My friend
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b7kerravon made the mistake of asking "If I was marooned on a desert island, what ten fanfics would I want with me?" Of course, being the geeks we are, if we
knew we were going to be marooned on a desert isle, we'd have a laptop and a external drive packed with fic with handy solar power converters. Even if I'm only flying to Cleveland, I make sure to have more than ten fics with me because the last thing I want is to be trapped on a mystical, time-traveling island with nothing but
Watership Down to read.
But just contemplating being limited to ten stories, even favorites, is enough to bring on fangirl angst. Some of my favorite fandoms, such as
Supernatural and
Stargate SG-1 are so rich in well-plotted, beautifully written gen H/C stories it is difficult for me to compose even a 'favorite ten authors' list without leaving out a lot of extremely worthy stories. Yet, if I did have to choose, I think I would want: longer stories, to prolong the joy; stories across the fandoms I enjoy, to give me a multitude of mental starting off places (isn't the epilogue or missing scene you write in your head a part of what you love about a favorite story?); and stories that epitomize my favorite aspects of the characters' relationship. With those characteristics in mind, I have selected a favorite from each of my fandoms:
I. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Observare by Jeanne DeVoreBTVS fandom was dominated by ship and slash parings, but there were some gems of friendship-focused stories among them.
Observare, originally published as a print zine lovingly illustrated by Linda Fairbanks, is a wonderful example of the Buffy/Giles mentoring genre. Giles receives word that the father from whom he is somewhat estranged is dying, and asks Buffy to accompany him to England. It's the perfect set-up for Buffy to learn more about who her Watcher is, to explore the Watcher/Slayer relationship, and for Giles to open up to his charge.
I lost most of my
BTVS fics in a harddrive crash a few years ago, and many of the sites that I used to enjoy have decayed or disappeared, but a few stories are still available. I really enjoyed Gail Christison's episode tags; fortunately her
Once More With Feeling site is still up and running. I also adore, adore,
adore ELG's Wesley de-aging story,
Childish Things, which is everything I've ever loved about that genre of fic.
II. Doctor Who: Susurration by PatriceI'm new to OldSchool!Who fic, so I count myself fortunate to have found Patrice, who has written eleven full-length novels, most set in the Fifth Doctor era. Truly, I recommend all of her novels; her work is consistently excellent and she has a wonderful command of Five's companions, who can be irritating (Adric/Tegan), boring (Nyssa) or unsympathetic (Turlough) in the wrong hands. Her plots generally feature some element of H/C, and her Five is a gentle if imperfect mentor as well as loyal and caring friend. In
Susurration, Five brings Tegan and Turlough to a planet with a location renowned for its healing powers, in an attempt to comfort his companions after Nyssa's decision to stay behind at the end of
Terminus. Unfortunately, they stumble into a bloody civil war that threatens Turlough's life and Tegan's sanity.
Unfortunately, I haven't found very many longer gen OldSchool!Who stories, but another I would strongly recommend is
Lost Luggage and Lost Souls by Nemo the Everbeing. Seven and Ace are an odd pair, especially if all you've seen is the outside; it's not immediately obvious why a slightly bumbly-looking middle-aged Scotsman might be traveling with a streetwise teenage English girl.
Lost Luggage and Lost Souls is a beautifully rendered outsider perspective on Seven and Ace's relationship, chock full of my favorite things: witty banter, mortal peril, compelling original characters, and happy endings.
III. Harry Potter: Resonance by GreengeckoSnape/Harry mentorship stories are my drug of choice in
Harry Potter. My favorite of these is
Resonance by Greengecko, in which the author builds a believable set of circumstances in which Snape and Harry would begin to overcome their enmity and eventually heal each others' figurative (and literal) scars.
Resonance has many classic H/C moments, wherein the author provides fully satisfying peril and recovery while maintaining the characters' distinct, often difficult personalities. She's also adept at world-building, going beyond Rowling's original setting to provide us with a fascinating set of spells and magical laws, the exploration of which bring us insight into the characters.
Of course, if I could sneak them onto the island, I'd have the other classics of this genre,
A Year Like None Other by Aspen in the Sunlight and
Blood Magic by GatewayGirl
*.
IV. Lord of the Rings: Fate and the High King's Falcon, by BaylorSet immediately after the final battle in
Return of the King,
Fate is the story of Pippin's recovery from near fatal troll-squashing. Baylor has a talent for capturing the voice and manners of Tolkien's characters, and her comfort is among the gentlest and sweetest I've ever read. For me, her take on the hobbits is definitive, and if I had room, I'd be chucking in
I Always Know You (pre-
LOTR, Merry caring for a frequently ill Pippin) and
The Care and Feeding of Hobbits ("Ruminations on the Little People by Boromir, Man of Gondor").
