Fandom: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: None (gen)
WARNING: Graphic Adult Scenes
Author on LJ: jazline
Author Website: http://mysite.verizon.net/jazline/
Why this must be read:

My purpose being to show all the aspects of the MFU fanfiction (except the het stuff; sorry, I never got the courage to read anything of it till the end), I feel compelled to present now a real, dyed-in-the wool, hard-core H/C story. This one appears as a perfect example of the genre, neatly written, masterfully plotted to produce the maximum suspense, thrill and emotion.

However beware: This is not for the most sensitive souls. Some readers could even find there is more hurt than comfort here (but everything is mended at the end, of course) and the author herself describes her work in those terms: A badly damaged Illya is retrieved after a devastating captivity. Will he ever be the same man again?

Poor Illya, always the doomed victim! But the topic itself doesn't lack interest or originality; the question is: how deep can a mind manipulation go through? Is a brainwashing able to completely and permanently erase a man's memory, personality, loyalty and feelings?

The harshness of the situation is somehow alleviated in the reader's mind by a slight impression of unreality or, rather, by a modified sense of reality, like in a vivid nightmare. From nightmares, the narrative gets its power of suggestion, its blind desperation, its angst driven and breathless motion, but from nightmares as well comes the confused certainty that "it's not for good", that sooner or later you will awake from the dark depths of the night.

I sincerely hope I didn't deterred the potential readers from the trip, instead of encouraging them! Try the reading first, you have time to tremble afterward (it's not the darkest story in Jazline's universe).

The Sahara Experiment Affair

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: N/A
Author on LJ: queen_geek
Author Website: N/K

Why this must be read:

I apologize for not getting any recs up since last week--we were computerless for several days. I'll try to fit a few more in today without spamming...

Here's another post-SERENITY ficlet, from ff_friday, on the theme of ghosts. The author does a masterful job of showing how the events of the film affect each crew member, by relating their pasts with this new unsettled present.


Lost and Found

I know I'm late with this, but I was out of town for Thanksgiving and only just rejoined post-turkey civilization.

Vidder: Seah and Margie
Musical artist: 3 Doors Down
Pairing: Fawkes/Hobbes
Vidder's website: Seah and Margie's Vids
Why this vid kicks ass:

I can't hear 3 Doors Down on the radio anymore without running to watch this vid again. Seah and Margie do an amazing job of laying out the premise of the show, hitting all the emotional notes of the song perfectly, and then showing that the only bright spot in Darien's life is the crazy, deep relationship he has with Bobby Hobbes. It's one of my all-time favorite vids for any fandom. Go check it out.

Fandom: INVISIBLE MAN
Pairing: None
Author Website: Story found on I-Maniacs Online
Why this must be read:

This is an episode-driven story looking at how conflicted Darien was during Cat and Mouse when his old life butted up against his new one:

"I remember my uncle buying a safe for his lab when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was down in his lab, playing with the dial, trying different combinations. He - and I'm sure he was joking here - he offered me five bucks if I could open it. I must have spent four hours with the darn thing that afternoon."

Faster's Better

Fandom: INVISIBLE MAN
Pairing: Fawkes/Hobbes, implied past Fawkes/others, Hobbes/others
Author Website: Story found on Adultfanfiction.Net
Why this must be read:

Some stories are dark. Some are playful. Some are sexy. What's damned hard is hitting all of those notes so fast and hard you give the reader whiplash and make them beg for more. From Hobbes's claims of sex on a mission in a shiek's harem to Darien's quiet confession of the worst night of his life, this is one game of Truth or Dare worth playing.

Pop Quiz

Fandom: INVISIBLE MAN
Pairing: Fawkes/Hobbes
Author Website: Legion's Hidey Hole
Why this must be read:

I first discovered Legion through her many dark and sensuous Sentinel stories, but a good writer is a good writer in any fandom, as this story proves. A new counteragent drug causes Bobby to go quicksilver mad instead of Darien, forcing Darien to talk Bobby down any way he can.

