RatCreature's Journal

Occasionally you get happy surprises: I just found that some of Anna S./eliade's stories are now available on the AO3. For years after her site vanished I could only link to Wayback Machine versions of the Buffy Season Noir and Sidelines.

Thus far the Buffy/Angel and Sentinel stories are on AO3, not (yet?) the X-Files and SG-1 stories. Though the former are still available on XF archives.

Apparently I'm in a spammy mood today, sorry about that, I don't usually inflict three posts in such a short time.

But while going through my bookmarks for the next AU recs update, I thought that maybe non-AU recs also might be of interest. And since crossovers delight me almost as much as AUs I decided to point out a couple of crossovers I've read and liked over the last few months.

Five Superheroes Dean Winchester Never Slept With, by derryderrydown. Slash and het, Dean Winchester/Roy Harper, Dean Winchester/Stephanie Brown, Dean Winchester/Grace Choi, Dean Winchester/Dick Grayson, Dean Winchester/Jason Todd. (ca. 3,250 words)
DCU/Supernatural
The title really says it all. Dean just fits so very well into the DCU. The idea behind the Dean/Steph snippet is especially cool, but Dick and Dean bonding over their scars and Dean working with Roy were also great.

Stopping for Pancakes and its sequel Looking for Salt, by dotfic. Gen, Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Dana Scully, Fox Mulder. (ca. 950 and 5,800 words)
Supernatural/The X-Files
If you're interested at all in Supernatural you probably have already read those two. Anyway, it's great to have Mulder and Scully interact with the Winchesters. The first takes place pre-series when Sam and Dean are still kids and Mulder and Scully are still working for the FBI, and in the second they run across each other again years later, some time during the first SPN season, and are fighting zombies together. I mean, zombies, how could you resist that? *g*

Once Upon a Time in the West, by marinarusalka. Het, John Winchester/Sarah Connor. (ca. 7,660 words)
Supernatural/Terminator
John and Sarah meet while buying weapons and ammunition. This makes for an awesome and very fitting pairing (not to mention hot), also Sam and Dean have some hilarious lines. As usual with marinarusalka's SPN fic the view we get of the Winchesters' pre-series family life is great, even if this is John-centric and not focused on the brothers.

Stray Cat Blues, by monkeycrackmary. Gen, Faith, Sam, Dean, and John Winchester. (ca. 3,500 words)
Supernatural/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
This takes place pre-series for Supernatural. The Winchesters run into Faith while on the road.

Rollin', by tzi and zaganthi. Slash, Rodney McKay/Dean Winchester. (8,256 words)
Supernatural/Stargate Atlantis
This isn't a pairing or crossover that would have occurred to me, but strangely it works.

White Rabbit, by valderys. Gen, John Sheppard, Grant Jansky (the author labelled it as being "pre-slash if you squint" for a bunch of pairings, but I read it as gen). (8,866 words)
Traders/Stargate Atlantis
This was done for the reel_sga challenge and adapts the movie Harvey. After an Ancient technology mishap John finds himself back on earth and in the past, and only Grant Jansky can see him. Donald's, Jack's and Adam's reactions to Grant seeing an invisible Air Force Colonel are great, it is a lot of fun to read.

Without Sandy's rec page I would have never tried Giles/Oz fic, but she recommended Sarah T.'s Til it Bleeds Daylight and I enjoyed this wishverse fic quite a lot. So I tried another one of her Giles/Oz stories, Messengers of Grey, a story in which Giles and Oz meet in London after Buffy's death, and enjoyed that as well. So obviously I'm even more flexible in the Buffy pairings I enjoy reading than I previously thought.

A Smallville fic I quite enjoyed was Interstitial by Punk Maneuverability, probably because I like CLex future-fics that aren't bleak and depressing. Not that there's anything wrong with dark and depressing, I like that as well, just not constantly. I'm too much a sucker for happy endings for that. My only quibble with the story is that it doesn't really resolve the plot about Clark's powers. There is some foreshadowing as to what might be going on, but nothing definite. So I'm hoping for a sequel (and I've already written a whiny LoC to the author, too *grin*).

Basingstoke posted a fun SV story told in letters, emails and chat to her LJ: here, here and here. It's still to be revised, but it's already very readable and funny, I was laughing in several places.

A lot of the Invisible Man fanfic I've come across has been quite horrid, but the first ep of the Invisible Man Virtual Season was okay, not fabulous, but entertaining enough that I'm going to read the second ep. And definitely much better than a lot of IM fic I've come across, like lots of marriage or wedding fic, complete with (invisible) kids, Mary-Sue-ish new original invisible agents etc. And it's worth pointing out that I don't have a het squick or anything like that, it's just an awful fanfic squick. Another gen IM story worth reading is For the Good... by XmagicalX, a solid long (234K) story with The Keeper and Hobbes rescuing Darien from the clutches of the CIA.