Title: Mars Assassins
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz, with a slight crossover with Fenndom
Pairing: Crawford/Schuldig, Victorian style
Categories: AU, action, drama, crossover
Length: EPIC [~218,000 words]
Warnings: er, if you don't like genre mashups, this is definitely not for you; main characters are psychic murderers


Author on LJ: daegaer
Website: mars_assassins

Summary: A gentle heartwarming tale of gunslinging assassins in the Old West. And on Mars. (Oh, and they're psychic.)

Review: Against all odds, Daegaer managed to move the Schwarz group out of the modern Japan setting of Weiss Kreuz, and insert them into an AU Victorian-era Wild West adventure IN SPACE, with hardly a sign of effort. The characters feel like they were meant to be in this frankly-implausible world... and that is the mark of a truly great fanfic writer. The vaguely-steampunk feel of the spaceship and Mars colony adds to the atmosphere of the fic.

Daegaer says that she wrote the story in the style of George Manville Fenn, and I can believe her - it reads exactly as if someone of that era was given a computer and a guide to slash/yaoi. The story is sixty chapters worth of Victorian sensibilities (manly handclasps, racism and all) as filtered through the viewpoints of amoral, probably-insane assassins. I particularly liked that Mars felt like yet another colony fallen victim of Western imperialism - there are Martians, and they are very clearly treated on the same level as the other human races. [Which also presents wonderful problems for Nagi, the only ethnically Japanese character.]

You don't need to be familiar with canon to enjoy this fic - while it does add something to know the characters beforehand, the story is so far removed from canon that, so long as you enjoy Victorian novels, steampunk sci-fi, assassins, psychics or slash, Mars Assassins will entertain you.

mars_assassins is the only location for this fic. Just skip back to the first journal entries, and commence losing all your free time this weekend.