A Week of Spies:

A Week of Spies: Alias Fic Recs

Culled from a week's worth of blog entries while I worked on my nominations for the Festival of Fic.

All stories can be found at Credit Dauphine, the Alias Fic Archive.

Day 1 (May 18, 2002) Anyhow, in my brief time at the computer--when I should be answering email, but that takes effort--I'm reading fic. I want to get my nominations in for the Credit Dauphine Festival of Fic. I'm always disgustedly organized about awards, so I have printouts and notes and all sorts of things. In the process, I'm discovering some great stories I hadn't read before. You only get a couple today; I've been at this most of the day, reading alphabetically by author, and I'm just finishing the Bs. I read two stories, take a nap, read two stories, eat something... Angela Evans has done some Jackfic I liked, but I also like an angsty little vignette called Glissade about Sydney dealing with Danny's death that I found very...I won't say "realistic," as I've never been in Sydney's position, but it worked for me. Speaking of Sydney-based fics, Ashni wrote a challenge fic called Oh Crying Souls that can be read as almost a companion piece to the above story...plus I like her (his?) Action!Sydney. Aquarian Lady/Waterdancer wrote The View. Hee! Funny Francie! Sexy Francie! I love it. Bella Lumina. What can I say that hasn't been said better and more often by everyone else? (Watch while I say it anyway.) She's got this great lyrical style, and then when you're hip-deep in that she pops out with a line so funny your cats run away from you. My current favorite, from Rules of Engagement, is Weiss describing Sydney's job: "Retrieve the device, take down the three-hundred-pound guard, kiss up to the owner, and run like hell," he elaborated. "Remember Crete? She almost blew up in Crete!" Read all her stuff. There, that was easy. g
Day 2 (May 19, 2002) On to the Cs... A Dame Like This by chocolate queen is Bogart Does Alias, and I had a lot of fun imagining Vaughn as a private eye. ILoveMichael by Cresmoon is oddly named, but a fun piece of Halloween fluff. I recommend it just so you can laugh yourself silly over Vaughn's costume. chortle I've recommended darkstar before, and I will again. I love all her stuff, although like most people jodhpur is my favorite. darkstar is a brilliant writer: (Go down the list, check off what you have left, what you've lost along the way. Innocence, gone. Faith, gone. Starlight in palms, gone. Gone, gone, gone. Broken down. Casualties of war. Love, gone. No, wait. Love: damaged, burnt to the core but not broken.) (from Shades of Blue) Diana's Running is a WIP, and I don't usually recommend those, but even if you read the first section as a vignette it's still good. Dustbunny. (It occurs to me I've just recommended everyone in the Ds. Shut up.) The Dead Cell Club. What I would have paid to see this onscreen. Will and Vaughn, bonding over drinks. Hee! I like the rest of her stuff too--Photograph is another entry in the DeadVaughnSr category, a mini-genre I'm starting to develop a weakness for. On to the Es...I'm feeling ambitious (okay, I can't sleep). Elizabeth is best known for _________, but Of the Earth is brilliant, too. O by Gophish is classic SydneyAngst.
Day 3 (May 20, 2002) H: Hillary should be nominated for Funniest Author's Notes. (From Heavens Earth: "Last call for you to jump off the angst train. We are officially leaving the station.") She's great with the plot twists. (Don't start Memento Mori unless you're willing to sit at the end of chapter eight making little squeaking noises.) She's got Broody!Vaughn nailed. (From Notturno: "She smiles, and for a second I smile back at her, but then I remember how moody and introspective I am, and I revert back to staring at wine bottles." Heehee!) And, you know, read the rest of it too. :) I: Icyfire, aka Robin. Who I've already recommended in nauseating detail. Don't care. Go read her again. g There's a great bit in The Screams Inside: "[Jack's] arms performed an action they had not done in twenty years. They hugged his daughter to him." It's so perfect, because Jack and his emotions are on two different planets, and it's the perfect illustration of his issues at this point in the story. Blows me away. J: (This might be a long one) Jamie. In the Dark. Say it with me: Awwww.... g I love this story! I remember telling Jamie when