Horsechicks of the Apocalypse

Apocalypse West 2006 - 2008 Vid Reel was released at VividCon 2008. It had work by five vidders on it, plus me pulling together the opening credits (from Dianne's idea) and doing the closing credits, production and post-production.

Update will be on www.ApocalypseWest.com as soon as I develop it as a Drupal site.

We sold ~12 at the con. If you got one there and it is glitchy (since I didn't have time to check the disks) please let me / us know. You will know that you got one of the VVC ones if the menu says "Apocalpse West" *facepalm*

I've been bookmarking stories I like in the former de.licio.us, now Delicious, application for a while now. Mostly I keep it short, summary-one-line-reaction. I've got tags for "lovely", "glee", and "awesome", "angst" and "crack" as well as ones for crossovers, au's, and het and gen. 165 recs so far as of today, here.

The latest are a couple Torchwood-Journeyman crossovers, some post-Season-4 Doctor Who's, Tin Man, Supernatural Big Bang fic, more crossovers, NCIS, Angel, Heroes and Farscape, old and new stories alike.

Because I just wrote Persistence of Memory (crossover with Doctor Who, dealing with both the Deal, and Martha's actions during the Year that Never Was), I went looking for other fics that address Dean's deal with the Crossroads Demon. Only five eps until his time is up; now is a good time to get your Alternate Realities in place, if they do something horrible to him. So I present four of my faves: different ways of trying to save Dean.

Strange's Country by concernedlily
Rating: R
Author's Summary: Sam stopped focusing on ways to free Dean from the deal and started looking for ways to get him out of hell two months before he was due to arrive there.

Long, plotty, crossover with "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell", but so mildly that you don't need to have read or even heard of that book for it to work. Sam POV, but everything in it is informed by Dean, and the descriptions are awesome, as is the new magic Sam studies in trying to save Dean. Great stuff.

Cast Stones at Dragons by trollprincess
Rating: PG-13
Author's Summary: It’s been a decade since Dean’s year was up.

Spare, short, but intense, with Sam still working on the solution long past the deadline, in a way that is unique and original.

Like a Wheel by ms_jvh_shuh
Rating: R
Author's Summary: The hellhounds have dragged Dean off to hell, and either Sam is going insane with grief or the car he just inherited is trying to persuade him to follow.

God, the imagery on this just kills me. And since I adore Impala-fic, this was incredibly welcome. The ending like iced-tea after an awful, hot day.

Under Darkening Skies by RivkaT.
Rating: R
Author's first paragraph: It went to shit in Waterloo, Iowa. They'd just iced a demon who'd possessed a college professor and had been inducing his students to cheat, steal, and even murder, so that went okay. But when they were on the way out of town, they ran into a roadblock. It looked like a sobriety checkpoint—college town, right?—but no sooner had they stopped, ready to give the sheriff's deputies smiles and fake IDs, than they were swarmed with black-suited SWAT guys and ordered out of the car.

Crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, post-Chosen. I have issues with some of it, but other parts ring true; and most of my issues are lingering BtVS issues (I still can't like Willow), not SPN. Sam and Dean are drafted for one last job, and Dean figures it's better to go out with a bang (so to speak). And yet one *more* way to deal with the Deal, that isn't like the others.

Read 'em and brace yourself for the end of Season 3.

This is just poignant and poetic and stunningly beautiful. Part of the recent ficathon over at sarahjane_fic.

Gen, PG, 9400ish words.

Did I mention stunning?

(Gotta remember to post announcements here as well as on my LJ!)

"Five Times Coreen Fennel Didn't Kiss Henry Fitzroy (And One Time She Did)" by yours truly. T, just over 10K words, Coreen & Henry friendship. Spoilers through "Wrapped."

