Belated Sunday Recs
Many apologizes for the late post, but unfortunately, I haven't had internet access since late Friday. Power blackouts are pretty common here. So you get two-for-the-price-of-one today. This is a mixed-bag of recs from the fandoms I've been all aglow about recently.
Fandom: Alias
Title: A Fairer House than Prose
Author: pellucid
Link: http://pellucid.dreamwidth.org/374406.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: : "When man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."
Why I fangirl this: I love Jack and Irina's relationship like I love Italian food - it's delicious, intriguing, and SO good. Pellucid gives a gorgeous look into Jack and Laura's marriage, using the poetry and ideology of John Keats as a metaphor for spycraft. Irina absolutely would lecture on Keats, and I find "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" an apt parallel for her assignment with Jack. I love that Jack passed her test on the first try, and the way both of Irina's daughters imagine her when she's gone. I especially wish we'd gotten this ending for Irina in canon. I would also totally take her Idiot Comp course, but that's because I like Keats and I'm a masochist.
Excerpt:
Most scholars, when they lecture or write on negative capability, point to Keats's use of the idea as a precondition of good poetry. Some extend the concept to include the larger concepts of empathy and humility: the ability to see multiple points of view without feeling compelled to insist upon the rightness of any one of them is a humanist virtue.
If Irina lectured on the passage (which she never would; otherwise the assignment would lose all pedagogical usefulness, and the students would merely parrot inferior versions of her own ideas back to her, rather than thinking for themselves), she would point out that negative capability is itself a value-neutral quality. Perhaps it can lead to empathy and understanding, but the ability to suspend personal convictions and to imagine oneself in the mind of someone else can be as useful to torturers as it is to poets.
It is also a prerequisite for being a good spy.
*****
Fandom: Alias
Title: Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)
Author: Yahtzee
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/32974
Rating: General.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Two years after the events of the series finale, Sydney encounters another Rambaldi artifact that takes her on the strangest journey of all.
Why I fangirl this: This one is basically what happens when you combine a bit of Life on Mars - an accident takes the protagonist back to the past, in Sydney's case, 1978 - and some Rambaldi phlebotinum. And it's just brilliant. I love the glimpse of Sydney (and her friends) post-series, how she isn't really coping with her parents' deaths, the steps she takes to try not to change the past. I love '78 Jack and Sloane and Bill Vaughn, how they're both the same and completely different from the men we know. The way Sydney can't help but tell Irina she knows she isn't Laura, and can't help from warning Sloane about how corrupt he becomes. The Syd-and-Jack scenes are, as ever, the crowning glory, because their love for each other just shines straight through. I weep for the fact that this isn't canon and yet is so much more brilliant and fitting an ending than we got.
Excerpt:
If this was real - if she had in fact returned to 1978 and had the ability to change events - did she have the responsibility to do so?
I could stop 9/11. I could prevent the Iranian hostage crisis. I could warn against any number of political assassinations. I could expose Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. I could advise the CDC about testing the blood supply for HIV much earlier.
Those were big - maybe too big for one person to accomplish. If she walked into Sloane's office and started spouting off a few decades of history, and how best to change it, she might not be believed. Would a nation still in the grip of the Cold War believe that, in 2008, its greatest danger was a small group of terrorists who lived in Afghan caves? Besides, changing even a few events early on might alter the world landscape so that her warnings would soon become useless.
But there were other things she could do, smaller deeds that would nonetheless have real impact.
For instance, she could tell Arvin Sloane that his best friend's wife back in Virginia was an agent of the KGB.
Turning in her mother would spare the lives of many American agents - including Vaughn's father. It would bring her dad into disgrace again, but Sydney could exculpate him in her original statement and spare him prison time. At least this way the deception would be over earlier, and Irina Derevko would be safely in custody instead of going free to turn into - into whatever it was she had become in the end.
*****
Fandom: Alias
Title: The Twelfth of Never
Author: Yahtzee
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/150129/chapters/215144
Rating: Mature
Status: Completed.
Summary: If you accept that Rambaldi really did foresee Sydney's existence, then it stands to reason: No matter what else happened in the world, no matter what else they were doing in their lives, Jack and Irina had to conceive Sydney. This story is really a collection of five other ways Sydney might've come to be.
Why I fangirl this: Okay, I know I just rec'd the same author, but everything Yahtzee writes is brilliant. There are so many of her stories I could rec ("Bristow's Eleven", "Escape in Three Directions", "Irenicon", to name a few), but this is the one that hits me the hardest. It's five completely different, but no less fascinating, ways in which Jack and Irina could have met and had Sydney. The first, "Henry and Natasha" is a gritty look into war-torn Cambodia, with Jack and Irina reluctantly teaming up to survive. The second, "His Best Friend's Wife", is what would have happened if Irina married Sloane instead of Jack, and they had an affair. The third, "Larisa", is a world where Jack and Irina never met, but well, Rambaldi devotees love their babymaking, and Jack suddenly has to care for his Russian-raised teenage daughter. The fourth, "Red", is my favorite, where Russia wins the Cold War and Jack infiltrates Russia to seduce Irina. And the fifth, "The Interrogation", is where Irina defects to the U.S. and Jack interrogates her.
Excerpt:
To the casual observer, Irina suspected they seemed much alike: dark-haired sisters, arrayed in severe gray-green uniforms, all standing at perfect attention. The only obvious difference was that Irina stood a head taller than her older sisters, who had inherited only their mother's height. Nobody who did not know them well - and few people did - could guess how much deeper the divisions between them went.
They all served in the GRU together, and each sister in her own way was considered an up-and-comer. Beyond that, they were special, even sacred to some, because of the links between their family and Rambaldi. Some called the three Derevko sisters the future of the Soviet Union itself.
Unlike Elena - and, sometimes, unlike even Katya - Irina considered such talk grandiose. Certainly, in the past year, they had all come to consider it an uncomfortable subject. But it didn't much matter if Irina believed in Rambaldi's mysticism herself, as long as others believed it - and treated the Derevkos accordingly.
