Fic Rec: King of the Rodeo by Fluffontop
AU's are hard. You have to keep your cast in character enough to be recognisable completely out of their normal context. You have to world build from scratch usually. You have to create reasons for your characters to be where ever it is your fancy has placed them. And you have to make it fun. And that's just the bare minimum requirement for making it readable.
Imagine then the work that goes into an AU that is not only all of the above, but utterly engaing, true to real life, charming and incredibly long. Imagine that fic also has every single bandom hero you could want, true to their fanon and canon selves, doing the kinds of life sucking jobs we've all lived to loathe at some time. Imagine all that, in a Mall and you've got the first inkling of how great this fic is.
http://fluffontop.livejournal.com/561681.html
King of the Rodeo also manages the holy grail of ensemble slash AU's: Everyone is gay and it works.
It works because each character is on their own tragectory, each intersecting perfectly with the others in unforseen ways. The central theme is about coming to terms with who you are, and the trials and tensions of young gay romance is a natural backdrop for exploring that idea. It works like the best kind of ensemble cinema, like one of those adorkable indie coming of age flicks from the 90's where sexually confused youths learn how to define themselves through their relationships with others. And it's utterly charming. The writers juxtapose character types (When virginal yet determined Brendon Urie - wonderfully sympathetic centre-point of the fic - forms and unlikely and rewarding friendship with world weary and embittered Mall-adonis, Brian Schecter I dare you not to sigh) and give them utterly realistic (and sometimes annoyingly true to life) hurdles to over come on the way to...not wishy washy true love, but real acceptance, real hope, their real selves.
The story is so well crafted it 'reads' like cinema, so much so that my first thought was that this was some kind of Reel fic. But it's not it's all their own world beautifully observed and lovingly detailed.
There is so much more I want to say about this fic, but the best thing I can say is read it. It's Ensemble AU at it's finest.