WARNING: This Overview contains spoilers through episode 1.18 "Parasite".

( Plot Overview )

( Glossary of Characters )

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( More Characters! Now With Plot! )

( Ship Overview )

( Fandom Resources )


This overview was compiled with tremendous help from (in alphabetical order): fashes, sansets, scribewraith, sheepfairy, sixersfan, technosage, trollprincess, and txtequilanights.

In celebration of Hornblower Appreciation Week, I bring you another Horatio Hornblower rec!  My goal is to bring you one or two a day this week, and hopefully, I'll be able to post the winner of the Hornblower Appreciation Week contest at the end of the week.  Enjoy!

Fandom:  HORATIO HORNBLOWER
Pairing:  Horatio Hornblower/Archie Kennedy (?)
Author on LJ:  lokei
Author's website:  lokei's LJ
Why this must be read:  Hornblower fandom is known for the diversity of talent in it's creative base.  lokei is no exception. While she normally writes prose and stories, here, she offers up poetry.  Beautiful poetry at that, not to mention it's in a sonnet form, and the sonnet is done well.  Very well.  This from me, a writer of poetry herself -- and one who has never been able to write a decent sonnet without it sounding sing-songy and stupid.  *G*   This sonnet reads like prose... you don't even realize it rhymes and has a meter until you step back and look at it... and that's a good thing.  This again, from an aos_challenge prompt, "Fair Winds and a Following Sea."

Happy as I to follow, though I go
Now on before you to that veiled shore.
We say it not, but wordless still we know
I wish for you, and you wish for me
The fairest of winds, and a following sea.

Lieutenant

Fandom:  HORATIO HORNBLOWER
Pairing:  Horatio Hornblower/William Bush
Author on LJ:  chateau_bleu
Author's Website:  chateau_bleu's LJ
Why this must be read:  chateau_bleu defintely has a twisted mind, and it's a wonderful thing.  *G*  Breath depicts a side of Horatio Hornblower's character that we all know is there, lurking beneath, bubbling up now and then, but never revealing itself full-fledged -- until now.  While this fic may not be everyone's "cup of tea," as chateau_bleu says, and it depicts an act which is dangerous and possibly fatal, it works.  It really does, with these characters... and withchateau_bleu's writing, which is seamless and strong.  When I read this, I literally gasped.  Gasped, I tell you, and I understand that when this was originally written, the ending was done so that William Bush's fate was left unknown.  What's more... the last line of this fic left me chilled and shuddering.

It was, according to the ancients, a death of sorts, and Hornblower hovered there, caught between one world and the next.

Breath

Hello, I'm poisontaster, and I'll be your first ever Heroes driver. I'm really kind of crazy over Nathan and he features prominently in most of my recs, but I do have a mix of things I brought for show and tell. I thought we'd start with something short and fun.

Fandom: HEROES
Pairing: None.
Author on LJ: trollprincess
Author Website: None.
Why this must be read: Trollprincess's summary said "A short piece about Nathan and flying and that's what this ficlet is, but it's not all it is. It manages to combine both whimsy and insight in very few words, and very skillfully too.


Into the Black

Fandom: TORCHWOOD
Pairing: None
Author on LJ: lower_case_me
Author Website: None that I know of
Why this must be read:

Because it's fic about the pterodactyl. How can you lose? No, seriously, this fic is both funny and angsty and it's generally a wonderful example of how the Torchwood crew deal with each other and the world. The only flaw is that the story is poorly formatted, but it's worth reading anyway, believe me.

( Read an excerpt )

Loyalty, With Extra Anchovies

Fandom: MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
Pairing: Some Chris/Mary and JD/Casey. Josiah/OFC.
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: http://www.magnificent7.com/fanfiction.html
Why this must be read:

I'm elspethdixon, and I'll be driving the van for Magnificent Seven this month. smilla02 has just finished giving us some nice slash recs, so I will be reccing mostly long gen fics, since M7 offers some truly spectacular gen.

"When Shadows Fall" was one of the first Magnificent Seven fics I had the good fortune to read, and at 3.12mb, also one of the longest. And, after three years, still one of my favorites--I have the entire thing saved to my harddrive, and still go back and re-read it every couple of months. All seven guys, including the often neglected Josiah and Nathan, are well characterized and have major rolls in the plot, as does Mary Travis, and the writers beat up Buck and Vin very nicely indeed ^_~.

( read more )

When Shadows Fall

Fandom: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
Pairing: James Norrington/Elizabeth Swann
Author on LJ: the_dala
Author Website: Livejournal memories
Why this must be read: Set post-CotBP (but written before DMC), “Adaptation” finds a marooned Norrington rescued—by the Black Pearl. The crew of which now includes Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann.

James may have preferred to remain shipwrecked.

In the_dala’s carefully constructed story structure, moments that seem like throwaway lines earlier in the fic come back as major plot points later. Her Elizabeth is flawed yet passionate and determined; and her James slowly but believably adapts to life aboard the Pearl, as he eventually discovers what he wants out of life isn’t necessarily what he needs.


And, um, the porn is hot, too. Elizabeth brings new meaning to ‘cocktease’.


Adaptation - Part I and Part II

Hi again, crack_van! Just having finished reccing one fandom here, I immediately start another--I'll be your Star Wars driver for April. I've got a fairly wide variety here for you, all the way from pre-Phantom Menace to the post-Return of the Jedi Extended Universe, as well as a mix of het, slash, and gen. And with that, here we go!

