sholio: sun on winter trees (Highlander-Duncan Amanda)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2011-04-21 04:59 pm

6 Highlander fic recs

Since I'm not doing too well at sitting down and putting together a comprehensive Highlander recs post, let's see how it goes reccing things a bit at a time! Today: two humor, two h/c, two long gen fics.



2 Humor

What's a Little Homicide Between Friends? by Amberlee - (gen, ~2000 wds) This is an awesome Highlander take on the "two characters get involved in a prank war" trope that crops up in most fandoms. Duncan and Methos take up competitive murder as a hobby ... murder of each other, naturally. This fic also features an awesome, hilarious Joe, who simply cannot believe what they've gotten themselves into this time.

Attention Shoppers by [livejournal.com profile] amand_r - (largely gen with a side of Amanda/Duncan/Methos, ~10K wds) This story could best be summed up as "Amanda convinces her friends to help her break into a Wal-Mart. Hilarity ensues." It totally reads like one of the show's heist episodes, except with a bit of Amanda/Duncan/Methos sex on the side (which I am never going to complain about *g*).


2 H/C

Good h/c (by which I mean "to my tastes", obviously *g*) is hard to come by in Highlander fandom, for obvious reasons -- there's not a whole lot you can do to characters who basically have two physical states, "healthy" and "dead" -- and the h/c which does exist is much more old-school and torture-based than is generally my cup of tea. Which makes it all the sweeter when I run into fics I like!


Past and Present, Hand in Hand by Calime - (gen, 2700 wds) Methos is, basically, tripping after a Quickening, and can't tell past from present; Duncan and Amanda try to ground him. This is funny and subtle and sweet without being cloying, as well being as a good Methos character piece. I think it's my very favorite h/c fic in the fandom so far; it just matches my tastes perfectly.

Tantalus by [livejournal.com profile] lferion - (some fairly subtle Duncan/Methos; otherwise gen; ~17K wds) I almost skipped this one because, well, torture: not my thing. But I was very glad I read it; it's long and gentle and lyrical and, for an interesting change, mostly outside POV. The story begins after Methos escapes from a prolonged torture session (... it's always Methos, isn't it?) when he's rescued by some women who run a commune in rural Canada; later there's an OC Watcher as well, not to mention Joe and Duncan. I really liked the OCs and the way that the story is deeply rooted in the love and trust between all three men, without doing too much wallowing in Methos's ~angst~ and ~woe~.


2 Long Gen

The Covenants Series: Incubus (~29K wds), Transferences (~15K wds) and Once Out of Nature (~25K wds) by [livejournal.com profile] selenak - A triptych of stories in which Cassandra and Methos are forced to work together post-series; there's also a lot of Amy Thomas in the second and third installment. These were the first long gen stories that I read in the fandom and they blew me away - they absolutely nail Cassandra, and Methos, and the morally convoluted, bittersweet feeling of the show. One thing I particularly love about these stories is the way that you see Methos through a bunch of different characters' eyes, and he's different each time - for example, even though Cassandra knows a side of him that no one else does (and she isn't wrong), it's not the only side of him ... There's just a really interesting handling of the show's complexity and the characters' complexity that I haven't encountered in very many HL stories at all. (My only complaint is that there's quite a bit of POV-switching, but I got used to it after a while.)

The Dawson Chronicles: The Price of Interference (~35K wds) and The Secret War (~24K wds) by [livejournal.com profile] keerawa - Two plotty fics that weave in and out of season four canon. The first deals mostly with Joe and Duncan patching things up after their falling-out in early season four; the second is Joe and Methos taking on the Hunters. Absolutely fantastic Joe POV and a really interesting take on season four canon that in some cases explains things better than the show did, or at least adds a really fascinating second layer to the canon events we saw.

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