who better to understand this kind of mess than Roy?
they shall have stars at elbow and foot (Dick/Jason)
--> This is an AU where Jason is Cambodian and Selina is Taiwanese, a thief who liberates artifacts that were taken from their home countries years ago. She adopts him, trains him, takes him on as a partner, and years later he has some extremely entertaining run-ins with Robin.
Merlin
Doubled Over with the Hunger of Lions (Arthur/Merlin)
--> Okay, this is a little hard to explain, because it's one of those stories that you don't just read, you experience, but I shall try. Arthur and Merlin get hit with a changeable curse that's been sweeping over the land with the wind, and it requires them to have sex every few days or become very ill. The story starts in the aftermath and builds into sharp tension over and over again, until the tension begins to transmute into something softer and sweet, until both of them, unconsciously or not, begin to choose instead of just give in.
Fringe
Five Things Peter Remembered (In)correctly (gen)
--> Oh, this story is just sharp enough to cut. The two universes are close, but there are clearly inconsistencies, and this is a collection of Peter encountering those inconsistencies. There's a tiny fraction of hope, at the very end, a tiny look at how much this Walter loves his son, but it's very subtle and brilliantly done.
Frequency (Peter/Olivia)
--> After season two, Peter can hear his Olivia, the real Olivia, reaching out to him, and so he listens. Concisely illustrates every single thing I love about the dynamic between them, and the last line gets me every time.
Make a Deal with God (Peter/Olivia)
--> If the start of season three is anything half as good as this, I will be one satisfied fan. This is FauxLivia trying to adjust to the other side, trying to carry out her assignment and not give into the threatening sympathy she feels for these people and this world. It's Olivia suffering in confinement, and everyone in this world feeling just a degree off correct around FauxLivia, and slowly coming to the horrifying realization. It's excellent in the way they can put so much meaning into a single small line, like She wants a strawberry. And it's about Peter having one guiding constant in making his choices, and Walter not capable of telling him no, and Olivia just wanting to go home. It's just fantastic, and even though the style is very different it felt like a really amazing two-part episode in the way it's structured, till I felt breathless by the end, waiting for it to end happy. (Spoiler: it did.)
Marvel Movieverse
Growing Season (Tony/Pepper)
--> Post-IM2, Tony keeps bringing Pepper fruit and eventually, he gets it right. A short and sweet look at them trying to develop an actual relationship.
Star Trek Reboot
One of a Kind (Kirk/Spock)
--> Kirk and Spock, with three planets, each other their own wonders and beauties. It's a slow, sweet kind of story, one that really makes me smile, because it smooths over a lot of the crazy intensity that they were rocking in the movie, into something that's a working relationship, and then friendship, and then more. The theme is things that are rare and wonderful, from the only silicate-based species, to a plant on the verge of extinction, to Spock, who is "one of a kind" in more ways than just his biology.
Torchwood
tell rock n’ roll i’m alone again (Owen/Ianto)
--> This is a rock star AU. And despite all the ways that it could have been ridiculous, or campy, or just good silly fun, this story went a different route, and pulled out all the petty and disturbing and dysfunctional things that made the show so compelling, and mixed them in with the fucked-up life of a touring band, and hit blend. This felt like a really brilliant remix, somehow, in the way the author used all the episode titles as song titles, and all the characters were there and perfect versions of themselves, but with a knife-like little twist. I just loved this to little tiny pieces, and felt that it explored Susie and her madness and suicide a lot better than the show did, honestly. Just, awesome.
Harry Potter
Fear and Loathing at the Phoenix (Harry/Draco)
--> This is what would happen if Harry Potter and Transmetropolitan were to breed with Hunter S. Thompson. Years later, Harry is a Journalist in constant search of some Truth, and Draco is his (much-needed) lawyer (and lover). This could be an absolutely silly story, and to some measure it is, but that's part of the point. It's also a very profound piece of work, and says a lot of important things about whoring oneself out to a concept instead of thinking for oneself, about appropriating stories, about all the complicated and fascinating things about the public and private nature of heroes, and the ways they do and don't overlap. It's meta on both an in-character level and as a look at fans of the books; it manages to skewer the books, fandom, J.K. Rowling, all at once. I love this story because it's a lot of fun, but I love it more because it's fiendishly clever. There's nothing that suckers me in more than truly intelligent writing that doesn't lose its heart just because it's saying something important.
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Criminal Minds
Knock on Coffins (gen)
--> A casefile, about a man who is murdering homosexual couples. It's a well-constructed casefile, clever and quick, but it's all the little side details of the people, both on the team and not, that make this story (much the way they make the show itself).
Lucky (gen)
--> This is a casefile fic from the ruler of CM casefiles fics, centered around the women of the BAU, with a case that is really, genuinely, disturbingly creepy. It's also brilliantly written, and I'd say that it's not any more triggery than Criminal Minds ever is and is probably a great deal less, but the bombshell of the pathology hits your brain like a rock in a still pond and the ripples spread throughout the rest of the story.