Fire-Born Child

Fandom: INVISIBLE MAN
Pairing: None
Author Website: Story found on The Invisible Man Fanfic Page
Why this must be read:

And for my last rec, a lovely treat. In this AU, Darien is little more than a labrat, with no friends and no hope for a better life. You guys have been great, and it's been wonderful driving the van this month!

"Look Kid," Hobbes said sincerely as if completely understanding Darien's dilemma. "You're less then a day from QSM, we know you plan to push it again." He paused watching Darien carefully as he said, "If you let the Keeper do what she has to do, I'll take you topside, I promise."

What If

Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: Josh/Donna, but mostly just Donna
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: coffee, beer & red lights

Why this must be read: This is a story of Donna and her self-discovery. It takes her far away from Josh, all the way to Italy and the manor that belonged to the grandmother she hardly knew. She restores it and her faith and self-confidence all in the same journey. And she realizes that home and her heart really are wherever Josh is.
This is a very sweet AU and well worth the read, especially if you are looking for a Donna-centric story.

Incrocio

Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: Josh/Donna
Author on LJ: bexatious
Author Website: Josh & Donna by Bex

Why this must be read: Oh my god! This has got to be the hottest smut fic out there! I would say it is my favorite straight ahead, balls to the wall, TWW smut fic. Bex can bring the sizzle, folks.
A newly coupled Josh and Donna go to the movies to see an old movie and sit in the back of the theater, where all the reall action then takes place. This story's best part: one of my favorite fic kinks, Josh talks dirty during all the sex. HOTTTT!!!!

Popcorn

Fandom: ANGEL
Pairing: Angel/Connor/Spike
Author on LJ: germaine_pet
Author Website: Night Never Ending
Why this must be read: This post-"Not Fade Away" story explores how Angel, Spike, Connor, and Illyria deal with the after effects and fallouts of Angel betraying the Senior Partners. Lynne beautifully crafts the fic to show the inner workings and thought processes that the characters go through. Generally, I don't read stories that contain incest, but Lynne weaves together Angel, Connor, and Spike in a way that works. Her in-denial-and-attempting-to-cope Angel is one of the best I've seen in post-series stories.

Angels & Insects

This will be my last rec of the month. I had a lot of fun and hoped that everyone found something new to read and enjoy.

Fandom: ANGEL
Pairing: Buffy/Gunn and Lilah/Wesley
Author on LJ: twinkledru
Author Website: Evil Temptress
Why this must be read: This post-series set of stories made me addicted to Buffy/Gunn. The stories take place in a heaven-like dimension complete with IHOP and movie theaters. While Lilah and Wesley are plotting a hostile takeover, Buffy and Gunn are having fun together and generally enjoying their afterlives. Twinkledru's dialog is snappy, and she has a great grip on characterization. These stories are both fun and well-crafted.

( A Buffy/Gunn exchange from early on in the first fic )

Could Be Purgatory and ...And a Whole Lotta Crazy Crap on the Walls

Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: Josh/Donna
Author on LJ: carleton97
Author Website: reconciled among the stars
Why this must be read: Some of us were lucky enough to have grown up with Schoolhouse Rock. It's a shame if you weren't. This story has Josh singing one of the old Schoolhous Rock favorites and in front of a classroom full of kids, no less. And then to top it off, he has some pretty hot sex in a storage closet with Donna. What's not to love?

Sittin' In Committee

I've really enjoyed driving the TWW crack_van this month! I hope you've found something new to read, or been reacquainted with an old favorite. Please consider sending feedback to the author if you enjoyed a story! See you next time!

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Mal/Inara
Author on LJ: N/K
Author Website: N/K


Why this must be read:

Because it's "caper fic," with oodles of character interaction and thrilling heroics. Set post-series, Mal decides to take on a daring job for a big score, despite complications--mainly his emotional state after Inara's departure from Serenity. Kaylee and Jayne get to have some fun taking part in the heist, which of course fails to go entirely smooth.

