theflophouse, posts by tag: !betweenthebliss - LiveJournal

So once upon a time I said I was going to give this comm a bit of a reboot, and then I got promoted at work and forgot the internet existed for awhile. Sorry about that. >.>;;; Anyway, I've really been missing having a place to share fic recs, and to get recs from other people, so I figured rather than try to do something elaborate and ceremonial to restart the posting I'd just jump in and throw a few fics your collective way. Then we can sort out who's still paying attention to this, who's still interested in posting, and all that jazz. So here we go!

Fandom : X-Men First Class
Title : fear death by water
Author : anonymous
Rating : hard R / NC-17
Characters & Pairings : Charles Xavier / Erik Lensherr
Length : short-to-medium
Warnings : none
Summary : One of Hank's experiments goes wrong, and Charles and Erik suffer the consequences. (aka, X-Men meets sex pollen.)
My Rave Review :
So I'm pretty sure that Xavier/Magneto was actually my first slash ship, as a kid not knowing what slash or shipping was, just knowing that these two were definitely in love. So the whole XMFC thing has been great for me to kind of get to see that relationship come to life (and dear god do McAvoy and Fassbender do a fantastic job of it). But anyway-- a lot of what's to love in this ship is the angst, and this fic ratchets it up to eleven. It's not easy to do a tropey fic like this and still make it feel epic and also, you know, contain character development, but whoever this anon is has done just that. This is gorgeously written and just drenched in that rip-your-heart-out kind of angst. So delicious. XD

Fandom : Game of Thrones
Title : your eyes were december when you had june in your heart
Author : marycontraire
Rating : PG
Characters & Pairings : Jon Snow, Robb Stark, slightly shippy if you squint.
Length : medium
Warnings : none
Summary : Missing scene from 1x01; after Robb takes Arya to bed, he brings Jon a drink.
My Rave Review :
Okay I'll admit it, I ship it. I shipped it before the show ever came out. This isn't shippy though, not really, not unless you're looking for the undertones, so if you don't ship it you don't have to see it that way. And it's a really wonderfully written scene, too. Part of what I love about the relationship between Jon and Robb, whether it's shippy or not, is the tension. They're close, but there's always a strain, and neither of them likes it or knows what to do with it. And this fic kind of sums it all up really neatly. Also I got a big lol out of Theon being the horse's ass that he is.

Fandom : The Eagle
Title : The Blood Knows the Path
Author : linaerys
Rating : mature
Characters & Pairings : Marcus/Esca
Length : ~9k
Warnings : none
Summary : Esca is a bad slave.
My Rave Review :
This starts out filling in the gaps in the first half of the movie, then moves through the end of the movie and beyond. It's about the destiny and honor and oaths binding Marcus and Esca together, and Esca's curiosity in assuming the gods have brought them together for a reason is quite compelling. I love especially the scene where the seal prince has his knife to Marcus's throat. "If the prince cuts Marcus’s throat then Esca will stay here. He has done what he can, shown his power over Marcus, but it is in the hands of the gods now." and then "The prince and Marcus’s life stood evenly balanced for a moment, but now the gods have favored Marcus, and it is the Seal Prince whose death is coming for him. Esca feels the change in the wind." Gorgeously written and definitely one I love to reread.

Fandom : White Collar
Title : Third Date
Author : lightgetsin
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : Neal/El, Peter/El, Neal/Peter/El implied
Length : ~3700
Warnings : none
Summary : Peter doesn't want to start a relationship with Neal until after the anklet comes off, but that doesn't mean El has to wait.
My Rave Review :
El came down at seven fifteen looking like a million bucks in a blue and gold dress with her hair up in a complicated twist thing. Peter was ninety percent sure the dress was new, but there was that lingering ten percent uncertainty, so he stuck with a safely neutral, "you look great." This fic is AMAZING. This is Peter's side of Neal and El's first time together, and it is simply brilliant. His state of mind while he's at home waiting, and everything that happens after she comes home... it's beautiful and perfectly written. This is one of the best fics I've read in this fandom, hands down.


...and with that i bid you all adieu, good night, etc. i'm off to dream of fassbender. 8D

because it's hump day, and the internet is for porn.

Fandom : Firefly
Title : Hypothesis
Author : recrudescence & nakeno @ AO3
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : Jayne/Simon, Mal
Length : ~8K
Warnings : none
Summary : He'll pull Jayne aside later on, give him a very concerned piece of his mind for dragging not just a crew member but a fugitive into bed with him. The man's been known to think with body parts considerably lower than his brain plenty of times in the past, but this is something else.