Fandom: STAR WARS: PREQUELS
Pairing: Anakin/Padme
Author on LJ: obaona and vader_incarnate
Author Website: obaona has a site, but dunno about the other two
Why this must be read: I've always rather liked stories where a character from the canon universe is dropped into an alternate one, and this is a wonderful example of the genre. In this case, Obi-Wan, damaged and despairing in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith, wakes up to find himself in a galaxy where the Sith are long gone, the Jedi have not recently fought a war...and where his own counterpart turned to the Dark Side and was subsequently killed by Jedi Knight Xanatos.

This is a very long story focusing on Obi-Wan, who begins to heal in this peaceful galaxy so like and unlike his own, and on Anakin, who confronts his destiny in a universe where the Sith have long since been defeated, yet he still has choices to make. There's moments of humor, of pain, of catharsis and healing, of love, romantic and familial, of truth, of teaching and learning. There's just so much to this story, and it's so well-crafted, even with three different co-writers, that I always get something out of re-reading it.

( Excerpt )

The Water's Edge

"I'm getting the call? I still don't know what that means."

I got the call to rec Sports Night as a small fandom for April on 1 April, a day of many a strange email. I had nothing prepared but, luckily, I've been keeping track in my memories of all the SN fic posted so far this year (for the record: around 160 entries, including drabbles, snippets and commentfic), so it's not as though I didn't have resources to draw on. And so, with my usual ineffable logic, I went back to late last year and chose this:

Fandom: SPORTS NIGHT
Pairing: Casey McCall, Dan Rydell
Author on LJ: quiesce
Author Website: N/A

Why this must be read: quiesce has been one of Sports Night's more prolific writers over the past few months. So, out of all her work, why've I picked this unseasonal Christmas ficlet for my first rec? Because it gives us an almost unique Casey/Dan point of view. Most SN fic is placed during series canon, or at most a few years after to bring it up to the present, with a substantial body of pre-canon, but this ficlet of quiesce's, and the ones she's written in the same universe, are almost the only future –far future – fic I know. (I am not forgetting Em Brunson's The Lake, to which I don't have a working and publicly viewable link.) Many of us write first-time fics, had-sex-by-accident fics, casual-encounter fics; few of us write the boys in an established relationship, still less one that's lasted fifty-odd years. quiesce does, and she makes it believable, and lovely. And the boys, forty years on, are still the boys we know and love: bantering, quirky, snarky, and adorable.

There's a link in the header of this fic that will take you back to the first story in this series, and check out also the ficfor1000 story in the same universe.

Traditions New and Old

This be Dave, and she'll be driving your Doctor Who recs this month. While I lean mostly toward het ships, mainly Doctor/Rose, I like ambiguous plotlines and interesting concepts and characterizations that have to work diligently to be believable (if only within the story's own verse). Oh, and futurefic/AU.

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Author on LJ: walkwithheroes
Author Website: fanfiction tag
Why this must be read:

For all it's a story of his children, this fic is a fascinating look at a broken and mistaken Doctor. Lessons is a sidelong glance at a slowly fading ficcing taboo: incest. It's not a salacious Weasley or Winchester fic but a quiet study on family, abandonment, and heritage. And strangely, oddly, this story of not-about-the-Doctor-at-all seems, to me, to document his descent into madness (and Rose's progression into enabler). I always finish reading feeling dissatisfied with the way things progress and, ultimately, end, but I'm dissatisfied in a way that consistence characterization makes one feel: it doesn't seem out of place what happened in the fic.

By the end of the story, we're really questioning what the Doctor's taught his son, what Rose allows, and what is learned wrong or right by the children. Some grammar & cannon issues (Time "Lady"/the Doctor isn't half human, which is debatable in itself), but definitely worth it if only for the discussion it brings up -- discussion centered largely on the Doctor & would-he-or-wouldn't-he & how he raises the children.

Lessons

Hiya, I'm vaudevilles and I'm the driver of the popslash behemoth in April.

I get all thirteen about Chris and the bantery sparkly snarky goodness that the best fic about Chris involves. I also have a serious kind for genderf*ck stories involving eyeliner. Please don't tell my mother.

Fandom: POPSLASH
Pairing: Chris/Lance
Author on LJ: wearemany
Author Website: Wearemany
Why this must be read: Because if genderf*ck is your bag it hits every single kink in existence. Plus Chris is trying so hard to protect Lance that he's completely clueless about his own feelings. Holy GUH Batman!

Lance had gotten into the business too late to be innocent and too early to be jaded, and Chris knew he was just trying to figure himself out, but there were only so many times he was going to get off that easy. The pretty boy needed a little roughing up. It was for his own good. Chris' job was to do things for their own good before someone else had to do it for them.

Mädchen

Fandom: FARSCAPE
Pairing: John/Aeryn
Author on LJ: raqs

Hi, I'm gigerisgod and I'll be your driver for Farscsape for the month of April. It's my first time, so here goes. I love this show and all its characters, with a special love for Crichton especially, but I promise to try and spot a little something for everyone. I am continually surprised and amazed by some of the wonderful writing to come out of this fandom.

Why this must be read:
I'm going to start things out with John & Aeryn. The author wrote this bit for the porn battle. This is delicious porn; it's not particularly graphic, but it's very sexy and descriptive and keeps you thinking about it long after you've finished reading. This is told from Aeryn's pov, very happy and satisfied with John as her overachiever lover. Easy, simple, no angst, just good smutty fun and who can't use more of that? Enjoy!



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