Explorations of two of the more problematic couples in a canon peppered with them:

1. "Love's Labours" by amilyn (Othello, Iago/Emilia)

With the Yuletide reveal come and gone, I can publicly thank amilyn for the honor of betaing this intriguing look into just how those two came about. They are entirely their pragmatic, calculating and unromantic selves, and it makes total sense. (There be some smut here.)

She paid less attention than was her custom to the patrons around her until one of the men stopped her with one hand and grabbed her ass with the other. He licked his lips and asked, "When will your father offer you for hire, woman?"

Emilia pushed her hip into his shoulder, and smiled coyly as sack sloshed into his lap. "Never when you are asking, Master Carter," she retorted.

The other men at the table jeered loudly as she proceeded to the man whose blank stare was now on her. She leaned over the table as she set his meal down. "Your dinner, good sir."

2. "Best Men Are Molded Out of Faults" by a_t_rain (Measure for Measure, Mariana/Angelo)

Saw this recced on angevin2's LJ earlier today, and had to check it out. Mariana was my first role in a full Shakespeare production, and I'm oddly protective of her. My Mariana was determined that the second chance she gave Angelo would not be wasted. This is an Angelo who rises believably to that challenge. Don't miss the shifts in form of address; every one of them is telling.

"Well! Methinks I see a proper spirit of humility in you, like to that of your virtuous wife. I did well when I ordered the two of you married." The Duke leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands together, and suddenly Mariana understood exactly why Isabella had refused the best match in Vienna.

"Pardon me, my lord, but you ordered me widowed, and him beheaded. I call that a strange sort of marriage."

"I feared, Mariana, that it would be a stranger marriage if he lived, but I am pleased to see it is not so." The Duke gave them both a searching look, and Mariana quickly reached for Angelo’s hand. As a gesture of affection, it was not entirely successful because Angelo did not seem to know what to do with hers, but it might have deceived the Duke by candlelight.

[xposted to my LJ]

The Fate of the Universe Depends on It (Probably) by Doyle
Black Books, Torchwood, PGish. I have never seen an ep of Black Books. If you haven't? You don't have to, to appreciate this slice or sitcom fluff with Captain Jack there being, well, Jack.

Just as Bernard had predicted, the American was still there when Manny crept downstairs. Everyone else had cleared off - he didn’t like to guess what Bernard might have said to them. The American (he had to be! Look at the way he stood!) was looking over the shelves with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and he was wearing sunglasses even though they were inside, which must have racked him up another few places on Bernard’s scale of hate. Something about him, Manny decided, radiated coolness. Put up against him, the Fonz would end up slinking away to join a traveling folk group.

Bernard is the spiritual twin of Gregory House, Fran could be Francesca Vecchio's soul sister, and poor Manny, maaan... I dunno, Andrew? Anyway. The dialogue makes it even better.

Sure as Eggs is Eggs by Doyle
DW, 1st Season, after "Boom Town."
The Doctor, Rose and Jack, dropping off their latest acquisition on Raxacoricofallapotorius, with sweetness and last words of advice and well, bobble hats.

All this Season of Snow and Sins by cherryice
Doctor Who/Torchwood, PG, somewhere in or out of canon.

Summary: Romana, after the Time War. Jack, at the Time Agency.

You can't fight a war, because the war always wins.

Shuddery and evocative, scifi with a fairy-tale (the dark kind) edge, totally possible and plausible; could be canon. Who can say? I like stories where I don't quite know what's going on, and am left to catch up and puzzle it through on the re-read. Great characterization, gorgeous descriptions, and you don't have to know Romana *or* Jack to get that Bad Things Are Going Down.

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose by synechdochic
SG-A, future-fic, gen with slash mentions, PG-13 (maybe). Rodney, after Atlantis. After he's back on Earth, quit the job at the SGC, getting the hell away from everything that happened, going into academia in a tiny university no one cares about. Sounds like it should be depressing, and most profoundly is not, even though it's about mourning, new beginnings, the ethics of superweapons, science and physics, and Rodney, god help us all, teaching. No, really teaching.