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Fandom : Star Trek XI
Title : Down in the Jungle Room
Author : rubynye
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : McCoy/always-a-girl!Chekov
Length : medium
Warnings : sex pollen, which might count as dubcon?
Summary : McCoy. Girl!Chekov. Sex pollen. Why haven't you clicked yet?

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Fandom : Romeo + Juliet (specifically Baz Luhrman's version)
Title : Mourning Sun
Author : elke_tanzer @ AO3
Rating : mature
Characters & Pairings : Benvolio/Mercutio
Length : ~1100
Warnings : none
Summary : This day, Benvolio plays alone.
My Rave Review :
this was another one i found while randomly clicking around AO3. i have a ridiculous weakness for shakespeare slash, romeo and juliet slash in particular, and i absolutely love this solitary, lonely reflection of benvolio's after the end of the play. the whole city is in mourning for the doomed lovers, but benvolio is grief-stricken for mercutio and reminiscing on his memories of him. what i love best about this fic is the imagery and flow-- the author writes with a rhythm that kept me in mind of shakespeare the entire time, and i loved the way she played with words. it's so vivid, in my head it plays like a missing scene from the movie; i can see the colors and the camera angles and it's just beautiful.

Differences were not so different after all, and sameness had its own nectared sweetness. Scarce-concealed glances, glittering glances, 'neath the glaring neon and jangling bell-toll of Apples' Orchard arcade... rough and tumbled and sequined and sparkled and naked and wrestling in the sand of the Sycamore Grove... it was all the sun, and it warmed him when he hadn't before felt any chill of cold.

grief is always a hard emotion to write, in my experience anyway, if only because it's easy to tip the scale toward melodramatic wallowing if you do it wrong. and given that the source play is so full of people losing their shit over the deaths of their loved ones, it would be even easier to go the ostentatiously tragic route with the fic. but it's fitting to benvolio's character, as the one who is caught up in the battles in the play and yet never takes an active part in causing them, that his grief is understated and introspective. this fic hits just the right note of hurt, longing and sorrow, so i was feeling for benvolio and also feeling with him. it's a great little character piece that puts me severely in mind of the movie (and in the mood to go watch it when i get home tonight).

sorry for the spam you guys, i'm emoting like two months' worth of recs over here. ;)

Fandom : Stephen King's The Stand
Title : Running with the Devil
Author : fantasticpants @ AO3
Rating : explicit
Characters & Pairings : Randall Flagg/Lloyd Henreid and assorted minor book characters
Length : ~4800
Warnings : some description of dead bodies
Summary : It's not easy, being the devil's right-hand guy.
My Rave Review :
this was my friend peregrina's yuletide gift, the lucky bitch, and i actually can't believe it's taken me this long to rec the shit out of it here. if you've read the stand, you remember lloyd henreid, the hapless stoner who went to jail for shooting up a gas station and was rescued from starvation after the superflu by good old mr. flagg. by the book's standards lloyd is a relatively minor character, but an interesting one, and ms. fantasticpants has done a ridiculously awesome job not only fleshing out his character but telling his whole story from start to finish, referencing all the pieces we saw in the book and filling in all the pieces we didn't. it's an amazing study of lloyd as a character, and a fairly creepy insight into how flagg works his dark magic on people.

Lloyd's never been a big guy, but now he's a skinny wreck, and the fresh clothes don't sit right on him. He feels small and insignificant standing there next to his savior, the one everybody's eyes are on, but then Flagg places a warm hand on his back, and all of the sudden, Lloyd feels taller. He remembers the stone in his pocket, and the promise Flagg gave him: Going to put you right up there with Saint Peter; slip the keys to the kingdom right into your hand. What a deal, right? It is a hell of a deal. Some of the gazes are directed at him now, respectful and expectant. When he gave Flagg his word, Lloyd only had the fuzziest of ideas of what it actually meant. Maybe even less than that. He thinks he sort of understands, now.

the coolest part about this is all the different threads of lloyd's character that get teased out, and yet he never strays into gary stu territory, or even comes off as slightly deviated from the character stephen king wrote. i also have to say i love how she's written flagg here. he's famous to stephen king fans, and it would be really easy to make him too much of one thing and not enough of another. but flagg is both lloyd's hero and his villain; he saved lloyd's life and damned him in the process, and while he wants flagg he also hates him, knowing there's no hope for him to end any way than he ultimately does. and did i mention how amazing the writing is? the words are put together so carefully, yet it reads without a hiccup, and every sentence strings into the next so there's a constant build from start to finish. it feels like reading an appendix to the book, which is pretty much the highest compliment i know how to give someone who writes fic for book fandoms, and i can't think of a fic that deserves it more.

