![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
due south fic recs
And what do I do on my day off? Why, compile a list of favourite due South fics and post it at ungodly hours of the morning, of course.
There is lots of really great due South fic in the world, and I have probably read at least a good 80% of what the internet has to offer. One of the great blessings of this fandom (besides the astonishing lack of wank, which is a wonderful breath of fresh air after Doctor Who fandom, and no, don't even try to tell me about the Ray Wars, I don't wanna know) is that, by and large, most of the fic is really good. Inevitably I have become pickier about the way I like my Fraser and Rays as I go along, but the number of times I actually hit the back button is negligible compared to the other fandoms I've been in.
In saying this, my basic point is that I couldn't possibly do a comprehensive reclist of the due South fic that I like. (Hell, if you want that, it's what delicious is for.) This is instead a rather smaller list of the fic that possibly made me shriek and flail and gnaw on my knuckles the first time through, or made me say "YES!" aloud, or just makes me feel really happy and comfortable each time through and bears up well under rereads. I try to stick to one story per author, but a lot of the time it can be taken as read that if I like one thing, I like most if not all of the other fic they've written also. This list is possibly for my own reference as much as anything, but maybe you'll discover something new here, or an old favourite.
Anima by J S Cavalcante
Ray was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because he was a woman. This is the genderswap fic I have been waiting for all my life and never knew I needed. As the opening note says, it's not kink or crack, it's serious spec fic, and if there was more x-wakes-up-the-opposite-sex fic like that, I think the world would be a much more awesome place. I love this fic for a number of reasons, starting with the quite important one that I've taken enough gender studies courses at my Liberal Women's College Of Feminism to get stars in my eyes when anyone wants to start discussing gender in a serious way, especially via the medium of Ray Kowalski. (I may have a huge lesbian crush on Rae, which is pretty impressive considering that she never actually appears in the story.) It also has a fairly riveting plot and a memorable OC I adore. And it has scorchingly good het sex, which is rare enough in my fic-reading travels that it absolutely deserves a mention. As a caveat, this fic is long, but has a number of breaking points for when real life inevitably intervenes.
Black Ice by sprat
I am a liar. That is the truth. Godel again, the circular logic, the paradox at the heart of me. And now with the yellow line on the wrong side of the car and a dauntingly large set of headlights bearing down, I can't remember what I thought I was defending. This fic, on the other hand, is quite short, and utterly incredible. It has perhaps the best narrative Fraser voice I have ever read, as well as a fantastic understanding of him. This is just a couple of short sharp snapshots and a near-death experience, but god does it pack a punch.
Cold Desert by Sionnain
Ray was used to having bits of other people stuck to him. And in this case, it was a Canadian Mountie and an attention-challenged Chicago cop. Honestly, Ray would take that over a buttermilk-drinking wiseguy with a bad mustache any day. In which Vecchio goes back to Vegas to testify, Kowalski gets assigned his security detail, and Fraser volunteers himself to help out too. This show gives me such an OT3, and in fact a disproportionate number of my favourite fics are F/K/V, but this is one of my favourites. I think that has to do in large part with the way it treats wonderfully on the repercussions of Vecchio's time in Vegas, both emotionally and with a good plot to match. The tension and the love make me very, very happy.
Don't Let Kowalski Interview the Perp! by catwalksalone
This is a little illustrated click-through story based on Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! an almost equally adorable picture book that you can almost certainly find chilling somewhere at your local bookstore. The pigeon is cute but Kowalski throwing a tantrum is even cuter. This one never fails to make me smile. And I think it's the only one of my favourite fics that is gen, but hey. It's a picture book. (And part of me even kind of wants to save it, so that a billion years from now when I maybe have a child and want to induct them into fannishness at a young age, it can be a picture book. That would be awesome.)
