Hieroglyfics Recs

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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 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.

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.)

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.

A screencap story in seven parts, in which scenes from Burning Down the House are given rather a different slant with entertaining speech bubbles.

I recced a shorter version - what became the first chapter - before. But yay, Salieri continued and expanded this dystopian cyberpunky idea to a novella, and, wow. Fraser’s a bot looking for the killers of the AI that created him, and Ray’s a cop looking for answers. It’s got great nods to canon, a cleverly imagined plot, and an ending that knocked my socks off.

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.

This pastiche of the Twelve Days of Christmas was created for last year’s DSSS; I stumbled on it and promptly came down with a fit of the giggles.

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.

Eight years after CotW, Ray finally gets the nerve up to go after Fraser. This basic storyline has been told a zillion times, but it’s done well here, with some lovely bits of writing and some lines that really zing. What I like best about this story are the vivid little snapshots at the beginning, of Ray and his new partner, of Stella and Vecchio down in Florida, of Frannie and her babies. Oh, and the emotional aww of Ray and Fraser finally getting together, of course.

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.

Post-COTW, in which Ray goes back to Chicago, Fraser gets posted in Banff, and they slowly figure out they need to be together. There’s so much detail, so much richness, and the pacing is slow and sure and perfect within a well-crafted structure. I like seeing Fraser posted somewhere other than middle-of-nowhere, Canada after COTW, and I also loved the implication that the bowling alley was Vecchio’s cover story, because yeah, that always seemed hinky to me, too. The one thing I wasn’t fond of was the present tense, which didn’t work well for me with the time span and structure - I kept noticing it, which knocks me out of the story.

Fraser/RayK, Fraser/RayV, implied Ray/Ray, implied…things I don’t even want to mention. :-) NC17, short story. The warning at the beginning tells you it’s going to be semikinky!sex threesome fic with tentacles, but it starts out as a deceptively normal story in which shortly after Fraser discovers that Ray and Ray are having a relationship, each of them separately approaches him for inexplicably motivated, incredibly hot sex. I really like the POV, which is a somewhat distantly-observed Fraser, not so much in his head but rather commenting with wry detachment. There’s all sorts of great detail, from the cases they’re on to the amazing sex they’re having. And then the story takes an abrupt turn for the total crack as the punchline to the shaggy-dog story sneaks up on Fraser - and on the reader. Hee!

Shopping for gear for the quest. The language is just lovely and makes me want to hug them.

It’s a retelling of the Norse Ragnarok myth (for the Apocalypse challenge), which means it’s a death story (as in, everybody in the whole world dies), except that…well, it’s sort of hopeful, which you will see if you read the linked Ragnarok explanation at the end.

RayK/Turnbull, implied RayK/Fraser. Ray turns up drunk at the Consulate, looking for Fraser - but he finds Turnbull instead. Turnbull is so goofy and earnest and sweet: “Oh, you needn’t apologize, Detective — Ray,” Turnbull said warmly. “You can kiss me any time you feel it’s necessary.” I wasn’t a fan of the ending, which sort of leaves things in an uncomfortable place that doesn’t really fit with the rest of the story.

Set around Good For the Soul. Oh, this is fantastic. She manages to both stay true to Ray’s rough voice and infuse the story with lyric imagery and a kind of wistful nostalgia. Nice pacing and smooth storytelling.

A post-CotW story in which Fraser and Ray each push a little and give a little; the tension lies in how much pushing and giving each man is willing to do, and things unfold slowly but inevitably. Fabulous structure: each short section is headed with a book title, and relates (sometimes tenuously) to that book, and bits and pieces from Dief’s POV punctuate the angst with bits of humor.

In Mountie on the Bounty, Ray tells Fraser he can’t swim. This beautifully-written story consists of a series of tiny snapshots of Ray’s life which show us why - and then take us forward, to a sweet and fitting future.

Oh, I am a sucker, a total sucker, for stories which have the characters meet by chance pre-canon. This one’s set during Pizza and Promises, while “Billy-Bob” Fraser is working at Tex Markle’s used car lot, and maybe I like it so much because I just saw the ep recently, but it just made me feel warm and fuzzy to see Ray, on the outs with Stella, flirting with this cute car salesman.

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.

An absolutely brilliant Eliot pastiche. What I think is the most genius about this pastiche is the way that she has cleverly combined the formal language of the original with Ray’s slangy speech - and also combined serious imagery and playful humor, which is really much like the show. The particular plays on the original (like malingers/lingers!! grow old/cold!!) are inspired.

In which Fraser discovers a meeting taking place in his father’s office. Funny and sweet with impeccable characterization.