Slashy Nominations 70: Blink and You'll Miss It

I have got an awful song lodged in my head. An awful, awful, awful song. A song by Joni Mitchell. A song that is, in fact, my mother's favorite song.

So I am in no mood to fuck around. Hence a set of fast fic. Because it's the fic that doesn't fuck around.

Best FF Introducing One Concept Comics Desperately Need and One Concept Fandoms Desperately Need: The Color Pink, by basingstoke. DCU, and it's slash without a pairing - a whole new, um, ballgame. And I didn't mean that the way it sounded. So, can I just say that every single possible fandom should have a story in which one of the characters checks out the LotR boys? Think about it, people! Ray ogling Boromir, Fraser agonizing over deviations from the book to the point that he forgets to warn Ray that Boromir dies. Danny secretly buying all three editions of all three movies, plus a poster, and Casey finding out ('cause Danny'd have to have it delivered to his office, since he's never, you know, at his home), and banter ensuing. Bobby and St. John on a movie date ("It's not a date." "It's a movie date." "It's just a movie! No date!") watching Return of the King. Weird metaslash in which the actual book Aragorn watches the movies and says "It was not like that at all, at all. That is not it, at all." There's no end to the joy this could bring! OK. Maybe that's just me. But even if the idea of Kon + Tim + Fellowship of the Rings is not appealing to you (although, for the record, that would make you freakishly strange, possibly even mutant), this story should be. Because: pink kryptonite (that's the thing mentioned in the title that every comic should have). And Batman being so Batman, and Tim...Tim...look, just read this. It makes me giggly and incoherent, folks; it's just that good.

Best FF That Gave Me New Insight into a Character and Taught Me a Whole New Sporting Concept That Will Surely Find Its Way into Many of My Conversations in the Near Future: The Prevent Defense, by scribblinlenore, who I forgive for her user name even though it makes me recite Poe every time I see it, because, hey, it's better than Joni Mitchell. Sports Night, Danny/Casey. Ish. You know, I read a lot of drabbles. (Well, we all do. I'm not claiming that's special or anything; I'm just saying.) And most of them inspire one of three thoughts: "Hey, there's a great story idea in here - it just needs an extra thousand words to flesh it out!" or "Was there a point to this? A point that I am missing?" or "What the hell was that?" But this drabble kicks ass. It makes me remember why I read all the bad drabblage out there - so that I can find the occasional tiny, perfectly-done gem like this one. What happens here? Casey's thinking of sports, but he's thinking about Danny. You know, the usual. But what the writer has done with that is unusual. And impressive.

Best FF Featuring a Werewolf Who Should Really Think about the Precedent He's Setting, but Won't, Because We Didn't Either at That Age. Or, for That Matter, at This Age.: Weakness, by enarte. Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black. It's a look back at Sirius and Remus as they once were, before...well, before pretty much everything. And yet we can already see, in this small piece of fic, their entire future together. Sirius is just a little young for his age, just a little thoughtless, and Remus is forgiving but not forgetting. This story shows us why the interlude in Grimmaud Place couldn't be any more than an interlude (and I believe that even if I still resent JKR for writing Sirius so that it had to be that way, and then killing him off just, apparently, for fun). We also see the reason why Remus keeps walking away, moving on instead of fighting - or at least we have proof that he's always been doing that. This is a totally believable young Sirius and Remus, in other words, and teeny canon violations in no way undermine that.

Best FF Featuring a Superintendent of Schools Who Is Going to Learn Just How Totally Outclassed He Really Is: These Aren't the Droids, by c_elisa. X-Men movies, gen. We began this set with a story from a comics-based fandom and containing a reference to a popular movie, and we're ending it the same way. Here we see why Xavier doesn't have to be evil, why he can afford to be better than that - how he is fundamentally different from Magneto not just because he's good in the moral sense, but because he's good in the skills sense. Xavier, my friends, is the original man with all the answers, and the sad part is that he usually doesn't even pull them from other people's brains. Who needs Jedi mind control when you've got Xavier spin control? Not this passel of mutants, I tell you. Go. Read. Admire. May I join you?