No, Flagg is no Wizard of Oz, thinks Lloyd, because all that guy ever did was pretend to give you something you already had. The scam Flagg runs is much nastier than that. He gives you what you want, but afterwards, you realize that maybe you didn't want it as badly as you thought, and that what you gave in exchange -- even if it seemed like nothing at the time -- was worth a whole lot more. Be careful what you wish for, right?

i think what stuck with me after reading (and rereading and rereading) this fic is the satisfaction and completeness it left me with. i knew how the book ends, i didn't ever have hope that anything was going to go differently for lloyd, but i couldn't help wishing it had, even as i was loving reading about how his experiences with the dark man made him aware of himself and his world in a way he never had been before. by the end of the fic i was pretty awed by how much i sympathized with lloyd. there's always something else to discover in this fic, always a different word or sentence that jumps out at me differently than it did the last time i read it. if you like stephen king and if you like character studies, don't let this fic pass you by. (and be sure to leave her lots of awesome feedback if you enjoy it as much as i did. ;))

Fandom : Remember the Titans
Title : Sunny Days
Author : eatsscissors @ AO3
Rating : mature
Characters & Pairings : Gerry/Julius
Length : ~6700
Warnings : none; spoilers for the movie, obviously.
Summary : A collection of missing scenes, telling how Julius and Gerry went from enemies to friends to Julius standing beside Gerry's mother and wearing no ring.
My Rave Review :
there's just something about this movie, am i right? you'd think a story about an integrated football team working its way toward simultaneous racial cooperation and a state championship in the 70s sounds too predictable for words, and yet, if you've seen it, you know that's not the case. right from the beginning it reaches in and grabs onto your heart, and then spends the next two hours yanking for all it's worth. i think the best thing about the movie, the thing that makes me love it, is that it's irrepressibly hopeful without being clunky or trite about it-- and the same is true of this fic.

i just stumbled across this while surfing AO3 at work last week, and god, am i glad i did. i've always shipped gerry and julius, but never to a degree where i wanted to see the ship take precedence over the awesomeness of their friendship, and this fic gives me just the right balance. the romance enters in pretty quickly, but the author never gives the impression that it's separate from them becoming closer, stronger as teammates and friends, and using that closeness to drive what happens in the movie. it's not easy-- the same conflicts crop up, with an edge to them borne of knowing there's not one but two dangerous sides to what's between them.

"Look, like I said, I knew you weren't ever going to show your face around someplace like the 'burg, just like you know damned good and well that I'm never going to meet your mama for dinner, and it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we're--" Julius makes a gesture between the two of them that seems helpless, confused, and entirely mirrors what Gerry is thinking. They're fucking, and it ought to be pretty clear by now that they're not just fucking, but they're fools if they think that they're dating, either. Gerry tries to imagine which one Mama would be able to get over faster, the fact that he's seeing another boy or that he's seeing a black boy, and decides that he had probably resign himself to being an orphan before he ever mans up enough to actually tell her.

i love the narrative from gerry's point of view (and her voice for him is spot-on, just the right touch of country hick without overdoing it), i love how it shifts as his relationship with julius opens his eyes to the world being bigger than himself, and after the car accident it shifts again. gerry's character has always really fascinated me, and i love this fic for giving me more of it. it's not full of revelations or surprises about him, or about julius either, but really rounds out his transformation from small-town kid to becoming a man, and puts it in the context of his life. it also fills in the gaps in the movie with a really sweet, funny and touching love story, which i can't resist either.