He is so distracted by the frantic two-week scrambling to find textbooks that don't lie and plan assignments and labs that make the most of the university's woefully-inadequate experimental facilities that he gets his final class cards to the registrar's office at four AM the day they're due. For the rest of the semester, he can't for the life of him remember what he calls the class without looking it up. It shows on his students' transcripts as "Practical Crisis Problemsolving", but in his head it will always and forever be "101 Ways The Geek Can Save You From Getting Eaten By An Alien", so much so he slips and calls it that in lecture one Thursday afternoon. His students chalk it up to one too many episodes of bad science-fiction television.

At Every Corner Have Them Kiss by troyswann
Slings & Arrows, post season 3.

If you haven't seen the series, that *doesn't matter*. It's about theatre. Actors. artistic integrity. Paul Gross as the world's most frustrated theatre director. And the usual disasters that happen when someone with a vision steps in to direct at the last second (hello, Darren). Written for a ficathon with the prompt: "dangerous stage props or effects." Heh.

“Besides,” he says, casually dismissive–this is, by the way, the worst example of his acting skills ever–“this whole thing was a tempest in tea pot.”

Mary goes for stone-faced contradiction. “There was a brawl.”

“It was not a brawl.”

“It was. It was a brawl.” She starts rummaging through the box.

“The theatre sat 100. That’s hardly enough for a brawl.” Caught between opposing impulses, he’s watching her with increasing trepidation, leaning away but craning his neck forward to see into The Box.

TEARS PERCHANCE FOR BLOOD
TSA'S PLANTAGENETS OPENS WITH REAL-LIFE BRAWL

“A brouhaha, maybe,” Geoffrey concedes. “A dust-up. Certainly nothing worth all the ink.”

“Worth a class-action suit.”

So, I just finished re-watching the last three eps of Season 3 Dr. Who with Perri, and now have fics to recommend while we wait for the next season. Plus a few other things.

Correspondence by evil hobbitess
DW/Torchwood, end of S3 spoilers. Gen/J/M? Jack and Martha write to each other, post "Last of the Time Lords", and slowly work their way past the trauma of the events of those last eps. Lovely Jack and Martha voices; one of those fics that becomes my personal canon.

Five Time Jack Harkness Never Interfered with Rose Tyler's Timeline (and one time he did) by travels_in_time

DW/Torchwood, S3 spoilers. Gen. "I went back to her estate...just once or twice. Watched her growing up. Never said hello. Timelines and all that..." A series of vignettes, showing what Jack did. Sweet and kind of achey, and a really good closure for Jack and Rose, who didn't get a real good-bye on the show.

Under the Skin, by HonorH

DW, Gen. AU Martha Jones meets our Rose-who's-stuck-in-a-parallel world. I really do like this one. For one thing, it ought to put the Martha vs. Rose debate to rest, since they would, the Doctor notwithstanding, probably end up friends if they ever met.

Where Ever I May Roam by IrenaK

Phone fic! heh. It starts with a drunk-dialling, and shows real character development as the Doctor and Martha keep in touch over time and space. Very, very funny, with no real spoilers for the ending of S3 either, except that Martha left the Doctor her phone, so she could call him. This is dialogue-fic, with an appearance by Donna, too, as well as the Torchwood crew.

Donna the Beta-Reader by nostalgia
Dr. Who. / Angel. Gen, with mentions of truly bad Angel slash. Written for the Writing Fanfic Challenge, the Tenth Doctor writes Angel fanfic. And Donna goes to town on it, because yes, he is *that* bad. Spit-take-on-the-monitor funny, and I seriously hope Donna is as cool in 4th Season DW as she is here.

Daniel's Thesis Day by greenconverses
A cute little AU, Daniel/Vala-ish. All Daniel wanted to do that Saturday was work on his thesis. The rest of the complex seems determined to stop him. Cute, short, fun idea of the SGC/A crews as college students, with Daniel being a big geek.

