Scales and Tales

On Wednesday I cleared out the 461 emails in my fannish email account. I don't check it as often as I ought! Among the million comment notifications in the heap I found a reply to a post I made elsewhere about '90s anime recs, which seemed worth digging up and filling out a bit to post here!

Here you go; have a bunch of nostalgia. :D


( Six Utena fic recs, Anthy/Utena and gen with various characters: )


( Three Yami no Matsuei fics, all shades of Hisoka/Tsuzuki: )


( One Vampire Hunter D fic rec: )

LOTR recs, take two! These are mostly Aragorn-centric, gen and various pairings.

( Gen recs below the cut. )

( Slash and het recs below the cut. )

I was surprised to find no Aragorn/Arwen recs in my collection; past me apparently didn't find anything worth saving, but there must be lots of good fic out there. Please share if you have any!

Well, I fell down the rabbit hole into another old fandom, so between yesterday and today I have read more than 100K of Forgotten Realms fanfiction.

Oops?

Have some recs. ( Below the cut! )


Most of these are Jarlaxle/Artemis Entreri - which feels weird, because I didn't have the slightest interest in Entreri back in the day! But Drizzt is so unrelentingly het in the series that it's hard to find fics about him that I enjoy, Zak's dead, I've forgotten most of the cast of War of the Spider Queen, and it turns out (I discovered gradually through my reading) that there's basically a whole series about Jarlaxle and Entreri now? And they tried very hard to make everything as un-gay as they could, but since I have not read the books I'm just going to substitute logic instead. Nothing will ever convince me that male drow aren't all bisexual; Menzoberranzan is absolutely a Situational Sexuality setup if ever there was one.

As Though in Deliberate Mistranslation by verdenal. FMA '03 fic (though featuring minor mentions of FMA:B characters); Ed/Roy. After eight years, Ed and Al find their way back across the gate. As it turns out, you can go home again.


Ed first gets the idea in Prague, where they’re lying low and trying to figure out the best way to escape Central Europe. The Germans are constantly on their trail, probably because two foreigners with gold eyes and six flesh limbs between them stand out in people’s memories.


Watching FMA:B has me reading fic again, not that I need an excuse to revisit FMA fic. :D It's one of those fandoms I always return to, and I love every incarnation of it... but I sometimes suspect that FMA03's ending lends itself to great fic setups.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (whoops, wrong fandom!), I promised somebody that I would collect my Kirk/Bones recs all in one big post. Mind you, this was at the height of ST:Reboot fever, for both myself and the nascent fandom -- the kinkmeme was going through a post every two days, and I was reading every story in half a dozen pairings, which meant scanning 50+ pages of comment threads per post for Relevant To My Interests prompts and fills.

When I started slogging through the folder I keep for those recs, though, I realised that this was a MUCH bigger project than I'd thought it would be. I admit it: I crumpled into a little heap of "I can't do this!" after two days of labour wherein I did not even reach the M- titles.

(3W4DW seemed like the perfect time to dust that list off and get to work again!)



In the spirit of 3W4DW, comments are turned off on LJ, but you can easily comment on DW via Open ID; just follow the fake cut!

This post was made for painless_j, but because I subscribe to the theory that it's better to do a thing once and well, it contains ALL of my Roy/Ed recs, including those I know J has already read, the better to serve as my own personal bookshelf and a rec list for others.

Warnings, disclaimers, notes, and other miscellany:

I should perhaps warn that many of these are AU-from-the-movie, because the movie breaks my stupid little heart and I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist.

I have not read every fic by every author; ergo, that I have recced one thing by Author X but not another may mean that I liked the former and not the latter, or that I simply haven't read the latter, and thus have no opinion.

Edward Elric, in canon, is 12-16 years old. This means that in a lot of fic, Edward is 12-16 whilst Having Feelings For someone. I do not warn for underage-ness unless Ed's in the lower half of that range.

Other miscellaneous quirks:
* I detest fangirl-Japanese, and won't rec fics where everyone is "Taisa" and "nii-san" and "Edward-kun"; likewise I hit Back immediately upon encountering "Edo" and "Aru", so if there are any really brilliant fics out there that use these, they will not be recced here.
* I'm dreadful at summaries, so I just tried to keep them short; please don't put too much weight on them.
* I have tried to warn for the timeline status of things, but reserve the right to have goofed up in places.
* I have included Al/Roy/Ed in this Roy/Ed post.
* I do not use the "name order conventions" common in anime fandoms; "Roy/Ed" does not imply any particular sexual role for each character.
* I hope you enjoy it! I am amazed at how much I found once I started digging through my folders... :D


( Let the recs begin! )

Next post: recs for other pairings; gen fic; character-centric fic.

DementorDelta and CruiseDirector have just earned 10,000,000 points and a free lifetime supply of squee! A Reason To Celebrate (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) is exactly what I wanted: post-Deathly Hallows Harry/Snape that fixes canon in the best ways without destroying it.

If you're feeling the need for an antidote, Barmy is just the thing.

Schemingreader mixes liberal doses of humour with the occasional startling insight. I love her Snape and Harry, and the ambiguous position they occupy, both with the outside world -- patients to be coddled and healed, yet prisoners to be feared -- and with each other -- tormentor and healer, both wounded and each trying to mend the other.


You have recurrent and unpredictable memory loss, possibly due to spell damage. The only thing you seem to be able to remember is your antipathy for me. Every so often you inform me of it, with bellowed threats."

"Really?" Harry said to himself. "Good for me."

And then there's what I can only call Snape's Midlife Crisis. Fast driving, sunglasses, loud nostalgic music. (And sex! In hotel rooms!) I nearly died laughing, and at the same time was misty-eyed at seeing Snape actually, normally happy.

sinick and ac1d6urn have done it again! "Two Lockets" is amazing -- I love the way the story unfolds, the little details and separate parts slowly fusing into/with the greater whole; and Severus and Harry are the same, managing to slide from antagonistic into supportive in such an amazingly well-built, lifelike way. Bonus: Mrs. Black is actually a human being!

Senility has set in, because I could have sworn I recced this already, back when it first appeared. Nonetheless, Black Story is worth reading again. Jay Tryfanstone writes the most fabulously real Snape and Harry; wounded, heart-hungry, with sharp edges and unpleasant truths and need. "Black Story" is a tale of mending: of Snape, desolate and desperate and deeply wounded; of Harry, haunted and hiding; of books and lives, as well as bodies. Very sensitive readers should beware; there's a pretty graphic, if brief, scene involving (child) sexual abuse.