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Recs
by Thamiris
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I'm a slash-whore
who reads across fandoms, genres and authors, although Smallville
is my current favorite. Something must leap out, preferably lush
style, inventive plot, hot sex, strong characterization. Final note:
please send the authors the feedback they so deserve.
New Recs
I was going to write up more than
these nine recs, but RL dictates otherwise.
December
20, 2002
| Smallville
Beth Ann's Confidence.
Clark/Lex. NC-17. Drama. 84k |
A gorgeous multi-narrative
story with the voices split between Chloe, Lex and Clark. Absolutely
perfect Chloe voice, and she controls the story, the action of which revolves
around her curiosity about Lex. She's not the only stellar
aspect of the story: I'm burning with heat for the Lex/Clark relationship
here, which is smart and at points even vaguely disturbing but always romantic.
*fixed the link.
Here we have a story that begins with
a description of clothing, but as in all good strip teases, they're slowly
dropped, piece by piece, until we're left with a character study of Lex,
a dark, bitter, cancerous one.
The notes offer
an apology to Spillane and Hammett, and that should give you a clue to
the kind of story it is. It shoots faster than John Wayne on crack.
It wiggles and writhes like a stripper with an itch. Funny,
so damn funny, but it's the language that yanks me in, the clever way she
wraps her words together. And on top of it all, or maybe underneath,
or better yet, behind the glass like that pearly naked Lex, this story
is hot and romantic, too. Story-telling under the wacked-out
faux-noir insanity.
Jonathan isn't
a character I like easily, but here he's somehow purified, becoming the
best of what he is on the show, the edges still there, but...Well, I think
it's that Ingrid turns him into a human being better than John Schneider
can; hers acts with Academy-Award-winning precision, and he really is a
beautiful thing to watch. So touching how much he loves Clark, how
hard his life is, how stoic he can be. Cuts in a melancholy way.
| Smallville
Lenore's Balance.
Clark/Lex, Martha/Lex. PG-13. Drama. 28k |
I just read "Balance,"
and I loved it. It's the kind of story where the emotions come
out in the details -- and it's a story full of emotions. Lex
struggles to make sense of his life, tries to figure out where he fits
in relation to his father, his dead mother, to Martha and finally to Clark,
or maybe where he fits in the world overall, grappling with his "tendency
to oversimplify."
Lovely, thematic
story of Clark and his relationship to pain and heat. I love
how the story moves slowly through time, linking Clark's experiences with
others' pain until the narrative line shifts and it becomes about a different
kind of pain. Clark's guilt for the pain he causes is channelled
into something warmer with Lex.
| Smallville
Pearl-O's Drowning
in Syrup. Implid Clark/Lex. PG-13. Drama, Futurefic.
16k |
"Do you ever
get that feeling, where part of you is wishing you could go back to being
a kid and the way it was before, and just forget about everything -- but
then the other part of you is still waiting to finally get to be a grown-up?"
That's Chloe, who returns as an adult to Smallville and learns that
nostalgia's not all it's cracked up to be in this touching, rainshower
of a story.
Clark returns
to the bridge where it all began. Quiet and beautiful, with spikes.
I need to read more of Slod's work: it's subtle yet rich, the kind
that bites when you're not expecting it.
"I don't know,
Lois. When did Superman's dick become your moral yardstick?" This
line from Clark to Lois sums up everything that I like about this story.
It's not just that it's witty, which it is, or that it gives me a nice
bit of pleasure picturing Clark's cock, but because it captures the wacky
distortions of Clark's world. He's so delightfully human, and
I'm terribly in love with him, beautiful and befuddled as he is.
May 20,
2002
Clark reminisces
about his first kiss--and his second. He talks about his unexpected
reactions, and the story echoes this, shifting, taking me behind columns
to see mysteries. Sexy and insightful.
It's like Beth
took all of the things that I see when I watch SV, the friendship between
Clark and Pete, Lana's obsession with her dead parents, Chloe's goodness
and loyalty, and of course Lex and Clark's love for each other, and wove
them around a very darkly-romantic center. Read prepared to ache.
While I'm on a
bit of a strike against first-person stories, I broke that rule to swim
in this one. It seduced me with the dreamy, vaguely-surreal
first line and once I started, I couldn't stop. The writing
was too lyri-psychological to resist, and--see? It's so good
I even invented a whole new category just for this story.
"Planets," a second-person
narrative, has this lyrical quality, this poetic tempo and beauty that
still manages to capture Lex, what he's feeling, what he's thinking, without
reducing him to a single dimension.
| Smallville
Destina's Chrysalis.