Nothing Up My Sleeve by Troll Princess
SPN, gen. Summary: So Sam's mastered his powers and defeated the crossroads demon. Now what?

So after a little bit of struggle and whole lot of trying not to be a murdering bastard, you can move things with your mind and read other people's emotions and know every other card on the table, and that, my friends, is how you rip off a casino.

It's also how you kick a demon's soul-stealing ass, but that's what we did last week.

Short and fun, and what I'd love to see Sam and Dean do after they get Dean out of his contract and deal with most of the rest of the demons. Perfect Dean voice in between dialogue bits, and the payoff is great.

Most of these have been recommended elsewhere, a lot earlier, but what the heck. They deserve more talking up. And my reasons for liking them may not be the reason other people do. It's the fic that sucked me into this fandom, anyway. I was going to avoid SPN religiously, since it has blood and demons and people screaming, and that never ends well for me. But, it has Sam and Dean. Road tripping. A '67 Chevy Impala. And enough snark to save Buffy all over again. So I was kind of doomed.

A Foreign Country by casspeach
Author's Summary: Dean finds himself alone and badly injured on the side of a mountain in Colorado with no memory of who he is or what he's doing there. This is the story of the life he makes for himself when he has no knowledge of hunting or the dangers lurking in the dark (or, gasp, Sam!!). When something threatens his new family he's forced to fall back on lessons he can't remember being taught, and skills he can't remember acquiring to protect them.

I admit it, I have a weakness for amnesia fics. At least when they're well-done. Even soap-opera or magic amnesia. But I especially like those that are realistic about memory loss, and how someone would have to re-build their life without a past to rely on. The characterization in this story is great, both on Dean-- who is Dean, whether or not he remembers who that is-- Sally, who he gets involved with, their friends, and yes, others in the SPN-verse. No spoilers on who though, hush. Go read.

A Stand-Up Man by alethialia SPN, Gen, First season
Author's Summary: "Just so you know, there are some things I won't do for you."

Road trip fic! This may be the exact one that sucked me into the damn fandom. Stories like this, and marinarusalka's below. And Dean. This is just a good story, of Sam slowly acclimating back to the hunting world, and Dean being his big brother and tormentor and best friend.

First couple lines:

"You told me you didn't sleep with her!" Sam accused hotly, still struggling, heedless of the stinging bite in his arms and chest.

"You told me to tell you that!"

"I didn't tell you to lie."

"You said, and I quote: 'Dean. Tell me you didn't sleep with her.' I was just doing what you said, man."

how to go on by khohen1 Pre-series, PG-13
First lines:
People think there are two reactions you can have to any great tragedy. The right one and the wrong one. John doesn't see it that way though. He's not even sure there are any wrong reactions, just misguided ones.

A small, sad, grieving story about how John pulled it together after Mary died, with a lot of help from some friends. Then got his life back on something resembling a track, and just kept going. WeeDean and WeeSam are adorable and sad little kids, and John... ow.

Straight On 'Til Morning by trollprincess R, John/Mary, AU
Summary: Thirteen times Mary knows her scars are beautiful.

Assumes Mary survived the fire, albeit injured, and then goes on with the life they may have had after that. More great kid stuff with Dean and Sam, but also showing how things might not have broken apart in the family with a mom like Mary to keep it from spinning out.

There's the gentle rasp of paper sliding across wood, and she reaches for the articles he's passing her -- something about an animal attack, tragic and wrong in the details. Too many teeth, too many claws. When Mary takes the articles, the sleeve of her nightgown rides up enough to let the warm glow of the kitchen lights settle on her scars.

"What do you want to do?" she asks, but she already knows the answer.

Bargains by marinarusalka PG-13, gen

Summary: Sam and Dean investigate a missing-person case in North Carolina, and discover that the situation is weird even by Winchester standards.

