Fandom: TEEN WOLF
Pairing: gen Lydia Martin, Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale
Length: 9253
Author on LJ: argle_fraster
Author Website: at AO3
Why this must be read: This is set/written post season 1; therefore it has been Jossed. That doesn't make it irrelevant though. Canon more or less forgot that Lydia has fans, people who want to see her struggle back to herself -- even if she realizes who she was isn't who she wants to be. The fic has a dreamy feel, it can be a little purple with the prose, BUT! BUT! It's so *good*. Heed the warnings if you have triggers. Lydia is in a dark place and she struggles a lot before she takes back her life.


After school one day, she smells something sweet in her room when she gets home. It's the wrong kind of sweet, the kind that smells like him. She almost falls over when she walks in the door because her breath catches and her pulse jumps; she feels like she just ran three miles. She can't breathe. It's in her room, he's put it in her room - she throws herself to the ground. She can see it growing out of the carpet. It's blue and purple and overpowering, and it's clouding up her mind.

She rips the carpet free from the corner before she realizes she's crying. It's the ugly sort of crying; the kind where she's hiccupping sobs that ache all the way out, that nearly make her keel over with the force like her body can't possibly withstand the onslaught. She tears at the carpet, desperate to find the source.

Everything is purple and blue and Peter Hale.

It's only when things get red that she stops. She's bleeding - ripping up the carpet has driven staples into her cuticles, and her nails are ravaged. There's blood all over the bits she hasn't managed to pull up from the boards yet. She tries to suck in air and her lungs have stopped working. She wants to scream, and she doesn't have the oxygen to get the sound out. When she presses a hand against her lips, she can taste the copper pang of the blood.

As she cries, low and anguished and desperate, Lydia looks up at her vanity.

There are flowers there: roses. Pink, her favorite color. There's a note amidst the blooms and she can't read the words, but she does know her mother's handwriting. It's the usual gift when her mother feels a stab of guilt for not paying enough attention to her. A consolation prize, of sorts: dearest Lydia, sorry I'm not here for you. Love, Mom.

Roses, not wolfsbane.

this is a warning sign, a battle cry

Fandom: FRINGE
Characters/Pairings: Alternate Lincoln Lee, Alternate Charlie Francis, Alternate Olivia Dunham and baby Henry Dunham
Length: 2911 words
Author on LJ: giallarhorn
Author Website: intro post and master list on LJ
Why this must be read:

Because it's a sweet and anguished piece taking a further look into altverse post-Bloodline, particularly the conspiracy angle that is hinted at, the things the alt!team don't get told. We get an adorable bit of Lincoln with baby Henry that leads into a more disturbing realisation about blue!Charlie uncovered thanks to his position. I think of all the points relating to the altverse characters that got dropped in canon this was the one I was most sad not to see brought up because more on Charlie is always good and this fic nicely fills in that canon gap.

One of laughter, one of anguish

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Gen
Length: 4324 words
Author on LJ: myscheherazade
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read: This is the best kind of crack, even for a fandom where crack premises like "the Doctor regenerates into a cat" are actually kind of canonically plausible. Anyway, read it--it's funny and a little heartbreaking and sweet and features lots of old friends who take this rather pear-shaped turn of events in stride. Also, K-9 can be a bad dog, sometimes.

( On the plus side, he's finally ginger. )

Gone Native

Fandom: NARUTO
Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke
Length: one-shot at 7,337 words
Author on LJ: askerian
Author Website: author has fics all over, but looks like their FF.net profile has an index of all the various places
Why this must be read: This fic is proof that no matter how worn-out a trope, a good author can make it work, and work WELL. This fic is dark and painful and not happy at all, and it's all the more powerful because of it. The relationship between Naruto and Sasuke feels perfect, their characters ring true, and in the end I was so very glad Naruto had Sasuke to help him. For the record, the tropes are High School AU and Healing Cock. (ONOES!) As a bonus, the author is ESL. As my BFF said when I told her about the fic, "This author wins at fanfic." Warning: torture and off-screen rape [setting is the dreaded high school AU, no canon spoilers]

Locker Room Therapy by Asuka Kureru

Fandom: STAR TREK REBOOT
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, with initial Spock/Uhura
Length: 65k
Author on LJ: awarrington
Author Website: Her master list on LJ and the KS Archive

Why this must be read:

Another trope I adore is the accidental bonding one, and there is an absolute plethora of it in this fandom. This one, however, is the one against which all others should be measured.

"Silver Lining" starts with Spock going into pon farr, and so he must be taken to his bonding with his intended, T’Pring, who survived the destruction of Vulcan. As in the original series ep Amok Time, T'Pring challenges their bonding so that she can be with the man she has chosen for herself. Jim, in the meantime, has insisted on accompanying Spock to the ceremony – because he’s a good bro, people – and in the process winds up accidentally bonded to his first officer. Spock’s pon farr hasn’t abated, however, and naturally the two must consummate their match.

That’s just the beginning, of course, as the story shows us a friendship that grows into a deep affection and eventually love, with a lot of really hot sex along the way. How Jim falls for Spock is done in a believable and natural way, and when a crisis affects them both, Jim learns exactly how deep his feelings lie. But the great thing about the story is that it doesn’t hand-wave the complications – Spock was in a relationship with Uhura, and they loved each other, and Jim really isn’t the marrying kind.

As if this story wasn’t brilliant enough, the author then wrote a 30k word sequel from Spock’s POV that is even better! “Children of Destiny” doesn’t just rehash the events in the original, it shines a light on them that provides a fresh perspective that will make you see the whole tale differently. In many ways, it’s a tragic yin to the initial story’s romantic yang, as we learn how painful Jim’s diffidence about their bond is for Spock, as well as Jim’s betrayal of it when he hooks up with someone on shore leave. But as we already know, they fall in lurve, and the journey is somehow more satisfying the second time around.

This writer has one of the best Spock voices in the fandom, making him very sympathetic, yet still Vulcan, and she never portrays him as a robot like many writers tend to do. I hope you’ll check this out.

( Here is an excerpt… )

Silver Lining on AO3
Children of Destiny on AO3

Fandom: FRINGE
Characters/Pairings: Peter Bishop
Length: 2361 words
Author on LJ: exorcisingemily
Author Website: on Fanfiction.net
Why this must be read:

Because we never do quite find out what it is Peter is running from, what lies in his murky past and this fic presents an atmospheric scenario for something gone wrong that even Peter doesn't fully understand as it happens.

Reinvention