Fandom: WATCHMENCharacters: Dan/Laurie/Rorschach, Hollis, Adrian, Sally, Moloch, Mothman
Length: ~45.5k
Author on LJ:
mustinvestigateAuthor's website: fic listWhy this must be read:This is one of the fandom's masterpieces. It's an AU set in the world of William Gibson's
Neuromancer, where Dan and Rorschach are hackers and Laurie is a razor girl. It's MASSIVE, and extremely complex, and so well written that every one of its bazillion little pieces shines.
This story is so good because it not only has all the usual things you want in fanfic - inventive but plausible extrapolations of the characters, new interaction, new adventures, humour, weird transhumanist techno-sex - but it also really strives to live up to its source material, and it succeeds. It has the same crazy abundance of detail as
Neuromancer, the same kaleidoscopic sense of multiple overlapping realities, and just the right kind of dystopian griminess.
Laurie Isham was waiting when he finished, slipping the virtual reality helmet from his head with fingers that felt thick as firehoses. She stubbed out her contraband cigarette half-smoked and helped him to his feet.
“You got em?” she asked, pointedly ignoring Kovacs as he bundled the equipment away into the hidden safe under the stairs.
“We got em,” Dreiberg replied, unable to keep the smug satisfaction out of his voice. He’d single-handedly destroyed a massive 64k of child pornography before it hit the streets, shooting the police department enough data to compare the models to their missing-child registers and arrest the perpetuators. Should they be so inclined and able, within their complex web of bribes and favors owed. Dreiberg had been careful to bounce the data through three laundering hubs, just in case.
All Quiet on the Liminal Fringe