Keep Hoping Machine Running

Dear People Out There,

I am hoping you can help me with something.

See, our beloved Philips plays-anything DVD player experienced serious trauma in the move. (Well, we all did.) Now it just sits there with its power light blinking red, and nothing we can do will make it open or play. We've given it time to heal, largely because I hate hate hate replacing things, but it hasn't gotten better, so - what is the current fannish DVD player? The one that plays the most formats, and so on? What do you folks have and love? (That can currently be purchased, I mean.)

Now, onto the recs. Once again, it's long stories. (Parenthood and breastfeeding have really changed the way I'm reading; since I only managed to read fan fiction on the Kindle, and I tend to Kindle mostly longer things, that's what I end up reading. Someday, presumably, there will be more variety here, but you'll have to take that up with the earthling.)

The One with Extra Vulcan Goodness. So Wise We Grow, by captanddeastar. Star Trek Reboot, Jim T. Kirk/Spock.

Okay, I will admit it. I am unabashed lover of epic kidfic. But my standards for kidfic went way, way up during pregnancy. (True fact: at one point, in around my eighth month, I snarled at the screen, "That is NOT how it happens, and that is NOT medically accurate, and also -" and then I realized I was criticizing the medical realism of MPREG. People who tell you pregnancy makes you crazy probably aren't thinking of this moment, but they should be.) And then they skyrocketed again after I was living my own version of kidfic, complete with earthling. So I now approach kidfic with joy and trepidation, because either it's going to make me happy all day long or it's going to make me write yet another lengthy mental post entitled Pregnancy and Childrearing: Actual Facts, Because You Seem Not to Have Any Even Though the Internet Is Totally Full of Them.

This one fell squarely into the "happy all day long" category. And in a rather unusual way, too. See, okay - most kidfic starts from one of two places: either a new baby, via MPreg or alien/divine/future/magical intervention, or a (gasp!) woman, whatever, or a kid still firmly in what I think of as the Era of Cuteness. This story starts out with a kid in the Era of Snottiness, and I just love that. (Partly this is because I have a nephew who has just embarked on the Era of Snottiness, and I have so much enjoyed seeing him discover sarcasm and obstructive literalism and eye-rolling and various gestures behind my sister's back. I imagine I will love this age much less when the earthling gets there, but for right now, it's comedy gold.)

And I also love (we're back to the story again) Jim and Spock, getting it backwards as usual. (First comes baby, then comes marriage, then comes love: I am pretty sure that is not how it usually goes, guys! But then, being captain of the whole fucking ship doesn't usually come at the start of one's career, either, so I am guessing they're used to inverting these things. They'd probably be all shocked if they actually did something like other people for once.) And I love how they fuck up, and also get things right, and how they get it all figured out in the end.

Most of all, I just really, really love seeing Jim Kirk dealing with TWO snotty Vulcans. I cannot think of anything better than that.

The One Where Ray Totally Calls Fraser on His Bullshit. More People Need to Do That! A Moment of Insight, by cesperanza. Due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski.

Did I really not recommend this before? That hardly seems possible, and yet LJ Archive insists that it is so. In which case, I really have to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Because this story is so very marvelous, and I re-read it regularly, and yet somehow I failed to mention that fact to you. Maybe I assumed you all knew about it, but if so, I am sure I assumed wrong. (If I've learned one thing on the internet - besides "never click without first seeing where the link goes, especially if the link text is something like HA HA HA" - it's that there is always someone who hasn't seen it, someone staring at the screen thinking, but what's a LOLcat? Often that person is me. Although I do know what LOLcats are, thank god.)

I can't take the risk that there is someone out there who is looking for a good, long story, or a good dS story, or just a story involving hotel rooms in middle America (and if you think there isn't someone looking for that last one, watch a few storyfinders communities - there is always someone looking for a story involving, like, eye infections, or learning to stand on your head, or French-Canadian pastries, things like that.)

