RECS: November 13, 2012

[bethbethbeth]

Thirty-plus stories at least still in the queue, almost all Avengers. Soon!



Avengers

absolutelywrite "words like arrows (keep missing the target)" (Avengers. Phil/Clint "Phil Coulson dies saving the world; Clint Barton would rip the world apart to get him back." Could possible have benefited from another "act," but creative and very moving.)

adventurepants "These Are Better Days" (Avengers. Steve, Pepper/Tony, Team. " Steve's tried to watch the news, some—he has a lot to catch up on, after all—but sometimes even that's not real. “The Daily Show is funny because it's fake,” Bruce had tried to explain to him. “Fox News is funny because it doesn't know that it's fake.” / They try to be patient with him. He figures, with Thor back in Asgard, he's the closest thing to an alien they've got. But he's stopped watching the news, anyway. It gets old, after a while, when you just keep seeing your own face." Touching...and particularly good Steve & Thor interactions)

arthur_177 "Shooting gloves and champagne glasses" (Avengers. Phil/Clint. "Clint fits in well enough in a lot of places; high society charity balls are not one of them. /nfortunately, that is exactly where he is, and that is exactly where he is making a fool of himself. / To add insult to injury, Coulson is there to witness it, and of the many things he perhaps wouldn't mind revealing to Coulson, this is definitively not one of them." )

athena4lynn "Vibrate to that Iron String" (Avengers. Clint, Natasha, Phil. "In which Clint's hearing is damaged, Natasha learns to trust Coulson, and both of them help Clint get his groove back." Pre-movie canon, though harking back to Clint's hearing loss in comics canon. Good progression of Clint, Nat, and Phil adapting to Clint's new reality.)

Echo: "A.I.'s and Lullabyes" (Avengers. Tony, Team, JARVIS. "Tony is suddenly a quiet, wary five year old boy. The rest of the team are less than completely sure about what to do about that." There are a lot of de-aging stories in this fandom, many of which are very successful in examing the 'inner child' of specific characters through...an outer child, but this story does an extremely good job of letting us - and Bruce and Natasha in particular - see through to the very core of Tony. A little heartbreaking, but hopeful at the same time.)

Epiphanyx7 "The Butterfingers G.D.I. Stark Guide to Problem Solving" (Avengers. Bots and Tony! Team, with background Clint/Phil " Tony begins to notice that things are going missing from his workshop... and discovers that his bots have been hiding a very, very big secret from him. Or rather, a very, very small one. / In which Dummy is a kleptomaniac, You is painfully shy, Butterfingers is a programming genius, JARVIS is a sarcastic sonofabitch, Pepper takes care of Tony outside of the workshop, Bruce is Tony's boo, Thor is Tony's favourite, Clint is actually kind of smart, Steve has terrible timing, and problem-solving is never simple or easy." Wonderful - if sometimes misplaced - Bot love for Tony. )

irnan: "call every girl we ever met maria" (Avengers/Iron Man. Tony/Pepper, Tony & Rhodey, Team. ""You're telling me," Rhodey said, gleeful, "you're telling me that you've been shot, stabbed, sewn up, been riddled with shrapnel, had a magnet implanted in your chest, spent two years poisoning yourself with palladium, spent twenty years as a functioning alcoholic and had a vasectomy and you still managed to knock Pepper up?"" Neither Tony nor Pepper are the most obvious parent material, but babies rarely wait for their prospective parents to pass a test. Smart and engaging, and while there are sweet elements in this story, it's anything but saccharine.)

mercaque "Worse Without" (Avengers. Tony/Bruce. "Too familiar with loss, Tony can't resist an invincible creature like Bruce. But even Bruce can be hurt." Sweet and Angsty...but with an entirely hopeful ending.)

missbecky "this is what peace feels like" (Avengers. Gen Tony, Pepper. "The best thing about being you is also the worst thing about being you. You put on the armor and you soar through the sky and the world falls away so there's only the mission and all that is good, it's very good. But at the end of the day, no matter how much you resist it, you still have to land again./ The armor has to come off." Insightful, with a hint of Tony/Pepper to come )

Not_You "Mr. Coulson's Technicolor Dreamhouse" (Avengers. Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanov/Maria Hill, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Thor/Jane Foster, Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark. "Phil is Mr. Coulson, beloved children's entertainer and purveyor of quality television for humans. Clint is the new cameraman, and this is the tale of their love. And of Steve and Bucky's, and other people's as they appear. Coulson is afraid he's too boring and Clint that he's not classy enough. They are both wrong." One of those "nothing-like-canon" AUs that still work wonderfully. Great relationship dynamics.)

Ralkana "Good SHIELD Agents Never Die " (Avengers. Phil/Clint, Phil/Work. "They just go back to work." Satisfyingly happy-making early story in the wake of the "coulsonlives" news, with excellent character details. )

spinstitcher "Kings and Vagabonds" (Avengers. Loki-centric Gen, many characters from Thor, etc - and Sleipnir! "n the wake of the Chitauri Loki is stripped of his powers and banished to Vanaheim. Nobody tasers him, but there is an awful lot of singing and dancing. Accompanied by his eldest son, who happens to be a horse, Loki slowly begins to carve out a place for himself – one that isn’t Supreme Ruler of the Known Universe / But there is another power emerging from the darkness; one that threatens the safety – and sanity – of all the Nine Realms. Loki may have given up his dreams of becoming Glorious Overlord, but that doesn’t mean someone else gets to take his place." A smart and insightful 'redemption fic' for Loki, post movie canon. There's a shippy sequel to this story that's currently in progress - and which is quite good - but I really love this one. )

Zekkass "i'll reject your reality and go home to my own (but not without fixing a few things first) " (Avengers Bruce/Tony, Steve. "He doesn't expect to come back from that one-way trip. He doesn't expect to wake up in the past. / (Steve doesn't expect a robot to show up in his home, but he's always rolled with the punches.)" Parallel universes, handled extremely well. Happy and Sad at the same time. )

James Bond - Skyfall

torakowalski "With Your Hand In My Hand We'll Still Stand" (James Bond - Skyfall. Q/Bill Tanner. "The crisis is over but no one at MI6 is sleeping yet." Post-film, and as the author notes: "This fic contains spoilers for Skyfall. Trust me, you want to go into this film spoiler-free.")

Sherlock Holmes

KazVL: "Puppet on a String" and "Wasteland" (BBC. Lestrade/Mycroft, Sherlock. Set before Sherlock meets John, these first two stories from the "Fire and Ice" series are a fantastic look at how a man - Lestrade - goes through the end of a marriage and then, slowly, works his way through the intricacies of starting a new relationship for the first time in decades - especially when that relationship is with the most difficult partner ever.)

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As I've noted before, I will clearly never catch up with old stories. If you have a favorite story (your own or somebody else's) that you think I might have missed and it's in a fandom that I've recced before (see my main recs page, which includes links to all the individual major fandoms and a miscellaneous fandoms page). Most loved at the moment are stories from one of the following fandoms: Avengers, Discworld, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Lewis, Sherlock Holmes in all varieties, or White Collar (feel free to leave a link below), but everything is welcome.

Comments

[ainsley]

RECS. yay!