"In the past sixty years, we have experienced two world wars. After the First World War, the Great October Socialist Revolution took place in Russia. And after the Second World War, the Great August Revolution took place across the entire world!" The cheering was fevered now, almost wild. Sometimes Irina almost wished that she could share the blindness of the mob, so that she could join in that mad, mindless joy. "After the defeat of the imperialist Nazis, the world's citizens joined the great socialist movement of our age! One by one, the nations joined us: Germany! France! Italy! Great Britain! All joined us as one under the banner of socialism and human freedom!"
Katya murmured, "And only forty million more people had to die."
"Hush before I have to arrest you." Elena never took her eyes from the cheering crowds.
*****
Fandom Ashes to Ashes
Title: the way the world ends
Author: carla_scribbles
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/PornBattleXI/works/156092
Rating: Adult.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Why I fangirl this: Well, other than the fact that it's Gene/Alex/Keats, and it was written because I batted my eyes at Carla and said "pretty please"? I love it because she just *gets* these three, and the way they've woven themselves around each other. I love it because I love Elliot and I love The Waste Land, and putting it together with fic is just even better. I love the way Carla writes Alex, her self-destruction, her need for an all-consuming passion. I love her Gene, strong and certain, the way he never forgets Sam, the way he almost-remembers what's really important. And oh, her Keats. Vicious and manipulative and gorgeously intent upon breaking Alex - and the world - to rebuild it in his image. Just go and read, okay?
Excerpt:
Hunt’s Alex wears her triggers on the outside. Her dreaming forms him youngish-middle-aged, pedantic, wry -- provides him suits and hornrims and a certain twist of the mouth. He loves her before her eyes can open, the moment the persona crystallizes, and she doesn’t disappoint; she is delicate, bright, resilient, the unearned best of Hunt’s best.
Seducing her is easy, with every advantage she’s given him. She hands herself over, such trust, as though it’s a relief, and he whispers nightmares to her and kisses her before a reply can form in her mouth. And she fragments. Pushes-pulls at him, face turned away as her body melts into his; he strokes her neck, her shoulders, until she shudders and stills.
When he puts his open mouth to the scar on her belly, the rest of the world goes white.
*****
Fandom: Glee
Title: Cerebral
Author: recrudescence
Link: http://recrudescence.livejournal.com/294276.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Coach Sylvester says jump and no one asks how high.
Why I fangirl this: Because Brittany worries me; even before I read this story, I suspected something like this could be the case in a more serious universe. Glee will never go this route, but Yvi is a brilliant writer and makes all the pieces slot together perfectly. She gives Santana and Sue the portrayals they're denied in canon, Santana's fierce protectiveness and honest friendship with Brittany, and Sue's hair-extension measurements and quiet changes. Brittany just breaks your heart here, and the fall isn't worth it.
Excerpt:
You don't ask Coach Sylvester anything. You push off and shoot as far into the air as you possibly can and if you're lucky you come back down with stars. No one flies higher than Brittany, not even Mari Panova who was a gymnastics prodigy in Moscow or something.
When you're one of the only freshmen on the team, you want to aim beyond the ozone. Back handspring, front hurdler. Piece of cake. Brittany isn't small enough to fly anymore, like she could in middle school, but she's a base when they do scorpions. Easy as pie. Mari isn't there, tiny Mari, and Coach Sylvester calls out Brittany to stand in for her.
Just for a demo, just a routine basket toss, just to show the others how it's done so they can really wow the crowd at the football game on Friday.
Kick twist basket toss. Normally Mari only twists twice, but Brittany can do one more, always could before she had her growth spurt and got too tall to be the flyer anymore. She can still do it, she's sure.
*****
Fandom Glee
Title: Debut: Allow Me to Introduce
Author: satora_chan
Link: http://penscratching.livejournal.com/6462.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Blaine’s childhood is full of cotillions. You could even say they were formative from age five to Kurt.
Why I fangirl this: This author takes the fact that Darren Criss is half-Filipino and creates a gorgeously, excellently-rendered backstory for Blaine that involves the Filipino tradition of cotillions. Satora creates a gorgeous mother for Blaine (Emily, who is Lea Salonga and dammit, producers, are you listening?) and a fantastic sister (Camille, who is as awesome and funny as most fanon older sisters for Blaine are), and gives so much detail to the world of cotillions. I love the videoke, the dancing, the casual racism Blaine gets for being a half-and-half, Emily dropping the bowl, boys dancing with boys at cotillion, the bit about Sue, Kurt's tiara, and the New Directions gang supporting their boy.
Excerpt:
Emily loved her little boy. She loved all her children, but as Camille would always be held in her heart as her first-born, Blaine she had always considered her last-born, her forever baby. Even when Patrick unexpectedly came along, she had never transitioned the title. He was her munchkin of curly hair and forest eyes, and he used to cry when the Beast in that Disney movie transformed back because he didn’t understand why he had to change.
But munchkins were only humans, and he was her child to boot, and human children were always learning and making mistakes. In her secret heart of hearts, she wanted Blaine to find the love of his life and live happily ever after because what else could she wish for? But she knew also that she could wish for a lot of things, each with increasingly less chance of success.
So, God, she thought viciously, you gave me a son who can’t change and who’ll be unhappy if he wants to please You.
*****
Fandom Glee/Star Trek
Title: to boldy go
Author: sotto_voice
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/178808
Rating: Teen.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Kurt and Blaine as third-year Starfleet cadets; tiny cameos from Santana Lopez, Rachel Berry, Jacob Ben Israel, and various Warblers.
