Slashy Nominations 132: And Ivan Makes...Um. A Number Greater Than Two, Anyway.

[thefourthvine]

Well. This has been a revelation.

Last week, after much consultation with y'all, I decided what iPod to get for Best Beloved. (The video iPod, if you're curious. Best Beloved likes lots of storage space.) I went to the online Apple store, put a bunch of stuff in a shopping cart, and checked out. As I am a human being with functioning brain cells

Comments

[thefourthvine]

Okay, first things first: I love your icon. It's gorgeous. Also - I'm glad you're here, and glad you like the recs. Thank you!

I've always read Sentinel gen as well as slash

See, I'm totally a late starter with TS gen; I mean, I always read the occasional bit of it, but mostly I read slash because it was easiest to find, and frankly it made sense; Jim and Blair are, well, so doing it. But then I found gen and it was like finding a whole new fandom with a huge back catalog of stories, only it inexplicably featured characters I already knew and loved. And now I read much more gen than slash in that fandom.

Plus, I mean, Dasha is, all by herself, a perfect argument for reading TS gen.

And in my current fandom, Hercules, the gen is often better than the slash, and there's tons more of it, too.

*fixes you with a beady stare*

You interest me strangely. See, Best Beloved just started watching Hercules. (Look, the first season was less than fifteen bucks new on DVD - and that included seven disks and the commerative collectible "coin." What were we supposed to do, pass that up just because we'd never seen the show?) Which traditionally means that I will start reading fic in the fandom. But I have no idea where to start with Hercules; I don't know off-hand of any authors from other fandoms who also write or have written Hercules FF - which is weird, and I'm thinking I must be forgetting some people, because I love a lot of writers - and my favorite recs sites have nothing to get me started. And it's scary going into a new fandom with nothing relatively safe and trustworthy to get me over the initial hump.

So my question to you is: where do you go for good Hercules FF? Slash (m/m or f/f), gen, het - all are good for me. I like humor better than serious darkness or angst, and I like happiness better than sadness, but basically anything that's well written will draw me.

*looks hopeful*

[marycrawford]

You make me smile. Thank you for the kind words about my icon, but most of all for the excuse to wax enthusiastic over HtLJ fanfic! You will be assimilated sorry inundated. *g*

Hercules is an odd, isolated little fandom in many ways. Not many writers crossed over to other fandoms, as you say, and very few of the BNFs in other fandoms have written for it. (James Walkswithwind wrote a brief story, and so did Torch. Can't think of others ATM.)

Nonetheless, there are some huge archives out there. There is also a ton of slash I haven't read because it doesn't fit my needs - I'm all about Hercules and Iolaus, slash or gen or het, but not so much the Ares/Joxer, say. I could find you sites to point to if you want, though. :-)

Recommendations:
- first and foremost, everything on The Less Than Legendary Journeys. This site snared me into the fandom. (Some of my own stories are there now, too, but I'm not trying to sneakily recommend myself. Really. *g*) There is slash, het and fantastic gen there, funny, angsty, and all very well written. The Perils of Perseus, Letters Home From The Academy and An Affair To Remember are all funny, upbeat stories and a good introduction to the site. I also can't praise When Hellmouths Collide, a Buffy/Herc crossover, enough, and the heart of the site is the series of long adventure stories that begins with Home Is Where The Heart Is. :deep breath:
- Nym has some amazing slash, but be warned, some of it is very melancholy.
- The Iolausian Library is a huuuge, badly-designed gen archive, with Iolaus-centric stories, obviously. It has some links to slash stories as well. I like Valentin, Melisande, Therienne and Pythia, among others.
- I need more spaaaace, but I will point you to my LJ memories category for Herc fanfic recs here, which also has all of the Hercules & Iolaus recs that ltlj and I wrote for crackvan.