Fandom: STAR TREK: REBOOT
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Length: 7,400 words
Author on LJ: black_eyedgirl
Author Website: Fic tag
Why this must be read: What happens after the film ends? That's the question this lovely story answers, showing us the first year of Enterprise's mission, and Kirk and Spock moving on from being Captain and First Officer, to something much closer to friendship, with just an edge of something more. Mmmm. Lovely.

Taking the slower path (we'll get there in the end)

Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: None
Length: ~4,700
Author on LJ: alena_hu
Author Website: No other site for her HP fic
Why this must be read:
Alena wrote two fics for the snape_after_dh fest, when fans (like me) were still flailing about, trying to adjust to the fact that Snape was dead. Both fics are worth reading, and the other is arguably the better crafted, but this one hit me hard at the time. It still fills a need that I wish more authors would address, because it deals with a small handful of minor-character Slytherins, survivors and real people, not evil, Dark, or stupid losers. This is a chamber-music piece describing what happened to each of them on the night of the last battle, spoken over the grave of their Head of House. In some ways, it's a bleak fic, but the four voices are wonderful. It reminds us that history is written by the victors, and that there are always victims caught in the collision between opposing sides. These children are sharp, smart, defiant, old beyond their years, and aware that life will never be brilliant for them. So they've gathered to pay tribute to the one teacher who ever actually gave them what they needed, even if that knowledge is more bitter than sweet.

The verb tenses wobble once in a while, but it nearly works to the fic's advantage, because the voices are so personal and the words informal. It may bruise your heart a bit, but it might also succeed where JKR failed: in showing that Slytherin students are just like any other children, and that the world makes a different sort of sense depending on where you're standing at the time and how much of an outsider you are.

( Blaise speaks )

Silver and Green: a Quartet

Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Gen, moving to Fraser/OC
Length: 5400 words
Author on LJ: luzula
Author Website: Index of Luzula's Stories
Why this must be read: Because there are a lot of examinations of "what happens after" but this one goes some places which others have not. Because it shows Benton Fraser changed by experience, and still his reserved and solitary self. Because other people care obout Fraser, and he cares about them; his solitude does not mean he doesn't belong to and in his community. Because time heals, and this story shows that process with grace and elegance.

Excerpt:

Sometimes, shelving books in some corner of the library, he felt (or imagined) the ghost of his grandmother looking over his shoulder. He imagined that she would not be displeased with how his life had led him back here, to perform the same service to the community that she and George had made their lives' work. Their traveling library had been integrated into the main library in Inuvik when they retired, and Fraser had found their old card system in the file cabinets standing in the back room. It was still meticulously in order, and reading the entries in Martha's bold handwriting and George's even, slanting one gave him an oddly satisfying sense of continuity.

The Passage of Time

Fandom: POPSLASH
Pairing: Chris/Lance
Author on LJ: wanderingwombat
Author Website: http://www.respect-the-sparkle.co.uk/stories.html
Why this must be read:

(Note: The author uses different pen names; I've headed this entry with the one that's used on Make The Yuletide Gay where this story was first posted.)

Another in the long line of SeSa fics with weird and wonderful titles, this is a downmarket AU in which the boys all work the menial jobs at a legal firm, and Chris and Lance have a Thing going. Great characterisation, especially of Chris, whose unpredictability is as usual part of the attraction, and some really sensual scenes.
( Read more... )
All the Best Washerwomen Drink Mountain Dew

Fandom: STARSKY & HUTCH
Pairing: None - Gen
Length: A bit more than 900 words
Author on LJ: loyseofverlaine (Edited thanks to kimberlyfdr :)
Author Website: Under her name in Kassidy's place
Why this must be read: I usually don't rec short pieces, as I found myself going for long, plotty stories most of the time. But then, you find something like this one, and you know how wrong had you been. This short story is mostly about Vanessa, Hutch's former wife. It's about what she thinks of her marriage, her husband and his partner. About her past and her future. It happens just before "Hutchinson: Murder One", and it's a very, very good view into her.

If you want to have a taste, click ( here )

Pieces of Silver

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: River/Kaylee, River/Inara, River/Zoe
Length: 1300 words
Author on LJ: carmarthen
Author Website: With Gleaming Starlight
Why this must be read:

This is an achingly beautiful look at River as she falls in love and has her heart broken, with a wonderful River voice.

Dinner tastes like bland molecules, oxygen and carbon chaining and linking into beautiful spirals and sweeping shapes that still taste like nothing. River is more interested in watching Kaylee: Kaylee laughing at some joke of Mal's, smiling at Simon and Inara, blushing when Jayne says something inappropriate. Kaylee is bright and warm and makes River feel slow and calm and sweet and a little bit melty, like ice cream

(she thinks she remembers ice cream, but it's been a long time).

Once Simon tried to make ice cream from protein for her birthday, but it tasted like stale dreams instead.

Full Circle, or, Two and a Half Loves for River Tam by carmarthen

If you enjoy the story, please let the author know.

*

Fandom: LIFE ON MARS - UK
Pairing: Sam Tyler/Vic Tyler (implied)
Warnings: suggestions of father/son incest, spoilery for ep. 1.08.
Length: short
Author on LJ: dew_chan
Author Website: none that I can find
Why this must be read:

Andy said it all in her comment about this fic: "Deeply twisted and oh-so-wrong, but beautifully lyrical." It really really is. I tend to skitter away from dark-fic and incest fic (neither squicks me particularly, but there is a certain amount of discomfort that leads me to generally avoid both genres) but this one is an exception. Retelling Sam Tyler's story through the lens of a broken fairy tale, it is a gut wrenching look at the worst-case "might have been" for the show. *shudders* But oh so beautifully done...

Story: Red Riding


~

Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Lyle, Claire, Nathan, Peter, Angela
Length: 3526
Author on LJ: saestina
Author Website: Fan Fiction Index
Why this must be read: It is rare that we get to see a story told from one of the lesser known characters in Heroes fandom, and in this fic the author gives Lyle Bennet a voice that is witty, real, and full of character. Through his eyes we get to know Claire as a sister and the Petrelli's as a family full of dysfunction, but still a family nonetheless.

( excerpt )


Ordinary Boy