(Although there's some irregular punctuation in the story that drives me crazy, it's still a good read.)


Stay

Fandom: THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF JULES VERNE
Pairing: a fair amount of Phileas/Rebecca angst
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: author's page at The Book of Knowledge
Why this must be read:

In the episode "The Victorian Candidate", Phileas is brainwashed by the League of Darkness and sent off to kill Queen Victoria. Rebecca stops him at the last moment, talking him back to himself - and then the episode ends with a view of the Aurora flying away.

Not good enough, said the fans. We want to know what happened afterwards, see Phileas' recovery, ect. There were quite a few post-ep fics written, but this one is my favorite of the bunch.

Jericho

Fandom: THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF JULES VERNE
Pairing: Rebecca/Jules
Author on LJ: wishfulaces
Author Website: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/19717/
Why this must be read:

Because in the series it's painfully obvious that Jules has a bit of a crush on Rebecca. This pairing doesn't get as much fic as the others do, but this is a nice if bittersweet show of what could have happened while nobody knew.

Weathered

I've had a lot of fun driving the Arrow-mobile this month, I hope you've enjoyed it too.

Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle (Batman/Catwoman)
Author on LJ: sister_wolf
Author Website: BadB.net
Why this must be read:

After all the trauma I've visited on you this month, I wanted to leave you with something quiet and calming. Yes, there are relationships in the DCU that are healthy, or at least do a good impression! Batman/Catwoman is canon, but even in canon it gets short shrift. This fic shows two people who might find comfort with each other, and even love.

Also, look! I squeezed some het in!

Every time we say goodbye

Fandom: HORATIO HORNBLOWER
Pairing: Clayton/Simpson
Author on LJ: juxiantang
Author Website: Juxian Tang's Fiction

Why this must be read:

I have a weak spot for Clayton, he is one of my favourite HH characters and gets very little play in fanfics. As expected, the Clayton/Simpson relationship is portrayed as violent and abusive, but there are unpredictable elements and layers in this short story that make the pairing dynamics a lot more interesting.

Simpson is a character you love to hate, gaining power by leeching the strength and emotion of others, while Clayton comes across as a bleak lost soul, bitter in his self-awareness, and helpless in his anger. But it's all rather disturbingly hot.


Liar

Like all good fireworks shows, this month of Cally fic recs is going to end on a grand finale. We're going to wrap up the two-week Cally-Travis theme that's following the Cally-Avon theme, and then I've got some lovely, sparkly surprises to send everyone away happy.

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: Cally/Travis or Cally-Travis
Author on LJ: lyssie
Author Website: http://lysanity.topcities.com/ana/index.htm
Why this must be read:

Lyssie's universe is a dry, dark one; not hopeless, but demanding of its inhabitants, a world full of hard, vulnerable, tired people who try to keep going and aren't always sure why. This is the first of two consecutive character vignettes, which illustrate beautifully the appeal in putting Cally and Travis side-by-side in fic. While Travis starts the show as a nemesis and dark mirror of Blake, his role changes when he's put on trial and escapes the Federation he believed in. He starts to more closely mirror Cally; they are unwilling exiles on opposite sides, they are soldiers trying to bring down the Federation for opposite ideological reasons. This story is, as most Travis-and-Cally stories need to be, at least somewhat AU, in that it presumes Travis survived the Star One accident we're meant to believe killed him.

Her versions of Cally and Travis are painfully aware of the complications their pasts and also of the diminished circumstances of their presents, and yet they still manage to find enough common ground to walk warily around each other, perhaps enabled by the lack of any respect or other need that'd lead them to be guarded around each other. Her extrapolations of these characters, one supposed to be dead and one largely forgotten by the writers, is true to their origins and later development, not comforting or full of any resolutions for the things that haunt and drive them, and also allows each to show how they've grown and changed by the end of the story. The prose is sharp and staccato, like a 1940s noir story - these are dark streets full of characters who have seen to much. The final line is a beautiful one, both sad and full of possibilities, opening up the world for characters whose stories were presumed to have been over.