I first read it that it's one of those stories that becomes part of your own personal canon...there's what's on the show, and there's what happens in this movie theatre, and they're both real, dammit! Jedi Princess. Code. I hate stories that tell someone's POV during an episode. Except I love this. So, whatever. And Conclusions: "You remind yourself firmly that this is not a bash - Vaughn day, and no matter how cute he looks when he's flustered, you do have a mission to complete." chortle JenC. You know, I'd feel bad about recommending her, since she's my best friend...except she's wonderful. Father Figure for a great Syd/Jack relationship; Walkabout for Laura's POV. Jennifer-Oksana. For the Love of the Game. Getting inside Anna Espinoza's head--scary and fascinating all at once. Loved it. Jessica S. Crumble. Vaughn POV (my personal favorite) with math jokes! Sorry, I need to clean out the tax preparer part of my brain. Tomorrow: Ks. Ls. eeep.
Day 4 (May 21, 2002) Recs already: K: Kara has got to be, hands down, the most prolific author in Alias fandom. She's got a gift for plot that--well, everyone knows my abilities in that area are limited. I think she's kind of a stream-of-consciousness writer, so her stories look like first drafts to me. I can't read her without doing mental edits. Possibly my problem, not hers. :) Of her stories, my favorites are Memory Loss and Broken. Karen T. Who'll Stop the Rain. One of those stories that I could easily see happening on the show. Great work with Dixon, making him more than just the token partner, and the scenes at home with Will and Francie are completely realistic. Kat. I love Kat. Have her blog on speed-dial, read all her stuff repeatedly...it's a thing. American Triangle deserves a blog all its own...remind me someone that I said that after this wave of fic recs ends? Easy is very NC-17, and I couldn't decide if I needed a shower or a cigarette afterwards. I loved Weiss in this story--he was the perfect best friend in this, as he was in the series until I wanted to smack him with a frying pan the last couple of eps. And The House that Jack Built is good Jackfic, and you don't often see the S/Vers wandering that way, so it doubly impressed me. You can read Merci by Kate Andrews, but you'll have to wipe off my drool stains first. Oh...my...mmph! And she does Ironic!Vaughn sooo well. Okay, we're gonna stop here for the night. The Ls are another page of stories, and, well, I'm still drooling over Merci. Yum. Yum, yum, yum.
Day 5 (May 22, 2002) L: Labyrinthine (aka Jess) is...what's the best way to put this? I think of her as the archetypal Alias fic writer. When you think about what makes Alias fic stand out from other fandoms--well-thought-out plots, sentences structured within an inch of their lives, imagery and symbolism that would make Byron weep with envy, and oh, yeah, angst--Jess has got all that in her stories. My favorites? Expired Ophelia (the balancing of Will's freaky nightmare, which takes place in five different rooms, and the different settings of his daytime life, is just brilliant), Fugue (yummy OverThinking!Vaughn) and Schism (more of the same, and even yummier). And can I just say, more Full Circle? Like, now? Ladyfiery. fans self Wow. Dude. Willporn. Good Willporn. Read Penance first, and then its quasi-sequel Candyland, but only if you're 18 or older. Lara. My favorite line of hers, from Marilyn and Rosie: "He longs for the days when he was competing with a ghost, a crazy reporter, and protocol." My favorite stories, though, are currently Spark and its sequel Repurcussions--great plotting, and cool little character bits for both the series characters ("Sloane greeted them with a brisk, 'Good morning, people,' and an evil eye toward Marshall, who had picked the wrong time to slurp from his coffee mug.") and the original ones (the CIA tech guys are a blast). Looking forward to her newest "monstrosity," as she calls it. Lexx with Mala: Half Circle of Hell. It makes sense that the only slash I've found in this fandom is a) femslash and b) also S/V UST. Cool! Speaking of Mala, Queen of the second-person POV (how the heck does she do it?). Can't pick just one story. Read 'em all. But I guess you could start with Pirouette for some really good Vaughn angst, and Silent Reverie for an one of my favorite endings ever.