Why I fangirl this: Because it is a spot-on fusion with the Trek reboot, of Kurt and Blaine at Starfleet Academy. If you love Glee, you'll love the Blainevoice, Kurt's signature bitchiness, and the cameos from the other students. But if you're also a Trek fan, like me, you'll be bouncing out of your seat with all the little details Lexie's added. Kurt being half-Betazoid! Kurt as a very logical engineer! Blaine as a hapless command cadet with a mouth bigger than is good for him! The gender-neutral psych professor! Rachel as full-Betazoid! Kurt's love of Klingon music and Blaine taking the Kobayashi Maru! The imzadi concept! It's just lovely and perfect and true to both sources.
Excerpt:
After all the stories that have gone around the academy (Cadet Hummel stared down Captain Kam’har over a question of Federation Treaty history; Cadet Hummel’s ingenious jerry-rig after the simulator engines were disabled helped bring his captain’s crew the closest to defeating the Kobayashi Maru scenario that anyone has managed in three years; ice runs in Cadet Hummel’s veins, possibly literally; Cadet Hummel once got into a bar fight with 16 Klingon warriors and a sehlat, and won), Blaine is picturing a larger-than-life figure.
So he gapes at the slender figure sitting at a table by himself and slowly eating some kind of salad as he peruses material on his PADD. He has elfin features and long fingers, and he looks like he spends a lot more time on his hair than Blaine ever would have imagined.
“That’s Kurt Hummel,” Blaine says dubiously.
*****
Fandom: Kick-Ass
Title: Masks Upon Masks
Author: Misachan
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/141285
Rating: Teen.
Status: Completed.
Summary: She knows what Mindy wants. She knows what Hit-Girl wants. She has no idea what the middle even is anymore.
Why I fangirl this: I loved the movie Kick-Ass more than I ever expected, and it was largely due to Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Misa provides a perfect portrait of how superhero Hit Girl has to become plain old Mindy Macready. Sleeping in her costume, going through puberty, losing her coordination, Jake asking her to prom, the new identity, all of it. It's an absolutely heartbreaking read, but so worth it.
Excerpt:
Of course, her dad gave her two names, but she's not allowed to talk about the other one. Sometimes she writes it on top of her test papers in very neat, very faint letters, just to see how it would look before erasing it.
Late at night, when she's sure Marcus is asleep, she digs out her mask and wig from the hidden panel under her closet and puts them on, because she's beginning to forget what she looks like.
She still patrols. Oh, nothing big, just sentry stuff, practically baby patrols, but every so often a dealer comes up with a weapon she hadn't guessed at or some gangbanger manages to actually connect with something and the night manages to get interesting. She thinks she likes those nights the best, actually; she can hear her dad running down the fights in her head. Oh, child, she knows he would start, and her hands ball into fists because no one ever calls her that anymore.
*****
Fandom: The King's Speech
Title: The Beauty of Our Dreams
Author: cruisedirector
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/152272
Rating: Explicit
Status: Completed.
Summary: On the advice of his speech therapist, the King tries to work out what he needs to clear his head.
Why I fangirl this: The movie itself was magnificent, but I needed this catharsis - the resolution of Lionel and Bertie's love for each other and the expression of it. All the characters are so perfectly true to the movie; Bertie's yearning for normalcy and Lionel's whatever-it-takes devotion, Elizabeth's need to make her husband happy, Myrtle's adjustment at being friendly with royalty. And ohhh, the voices. I can hear Bertie perfectly, the stutter and the perfect diction and the unholy glee he has of using vulgar language.
Excerpt:
"Her Majesty is very understanding," he murmurs to Bertie.
"She knows how much I need you. She sent me to you after my father died, you know -- she knew I would want to talk to you. She's more at ease when I'm happy, and nothing has made me happier than you have."
It's hard to say which arouses Lionel more -- the physical presence of the King in his uniform or the intimacy of the words. He squeezes Bertie hard, knowing that no amount of physical affection he offers can erase abuse at the hands of a nanny and parents too neglectful to notice. He'd wanted to cry for the small boy with the stammer and leg braces, but Bertie had learned not to cry, and that often took longer to unlearn than not to stammer. Was that why he was so eager to return these ardent kisses?
"Come with me," Bertie breathes in his ear, neither a command nor a plea but a joyful request. There are no servants, no palace staff, not a single royal handler anywhere in the rooms through which they pass, Bertie's fingers holding his own.
*****
Fandom: Mad Men
Title: Another Working Day
Author: mswyrr
Link: http://madmen-tv.livejournal.com/378013.html
Rating: NC-17/Explicit.
Status: Completed.
Summary: They're not fucking.
Why I fangirl this: Because it's everything I wish we'd gotten from a follow-up to "The Suitcase". How Don's trying to change. How much collective shit Peggy has to put up with. How to navigate emerging gender issues in business. How to be a woman in an ad agency and be good at your job and not have everyone hate you. How to be a man trying to understand women's products and never getting it right. And I love how honest they are with each other, Don explaining the behavior of the junior execs and telling her what'll happen if she fires them, Peggy explaining tampons and talking about prostitution and being good at telling Don what he really needs to hear.
Excerpt:
"I used a word earlier," she started, "'hate,' and I could tell you didn't like that. But it's important." She took a sip from her glass. "It's really hard not to hate yourself or feel hated when you're a woman."
It was the craziest thing he'd ever heard.
He opened his mouth to say so.
"Don't," she said. "Please. Let me finish."
"All right."
"One minute you're a little girl," she said, "And things aren't great, but you're... so free," she sounded wistful, "but it doesn't last. All of the sudden there's this... thing," she said, her nose crinkling. "It's bleeding and it hurts. It's terrifying, and you know that you're wrong. You're something that has to be cleaned up. And then there's..." she gestured expansively, "humiliating accidents, and pills that don't work and cups and devices and leering doctors." She leaned forward, "You have no control. And later on sex is good, but the exact same men who want to get inside you so much, most of them hate it, too!" She threw her hands in the air. "How do we sell that? I look at a tampon box and all I think about is... all of that. How do we get past that? How can you possibly make a woman look at," she tapped the portfolio on the coffee table, "any of our ads and not be so caught up in that and the thought of having to put them in, having to take them out, having to look at them - that none of our messages get through? You talk about advertisements making people feel okay, but I don't know if you can do that with this."
