Hieroglyfics Recs

Stephen has arranged for a source to stay at a gentleman’s club that caters to a particular sort of gentleman, with particular tastes; Jack, unknowing, follows him there. Possibly this is the Age of Sail version of the “undercover in a gay bar” trope, but it is handled so deftly and sensitively here that it seems completely in keeping with canon. Jack’s utter obliviousness is just wonderful.

This story feels exactly like canon, except for the zombies, and I can’t believe I actually wrote that sentence in a rec. No, seriously. It was originally written as a series of comments to the anonymous Aubreyad Kink Meme, and with the author’s permission, I collated it into a single file, which is linked above. And it rocks utterly. It is the story of a plague that comes to London, and of sailing ships, and of politics, and how Jack and Stephen’s friendship is sorely tested by difficult times; it is magnificent, and you should read it. There are clever references to canon and to other sources (I detected a Shackleton homage, and I am sure there are others.) And there are zombies.

Geoffrey gen (as per the author; I read it as implied Geoffrey/Ellen). Geoffrey’s madness from the inside out. In this case, his madness is directing Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, and if I knew this play, I am sure I would have gotten even more out of this story. As it is, there are all sorts of wonderful wry bits of metaphor and in-joke that even a dullard like me noticed. I thought it particularly brilliant to use Cheryl, the stage manager from Theatre Sans Argent in the first episode, as the grounding center of reality here.

Post Dead Men Don’t Throw Rice, Fraser goes back to the Borderlands…and into the Underworld, and Ray has to follow and bring him back. Yep, it’s Orpheus, dS style, and although it started a little slow, by the time the boat named “Charon” shows up on a body of water that is not, after all, Lake Michigan, I was hooked. Yeah, I’ve got a thing for afterlife fic - what of it? I did not buy all of the characterization details, but the retelling of the myth was awesome, and the translation of the underworld’s features and denizens into Ray’s interpretation was fabulous and spot-on.

Legolas comes to terms with his desire. Book canon, so we have dark-haired Legolas, and the Fellowship’s visit to Lothlorien in exquisite, luminous detail. I think it’s always a challenge for an author to convincingly show a character’s growing desire for a character who is not conventionally attractive; it’s easier to imagine the dwarf falling for the elf than the other way around. This story, with its subtle and gentle tension, makes a believer of me.

Orlando/everybody. This story takes the “fandom slut” cliche and turns it on its head. Orlando serenely moves throughout the cast, using his unique gift - his ability to love, and to inspire love - to make each person more whole and complete, to heal their wounds both physical and psychological. It’s not so much an “Orlando fucks everybody” story as an “Orlando loves everybody” story, and that emotional dimension is what elevates it above other stories of this type.

Viggo/Sean Bean. I wasn’t particularly interested in Orlando Bloom when I started reading in the fandom; this story, told from his perspective (and oh, how I love stories about relationships told from a third-party POV!) is one of the things that has changed my mind. Slowly, bit by bit, Orlando puts the pieces together and sees the strong, deep feelings that run between Viggo and Sean. It’s subtle and well-paced, and the external POV allows the men’s motives and feelings to remain obscure, only hinted at, which is what I crave for this particular relationship. Best of all are the Tempest references scattered throughout, never gratuitous, always perfectly fitting.

Legolas/Gimli by one of my favorite writers. Beautiful and very, very hot.

Wiseguy, Sonny/Vinnie, R. Post-apocalyptic roadtrip fic yay! I mean, really, the only way to make this relationship end well is to destroy (most of) the earth. This is an awesome SF story and only incidentally Wiseguy fanfic, which, considering I have only seen the pilot episode, is probably why I loved it so much.

Big Eden, Henry/Pike. I don’t necessarily buy all of it as my backstory for Pike, but it’s a plausible backstory, the device of telling it through his interactions with the various people of Big Eden is clever and works well, and the writing is really luminous in places.

Wiseguy, Vinnie/Sonny, AU assuming Sonny escapes from the Rialto - and brings Vinnie with him. It’s a fabulous road-trip story, a perfect set-up and a satisfying ending.

