due South Recs Redux

Today's post is a bit of a grab-bag (and kind of long). Before we get to the links, though, I need to say something: This right here is the best fandom ever. Ever, do you hear me? There is so much good fic out there by so many talented writers, that when I started looking for what to rec the sheer volume of excellence nearly made me cry. I'm telling you, there were sniffles involved. And that doesn't even count the masterworks of the fandom, like "Hawks and Hands," "Academic Punk," or "With Six You Get Eggroll."

Okay, here we go (and these are in no particular order). It took a while for me to appreciate the merits of cross-dressing. Er, so to speak. lalejandra made me love it. In "Woman Like a Man" (PG), Fraser and RayK meet under very different circumstances.

Genderfuck, a bit like cross-dressing I think, is one of those genres where you might not get it, until you really get it. My break-through story of this kind is "Gonna Go to Babylon and Get Me Some Whiskey" (NC-17) by sanyin. Fraser should know better than to leave RayK unattended. I'm just sayin'.

Sometimes, even if you're in both fandoms involved, a particular crossover never would have occurred to you. Meet Benton Fraser, Rogue Demon Hunter. No, that's not fair to say, because it implies that the story is funny, when ... not so much. "Hands on the Wheel, Eyes on the Sky" (no rating, but I'd say PG) by inlovewithnight is another fic on my short list of best-evers. dS/AtS crossover, Fraser and Gunn on the road.

The next rec actually did make me cry. "By the Sounding Sea" (R) by cathybites goes AU from "Mounty on the Bounty." F/K, lyrical and compelling, plus it's got Poe.

Oh, geez, those were all kind of serious, huh? Well, here's a hopeful fic, a particularly fine example of The Boys Buy a Clue. "Where I End and You Begin" (rated "no pants") by visionshadows is a sweet and funny story of what happens when everybody but Fraser and RayK think they're, y'know, boyfriends.

I'm going to wrap this up with two fics that just slay me, for very different reasons. First is "Special Fucking Friends" (R) by slidellra. I would have rec'ced this one in my crossover post, except I had a total brain blip and couldn't for the life of me remember who wrote it or where I'd found it the fandom it crosses with is Canadian RPF, and the fandom it pulled me into was HCL. When Hugh Dillon loses his passport while in Chicago, where's he gonna go for help? Sheer genius, and so very, very hot.

Finally, if there's anybody in dS fandom who hasn't read this story at least three or four times, please raise your hand. If I had to pick one and only one fic to demonstrate everything I like best about dS fanfic, I'd choose "Ray Is Not Actually Graphing The History Of His Relationship With Fraser - That Would Be Pathetic, And Ray Is Not Pathetic - But If He Was Graphing It, Even Just In His Own Stressed-Out, Messed-Up Brain, It Might Look Something Like This" (NC-17) by sprat. It's got everything - humor, angst, hotness, relationship advice, and the entire story is one long parenthetical, punctuated by graphs.

So we're done here. Enjoy the recs, and please give some love to the authors when you do.

*smooch*