So. What we have here is:

1. Ray and Fraser. (A good way to start! Years of happiness started that way for me.)
   
2. Trapped in a hotel room. (I think we can all agree that this is a fundamentally excellent plot development in virtually all fandoms, and before you argue, consider: Buffy and Ethan Rayne, trapped in a hotel room! Hercules and Iolaus, trapped in a hotel room! Reboot Kirk and Methos, trapped in a hotel room!)
   
3. Engaged in sex and case-solving, and, really, what could be better? (Fan fiction has changed my definition of "awesome procedural crime story" to the point where I always find myself vaguely disappointed in published if the heroes just catch the bad guys, and don't actually fuck or flirt or have a moment of relationship-defining staring or whatever. This is funny because I love gen fan fiction and almost never have that problem there, but then, fan fiction writers actually know when they're writing slash, most of the time; pro writers often don't.)

Basically, this story is everything I love about dS.

The One Where We Learn About the Persistence of Pizza. In the Memory, I Mean. Forget Me Not, by maisierita. Stargate: Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay.

I love amnesia. I just - I really do. (When it happens to fictional people, I mean.) Someone on my friends list was talking about her incredible folly of starting a story with everyone with amnesia and lost in the dark, and I was like: that is an awesome idea. I would love to read that! What's wrong with starting out with everyone amnesiac and lost in the dark?

(Answer: hard to write. Apparently. Whatever.)

I'm not sure what I love more about amnesia - that you get to see everyone without their internal history (who I am, where I hurt, what I've learned) or that you get to see folks interacting without their interpersonal history (who you are, what we fight about, why I like you). Fortunately, in this story, I don't have to choose. Because, okay, Rodney and John may not be lost in the dark, but they definitely both have amnesia. And they're in an unfamiliar world. And not only do they stay that way a good long time, but John gets extra amnesia, which is, obviously, extra awesome. (Also just like him - always taking the largest share of the pie, as long as the pie is made of pain, suffering, time on his knees, or emotional maladjustment!)

I love watching them renegotiate their relationships when they're missing most of the pieces of the puzzle, and figure out what the hell is going on, and deal with the circumstances of their capture. And, equally, I love watching them manage the little stuff - like, they have to reinvent pizza and ice cream and coffee. I think we can all agree that would be a major priority for anyone stuck on an unfamiliar world. (I'm only surprised they didn't reinvent Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Seems like every American who goes to a distant land sends back pathetic pleas for suitcases full of Kraft. Even when they did not eat it at all in the US.)

Basically, this story takes two classic fan fiction tropes (Imprisonment! Amnesia!) and does them up right, in an intensely satisfying story that I re-read at least four times a year.

(Note for readers who happen to be best_beloved: Yes, maisierita also wrote that one really sad story. This one is not sad. Authors are allowed to have many facets. READ THIS. You will like it, I swear.)

The One That Will Cause Anyone Who Routinely Drives in Los Angeles to Spend a Lot of Time Imagining the Commute and Sigalerts on This Day. Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, by Annie D., aka scaramouche. Die Hard 4 x Speed, John McClane/Matt Farrell.

No, I am not recommending this one just because I spend a suspiciously large part of my life singing this song. That is just a bonus. (Although I am kind of sad that there won't be a sequel, because that so obviously would be titled Row Row Row Your Boat.)

Here's the thing: I have never seen Die Hard 4, although I am fairly sure I can fill in many of the blanks. (John McClane is manly and kicks some bad guy ass, for example.) And I actually have seen Speed, but I realized, while reading this story, that I don't really remember it. What I remember is, like, the movie trailer version of it. I remember the central plot device - the bus thing, of course - and a few snippets of dialog and some of the characters. (I think my brain has even set this memory to stirring instrumental music, and prefaced it with a ratings screen.) And I very clearly remember thinking at one point, wow, this movie really needed to end about 20 minutes ago. But I don't actually remember, like, who the bad guy was, or, um, the plot - things like that.

I do not regret this at all, because I am just going to pretend, for the rest of my life, that both Speed and Die Hard 4 went exactly like this story. It has everything I want from an action movie - ass-kicking! Wise-cracking! Manliness! Injuries! Inexplicably well-equipped bad guys who, in reality, would just make several billion dollars looting hedge funds and then buy a tropical island, which would in any case be easier than their nefarious plans! Kissing!

