A lovely, slow and stately portrait of Jack and Stephen growing old together. The language is beautiful, subtly weaving together the threads of their interactions with their families, old friends, and each other until the picture emerges.
Aubrey and Maturin gen, crossover-fusion with Temeraire, short story. Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin meet Captain Laurence and Temeraire. I love the way this is written, which seems very true to both sources, although I suppose that in a true crossed-over world, Jack and Stephen would already be somewhat familiar with dragons and their riders.
Aubrey/Maturin, G to PG, can be read as slash or gen. Alas, my very favorite writer in this fandom vanished a few years ago. Her stories all begin with a short quote from canon, but were I left on my own I wouldn’t be able to tell where O’Brian’s words end and hers begin, so perfect is her voice. I adore her writing to tiny little bits. I especially love Sealegs, Unkindest Cut, At Dawn, and Blue Devils, but really, all these are wonderful.
Faramir visits the tomb of the Stewards and has…an experience. This is a great gen ghost story, and although it makes more sense if you have read the historical appendices to LotR, that’s not altogether necessary. The ending made me a little weepy. I listened to the audiofic as excellently read by Greylin.
Gen. Faramir and Arwen play chess. I particularly liked the choices made for the names of the pieces in Middle-earth. I listened to the audiofic and the reader, Greylin, was a large part of my enjoyment.
Stella and Diefenbaker gen. I laughed out loud at the punchline!
Boromir and Pippin gen. Maybe I like this because I have Boromir’s tortured thoughts in my head from just watching the movie; he sees what is to come, and he wants to stand against it, but feels inadequate and lost, knowing its power. Or maybe it’s just because even with unwashed hair, Sean Bean is adorable, and the idea of him feeling all protective of the hobbits turns my insides to goo.
Aragorn/Legolas. A little vignette that reminds me, maybe, of the John and Ronon dynamic I wrote about in Alpha Males. Guys. You know.
Gen Gimli and Legolas, but you may be forgiven (at least by me) for thinking of this as pre-slash, la la la. Even if Gimli still has that crush on Galadriel.
Hot Fuzz, Nicholas/Danny. This story walks the perfect line between tentative awkwardness and outright silliness, and it’s sweet and gentle and has awesome characterization through dialogue.
Big Eden, Henry/Pike. Henry’s POV on the penultimate scenes of the film - what happens at the store while Pike’s driving to the airport. I want to draw big sparkly hearts around this story. Yay! I love the way all the townspeople are looking out for Pike.
Rodney always wanted to be a Mountie! The clip choice is good and often utterly brilliant (I laughed out loud when the line about visiting Vancouver was matched with a shot of The Alien Planet That Somehow Always Looks Like Vancouver) and the internal timing is well done. My one criticism is that I think it would have benefited from judicious cutting - the song’s extremely long, and it felt to me as though the vidder was reaching for clips to use during the long dialogue section. To me, it’s a sort of “reverse” vid in that rather than re-interpreting the show through the song, it illustrates the song using the show.
Bon Cop, Bad Cop, gen. Another wacky Canadian casefic, in which Martin and David are assigned to investigate bootlegged Mountie dolls. Hee!
An illustrated and rhyming answer to the sga_flashfic “Ways to Die” challenge, a la Edward Gorey. Randomly spoilery for various eps up through S4, will make you grin like a loon.
An older vid, remastered by Gwyn_r. Some of my favorite S1 and S2 scenes in here, and I’ve always liked the song.
“They Built This City on Rock and Roll,” dude! Effects galore, sparkles and goofy faces. This made me giggle and grin with its utter cheesetasticness. The best part is the scream at the end.
Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia and her brother, gen. A beautiful double-drabble with tone and language that evokes the movie perfectly.
Apocalyptic fic, beautiful and heart-rending.
Gen Snape and Black, G, comic. Sirius Black and Severus Snape review “Deathly Hallows.” Funny as hell - er, heaven. In two parts so far - there’s a link to part 2 at the end.
SGA vid set to the Muppet Show theme song. If the Hermiod cameo doesn’t make you laugh out loud, there is no hope for you.
Lim’s vids push the boundaries of what I consider fanvids; they are technically brilliant, but because I am not a particularly sophisticated vid fan, they tend to go over my head. But I really like this one, set to “I Saved The World Today” by the Eurythmics, partly because of the very cool use of color and effects and stuff I don’t even know how to describe, and partly because it takes in everyone in Atlantis, from Caldwell to Kavanagh, sending the implicit message that everyone is an important part of the bigger team that is Earth’s presence in the Pegasus galaxy.
Written for the genre challenge, this is an absolutely fabulous take on Ladies’ Man (with a hint of Asylum, and a tiny bit of CotW) as a Dorothy Sayers pastiche - and Lord Peter Fraser is spot on. This AU posits that Kowalski was brought up on charges of killing Detective Botrelle, during the years that Fraser was partnered with Vecchio. The writing is gorgeous and the story unfolds beautifully.
Zenna Henderson - The People series, gen, G. This story was written for ME! Yay! But even if it wasn’t, it deserves a rec because it is just that fantastic. The gentle story of a young woman who comes to college and discovers that her assigned roommate is just a little bit…different. It will make you smile if you know the series, and it will make you want to read the series if you haven’t yet.
Shopping for gear for the quest. The language is just lovely and makes me want to hug them.
Fraser’s locked in a room and doesn’t have the right tools to get out; his dad is no help at all. So funny.