Been recc'd everywhere, but it deserves it. Nature, old magic, Sam being stubborn, Dean being *more* stubborn, and this was written well before all those demon bargains on-screen got made, but it's perfectly IC.

Accidents Will Happen by holli PG, gen
Summary: Some Goth teenagers accidentally resurrect John Winchester. No, seriously.

Also recc'd everywhere, but one of the more hilarious outsider POV's I've read in any fandom. The OC voices are distinct, and the kicker at the end made me fall off my chair laughing.

The first thing I realized was this: there had been five people in the room when we started, and now there were six.

Person number six? Unconscious, curled up on his side in the middle of our pentagram, and, did I mention? Naked.

No, I'm not declaring I win at life. It's been a long long time between updates, but I'm not that far gone.

Instead, recs I've been meaning to share for ages, and for good reason. Yahtzee writes in a number of fandoms, and one of her favorites is ALIAS. You might have read all these, or maybe not; they're not all up on her fanfic page yet. And even if you have, it's a good time to re-read them, here in the dog days of summer. There's a pairing for just about anyone's tastes, although like any of Yahtzee's fics, the relationship isn't overpowering the plot. There's always a really nice balance between plot and character interaction in her stories, and awesome dialogue, as well as realistic and thrilling action.

Evergreen - Nadia/Jack - post S5
Talk about fix-fics. This one takes off from a couple episodes before the end of Season 5, and goes AU-- but also goes AU backwards in time, positing a secret romance between Jack and Nadia, and revealing how the two became involved despite misgivings on both sides. Long, multi-continental, great characterization, and good work with Sydney, who I often want to smack, but never in Yahtzee's stories.

My So-Called Afterlife - Francie
Short one-shot, post S5, and funny as hell. Francie is brought back from the dead.

And then there was this guy there, just staring at me like I was Jesus and Britney and a plate of spaghetti all rolled into one, and he kept saying, My God, it worked, I can't believe it. First I wanted to ask him how the hell me being coated in syrup could be the desired result of any process whatsoever, and then I wanted to ask him who he was, and then I noticed that I was stark naked and we were alone, which is when it actually got scary.

Who are you? I asked him, and he said, You don't remember, but it will come back to you. I said, My clothes better come back to me right now or I'm calling the cops.

Perfect, awesome voice, as you can see, and the rest of the skewed ALIAS world through Francie's eyes is utterly hysterical. I liked Francie and was sorry when she got killed, and this is a perfectly plausible (in the ALIAS-verse) way to do it.

What Julia Knew - Sydney/Will - post S2
This fic is brutal. It assumes that Sydney never went to get her memories wiped at the end of S2, never woke up in Hong Kong wondering what the hell happened, and remembered two years of brutal torture and mind-control when she finally runs into Will again. Great Jack and Irina in there too, but it is not a pleasant read in some places. I do believe in Syd & Will by the end of it, though.

Five Ways: The Twelfth of Never Jack/Irina - pre-series, AUs
Five *other* ways that Sydney could have been conceived, and become the woman on Rambaldi's page 47. In order:

1. Henry and Natasha (Vietnam)
2. His Best Friend's Wife (D.C.)
3. Larisa (L.A. and Moscow)
4. Red (Moscow)
5. The Interrogation (Denver and Corsica)

All of them plausible, all of them snarky, some action-packed, some skirting the same lines of betrayal that Jack and Irina had the first time around, others finding new ways to hook these two up.

Bind Them With Fury - S/V, N/W, J/I, others - Post 4th Season

"The Prophet's Red Right Hand" was Yahtzee's long S2 summer story, speculating on the possibilities in an AU where Jack visited Russia, instead of Irina coming to America. It's at her site, go read it. "Irenicon" (previously recc'd here) was her long S3 summer story, taking off from the end of S3 and working out how some of Rambaldi's prophecies might come true. "Bind Them With Fury" is her looooong, plotty, post-4th season take off of the S4 ender, with Nadia in a coma, Sydney and Vaughn in a car wreck, and various Rambaldi players still at large. There's capers, as various Rambaldi artifacts are stolen and destroyed, alliances shift and change, and Sloane continues to walk that fine line between redemption and really, really wrong. Have fun reading this one.