School Daze (gen)
--> This is a gen casefile story, that deals with queer themes and high school, two great tastes that taste like everybody's bad memories together. It's a story about Spencer's percieved self-weakness, and how bad Emily is at keeping secrets, and how much of a team they are even when they piss each other off, because they're always there for each other. The casefile is brilliant, and Emily and Spencer both shine in this, but the little bits of Morgan (and, at the very end, Hotch) being oh-so-very human are what really makes it for me, along with the tiny snapshots of each team member throughout the story.
Supernatural
Before Your Time Has Run Astray (gen)
--> This is a combination of touching and hilarious, mostly hilarious. Post-Swan Song, Adam and Sam both come back, only Sam refuses to go back to Dean so instead he stalks Adam, who just wants to be left the hell alone. Adam's POV in this is killer, just utterly bitchy and cutting and brilliant, especially when paired against Sam's misguided earnestness. I love, love, love the ending, especially. They'll make a Winchester out of him yet.
but thank the stars we are entwined (Sam/Dean)
--> A story about Dean and tattoos, starting from the anti-possession and going on from there. Sam keeps obsessively picking out new tattoos for Dean, and Dean keeps getting a little sad because he wants cool tattoos to show off to hot bartenders (of either gender) and Sam won't let him, and he's just basically epically clueless about Sam's intentions. Sweet, hot, smile-inducing.
Desired (Sam/Dean)
--> This is porn that's all about the intricate nuts and bolts of the functionality of their shared kink; it's about how regular sex (admittedly: incest) can develop into the unique patterns of these two particular people in a sexual relationship. The kink isn't really anything in particular, it's more about the headspace for both of them, the way their issues interlock and occasionally become compatible: Sam wants to give Dean what he needs, and Dean wants Sam to provide it. The "what" is less important than the "how," which is why brain!porn always works so much better for me than simple tab A, slot B.
Don't look back (it's a funeral) (Sam/Dean)
-->Oh man, a post-Swan Song story that's just absolutely killer. I like the bit about Dean continuing to go to church just so he could be angry at God, and the bits about his relationship with Lisa and being a dad for Ben, but then Sam shows back up. And Dean is just utterly ignoring Sam's presence, won't talk about him, anything, and the punchline of why is just bittersweet and awesome. It's a very Dean kind of story.
Immigrant Song (Dean/Castiel)
--> This is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, a BigBang story that's structured into episode format following the start of a hypothetical season six where Castiel is fallen and Anna and Gabriel are both brought back. It's a look at a premise offered, briefly, in Hammer of the Gods: there are other pantheons out there, waned but still powerful, and now that Heaven and Hell have both retreated, they're staging a comeback. There are parts that don't hang as well together as I would have liked, but I think that's more the format, the way the episodic stuff works better as weekly visual medium and doesn't hold up quite as well read in one chunk, but I loved everything she did enough that I genuinely didn't care. Dean has a crisis of sexuality (oddly absent from most SPN fanfic) and Castiel isn't as patient as he appears, and Sam just wants to get on with their lives and for everything, for once, to work out for them. The plot of the last chapter just killed me, because I caught the hints going on but I TOTALLY didn't see where she was going with it, and it was so, so worth the ride. The ending was just a perfect circle for the entire story, and I am a sucker for stories that tie themselves together like that. Just, so much love.
Nutshell (Sam/Dean)
--> Post-Swan Song, Dean tries, really hard, to adjust to real life, but even he knows that he's mostly doing it so that he doesn't give in and kill himself. Then Sam is back, and all Dean wants is for him to release his promise, so Dean doesn't have to leave him again. Sad, a little achy, sweet and heartfelt.
Right Behind Me As Before (Sam/Dean)
--> Post-Point of No Return, Dean goes off into the junkyard to think and Sam follows him. Dean's headspace is what got to me here, the ways he's finally feeling like he's coming back to life after everything that went wrong, and the ways that all of that is centered around Sam. Lovely.
The incestuous courtship of the antichrist's bride (Sam/Dean)
--> What can I say about this that hasn't already been said? This made the rounds of the fandom and recieved all the praise that it so richly deserves a year ago, and I lost it in the wasteland of my to-read folder until just recently. It's absolutely, hysterically, laugh-out-loud and choke-for-air funny. It has Uriel as the wedding planner of the apocalypse, and Sam getting drunk and rambling about his epic love for Dean to a very patient Lucifer, and Ruby is his best man, and Sam keeps getting summoned naked by his adoring cults (which schismed in order to better schedule some WoW raiding on Tuesday nights) and it's just, yeah. But underneath all the hilarity, the bit that makes it all work, is the fact that when Lucifer asks who sam loves most, Dean's name is the first on his list, and even throughout everything, that doesn't change.