( Later, she would wonder if he'd deliberately let her see him... )

Not a Bad Dream

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: Cally/Travis or Cally-Travis
Author on LJ: lyssie
Author Website: http://lysanity.topcities.com/ana/index.htm
Why this must be read:

With the second of Lyssie's two consecutive Cally-Travis vignettes, we've moved a year into the future and well into AU territory, with Cally having survived Terminal. She's come full-circle to who she was when she first appeared on Saurian Major: one guerrilla fighter in red leather highlighted against the horizon, alone, having survived everyone she knew, and blowing up every target she can find because it's all she can do.

(You don't think there have been enough explosions in my recs so far? Well, I wasn't kidding about ending the fireworks show with some good ones.)

( The explosions have been filling the night sky for the last several minutes. Alarms are blaring all across the city... )

If she's returned to her origins, Travis, on the other hand, is a man still searching for a place in his world. With one failed coup behind him, and his new enemy, the Federation he felt had betrayed him and its own ideals, on the march to even greater power, he wants one more chance to bring it down. When he finds that he and Cally are winding up in the same place for the same reasons, there's a second chance for both of them, and he winds up making her much the same offer as Blake had made to her on Saurian Major.

The interaction is fabulous; two highly-trained fighters with little to lose, one idealistic by nature and the other bullying and bitter by nature, neither trusting or liking the other, bandying pointed and dry, barbed comments to goad the other, but ultimately coming to some sort of understanding and, by implication, a common goal, despite never once forgetting how opposite their ideas and actions have always been. The immediacy of this story, aside from being one of two lost people finding purpose and allies in an empty world, lies in, as a certain other BBC science fiction show once put it, "A brilliant move. The black and white pawns don't fight each other, they join forces." This is the promise of the previous vignette realized, as roles and allegiances shift, possibilities open up, and the tense balance of control and resistance in this political landscape is restored.

( If he caught the dig at his own war crimes, he doesn't show it.... )

Too Many Light Years Run

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Mal/Inara
Author on LJ: jwynn
Author Website: N/K

Why this must be read:

It's a wonderfully evocative piece, brimming over with sensory descriptions. And for the author's first attempt at Firefly fiction, it's delightful. (Of course, that could be my M/I bias showing...) The tagline? "He wants to muss her." Yow.

Set post-SERENITY.

She doesn’t fit in the rough and tumble confines of Serenity, so perfectly composed, perfectly presented with her smooth dress, smooth walk, smooth words. From the first moment she stepped aboard, she stuck out like the most beautiful polished thumb in the damn galaxy, and his hands just itched to muss her.



Seven Days

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Mal/Inara
Author on LJ: dangermousie
Author Website: N/K

It's been a lot of fun driving the van this month, and I hope people have enjoyed my recommendations. We'll finish up with one more post-SERENITY, M/I ficlet.

Why this must be read:

This little story packs a different emotional wallop than the previous rec. Redemption has always been my favorite Mal/Inara theme, and here it's delivered with equal amounts of joy and sorrow.


Her hands tug at him, and she moans into his mouth and he is shaking because he feels as if he is in free fall, spinning out of control. He does not remember knowing all those dead are his fault. What did Zoe say? “A hero is the one who gets others killed.” He forgets that he is certainly a hero, a score times over.


Absolution

Okay, now for a few little sparkly bursts of fic in the night sky to send you all on your way.

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: hafren
Author Website: unknown
Why this must be read:

Fresh from the loss of her sister, her home, her entire people, Cally finds an unexpected comfort and understanding. I shan't spoil it, it's such a short and sweet little appetizer of fic. This follows up on an implication of early canon that very few have played with, and which would have been fascinating had the show ever attempted to use it. Oddly, the character it rounds out isn't Cally at all, but an even more underused and overlooked character.

