Recs: First round

[very_improbable]

Now with authors!

Last year I tried to wait until I had all my yuletide recs ready, and then I never posted them. So I think I'll just start now--with a selection from the end of the fandom alphabet! More to come (likely including more from some of these fandoms, and others from # to Z).

Composite (Warai no Daigaku aka University of Laughs) by jamjar. This is--as I think keiko_kirin put it--a "noner-than-nonesuch fandom". I'm pretty sure this story increased the amount of posted fanfic in the English language for this movie/play by 50%. How fortunate this tiny fandom is, then, that its tiny body of extant fic has been written with such fidelity to canon, tenderness and bittersweet humor.

The Fearless Moral Inventory of Milhouse Van Houten (The Simpsons) by meyerlemon. I know everybody and their dog has already recced this; that's because it's BRILLIANT. It's fuuuuuucking brilliant.

There's an absolute ass-ton of Slings & Arrows this year. I've barely begun to work my way through it, but for those of you who have not yet heard (both of you!) there's a lot of wonderful stuff in this fandom this year, and it's not all Geoffrey/Ellen(/Oliver)(/Darren), either.

What Price Freedom? (Strangers With Candy--Noblet/Jellineck, explicit) by kahvi. Down in the basement! He didn't have to worry about what other people would think, because as a homeless criminal male prostitute, they already despised him. There need to be so many more comments on this story, like, right now.

I Am Therefore You Think (Red Dwarf) by kitt. They were being led to their own destruction by a lunatic with curry for brains. It's at my outer limit for acceptable schmoopiness in this canon, which is to say not very schmoopy at all. Great Rimmer POV.

The Jimmie Situation (Pulp Fiction) by kormantic. Delivers just what the title promises--a Jules n' Jimmie backstory that totally works. The character voices are so spot on, it could be a DVD extra.

Mise en Scène (The Persuaders--Danny/Brett, as if it needed to be said) by joandarck. Yay yay yay. Who has relationship talks while injuring art thieves with projectile heirlooms? DANNY AND BRETT DO.

ETA: The Strange and Not Entirely Ineffective Courting of Jon Stewart by Stephen T. Colbert (The Colbert Report) by sparky77. (It's under "RPF - Punditslash", but I'm calling it TCR fic, since it definitely involves "Stephen Colbert", not Stephen Colbert.) He woke up late the next day. There were twenty messages on his voice mail. Seven of them were from George Clooney. That was never a good sign. It's uh, hahahahaha, oh just read it.


Short cuts, because the smaller treats need love too:

And All the Roads (Nip/Tuck) by ceares. Relatively quiet and perhaps the least angst-ridden Nip/Tuck fic in existence--yet still well-characterized, with the ring of truth.

Temptation (Pulp Fiction) by xochiquetzl. Dead-on little Vincent and Mia scene.

Better Than A Poke in the Eye (Red Dwarf) by megthelegend. I nearly missed the punchline of this story at first, because I'm slow. But: Ha!

P Is For ? (Sesame Street) by mtgat. A short, immature stocking stuffer. C'mon, you know you want to look.

(Note: I cannot in good conscience exactly recommend the Sesame Street story Why Sex Ed Should Stay in Schools by greenspine, which is this year's Slave Bear Of Care-A-Lot, but for those of you who like that sort of thing, that is definitely the sort of thing you will like.)