Okay, let's try this again --- This time I'm not posting in the wee hours of the morning, so hopefully I won't screw up the formatting and links this time!

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: ( withheld ) (not slash)
author on lj: bigdirty
author website: Fictional Excursions

Why this must be read: This story is COMPLETELY AU and that's the only thing you know going into it other than the warnings Dark and fucked up. Explicit sex. Pleasurepain. Ambiguous consent. As such, I'm not totally revealing the pairing here, because figuring out the characters is part of the experience. If any of the previous warnings squicks you off, don't go there or check the withheld pairing first to make sure it's your cup of tea.

Explanations aside, the language within the story is beautiful. Combined with rich symbolism and frequent T.S. Eliot quotations, it draws the reader into the story and holds them there on with constant anticipations and an edge of dread that mirrors what is happening to the characters. This is not the typical type of story I seek out, though it is one of the pairings I do go for, but at the end I was very happy to have read it because it is so different than almost anything else available within the fandom or even that pairing. (That or I'm horribly protected in my little nook of fandom and you guys should take this opportunity to educate me with a plethora of recs). If you like AUs and don't mind dirty/bad/wrong in the context of plot, go and read this now. You won't regret it.

Till human voices wake us and we drown (click on the opening lines to get to the story)

1. in the beginning (evening is spread out against the sky)

She wore a veil. Her entire outfit was scarves. She danced, stripping. Her body beneath the scarves was painted in dead languages. She had thought it a humorous touch, externalizing her internal death. As a practical matter, it meant she didn’t have to worry about anyone getting distracted reading her skin. She knew that would have been a problem since she catered to scholars.

Fandom: LOTRIPS
Pairing: Elijah Wood/Orlando Bloom
Author on LJ: ofslashymuses
Author Website: None
Why this must be read: Because Elijah has a foul mouth, and Orlando isn't at all vulgar. This is a short, funny moment that rings so true.

Vulgarity

Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Author on LJ: musesfool
Author Website: Achromatic
Why this must be read:

One of the best Remus/Sirius stories I've read set during the first war, this short story about Remus and Sirius meeting in a restaurant perfectly captures all the reasons why they don't understand each other and all the tragedy that causes. Painful and real.

Coffee and Cigarettes

Fandom: ANDROMEDA
Pairing: Trance & Harper
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: Official Website
Why this must be read: this story, written in script format, is an example of something that's pretty unique to Andromeda fandom. David Hewitt Wolfe was one of the original writers on the show and was very active in forming the major arcs, until he (and a few other top writers) left at the midpoint of the second season. the show continued on with many of the story lines he had overseen, but either changed them or eventually dropped them completely.

"Coda" is essentially a piece of fanfic Wolfe wrote three years after he left the show, which uses Trance's foretelling ability to subtly comment (and snark) on the places the show ended up and the places it was meant to. it touches on pieces of canon from the early seasons (including the Engine of Creation, about which we already have conflicting canon in the form of an episode and an official novel) to build on what Trance sees as the Perfect Possible Future.

this story is worth reading both as an interesting piece of fic and as a telling piece of meta.

Andromeda: Coda

Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: Ainsley/Joey Lucas
Author on LJ:
Author Website:
Why this must be read: Ainsley has one of the most distinctive speech patterns of any West Wing characters, making it difficult to emulate well without the dialogue sounding strained. In this short story the suthor hits Ainsley's verbal circuitousness dead on.

The other characters involved - Sam and Joey - are on too - particularly a flustered Sam after Ainsley's unexpected conversational side-alleys.

( Excerpt )

The significance of coffee

Fandom: STARGATE ATLANTIS
Pairing: John/Rodney aka McShep
Author on LJ:nindulgence
Author Website:
Why this must be read:

This is the first of my favorite stories from the School Challenge at sga_flashfic last November. High School AU.