This is a rec with a caveat, not because of the story but because of me: it’s a post-CotW F/V, which makes me oddly uncomfortable. I’m not sure why I can happily accept the unraveling of the CotW resolution for Ray/Ray, but not for F/V. It’s just me, I guess. So I liked the story in a lot of ways, but am still left with a little niggling waah at the end. Anyway, the plot made me happy, especially the way it was resolved, in which you really see how Vegas has changed Ray - and how it hasn’t. I really liked the characterization of Fraser. And Kowalski shows up at the end, which does a lot to make me feel better about things.

Ray/Ray with hints of F/K/V. Vecchio’s work in Vegas must come to an abrupt end when he sprouts wings; there’s a lovely metaphor of devils and angels, there, and in fact the whole story is rich with metaphor and imagery, sensitivity and grace and poetry. There’s a bit of plot which is not really resolved - I hope this story gets expanded or the clearly needed sequel written.

This casefic has Fraser and Ray going undercover at a dog show, with Dief, of course, undercover as a dog. It’s plotty and funny and well-written, and obviously involved a whole lot of research. The Dief POV sections made me grin a whole lot.

Fraser is dying, and Ray Vecchio comes to Canada for a final visit. It’s so sharp and clear and heartfelt - and heartbreaking. I love the imagining of Ray Kowalski as competent and brusque and intensely private in his love for Fraser. Showing the story through Ray Vecchio’s eyes works really well.

A classic “hero’s journey” in which faint heart never won fair, well, never mind. This is awesome and funny and smooth, with a structure that makes my structure-loving-brain happy, and so many clever lines I don’t know where to start admiring.

Fusion with the luminous film of the same name: Ray is an angel whose fascination with human life in general, and one human in particular, lead him to “fall” and become human. The language is exquisite, the pacing perfect, and the choices Nos made for the events of the story work beautifully. I especially adore Welsh, and more than that I will not say. I was teary-eyed with pure love and happiness at the end.

I know Toft from the HP fandom, and I’m happy to see her in my new fandoms. This is a cross-dressing Sheppard story; cross-dressing is not really one of my kinks, but it’s handled very well here, and there are a lot of interesting aspects of Sheppard’s sexuality explored here - not to mention of McKay’s. Men communicating poorly is one of my story kinks.

Although the ds_harlequin prompt (”Private eye Ray Kowalski is attracted to Benton Fraser from the moment he sees him– in the courtroom where Fraser is on trial for murder….) could have been pure AU, this story posits that Ray became a private detective after being booted from the police force in the aftermath of the Beth Botrelle case, and that during the events of Victoria’s Secret, Ray Vecchio catches up to Victoria…and is killed, and Fraser implicated. This makes for a plausible and fascinating story as it veers only a little distance from canon. There is an “alternate noir ending” which is linked from the last part; I thought it a little too far out to be believable in the context of due South fanfiction, but I sort of prefer it on strictly aesthetic grounds as it’s a totally kickass ending in a structural sense.

This story is a first-person Ray POV (beautifully done, IMHO) retelling of much of canon, through COTW and beyond, and although it drags a little bit in the middle (I’m not a fan of retelling canon the reader already knows) it puts an interesting spin on canon by getting them involved right after Odds. By the time COTW happens they’re already lovers - and then the quest is them not having sex, and not talking about it, and having to actually figure their relationship out. I am such a sucker for men not being able to communicate! The turtle metaphor that runs through the story is wonderful, perfectly apt without being heavy-handed, and I adored the Ray-voice and Frannie’s cameos.

Aubrey/Maturin, NC17, AU. If this is a fusion with something I don’t recognize, it’s brilliant, and if it’s an original fusion I’m floored. It takes O’Brian’s world into a different direction in the same way the Temeraire series does (but with its own completely realized execution: swords and sorcery, and a complicated feudal/sexual structure), and as such it would be fabulous as original fic. The dialogue and characterizations are fabulous, the minor characters from the series welcome grounding in canon, and the plot nicely done with a punchy ending.

This is apparently based loosely on the movie Never Been Kissed: Rodney’s masquerading as a biology grad student in order to get close to Professor Sheppard, for purposes that I don’t want to spoil here but the cool thing is that the AU converges with canon, which is my favorite type of AU. As you might expect, he gets close to Professor Sheppard in an, er, rather different way than he was supposed to. The absolute best part is Ronon, who takes to hanging out on a college campus with unexpected zest.

