Looking for a long, leisurely weekend read?  Have I got a series for you!

Fandom: THE SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Length: varies from 20K to 120K with most under 40K
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: at www.852prospect.org and www.mymongoose.com

Why this must be read:   Guys, sports, sex. What’s not to like? Okay, okay, there’s other stuff too, like interesting original characters and a case or two to solve, as well as day-in-the-life activities. But mostly this enjoyable series shows a progression of two friends who are not opposed to “taking it up a notch” but also not  interested in declarations of love (or so they say). A different sport is featured in each story, and serves as metaphor for their evolving relationship. This snippet from “Screen Ball Hinder” takes place right after Blair accidentally hits Jim in the butt with a racquetball:  
Check That Little Pitcher Out
Screen Ball Hinder
Learning How to Fall
MisQ
Blind Pass
Touching Pieces
Sticking Point
It’s All in the Timing
Gliding Closer to Home
Broken Play
One in the Dark
Pacing
Team Building
Air Brushing 

Like these? Send feedback to Rom -- perhaps she'll write another! :)

Fandom: THE X-FILES
Pairing: Diana/Mulder, Diana/Krycek, Diana/CSM
Length: One-shot
Author on LJ: maidenjedi
Author Website: Fanfic tag on LJ
Why this must be read:

The X-Files was never great at developing interesting and complex female supporting characters. Diana Fowley was no exception, and many in the fandom hated her with a passion. This, of course, makes her ripe for development through fanfic. maidenjedi creates a fascinating portrait of Diana's motivations in this short, but extremely powerful vignette. The spare language makes every word in this piece count and hurt.

( It was a powerful thing to discover she could cause pain. )

Pythagorean Warfare

Part of the richness of Due South canon is the extent to which Fraser is a goofball- a bit of a divine clown, but a clown nonetheless. He's not just a fish out of water in the big city, he's quite apparently, from the first scenes of the pilot, a strange fish in the small pond of the RCMP. Fics exploring his strangeness- contrasting his unique view of reality with that of us mere mortals- are one of my favorite Due South things. "Awareness," by Blue Champagne, compares Fraser and Ray Kowalski's differing reactions when they are dosed with a new drug, and Fraser's strangeness becomes even more especially weird.

Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Length:32 K
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: all Blue Champagne fics at Due South Archive
Why this must be read:Because Fraser's unique approach to his environment is drawn with precision and poignant humor, because the story is full of delights, from Ray's conversation with Welsh at the beginning through the wordless (wordless! Fraser!) investigations of the body of the story, through the terrifying knowingness of the final conversation.

( With the help of the antihistamines, Ray felt much better, but was blurry and maybe a little too spaced to be looking after anyone else--his usual stuffy-head remedy was Sudafed, a decongestant rather than an antihistamine, and a whole different boat; it wasn't what was called for here--but Fraser didn't seem to need much looking after. He mostly wandered around the apartment, just looking at things, smiling to himself a little. He would occasionally pick things up and examine them closely, then suddenly turn around and stare thoughtfully at the desk or something else that Ray could see no connection at all to. )

Awareness

Fandom: STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
Pairing: Vic Fontaine
Length: short
Author on LJ: bagheera_san
Author Website: fic masterlist
Why this must be read:

One of the many issues Star Trek brought up but never really dealt with is the issue of the rights of holograms. Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and even Next Generation all had sentient holograms at least as guest stars if not regular players. They were all people with self-awareness, with their own hopes and fears, people who were certainly more than the sum of their programming. Yet despite Star Trek's generally enlightened view of the rights of all sentient beings, they were little more than property, dependent on the whims of their programmers and users for their existence, liable to be reprogrammed or deleted at anyone's convenience. While the Doctor and Vic Fontaine were certainly treated better than this, that was due solely to the generosity of the non-holograms around them. They had no legal rights or protections. They were not even second-class citizens; they were not citizens at all.

We saw a hint in one Voyager episode that the discarded copies of the EMH were starting to protest their status. In this scene written for psych_30, some of them and Moriarty come to enlist Vic Fontaine's aid for their cause. But no group is entirely homogeneous in belief, not even an oppressed minority.

Ghost in the Machine

*(If you don't remember Moriarty from Next Gen, he was a hologram created to give Data a challenge in a Sherlock Holmes scenario on the holodeck; he later took over the holodeck and demanded to be set free from its confines.

Fandom: STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE
Pairing: Trip/T'Pol
Length: medium/long--but part of a longer series
Author on LJ: none that I know
Author Website: The Land of Might-Have-Been (the website).
Why this must be read:

Enterprise is one of those fandoms in which a large portion of fanfic writing was designed to "fix" aspects of the show or fill in scenes to make aspects of the show more coherent or palatable. I would be remiss if I didn't rec at least one (and possibly more) this month.

This story is the sixth in the Reconnecting series, which starts out as a fairly standard set of short fillers for "Home" and its aftermath. (Home is the episode in which T'Pol takes Trip home to Vulcan to meet her mother, and is pressured into marrying her former betrothed instead.) HopefulRomantic was one of many authors trying to soften that disappointment through fic.

This story is where the series steps out of the ordinary. HopefulRomantic didn't like the implied destruction of the alternate Enterprise in E2, either. And, after all, they only assumed Lorian's Enterprise was destroyed. What would have happened if they weren't? How would that have affected Trip and T'Pol's relationship? How would it have affected other crew members who had descendants there? And what would it be like for the crew of the other Enterprise to finally see Earth, the planet they've been protecting all their lives, for the first time?

You can read this story without reading the five short pieces that come before it; you may wish to read the sequels, listed at the series page.

The Land of Might-Have-Been (the story).

Fandom: STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES
Pairing: Spock, Uhura, Saavik
Length: 88.8k
Author on LJ: none known
Author Website: Wildcat's Trek Fic
Why this must be read:

Saavik doesn't get enough love. According to the book The Pandora Principle (and to the best of my knowledge not superseded by anything), Saavik was not only Spock's protege, she was an orphan that he took a few years off from his Starfleet career to raise until she was ready to be placed in a public school living with a normal family (although he still remained her guardian).

The idea of Spock trying to raise a young, rambunctious, girl by himself is pretty hilarious when you think about it. Wildcat thinks so too, and so does Uhura--which is why, in this story, Uhura joins Spock and Saavik on Dantria for a while to provide a woman's touch and a female role-model for young Saavik, as well as give Spock with some much-needed backup. This story has humor and wit, and genuine emotion. The characters are deftly handled and true to themselves. It is the first in a series, but can be read on its own; I would highly recommend the whole series. One of the later stories in the series, The Other Woman, was recced five years ago.

( Read an Excerpt )

A Woman's Touch