erinptah: Madoka and Homura (madoka)
[personal profile] erinptah
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Characters/Pairings: OCs, Watanuki
Rating: PG-13
Length: 9.4K words
Creator Links: [livejournal.com profile] sparklyfanta
Theme: Outsider POV, Characters of Color, Competence

Summary: Detective Tezuka Akira chewed on the end of a pencil and wished it were a cigarette. He was stuck reviewing, and investigating, some chilly cases from a year or more ago, in hopes that a fresh eye would turn up something.

Reccer's Notes: This is a great "competent, realistic professional who doesn't realize he's living in a fantasy/magic universe" fic.

Fanwork Links: Cold Cases
cest_what: (supergirl)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle*
Characters/Pairings: Fai/Kurogane
Rating: mature
Length: 9000 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] aliferlia
Theme: Worldbuilding, Complete AU (office)

Summary: Obligatory Shigatsu Tsuitachi fic. Fai trolls, Kurogane patrols, and Hokuto writes girls' love manga. The usual.

Reccer's Notes: So this year for (Cardcaptor) Sakura's birthday on 1 April, CLAMP made her the president of a company called Shigatsu Tsuitachi, along with a bunch of art and chatter over twitter about all the other CLAMP-verse characters who work there. It's really freaking delightful and if you're fond of any of the characters I recommend reading through the transcript.

This fic takes the twitter chatter and runs with it to create an even more ridiculously delightful office AU. Fai and Kurogane are both wonderfully true to themselves here, Fai all sunshine and vicious happiness and issues, Kurogane's stoicism and the way he frames his relationships as matters of allegience and trust. And I adore the way Tokyo Babylon's Hokuto slots in to make the third in their dynamic, as Fai's partner in ridiculous crime and perving on new security guards, and Kurogane's unlikely collaborator on historical fantasy seinen girls' love manga.

Story Links: some curious synchrony @ AO3

* Actually ensemble CLAMP-verse incorporating characters from all CLAMP's works, but the pairing characters are Tsubasa.
cest_what: (Default)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Characters/Pairings: Tomoyo/Sakura
Rating: Worksafe
Artist Link: [archiveofourown.org profile] bottan
Theme: Characters of Colour, Female Characters, Complete AUs

Reccer's Notes: This was created for a recent CLAMP Femslash fest, and it's gorgeous. I love band AUs, and this older Sakura and Tomoyo in torn black jeans and spangles, the way they're leaning in and their focus on one another, are so appealing.

Art Link: Tomoyo/Sakura fanart @ Tumblr
cest_what: (Default)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Characters/Pairings: Touya/Yukito, Touya/Yue
Rating: Mature
Length: 1600 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] torch
Theme: Characters of Colour

Summary: Touya and Yukito and Yue on the floor and on the couch.

Reccer's Notes: The summary makes this sound like it's about sex, but it's mostly classic wingfic. It's lovely. I really like the easy but careful way Touya approaches Yukito and Yue's duality, and the way Yue responds to his own uncertainty and unacknowledged yearning.

Story Links: asking for the taking @ AO3
cest_what: (Default)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Characters/Pairings: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: Explicit
Length: 21,000 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] TruckThat
Theme: Characters of Colour, Complete AUs, Amnesia

Summary: An AU where Kurogane is (mostly) the son of a small-town baker and Fai is... not. Also featuring wizards, raisin muffins, curses, an abandoned house, and a series of terrible mistakes.

Reccer's Notes: This story blew me away. It uses my favourite trope - amnesia - better than any other fic I've read, and the characterisation is wonderful: Kurogane grumpily trapped in a rose-covered fairytale-esque house that won't let him leave, and Fai with a backstory that is completely different from canon (and unlike canon isn't so impossibly terrible you can't take it seriously) but believably spells out the same bleakly bright smiles and fatalism and crushing loneliness. And the way everything about this world is so charming, at the same time, the house with its moods and the weather and the muffins.

Story Links: Book & Bell @ AO3
cest_what: (wounded lion)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Characters/Pairings: Fai/Kurogane
Rating: G
Length: 3100 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] aliferlia
Theme: Families of Choice, Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship

Summary: Fill for a prompt at the KuroFai Headcanon Meme at Dreamwidth: "Fai doesn't know how to feel about [Kurogane's scars], sees them as physical manifestations of the pain he has caused, and accidentally makes Kurogane feel like he needs to keep his own skin hidden from Fai."

Reccer's Notes: Tsubasa is one of the great Found Family canons, and even though this centres on Kurogane and Fai, it has a strong and lovely sense of the four of them as a battered and gallant little family. This fic is about winning happiness at great and continuing cost; about things that are worth loss and hurt. It's beautiful.

Excerpt:
It was quite a sudden thing, and very small: a stone shifted under his foot, and he grunted, pulling Fai closer to keep his balance. In that same moment, long cold fingers found the thick patch of scarring at his left flank and fairly flinched back. Kurogane broke the kiss, lips parted, throat suddenly thick. Fai went stiff in his arms.