"She woke to the ache of absence..."

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: snowgrouse
Author Website: unknown
Why this must be read:

Oh, this one is so beautifully sparkly and lush, as per Snowgrouse's prose standards. It's not just Cally as competent fighter, but as archetypal warrior; not just Cally as attractive alien telepath, but as truly alien, invasive, probing, threatening. An electric little story, beautiful stylized and seen through a haze of red, from Avon's POV.

Dakini

And with this one last fanfare, I'll bid you adieu.

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: vilakins
Author Website: unknown
Why this must be read:

[Disclaimer: I'm mentioned in the author's notes, so I'm not entirely an uninvolved party. However, as my involvement was limited to reading it and liking it, I think I'm still a neutral one, and it's still great fic.]

This is another small character study, taking up the implications of canon where canon itself failed to go. Bridging Redemption and Shadow, it picks up on Orac's self-serving trickery, the technology of his carrier waves, and Cally's character background, very neatly. Vila becomes suspicious of a plothole dangerous inconsistency in Orac's story and Cally takes steps to solve the problem.

Now, there is a subset of fandom that's rather anti-Orac, and not without some reason. I'm not one of them; I love the little plexiglass monster with his Christmas lights. But it's still rewarding to see him get his comeuppance, for once. To come over all pretentious for a moment, if Orac is the trickster character, the unreliable voice of fate in computer form, then here we have Cally as the show's hand of justice taking him in line, even if only temporarily, as later events show. To be a little less pretentious, but only a little, there aren't many stories that actually pick up on this specific aspect of Cally's training, perhaps because the series itself never explained what exactly she meant by it or how she used it, and only a few more that develop or use her alienness, so this is a rare demonstration of both her technical skills and her alien ones, and it's all the more rewarding as both anticipation and payback for the events of "Shadow".

( 'I am a telepath, Orac. Are you aware of that?' )

Oracle

This is my 12th and last rec of the month in crack_van and no, it is not my second post for the same day. My previous rec should have been dated on the 29th but, because of internet failure, I couldn't reach the site before midnight. So, I feel allowed to post this one (before midnight I hope!).

Fandom: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: Napoleon/Illya (slash)
Author on LJ: taliesin
Author Website: Taliesin's Reach: http://users.frii.com/wanderer/fanfic/reach.html

Why this must be read:

Because it's the sequel of "To live in interesting times"!, already recced, written with the same magic, in the same vibrating, haunting tone and because this dark universe, that we see progressively becoming ours a little more everyday, is my favourite MFU nightmare; this time the author is offering us a tiny, faint blink of light, a while of rest in a murky, chaotic, meaningless fight.

like the ancient Taliesin the Bard, who had the power to tell the things that are, the things that were and the things that would be, our Taliesin knows how to call forth the shadows of the events to come.

Sufficient unto the day

It's still November in California! This one is so old, I had to use the Wayback Machine's 2001 version. It has an OFC, but maybe I've built up enough cred over the month so that you're not running away screaming yet. I think the story is quite good.

Fandom: POPSLASH
Pairing: Lance/OFC, sort of
Author on LJ: none that I know of
Author Website: Intangible
Why this must be read: Lance's backstory is that he's a shy, Southern boy from Mississippi. The boy used to sing in choirs, and he had a bowl cut and looked like a girlier Ellen DeGeneres in the earlier years, for cryin' out loud. But somewhere along the line, we saw Lance evolve into this snarky, Hollywood type boy, and while we were happy to see the hotness develop, we were all kind of sad to see the Good Old Boy fade away into the ether. This story explores how someone else might view Lance, back home for a visit.

Once Upon A Time
(The Wayback Machine is currently being a punk, but I swear it worked yesterday. The general URL is dreamz.nu/intangible/f/once.html, for reference.)