Welsh-centric gen with hints of Welsh/Frannie, PG, novelette. Welsh has a sucky day - and then it gets worse, as his mother’s ghost visits him and causes him to relive the day from the points of view of every person he’s interacted with. Kind of a cross between Groundhog Day and A Christmas Carol, it’s funny and sly and made me both laugh and go, “awww.”

This is a rec with a caveat. I originally passed over this story because a, BSDM isn’t my thing, and b, I had not read the series which the story notes say this is an “unauthorized homage” of. I read it because of Cathexys’s (locked) post in which she referred to the story as a feminist critique; this is how I read and interpreted the story, and that’s why I liked it.

I guess I’d describe this as a “BSDM AU”. For discussion that includes the BSDM aspect and the relationship between this story and its source, see Millefiori’s post here; to me, it reads as brilliant social satire on traditional views of the role of women:

Until 1941, subs hadn’t been allowed in the military at all; temperamentally unsuited, everyone said, for fighting. Much better to keep them safe at home. Subs were excellent aids and secretaries, junior engineers, kindergarten teachers, nurses, assembly-line workers, mechanics, accountants—careful, rule-following, meticulous, obedient. In the midst of World War II, personnel shortages had forced the armed forces to allow subs to enlist, but they’d been put in separate units, and couldn’t be promoted beyond Corporal. Subs had separate rank insignias until 1970 and wore an S-pin on their collars until 1982.

I’m not generally a fan of BSDM, but here I don’t think it’s intended to be either particularly realistic or even titillating, so for me it works more as a metaphor, the absurdity of which is what makes the satire work. Helen also pokes fun at some canon and fanon elements (such as Sheppard’s frequent defiance of orders). The characterizations are fairly loose, as usual with her stories. The writing is beautifully invisible and just pulls the reader along.

Benny’s got a thing for Ray’s neck; Ray figures it out, and provokes him. The dialogue is snappy and funny and really seems true to the characters. I think I’ve got a thing for Vecchio’s conversation.

Sharing a hotel room together, Fraser catches Ray masturbating. The pacing is just right, and the emotion, and I love Fraser’s POV. One thing I really like about this story is the way little details from the show are included in a subtle way which grounds the story in canon without seeming like it’s retelling everything we already know. And oh, the sex is so hot.

Teyla and Rodney (and the rest of the team) gen (offscreen Teyla/OMC), illustrated, art-format. Spoilers for McKay and Mrs. Miller - personally I don’t think they are huge spoilers, but if you haven’t seen the ep you might be confused by what Rodney’s sister calls him. Teyla and Jeannie strike up a correspondence. It’s a sweet, humorous, heartwarming look at family dynamics - both between Rodney and his sister, and among the members of Rodney’s team, who function more or less as a family.

The “Franklin cold case” didn’t work out and Ray kind of backs into becoming a bush pilot in Alaska. And then, one day, he picks up some guys and Fraser’s with them. Angst, recrimination, and buttsex. Awesome Ray voice, lovely dialogue, and a richness of detail that never seemed to be just description - it was viewed through Ray’s lens and that made it so much more immediate and clearer.

Rodney’s a brilliant conductor who’s written a violin concerto, and John is the erratic but talented violinist trying to escape the shadow of his famous father. There are a few nods to canon - “think of where we are in the solar system”, the coin flip, flying metaphors - but mostly this is an entirely different world. Yet Rodney and John are both distinctly their canon characters and simultaneously perfectly translated into this world, and their individual faults and problems are transcended by what they can do together - just like in canon.

Dan/Val, Dan/Duck, Dan/OMC. Backstory on Dan: who he was and how he came to be the character we know from the movie. This story gives solidity and dimension to Dan’s character, and creates a Val I can believe in and both sympathize with and dislike. The scenario of what could have happened before the movie seems not just plausible but real.

Mostly gen. Billy comes to terms with his feelings of guilt over Joe’s death. The structure is really cool, alternating interview snippets with Billy’s interactions with the various people in his life: the members of Jenifur, Mary, and most especially John Oxenburger, who really shines here in the same sort of role he has in the film. John is the Greek Chorus, the voice of reason in a most ironic sense, and he cuts through to the heart of Billy’s emotional turmoil.