Mosaic, Piece by Piece by china_shop
"We'll just be one more curiosity in a town of freaks and weirdoes, you mean." In which a just-divorced Ray Vecchio visits Inuvik, where Fraser and Kowalski seem to be living quite happily, and slowly rebuilds his life. This is another OT3 fic; it wasn't the one I read first, but it's the one that's stuck with me the most. I think that might have something to do with the fact that Kowalski running a pizza parlor in the frozen north is kind of memorable, but it also deserves a special place for being the one F/K/V fic wherein I'm convinced it could work despite Kowalski and Vecchio not really making peace with one another before Fraser's in the picture. It has less sheer overflow of love than a lot of my other favourite fics do, but it's better for that; it's warming in a different way.
Negociations and Love Songs by Brynn McK
"Jeez, Fraser, you throw yourself at moving cars all the time, and this is too much for you?" I can't in good conscience make a list of my favourite due South fic without at least one Fraser/Vecchio fic. (I'm sure there's lots out there that is wonderful and that I haven't found; I'm just not very good at shipping Fraser/Vecchio, mostly because the canon kind of dooms them. In anything pre-s3, I know their time is running out; in anything post-CotW, I feel bad if Kowalski's not there too, which has given me a lovely OT3 but still precludes searching out straight-up F/V fic.) In any case, I did find Brynn McK's Fraser/Vecchio fic; all of it is lovely, but this one is probably my favourite. It has a tone about it that is very much like Red White or Blue, which I love -- it understands Ray and Fraser in the same way that episode does, but taken to logical shippy conclusions. It also has a damn good Fraser, and not one I'm used to, either: he's absolutely accurate, but he's from s2, which makes him different enough to be freshly surprising each time through. This one is not epic, but it is warm and fuzzy and eminently rereadable.
Parameters by brooklinegirl
Ray shook his head. He never could win an argument around here. I believe my delicious note for this fic just reads "Porn porn porn <3" and it is absolutely accurate; in fact one of my favourite things about this fandom is that a lot of the time I find myself sitting there thinking "Porn porn porn <3" but in the main the really memorable stuff that gets stuck in my mental Best Fic folder has at least pretensions of plot. This, on the other hand, is just Fraser and Kowalski and Vecchio all having lots of sex, but it still ended up in my mental Best Fic folder. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I sometimes suspect the internet of not having even a fraction as much good funny Vecchio-POV fic as it should, and this particular fic goes a long way towards making up for that lack.
Real Boys & Real Worlds by salieri
"That's the problem with you humans, Ray. You figure you're the only ones who ever discovered love. Everything would make sense if you weren't so narrow-minded." This fic is apparently a riff off a Philip K Dick novel that I have not read, so I don't know how much was directly taken, but I have a vague memory of hearing from various quarters that this fic plays with the sandbox of the world in a much more awesome way than the original did. It features bot!Fraser and all those attendant "what makes us human?" questions; I was easy for that sort of thing in BSG and I am just as easy for it here. Mostly, though, I love these fics because they fit in basically the entire ensemble cast of the show, seamlessly and plottily; Francesca is particularly inspired, but Victoria and Ray Vecchio are also wonderful. Real Worlds is a good deal trippier than Real Boys, but in the best possible way. I could probably read fifty of these fics and never get bored of them.
Scrabble by Speranza
Benton loves death. It's not a real due South reclist unless you rec Speranza somewhere! I have a particularly fraught relationship with Speranza's dS fic, because nine times out of ten her Ray Kowalski is not mine at all, but this does not mean I don't usually enjoy her fic, and this one is probably my favourite. I held off on it for a long while, possibly out of sheer intimidation for the formatting, but once I did read it I realized the formatting is the best part: whether or not I agree with her Ray is a moot point, because this fic taught me a lot about the different things you can do with Ray or Fraser's POVs. I also just love it conceptually; there's something wonderfully compelling about the places Fraser's complete unconcern for his own wellbeing in the face of danger can be taken.