Day 6 (May 23, 2002) Relativity by Peregrine is unexpected at every turn (you're not going to believe what happens to Marshall, sexy (NC-17 sexy, kiddies) and...just funny: While I connect the dots of desire, Arvin asks me a question and I throw back an appropriate answer. My left brain is occupied with lust and my right brain works on his problem. That's called multi-tasking, and I'd be dead without it. I actually have a secret compartment in my cerebral cortex that I reserve for my CIA missions, but that's another story. There were a couple of bits near the end that didn't ring right for me, but overall a really kickass story. Pharo is one of the goddesses of Alias fic. Flawed is probably my favorite story of hers (VaughnSr stories...love VaughnSr stories!). No, Futility (I'm always inspired to write sappy futurefic based on this). No... My only...not even a quibble, really...she has these great one-word story titles that my brain refuses to process. "Ice is the one where...it's cold or something...?" (ha.) Phoebsfan. Journalists Anonymous. dies laughing Precious Jax. A Thousand Words. Hey, remember back when we thought "The Confession" inspired a lot of fic? g But this is a favorite. I'm on tenterhooks--tenderhooks? You know what I mean--waiting for the next chapter of An End to All Things. I love that this gives Vaughn the same kind of stake in everything that Sydney has. Oh, and Under the Influence. "If he only knew that Sydney could forcibly remove me with one hand and a foot while maintaining a conversation on the proper dinner wear to use at a bah mitzvah." hysterical giggling Drunk--Vaughn--love--drunk--Vaughn!!!! I know I've already recommended Rach. There's The Envelope (strong R), Jekyll Island (WIP) (shush, Rach, I like it), The Magic of Merlot (not that you can walk anywhere in LA in ten minutes, but that's okay), The Mornings Story (WIP, want more!) and last but never least A Stranger's Life. Rhiannon, aka Lizbet, who should really write more fic for this show. Or do a vid so I don't have to. Are you listening, Plague? Anyhow, Alternates will always be one of my favorite stories (and I adore the graphic that Hill added when she archived it at CD). sigh Miss Danny. My favorite Rhythm story is Love Letters and Kalashnikovs, but I just like her style overall. ("Now, final requests are pretty useless things; there's only one thing you really want--for them not to kill you--and that's the one thing they're not gonna go for.") Every time I wander past her author page on ff.net, I stop and reread that story, and it always makes me smile. (Sorry, kiddo--I know you'd rather make me cry.) RJ Anderson--The Ties that Bind--Awww! S/V wonderfulness! I can't get to Whirlpool Heart at the moment, because ff.net is down, but I'm sure it's just as good. Rocknpnay's The Usual Suspects. The last line of this story just makes it all work. It's amazing. Rocknvaughn's Behind the Scenes is another of those stories that I'm convinced must have actually happened, even if I never saw it onscreen. Jack and Devlin discuss the multiple problems that Vaughn's "handling" of Sydney may cause.
Day 7 (May 24, 2002) S: Sara C's The Curtain Rises has a great concept (I laughed myself silly throughout the first half) that gets bogged down a bit too much in shipperness (I can't believe I just said that. Who's been drugging my Coke Classic?), but you still have to read that first half. still giggling Souris is psychic (Answers was written before "The Confession"), funny and angsty (Do What You Have to Do is both), she can plot, dammit (The French Connection), and did I mention the angst (Reverberations)? Yeah. Love her. Sydney Real wrote A Day in the Life Of and...I believe the expression is "wig." Seriously. But in a funny way. Just read the damn story. Thorne needs to write more. Period, full stop. Nepravda is one of my favorite SydneyAngst pieces, and Modo Demum Veritas (NC-17) made me like Will. Stop that! V. Alexis wrote a fic in script format called Heist. I was really impressed with the use of the format--usually stories written as scripts leave me flat. I had some problems with the dialogue (lots of filler lines), but they might have just been more obvious because of the script thing. Valerina specializes in Vaughn angst (who doesn't?). Rain is a great example. Vlada's Truth Serum is a great AU of what Syd's life could have been, and Wants is a great look at Vaughn and Alice's relationship.