*****
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Title: Reconstruction
Author: philomytha
Link: http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/45829.html
Rating: PG.
Status: Completed.
Summary: : After the Pretendership, Aral and Alys try to rebuild their lives.
Why I fangirl this: A gorgeous, fascinating AU where Aral never marries Cordelia. I agree with Philomytha, it's one of the only ways I could see Aral/Alys happening, but in this universe, Aral needs her more deeply than even he knows. I love the desperation in this, the way that everyone is trying like hell to hold it together, and it's only with someone like Alys (who's lost as least as much, possibly more, than Aral) that Aral can articulate his fears and doubts. And Alys is just heartbreakingly strong, a true Vor woman with a core of steel who can slap the Regent across his idiot face and remind him that's she's lost everything he's lost, and has a newborn child to care for. That they can do this, but only together. The scene with Piotr in particular makes me sob for how strong Alys has to be.
Excerpt:
"I think I will abdicate," Aral said. "You're right. I'm useless to you, to Barrayar, to Gregor."
Alys looked at Aral for a moment, then raised her hand and slapped his face. "What," she said in a fierce undertone, "makes you think this is a good time to have this conversation with me? I haven't slept in days. You, on the other hand, have done nothing but sleep."
"Oh, that's not true," Aral said. "I've thrown up quite a lot too."
Now seething with fury, Alys slapped him again. Aral, bizarrely, smiled, caught her arm and led her back into the corridor.
"We should make you Regent," he said. "You'd do it well. I suppose I deserved that. Feel free to do it again."
Alys gave him a look that should by all rights have frozen him solid. "You cannot abdicate," she said. "My Lord Regent," she added bitterly. "Your name is the only thing that is holding this planet together."
Aral paced along the corridor, wheeled, came back and sat abruptly down on the hand-woven carpet, his head bowed. "I don't care," he whispered. "I don't care. I want to care, but I can't. Can't feel anything. I keep thinking that when I'm drunk enough, I'll be able to cry, but I can't. I can't do any of this."
Alys' head lowered. "Do you think I don't know?" she replied, kneeling down beside Aral. "Every time I turn around, I think he's behind me, and then I remember."
*****
Fandom: The West Wing/The Thick of It
Title: Life During Wartime
Author: Aramley
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/104059
Rating: Mature, mainly for vast and inventive use of profanity. This IS Malcolm Tucker we're talking about.
Status: Completed.
Summary: The improbable friendship of CJ Cregg and Malcolm Tucker.
Why I fangirl this: Because not only is it spot-on for both shows, it's absolutely hysterical. I love how everyone, especially Josh (hiding under his desk) and Sam (with his excellent Braveheart analogy), are terrified of Malcolm. I love how Toby takes it as a challenge to use four-syllable-or-less-words in Bartlet's speech because the PM is a moron, and his "screw the English" acrostic. I love Danny, and how CJ has to pull out her terrifying voice on him. I love how the only thing that can cow Lord John Marbury is Malcolm. His impressive powers of vulgarity are in full force, and I love how he teaches CJ to embrace the C-word. I love their bonding over the MS and the "arboreal stop" and the PM insulting the Japanese ambassador's wife.
Excerpt:
There's not exactly an international mailing list for press secretaries, but it's easy enough to track down his address.
How do you solve a problem like Lord John Marbury? she sends, before she can think better of it.
Malcolm replies, with eerie rapidity: "You tell that fucking inbred fucking lush that Malcolm Tucker's powers transcend borders and oceans and fucking time and space; that I will come over there and personally pioneer the procedure to medically remove his fucking bell-end via his eyesockets if he so much as fucking LOOKS at a woman while he's there. Jesus Christ."
"Oh, by the way," CJ says, as Lord John veers towards her, whisky on his breath. "Malcolm Tucker sends his regards."
She sees him physically recoil; he actually leans backwards. "Ah," he says. "Well. Ha-ha. Good old Malcolm."
*****
Fandom: White Collar
Title: Never Leave a Trace
Author: copperbadge
Link: http://sam-storyteller.dreamwidth.org/160759.html
Rating: R/Mature.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Neal Caffrey can steal souls. Peter Burke has two shadows. Everything's normal...except when it isn't.
Why I fangirl this: Sam is fucking brilliant, and this is one of the most fascinating AU's I've ever read. It takes Neal's spooky con talents and Peter's uncanny tracking abilities and ramps them up into magical-realism levels. Peter's shade is fascinating, as is Neal's organic magic - the burning of eggs, the tattooing. I love how richly-drawn the other prisoners are; Gutierrez who talks to God and Marlow who curses men and Noel who takes away pain. Noel's tattooing scenes are gorgeous and haunting, the way he and Neal are perfect for each other. I like Neal's distinction of the Good and the Powerful, and the way Peter is the only one who's both. I love Elizabeth's strength, her fascination with and control of Peter's shade. And the OT3 is quite lovely.
Excerpt:
They said a lot of things about Neal Caffrey in prison, once he was no longer there.
They said that he was a con man, that he could make cigarettes and scraps of paper disappear and reappear stage-magic style. They said that he once walked out of supermax cool as you please in a prison guard's uniform, and then gave himself up on the outside a few hours later. They said he was a snitch, that he had a cop on the outside who was his lover (that this lover was a woman; that this lover was a man). They said he had never been touched in prison, couldn't be touched because someone was always looking out for him. They said he was in tight with the Irish, or the Italians, or the Aryans. He once shanked a prison guard so stealthily that the guard didn't even know until ten minutes later and they never did figure out it was him.
He could get you anything you wanted. He knew what you wanted when you didn't. He'd show it to you, and you'd know, and then he'd ask his price.
He had nicknames on the inside: the guards called him Cat, the inmates called him Suicide.