But this story is better than most action movies I can remember, and certainly better than all the ones I can't.

Also, the kissing is between the two main dudes, and I don't think I'm going to be seeing that in a big-budget action movie any time soon. Thank you, Annie D, for giving me everything I want in an action movie. Without even requiring me to hire a babysitter.

SGA is ending. And the thing is, I actually got sad when I heard that, and I don't watch the show. (I watched, um, some episodes of season one. And it is not looking like I will have time for television before the earthling is, oh, twelve, so I doubt I'll see even those episodes that are Instant Slash Classics. I'm sorry! I'm just not very good at television.) But the fandom has been so very wonderful for me. I have over a thousand SGA bookmarks in my del.icio.us account alone. (No, you can't see that many. Most of them are unshared.) Almost five hundred of those are ones I consider recommendable. That doesn't include the vids, either. Or the art. Or the podfic. Or the comics. Or the meta.

I mean it when I say that this is an awesome fandom.

So, yeah, I'm sad that the show is going - because the fandom is sad, and because the fandom will change, and because there will be no more canon for this fandom to interpret and rewrite and argue about and vid. No more canon to transform. But at the same time, I'm not at all sad that the future of these characters is, in a few episodes, going to be entirely in the hands of fan fiction writers. Why? Well. Here are four reasons. Four of so very many.

Because When Fan Fiction Writers Do SG1 Crossovers, They Do It for All the Right Reasons. (Also, They Throw in More Gay Sex Than the Canon Writers Ever Have. But That's a Side Issue! Really!) At the Hour When We Are Trembling, John Sheppard/Daniel Jackson.

This story breaks two of my OTPs. TWO. And, you know, I usually won't even look at stories that break one, because I am a sensitive and fragile flower, and also I do not like to court pain. But I'd read Frostfire if she wrote Benton Fraser/Rodney McKay. (Well...I mean, I'd probably read that anyway, because talk about trainwrecks, oh my god. Giant Canadian trainwreck! Probably involving nuclear weapons! But if Frostfire wrote it, I wouldn't be reading with my hands partly covering my eyes.) And this story is exactly why.

This is - okay. Let's get this all out of the way up front - and, hey, let's do it movie-trailer-announcer-guy style:

In world destroyed by the greatest enemy humanity has ever faced,¹ two men forge an unlikely alliance.² They will fight...against overwhelming odds...to save the planet. But can they save each other?³

And I chose to summarize it that way because, truly, this would make an awesome movie. (The explicit gay sex would be particularly entertaining, although I suppose there might be some kind of ratings issue or something. The MPAA makes everything less fun.) But it makes an even more awesome story. (Also very engrossing. I pulled it up to re-check the capitalization on the title just now, and I had to re-read the whole thing again, even though I'd just re-read it in preparation for writing this rec. Block out some time for this one, is what I'm saying.) It's rare to see action written this well in fandom. Hell, it's not usually written this well in, you know, published action novels.

¹ The Goa'uld might have been worse - I mean, I would much rather have my life sucked out of me than have my body and mind taken over. But movie announcers are allowed to exaggerate. For example, they often say things are funny. Or tragic. I have noticed they are usually wrong about both.

² There also have, you know, a team. But movie announcers do not care about people whose names don't appear in the front credits of the movie.

³ Movie announcers would never talk about how they're already basically completely and totally crazy, and might be suitable for a padded room except for how you don't get padded rooms after the apocalypse.

Because Fan Fiction Writers Can Take Us Places Canon Writers Can't Even See from Where They're Standing. The Water Grinds the Stone, by auburnnothenna. Rodney McKay/John Sheppard.

(Note: this totally stands alone, but it is in fact a sequel to The Taste of Apples and Sacrificial Drift.)