Clark/Lex. R. Drama. 36k |
A complicated
story from Lex's point of view. Lex is dark-edged here, surrounded
by rich prose and subtle dialogue, and he wants, but his actions are counter-intuitive.
Brain-engaging with the right amount of emotional twists. In
both this and Prophet
of Eden,
Destina made me anxious; her stories are never predictable.
An epic story
that weaves present and future, and forces Lex to face some deep, dark
shit. Powerful, unforgettable story-telling that chews on your intestines.
An outstanding piece, and I highly recommend it.
| Smallville
Falada's Apple.
Clark/Lex. PG-13. Angst. 20k |
Some stories are
short and skimpy, and I want to buy them clothes. This wasn't one
of those. I love narratives where the writer bothers with details,
where the world within is sensual and surreal, not a haphazard creation
but a serious attempt to produce a viable universe. This is
what I found in Apple, a story where Clark comes to terms with his
feelings for Lex.
Lex wants something
from Clark, and his other demands--the "lipstick, candle wax, bondage,
videotape"--are all about eliciting it, whether he knows it or not.
Steamy, sweat-inducing story, with Hope's trademark literary touches.
She's goooood.
| Smallville
Hope's Stick Shift.
Clark/Lex. PG-13. First-time. |
Talent!
I love to read a story where the writer has it,where I know the fictive
goodness that I'm seeing isn't just fluke, but real. This is
what reading fanfic is all about, the pleasure in finding someone who can
put together words and ideas in a way that resonates, that turns the ordinary
into so much more. Stick Shift does that, turns this
story of a boy and his car, and another boy, into this wonderful, funny,
romantic story.
This is one of
the stories that helped me like Whitney. He became more than the
pretty, petulant football player because Ice gives him a personality here.
Whitney's strong and needy, confused and angsty--and hot for Lex (like
the rest of us). Lex seduces him, and it's of the good. Have
some ice water handy.
| Smallville
Jenn's Scars.
Clark/Lex. NC-17. PWP. 16k |
Clark learns Lex's
scars, then Lex paints him. Not an adequate description, but really,
I just want to moan and writhe and whisper, "Read with a fire extinguisher
handy." Only that's not fair to the story, which has the sweetly-ripe
prose that always makes me swoon, and an intensity to the relationship
that transforms it from a simple PWP--it's the definition of good erotica.
| Smallville
Kassie and Lar's Lumina
Series (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
Clark/Lex.
NC-17. Drama. Unfinished, but read it anyway. |
The story shifts
between Lex and Clark, who think and want. If that sounds unappealing,
don't be fooled: it's sharply-observant, intricately-detailed.
It's like a forest in the fairy tale, with a gingerbread house that you
could eat for days, and a lurking witch. I broke my no-serial-stories
for this one, and it was worth every second.
| Smallville
LaT's Misapprehension.
Implied Clark/Lex; Lex/f. PG-13. Angst. 12k |
There's so much
rush in fanfic, this speed to get everything out and run off, but LaT avoids
this, concentrating instead on Clark. It's vivid enough that I not
only saw his trek through the garden and inside the house, but also felt
it, all of it, from the little things, like his fond thought of his mother
and the flowers, to the hesitant consideration of his sexuality, to the
shocked knowledge that comes when he see Victoria and Lex in bed together.
| Smallville
Meredith Lynne's Ice.
Clark/Lex. NC-17. Romance. 48k |
At one point in
the story, right before he gives in to Clark, Lex thinks to himself, "No
defense against this, but he'd brought it on himself and it was so good".
That's very much how I felt reading this story. Even if I wanted
to resist Ice, because it's romantic and sweet under the layer of
Lexian suffering and I'm an angst-queen and above melting and swooning
and dying for the boys to be together, I couldn't. Because
I did melt and swoon and die. Damn you, Merry.
| Smallville
Te's Deep
Throat. Clark/Lex. NC-17. First-time. 24k |
Hot.
Brutally hot. Except that the story's not brutal at all, just
the heat of it, total sweaty summer day with Clark starting off in his
fantasy world, picturing and wanting and needing, then Lex showing up and
doing, fulfilling and giving. Panty-scorching, with Te's dialogue
that always sounds real.
| Smallville
Vera's Cotton.
Clark/Lex. PG-13. Drama. 4k |
I liked this story
a lot. I wasn't sure when I began to read, that I would; it's from
Martha's point of view, I'm terribly impatient with domesticity, but Vera
handled it so well that she won me over almost immediately.
In some ways it reminded me of Leon Rooke's A Bolt of White Cloth;
Vera connects each action of Martha's actions with her history, so that
each one feels like an emotional compass.
| Smallville
Wendi's Eros
and Agape. Clark/Lex; Clark/f. PG-13. Future-fic; comedy. |
I was prepared
for an all-out comedy, but this actually made me feel as well as giggle.