Feedback the authors if you liked the stories, please.
(Mods, may I have tags for "Kick-Ass" and "The King's Speech"?)
Fandom: Alias
Title: A Fairer House than Prose
Author: pellucid
Link: http://pellucid.dreamwidth.org/374406.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: : "When man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."
Why I fangirl this: I love Jack and Irina's relationship like I love Italian food - it's delicious, intriguing, and SO good. Pellucid gives a gorgeous look into Jack and Laura's marriage, using the poetry and ideology of John Keats as a metaphor for spycraft. Irina absolutely would lecture on Keats, and I find "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" an apt parallel for her assignment with Jack. I love that Jack passed her test on the first try, and the way both of Irina's daughters imagine her when she's gone. I especially wish we'd gotten this ending for Irina in canon. I would also totally take her Idiot Comp course, but that's because I like Keats and I'm a masochist.
Excerpt:
Most scholars, when they lecture or write on negative capability, point to Keats's use of the idea as a precondition of good poetry. Some extend the concept to include the larger concepts of empathy and humility: the ability to see multiple points of view without feeling compelled to insist upon the rightness of any one of them is a humanist virtue.
If Irina lectured on the passage (which she never would; otherwise the assignment would lose all pedagogical usefulness, and the students would merely parrot inferior versions of her own ideas back to her, rather than thinking for themselves), she would point out that negative capability is itself a value-neutral quality. Perhaps it can lead to empathy and understanding, but the ability to suspend personal convictions and to imagine oneself in the mind of someone else can be as useful to torturers as it is to poets.
It is also a prerequisite for being a good spy.
*****
Fandom: Alias
Title: Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)
Author: Yahtzee
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/32974
Rating: General.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Two years after the events of the series finale, Sydney encounters another Rambaldi artifact that takes her on the strangest journey of all.
Why I fangirl this: This one is basically what happens when you combine a bit of Life on Mars - an accident takes the protagonist back to the past, in Sydney's case, 1978 - and some Rambaldi phlebotinum. And it's just brilliant. I love the glimpse of Sydney (and her friends) post-series, how she isn't really coping with her parents' deaths, the steps she takes to try not to change the past. I love '78 Jack and Sloane and Bill Vaughn, how they're both the same and completely different from the men we know. The way Sydney can't help but tell Irina she knows she isn't Laura, and can't help from warning Sloane about how corrupt he becomes. The Syd-and-Jack scenes are, as ever, the crowning glory, because their love for each other just shines straight through. I weep for the fact that this isn't canon and yet is so much more brilliant and fitting an ending than we got.
Excerpt:
If this was real - if she had in fact returned to 1978 and had the ability to change events - did she have the responsibility to do so?
I could stop 9/11. I could prevent the Iranian hostage crisis. I could warn against any number of political assassinations. I could expose Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. I could advise the CDC about testing the blood supply for HIV much earlier.
Those were big - maybe too big for one person to accomplish. If she walked into Sloane's office and started spouting off a few decades of history, and how best to change it, she might not be believed. Would a nation still in the grip of the Cold War believe that, in 2008, its greatest danger was a small group of terrorists who lived in Afghan caves? Besides, changing even a few events early on might alter the world landscape so that her warnings would soon become useless.
But there were other things she could do, smaller deeds that would nonetheless have real impact.
For instance, she could tell Arvin Sloane that his best friend's wife back in Virginia was an agent of the KGB.
Turning in her mother would spare the lives of many American agents - including Vaughn's father. It would bring her dad into disgrace again, but Sydney could exculpate him in her original statement and spare him prison time. At least this way the deception would be over earlier, and Irina Derevko would be safely in custody instead of going free to turn into - into whatever it was she had become in the end.
*****
Fandom: Alias
Title: The Twelfth of Never
Author: Yahtzee
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/150129/chapters/215144
Rating: Mature
Status: Completed.
Summary: If you accept that Rambaldi really did foresee Sydney's existence, then it stands to reason: No matter what else happened in the world, no matter what else they were doing in their lives, Jack and Irina had to conceive Sydney. This story is really a collection of five other ways Sydney might've come to be.
Why I fangirl this: Okay, I know I just rec'd the same author, but everything Yahtzee writes is brilliant. There are so many of her stories I could rec ("Bristow's Eleven", "Escape in Three Directions", "Irenicon", to name a few), but this is the one that hits me the hardest. It's five completely different, but no less fascinating, ways in which Jack and Irina could have met and had Sydney. The first, "Henry and Natasha" is a gritty look into war-torn Cambodia, with Jack and Irina reluctantly teaming up to survive. The second, "His Best Friend's Wife", is what would have happened if Irina married Sloane instead of Jack, and they had an affair. The third, "Larisa", is a world where Jack and Irina never met, but well, Rambaldi devotees love their babymaking, and Jack suddenly has to care for his Russian-raised teenage daughter. The fourth, "Red", is my favorite, where Russia wins the Cold War and Jack infiltrates Russia to seduce Irina. And the fifth, "The Interrogation", is where Irina defects to the U.S. and Jack interrogates her.
Excerpt:
To the casual observer, Irina suspected they seemed much alike: dark-haired sisters, arrayed in severe gray-green uniforms, all standing at perfect attention. The only obvious difference was that Irina stood a head taller than her older sisters, who had inherited only their mother's height. Nobody who did not know them well - and few people did - could guess how much deeper the divisions between them went.
They all served in the GRU together, and each sister in her own way was considered an up-and-comer. Beyond that, they were special, even sacred to some, because of the links between their family and Rambaldi. Some called the three Derevko sisters the future of the Soviet Union itself.
Unlike Elena - and, sometimes, unlike even Katya - Irina considered such talk grandiose. Certainly, in the past year, they had all come to consider it an uncomfortable subject. But it didn't much matter if Irina believed in Rambaldi's mysticism herself, as long as others believed it - and treated the Derevkos accordingly.