This is a fucking novel, people. A great one. (Which, I might add, Auburn wrote in, I think, four months. I watched her word counter go up. It was hypnotizing and kind of terrifying, like those animated things that show you how many cats you have after unbridled breeding for eight generations. I kept wondering if we should club together to get her a holiday in a very cold place; I was afraid her brain would melt. She was obviously overclocking it to a substantial degree, and I suspect she voided her warranty.) This is - okay. This is science fiction as I wish the published stuff was; it's science fiction without the part where I end up wanting to punch the author in the nose. (And I say that with love for the genre. It is my native genre! Just not one where I'm especially welcome.) It builds an epic future for our characters and the stargate program, and - okay. It's not just that most science fiction writers can't do this. It's that the show's writers sure as shit can't do this - they're not this smart, they're not this brave, and they're limited by the episodic format.

So this is SGA (and SG1) with a great writer at the helm. And the brakes off. And, see, here's the thing: this story contains at least a little of a lot of things I don't like, including a couple of things that are deal-breakers for me. I did not care at all. I read this thing at what was, at the time, an incredible pace. I had a new baby, and I skipped sleep in order to finish this. (For those of you who do not have babies: this is like skipping food after you've been eating 400 calories a day for two months.) It's that compelling and that intense.

(Oh, and this story kind of breaks up two of my OTPs, as well. Because anyone who tells you John Sheppard/Atlantis isn't an OTP hasn't been reading in this fandom very long. Johnny and the city, sitting in...an ocean. Okay, the rhyme doesn't work. But the sentiment is definitely all through this fandom.)

I realize that a quarter of a million words is kind of a lot, and you may be hesitant about starting this story, but trust me: you will not be sorry. (Okay, there are a couple of places where you might be sorry, but let me promise you it all works out eventually.) (Also, you will be sorry if you have to get up the next day.) (But, really, other than that - no regrets! Probably! My apologies. I really shouldn't try to make absolute statements about anything.)

Because That Makes Us the Victors. I Mean, We're the Ones Still Writing the History, Right? Written by the Victors, by cesperanza. Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan/John Sheppard.

If The Water Grinds the Stone brought SGA into reality in one way, Written by the Victors does it in a totally different way. Because just as that story is a very probable depiction of how declassification might go down, this is so absolutely how academia would deal with Atlantis. (As far as I can tell, the academic motto is, "When in danger, when in doubt, hurl citations all about. And if that doesn't work, build a blanketfort out of footnotes (or endnotes, depending on your field).")

But what I love about this story - my secret and abiding love for it - is. Okay. Once upon a time, when I was very young (seriously, I was in high school, and I do not want anyone telling me that this was unethical because I know it now but I was 14, okay?), I made money doing lit reviews for grad students. (For anyone who is blinking at the screen right now: people doing dissertations have to do a lot of reading on their topic, and then prove they've done it by writing it all down. A lot of them would, as it turns out, prefer not to do the actual research part of this, even if that means paying someone else to do it. And I guess once you've already paid a high school student to research everything in your field ever, photocopy it all, and give it to you ordered by topic with helpful sticky notes, it is not that hard to slip her a little extra money to do the writing part, too.)

My point - and, really, I'm getting there - is that I spent a lot of time in high school sitting in university libraries reading through various obscure journals, following the intensely formalized bickering that seemed to be 35% of what academics did, sometimes snickering at the obvious bitter grudges just barely concealed behind weasel phrases. And then, when I got to fandom, I had this immediate sense of familiarity when it came to certain kinds of meta and wank, but it took me some time to realize that was because it perfectly, but perfectly, recapitulated the academic bickering I spent so much time photocopying. It was like I was back in that bizarrely lit university library slaving over a hot photocopier. I'd come home! Sort of!

Well. This story - yes, fine, shut up, we've gotten back to the story now - is the perfect encapsulation of that. It's about how academics interpret things, yes, but it's also about how fandom does - and, really, it shows very clearly that academics and fandom are two peas in an awesome but somewhat contentious pod.

So that's my major source of joy in this story. Okay, and I also like the plot, yes, and I revel in this glorious, glorious ending for our heroes, which again is well beyond anything the canon writers could create, and, yes, I love so very many bits of it. But most of all I love that it makes my high school endeavors worthwhile.

Because Fan Fiction Writers Believe in the Characters. The Canon Writers Just Believe in the Show. Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose, by synecdochic. Rodney McKay/John Sheppard.