This Fortress Made of Us (Sam/Dean)
--> This is post-Mystery Spot fic done right, with Sam being utterly freaked and kind of clingy, and Dean kind of bemused and easygoing about it. The tension between them builds slow and sweet, and I especially like Dean in this, just sort of patient and affectionate and waiting for Sam to catch up.
This thing of ours (Sam/Dean)
--> This is an AU where instead of being a family of demon hunters, the Winchesters are one of the most notorious crime families in the US. What works so well here is that Sam is still, basically, Sam, there's very little change, which is sort of fascinating and revealing about how canon!Sam views hunting in the first season. Dean, however, is what really shines in this, because he's charming and brutal and loyal and loving and cruel, and it doesn't seem like he could possibly contain all these contradictions but he can. He's still the Dean Winchester who hunts, and he's still the Dean Winchester who loves his brother more than anything; it's just that he's no longer the Dean Winchester who saves people. What a killer story.
Under Hill (Sam/Dean)
--> This is an old favorite that must have gotten lost somewhere in bookmarks wasteland. Fairies make Dean and Sam lose their memories, and Sam decides that due to circumstances (their hotel room with only one bed) they must be a couple. While working the case and fulfilling three tasks to get their memories back, Dean slowly gives in, because the emotions are there, he feels like he loves this person more than anyone else in the world. You know they're going to get their memories back, and maybe the ending isn't that surprising, but it's getting there that's more than half the fun, it's Dean's headspace and the awful, terrible feeling you get watching him decide it's okay to be happy and knowing how he's going to feel about it when he remembers.
Glee
sick and tired of being sick and tired (gen)
--> This is Rachel who gets diagnosed with fibromyalgia, right on the cusp of her big breakthrough into Broadway. It's a multimedia story, the whole thing done in text messages and emails and journal posts and facebook and so on, and it just barely touches around the edges of everybody's lives, but it packs a wallop. And the ending makes me smile.
Stargate: Atlantis
Happy (McKay/Sheppard)
--> Rodney touches a device that's supposed to just release "unhappy memories," and he forgets things like Wraith encounters, and his citrust allergy- and John. No one else, just John. There are so many harsh edges between them here, John grieving and Rodney suspicious as everyone's trying to figure out why Rodney forgot his ebst friend, and, okay, it's kind of obvious to the reader from really early on, but getting to the reveal is half the fun. And it takes them forever to get anywhere, and the story sucked me in and became a lot more sincere than I was predicting, and the scene where Rodney has the option of getting his memory back but forgetting everything that happened in the last two weeks is just desperately poignant. The one line that really sums it all up, for me, is when John tells him that Rodney was still him, and Rodney shouts back that he didn't remember John, how the hell could he still be the same? The final happy ending, though, is just awesome, with so much awkwardness and differing memories and stuff between them, until they can finally just cut through the crap and be, well, happy.
Star Trek: TOS
only logical (Kirk/Spock)
--> This is a really fantastic story, just sort of slow and sweet, about Kirk hitting his forty-fifth birthday, teaching at the Academy, and trying to force himself to adjust to the fact that he doesn't necessarily have first claim to Spock anymore. There's a really fantastic OC in a cadet that Kirk basically adopts, and it reminds me a lot of the very best of Doyleist Holmes fanfic, where all the conversations are just so smooth and clever and bantery with a lot of emotion underneath. Just, fantastic.
unintended (Kirk/Spock)
--> Weirdly, this is the kind of story that I always wanted from Trek and (personally) was always left wanting. It showcases Kirk and Spock being excellent both at their jobs and as people, and it really captures the epic nature of their relationship in the little details. Essentially, Spock is starting to feel distracted by Captain, and Kirk is worrying that he's not giving Spock his entire trust the way Spock so clearly deserves, and when the two of them settle in for Vulcan yoga that includes a very brief mind-meld, things get out of hand. This is Kirk and Spock exactly as I want them to be, just exactly like this, highly intelligent and capable and devoted and, well, epic.
CSI: NY
The Scientific Method (Mac/Danny)
--> I'm a total sucker for an unreliable narrator, and this story therefore works for me because this is a story in which Danny is very, very dense. Everyone around him understands Mac's motives except him, but it works nonetheless. It's about the aftermath of the Tangelwood case, and Danny pining kind of obviously, and just going along, but slowly things are changing between him and Mac. And when he finally figures it out, at the very end, it's the "I love you" without actually needing to say the words, which is another literary kink of mine.
Smallville
Hideaway (Clark/Lex)
--> A futurefic in which Lex forces Clark to take a vacation, and Clark forces Lex to come with him to make sure he doesn't do anything sinister while he's gone. While on their little island they spend a while absolutely failing to laze around, but uniting to take down an unexpected threat changes the entire tenor of the piece, pulling it into sharp longing that eventually snaps. A story to put a smile on my face, with a happy ending.