"In the past sixty years, we have experienced two world wars. After the First World War, the Great October Socialist Revolution took place in Russia. And after the Second World War, the Great August Revolution took place across the entire world!" The cheering was fevered now, almost wild. Sometimes Irina almost wished that she could share the blindness of the mob, so that she could join in that mad, mindless joy. "After the defeat of the imperialist Nazis, the world's citizens joined the great socialist movement of our age! One by one, the nations joined us: Germany! France! Italy! Great Britain! All joined us as one under the banner of socialism and human freedom!"
Katya murmured, "And only forty million more people had to die."
"Hush before I have to arrest you." Elena never took her eyes from the cheering crowds.
*****
Fandom Ashes to Ashes
Title: the way the world ends
Author: carla_scribbles
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/PornBattleXI/works/156092
Rating: Adult.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Why I fangirl this: Well, other than the fact that it's Gene/Alex/Keats, and it was written because I batted my eyes at Carla and said "pretty please"? I love it because she just *gets* these three, and the way they've woven themselves around each other. I love it because I love Elliot and I love The Waste Land, and putting it together with fic is just even better. I love the way Carla writes Alex, her self-destruction, her need for an all-consuming passion. I love her Gene, strong and certain, the way he never forgets Sam, the way he almost-remembers what's really important. And oh, her Keats. Vicious and manipulative and gorgeously intent upon breaking Alex - and the world - to rebuild it in his image. Just go and read, okay?
Excerpt:
Hunt’s Alex wears her triggers on the outside. Her dreaming forms him youngish-middle-aged, pedantic, wry -- provides him suits and hornrims and a certain twist of the mouth. He loves her before her eyes can open, the moment the persona crystallizes, and she doesn’t disappoint; she is delicate, bright, resilient, the unearned best of Hunt’s best.
Seducing her is easy, with every advantage she’s given him. She hands herself over, such trust, as though it’s a relief, and he whispers nightmares to her and kisses her before a reply can form in her mouth. And she fragments. Pushes-pulls at him, face turned away as her body melts into his; he strokes her neck, her shoulders, until she shudders and stills.
When he puts his open mouth to the scar on her belly, the rest of the world goes white.
*****
Fandom: Glee
Title: Cerebral
Author: recrudescence
Link: http://recrudescence.livejournal.com/294276.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Coach Sylvester says jump and no one asks how high.
Why I fangirl this: Because Brittany worries me; even before I read this story, I suspected something like this could be the case in a more serious universe. Glee will never go this route, but Yvi is a brilliant writer and makes all the pieces slot together perfectly. She gives Santana and Sue the portrayals they're denied in canon, Santana's fierce protectiveness and honest friendship with Brittany, and Sue's hair-extension measurements and quiet changes. Brittany just breaks your heart here, and the fall isn't worth it.
Excerpt:
You don't ask Coach Sylvester anything. You push off and shoot as far into the air as you possibly can and if you're lucky you come back down with stars. No one flies higher than Brittany, not even Mari Panova who was a gymnastics prodigy in Moscow or something.
When you're one of the only freshmen on the team, you want to aim beyond the ozone. Back handspring, front hurdler. Piece of cake. Brittany isn't small enough to fly anymore, like she could in middle school, but she's a base when they do scorpions. Easy as pie. Mari isn't there, tiny Mari, and Coach Sylvester calls out Brittany to stand in for her.
Just for a demo, just a routine basket toss, just to show the others how it's done so they can really wow the crowd at the football game on Friday.
Kick twist basket toss. Normally Mari only twists twice, but Brittany can do one more, always could before she had her growth spurt and got too tall to be the flyer anymore. She can still do it, she's sure.
*****
Fandom Glee
Title: Debut: Allow Me to Introduce
Author: satora_chan
Link: http://penscratching.livejournal.com/6462.html
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Blaine’s childhood is full of cotillions. You could even say they were formative from age five to Kurt.
Why I fangirl this: This author takes the fact that Darren Criss is half-Filipino and creates a gorgeously, excellently-rendered backstory for Blaine that involves the Filipino tradition of cotillions. Satora creates a gorgeous mother for Blaine (Emily, who is Lea Salonga and dammit, producers, are you listening?) and a fantastic sister (Camille, who is as awesome and funny as most fanon older sisters for Blaine are), and gives so much detail to the world of cotillions. I love the videoke, the dancing, the casual racism Blaine gets for being a half-and-half, Emily dropping the bowl, boys dancing with boys at cotillion, the bit about Sue, Kurt's tiara, and the New Directions gang supporting their boy.
Excerpt:
Emily loved her little boy. She loved all her children, but as Camille would always be held in her heart as her first-born, Blaine she had always considered her last-born, her forever baby. Even when Patrick unexpectedly came along, she had never transitioned the title. He was her munchkin of curly hair and forest eyes, and he used to cry when the Beast in that Disney movie transformed back because he didn’t understand why he had to change.
But munchkins were only humans, and he was her child to boot, and human children were always learning and making mistakes. In her secret heart of hearts, she wanted Blaine to find the love of his life and live happily ever after because what else could she wish for? But she knew also that she could wish for a lot of things, each with increasingly less chance of success.
So, God, she thought viciously, you gave me a son who can’t change and who’ll be unhappy if he wants to please You.
*****
Fandom Glee/Star Trek
Title: to boldy go
Author: sotto_voice
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/178808
Rating: Teen.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Kurt and Blaine as third-year Starfleet cadets; tiny cameos from Santana Lopez, Rachel Berry, Jacob Ben Israel, and various Warblers.
Why I fangirl this: Because it is a spot-on fusion with the Trek reboot, of Kurt and Blaine at Starfleet Academy. If you love Glee, you'll love the Blainevoice, Kurt's signature bitchiness, and the cameos from the other students. But if you're also a Trek fan, like me, you'll be bouncing out of your seat with all the little details Lexie's added. Kurt being half-Betazoid! Kurt as a very logical engineer! Blaine as a hapless command cadet with a mouth bigger than is good for him! The gender-neutral psych professor! Rachel as full-Betazoid! Kurt's love of Klingon music and Blaine taking the Kobayashi Maru! The imzadi concept! It's just lovely and perfect and true to both sources.