Some stories I read waaaaaay up high on the catwalk over the chasm of disbelief. The slightest break in my laser-like focus on my mantra ("ignore it ignore it ignore it" or "it's just a story" or "I should really just relax"), and suddenly I'm falling into that chasm, shrieking as I fall, "Science doesn't WORK THAT WAY." For example. And after that, I have no choice but to shake hands with Mr. Back Button, your friend and mine.

This is not one of those stories. This is the opposite: a story so perfectly right, so perfectly accurate, that I was nodding all the way through. Because science really does work this way. I mean - not, you know, the wormhole and Ancient tech and all that, no, sorry - that's what we gently and kindly describe as science fantasy. But the academic stuff in this is dead on.

I loved this when I first read it. But I've been putting off recommending it for two years. I was afraid to re-read it, and I really don't know why, because this isn't in the category of Brilliant Things I Can Never Re-Read Because They Will Make Me Cry Myself to Death. (Examples of this category: samdonne's Your Cowboy Days Are Over. Or rheanna27's Theory of Everything. Totally worth reading. Totally. And, sorry, I can't get you links, because even that would potentially destroy me. Typing the titles was risky enough. ETA: The links are available in the comments, though, thanks to elaran, who is stronger than I am.) This didn't leave me sobbing helplessly, trying to keep from getting so much saltwater in my keyboard that it would stop working. It didn't leave me crying at all, because it really isn't a sad story. (It could have been. Written with a slightly different focus, it could have been a soul killer.)

No, I avoided re-reading this because it really is just that much like life. When I finished it the first time, I believed it - believed it more than the canon. Because the canon feels like a story. And this feels so real that after I finished it the first time, I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't canon. Everything looked a little fake for a while after I was done.

I did re-read it for this rec, of course. I had forgotten how quickly this story grabbed me the first time through, and it did it again - I read the first sentence, telling myself that after two paragraphs, I could go read one in my current Story That Heals All Wounds. (It is always best to have such a story waiting for you in a safety tab. Just in case.) I looked up some undefined amount of time later, smiling helplessly, just slightly teary, blinking away a different world. This is an incredible story, people.

You all will be pleased to hear that nascent plans for the third consecutive Things That Never Happened set were scotched by a wedding, followed by a right bastard of a cold picked up at the wedding, like it was a very novel favor or something. I’ve now reached the stage where I’m no longer actively wanting to die just to spite the damned rhinovirus convention happening in my upper respiratory system (“Hah. Try making me miserable when I’m dead, you snotwads.”), and I can’t remember what stories the set was supposed to have had. TTNH haters, you are saved! Although it was through my suffering, so I hope you feel soul-crushingly guilty.

Instead of TTNH, today’s subject is - okay, I call this category “long,” but really the stories are somewhere between short stories and novellas in length. Basically, if it would take more than one LJ post to get the whole thing up, then it’s long. (If it would take more than five LJ posts, then it has moved into the territory of “very long.” I am so rigorous in my classification schemes that someday I will rule the world through quantitative analysis. Although there’s a major kink in this system - and notice, SGA fans, that I did not capitalize “major,” and thus I am not referring to first-season Sheppard’s well known fetish for long fiction - in that a lot of long stories don’t get posted to LJ. Researchers continue to study this problem round the clock at the famed TFV Fan Fiction Laboratory, so please view this as a merely interim story classification method.)

My point is, sometimes you need longer fiction. Today, I need longer fiction, and, well, as long as I was looking the stuff up anyway . . .

The One in Which We Learn Why Touya Akira Needed Shindou Hikaru: Because Every Almost Immoveable Object Needs an Irresistible Force. Inertia, by rageprufrock. Hikaru no Go, Akira/Other, Hikaru/Other, Akira/Hikaru.

Okay. Here’s the thing. I didn’t actually want to rec this until I’d uploaded all the manga, because this is a story set well after the canon and so it spoils almost all of it. Then it occurred to me that I could rec this and upload all the canon, because - well, here’s a long story by rageprufrock; what’s more tempting than that? So, first, here’s links for the complete scanned and translated manga: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Let me know if any of these time out or are broken or what have you.

