Fandom: The X-Files
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Author on LJ: coffeeandink
Author Website: Inauthentic Prototype
Why this must be read: I joined the X-Files fandom in the spring of 2000, when season seven was well underway and the fandom itself was beginning to unravel. You wouldn't have been able to tell, though, after "all things" aired. An incredible number of post-episode stories hit the web, and post-"all things" stories nearly became their own genre.

With that said, if post-episode stories make up a genre, Melymbrosia's quiet "Subaqueous" would be one of the defining pieces. It's not very long, but it captures the mood at the end of the episode very well. "all things," if you're new to XF, was the "did they or didn't they" episode of the series, and most post-eps took it as a matter of course that they did. Few kept the atmosphere evoked by the parting shot of Buddha with Moby's "The Sky is Broken" fading away. This one achieved that and does wonders with Mulder and Scully.

Subaqueous

Point One: Blair Sandburg is a magnet for trouble. That’s both canon and fanon. If there’s a psycho villain out there, Blair’s the one to whom he’ll gravitate.

Point Two: Blair Sandburg is an obfuscator extraordinaire. He can verbally tap dance his way out of any situation, or persuade anyone of just about anything.

Point Three: Wax Jism can take these two canon and fanon conventions and play with them like a tiger does with a piece of bloody sirloin.

Fandom: THE SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim/Blair, slight Blair/OMC (which precipitates the Jim/Blair)
Author on LJ: wax_jism
Author Website: Wax Jism, go to “Pickled Slash” and click on “stories.”
Why this must be read:

Blair gets the “neo-hippie witchdoctor punk” treatment most of the time in fic. He’s New Age. He’s sensitive. He’s Mr. “Can’t-we-all-just-get-along?” It's often forgotten in fic that he’s also the guy who knocked over a vending machine onto a militia member, taunted a serial killer while chained up, and defused a bomb on a rig when he could have just saved himself.

Knowing all of that, Wax Jism asks -- and answers -- the question: just what is Blair Sandburg capable of?

( Hold onto your soft bits. Wax Jism punches hard. )

Grey Areas

Fandom: SMALLVILLE
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Author on LJ: josephides
Author Website: Smallville Fic by Jojo
Why this must be read: This story is another wonderful futurefic. It's sweet and funny, and as an added bonus it has a great line about Batman. Plus, it has one of the best Clark confessions ever; it's just so world-weary and anti-climactic and makes me snicker every time I read it.

Nemesis

Fandom: SGA
Pairing: None
Author on LJ: sdraevn
Author Website: Untitled
Why this must be read:
This is a snazzy little character portrait with a definite twist to the darker side, as John's tortured mind seeks out hiding places to evade what is happening to him. He hallucinates, blurring the line between fantasy and reality as the aliens holding him try to pry out information on Atlantis, and each hiding place he finds tells us more about John and what he thinks of his relationship with the people around him.


( excerpt )

A Place to Hide

Fandom: ANDROMEDA
Pairing: Tyr/Harper
Author on LJ: ana_grrl
Author Website: Ana's Fiction
Why this must be read: Written for the 'Wake Up Gay!' challenge, By the Progenitor! is unashamedly silly, and I love it for that. Take one character whose entire race places reproduction above all other things, and turn him gay. Then stir in a handful of flaming clichés and you have something that never fails to make me grin.

( Excerpt )

By the Progenitor!

Fandom: Hikaru No Go
Pairing: Touya/Shindou
Author on LJ: mousapelli
Author Website: The Ratbox
Why this must be read:

The rivalry between Shindou and Touya has a purpose, but they might arrive there without realizing it at first. A humorous take on Touya and Shindou finally reaching the perfect match, with a more unusual location for the game this time. In the end, after all, they're both go-freaks...

Perfect Game

Fandom: STARSKY AND HUTCH
Author Website: http://fanfic-jenny.tripod.com/index.html
Why this must be read:

Starsky and Hutch go under cover at a gay bar. OK, I'll pause for the laughter now.

And when you are done laughing, read this fic. It starts out deceptively light. Then it builds into a heart-jolting adventure that combines H/C, angst and darkness into one of the better stories I've read in the fandom. The author's first language is not English, but that does not detract from this fine bit of fic:

"...he picked up the book from Starsky´s chest and turned it. The 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' was glaring back at him with all the destroying despise its words contained, their blows arbitrary, leaving him breathless, suddenly cold. He'd known the poem, but had never before noticed its impact, its hidden meaning. Hidden to the point of nonexistence. As long as you didn´t fill it with your own demons, it was just that--a pain filled description of a surviving mariner. Randy´s 'Rime', though, had been bursting with dark-colored fright, wings of devils circling in his soul.

'I closed my lids,' Hutch read, 'and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky,
Lay like a load on my weary eye...'

He swallowed, closing his eyes as the last sentence of the verse echoed in his mind, which chosen to read it in the voice of his partner. 'And the dead were on my feet'."

And the Dead Were On My Feet