Shifting by Luzula
"Yeah, now I see where that thing you have for licking comes from." In which Fraser is a werewolf (on his mother's side). I adore this fic because I serendipitously found it almost directly after having a conversation with my friend Rigby to the tune of "Wouldn't everything make an astonishing amount of sense if Fraser were a werewolf?" Our thought experiment, however, didn't carry itself out to all the logical conclusions, but this fic does, quite wonderfully, and explicates all of Fraser's oddities in good ways. There are a couple of other fics in this universe also, one about Caroline-the-werewolf first meeting Bob Fraser and one that is a remix of Victoria's Secret (with Victoria-the-werewolf, of course). The whole concept and execution fills me with delight.
Sliding by Sage
Five days before, Ray had never imagined bedding down on top of several feet of snow. Funny what a difference a week could make. There is a lot of good quest-for-the-hand-of-Franklin fic out there, but this is absolutely my favourite one. I think in large part I love it so much because, while I occasionally enjoy their agonies of being convinced their love is unrequited and their spectacular failure to communicate, I always get very nervous when that plot happens in conjunction with the quest -- and this fic is not about that. This fic has a slow mutual build of love that is pitch-perfect and wonderful. It also features an attractively competent Ray (who is still wonderfully Ray; he gets worried about polar bears and thinks of musk-ox as hairy ottomans, among other things). I think this is probably the truest quest fic I've read.
This Is Your Life by china_shop
"Our home," says Ray Kowalski. "Come on, you can discover the twenty-first century all over again." I am breaking my own no double-reccing rule for this, because due South gives me an OT3 something fierce and china_shop does it particularly well. In this one, Fraser gets amnesia -- again, bless him -- and believes it's still 1998 when it's actually 2001. The only problem is, he's living with Kowalski and Vecchio, with no context at all. I am a big sucker for both first time/getting-together fics and for the ones that are secretly about the fuzzy domesticity and how much they love each other, which is why I have a tendency to go for the long plotty fics in this fandom; it's usually the easiest way to get both. But this contains both the realization and the established relationship in one concise package, which is wonderful. The love just comes glowing through, and I get warm and happy all over again every time I read it, which is a lot.
Unlikely Odds by Crysothemis
"Wait, you're telling me that every time you told that crazy story about the guy who eats princesses for lunch, you were trying to say you loved me?" Episode tags for, perhaps not surprisingly, A Likely Story and Odds. I uniformly love Crysothemis' due South fic -- I think I am particularly well-disposed towards her Fraser characterization -- so actually choosing a favourite one to rec was difficult. I chose Unlikely Odds because it is that rare creature in dS fandom, the episode-related fic that is not about Mountie on the Bounty or directly dealing with Call of the Wild. This fic made me enjoy the episodes in question a lot more than I would otherwise on a rewatch; it is in large part a deconstructing of the subtext of the episodes, which is probably not everyone's cup of tea but makes me deeply happy. It is also very loving; this seems to be a pattern with what I like in my dS fic, but that's okay -- I am very much in favor of a story that understands what it's like to be in love and learn to be healthy about it.
The Unofficial RCMP/CPD International Co-operation and Liaising Recipe Book by china_shop
Kowalski Flambé / The Whole Benton Fraser Enchilada / Stuffed Fraser with a Frustration-Glazed Kowalski / Canadian Self-Saucing Pudding with Polish-American Chocolate Kisses. And I am breaking the no double-reccing rule again to triple-rec china_shop, because this fic is possibly one of the most amazing things this fandom has ever produced. Someone on ds_flashfiction explained it better than I ever could: "I am fascinated and slightly horrified, as my brain skitter-scatters back and forth between reading this as a cooking recipe, a plot outline, and a cannibalistic feast." Except in my case, 'slightly horrified' is mostly just 'delighted, and unable to stop grinning whenever I think about it.' It's sheer brilliance.
You Can't Take That Away From Me by joandarck
"Actually I think I'm real in touch with my feelings right now. I feel like I'm a good guy, you're a bad guy, and if you stick one foot past that table I'm gonna nail you in the head." In which Ray uncovers illegal goings-on in a hospital, the result of which is probably the best use of the amnesia cliché I have ever seen. This fic is absolutely hilarious, and moreover of all the fic I have recced here, I think it is the one I would most want to see as an episode. Of course an episode version would probably be a little less overt about the Fraser/Kowalski bits, but that's what the lovely fic is for.