V. Real Ghostbusters: Highway to Hell, by Kitty Woldow The story that sets the standard for smarm in
RGB fandom, from the woman who
invented the term. The noble sacrifice of a friend for the lives of his companions is a well-worn path in traditional media and fanworks, but I haven’t read any story that so unflinchingly examines the way such a sacrifice can shatter its survivors. Of course, our fallen teammate is only mostly dead, and after several clever plot developments and acts of heroism, is reunited with his fellows, but not before a lot of teamwork, daring-do and bonding.
RGB is a small fandom but punches well above its weight in fan fiction, especially if you love H/C, smarm or friendship-focused fic. It is difficult to pick a favorite out of all of the quality stories published over the past twenty years; there are plenty of stories I would love to sneak into my desert island collection, including just about anything written by
Brenda (start with
Christmas at Columbia). Sheila Paulson has an
unbelievably enormous back catalogue of
RGB fic with a heavy friendship focus. Her novel
Paths of the Dead is my favorite but doesn’t appear to be online (or was lost in the move when AOL shutdown Hometown), but
The Night Between the Stars and
Buster and the Beast are close seconds.
It is difficult to even select among authors in
RGB; the entire fandom is a smorgasbord for friendship-focused fans. Just click over to Sheila’s site and have a blast. Don’t be put off by the fact that the source material is a cartoon; the episodes made for syndication were much more mature and sophisticated than what passes for kids’ shows these days, due in part to its story editor, a young J. Michael Straczynski.
VI. Stargate SG-1: Fate's Reflection, by Yum@Epic. Stunning. Brilliant. Yum@ uses
SG-1’s mirror device to produce a deeply engaging post-apocalyptic vision of the
Stargate universe. The best part of this device is that we get to see the ‘mirror’ characters contrasted with their ‘real’ counterparts, a wonderful method of illuminating aspects of those characters, as well as forcing them to face intriguing or painful might-have-beens. Yum@ kills on every metric: an intricate, intriguing plot with fascinating and unpredictable development, a keen grasp on the motivation of her characters, and an incredible depth of emotion, artfully expressed. I couldn’t put it down which, at over 350 pages of very small font, posed a problem for little things like eating, sleeping and keeping my job.
I am fortunate that
SG-1 was my introduction to fan fiction; there was so much quality H/C fic and the fandom was populated with especially generous and welcoming folks willing to take a newbie under their wings. My best memories of fandom are from
Stargate, so it’s particularly difficult to choose among these stories. I would certainly want to take along as many as I could fit in my grass hut. All of ELG’s novels are excellent;
The Quality of Mercy was the first ‘net story I enjoyed so much I had a copy formatted and bound. Scribe’s
True Foundations and Jmas’s
Walls are also well executed stories that have a particular resonance for me.
VII. Supernatural: Strangers and Angels by ReadingWet, tired, caked in mud, and still reeling from the events of
Faith, Sam and Dean pull into the only roadside motel in the middle of nowhere and find an unexpected respite from a world intent on wearing them down. Not a hurt/comfort story so much as a comfort story, this fic is a sweet cup of hot cocoa enjoyed under a warm fleece in front of a crackling fire. Reading has created a set of realistic, three-dimensional original characters that compliment and illuminate our boys. I would use some creative accounting to include the entire Strangers and Angels AU, which continues in several sequels, in my ten desert island fics.
Supernatural has given friendship fic fans a golden age I haven’t seen the like of since the hayday of
Stargate, so it’s extraordinarily difficult to choose among my favorite stories. Gekizetsu’s
Month of Open Doors series is one of the first things I read in this fandom; she keeps the tension at a fever pitch and makes perfect use of the ‘supernatural’ elements of this universe to peel back the boys well-constructed defenses.
Payment Plan by Minkmix is my favorite third party POV story; her narrator’s callous practicality is more chilling than a thousand moustache-twirling villains. Dodger Winslow consistently blows my mind with her use of perspective, rich characterization, and unique style. All of her Wee!chester is amazing, but I come back to
The Constancy of Pain again and again. There’s really too much to choose from—early in the fandom I bound one anthology of favorite stories but there are so many excellent fics I’m switching to full ‘complete works of’ collections.
* Warning: unlike my other recs, this story contains some mild ship and slash; I'm not sure why, but this author was set on making every character in HP bisexual. Still, the romantic pairings are not the main thrust of the story, so I would still consider this gen, and I don't recall sexual content to be explicit.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