‘Kissy times,’ Mokona warbled, paddling past, ‘kissy times with mommy and daddy! How romantic!’

‘Your face is romantic!’ Kurogane yelled, which, as insults went, was fairly feeble, and dove after her.

He shouted and he splashed, and when Syaoran came stumbling back into the grove, carrying a very small and very angry octopus swimming in a glass observation jar, he made a great show of examining the thing. He did not like silence, not when it came with Fai flinching away from him. He was not entirely sure what else he could do. The scars on his back prickled. He had never been angry at his own flesh before.


Story Links: kintsugi (AO3)
cest_what: (wounded lion)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Characters/Pairings: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: Mature
Length: 150,000 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] Mikkeneko
Theme: Competence, Complete AUs, Mythical Creatures (Vampires & Demons), Hurt/Comfort, Novel-Length Fic

Summary: Ceres and Nihon are on the brink of war, and Kurogane and Fai must struggle to balance their loyalties to their home countries with the pressing demands of survival - for themselves, their countries, and for their world.

Reccer's Notes: So, wow, this is a monster of a fic, an action/adventure/angstfest worthy of Tsubasa. Like a lot of epic fic, it could do with a tighter edit, but the pacing is splendid, the horror is horrifying, the action is exciting, Fai is his tortured angstmuffin smiling self and Kurogane is stoic and lovely, and there's a large ensemble cast being morally complicated and romantic in every direction. I'm reccing it for this theme because while Fai is rather broken, he and Kurogane are both unparalleled at what they do, and that's a major theme in the fic.

Story Links: The Wizards of Ceres (AO3)
cest_what: (Austen girls)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: Legal Drug | Drug and Drop
Characters/Pairings: Rikuou/Kazahaya
Rating: PG
Length: 3800 words
Author Links: Unknown
Theme: Small Fandoms

Summary: Kazahaya felt like he had to check into one of those detox clinics just to enjoy his day off.

Reccer's Notes: This has some spark, Kazahaya hissing and spitting at Rikuou occasionally, but overall it's a quiet and rather lovely story. I really liked the pet store scene, Rikuou's accidental response there, and just the things that remain unspoken but discernable all the same. It's difficult to find good fic for this fandom, but this one is great.

Story Links: At the old Yuletide archive

Tagging note for mod: this manga was originally known in English as Legal Drug (or Gouhou Drug), then went on hiatus and has since been resumed as Drug and Drop. Tag as you see fit! (Going forward, Drug and Drop will probably become the more common name.)
cest_what: (Default)
[personal profile] cest_what
Fandom: xxxHolic
Characters/Pairings: Jorougumo/Yaobikuni
Rating: Teen
Length: 12,000 words
Author Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] ophelietta
Theme: Small Fandoms, Rare Pairings, Female Characters, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Characters

Summary: A cranky spider monarch. The chick who ate the Little Mermaid. Definitely not a match made in any Shintoist idea of heaven. Featuring haiku, witty servants, baby-eating priests, ornamental fish ponds, and fluffy angst.

Really though, it's a love story.

Reccer's Notes: Remember the time Watanuki tried to set up a spider queen with a mermaid eater? This is their story, and it's wonderful. The aesthetic is exactly right, xxxHolic's intertwining of folklore and modern urban sensibilities (Jorougumo's relationship with her longsuffering teenaged steward is delightful). But more than that, the love story itself is super compelling. There's very little canon to be going on for these characters, but the story the author's spun out of the yaobikuni's patiently suffering love and the jorougumo's disgusted words about self-sacrifice to Watanuki at their first meeting is utterly believable. I love everyone in this story.

This would also be very easy to read as original fiction, if you like urban folkloric f/f stories about gothic lolita spider queens falling in love and bitching about it.

(Warning for a brief description of past forced prostitution.)

Story Links: Pearls That Were Her Eyes (AO3)
kadytheredpanda: (Default)
[personal profile] kadytheredpanda
Fandom:  Cardcaptor Sakura
Characters/Pairings:  Eriol/Tomoyo,
Rating:  G
Length:  540 words
Author Links:  [livejournal.com profile] dropsofviolet 
Theme:  pretend couple, comfortfic

Summary:  People were starting to talk about Tomoyo, about how she might love her best friend too much.  Eriol is having a smiliar problem.  The pair find a solution.

Reccer's Notes:  This is one of my favorite CCS fics. As short as it is, it always gives me a smile and a fuzzy feeling every time I read it. This is so cute and everyone is written beautifully.

Story Links: Date

snowynight: colourful musical note (Default)
[personal profile] snowynight
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura/Princess Tutu.
Pairing: none
Length: 879
Author Links: [livejournal.com profile] allira_dream
Theme: Crossovers/Fusions
Summary: If you are to create Illusion, is there a better place than a fairytale to do so?

Reccer's Notes: A brilliant meta fiction on narrative, writers, and illusion with great characterization.

Warning: Spoiler for Princess Tutu
Story Links: All That's Best of Dark and Bright

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