There is lots of really great due South fic in the world, and I have probably read at least a good 80% of what the internet has to offer. One of the great blessings of this fandom (besides the astonishing lack of wank, which is a wonderful breath of fresh air after Doctor Who fandom, and no, don't even try to tell me about the Ray Wars, I don't wanna know) is that, by and large, most of the fic is really good. Inevitably I have become pickier about the way I like my Fraser and Rays as I go along, but the number of times I actually hit the back button is negligible compared to the other fandoms I've been in.
In saying this, my basic point is that I couldn't possibly do a comprehensive reclist of the due South fic that I like. (Hell, if you want that, it's what delicious is for.) This is instead a rather smaller list of the fic that possibly made me shriek and flail and gnaw on my knuckles the first time through, or made me say "YES!" aloud, or just makes me feel really happy and comfortable each time through and bears up well under rereads. I try to stick to one story per author, but a lot of the time it can be taken as read that if I like one thing, I like most if not all of the other fic they've written also. This list is possibly for my own reference as much as anything, but maybe you'll discover something new here, or an old favourite.
Anima by J S Cavalcante
Ray was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because he was a woman. This is the genderswap fic I have been waiting for all my life and never knew I needed. As the opening note says, it's not kink or crack, it's serious spec fic, and if there was more x-wakes-up-the-opposite-sex fic like that, I think the world would be a much more awesome place. I love this fic for a number of reasons, starting with the quite important one that I've taken enough gender studies courses at my Liberal Women's College Of Feminism to get stars in my eyes when anyone wants to start discussing gender in a serious way, especially via the medium of Ray Kowalski. (I may have a huge lesbian crush on Rae, which is pretty impressive considering that she never actually appears in the story.) It also has a fairly riveting plot and a memorable OC I adore. And it has scorchingly good het sex, which is rare enough in my fic-reading travels that it absolutely deserves a mention. As a caveat, this fic is long, but has a number of breaking points for when real life inevitably intervenes.
Black Ice by sprat
I am a liar. That is the truth. Godel again, the circular logic, the paradox at the heart of me. And now with the yellow line on the wrong side of the car and a dauntingly large set of headlights bearing down, I can't remember what I thought I was defending. This fic, on the other hand, is quite short, and utterly incredible. It has perhaps the best narrative Fraser voice I have ever read, as well as a fantastic understanding of him. This is just a couple of short sharp snapshots and a near-death experience, but god does it pack a punch.
Cold Desert by Sionnain
Ray was used to having bits of other people stuck to him. And in this case, it was a Canadian Mountie and an attention-challenged Chicago cop. Honestly, Ray would take that over a buttermilk-drinking wiseguy with a bad mustache any day. In which Vecchio goes back to Vegas to testify, Kowalski gets assigned his security detail, and Fraser volunteers himself to help out too. This show gives me such an OT3, and in fact a disproportionate number of my favourite fics are F/K/V, but this is one of my favourites. I think that has to do in large part with the way it treats wonderfully on the repercussions of Vecchio's time in Vegas, both emotionally and with a good plot to match. The tension and the love make me very, very happy.
Don't Let Kowalski Interview the Perp! by catwalksalone
This is a little illustrated click-through story based on Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! an almost equally adorable picture book that you can almost certainly find chilling somewhere at your local bookstore. The pigeon is cute but Kowalski throwing a tantrum is even cuter. This one never fails to make me smile. And I think it's the only one of my favourite fics that is gen, but hey. It's a picture book. (And part of me even kind of wants to save it, so that a billion years from now when I maybe have a child and want to induct them into fannishness at a young age, it can be a picture book. That would be awesome.)
