Slashy Nominations 59: The World Is Full of Paper. Write to Me.

I have a near-lethal addiction to the documentary form, and I'm not talking about movies. My personal favorite is the epistolary, but I'll take diary entries, too, or, hell, tax forms. All documents are good. Stories written about documents, or with documents, or referring to documents - I love those, too. I'm the original cheap date when it comes to this form.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of true epistolary FF out there. Doesn't matter. I'm such a document slut that I'll go with any story that promises to mention letters or diaries. Sad, but true. Well, providing said story is good. And these are.

Best FF Likely to Lead to a Master's Thesis on the Importance of Sig Files in Modern Communication, and the Significance of the Suppression Thereof: Eros Epistolary, by Brighid, aka brighidestone. The Sentinel, Jim/Blair. The first challenge of an epistolary story is to come up with a good reason why the characters are writing to each other, rather than, say, chatting. This is especially difficult, I'm sure you can appreciate, if the two characters live together and in fact spend essentially every moment of their lives together, which, of course, is exactly what Jim and Blair do. Brighid manages to get the guys writing to each other just fine, though. And note her fabulous use of the many options available to the modern epistolary writer, from sticky notes to email to recycled paper. Epistolary stories aren't boring! Epistolary stories are grand! Epistolary stories in the morning! And epistolary stories in the hand! Um. Stopping now.

Best FF That Shows How Addictive Letters Can Be in Bad Circumstances, So Won't You Write to Some Depressed Individual Today?: Letters Home, by penknife. The Secret Garden, Dickon/Colin/Mary. This story is not told entirely in letters. But it's about letters, and it's got extracts from letters, and it's a fantastic story, so I'm not seeing a downside here. Except the sadness. See, the problem with The Secret Garden is that it has to stand alone. Given the times and the culture in which the story takes place, there can't be a happy ending for the three of them as adults. I've always known that, sadly, the likeliest outcome was Mary and Colin married, and Dickon working as their gardener.

Except, of course, that they are on a collision course with World War I. Colin and Dickon are destined for hell in the Somme, and the odds aren't good that they'll both survive - especially not if they end up calvary, as penknife hypothesizes here. This story is something I could never even imagine - a reasonable extrapolation of The Secret Garden, one that lets the trio grow up and places them squarely in the real world. This shouldn't work. Except that it does, it really does.

Best FF That Shows How Addictive Letters Can Be Even in Relatively Good Circumstances, So Won't You Write to an Irritatingly Happy Person Today?: Written by Hand, by setissma. Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, James Potter/Lily Evans. Perhaps it would be better if I just wrote "assorted non-explicit and implied pairings." In any case, what we have here is a story in which Remus suffers from a handwriting addiction, and Sirius helps him figure out a way to get his fix even in Romania. It's sweet without being cloying. Remus gets down with the magic theory, we get the niftiest form of eavesdropping ever, and love prevails. At least briefly, which is exactly how long love gets to prevail in J. K. Rowling's world.

Best FF Told Entirely in a Letter That Leaves Me Barely Resisting the Temptation to Write a Letter Back¹: To Casey, on His Thirty-Fifth Birthday, by Mosca, and does anyone know if she has a LJ? Sports Night, Dan/Casey (ish). Let's just get this out of the way now. I succumbed, OK? I completely and totally succumbed to the lure of Sports Night fan fiction, and if you haven't, all I can say is: run. Or the cultists will get you, too, and soon you'll be reading fabulous fan fiction about two guys who are smart, neurotic, funny, and so clearly in love that I'm surprised it was never mentioned in a daily run down meeting². I really have to apologize for making my first official nomination in this fandom (the other one didn't count, because I wasn't in the fandom then) so wistful and unsmutty and unresolved. Trust me, there's also joy aplenty in the SN fold. (And if you won't trust me, trust the minions of Bhagwan Sports Night. They are even now waiting on your doorstep to tell you about the pure and slashy love to be found when you embrace Sports Night, for Sports Night is love and love is Sports Night.)

Best FF That Proves That Fraser and Kowalski Can Make Even a Community College Creative Writing Class Sexy: The Course, by Bone, aka thisisbone, and Aristide (anyone have a link for her?). Due South, Ray Kowalski/Benton Fraser. I love document-related fiction way too much to limit myself to just four stories; it was actually a battle of will for me to limit myself to one story per fandom. So this is today's bonus story. It's one that many people will have read; this is what we call a classic of the genre, by which we mean that it is chock-full of smut. And humor. And then a lot more smut. And this cavalcade of smut is induced, my friends, by Ray's journal entries. Diaries and smut and undercover work and smut and sullen community college students and smut and Fraser in relaxed clothing and smut. And then some smut. So, really, you cannot go wrong with this one. And if you don't know from due South? Well, you'll be able to read this anyway; I barely knew the fandom when I found this story, but it turns out that high-quality smut is truly accessible fiction. (Just think of the improvement in our nation's literacy statistics if summer reading lists included this sort of story!)

-Footnote-

¹Said sequel would, naturally, be called "To Danny, Who Will Be Lucky If He Lives to See His Next Birthday If He Keeps Leaving Tragic Love Letters on Office Computers." And it would begin "Dear Danny - I see that therapy has really improved your communication skills, not to mention your passive-aggressive behavior and your self-image. And if you think I won't read every damn file on my computer rather than write a script, then have I been sharing an office with Pod Danny for the last two years?"

²Actually, I suspect this was covered in a rundown meeting. ( Probably it went something like this. )