Stargate Atlantis RPS: Joe/David.
I really adore this story. The characterization is good but the pacing and the buildup and the intensity are what make this story so perfectly wonderful. Everything in the story fits together like tiny puzzle pieces; there are a ton of wonderful details, and the side cast is spot on.
a note on this rec: this entry was posted locked to the sga_rps livejournal community. I don’t usually rec friendslocked posts but since this is in an open community and not a personal journal I’m going to keep the rec, just don’t forget to join the community if you want to read it.
Late Night Television
Stargate Atlantis: Sheppard/McKay.
Lenore is a fabulous storyteller. Her scenarios are always inventive and completely entertaining. This is a fantastic take on the aliens make them do it genre of fic.
What Happens on Telarus and What Happens in Atlantis
WB rps: Jensen/Jared.
A short, lovely story about Jared’s jealousies, there’s Christian and Steve and it’s fabulous, as one should expect from Estrella.
Heart Shaped Bruise
WB rps: Jensen/Jared.
Lengthy enough to be well paced and somewhat plotty, with a good Jared voice. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Something to Think About
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
Artful, plotty and well characterized. This is set in the near future probably, and is slightly AU as it has no mentions of the season 1 finale events. Sam’s powers are developing more, the boys take a case in Michigan. It’s creepy and detailed and well characterized; basically everything you can ask for in a Supernatural story, with a lovely slow burn of relationship building.
The Flow of Darkness
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
A companion piece to Stumbling Across Its Bleak Ending (previously recced here) this is that story from Sam’s perspective. The contrasts between the two stories are what make this for me (you know, aside from the excellent writing) because where that story is all about Dean’s having left Sam, this one is all about Sam’s determination to get him back. And it’s just gorgeous.
Practical Men of the World
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
This is fantastic; I love the slow reveal of what’s really going on, and Dean and Sam’s subtle shifts in personality and action as time passes. Also, I am a huge sucker for unreliable narrators and this story totally rocked that; I loved Dean’s perspective and how we learn what’s going on at the same time he does. It’s just such an effective narrative style for a story like this; wonderfully suspenseful. Plus! Werewolves!
On the Banks of the Tiber
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
I am totally obsessed with stories that get into the circumstances around Sam leaving for college, and while I don’t often buy the idea that Dean and Sam ever had sex in the pre-college days, this is the kind of story I can buy it in. A refreshingly original take on the situation that so many fic writers have tackled. Much less about the sex than the relationship, this story is both heartbreaking and powerful enough to leave an imprint.
Light of a Match
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
Complex and perfectly heartbreaking. I love an author who doesn’t flinch at writing the fucked up complicated parts of the Dean/Sam relationship, because it can’t possibly all be puppies and bunnies the way the fall lines are drawn in canon.
and when they fall
Supernatural: Dean/Sam.
Written after Salvation but before Devil’s Trap, this goes AU before the season 1 ending but it’s a gorgeously executed look at what could have happened if Sam and Dean hadn’t gotten to Papa Winchester in time to save him. Dean and Sam’s characterization is great in this; Sam and Dean always seem like the kind of characters whose best (and worst) qualities come out in times of crisis and Liz totally understand this.
Carry On by ; 2.287 words, NC-17.
Sports Night: Casey/Dan.
Told in alternating sections of Dan talking with Abby in therapy and the events he tells her about, the narration in this story is amazingly tight. Unreliable narrators, when done right, are such an effective trick; they’re fallible, we only know what they know when they know it (but sometimes we can guess at more) and the building of plots is even more intense. And Annie is fantastic at all of this in Like Sailing and Home Runs. Her Dan is charming and fallible, sympathetic and stubborn.
Like Sailing and Home Runs
Sports Night: Casey/Dan.
This is like, an entire afternoon read, but it goes by so quickly. Some authors fall into pacing traps and narrative potholes and diversions when writing stories this length but Annie is not one of them. Epic and at turns frustrating (because boys are just so dense you know?) and romantic but never, ever sappy. And the fantastic thing about Annie’s stories? Is that they always satisfy. She is the queen of telling not showing and she’s a true Sports Night writer, this isn’t just a story about two guys getting together, it’s a story about best friends and sportswriters and tv shows and so, so much more. Every cast member is fleshed out and full of life, and every pice of action is lived by you and the characters. This is how all fanfiction should be written.
Not Homophobic
The West Wing: gen, Toby and Leo centric.
This is cool. Toby and Leo on the campaign when Bartlett first runs. I like this because we see how Leo gets Josh on the campaign, and we see how Josh gets Sam and how Donna gets herself, and even how Toby gets CJ, but we never see Leo recruiting Toby so this is some good backstory. The voices are, if maybe not absolutely pitch perfect 100% of the time, pretty damned close. There are a lot of lines that I can just hear Leo saying and that is never a bad feeling.
Playing the Game
Stargate Atlantis/SG-1: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay/Sam Carter.
This makes two het!threesome recs in one day which is weird for me because normally I am not all about the threesomes. But this is so much more than that. Warm and layered, and told from Sam’s point of view, I love that she really gets John and Rodney and genuinely cares about them. I also love that John is so hesitant about it all, because for serious, the only way this could ever go down would have to be like that. And this is as much a John/Rodney story as anything else, which was a lovely surprise.
Yoshino
WB rps: Jensen/Jared.
