the sun and the moon and the stars

Some more recs! Apparently it's been six weeks since my last batch? Whoops. *wince* As always, longfic recs are archived in the tag.

The Parent Snap (54399 words) by follow_the_sun
Fandom: Thor (Movies), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Series: Part 1 of Odinbrood Adventures
Summary: Bucky Barnes thinks Odin's children got a bad deal, so he engages in a little light kidnapping to give them the happiness they deserve. One day, Hela, Thor, and Loki decide to return the favor.

Funny and poignant by turns, the worldbuilding is great in this -- but the bit that always gets me, whenever I reread, is Bucky's fierce kindness. Love it.


If They Haven't Learned Your Name (237623 words) by silentwalrus
Fandom: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Series: Part 2 of Bucky Barnes Gets His Groove Back & Other International Incidents
Summary: Steve gets out of the hospital in two days, but just barely. “I’m fine,” he tells Sam, Nurse Eunjung and the phalanx of doctors assigned to make sure Captain America didn’t bleed out and die and get bad PR all over their nice clean hospital. “I have an advanced healing factor. It’s fine. See? I’m standing.”

“That is not standing,” Sam tells him.

“You’re bending the IV stand,” Nurse Eunjung adds pointedly. “Let go and sit down, they don’t grow on trees.”

 
aka Steve and Bucky's Global Honeymoon Revenge World Tour.

This one is a fantastic entry in the Up All Night to Get Bucky body of work, featuring the USS Motherfucker, dubstep, and an amazing Natasha in the background. It borders on absurdist comedy, but in the "why is everything such a trainwreck" way rather than the Frathouse Avengers Tower way. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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Agent Afloat Atlantis (48793 words) by Mhalachai
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis, NCIS
Summary: Ziva's new assignment certainly isn't what she expected.

Divergent from NCIS after Season 5, and divergent from SGA at... some point? This one's one of my favourite crossovers, with a really smooth integration of the two canons (which work well together anyway), some fun procedural details, and a great eye for character. I'm always a sucker for crossovers where the Cool Kids from one canon get to find out the secrets of the other canon, and this one delivers in spades.

(Crossover familiarity required: if you're familiar with NCIS around Season 3-5 and you've got Stargate familiarity at Fandom Osmosis levels you should know what you need to know to enjoy it, I think.)

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The Dragon-King's Temple (196311 words) by Kryal
Fandom: Stargate SG-1, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Summary: Through the spite of the spirits or plain rotten chance, a door that would have been better left untouched has opened. On the other hand, with Fire and Earth as one's allies, sometimes escaping is the easy part.

Even the Dragon-King's temple floods.

Another great crossover -- while I'm not the greatest Stargate fan, the fandom does produce fantastic fanworks and the crossovers are fantastic. This one is meaty, plotty, adventure-y goodness that feels wholly in the vein of both canons. A couple of the tertiary OCs might read as annoying (especially if you read the author's notes, which I don't recommend) but overall this is a really great read with some fun worldbuilding, and the AtlA characters in particular are excellently rendered.

(Crossover familiarity required: I'm not sure how this would read if you don't know AtlA - it's set post-series and is very spoilery for the series as a whole. Set in Season 3 of SG-1 apparently, but I enjoyed it just fine with Fannish Osmosis levels of SG-1 knowledge, so.)

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Ugh, so, I had a whole bunch of tabs open with fic to rec and then browser crash and boom. So, in the meantime, have what's at the front of my mind!

I should also mention, because I've been reading and rereading a lot in Harry Potter lately, I freely confess that I prefer a whole bunch of fanon conceits in Harry Potter to the canon we got. One of those is around Draco Malfoy's characterisation - I much prefer a fanon Draco who acts as a foil and counterbalance for Harry rather than the Draco we ultimately got. I enjoy characters who are spiky and abrasive, but not necessarily evil, and that's what fanon Draco often delivers. I quite understand people who don't prefer that, but it does mean that many (not all) of my Harry Potter recs (particularly those with a Harry/Draco slant) may not be to your tastes.

(I feel much the same way about MCU Loki, although I don't tend to read Loki-centric fic much.)

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god loves everybody, don't remind me (70381 words) by napricot
Fandom: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Summary: N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance.

Erik gets a do-over. Erik gets a lot of do-overs. Or: Erik Killmonger's own personal version of Groundhog Day, only with a lot more murder, dying, trips to the ancestral plane, awkward family conversations, and divine intervention.

Funny, nuanced, plotty and interesting. This is Groundhog Day fic done right, and we get to watch Killmonger struggle, twist in Bast's grip, and change. I don't have anything smart to say about it, but I love this story a lot.

