Hieroglyfics Recs

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

Ray and Fraser as ELVES! Heeeeee!

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.

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/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!

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.

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

Fraser and Kowalski gen or slash, as you see it, R for violence and theme, short story. This is a fusion with House of Leaves, which I have never read, but after reading the comments by people who have, I’m…not sure I want to. It’s a highly stylized horror story, told in fragments, with impeccable voice and great tension and pacing. I especially like the story lurking in the lacunae, what isn’t written making a negative space that tells as much as what is.

I beta-read this story, so I know it started as slash, and in fact she labels it pre-slash - but if you don’t choose to see Ray/Ray as a possibility, I feel this reads perfectly well as that sort of intense gen that is about non-romantic relationships, with the same strong emotions as the relationships in canon. The Rays are trapped in a collapsed warehouse, and Vecchio’s severe injuries force Kowalski to come to grips with the depths of his concern for his partner. The non-chronological structure works really well, and the title is a perfect metaphor.

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.

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.”

Ray Vecchio/Irene Zuko. This is a vid based on the episode “Juliet is Bleeding”, and boy, does the song fit perfectly. I actually didn’t like the episode much - I found it too stiff, maybe, and too much like any cop show rather than good old quirky due South - and maybe that’s why I like this vid: it puts together all of the good parts, the strong emotion and the relationships and Ray Vecchio yay! And Irene Zuko! And angry glances between Ray and Frank!

Frannie/various, Fraser/RayK,. Frannie kind of likes Mounties. It made me giggle.

due South/Tru Calling, Harrison/RayK, RayK/Fraser, Harrison/RayK/Fraser, NC17, series of novel-length stories: Undone, Unfinished, and The Ending Hour [not yet read by me].

I started reading this knowing nothing about Tru Calling other than that Joe Flanigan was in one episode. I realized quickly that I needed a little background, so I read its IMDB entry, which told me that Tru Davies has the ability to make days repeat themselves in order to save people from being killed - and that was all I needed to make sense of this entertaining, plotty series. Harrison reads as an original character and is interesting enough, although he seemed quite a bit like Ray to me. The writing has a nice punchy feel to it, with each section ending with a good zinger that pulled me on to the next bit. The first story reminded me more than a little of my own Across the Great Divide. Needless to say, it hit both my crossover kink and my time-travel kink.

I preferred the first story, which seems a little cleaner and more put-together than the second; I have not yet read the third.

dS/BtVS: Fraser/Spike, implied Fraser/RayK, NC17, short story. Spike gets arrested in Canada, and intrigued by the Mountie doing the arresting. Underneath the Fraser/Spike interaction is a current of tension about the relationship between Fraser and Ray (who has returned to Chicago after the Quest), which is what really makes this story. Consensual bondage, and hot as a hot thing. I know nothing about BtVS but still enjoyed the story.

Ensemble, due South crossover with Men With Brooms, humor. Curling! Beavers! CANADA! This is great, and the editorial comments are priceless.

Okay, I admit it - I love Ray/Ray slash. But this is a wonderful gen story about their interaction as (working) partners, with snappy dialogue and great characterization. And Fraser’s not there - but he’s still there.

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.

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.

Thatcher, Stella, Frannie: varied het and gen, humor, genderfuck. This story is equal parts hilarity and brilliance. Three very short vignettes, and each one, astonishingly, tops the previous one.