A fusion with Charles de Lint’s Newford series. After a confrontation with some goons, Fraser is beaten almost to death - and rescued by an odd group of women with unusual powers. It’s an interesting mix of Celtic mythology, streetwise Chicago, and the show’s canonical magical realism. Great original characters. And, um, I got a little weepy at the end.

Ray Vecchio, mid-divorce from Stella, goes back to Chicago and finds Ray Kowalski unshaven and unwashed, in a depressed funk after Fraser sent him away. This is really wonderful - heart-hurty and sweet, totally believable in the progression of their relationship, and the character voices are, as usual, perfect. I especially like the part of the story with Frannie - her situation helps ground the story as believably post-canon.

As I recently saw the movie Last Night, this made me think a bit of Craig Zwiller: John figures that with the Wraith coming (end of season 1), he’d better get in all the sex he can. He’s pragmatic about it, figuring that he can get sex without emotional involvement from a guy, and hey, he likes Rodney, and Rodney’s probably desperate. But of course Rodney is the poster child for emotional involvement, so things get a little out of control. I liked it a lot and thought the characterization of John as emotionally closed-off was very canonical, but there are some very interesting comments from people bothered by John’s behavior. This comment by hth_the_first comes closest to how I see it.

Laura Cadman-centric, het, slash, and femslash elements. Full disclosure: I beta-read (and Ameri-picked) this story. And it’s really nifty: it’s Laura Cadman’s narrative during the events of Duet (although this story doesn’t so much fit within canon as much as it bends around canon), while she’s in McKay’s body. The Cadman-voice is a lot of fun, and watching her view of McKay change as she gets to know him better is satisfying. And the ending? Wow.

It’s hard to list pairings for this story for two reasons: several pairings are only hinted at, and some of them it would spoil the story to know in advance. Let me just say that the characters are Cadman, McKay, Brown, Zelenka, and Beckett, and most of the possible pairings among them are at least suggested in this story.

Isaac Asimov’s Robot series: Elijah Baley/R. Daneel Olivaw. This is a nice plotty mystery that could be part of canon - other than the sex, of course, which fits perfectly well with the plot. If you’re at all familiar with these books, read this story.

Joe/Billy, Billy/various both m and f. I assume if you’re reading this rec, you know the movie, but be warned there are spoilers in this rec (as well as, obviously, in the story itself).

Maybe it’s because I started out in HP fandom, where ghosts are characters too, but I really adore afterlife fic. This story begins with Joe’s death - how Billy deals with it, and how Joe deals with it. And neither of them deal with it very well. But then Joe’s shade starts haunting Billy, so to speak, and things start to change. I won’t say too much about how they change, because the slow build of the story to the eventual realization and climax is so artfully done that I don’t want to spoil it. I’ll just say that the author is very clever, and everything fits together beautifully and logically.

The story is structured beautifully, with clever choices of repetition and variation. Each scene contributes something, and the bits wrap in on themselves perfectly. One of my particular favorites is the scene with Bucky Haight; another is the scene just before that, with Ashley’s dad. Finally, there’s a lot of very hot sex throughout, but none of it feels gratuitous. It’s all there for a reason, and the reason becomes clear as the story builds to, er, the climax.

Tim Bayliss/Mark Smithbauer, Fraser/RayK, R, novelette. Crossover with Homicide: Life on the Street. This is kind of two stories smushed together - a bit of action, as Tim meets Fraser and Ray, who are on vacation (post-CotW) in Toronto, and then a bit of romance, when through them he meets Smithbauer. I particularly like Frannie’s cameo in this one.

Crossover with The Sentinel. It turns out that Fraser is a sentinel; Blair and Jim go up to the cabin he shares with Ray (this is post-CotW) to meet him. A great action-adventure, and the old-married-couple bickering between Ray and Fraser is funny and sweet.

Fraser/Dale Cooper, Fraser/RayV. Crossover with Twin Peaks. An FBI agent who comes to work with Ray on a case turns out to know Fraser from the past. Although the story takes place during a case, it’s really a lovely angsty romance.