Excerpt:
After all the stories that have gone around the academy (Cadet Hummel stared down Captain Kam’har over a question of Federation Treaty history; Cadet Hummel’s ingenious jerry-rig after the simulator engines were disabled helped bring his captain’s crew the closest to defeating the Kobayashi Maru scenario that anyone has managed in three years; ice runs in Cadet Hummel’s veins, possibly literally; Cadet Hummel once got into a bar fight with 16 Klingon warriors and a sehlat, and won), Blaine is picturing a larger-than-life figure.
So he gapes at the slender figure sitting at a table by himself and slowly eating some kind of salad as he peruses material on his PADD. He has elfin features and long fingers, and he looks like he spends a lot more time on his hair than Blaine ever would have imagined.
“That’s Kurt Hummel,” Blaine says dubiously.
*****
Fandom: Kick-Ass
Title: Masks Upon Masks
Author: Misachan
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/141285
Rating: Teen.
Status: Completed.
Summary: She knows what Mindy wants. She knows what Hit-Girl wants. She has no idea what the middle even is anymore.
Why I fangirl this: I loved the movie Kick-Ass more than I ever expected, and it was largely due to Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Misa provides a perfect portrait of how superhero Hit Girl has to become plain old Mindy Macready. Sleeping in her costume, going through puberty, losing her coordination, Jake asking her to prom, the new identity, all of it. It's an absolutely heartbreaking read, but so worth it.
Excerpt:
Of course, her dad gave her two names, but she's not allowed to talk about the other one. Sometimes she writes it on top of her test papers in very neat, very faint letters, just to see how it would look before erasing it.
Late at night, when she's sure Marcus is asleep, she digs out her mask and wig from the hidden panel under her closet and puts them on, because she's beginning to forget what she looks like.
She still patrols. Oh, nothing big, just sentry stuff, practically baby patrols, but every so often a dealer comes up with a weapon she hadn't guessed at or some gangbanger manages to actually connect with something and the night manages to get interesting. She thinks she likes those nights the best, actually; she can hear her dad running down the fights in her head. Oh, child, she knows he would start, and her hands ball into fists because no one ever calls her that anymore.
*****
Fandom: The King's Speech
Title: The Beauty of Our Dreams
Author: cruisedirector
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/152272
Rating: Explicit
Status: Completed.
Summary: On the advice of his speech therapist, the King tries to work out what he needs to clear his head.
Why I fangirl this: The movie itself was magnificent, but I needed this catharsis - the resolution of Lionel and Bertie's love for each other and the expression of it. All the characters are so perfectly true to the movie; Bertie's yearning for normalcy and Lionel's whatever-it-takes devotion, Elizabeth's need to make her husband happy, Myrtle's adjustment at being friendly with royalty. And ohhh, the voices. I can hear Bertie perfectly, the stutter and the perfect diction and the unholy glee he has of using vulgar language.
Excerpt:
"Her Majesty is very understanding," he murmurs to Bertie.
"She knows how much I need you. She sent me to you after my father died, you know -- she knew I would want to talk to you. She's more at ease when I'm happy, and nothing has made me happier than you have."
It's hard to say which arouses Lionel more -- the physical presence of the King in his uniform or the intimacy of the words. He squeezes Bertie hard, knowing that no amount of physical affection he offers can erase abuse at the hands of a nanny and parents too neglectful to notice. He'd wanted to cry for the small boy with the stammer and leg braces, but Bertie had learned not to cry, and that often took longer to unlearn than not to stammer. Was that why he was so eager to return these ardent kisses?
"Come with me," Bertie breathes in his ear, neither a command nor a plea but a joyful request. There are no servants, no palace staff, not a single royal handler anywhere in the rooms through which they pass, Bertie's fingers holding his own.
*****
Fandom: Mad Men
Title: Another Working Day
Author: mswyrr
Link: http://madmen-tv.livejournal.com/378013.html
Rating: NC-17/Explicit.
Status: Completed.
Summary: They're not fucking.
Why I fangirl this: Because it's everything I wish we'd gotten from a follow-up to "The Suitcase". How Don's trying to change. How much collective shit Peggy has to put up with. How to navigate emerging gender issues in business. How to be a woman in an ad agency and be good at your job and not have everyone hate you. How to be a man trying to understand women's products and never getting it right. And I love how honest they are with each other, Don explaining the behavior of the junior execs and telling her what'll happen if she fires them, Peggy explaining tampons and talking about prostitution and being good at telling Don what he really needs to hear.
Excerpt:
"I used a word earlier," she started, "'hate,' and I could tell you didn't like that. But it's important." She took a sip from her glass. "It's really hard not to hate yourself or feel hated when you're a woman."
It was the craziest thing he'd ever heard.
He opened his mouth to say so.
"Don't," she said. "Please. Let me finish."
"All right."
"One minute you're a little girl," she said, "And things aren't great, but you're... so free," she sounded wistful, "but it doesn't last. All of the sudden there's this... thing," she said, her nose crinkling. "It's bleeding and it hurts. It's terrifying, and you know that you're wrong. You're something that has to be cleaned up. And then there's..." she gestured expansively, "humiliating accidents, and pills that don't work and cups and devices and leering doctors." She leaned forward, "You have no control. And later on sex is good, but the exact same men who want to get inside you so much, most of them hate it, too!" She threw her hands in the air. "How do we sell that? I look at a tampon box and all I think about is... all of that. How do we get past that? How can you possibly make a woman look at," she tapped the portfolio on the coffee table, "any of our ads and not be so caught up in that and the thought of having to put them in, having to take them out, having to look at them - that none of our messages get through? You talk about advertisements making people feel okay, but I don't know if you can do that with this."