Fun. So Rodney even if it's High School!Rodney. High maintenance even as a teenager. John's hiding his intelligence but gets sucked in by the tornado that is Rodney. Funny, in character, even if it's stretching in a bit with the senior class trip to Toronto but still very funny, intelligent and unexpected.


Hands-On Science

---

I'm starting late but will hopefully post some of my favorites by May 31th

Fandom: STARGATE ATLANTIS
Pairing: John/Rodney aka McShep
Author on LJ:kellifer_k
Author Website:Here Why this must be read:

My second School Challenge fic from sga_flashfic

A little bitter sweet. Rodney, John. High School and John is the new kid on the block.

High School AU.


In Passing

Fandom: SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim/OFC Blair/OMC Jim/Blair
Author Website: The Pumpkin Patch
Why this must be read:

This has to be the most painful tearjerker fanfic ever written. I mean it. It's deathfic, and that's painful, but it's the lives that are painful, not the death itself. Jim and Blair are as close as two people can be, but Jim is straight and Blair won't ask for what he can't have. What follows are relationships, children, careers, self-destruction, healing, life, death, all of it in vivid and breathtaking detail.

In Another Life

Fandom: THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Pairing: Merry/Pippin
Author on LJ: sophinisba
Author Website: http://sophinisba.livejournal.com/
Why this must be read:

The Silent Street is an excellent, excellent, look at Merry and Pippin (most especially Merry, I'd say), with angst, and rather dark themes, as far (as she put it originally) as Merry/Pippin fics go. It is, really, simply excellent, with such deep emotional force -- when I first read it, there were points where I had to cry. The writing is powerful, and as mentioned before, incredibly emotional. The characters are strong, and real. I could go on more, but I will leave you with an excerpt, instead, and a link to the story.

( Excerpt: )

The Silent Street

Fandom: POPSLASH
Pairing: JC/Lance
Author on LJ: without_me and ramblinround
Author Website: KittenFic
Why this must be read:
Well, if you've ever been to Germany (particularly Berlin), it's an incredibly humourous look at Germany's rather free attitude to sex. If you haven't, it's still hilarious and rather touching, as Lance tries to cope in Germany during his rather hormonal teenage years.
Excerpt:
He hates the way he blushes when Chris teases him about sex. One day they're in the drugstore looking for cough drops and Chris shoves a box of condoms in his face.

"Look, Bass! Ever seen a dick with a smiley face before?" The condom box is black, with a little cartoon dick on it juggling fruit and grinning.

Lance feels himself reddening. "Leave me alone, Chris," he mumbles, and tries to duck out of Chris's reach.

Chris isn't willing to let him go so easily. He grabs Lance by the elbow. "What's your problem? It's just a penis, man! You do know what that is, right?" He leers at Lance. His voice is loud in the narrow aisle, and Lance can feel the Germans looking over at them disapprovingly.

Lance jerks his arm away and tries to laugh. "Pervert."




Read Sex Sells

Fandom: ANDROMEDA
Pairing: Charlemagne Bolivar/Harper
Author on LJ: luzmaria8
Author Website: Muses Compilation
Why this must be read: this story is blazingly hot. just, guh.

it's a PWP in that the entire thing is all about hot, harsh, boysex. but Charlemagne is so fucking in character that his lust for Harper serves as a window into the Nietzschean psyche.

Ambush

Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Author on LJ: nerdwegian
Author Website: S-AINT.ORG
Why this must be read: Imagine waking up in a hospital room with no memory of your life. Your parents, your ex-wife, your colleagues and friends visit, show you pictures of your life, but you don't remember. It turns out you're a cop, injured in the line of duty. Your partner is there, a strange, alarmingly polite Mountie, of all things. It turns out he's also your best friend. He sticks by your side and helps you through this horrible, confusing ordeal, but something's amiss. He's strange, yes -- but it's more than that. He's too quiet, and you feel there's something you're not getting, something important. And then your memories start to return and holy shit, you had no idea...
 

Iqaqpaa!