Omg. while this whole story is perfect in its sleepy, you can feel and taste and hear everything that’s going on style, it also rocks my world for making me actually burtst out laughing with the last lines. Oh man. I am still giggling when I look back at the title. (You’ll get it once you read the story.)
Blowjobs Are Key
WB rps: Jared/Jensen.
OMG 12,000 words of amnesia fic from one of my favorite Jared/Jensen writers is like heaven on a good day. And this is so, so fabulous. Touching and funny, with a perfect side cast and all these lovely details, all paced incredibly well.
You Must Remember This
Supernatural/Veronica Mars: gen, Dean and Logan centric.
This is just a short vignette without much plot to speak of but it’s just to cool. Logan and Dean, while not the first combination of characters that come to mind when imagining Supernatural crossovers, play off each other in some really interesting ways. This whole story is just delightfully inventive. And it all takes place at the Fitzpatrick bar, The River Stix, which is so wonderfully Dean to have picked that bar when he goes to Neptune.
In Harm’s Way
Supernatural: Sam/Dean.
Stories that go into the whole Dean wants Sam to stay, Sam wants to go conumdrum fascinate me, and this one feels incredibly true to how I think, things should play out if the boys are ever going to find some common ground (and, you know, if they were having the dirtywrong incestuous sex now and again, too.)
Stumbling Across Its Bleak Ending
Supernatural: Sam/Dean.
While I haven’t loved all of poisontaster’s writing, (she tends to go the dark, incest can never be right and Dean’s a bad bad man for thinking about it route more often than I prefer) I really like this series. All three are short, pwp style stories with a heavy emphasis on the public sex kink which, dude, I can totally get behind. Jerk off sessions in bathrooms and crowded bars? Hell yes. So if you’re into that at all, you will probably like this series as much as I did.
Helping Hands, On the Other Hand, Jazz Hands.
House MD: House/Wilson.
These characters are so hard to get right and I’m always left with this incredibly pleased feeling when an authors just gets them. Written for the prompt: Wilson takes House home for dinner with the parents., there are some really fabulous lines in this, and the banter, like everything else, is spot on.
Maui Gold
House MD: gen, Wilson centric.
Canon gives us hints of Wilson not being the good, nice guy he seems to be and this story expands on that in some really cool ways. Missing scenes from eight episodes in which Wilson is at his manipulative best. I couldn’t remember all of the details from each of the episodes Descrime wrote about, but I remembered enough.
Shape of the Universe
House MD: House/Wilson/Cuddy.
Episode 2×22 (aka Forever, aka the one with the crazy mom who seizes in the bathtub with her baby) left me with a total hankering for House/Cuddy or Wilson/Cuddy, or really, Cuddy anyone. This story is like the best of both worlds because I adore House/Wilson, too.
Knot
Firefly: Jayne/Simon.
Ana has written some of my favorite Firefly stories. This one is new to me, and totally charming as ever. Jayne and Simon are both wonderful, although I think this is a particularly good Simon in this. There are heists and build-up and snark, what more could you really ask for in a Firefly story. note: this is post Serenity.
An Arrangement of Parts
Smallville: Clark/Lex.
So, you know, I have a not so secret love for mpreg when it’s written well. Well as in fully recognizing the ridiculousness of the genre and delighting in taking a bizarre situation and making it funny and awesome all at the same time. There’s banter, and and it’s a post-rift future fic and Lex built a Superbot and just yes. You should read this.
Up the Yin Yang
Smallville: Clark/Lex.
Shallot pretty much rules at everything so when I heard that she’d written new Smallville I jumped at the opportunity for a good, long read. And this satisfies perfectly. Long, plotty, and well detailed, it ties in perfectly with the Batman Begins mythology and has a great Bruce Wayne.
Ulterior Motives
Stargate Atlantis: Sheppard/McKay.
This is a really interesting story because Toft takes all these things (or maybe really only one thing) that I didn’t think could possibly work and convinces me of them absolutely. John’s into cross-dressing and Rodney’s pretty much just into John; but it’s so much more than that too.
Second Skin
Stargate Atlantis: John/Rodney, with a side order of John/Teyla and implied Rodney/Teyla.
This is such a fantastic story, detailed and complex. This Sheppard is really interesting, I love that Lenore goes into his Afghanistan experience and ties it in with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so thoroughly. Also, Teyla especially is really excellent in this, strong and intuitive and incredibly loyal.
Parsus
WB rps: Jensen/Jared.
Sort of scenes from a courtship style vignettes. I. Hmmm. Okay, you know, this is lovely, but it actively bothers me that Cee doesn’t use quotation marks to delineate between spoken words and everything else. I guess it’s a style? But it pretty much makes everything she’s written completely unreadable for me. I’m reccing this story anyways because there’s barely any dialogue and it really is lovely, but uh, due warning and everything on that.
It’s Still Pizza
WB rps: Jensen/Jared.
Messy and complicated and lengthy. Jared is really good in this, and the whole story is just good. The author calls this porn with a little plot, and while the sex is scorching, there’s totally a plot in there with it.
6 lessons to live by (as told by jared padalecki)
WB rps: Jared/Sandy/Jensen.
Oh lord. There’s not a ton of stuff I’m actually embarassed to read but this is so shockingly hot and dirtywrong it’s just. I’m possibly a little broken.
Geography for Beginners