Hieroglyfics Recs

Kowalski and Vecchio get stuck in an elevator. I’ve found it hard to read Ray/Ray lately, because one Ray is always Ray and the other is Kowalski or Vecchio, which irritates and confuses me. But this story is in first person, and that neatly sidesteps the problem - plus, when POV-Ray thinks of himself, it is as ‘Vecchio’, and Kowalski calls him Vecchio, and, I dunno, it just works for me. Plus, slyly funny and hot like burning.

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.

Stella and Diefenbaker gen. I laughed out loud at the punchline!

Kowalski comes back from Canada and gets partnered with Vecchio; then Fraser returns to Chicago. I liked the narrative voice, and the use of metaphor, and the understated bits where you just see their understanding of each other. I love OT3 but have a hard time buying it; this, I buy.

Ray and Fraser as ELVES! Heeeeee!

due South/Good Omens. Fraser literally has a demon on his shoulder - Crowley. Fortunately Aziraphale is there as well. The writing is right out of Good Omens, but the device of Fraser talking to a supernal being and Ray thinking he’s talking to him is right out of due South (or at least dS fanfiction). Lovely dialogue and a sweet ending.

It’s hard to summarize this without giving away too much (and unfortunately the author’s summary errs, I think, on the side of not saying anything at all), but: it’s about perception and reality, identity and appearance, which are themes that I love writing and reading about. This was a Team Whimsy entry for the second DS Match, so you can expect magical realism rather than conventional truth. This elegant story takes canon and turns it sideways; the language and the structure work together to create a very believable and compelling world. And I was a little teary at the end.

Fraser/RayK and Fraser/OMC. The author’s summary says it all: Fraser, growing old. This Fraser is retired from the RCMP, and his relationship with Ray is in the past; one of the things I like about this story is that it doesn’t explicitly detail what happened, whether Ray died or they broke up or what, but it clearly devastated Fraser at the time - and just as clearly he has moved on, and this is what he has moved on to. Gentle and luminous, and Luzula’s knowledge of the far north shows in her evocation of the landscape and the authentic details of life in the far north. Because Fraser is so much about the land, formed by it, maybe, this works beautifully to limn him from a different perspective than most stories.

The Quest finishes when Ray runs out of vacation time, but every year for the next ten years, he returns to Canada and he and Fraser do their three weeks of searching for the Hand. But when Diefenbaker dies [because I don’t want people going OMGDIEF, can’t read, woe!: this is futurefic, Dief is old, it’s not unexpected - but the lost of his best buddy devastates Fraser, and Ray’s the only one who really understands], they have to rethink their plans and their relationship. I have never seen a “same time next year” scenario with them post-CotW before, and I really liked the idea, seeing them older and more settled in their new lives, yet only really feeling alive with each other once a year. Wonderful dialogue and a thoughtful plot make for a very satisfying story.

A first-time realization fic from Dief’s POV - with a fresh and clever Dief-voice I adored.

Ray Vecchio visits Fraser and Ray Kowalski in Canada, and slowly realizes they want him to stay. I liked the slow but steady pace, nothing left out in establishing how and why, but no dwelling on artificially angsty obstacles. It all seemed very genuine. I loved the various original characters, who each seemed individual and real. The dialogue made me giggle sometimes.

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.

Gen with references to unrequited Vecchio/Fraser and Vecchio’s canon het relationships. I am a sucker for stories told from an outsider perspective, and this one, narrated by the Vecchio family priest, is wonderful. Father Behan is a fully-realized character, sensitive and perceptive, and he brings another dimension to the canon events we know, from Ray’s childhood conflicts with Frank Zuko to his acts as Armando Langoustini. I got weepy at the end.

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.

Bwah-ha-ha! This is a clever little story, and it’s got dead!Bob in it, which is always a plus in my book. Crossover with a television show that I’ve only seen a few episodes of, but recognized anyway, and you probably will, too. Part of the fun (as well as the plot) is discovering exactly what it’s crossed with, so I won’t spoil it here.

Ray catches a clue. I love the Kowalski voice, and the conceit about the clues. Sexy and fun.