Mosaic, Piece by Piece by china_shop
"We'll just be one more curiosity in a town of freaks and weirdoes, you mean." In which a just-divorced Ray Vecchio visits Inuvik, where Fraser and Kowalski seem to be living quite happily, and slowly rebuilds his life. This is another OT3 fic; it wasn't the one I read first, but it's the one that's stuck with me the most. I think that might have something to do with the fact that Kowalski running a pizza parlor in the frozen north is kind of memorable, but it also deserves a special place for being the one F/K/V fic wherein I'm convinced it could work despite Kowalski and Vecchio not really making peace with one another before Fraser's in the picture. It has less sheer overflow of love than a lot of my other favourite fics do, but it's better for that; it's warming in a different way.
Negociations and Love Songs by Brynn McK
"Jeez, Fraser, you throw yourself at moving cars all the time, and this is too much for you?" I can't in good conscience make a list of my favourite due South fic without at least one Fraser/Vecchio fic. (I'm sure there's lots out there that is wonderful and that I haven't found; I'm just not very good at shipping Fraser/Vecchio, mostly because the canon kind of dooms them. In anything pre-s3, I know their time is running out; in anything post-CotW, I feel bad if Kowalski's not there too, which has given me a lovely OT3 but still precludes searching out straight-up F/V fic.) In any case, I did find Brynn McK's Fraser/Vecchio fic; all of it is lovely, but this one is probably my favourite. It has a tone about it that is very much like Red White or Blue, which I love -- it understands Ray and Fraser in the same way that episode does, but taken to logical shippy conclusions. It also has a damn good Fraser, and not one I'm used to, either: he's absolutely accurate, but he's from s2, which makes him different enough to be freshly surprising each time through. This one is not epic, but it is warm and fuzzy and eminently rereadable.
Parameters by brooklinegirl
Ray shook his head. He never could win an argument around here. I believe my delicious note for this fic just reads "Porn porn porn <3" and it is absolutely accurate; in fact one of my favourite things about this fandom is that a lot of the time I find myself sitting there thinking "Porn porn porn <3" but in the main the really memorable stuff that gets stuck in my mental Best Fic folder has at least pretensions of plot. This, on the other hand, is just Fraser and Kowalski and Vecchio all having lots of sex, but it still ended up in my mental Best Fic folder. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I sometimes suspect the internet of not having even a fraction as much good funny Vecchio-POV fic as it should, and this particular fic goes a long way towards making up for that lack.
Real Boys & Real Worlds by salieri
"That's the problem with you humans, Ray. You figure you're the only ones who ever discovered love. Everything would make sense if you weren't so narrow-minded." This fic is apparently a riff off a Philip K Dick novel that I have not read, so I don't know how much was directly taken, but I have a vague memory of hearing from various quarters that this fic plays with the sandbox of the world in a much more awesome way than the original did. It features bot!Fraser and all those attendant "what makes us human?" questions; I was easy for that sort of thing in BSG and I am just as easy for it here. Mostly, though, I love these fics because they fit in basically the entire ensemble cast of the show, seamlessly and plottily; Francesca is particularly inspired, but Victoria and Ray Vecchio are also wonderful. Real Worlds is a good deal trippier than Real Boys, but in the best possible way. I could probably read fifty of these fics and never get bored of them.
Scrabble by Speranza
Benton loves death. It's not a real due South reclist unless you rec Speranza somewhere! I have a particularly fraught relationship with Speranza's dS fic, because nine times out of ten her Ray Kowalski is not mine at all, but this does not mean I don't usually enjoy her fic, and this one is probably my favourite. I held off on it for a long while, possibly out of sheer intimidation for the formatting, but once I did read it I realized the formatting is the best part: whether or not I agree with her Ray is a moot point, because this fic taught me a lot about the different things you can do with Ray or Fraser's POVs. I also just love it conceptually; there's something wonderfully compelling about the places Fraser's complete unconcern for his own wellbeing in the face of danger can be taken.
Shifting by Luzula
"Yeah, now I see where that thing you have for licking comes from." In which Fraser is a werewolf (on his mother's side). I adore this fic because I serendipitously found it almost directly after having a conversation with my friend Rigby to the tune of "Wouldn't everything make an astonishing amount of sense if Fraser were a werewolf?" Our thought experiment, however, didn't carry itself out to all the logical conclusions, but this fic does, quite wonderfully, and explicates all of Fraser's oddities in good ways. There are a couple of other fics in this universe also, one about Caroline-the-werewolf first meeting Bob Fraser and one that is a remix of Victoria's Secret (with Victoria-the-werewolf, of course). The whole concept and execution fills me with delight.
