These are not my shoes

I've been doing a lot of Firefly fic reading since I wrote my Big Damn Fic, and I thought I'd share a list of some of my favorites. I've read a lot of great fics lately, many of which aren't on this list. These are the just the ones that stuck with me--the ones I kept thinking about afterwards and found myself wanting to go back and read again. They're based on my personal preferences, the sorts of stories that I like to read, which are maybe not the sorts of stories that other people like to read.

What you probably won't find in these fics: slash, porn without plot, romance, non-canon shipping. What you will find in these fics: great writing, great characterizations, great plots, great angst, and/or great humor. And darkness. Lots and lots of darkness.

"Ice in Crystal" by juliefortune
I'm a huge fan of Julie Fortune's Angel fics, so when she posted her first Firefly story I had to read it. It was my very first taste of Firefly fic, and boy what a standard does it set. Great plotting, perfectly realized characterizations, wonderful ensemble interactions, and Dark with a capital D.

"Scavenged" by salieri (troyswann)
It's possible that this is my favorite Firefly fic ever. Salieri's powers of description are incredibly vivid and yet perfectly spare. An unflinchingly dark story punctuated by perfect and heartbreaking interactions between Kaylee and Mal.

"Utopia" by salieri (troyswann)
Reavers. Jayne. Pretty much the scariest damn fic I've ever read. Read this one with all the lights on.

"Lex Talionis" by Tara LJC O'Shea
My favorite kind of fic--a plotty, action-packed ensemble piece interwoven with illuminating flashbacks. Great dialog, perfect characterizations, and lots of fantastic Kaylee-in-jeopardy angst.

"Reliance" by roseveare
This is the first in a series of connected stories, all of which are engaging and supremely satisfying. Perfect, plotty ensemble pieces with wonderful characterizations. Read them all.

"Rise Up No More" by agentotter
In my mind, this will always be Book's true backstory. Dark and heartbreaking.

"Divergence" by ana_grrl
AU snippets of what might have been for each of the characters had things been just a little bit different. I love these kind of "what if" stories--what if one simple choice had been made differently? How would that affect everything and everyone that came after? This is one of the best of its type I've read in the Fireflyverse.

On Saturday night Mr. Sus and I watched Serenity for the first time since we saw it in the theater last year. Yes, I've owned the DVD since Christmas and didn't even crack the plastic wrap until this weekend. You know why? Because Joss Whedon is an evil bastard. God, I love him. It's taken exactly this long for us to get over the extreme emotional distress inflicted by that fantastic freaking movie so that we could face the prospect of watching it again. It's still the best movie I've seen since Return of the King. And it still breaks my heart into a thousand tiny little pieces.

Part of the reason we finally sucked it up and watched the damn thing again is that I've been working on my Mal/Inara fic. I've decided to do something a little bit different and maybe kinda dumb. Instead of just writing a simple, 1000-word shipper fic like I'm supposed to, I'm writing an entire episode. Four acts, a teaser, A, B and C storylines and everything. Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with me, either.

I guess I've been reading too much of Jane Espenson's blog lately and it's been making me miss writing spec scripts and I decided I wanted to write one for Firefly. Only I figure the ficathon readers aren't really looking to read a script, so I'm writing it as a narrative and then I'll maybe go back later and adapt it into a script if I like the way it turns out. Don't worry, though, it'll be a Mal/Inara heavy episode--something along the lines of "Shindig" in terms of their interactions with one another. But I just couldn't bring myself to write in the Firefly 'verse without doing an ensemble piece because I love that ensemble like woah.

First off, happiest of happy birthday wishes to mcsister!

Secondly, before I forget, I've been meaning to pimp carmen_sandiego's Mal/Inara Ficathon. She tells me there's a serious shortage of good Mal/Inara fic in the world, and I believe her, so head over to truthsome_fic pronto and let's see what we can do to rectify this situation. Only two weeks left until sign-ups close!

On other fronts, there's good news and there's bad news. The first piece of bad news is that my laptop is on the fritz again and Mr. Sus suspects it may be shuffling off this mortal coil. The good news is that later today I'm going over to Best Buy to play with new laptops and see what I like. Yay! New laptop! My old one is three years old and was refurbished when I got it, so it'll be nice to have a zippy new fancy one.

The other good news is that yesterday we made our hotel reservations for Comic-con! SQUEE!!!!! The bad news, however, is that the hotel where we stayed last year and had our various encounters with Joss Whedon was already totally booked. But we've got reservations at the Marriott Gaslamp which looks to be about as nice and nearly as conveniently located, and who knows, maybe Joss will follow us there. (He's totally stalking me, ya'll. Really, he is.)

Oh, and Tuesday's Gilmore Girls was unforgivably bad. Really awful. Blech. Daniel Palladino needs to be strung up by his toes.