*****
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Title: Reconstruction
Author: philomytha
Link: http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/45829.html
Rating: PG.
Status: Completed.
Summary: : After the Pretendership, Aral and Alys try to rebuild their lives.
Why I fangirl this: A gorgeous, fascinating AU where Aral never marries Cordelia. I agree with Philomytha, it's one of the only ways I could see Aral/Alys happening, but in this universe, Aral needs her more deeply than even he knows. I love the desperation in this, the way that everyone is trying like hell to hold it together, and it's only with someone like Alys (who's lost as least as much, possibly more, than Aral) that Aral can articulate his fears and doubts. And Alys is just heartbreakingly strong, a true Vor woman with a core of steel who can slap the Regent across his idiot face and remind him that's she's lost everything he's lost, and has a newborn child to care for. That they can do this, but only together. The scene with Piotr in particular makes me sob for how strong Alys has to be.
Excerpt:
"I think I will abdicate," Aral said. "You're right. I'm useless to you, to Barrayar, to Gregor."
Alys looked at Aral for a moment, then raised her hand and slapped his face. "What," she said in a fierce undertone, "makes you think this is a good time to have this conversation with me? I haven't slept in days. You, on the other hand, have done nothing but sleep."
"Oh, that's not true," Aral said. "I've thrown up quite a lot too."
Now seething with fury, Alys slapped him again. Aral, bizarrely, smiled, caught her arm and led her back into the corridor.
"We should make you Regent," he said. "You'd do it well. I suppose I deserved that. Feel free to do it again."
Alys gave him a look that should by all rights have frozen him solid. "You cannot abdicate," she said. "My Lord Regent," she added bitterly. "Your name is the only thing that is holding this planet together."
Aral paced along the corridor, wheeled, came back and sat abruptly down on the hand-woven carpet, his head bowed. "I don't care," he whispered. "I don't care. I want to care, but I can't. Can't feel anything. I keep thinking that when I'm drunk enough, I'll be able to cry, but I can't. I can't do any of this."
Alys' head lowered. "Do you think I don't know?" she replied, kneeling down beside Aral. "Every time I turn around, I think he's behind me, and then I remember."
*****
Fandom: The West Wing/The Thick of It
Title: Life During Wartime
Author: Aramley
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/104059
Rating: Mature, mainly for vast and inventive use of profanity. This IS Malcolm Tucker we're talking about.
Status: Completed.
Summary: The improbable friendship of CJ Cregg and Malcolm Tucker.
Why I fangirl this: Because not only is it spot-on for both shows, it's absolutely hysterical. I love how everyone, especially Josh (hiding under his desk) and Sam (with his excellent Braveheart analogy), are terrified of Malcolm. I love how Toby takes it as a challenge to use four-syllable-or-less-words in Bartlet's speech because the PM is a moron, and his "screw the English" acrostic. I love Danny, and how CJ has to pull out her terrifying voice on him. I love how the only thing that can cow Lord John Marbury is Malcolm. His impressive powers of vulgarity are in full force, and I love how he teaches CJ to embrace the C-word. I love their bonding over the MS and the "arboreal stop" and the PM insulting the Japanese ambassador's wife.
Excerpt:
There's not exactly an international mailing list for press secretaries, but it's easy enough to track down his address.
How do you solve a problem like Lord John Marbury? she sends, before she can think better of it.
Malcolm replies, with eerie rapidity: "You tell that fucking inbred fucking lush that Malcolm Tucker's powers transcend borders and oceans and fucking time and space; that I will come over there and personally pioneer the procedure to medically remove his fucking bell-end via his eyesockets if he so much as fucking LOOKS at a woman while he's there. Jesus Christ."
"Oh, by the way," CJ says, as Lord John veers towards her, whisky on his breath. "Malcolm Tucker sends his regards."
She sees him physically recoil; he actually leans backwards. "Ah," he says. "Well. Ha-ha. Good old Malcolm."
*****
Fandom: White Collar
Title: Never Leave a Trace
Author: copperbadge
Link: http://sam-storyteller.dreamwidth.org/160759.html
Rating: R/Mature.
Status: Completed.
Summary: Neal Caffrey can steal souls. Peter Burke has two shadows. Everything's normal...except when it isn't.
Why I fangirl this: Sam is fucking brilliant, and this is one of the most fascinating AU's I've ever read. It takes Neal's spooky con talents and Peter's uncanny tracking abilities and ramps them up into magical-realism levels. Peter's shade is fascinating, as is Neal's organic magic - the burning of eggs, the tattooing. I love how richly-drawn the other prisoners are; Gutierrez who talks to God and Marlow who curses men and Noel who takes away pain. Noel's tattooing scenes are gorgeous and haunting, the way he and Neal are perfect for each other. I like Neal's distinction of the Good and the Powerful, and the way Peter is the only one who's both. I love Elizabeth's strength, her fascination with and control of Peter's shade. And the OT3 is quite lovely.
Excerpt:
They said a lot of things about Neal Caffrey in prison, once he was no longer there.
They said that he was a con man, that he could make cigarettes and scraps of paper disappear and reappear stage-magic style. They said that he once walked out of supermax cool as you please in a prison guard's uniform, and then gave himself up on the outside a few hours later. They said he was a snitch, that he had a cop on the outside who was his lover (that this lover was a woman; that this lover was a man). They said he had never been touched in prison, couldn't be touched because someone was always looking out for him. They said he was in tight with the Irish, or the Italians, or the Aryans. He once shanked a prison guard so stealthily that the guard didn't even know until ten minutes later and they never did figure out it was him.
He could get you anything you wanted. He knew what you wanted when you didn't. He'd show it to you, and you'd know, and then he'd ask his price.
He had nicknames on the inside: the guards called him Cat, the inmates called him Suicide.
Feedback the authors if you liked the stories, please.
(Mods, may I have tags for "Kick-Ass" and "The King's Speech"?)