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The If Sieve (36203 words) by cest_what
Fandom: Harry Potter - Rowling
Series: Part 1 of If Sieve
Summary: An If Sieve lets you see how things would have unfolded if somebody had made a different decision at a particular time.

This isn't quite Groundhog Day fic, but it plays with many of the same themes of iteration and exploration. In some ways, what I love about fic like this and Groundhog Day fic is that it's a microcosm of fandom itself, exploring all the different ways something could have gone other than the single path we got in canon. In this case, Draco is exploring all the paths of history to see if there was some way he could have been friends with Harry Potter after all. Needless to say, it goes wrong a lot.

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she does pretty well with fiends from hell (80591 words) by Hinn_Raven
Chapters: 8/14
Fandom: Batman (Comics)
Summary: Stephanie Brown is sixteen years old. She’s a vampire slayer. Things are going about as well as you might expect.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fandom that lends itself to really good fusions, and this is one of the best. It's got strong world building, so you don't need to be familiar with both fandoms to enjoy it, and the characterisation and plotting is great; the fusion is of DC characters fused into the BtVS world, and the story allows them to shine in ways that the DCverse doesn't. Highly recommended.

Warning: WIP. I wouldn't normally rec a WIP, but each chapter is itself long, plotty, and stands as much on its own merits as any TV episode. The author updates quite regularly but even if it were abandoned it wouldn't be unsatisfying as it stands, IMO.

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Thawed Out (159341 words) by auburnnothenna, eretria
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Series: Part 1 of Thawed Out
Summary: He's not the Asset. He's not the Winter Soldier. But neither is he Bucky Barnes. With the help of Steve, Sam and the Avengers, James takes the long, slow road to recovery. Nothing is as easy as either of them thought it would be.

Long, story-driven takes on the Winter Soldier's Life After HYDRA proliferated in fandom, and Thawed Out is one of the best. It was posted in 2014 so is obviously not compliant with later canon, but it's a great example of the genre, and a very good read.

I often ask for fic recs here on DW, and I feel I should pay it forwards. At the moment I'm really jonesing for good longfics, so I figured I'd rec some of my existing favourites in case they're new to any of you. I shall try to gather the spoons to do this on a semi regular basis -- I'm trying to be better about recording the fic I read, because my memory is so bad I've got zero chance of finding it again later if I don't. Even given that, I know I've read stuff I've loved recently that I haven't bookmarked or saved, so I guess it will be fresh and new again in a year's time if I stumble over it again.

( My tastes, likely to be on display here. )

An Ever-Fixed Mark (190537 words) by AMarguerite
Fandom: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms
Series: Part 1 of An Ever-Fixed Mark
Summary: One would think that having the name of one's soulmate appear on one's wrist on one's sixteenth birthday would make matrimony much less complicated. It mostly does not. And not at all for Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne. (A deconstruction of the "soulmate identifying mark" trope, using "Pride and Prejudice." Trigger warnings in the tags.)

I am not sure it's fair to say that I like the Soulmark AU trope, so much as a few of the fics it spawned are among my favourites. This story deconstructs that trope while executing it brilliantly, so it's satisfying on both levels. The series includes AU spin-offs, a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure of Elizabeth's key relationships. I love this series and re-read it a lot.

A Monstrous Regiment (94904 words) by AMarguerite
Fandom: Temeraire - Naomi Novik, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, AUSTEN Jane - Works, Persuasion - Jane Austen, Mansfield Park - Jane Austen, Emma - Jane Austen
Series: Part 1 of A Monstrous Regiment
Summary: General Wellington selects Colonel Fitzwilliam for a very singular honor during the Spanish Campaign: working with dragons-- and, in particular, with Captain Elizabeth Bennet, of His Majesty's Dragon, the Longwing Wollstonecraft. (Temeraire/Pride and Prejudice crossover entirely to have Elizabeth Bennet as a dragon captain during the Peninsular War, with Charlotte Lucas as her uber-capable first lieutenant.)

Another by the same writer; I had resisted reading this for ages as I'd forgotten everything I'd ever read of Temeraire, but I picked it up recently and was so glad I did. It made me want to go back and try Temeraire again, except so much of the joy of this is in these characters and AMarguerite's writing of them.

What We Pretend We Can't See (131086 words) by gyzym
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Summary: Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought.

HP fandom is, unsurprisingly, full of really fantastic long meaty worldbuildy stories. This one's one of my recent favourites, featuring Harry as a young adult Auror who's finally coming to grips with a lot of the things he cast off after the war.

Snatched (31168 words) by blamebrampton
Fandom: Harry Potter - Rowling
Summary: Scorpius Malfoy has always brought out the idiot in Albus Potter. For the past seven years they've dealt with this through a cunning application of denial. Now James Potter's life is being threatened, and everything else is swept to one side as they try to beat the most literal deadline any of them have ever faced.

