there will be a fish

I've had some fics I've been wanting to rec just hanging around for a while. Here goes:

1. Close To Home (DCU, Tim/Kon)
I feel like I must've recced this one before, but perhaps not. It's one of my favorite Tim/Kon pieces out there, and I have a huge soft spot for the pairing as it is. Basically, Kon ends up investigating the murder of a gay boy who went to his high school, and ends up tackling all the hate-crime issues and casual small town homophobia that goes along with it. Tim helps, being infinitely better at murder mystery stuff than Kon is. This makes it all sound much more serious than it is; Tim and Kon are the older and more mature versions you see around now, it's true, but it's not a downer by any means. There's plot and intrigue and a lot of Kon trying to figure out who is and Tim being slightly crazy and Bat-like, and generally is just a fun read all around. I ♥ this fic.

2. No Yesterdays on the Road (XM:FC, Charles/Erik)
This is probably my favorite XMFC fic that I've read so far. The basic idea: slightly AU from the beach divorce, where Erik still kills Shaw but the rest of the mess doesn't go down (with the subtle departure point of Erik simply not putting the helmet on, which lets Charles speak to him more directly. Kind of a cool alteration.) Anyway, they're working on the new school when Charles gets kidnapped, and Erik has to team up with Moira to find him. This story's characterization of Erik is brilliantly spot-on, and believably vulnerable in a way I think most authors ignore in favor of his harder edges. The plot is terribly fun and roadtrip-y, Moira gets to shine and snark and be competent in a way she wasn't given space to in the movie, and the interactions are just a joy. There is also a good deal of pining going on on Erik's part, which is one of my favorite things in the world. All in all, a wonderful read.

3. Telephone (Captain America/Avengers movieverse, gen-ish)
I almost skipped this one because I'm not the biggest Thor/Loki fan, and this was marked as such. I'm not sure why, though; any subtextual interpretation is on the reader's part, because this was as gen as the movies. More gen, even, because there's any any het going on here either. ANYWAY, I'm glad I did read this, because the Steve voice here is SO GOOD, and the story as a whole is hilarious and surprisingly touching and really just adorable. I really recommend this to anyone who loved Steve Rogers in the Captain America movie. Or maybe just anyone who finds the idea of Loki texting Steve Rogers out of boredom as hysterical as I do. :D

4. Pants on Fire (Inception, Arthur/Eames)
This was such a fun use of the amnesia trope. Helenish did her usual magic here in taking a strange concept and making it really work, and her Eames and Arthur characterizations were excellent. I feel reluctant to try to explain the plot; it's a lot more effective to just let it unfold, so I'm going to send you in blind. Cheers!

5. Captain America's Art Crawl Adventure (The Middleman/Captain America crossover, gen)
I love musesfool SO MUCH for writing this, I can't even tell you guys. I mean, she not only wrote a story featuring Art Crawl (o/!), but she added Steve Rogers to the mix as well. SO MUCH LOVE. This is hilarious, and I fell in love with Wendy Watson's fabulous ass-kickery and wacky art-related shenanigans all over again. (And Noser, and Lacey, and the Middleman, and of course Steve. SO MUCH LOVE, did I mention?)

6. Nerds of the Earth, take note! (Leverage/Iron Man crossover, gen)
Everyone loves Alec Hardison, am I right? I mean, he's the nerd of all our hearts (talks Doctor Who AND takes down evil doers with his geekery!), and he is a damn good-looking man. *SWOON* Anyway, my point is, this fic is all about putting Alec Hardison in the same room with Tony Stark, who is also a really hot geek, and having them work together to save the world in typical geek fashion while snarking at each other. It's wonderful, and hilarious, and even a little heart-breaking. Two thumbs up!

7. Dr. Sandburg Finds a Sentinel (The Sentinel/Stargate: SG-1 crossover, gen)
And by "gen," I mean "as gen as TS ever was," which really means "rife with subtext." Anyway, Blair is working at the SGC as one of their geeks, which is a brilliant job for him, and Jim gets caught up with a bunch of NID/rogue CIA/Chinese spies shenanigans (as you do), and the rest is history, explosions, and wackiness. I enjoyed the hell out of this story.

8. make your wars (XM:FC, Charles/Erik pre-slash)
This is a quiet little modern, no-powers AU that I really liked. I've not been overly impressed with those, but this one really caught me. Charles is a shrink, Erik's a war vet with a bunch of PTSD issues, and Erik would really like to be annoyed by Charles but can't quite manage it. It's just lovely and low-key, and I really liked it. There's a sequel as well, linked at the bottom of this post.

9. Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc (Sherlock/The Addams Family crossover/fusion, eventual Sherlock/John)
This is the first of three stories in a dark little Sherlock AU that duia recced to me -- it's a strange concept (John Watson is actually an Addams, on his mother's side), but the author really makes it work for the characters and the world. Fair warning, it can be pretty violently visceral and graphic in places, so that might turn some people off the story, but it digs into the creepier side of Sherlock in a way that I found fascinating.