Sliding by Sage
Five days before, Ray had never imagined bedding down on top of several feet of snow. Funny what a difference a week could make. There is a lot of good quest-for-the-hand-of-Franklin fic out there, but this is absolutely my favourite one. I think in large part I love it so much because, while I occasionally enjoy their agonies of being convinced their love is unrequited and their spectacular failure to communicate, I always get very nervous when that plot happens in conjunction with the quest -- and this fic is not about that. This fic has a slow mutual build of love that is pitch-perfect and wonderful. It also features an attractively competent Ray (who is still wonderfully Ray; he gets worried about polar bears and thinks of musk-ox as hairy ottomans, among other things). I think this is probably the truest quest fic I've read.
This Is Your Life by china_shop
"Our home," says Ray Kowalski. "Come on, you can discover the twenty-first century all over again." I am breaking my own no double-reccing rule for this, because due South gives me an OT3 something fierce and china_shop does it particularly well. In this one, Fraser gets amnesia -- again, bless him -- and believes it's still 1998 when it's actually 2001. The only problem is, he's living with Kowalski and Vecchio, with no context at all. I am a big sucker for both first time/getting-together fics and for the ones that are secretly about the fuzzy domesticity and how much they love each other, which is why I have a tendency to go for the long plotty fics in this fandom; it's usually the easiest way to get both. But this contains both the realization and the established relationship in one concise package, which is wonderful. The love just comes glowing through, and I get warm and happy all over again every time I read it, which is a lot.
Unlikely Odds by Crysothemis
"Wait, you're telling me that every time you told that crazy story about the guy who eats princesses for lunch, you were trying to say you loved me?" Episode tags for, perhaps not surprisingly, A Likely Story and Odds. I uniformly love Crysothemis' due South fic -- I think I am particularly well-disposed towards her Fraser characterization -- so actually choosing a favourite one to rec was difficult. I chose Unlikely Odds because it is that rare creature in dS fandom, the episode-related fic that is not about Mountie on the Bounty or directly dealing with Call of the Wild. This fic made me enjoy the episodes in question a lot more than I would otherwise on a rewatch; it is in large part a deconstructing of the subtext of the episodes, which is probably not everyone's cup of tea but makes me deeply happy. It is also very loving; this seems to be a pattern with what I like in my dS fic, but that's okay -- I am very much in favor of a story that understands what it's like to be in love and learn to be healthy about it.
The Unofficial RCMP/CPD International Co-operation and Liaising Recipe Book by china_shop
Kowalski Flambé / The Whole Benton Fraser Enchilada / Stuffed Fraser with a Frustration-Glazed Kowalski / Canadian Self-Saucing Pudding with Polish-American Chocolate Kisses. And I am breaking the no double-reccing rule again to triple-rec china_shop, because this fic is possibly one of the most amazing things this fandom has ever produced. Someone on ds_flashfiction explained it better than I ever could: "I am fascinated and slightly horrified, as my brain skitter-scatters back and forth between reading this as a cooking recipe, a plot outline, and a cannibalistic feast." Except in my case, 'slightly horrified' is mostly just 'delighted, and unable to stop grinning whenever I think about it.' It's sheer brilliance.
You Can't Take That Away From Me by joandarck
"Actually I think I'm real in touch with my feelings right now. I feel like I'm a good guy, you're a bad guy, and if you stick one foot past that table I'm gonna nail you in the head." In which Ray uncovers illegal goings-on in a hospital, the result of which is probably the best use of the amnesia cliché I have ever seen. This fic is absolutely hilarious, and moreover of all the fic I have recced here, I think it is the one I would most want to see as an episode. Of course an episode version would probably be a little less overt about the Fraser/Kowalski bits, but that's what the lovely fic is for.