DCU
Down to Zero (Dick/Roy)
--> Deathstroke takes Roy captive, and Dick has to consider some bad options in order to get him back. Afterward, they find themselves alone, carving out a little space for peace, and address a lot of the problems that went wrong for DIck in the last year or two. I can only wish that something like this had happened in canon, honestly. Who better to understand this kind of mess than Roy?
they shall have stars at elbow and foot (Dick/Jason)
--> This is an AU where Jason is Cambodian and Selina is Taiwanese, a thief who liberates artifacts that were taken from their home countries years ago. She adopts him, trains him, takes him on as a partner, and years later he has some extremely entertaining run-ins with Robin.
Merlin
Doubled Over with the Hunger of Lions (Arthur/Merlin)
--> Okay, this is a little hard to explain, because it's one of those stories that you don't just read, you experience, but I shall try. Arthur and Merlin get hit with a changeable curse that's been sweeping over the land with the wind, and it requires them to have sex every few days or become very ill. The story starts in the aftermath and builds into sharp tension over and over again, until the tension begins to transmute into something softer and sweet, until both of them, unconsciously or not, begin to choose instead of just give in.
Fringe
Five Things Peter Remembered (In)correctly (gen)
--> Oh, this story is just sharp enough to cut. The two universes are close, but there are clearly inconsistencies, and this is a collection of Peter encountering those inconsistencies. There's a tiny fraction of hope, at the very end, a tiny look at how much this Walter loves his son, but it's very subtle and brilliantly done.
Frequency (Peter/Olivia)
--> After season two, Peter can hear his Olivia, the real Olivia, reaching out to him, and so he listens. Concisely illustrates every single thing I love about the dynamic between them, and the last line gets me every time.
Make a Deal with God (Peter/Olivia)
--> If the start of season three is anything half as good as this, I will be one satisfied fan. This is FauxLivia trying to adjust to the other side, trying to carry out her assignment and not give into the threatening sympathy she feels for these people and this world. It's Olivia suffering in confinement, and everyone in this world feeling just a degree off correct around FauxLivia, and slowly coming to the horrifying realization. It's excellent in the way they can put so much meaning into a single small line, like She wants a strawberry. And it's about Peter having one guiding constant in making his choices, and Walter not capable of telling him no, and Olivia just wanting to go home. It's just fantastic, and even though the style is very different it felt like a really amazing two-part episode in the way it's structured, till I felt breathless by the end, waiting for it to end happy. (Spoiler: it did.)
Marvel Movieverse
Growing Season (Tony/Pepper)
--> Post-IM2, Tony keeps bringing Pepper fruit and eventually, he gets it right. A short and sweet look at them trying to develop an actual relationship.
Star Trek Reboot
One of a Kind (Kirk/Spock)
--> Kirk and Spock, with three planets, each other their own wonders and beauties. It's a slow, sweet kind of story, one that really makes me smile, because it smooths over a lot of the crazy intensity that they were rocking in the movie, into something that's a working relationship, and then friendship, and then more. The theme is things that are rare and wonderful, from the only silicate-based species, to a plant on the verge of extinction, to Spock, who is "one of a kind" in more ways than just his biology.
Torchwood
tell rock n’ roll i’m alone again (Owen/Ianto)
--> This is a rock star AU. And despite all the ways that it could have been ridiculous, or campy, or just good silly fun, this story went a different route, and pulled out all the petty and disturbing and dysfunctional things that made the show so compelling, and mixed them in with the fucked-up life of a touring band, and hit blend. This felt like a really brilliant remix, somehow, in the way the author used all the episode titles as song titles, and all the characters were there and perfect versions of themselves, but with a knife-like little twist. I just loved this to little tiny pieces, and felt that it explored Susie and her madness and suicide a lot better than the show did, honestly. Just, awesome.
Harry Potter
Fear and Loathing at the Phoenix (Harry/Draco)
--> This is what would happen if Harry Potter and Transmetropolitan were to breed with Hunter S. Thompson. Years later, Harry is a Journalist in constant search of some Truth, and Draco is his (much-needed) lawyer (and lover). This could be an absolutely silly story, and to some measure it is, but that's part of the point. It's also a very profound piece of work, and says a lot of important things about whoring oneself out to a concept instead of thinking for oneself, about appropriating stories, about all the complicated and fascinating things about the public and private nature of heroes, and the ways they do and don't overlap. It's meta on both an in-character level and as a look at fans of the books; it manages to skewer the books, fandom, J.K. Rowling, all at once. I love this story because it's a lot of fun, but I love it more because it's fiendishly clever. There's nothing that suckers me in more than truly intelligent writing that doesn't lose its heart just because it's saying something important.
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