Fandom : Inglourious Basterds
Title : The Fate You've Carved On Me
Author : lonelywalker
Rating : NC-17
Characters & Pairings : Hans Landa/OMC
Length : ~8300
Warnings : descriptions of violence similar to what happened in the movie
Summary : Villains never get happy endings, but Nantucket's only gay Nazi is damn well going to try.
My Rave Review :
when i rented inglourious basterds i expected to be wowed, but i didn't expect to love it. besides making me cry like a baby, i adored it, and while i haven't read much fic in the fandom, i'm always on the lookout for fic that continues exploring the characters that tarantino created which are, for me at least, the reason the movie tore my insides to confetti. i'm often prone to liking well-constructed and three-dimensional villains, but hans landa was more than even my black little heart could handle. i wanted to know all about how he became so deliciously evil, and what he did with all of it after the movie ended. this fic answers that question while also showing that there was so much more to landa than we got to see in the movie.

He feels a little like a victim, standing naked with the water beginning to chill. Looking in the eyes of someone who sees him, who sees him, this scarred old man, hardly the pinnacle of physical perfection even without the wounds or the weight of the years… He misses the uniform in that instant, the stiff leather of his boots, the coat that had felt as though it could stop bullets. They'd all looked at him and seen the Reich, seen blond hair and blue eyes though his had tended to grey and green. In the days when he'd not only been uninterested in love, but actively hiding from any hint of affection, it had served him well. And now he's lost without it.

lonelywalker's writing style is perfect for the story she's telling here-- a military man who's masquerading as an academic, a former SS officer pretending he ran to america from persecution by the nazis, she gives landa's personal background and paints the picture of germany during hitler's rise to power with a clear informative voice that, while it's not in first person, sounds to me like the way landa might tell the story to a listener if he had one. austere but beautiful, the story takes the reader through snippets of landa's life before, during and after the movie, and manages to humanize him without forgiving him for anything he's done.

...and, oh, the European war and what had followed had been quite a distraction. Blood and death and the loss of a generation of idealistic young men. And for what? For a humiliating defeat and the economic destruction that had followed. It had been easy to lose himself in grief and fury from a hospital bed, returning to his home town in a torn and bloody uniform to count off the names of his friends and lovers in hurried dispatches from the front: the dead and dying, those lost in action who would never be found, buried still beneath French farmland. And to think that he had once been eager to fight... Had he ever been as young, as innocent, as wide-eyed and naïve as Caleb Cooper? On reflection, he'd been even younger.

the chance for redemption and a fresh start for someone with a dark past is a theme that's easy to do wrong in both literature and fic, easy to make trite or predictable. this fic is neither predictable nor easy. landa and his companion (who, by the way, is a great OC i can actually picture having been in the movie) share something that changes both of them, i suspect irrevocably, and yet it's not simple and certainly not tied up at the end. there's a sense of inevitability-- one commenter described it as "it can't end like this warring with it has to end like this", and that's exactly how it does feel. landa doesn't deserve redemption-- but doesn't he? doesn't everyone who learns to regret their mistakes? but has he really learned to regret them? and what will happen to caleb now? you're left with a lot of questions at the end, but it's still a completely satisfying read, and i actually sighed out loud at the last line. i will reread this again and again, and i dare you to read it and not feel the same.

Fandom : RPF
Title : Kinda Busy
Author : yeats
Rating : M
Characters & Pairings : Lady Gaga/Beyonce (Gaga/Honey B)
Length : ~600 words
Warnings : none
Summary : I left my head and my heart on the dance floor.
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Fandom : Harry Potter
Title : Shattered
Author : femmequixotic
Rating : E
Characters & Pairings : Harry/Draco, Luna, Hermione
Length : ~7500 words
Warnings : some blood and paint play
Summary : One damned accident involving one too-lucky curse, and suddenly you'd think he was five again, with their Harry, be carefuls and their quick Levitating charms ready the instant the potion gives way and his rebelling hands lose hold of whatever's in their grasp.
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Fandom : Sherlock Holmes
Title : These Things Were Promises
Author : paperclipbitch
Rating : E
Characters & Pairings : Holmes/Watson
Length : 10,000
Warnings : drug use (more intense and explicitly described than in canon)
Summary : Watson has had to take a brutal course in being honest with himself so nothing Holmes says will ever be a surprise.
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and just a quick reminder to new watchers, don't try to join the comm, that's just for the reccers. all the posts are public so just watch it and you won't miss anything. <3!

