Thanks to chibifukurou and sheepnamedpig for permission to rec in their claimed fandom!


Title: I Fix Your Shit
Fandom: Marvel
Pairing: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Bruce Banner/Tony Stark
Categories: AU, Post-Apocalypse, Drama, Friendship, Romance, Artificial Intelligence, AI!Phil , AI Rights, PTSD
Length: Long (24,279)
Warnings: Heated discussion about consent (due to AI having override command codes)

Author on LJ: NA
Author Website: Eligh,  Eligh Rawley Writes

Author's summary: When the world's an empty, dead place, you hold on tight to what you've got.

Clint's never been one to thrive in a vacuum. It's a good thing, then, that he found this shack out in the middle of nowhere.

Based off of this art by eWKn.


Review:
I'm head over heels for these characters -- their histories, relationships, and the way they deal with their screwed up, empty world. With all the fan works I found to love during our December hiatus, it was this I wanted to share first.

We start with Clint wandering alone in a post-Hydra Colorado, with only a little AI rover for company for the past year. When even the rover dies, he's lucky enough to come across Tony and Bruce -- still with the arc reactor and 'green guy', but for different reasons here. Eventually they're joined by Phil, an extremely advanced artificial intelligence.

Things to love: the slow build toward trust between these characters, the thoughtful consideration of AI rights and what it means to have personhood, the romantic relationship that grows between Phil and a very pro-AI Clint, and the character of Phil himself, since he's so well written. There's also the great established relationship Tony and Bruce have going. Then there's suspense, action, friendship, back stories that make a lot of sense, the angst of dealing with marked PTSD and with Clint's concerns about consent, and the joy of creating something like a family together.

It's rich with great moments and well thought out plot and themes.

I Fix Your Shit

Title: Detention's the Least of Your Problems in this Dimension
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: (pre) Tim/Kon, implied Dick/Jason
Categories: AU, high school, dimension travel
Length: Medium (3,400)

Author Website: Hawk's Perch (tumblr), Hawkstout

Summary:
Tim is an average high school student, but he has a problem. He's locked in the math room's closet with Jason Todd and it turns out his crush Mr. Grayson is from another dimension.

Review:
This isn't a particularly long story, but it paints a nice little picture. Tim Drake is in high school, and has a slightly enormous crush on his math teacher, Mr Grayson. Jason Todd is also in high school, but is bored and disruptive, and decides to vandalize the Math room for laughs. Both of them end up squashed in the closet while Mr Grayson has a seriously weird conversation with Damian Wayne, the headmaster's genius son, and from there things just get stranger for the boys.

This is a light, gentle read despite the fact that it spends most of its time playing with your head. It's very much a slice-of-life story, skipping around what in another story would be the entire action plot to bring out what matters to the characters, and what changes in them. I particularly enjoyed Tim's initial obliviousness to the anvil-like hints his friend Kon drops about trying for someone more obtainable than a student teacher, and in general getting to be a stressed, angsty teenager. Jason too gets to be a real person in Tim's eyes, and by the end they are joking about things that would have started a fight at the beginning of the story.

Pleasant, mildly outrageous reading. Have fun!

Detention's the Least of Your Problems in this Dimension

Title: The War Prize
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Categories: AU, Science Fiction, hostage, cultural misunderstandings
Length: Epic (66,800 words)
Warnings: Reference to past non-con.

Author on LJ: meri_oddities
Author Website: Meri Oddities, Meri

Summary:
Jared, Monarch of Valdesco, did not want to get married. He especially didn't want a political marriage to someone who was part of the negotiations for peace. There was no way he could deal with a spouse whose culture was completely alien to his own.

Jensen Ackles was appalled to be the War Prize his country offered up as reparations. He sincerely did not want to go from being the High Chief's youngest son to being without status. And mostly, Jensen did not want to live in a country that was so technologically advanced that he had no hope of beginning to understand it.

But, like a lot of things in life, neither one of them was going to get a choice about it.

Review:
A lot of thought went into this story. It's clear from the outset that it is going to be all about the culture shock of moving into a country that's about half a century more advanced than what you're used to. What's less clear is that this cuts both ways; the Valdescans also make assumptions about Amaranth and its people that just aren't true, and some of the misunderstandings run very deep. The explorations of these differences is carefully done, too; as a reader, I didn't notice until quite a long way through the story that I was making the same assumptions as Jared and his people, despite half of it being Jensen's point of view.

The romance side of the story is equally well-handled, and equally stop-start in its progress. Naturally enough the boys start off putting up with what both think is an intolerable situation. For Jared, the whole idea of being handed a hostage he is expected to marry is barbaric; for Jensen, suddenly losing everything and being effectively owned by this stranger is pretty horrifying too. By their own lights they try to behave properly, but of course what's proper to one culture can be completely improper for the other. There are any number of times when Jared tries to do favours for Jensen that Jensen sees as punishments, for example. That they persevere in seeing each other as people is what eventually brings them together properly, and allows them to (heaven forfend!) actually talk about the whole mess.

For a story that has some quietly unpleasant corners, this is a remarkably uplifting read. I thoroughly recommend it.

The War Prize

Title: A Hell of His Making
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Categories: Soul Bonding, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, First Time
Length: Medium (12,533 words)
Warnings: None

Author on LJ: (This author does not appear to be on LJ.)
Author Website: ObsidianEmbrace

Author's Summary:
To harm one's t'hy'la is an unforgivable offense.

Review:
As much as I like the Kirk/Spock pairing — and it’s one of my favorite pairings across all fandoms — I didn’t really get into it until Star Trek XI came out in 2009. (William Shatner just doesn’t do anything for me, unfortunately.) For that reason, I don’t have an extensive knowledge of original series canon and I don’t know how much the concept of t’hy’la is really covered there. I do know how prevalent it is in Star Trek fan works, and that it is often used to great effect as it is in this story.

The author offers an interesting take on the possible repercussions of the scene in Star Trek XI where Kirk provokes Spock into attacking him to demonstrate that Spock is emotionally compromised so that Kirk can take command of the Enterprise. Spock became aware of the connection between them the moment they touched, and his life thereafter became (as in the title), a hell of his own making.

Spock and Kirk are each hurting in their own ways — Kirk, of course, is recovering from the events at the end of Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Spock is dealing with the intense remorse and self-hatred engendered by strangling Kirk nearly to death only a few months before. These emotions, the pain, the need — they are portrayed so clearly.

Both characters are written perfectly, and the author does a brilliant job of showing just how much they need each other. There is hurt/comfort, angst, misunderstandings, and a Kirk who won’t take “no” for an answer. Spock is stubborn and determined to pursue the course of action he thinks is best…until Kirk turns the tables on him in a way that is just so perfectly “Jim Kirk.” (And very, very hot.)

The voices (including those of the supporting characters such as McCoy and Uhura) in this are perfect; it’s a great example of the use of the soul bonding trope — one of my favorite tropes, too! — and everything feels very in-character and just really well done. It’s the perfect coda to Star Trek: Into Darkness and gives the Kirk/Spock ending I wanted so much. Highly recommended!

A Hell of His Making

Title: ST vs HP
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Pairing: gen
Categories: fan art, crossover
Warnings: none

Artist on LJ: ppierrot 
Website: http://ppierrot.deviantart.com/

Review:
Star Trek Characters in the Harry Potter universe. The artist does say that Bones and Spock might be better suited for Ravenclaw, but I think it's interesting to see them end up in Gryffindor. I bet there's a back story there that's just waiting to be written (*hint, hint*).

ST vs HP