Terraform by gilascave (Jared/Jensen). A really wonderful AU: Jensen works on space stations monitoring the terraforming of planets, though he usually moves on shortly after the colonists arrive. In the period of transition, Jared appears on the space station and opens a bar. Jensen is attracted to him, but begins to suspect that Jared is too good to be true, and might have a hidden agenda. I absolutely loved the plot twists in this, and it also has one of my complete bullet-proof kinks (which I cannot reveal without spoiling the story)--but suffice it to say this has become one of my top 3 favorite bigbang stories of this year. Also, for those of you reading while commuting, the link (eventually) goes to her website so it's all available in one big file.

So, in addition to today being the opening of Half-Blood Prince and the season premiere of Leverage (both of which I very much enjoyed--more on that in a later post), I've been looking forward to this day for weeks because it was the posting date for hansbekhart's Victor Henriksen epic, The Passenger. Technically this story is Dean/Victor, but the focus of the story isn't on the romance. In this story, Victor survives Lilith's tortures and is thrown into the world of hunting, in the middle of events he doesn't understand with only Dean to guide him.

I love this story to pieces. Not only does it create a terrific backstory for Henriksen (who's always been one of my favorite SPN minor characters), but it also goes AU after the events of Jus in Bello, leading to a very different series of events with respect to Dean's deal that I found very satisfying.

Well, I said I'd been reading like a madwoman, right? So I'm starting to catch up, and can finally get back to recommending stories.

( First, some stories to break your heart )


( And then some fluffy stories to cheer you up afterwards )

One bigbang story and a few shorter ones. ( Read more... )

Well, lately every day is SPN rec day here, so why should Friday be any different? A few more bigbang recs, including one potentially controversial one. ( Read more... )

but I bet all you spn_j2_bigbang readers will love me for it. I got tired of not knowing what particular stories were going to be posted when, since the master posting schedule on the comm doesn't give summaries, and the summaries don't seem to be arranged in any logical order (ie by date or alphabetical) other than the breakdown into gen SPN, slash SPN, and RPS. SO, I thought, I'll just make my own list of the authors by date and cut-and-paste the summaries. Easy peasy!

Ugh. Four hours later, I am wondering why I thought this was a brilliant idea, but it's done. It's a huge file (46 pages in word) so I posted it over on Dreamwidth here. I didn't proofread anything--literally I just cut-and-pasted the author summaries by date--but since it's all one file it's searchable, so if you absolutely need to know when the next Dean/Castiel story is going to be posted (July 2) or when the fantabulous-sounding Jedi AU is coming (June 17) or whether there are going to be any stories featuring the wonderful Victor Henrickson (yes! One June 26, one July 13 and one July 15, though everybody is still spelling his name differently), or what, exactly, the brilliant lazy_daze is writing about this year (a J2 Wimbledon AU), you can easily find it.

Doing this also made me realize (a) what a disappointing amount of het there is this year (dammit! I wanted more Sam/Ruby) and (b) there is an absolutely ridiculous number of J2 AUs to look forward to.

Neon Showman by atimi (Jared/Jensen) This is Jared and Jensen's epic romance as seen by Chad Michael Murray, and it made me laugh so hard I think I injured myself. Highly, highly recommended for some of the funniest dialogue--and internal monologue--I've ever read. A sample quote behind the cut: ( Read more... )

So I take it whoever did the bigbang scheduling decided Friday was for angst? And since that was the theme, I decided to add another non-bigbang story that fit the theme to this rec set as well. ( Read more... )

Well, only half of today's stories have even been posted yet, but I had insomnia last night so I read the two that were, so this may be part one of two. Or I might not review the other two until tomorrow, who knows. ( Reviews behind the cut )
As I was saying to redteekal in the comments of an earlier post, I feel almost bad calling these reviews, since I'm basically just summarizing the plots of all the bigbang stories and then babbling about how much I liked them, with the occasional caveat about formatting or story elements that bugged me. But since I've been doing that, I almost feel like I should keep doing that, although I don't know what I will do when I start encountering stories I don't actually like. Advise me, oh wise flist!

[Poll #1413876]

(1) Not at ALL in reference to an actual story posted during last year's bigbang, or anything

Edited to add: oops, I see the strike command doesn't actually work in polls. Well, you can probably figure out from context that it should read "Nora, you are far too obsessed with people's opinion of you nice" in the poll options above.

Ooh, Bigbang is here! Yay! I'm not going to have time to do bigbang recs every single day, but since I took the day off (bad sinus headache), I had lots of time to read today. Just because my comments got long, ( SPN/J2 Bigbang recs behind the cut )