Because underneath
the jokes about bisexual superheroes needing therapy, and Wonder Woman
and her magic lasso, I found myself invested in adult Clark's attempts
to choose between Lex and Lois. As an adult, Clark Kent is just what
he's always been: torn and confused, still with that delicious farm-boy
charm that makes what he's doing seem sweetly-befuddled, and not cruel.
| Smallville
Zahra's End
Game. Clark/Lex. PG-13. Angst. 4k |
Lex quotes Monty
Python here, and I find that the story itself is structured almost as a
series of jokes, each with its own punchline. I don't mean that each
section is funny; I'm thinking more of the structure, how each paragraph
is capped with a zinger. If there's any humor here, and I do think there
is, it's in Lex's self-depracating comments, in his wry awareness of his
obsessive interest in being Clark's "first." Zahra rocks.
January
11, 2002
| Smallville
debchan's Snow.
Clark/Lex. NC-17. PWP. |
I don't have much
to say about this story, except that I might've experienced spontaneous
orgasm in the middle of it. Lex and Clark in a stalled car, and Lex
gets cold. Clark helps, and it's like sitting in front of a
fire--no, sitting in the fire. The dialogue's great;
she doesn't clutter it with lots of extraneous crap, and the characters
are the babes I know from Smallville, not any two guys engaged in
automative groping.
And not turn
this into the all-Deb, all-the-time rec page, but the R-rated Cake
and Pie is another Clark/Lex story worth reading, this one again
for the dialogue and the sweet deliciousness of the boys' interactions.
| Smallville
Keelywolfe's Earthbound.
Clark/Lex. NC-17. First-Time. 16k. |
Keely's Lex, who
narrates this story, is snarky and hurting, just the way I like him, vulnerable
and hating it, as he tries to make sense of his past. Lushly-told,
with Lex so bruised I felt it, and Clark there to do what he does best.
The sex matters--everything does in this fic, and it all works toward a
complex, gorgeous exploration of the hottest bald bad-boy since Yul Brenner.
Great rhythm, too.
December
23, 2001
| LA Confidential
12/23/01 debchan's Distal.
Bud White/Ed Exley. PG-13. Drama. |
Set after the
movie, this story focuses on Bud's life with Lynn in Bisbee.
It's one of those perfectly-economical pieces where the tone is established
more through what isn't said than what is, and this is not a happy story.
The end is a little cough of blood in a story that's a series of low, hard
punches. Deb's Smallville fic, Antigen,
is the same way, and I'd happily rec that, too. She's becoming
one of my favorite authors.
| Smallville
12/23/01
LaT's Reveal.
Clark/Lex. R, with voyeurism. Drama. |
An unseen Lionel
Luthor watches Lex and Clark make love. It's a very introspective
piece that gets right into Papa Luthor's head. Not a place
I'd spend my Christmas holidays, but LaT reproduces a believable voice
for him, and ultimately I felt for Lionel, even if I didn't particularly
like him. Like Lionel himself, this story is smart enough to
face what's disturbing, and it's stayed with me. In an ocean
of Smallville stories, that's a great compliment to LaT's thoughtful characterization
(okay, and I really got off on the voyeuristic element here).
Merry is a very
good technical writer, and I mean that in the best way, as someone who
cares about narrative cohesion: this story is well-crafted, especially
the sequel, with all of the pieces fitting perfectly. And the
pieces here form a funny, charming story with an inventive and amusing
MOTW. I wish that more writers had her understanding of form, and
could package a story in a way that would make Martha Stewart proud, as
Merry has here.
| Smallville
12/23/01
The Spike's The
Butterfly Effect. R. Clark/Lex (the rating is hers;
I'd give it a hard "G," since the story is essentially sex-free).
64k. Drama. |
Beautiful, powerful
story that made me cry. It's about destiny, which sounds pretentious,
but so isn't in Spike's hands. That girl can write,
with lovely, lyrical prose, but doesn't forget the emotion underneath,
as she tells from several viewpoints what happens when Lex tries to see
into his own future. I'll add Spike's NC-17 Ride
here, too, which is a very different story, but one destined to steam your
panties right off.
| Smallville/Batman
crossover. 12/23/01 Te's See
This. Lex/Lionel, Lex/Bruce Wayne. NC-17.
Incest.
52k. Drama. |
This pre-Smallville
story deals with Lex as he grows up, following him through some painful
twists and turns, including an incestuous relationship with his father,
and a relationship with a young Bruce Wayne. The writing is gorgeous,
lush and vivid like all of Te's work, and makes me want to hold Lex on
my lap and sing him lullabies.
Go here
for previous recs.
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