Ronon/John, Ronon/F, John/Rodney. An incredible Ronon character piece written for the Seven Deadly Sins challenge at sga_flashfic, this consists of 7 pairs of vignettes, each pair dealing (sometimes elliptically) with one of the deadlies in one year as a Runner and the corresponding year in Atlantis. Overall it builds up a remarkably deep portrait of Ronon and his relationships with others. The other characters are all beautifully drawn as well. Very highly recommended.

Rodney and John slowly connect with each other while back on Earth. As usual for her stories, this is well-written, and I like that the characterization of Rodney comes through without him being obnoxious or rudely arrogant. I also liked her emotionally distant John. The one bit that continually nagged at me, though, is that this story depends on Rodney’s relative dislike of and ignorance of football, and I can’t buy that, based on Hide and Seek. Speranza tries to rationalize e.g. Rodney’s mention that Flutie went to Canada, but this particular point really did interfere with my enjoyment of the story. On the other hand, she deserves full credit for getting the Colorado (and other! I love authors who research!) details right. Although the CU Buffs are probably better than the Denver Broncos.

This tremendously original story, set in 17th century Italy, is about city magistrate Raimundo Vecchio and his French friend Benedetto Frasier, investigating a rumor about a painting of Christ modeled on the likeness of a “scruffy blonde barbarian” named Stanislaus. The writing is a bit uneven (particularly at the end) but overall, this story is clever and entertaining. (Part 2 is here.)

This classic AU recasts Victoria’s betrayal of Fraser into the publish-or-perish world of academe.

The true story of the well-known rock band, The Puddlejumpers! How they formed; how they found a manager; about the replacement of their bassist Aiden Ford. Little canon details are translated cleverly to this AU. I don’t see the point of it being McKay/Sheppard, really - it would have been a fine gen story, which lately is my complaint about a lot of SGA fiction, which is part of my recent meh-ness about fanfiction, but I digress. It’s worth a read - and a look at the art - and a listen to the song (!). Multimedia, woo!

Ray nearly dies on their northern adventure, and is saved by a wolf who has befriended Dief; of course, there is a price to be paid. I am a fan of magical realism - this edges more into Inuit-flavored mysticism.

Radek/Elizabeth, John/Rodney. An action/adventure story that reads almost like an episode: an Ancient spaceship is found, and it has a sentient brain which develops an attachment to Rodney. The Zelenka POV is nicely done, and the characterizations of him, Elizabeth, and Laura Cadman seem so canonical to me that I can hear their voices in my head. Beautifully plotted and paced, with clever incidental details and references.

Ancient technology turns Rodney into a Wraith. This is a very cool idea, interestingly executed. It’s in the dreaded Present Tense, which I hate. There are also a few canon problems; there’s no mention of Beckett’s retrovirus project, and the climax contradicts things suggested in Allies (which I won’t detail as not to spoil anyone, and I have to admit the climax is really fitting for the story, and honestly, I’m not sure how I would handle this problem). But Rodney’s characterization rings true to me, the insight into what it feels like to be a Wraith is believable and somewhat frightening, and the pacing pulled me right along and had my heart racing with emotion.

[ETA: after some discussion with the author (who hasn’t seen Allies) and the illustrator (who has) I realize that my conception of that episode is a little mistaken because I forgot about facts established in The Defiant One. And as I say, the climax is really perfect for the story. Also, ETA as I re-add this rec to my database, this story was written BEFORE Common Ground. So there.]

Sheppard/McKay, a touch of Dex/Weir. Apparently Atlantis is just like a Major Publishing Corporation - who knew? I probably missed half the in-jokes, but this is a funny and well-written romp in which Dr. McKay (”My doctorates are, in chronological order, Middle English morphology and syntax, applied linguistics in North America, and the history of punctuation in the Canadian novel”) runs the production department and Ronon Dex managed to leave Sateda LLC just before their takeover by Wraith Alliance.

There are sequels. I don’t like them as much as the original story.

After the team finds a mysterious crystal on a long-dead world, they begin to be haunted by ghosts from their pasts. This is a cool and clever story, well-written and with super characterization, particularly of Teyla and Ronon. The various story threads aren’t really tied together well - the resolution leaves a lot of questions hanging, and some guns were hung on the wall that weren’t used - but overall it’s an enjoyable read.