Fandom : Supernatural
Title : Bat Country
Author : ishafel
Rating : M
Characters & Pairings : Ellen Harvelle; Ellen/Bill Harvelle/John Winchester
Length : short
Warnings : none
Summary : Billy was always the one in the middle.
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Fandom : White Collar
Title : Slash Cliche series : Devil in a Blue Dress, Confidence Man, Just Like In the Movies, Pay Grade and Blind/Dates.
Author : captanddeastar
Rating : t through e
Characters & Pairings : Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke; all five are Neal/Peter
Length : all are about medium length
Warnings : none
Summary : five fics based on classic slash cliches : cross-dressing, sex pollen, stuck together, undercover gay and matchmaking.
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Fandom : White Collar
Title : Jack of Diamonds
Author : captanddeastar
Rating : M
Characters & Pairings : Neal Caffrey, Peter and Elizabeth Burke; Neal/Peter
Length : 8500 words
Warnings : off-screen non-con as a major focus of story, may be triggery
Summary : Neal goes back to prison for two weeks following a shooting at the scene of a crime. When he comes home, Peter and Elizabeth help put him back together.
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Fandom : Supernatural / American Gods crossover
Title : Dust in the Wind
Author : lyra_wing
Rating : T
Characters & Pairings : Sam & Dean Winchester, Shadow, Anansi/Mr. Nancy
Length : medium
Warnings : none
Summary : Everything around them was changing, but they weren't.
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Fandom : Star Trek
Title : and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind
Author : mortigi_tempo @ dreamwidth
Rating : m for mild horror and language, eventual e for sex
Characters & Pairings : Kirk, Spock, McCoy; eventual Kirk/Spock
Length : 18,750 words over 8 chapters
Warnings : psychological trauma, language, eventual explicit sex (and the author's journal layout has a rather creepy animated banner...)
Summary : Some labyrinths exist in the mind only, and not all minotaurs are wicked despite initial impressions.
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Title : If You Don't Start Drinking (I'm Gonna Leave)
Author : robanybody
Rating : e for language and sex
Characters & Pairings : George Kirk / Christopher Pike
Length : medium
Warnings : none
Summary : It all starts because Pike loses a bet.
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Fandom : A Knight's Tale
Title : By The Hideyn Scrybe Ywrit
Author : apiphile / derek des anges
Rating : T
Characters & Pairings : Chaucer, Roland, Wat, Kate; a bit of Wat/Chaucer
Length : 10625 words
Warnings : guns, bad language and drunken snogging
Summary : Geoffrey Chaucer, undercover journalist in 2009 London gangland.
My Rave Review :

okay, this fic? is amazing. as laulan will attest, i am weak for a good AU, and this one presses all the correct buttons in my brain that make me jump for joy. the characters are instantly recognizeable, each one, and the way the author has translated them into this gang is just perfect. of course kate would be the bookkeeper and weapons mistress. of course william is an ex-pro-footballer turned club owner. of course the black prince is a mob boss. the fic is peppered with utterly hilarious references to the canon that had me constantly grinning (including a paraphrase of kate's "sometimes both" line that made me chortle out loud).

but the best thing about it is the best thing about the movie in my opinion; the feeling of camaraderie and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-trousers companionship between these four, the way they're like the marauders crossed with ocean's eleven.

"Wat, sit the fuck down," Kate complains. She's cleaning a gun. Yes, that is why my shoulders are hunched up somewhere around my ears. I do not like the presence of firearms in my flat, because, even more so than the forgeries – which I can at least burn in short order – they will bring the weighty arm of the law around my neck like the hangman's noose. No amount of "I'm researching a book" would save my bacon, and … well. I doubt things would go well for Roland, Kate, and Wat, either.

After a minute or two of glaring and spluttering and threats to do terrible things to Roland and Kate and I (I have looked up the verb "fong", which he uses with bewildering frequency in his threats, and the only reference I can find is that it's from Old English and means "to kick"; quite where Wat came across any Old English and quite why he decided to adopt this particular verb is beyond me), Wat settles as best he can with the tabloid and starts swearing at the contents of this instead.

Peace and quiet in these circumstances is probably less helpful than Wat's usual brand of disruption, because without him growling and glaring and carrying on like a bear with a sore head, my mind is free to wander.

God preserve those prone to introspection.

it doesn't hurt that her writing is phenomenal, either. i can hear the entire fic read in paul bettany's (guh-guh-glorious) voice, and every scene was vividly visible in my mind. wat and chaucer drunkenly making out is nine kinds of win, hilarious and sexy and then hilarious again, and the heist/caper they're working on throughout the fic is interesting without derailing the character focus of the story. this is an awesome read, if you've ever pondered the existence of AKT fic, read this. XD