Everything Blamebrampton does is brilliant, and this is one of my favourites - a tense, thrilling story neatly wrapped up in some great worldbuilding and futurefic extrapolation.

So Wise We Grow (81248 words) by Deastar
Fandom: Star Trek (2009)
Series: Part 1 of So Wise We Grow
Summary: "Commander Spock, we have located your son," the Vulcan lady on the screen says, which would be great, except Jim can tell by the look on Spock's face that he's never heard of this kid before in his life. "If it is expedient, the child will be sent to join you on the Enterprise within the week."

It's a classic and rightly so. The second story in the series makes me ugly-cry every time I read it; this one just quietly makes my throat tight.

Jesus Christ, it's like fandom is actually trying to kill people with cuteness at this point.

To wit, a rec:

You Know How I Feel, aka, The Adventures of Bucky and Muffy the Dinosaur (4511 words) by ifeelbetter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Avengers & Bucky
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, original dinosaur
Summary:

Bucky saved a tiny dinosaur and took her home to Avengers Tower and on the way remembered how to laugh and sleep in soft beds.

Six times Melinda May spent time with a member of the Avengers Initiative, by Minnow. You have to be a registered member logged in at AO3 to read this, but it's so worth it. It's fabulous.

In Two Straight Lines in Rain or Shine by sienamystic. It's a lovely and entirely plausible Firefly/Avengers crossover. Enjoy!

The Raven, the Rooks, and the Lantern by sharpestrose, aka mary. It's a lovely XMFC/Narnia crossover and thoroughly worth it.

So I figured I'd put together a list of my favourite stories from 2010 (though some may be a little older).

Killing Elvis by hradzka - Aliens fandom, OFCs and OMCs. A hilarious epistolary fic and one of the breakout hits of Yuletide 2009.

Almost No One Makes It Out by atrata, a brilliant and incisive Iron Man AU, casting Tony as himself - but without the class and wealth privilege.

水火 by trascendenza, an Avatar: the Last Airbender story. It's an amazing look at Azula post-series, coming back to herself and finding a new way to live.

The One Where The Fire Nation Clearly Loses, another Avatar fic by Miarr. Hot, funny Sokka/Zuko porn with spot-on voices. (I just reread it and oh, SOKKA.) Normally I am not one for stories that are pure porn, but this one's hilarious because it's porn.

Enigmatic Absurdities by Eponine, a House/Angel crossover where House winds up trying to diagnose what's wrong with Angel. It's four years old but I only stumbled across it this year so it might be new to some of y'all too.

Nerds of the Earth, take note! by brown_betty, an Iron Man/Leverage crossover where Hardison gets coerced into doing a job for SHIELD.

Agent Afloat Atlantis by Mhalachai, a SGA/NCIS crossover AU set at the end of season 5 NCIS and mid-S5 SGA. When Vance breaks up Gibbs' team after Jenny's death, Ziva is sent to Atlantis as NCIS's Agent Afloat.

A Partial Map Of Your TARDIS (Subject To Change) by alibi_factory. Doctor Who fandom, 11th Doctor-ish but not really spoilery. I've recced this before but it's so good I have to rec it again. It's a beautiful, whimsical set of maps to the TARDIS, complete with follies and indulgences and it just makes me flap my hands around incoherently.

War Games by seperis, a hundred thousand words of Star Trek Reboot plotty awesomeness. It's Kirk/Spock with fantastic original characters and an engrossing storyline.

My Home and Native Land by Copperbadge. A SGA story in which Ronon is looking for a tribe to call his own, and finds one in an unlikely place. I love this story for Ronon's characterisation.

Working Around The Crazy by Peroxidepest. A Burn Notice/Supernatural crossover (spoilers for S3 Burn Notice and S5 Supernatural) where Lucifer's looking for a new host and has settled on Michael Westen - but Michael has other ideas, and the sang-froid to test Lucifer's patience.

Concession by obsession_inc, a brilliantly creepy story about Christine Everhart writing an investigative piece about the disappearance of Pepper Potts and Tony Stark. This is the kind of story that really sticks with you later.

Five Universes by quigonejinn. A brilliant Iron Man five things fic that, unusually for the format, makes some really incisive comments about the characters.

...okay, it's four am and I have to get to bed at a semi-sane hour. So, more later, I hope.

Almost No One Makes It Out, by atrata. It's a fantastic Iron Man AU (original movie only) examining the story of Iron Man if Tony Stark hadn't been born rich. It is kind of amazing, and since my circle is aflutter with Iron Man squee, you will love this.

Or else.