I particularly like stories that do the background work to show why the CotW resolution doesn’t work out - why Vecchio doesn’t make it with Stella in Florida and why Kowalski doesn’t make it with Fraser in Canada. Fraser is a constant presence, the bright red elephant in the room that they do not talk about. And all this against a plotty casefic background makes me deliriously happy, particularly since the romance plot and the case plot and the what-about-Fraser plot all intertwine in a thoughtful way.

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.

Ostensibly Fraser/RayK, but OTPers might not want to read it. The structure delights me and the punch line, which I refuse to spoil, makes me giggle.

Men awkwardly talking about their feelings! And kissing!

Fraser/every woman on the show! Hee, maybe you could consider this a bit of a constructed reality vid as well: Fraser as suave and sexy Lothario! Cutting a swath through the entire female population of Chicago! It’s fabulous and OMG hot, and it ends with a slashy implication, so, yay!

A Mountie on the Bounty snippet. Beautiful and evocative writing.

A post-CotW discovery fic, mmm. The voices worked really well for me, and I particularly love the aching yearning in Fraser, that he wants Ray and cannot bring himself to act. The choices in metaphor and description are lovely, with lots of realistic cold-climate detail.

I can’t even characterize this in my standard pairing lists. The fanfiction cliches we know and love, applied to the animal characters of due South. In the first section, Diefenbaker wakes up female…and it just gets crackier.

Fraser/RayK, Fraser/OFC. Fraser rescues an Inuit woman from a snowstorm; though she doesn’t speak to him, her presence gives him strength to rebuild his life after his failure to keep a relationship with Ray. Some readers probably see this as unbearably sad, because the OTP is broken at the start, but I read it as a hopeful and affirming story as Fraser and the woman lift each other from despair.

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.

AU. Fraser leaves with Victoria, and makes one last phone call to Ray. It’s just a little scene, just a sliver of the story, but it’s so rich in what it shows and what it doesn’t. The Vecchio voice is fantastic.

Posted as F/K/V, but it’s really F/K plus F/V plus a tiny bit of Ray/Ray hatesex. Also a little RayV/Stella. This is lovely and angsty, with incredible structure, but man, is it fucked up. At the end my heart just aches for poor Ray Vecchio - well, really, for all of them. (And for Stella, too!)

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.

Second person POV, but it’s short enough that it doesn’t get irritating, and it works well with the casual voice. Two guys named Ray thrown over by a Mountie and a lawyer. What are the odds, right?

Could be considered either Fraser/Vecchio or gen, depending on how you read it. Victoria shows up in Vegas, and the Bookman responds. What a fabulous angsty gem of a story this is.

Post-CotW, Ray and Fraser get together, but it doesn’t work out. I have a deep love for this story despite (because of!) its bleakness and unhappiness. I don’t have an OTP, and I don’t have a fixed idea of the characters, so any good author who starts with canon can convince me of any particulars, and I don’t need a happy ending (or hell, everyone alive at the end, even). I adore emotionally-stunted Fraser, who is really locked inside his own skull in many ways even as he embraces the loneliness of the great unbounded Arctic, who has things he needs more than love. And I adore the idea of a Ray who defines himself by his relationships but has so much difficulty coming to terms with the definition of himself as queer. (It strikes me as oddly and ironically subversive, in slash, to have a character who is unhappy with his sexuality, and to acknowledge the gritty realities of anti-gay prejudice rather than either pretending that the world approves, or waving the question away entirely.)

I loved this. It’s a kind of AU take on the end of the series, I guess, because the circumstances around Vecchio meeting Kowalski are entirely different, but oh, man, this is awesome. Victoria is caught in Atlanta, Fraser must go there to give a statement, Vecchio calls Ray K and warns him that Fraser is probably going to go crazy - and it turns out that crazy, for Fraser, means drinking heavily and sexing up everything in sight. (Including Ray, of course.) Yum.

An older vid, remastered by Gwyn_r. Some of my favorite S1 and S2 scenes in here, and I’ve always liked the song.

Apocalyptic fic, beautiful and heart-rending.

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.