10. You do know you're completely mad, don't you? (Sherlock, gen)
The meme prompt for this story was: When John says to Mike "who would want me for a flatmate?" Mike doesn't ask "what do you mean by that?" He also doesn't say "oh, what'd be wrong with you as a flatmate?" He just accepts that John would be a difficult person to find a flat for and moves on to Sherlock. Given that Mike knows at least a little of how odd Sherlock is and yet suggests Watson as a good match, does this imply that John has some weird habits of his own, without regard to his experiences in Afghanistan?

Which means the story itself is all about John's wacky shenanigans at university -- in John's usual unassuming yet awesome style. It's told from Stamford's POV, and is on the whole warm, affectionate, and very funny. I love the idea that John Watson is the most normal weird dude on the face of the planet, which is why he and Sherlock get along like gangbusters, and everyone else is totally fooled by the tea-drinking and ugly jumpers. ♥

Ugh, I should be doing reading for class tomorrow. Unfortunately, this means either a) reading dense film criticism or b) reading James Joyce. So instead I am fucking around on the internet and watching Psych and moaning in pain from my pilates class earlier. Owwwwwww. (please don't tell me that senioritis is setting in already...)

A List of Random Things That Have Crossed My Mind Recently:

- I saw a guy with a "Consent is Sexy" shirt the other day. I really think this would make an interesting fic challenge. *waves magic wand*

- There really should be more Southland fic in the world to tide me over until the premiere in October. But I've been made happy by two pieces recently: the first We Are The Same, a fusion with Homicide: Life on the Street, which is pretty cool. But what really made me clap my hands and twirl around like River Tam a crazy person? copperbadge wrote a Southland fic! He is one of my favorite fandom writers, and has that annoying ability to walk into a fandom and nail it perfectly first time out. I'm not going to complain, though, because Protective Custody gives some amazingly good Cooper POV, along with being a damn nice partnership piece. Maybe I'll go read it again now...

- I saw a bit of this Elizabeth Bishop poem tacked up on some cheesy bulletin board on campus, but I loved the line "have we room / for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?" so I looked up the full thing. It's much more biting than that image led me to expect.

- This video of a group of people pulling off a con (the "Good Samaritan") makes me want to write Leverage fic. Or at least finish that post I'm working on about David Maurer's The Big Con and Leverage and con men throughout the ages.

- I finally watched the Middleman lost episode table read from ComicCon. OMG I'd forgotten how much I love them.

- In the course of my weird project last weekend (don't ask), I may have kinda developed a tiny crush on this YouTube channel host. She's this adorable Asian girl with an Australian accent, and she occasionally makes entire videos about winking. Or maybe I was sleep-deprived, who knows.

- I was super-excited about Tim Burton's upcoming Alice In Wonderland live-action movie just on the basis of Tim Burton being the perfect heir to Lewis Carroll's particular brand of weirdness, but -- dude, I didn't realize he'd cast Mia Wasikowska as Alice! The casting of Alice can make or break this particular story, and having seen Miss Wasikowska (gosh, her name is fun to say) knock the role of Sophie on In Treatment out of the park, well, color me thrilled. She's gonna ROCK. Plus, there's Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Christopher Lee, Crispin Glover, Michael Sheen, and Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat (OMG perfect). Their casting director must've had an orgasm from the sheer cinematic serendipity of that lineup.

- Speaking of Stephen Fry, he tweeted this gorgeous link the other day. I think I have to agree with him that #11 is my favorite.

- In the pursuit of happiness procrastination an old LJ exchange I had regarding Sam and Dean dressed in that leg-baring armor the Greeks wore (which is all the fault of this story, which is not really a good AU, but still manages to be a fun story -- the characters are OOC and oddly changed to Roman names. But they're not necessarily badly characterized. Which means it's basically a historical Roman gay romance with two main characters pre-cast as Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins, featuring Jensen Ackles wearing Thracian armor and fighting as a gladiator and the both of them arguing classical philosophy and pining, so I'm not complaining). Anyway, it got me poking around my old journal entries, which is loads of fun. For instance, I found the previously mentioned exchange, which happened to include a rather prescient discussion of Sam and Dean's relationship with their father in light of something my Classical Myth prof said; the time I got to see the total solar eclipse in Turkey because I was up at 5am; an alarmingly thinky response to Pirates of the Caribbean 3; the definition of petrichor, which is the smell of rain falling on dry ground (there are scientific reasons for it!); that post I made trying to figure out Benton Fraser's birthday which is also alarmingly in-depth but was terribly fun; one of copperbadge's old House fics, which made me want to start watching again (worth it, y/n?); and aww, my first impressions of SPN, all the way back when Sarah Shahi was still "Will's girlfriend Jenny from Alias" instead of "completely awesome Det. Dani Reese from Life." :D I have to say, the latter did make me start missing the more grounded elements of S1; they've lost more than a bit of Sam and Dean's connection to the people they're saving. The "saving people" part of Dean's oft-repeated "saving people, hunting things" has become awfully abstract.

Probably should cut-tag, but waaaaay too lazy. :(

Hey Netflix subscribers, check it out -- Leverage S1 is streaming on Netflix!

You now have NO EXCUSE not to watch this show. I will give you my login, okay? :)