Ensemble (Fraser, RayK, Maggie, Bob, Frannie, and Dief/Ante :-), G, vid. I can’t believe a vid is making me all misty-eyed, but this is just…awww. There are all sorts of nice moments, like Fraser and Bob walking together in rhythm to the song, and the Dief/Ante is just…awww. Follow the download instructions carefully. File is .mp4 - I played it in VLC.
Elizabeth-centric drabble series. The last line makes me the good kind of weepy.
Kind of an unrequited Ray/Fraser vibe going on here, a little sweet, a little sad. I like the way the clips of the Riv are used to anchor the beginning and end (and there’s a lovely section in the middle that she called ‘car porn’ when I commented on it!) and the use of successive clips with Ray and Fraser in the same relative positions, which underlines the way they’re always together.
Oh, this cracks me up! These short vids are made to the audio of what appear to be 1950s era PSAs. The clip selection and timing is genius, and the freeze-frames make me giggle. And hey, black and white again, although obviously the effect is intended to heighten the period effect. I can’t wait to see the promised third and fourth parts.
In which Fraser discovers a meeting taking place in his father’s office. Funny and sweet with impeccable characterization.
Fraser/RayK, RayK/Stella, RayK/Luanne, RayK/Maggie, G, vid. The narrative here is very clear: Fraser watches Ray get involved with women who don’t love him like he does. I really liked how each section was about a different woman in Ray’s life - and poor Fraser, watching Ray run after them and get hurt.
Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Dex. Rodney’s got a crush on John, and he’s jealous of Ronon. The Ronon section was just yay.
Frannie/various, Fraser/RayK,. Frannie kind of likes Mounties. It made me giggle.
Set to “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” performed by Robbie Williams and Rupert Everett; it’s a languid, big-band jazzy song, and the clips are relatively long, so the overall effect is very relaxed and smooth. The cutting isn’t necessarily to the beat, but the action within the clips is nicely synched to the beat, which I really liked. Maybe it’s overly literal, but I need narrative, so literal works for me.
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.
Team humor vid which is quite silly, but does a clever job with the dialogue snippets. I admit that one reason I like this is that it’s very short - just over a minute, not so long that the single joke gets old. I’d probably like it more if I had ever watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
John and Teyla centric gen, alternate history AU.
This story, a pastiche of Lawrence of Arabia, is set in an AU Atlantis in which Sheppard came to Atlantis as a captain (and thus with less military authority); because he doesn’t go on the initial expedition to Athos, Teyla’s necklace isn’t activated, the Wraith don’t come to Athos, Sumner lives and the Wraith don’t awaken. Sumner runs his missions with the arrogance of a technologically and morally superior race, alienating the Pegasus people; Sheppard (the Lawrence character) is relegated to being “Captain LightSwitch,” using his gene to turn things on, until he gets itchy feet, wangles a mission to Athos, finds a kindred spirit in Teyla (who is a combination of Feisal and Ali), and “goes native.”
The brilliance of this story lies in the way that canon events (e.g. the meeting of the Genii, the discovery of the wrecked Wraith ship) are retold as they would have happened in this version of Atlantis. There are some very clever subtleties, such as the puddlejumpers being “gateships” (but of course!) and Sheppard’s thoughts on the “alternate alternate” history from the events of “Before I Sleep.” Sheppard is the perfect tragic Lawrencian hero, charismatic and sympathetic, disillusioned about the military yet a strong leader, ultimately a pawn in a terrible war.
You do not need to know the movie (or Lawrence’s autobiographical writings, which this draws from) to enjoy this fabulous story.
Snape and others, humor. This is a pretty old one, but it still cracks me up.
Teyla character piece. Homage to a strong woman.
Ensemble, crossover with SG1. This one is cool because it uses clips from behind-the-scene specials - it’s kind of a meta-vid about the creation of the shows we watch.
Ensemble. I interpreted this as Atlantis and the Ancients “speaking” across time to the Earth team, although I guess you could consider it John/Atlantis - I saw it as much more of a team thing, though. [ Email merryish @ anyroad.org for password.]
Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series: gen, metafic. Mary Sue stumbles into Callahan’s. Light (heh) and sweet, in perfectly canonical style, complete with excrable puns.
Crossover with Harry Potter. Ray and Fraser go to Animal Control to retrieve Dief, who’s been swept up as part of a rabies investigation, along with another…wolf? Sort of subtexty gen.
Ray gets a little drunk and starts talking with Fraser about…citizenship. Only, not. The perfect metaphor for these characters.
An amusing entry in the documentation challenge. You need MS Word to see the meat of this “story”, which is Zelenka’s performance evaluation as written by Rodney. His chief accomplishments for the past year include “not dying horribly.”
HP/Discworld. Gen, Susan Sto Helit-centric. This is a fantastic crossover and a brilliant idea, and well in keeping with both worlds: Professor McGonagall has a request for Susan.
Frannie learns that Fraser’s attentions are “otherwised engaged.” Hilarious character voice here.
SG-1 had an episode mentioning “Wormhole X-treme”, a tv show based on the “real” adventures of the stargate team. This is a fictitious IMDB listing for “Wormhole X-treme II”, a tv show based on the “real” adventures of the SGA team. The casting is funny, the character names are all clever puns (e.g. Leno Pinter for Carson Beckett), and the form is perfect.
Teyla/Ronon. This one has been widely recced, and deservedly so. A gennish look at the interactions among people of different cultures. Ronon’s background is given here as much more technological than most writers assume. The characterizations are lovely.