Dysmas, by troyswann. Gen AU -- what if Ray's aim was even worse than that at the end of Victoria's Secret? A little self-consciously artsy with the sensory descriptions, but it makes up for it with a sucker-punch of sharp clarity. Wow. Also: Not happy.

Title: Two Paths, One Road (The Chariot)
By: Lizbetann
Fandom: Torchwood
Length: 4955 words
Pairings: Ianto/Jack, Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG-13. Ianto whumping. Pre-slash. (Yes, I know. Me. I said "pre-slash". The end is seriously nigh.)
Spoilers: Takes place after Countrycide, but only spoilers to Cyberwoman.
Summery: Ianto's getting pulled in two different directions. Or, rather, dimensions.

( Follow the fake LJ cut to the story... )

Story #1:

Orbit
By Lizbetann, lizbetann@gmail.com
Fandom: Vorkosigan Universe
Paring: Mark/Kareen (het, canon)
Rating: PG-13. No sex, some discussion of sexual kinks. Language in keeping with the books.
Spoilers: Mirror Dance
Summery: In A Civil Campaign, we find out that Mark and Kareen had gone to the Orb of Unearthly Delights. What did they do there?

---

Story #2:

Kushiel's Curse
By Lizbetann, lizbetann@gmail.com, for the 2007 New Year's Resolution at yuletide
Fandom: Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel/Terre D'Ange universe
Characters: Joscelin, Phedre, Melisandre, Imriel
Ratings: PG-13 for violence. Those who require more specific warnings for your fic: Be warned.
Spoilers: AU, diverges halfway through Kushiel's Chosen
Summery: Not even Kushiel's scion can control every outcome.

M7G-512 (or: Why Gate Team 5 is No Longer Allowed To Write Their Own Mission Reports) by Khriskin

Just stumbled on this one again and nearly broke myself laughing. Had to share!
(only a page or so, PG-13 just for basic swearing, no 'ships)

A short untitled fic by jmtorres that only spoils a throwaway comment Jack makes in the first five minutes of the first ep.

And the excellent Five Ways Jack Harkness Died And One He Didn't by dune_drd, which has spoilers only through the first ep.

And not at all least: Salvaging Surrender by boji, which is just so beautifully done.
("Summary: Set after Torchwood Episode 2 'Day One'. Voyeurism is a team sport & it doesn't have to lead to sex.")

Chaos aka butterflykiki

Death aka diannelamerc

Doom aka celli

Havoc aka havocthecat
Note: The memories section for havocthecat also contains recs from her personal journal, as well as her comm recs.

Madness aka wiliqueen

Plague(let) aka lizbetann

(Un)Stable Girl aka tv_elf

(Strategic) War aka neonhummingbird

(Tactical) War aka catwar

The Magician Series
By Suzanne Bickerstaff & Jennifer Lyon
X-Files AU/Fantasy Romance Fic

Happened to be discussing AU fanfic with the Horsechicks the other day, and remembered an extremely long trilogy I read back when I was into X-Files fanfic. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the title or the author, only the fact that Scully and Mulder got pulled into an alternate fantasy-based universe. Armed with just that knowledge, I did five zillion gossamer searches on various combinations of "x-files fanfic fantasy magic AU sorcery witchcraft." Luckily, I managed to find it.

Anyway, I remember this as being a very interesting fantasy exploration of the two main characters, taking them outside of normal canon continuity and putting them smack in the middle of a place completely outside their experience. The characters are very true to life even in the middle of their situation, and the standard fantasy perils are actually very well done.

Also? There's now a fourth one in the series. I'd only read the first three back in, I think, 1998. So now I'm going to have to go and reread all three before I read the fourth one in the series.