So now my only problem is - what can I say about this story? Because, well. Okay. See, I’ve been reading Go websites. (It has nothing to do with my sudden interest in Hikaru no Go; I’m just, um . . . fine. I admit it. I’m obsessed. And, to be honest, I find it much scarier, as far as tragic proof of the kind of addiction that my loved ones should be scheduling an intervention for, that I’ve been reading stories blind at fanfiction.net.) And here’s the thing. Sometimes I get embarrassed for fandom, all, oh my god, people, please stop being on my side. Because we do have our moments of shame. So it makes me feel much better to note that Go fans are just like us: they too can get wank out of a stone. (Or, rather, out of 361 of them. Oh, I slay myself sometimes.) And Go wank is - um, special. (Like, there’s this one relatively recent wank that was instigated in large part by the Chinese press. Say what you will about our wank, at least it isn’t often started by New York Times headlines reading “For 41st Year in a Row, Fan Fiction Feedback Inadequate, Officials Say. Also, Real Person Slash ‘Totally Gross. Boyband Members Aren’t Gay!’”)

So I was going to write up this story talking about the yin/yang themes running all through this, and that’s totally appropriate to Go, of course, because . . . and then I thought I’d better make sure that I was right about the white and black stones having something to do with yin and yang. A short visit to Sensei’s Library later, I had learned that a) white was totally yin b) white was totally yang c) black was definitely female by default d) black was definitely male by default and, finally, e) Go players also obey the law of conservation of understanding. (“A debate continues until an equal distribution of understanding is achieved. Thus, given the general population of the internet, an open internet debate proceeds until no one understands anything.” And I just made that up, so I can’t source it for you, but you can’t deny that it’s true. Nor can you deny the corollary: “The introduction of one new person who believes he or she knows the right answer will begin the entire debate again, so that it can once again find understanding equilibrium (i.e., complete lack of understanding). This process can continue indefinitely. And almost certainly will. Thus, bringing up Nazis is really an act of mercy.”)

So I will avoid the whole attempt at literary analysis. It was bound to end badly anyway. Instead, I will say that this story is excellent, and it shows Akira being acted upon and Hikaru acting upon him, and it is totally how I am now convinced they end up after the canon. Also, there is sex. You want to read this right now. And you also want to read Hikaru no Go; trust me on this. Seriously. Just by downloading and reading one of those files (for clarity’s sake, it should be the first one), you can make me happier than I’ve been in months.

Don’t make me bring out the Doe Eyes of Pining, people. Read the manga. And then read the story. And then everyone wins.

The One in Which Lex Shows Us the True Meaning of Multiculturalism, and Clark Shows Us the True Purpose of Harem Pants. Moving On, by astolat. Smallville fused with DCU to make a delightfully frothy confection. Clark Kent/Lex Luthor.

It’s an excellent idea to get Lex Luthor off the planet, am I right? I mean, why should earth have all the fun? This is the reasoning that a number of people apply in this story, only to realize much too late that they are a) stupid and, also, b) really really stupid. (Except Batman, who stands in the background, being grimly and mercilessly right. The only reason his fellow Justice League members haven’t killed him by now out of sheer irritation is that they know in their hearts that Batman would stop them and then shake his head, say, “I knew it,” and walk off exuding an aura of I’m Too Sexy to Be This Right All the Time, but by God I’ll Have to Until Someone Else with a Brain Shows Up. No, Tim, I Don’t Mean You.) Lex, meanwhile, gets to take the party to the whole universe. Given that this is Lex, the party involves a lot of deep strategy, a number of hostile mergers, and gay, gay outfits. (If Lex ruled earth, Wall Street would be just the same, except that traders would be required to wear fabulous purple outfits, and also they would routinely assassinate each other right there on the trading floor. I would so buy season tickets.)

Clark, of course, tries to save the universe from Lex. And now pause with me and say, “Oh, Clark. When will you just accept who you are and stop with all these superfights? Blowjobs are so much less damaging to the country’s [galaxy’s, universe’s] infrastructure.” Eventually, there is a happy ending. Plus, of course, more excellently weird costumes. Do not miss, by the way, the unspeakably wonderful Lex Paper Doll Set, by mutecornett. I mean, if Lex gets to wear fabulous outfits, shouldn’t you be able to take them off him?

