Moderator post: share your recs!

[fiercelydreamed]

 People have contributed lots of great prompts for the kickoff festival that starts in a week. If you haven't checked them out recently, I recommend you go peruse them and find some inspiration. To those of you who are already working on a work in response: full steam ahead!

In the meantime, let's whet each other's appetites and share recs for gen works about sexual and gender minority characters. Fanworks and original works are both welcome. To help people navigate the comments, please put the universe(s) of the works you're recommending in the title of your comments (example: "Recs for Veronica Mars, historical RPF, and original works"). In the rec, please give us some basic information about the work: title, author, rating/content information, and maybe a short excerpt or a quick explanation of why you're recommending it. Something like:

My Name Is John Sheppard: I'm a Mathematician, by thingswithwings.* SGA, mild swearing. Reason for the rec: Guys, it's SGA + Mathnet! And queer!Rodney without that being in any way The Point of The Story or leading to mandatory makeouts.

One last favor -- when you're linking, please make sure your link doesn't lead people to bypass the header information; it's important to give people the opportunity to decide whether they want to read/view the content there.

Rec away!


*As per usual, I'm picking on someone who I hope will forgive me. Seriously, though: Mathnet!

Comments

[naraht]

Are self-recs allowed, or not?

[torachan]

Haha, I was going to ask, too. ^_^;;;;;

[fiercelydreamed]

Yep!

[thingswithwings]

(this is hard! there are so many gen stories where I just ASSUME that the characters are queer, but where it's not really in the story itself . . . stupid queergen goggles! But here are some of my favourite stories that are actually queergen, rather than just in my imagination.)

SGA:

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose, by synecdochic - one of the most famous fics in this fandom, and a great example of queer gen. Absolutely beautiful story about how Rodney moves on after Atlantis.

Nondisclosure Agreement, by synecdochic - Twenty-five things John Sheppard doesn't talk about.

X, by trinityofone - actually an SGA/X-Men fusion, that I think does a wonderful job of using both the literal queer bodies of X-Men as well as the queer metaphor that X-Men makes use of, within an SGA context.

Five Times Meredith McKay Came Out, by ceitie - this story is a sequel to Storm Damage, which I love to pieces as a story about women dealing with (sexual) violence together, and it's in the same universe as Five Times Aiden Ford (Almost) Wished He Were On a Different Team, which is an adorable little story about this AU team. Basically it's a universe in which both McKay and Sheppard are women. And in which, as you can see from the one story title, Meredith McKay is queer.

as if we live by different laws, by me - this might be pushing the boundary of gen, because it does have a bit of a description of a sex scene in it, but to me it's mostly a little story about how Rodney and John are both gay and both know that about each other.

Calvin and Hobbes:

Transmogrification, by hyperfocused - a wonderful story about how Calvin - who is in this story not only queer but also wonderfully non-neurotypical - grows up.

(edited because I cannot TYPE today)

Recs for Supernatural, Firefly & Harry Potter

[such_heights]

Let me plunder my lgbtfest bookmarks!

Now You're A Man by cho_malfoy [Supernatural]

My relationship with SPN & its fandom is ... complicated, to say the least, but my love for this story is very simple. It's a beautiful story about gender identity and transition, and it fits into canon amazingly well.

Carbon, Pressure, Time by lilacsgirl [Firefly]

This really nails the tone of the show, and it does a great job of looking at different feelings with regard to gender that make perfect sense for the canon.

Those People by obfuscate3 [Harry Potter]

A queer Pansy Parkinson writes an essay on Wizarding LGBT history. The resulting snark is epic.

Re: Recs for Supernatural, Firefly & Harry Potter

[cesy]

That Pansy one is great. Very amusing.

Torchwood, Discworld

[sqbr]

Modern Love by penknife. Discworld. PG-13. A collection of drabbles about gender identity and sexuality among the dwarves of Ankh Morpork. The first and last are gen.

I know it's cheating to just search my gen bookmarks for anything Torchwood but it's a cute story:

General Wrongness in the Hub by travels_in_time Torchwood. G rated crack. I'm not sure how to rec this without ruining it, but it's short and fun.

Re: Torchwood, Discworld

[kindkit]

Cool recs. By the way, "Modern Love" isn't a drabble collection, it's a short story that happens to feature multiple characters.

Re: Torchwood, Discworld

[sqbr]

Huh. You know I think you're right. Which of course makes it ineligible. I think I liked it so much I was trying to repress the knowledge of it's ineligibility :) *apologises to mods for breaking the rules*

Re: Torchwood, Discworld

[kindkit]

Eep, making this awesome story ineligible was totally not my intention. And I honestly don't think it is. It's a gen story, IMO. There are some pairings in it, but it's not primarily about romantic/sexual relationships.

Re: Torchwood, Discworld

[sqbr]

HMM. Maybe. I suck at definitions.

You know what, let's say you're right, no point stressing over it now it's posted anyway.

Torchwood!

[lady_ganesh]

Trying to Communicate, slight background hints but mostly gen, and very funny.

Vid recs: Torchwood

[sqbr]

Since this is Torchwood both of these vids have some sexual/romantic content, but it's not central. Both have a fair amount of of violence and angst. They're also both awesome.

Smiley Faces by charmax. Team Torchwood and "how hard this life can be." (but you put on a smiling face) Like Captain Jack (and the show) it has a big cheesey grin hiding a delicious angsty centre. S1 and S2.

Pretty Little Horses by hollywoodgrrl. Jack Harkness. Torchwood's Pied Piper. Made after S3.

I was hoping I could use some of my cheery Captain Jack vids but on re-watching they all turned out to be rather Jack/Nine/Rose-ish :)

all Metal Gear, I am a fandom monogamist lately.

[thene]

G-A-M-E-S-W-E-P-L-A-Y by rainy_day; it's BB and Ocelot playing scrabble and, yep, cheating! Much crack and nods to canon here.

Bear by sunnymario; a lovely gen art of Vamp (who is queer in canon).


I hope these next few qualify as queer; they're about an odd!household/family - two adult men and a small girl who all live together (in a small aeroplane, in canon).

Parenting Adjustments by vili_koopa - a Christmas exchange fic written for the prompt "pre-MGS4 Snake-Otacon-Sunny happy light-hearted domesticity". It delivers.

Have a very MGS Christmas by sharky_chan - humour comic, and yes, another unseasonal Christmas rec.

The Emmerich Curse by may_flyer - a drabble about fragile names and fragile family bonds.

Dad!Snake by pants4pants - and a fanart about terrible parenting. Fluff and guns!

Narcissism is a Go

[lunabee34]

Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History SGA; implied Teyla/Elizabeth; in this AU retelling of "The Return," the ladies take back Atlantis.

Self-rec for Pirates of the Caribbean

[aris_tgd]

As long as we're self-reccing... one of the stories I wrote for remix, I Am The Very Model of a Cyberpunk Librarian, does have a pairing in it but is really more of an ensemble piece, and does have a transgender character who is not in any pairing, as well as some discussion of how lifestyle choices made by one group of people can be an example of hugely unexamined privilege while being an important part of another group of people's lives.