32-minute podfic, 22MB. I started reading the (text version of the) story once, but it either didn’t impress me enough to finish, or I didn’t like it enough to leave a comment. I was being fairly picky about what I was reading at the time which probably had something to do with it. But also, I think that I’m more likely to enjoy a story if I listen to it, rather than read it - provided it’s presented well, which this one is.

This is an angsty story about what being undercover means to Ray K. The insights about how Ray prepares himself for being someone else are wonderful; I tend to forget that Ray is undercover as Vecchio, canonically, and that the way he approaches Fraser must be colored by this. I also really like the ending, which is not precisely happy, but (as I keep meaning to post about) I enjoy endings which are not precisely happy.

The reading is very well done. Keerawa has a pleasant voice, reads slowly, and infuses each line with meaning and energy. The individual characters come across clearly, including Ray-as-Ray and Ray-as-Gary both. The porn is quite sexy, and perhaps listening to this story while grocery shopping was not the smartest idea I’ve ever had.

Vecchio’s view on how Kowalski knocks him for a loop, and it’s just beautiful, filled with sideways observations and understated power, and Fraser’s even in there, too.

Fraser/RayK/RayV in all combinations. Vignettes that show the progression of the relationships into a threesome. Great use of repetition, and some fresh imagery and phrasing. And hot like burning.

Various characters and pairings. Um. Humorous deathfic? Although my favorite is the second, which is not so much humorous as sweet.

Ray Kowalski/Geoffrey Tennant. This is a wonderful due South/Slings & Arrows crossover in which Ray and Geoffrey meet in an airport during a snowstorm. This is my favorite type of crossover (and actually reminds me quite a bit of my own dS/Wilby crossover Islands), in which the actor-identity aspect is exploited for the story, with the real pairing behind the scenes clearly Ray/Fraser, and the imagined intersection of the characters seems very true. Funny, sweet and sad, with a satisfying ending.

This awesome vid makes me flail with delight. I can’t imagine the technical artistry required to make a shippy vid about two characters who share only a tiny amount of screentime, whose relationship is 95% fanon, but SD Wolfpup has pulled it off beautifully. As constructed reality, it makes perfect narrative sense. I love it!

This is about what love does to people and what love makes people do. This is a wonderful story, evocative and beautiful and weary and sort of sad-sweet.

Views on Fraser’s shopping list, from Fraser, Ray, and Diefenbaker - and the last is the best.

I suspect a lot of people passed it by because it’s labeled as a deathfic - but it really only qualifies on a technicality, when you consider the content, and the end has an awesome payoff that’s a staple of many post-CotW stories but gets a fresh twist here.

Cold plus alone equals dead. See? Math is easy. This is really great. I love the voice, which makes the emotion work, and it’s actually really nice to see a story treat the real problem underlying “how do these guys manage to compromise on what comes after the Quest?” without waving things away or getting overly sentimental.

Fraser and RayV friendship, Fraser/RayK, vid. I am very narrative-oriented when it comes to vids, and this one has a clear and engaging narrative, moving from Fraser “learning to fly” in Chicago with Vecchio, and then passing on his experience and knowledge to Kowalski. I think the change of POV works well here. Also, it doesn’t hurt that I adore Tom Petty. Nor that I wrote a F/K story with the same title, la la la.

Ray imagines, and Ray acts. This is gorgeous like a pendulum swinging, back and forth, around and about the true center, and the last line takes my breath away with its perfection.

Sort of a PWP, in which Fraser determinedly seduces Ray, but what sets this apart is the language, which does more for the characterization than a whole string of Fraser cliche. Very sexy, very believable.

Post CotW, Ray and Fraser stop to visit Maggie near Inuvik, get involved in an investigation, and figure out their relationship. This kind of reminds me of The End of the Road - no, wait, this is a happy story, but there’s something similar in the tone and style that I can’t quite identify. The writing is lovely, the plot involves things happenening - real, external things, that the characters respond to in convincingly in-character ways - and the sex is an integral part of the story, that somehow manages to be more breathtakingly erotic the less explicit it is. (In fact, the part I like least is the most explicit sex scene near the end, which seems tacked-on and gratuitous to me.)