The One in Which We Discover That It Does, in Fact, Take the Threat of Death to Get a Certain Cop to Clear His Paperwork. And We Totally Fail to Be Surprised. That Good Night, by Dira Sudis, aka dsudis. Due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski.

One of my major problems with recommending dS these days is that I’m not, um, always the most careful person in the world about marking what I’ve already recommended in my database, which is in any case a total mess thanks to del.icio.us (and also to my prize-winning laziness). So a lot of the stories I’ve loved forever I look at and say, “I’ve rec’d this, right? I mean, I’d be a fool not to have rec’d it. But, well, let’s just say foolishness isn’t totally out of character for me, so . . .” But I’ve decided not to get all obsessive about this crap, so I’m damn well recommending this one anyway. My promise to you: anyone who can point to the slashy set where I’ve already recommended a story gets - um. My thanks? I don’t really have a lot else to offer. But I will offer you another story recommendation. You can even pick the fandom, within the limits of what I’ve got to hand.

See, sometimes there are these little signs that, um, maybe we need to sit down and reassess our goals, our purposes, our lives. For example, if we spend a lot of nights getting drunk. Or if we cannot remember the last time we touched another human being. Or if we stay up late into the night solving tsumgeo (Go problems) solely because we know in our hearts that a fictional, two-dimensional ghost would approve. Or if a creepy old guy wearing a weird hat and carrying flowers keeps turning up and making eerie pronouncements about how we’re on the way out. Of the world.

In this story, Ray experiences more than one of the above. (Three guesses which, but here’s a hint: I am quite sure that Ray Kowalski has never in his life solved tsumego. Although Fraser probably has. He’d probably feel a real bond of sympathy with Hikaru, actually, all, “Yes, ghosts can indeed be a bit of a trial, but - no, Dad, I didn’t say anything. Yes, I’d be delighted to hear about the 81 uses for frozen beavers. Again. Even though I am already quite conversant with all - yes, Dad.”) And do you know what Ray learns? The solution to those little life crises involves lots of sex with Benton Fraser. (And a sun lamp.) Now that is what I call excellence in alternative medicine.

The One in Which We Learn That Rodney McKay, in Addition to His Many Other Fine Features, Is Also a Grammar Snob. And Thus My Happiness Is Made Complete. Cleave, by amireal. Stargate: Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay.

The first time I read this, I got partway into the first page and said, “Oh my god, so much yes.” Because one thing that John Sheppard and Rodney McKay definitely share is demand resistance; if you tell them they absolutely cannot do something - well, John smiles insincerely, swears he won’t, and then does it, whereas Rodney just basically does it. So, really, if you wanted the two of them to have sex - and I am not for a moment suggesting you might want any such thing, of course, but if you did - the fastest way to get them there would be to tell them they weren’t allowed to, and then put a lot of obstacles in their way. Make the obstacles totally, provably insurmountable and you’d probably have full-scale buttfucking before you entirely finished explaining the terms. (“And furthermore, if you defeat that barrier, a crack team of trained ninjas will emerge from the secret - damn. Miss Zygen, please send in a bucket of cold water and a crowbar; Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard are at it again. Hmmm. Maybe we should add some bioengineered cobras to level 7.”)

So, yeah, that appeals to me, and I don’t mean the sex. (Well. I don’t just mean the sex.) See, some people would tell you that I have, on occasion, been ever so slightly demand resistant myself, and I actually, um, admire it in other people. (We are the few. The proud. The very contrary.)

The other thing that appeals to me is allergies, and this is a total schadenfreude kind of thing. There’s a moment in this story where they think maybe John is allergic to water, and I just - when you have a bad cold, and also allergies on top of that, and you can’t get the shot that’s supposed to fix your allergies because your doctor has elected to go on vacation (Vacation! When there are people suffering here! With very unpleasant sniffles!), there’s nothing that cheers you up quite like imagining someone else being allergic to water. Really, this story gets me on all kinds of levels.

And did I mention the sex? Because the sex is excellent.