Fandom: THE X FILES
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek
Author on LJ: cazling
Author Website: Welcome to the Stacks

Why this must be read:

After the end of the world, it's Mulder and Scully and Krycek on the run; and then it's just Mulder and Krycek and more than enough grief and pain and rage and guilt to go around.

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"Zaghruda"

Fandom: THE X FILES
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: http://www.geocities.com/elanorg/

Why this must be read:

Elanor G. is probably best-known for her long, well-plotted seventh-season case files, which mix MOTW plots, mytharc elements, and Mulder/Scully romance to suspenseful effect. But for today I'm going to recommend an oddity and a blast to the past: a secret history of the X Files' very first monster of the week. Eugene Victor Tooms, Elanor suggests, may be older and stranger than we thought:

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"Undying"

Fandom: due South (AU)
Pairing: Smithbauer/OC; Fraser/Kowalski
Author's website: none, for FPS; check due Slash under "Colleen Kane"
Author on LJ: earthmagik

Why this must be read: In the first season episode The Blue Line, Fraser sees an old friend on the street and, naturally, stops to say hello. Almost immediately, things go awry. His old friend Mark Smithbauer is a professional hockey player and kind of a jerk and, oh did I mention, in some serious trouble with some serious bad guys. Fraser, being Fraser, wants to help. In the course of his helping, it turns out that Mark did kind of a foolish thing that winds up getting him kicked out of hockey. And that's the (original) story of Mark 'n' Ben.

Colleen takes the show canon and changes history a little -- Mark doesn't do that one particular foolish thing, and thus no career-ending scandal. Yet. But. As the summary says, we will still be dealing with Very Serious Issues. Because Mark, being Mark, has done some other rather foolish things ....

This isn't an easy series to read. Colleen's kind of a take-no-prisoners writer -- she'll shake you up and pin you down and make you hurt right along with the characters. And yeah, this one hurts. But it's not a death story, for those of you who like warnings. At the risk of sounding sappy, it's a life story.

Links are from due Slash

mark's story, written on the body

interlude: contact

todd's story, written on the bones

epilogue: find the river

why are you still here?

Fandom: FARSCAPE
Pairing: Scorpius/Braca
Author on LJ: Unknown
Author Website: Unknown

Why this must be read: I'm reccing this because Scorpy/Braca NC-17 fic is near-on impossible to find; and, as such, what little there is must be shared with the world. There isn't much plot to speak of -- the story could be summed up in "Scorpius. Braca. Jealousy. Aurora Chair." -- but then again, we don't read fic like this for the plot, do we? *g*

If you want a bit of nasty, twisted Scorpy/Braca porn (and come on, who doesn't?), this is the story to check out.

Bound to Please

Hi. My name is SA, and I'll be your February purveyor of Popslash. If you haven't tried out the Fandom That Ate My Brain, I suggest you read zaneetas's wonderful primer, which not only provides you with much information but is highly entertaining to boot.

I was trying to come up with a good theme for this month's recs, and I hit on AU's. Alternate Universes are a big portion of popslash's fic production, and there have been many reasons speculated as to why that is: the characterizations can be static even when the time or place changes, or the fact that it's just really fun to write Lance as a cabana boy or Chris as a private eye.

Anyway, AU's are pretty wide and varied, and there are subdivisions, many of them, within the broad expanse of AU: wingfic, genderbending fic, Nsync member turns into an animal fic, etc. But what I decided to concentrate on was the intersection of Real Person Fic and Fake Person Fic.

There's kind of a tenuous relationship between the two. It's pretty easy to overlay a Fake World onto the Real One, particularly when you have characters in RPF with the money and ability to do conceivably anything. But there are two things I'm going to recommend: the first, crossovers between Pop and other fandoms, and the second, stories where the characters from Popslash *are* the characters from other fandoms, or the plot is loosely adapted to fit the characters. There's a lot more than the twelve I'll be detailing this month; I'll append resources to find others at the end of my recs.

Anyway, I hope you like the stuff I'm showing you this month. They might be new to you or old favorites, but I liked them quite a lot. Cheers.

Fandom: SMALLVILLE
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Author on LJ: penelope_z
Author Website: Penelope-Z (though her SV fic doesn’t appear to be archived here)
Why this must be read:

If twisted obsession is your kink, this savage little fic ought to appeal. It manages to be both sparely written and lush with haunting imagery, and pretty much blew my mind out the back of my head the first time I read it. Ouch.

This Lex is a counterpart to the Clark-centric rec I’m posting next; both are very dark versions of our boys. Many in the fandom would argue them OOC (less so with this Lex portrait than the Clark). I can’t disagree entirely, though I think ‘AU’ would be more a more apt description. The epic good vs. evil that IS comics canon provides a great deal of leeway, after all.

Lex, as twisted psychotic: Sunburn (8 K)

Fandom: SMALLVILLE
Pairing: Clark/Lex, Clark/others implied
Author on LJ: ethrosdemon
Author Website: Biblioteque Diabolique
Why this must be read:

The Clark entry in my “twisted obsession” theme night. This may be my favorite AU version of Clark, who is a big adorable doof most of the time. Not here. Still, we’ve had enough glimpses at his darker impulses in the last couple seasons to know he’s got at least something like this in him, and what’s scarier than a super-powered, super-intelligent, disillusioned teenage boy?

Clark learned many things in the last few months. One of them is that shock is an excellent tool for restraining someone. Lex, like Lana like Chloe, is too stunned to attempt to escape, and a couple seconds is all Clark ever needs to convince someone that escape is a very silly plan.

Clark, as cunning sociopath: Simile (ficlet)

Fandom: HIGHLANDER
Pairing:  N/A
Author on LJ: Not that I know of
Author Website: Hosted at Athers Fiction Library. Slash fiction at The Erotic Fiction of Becca Abbott.
Why this must be read: Because Epic isn't just a picture sent by email.
 

I've been kind to you and recced this before the weekend, so that if you find yourself unable to stop reading you have some time for it <g> This is a long story, with an Interlude and a sequel, but that's not what makes it epic. It achieves that status by the breadth of the imagination that lies behind it, and the scope of the story.

( Want to know more? )

Re-reading it for this rec, I still felt the excitement that I had on the first reading. The same exhilaration I found with science fiction - of being transported to a new world.

Winterborne (1st part of three)