...and that's all, folks! Damn, I just read about 90% of what's archived at CD in a week.

Oy.

Photos from www.abc.com and used without permission.

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Day 1 (May 18, 2002) Anyhow, in my brief time at the computer--when I should be answering email, but that takes effort--I'm reading fic. I want to get my nominations in for the Credit Dauphine Festival of Fic. I'm always disgustedly organized about awards, so I have printouts and notes and all sorts of things. In the process, I'm discovering some great stories I hadn't read before. You only get a couple today; I've been at this most of the day, reading alphabetically by author, and I'm just finishing the Bs. I read two stories, take a nap, read two stories, eat something... Angela Evans has done some Jackfic I liked, but I also like an angsty little vignette called Glissade about Sydney dealing with Danny's death that I found very...I won't say "realistic," as I've never been in Sydney's position, but it worked for me. Speaking of Sydney-based fics, Ashni wrote a challenge fic called Oh Crying Souls that can be read as almost a companion piece to the above story...plus I like her (his?) Action!Sydney. Aquarian Lady/Waterdancer wrote The View. Hee! Funny Francie! Sexy Francie! I love it. Bella Lumina. What can I say that hasn't been said better and more often by everyone else? (Watch while I say it anyway.) She's got this great lyrical style, and then when you're hip-deep in that she pops out with a line so funny your cats run away from you. My current favorite, from Rules of Engagement, is Weiss describing Sydney's job: "Retrieve the device, take down the three-hundred-pound guard, kiss up to the owner, and run like hell," he elaborated. "Remember Crete? She almost blew up in Crete!" Read all her stuff. There, that was easy. g
Day 2 (May 19, 2002) On to the Cs... A Dame Like This by chocolate queen is Bogart Does Alias, and I had a lot of fun imagining Vaughn as a private eye. ILoveMichael by Cresmoon is oddly named, but a fun piece of Halloween fluff. I recommend it just so you can laugh yourself silly over Vaughn's costume. chortle I've recommended darkstar before, and I will again. I love all her stuff, although like most people jodhpur is my favorite. darkstar is a brilliant writer: (Go down the list, check off what you have left, what you've lost along the way. Innocence, gone. Faith, gone. Starlight in palms, gone. Gone, gone, gone. Broken down. Casualties of war. Love, gone. No, wait. Love: damaged, burnt to the core but not broken.) (from Shades of Blue) Diana's Running is a WIP, and I don't usually recommend those, but even if you read the first section as a vignette it's still good. Dustbunny. (It occurs to me I've just recommended everyone in the Ds. Shut up.) The Dead Cell Club. What I would have paid to see this onscreen. Will and Vaughn, bonding over drinks. Hee! I like the rest of her stuff too--Photograph is another entry in the DeadVaughnSr category, a mini-genre I'm starting to develop a weakness for. On to the Es...I'm feeling ambitious (okay, I can't sleep). Elizabeth is best known for _________, but Of the Earth is brilliant, too. O by Gophish is classic SydneyAngst.
Day 3 (May 20, 2002) H: Hillary should be nominated for Funniest Author's Notes. (From Heavens Earth: "Last call for you to jump off the angst train. We are officially leaving the station.") She's great with the plot twists. (Don't start Memento Mori unless you're willing to sit at the end of chapter eight making little squeaking noises.) She's got Broody!Vaughn nailed. (From Notturno: "She smiles, and for a second I smile back at her, but then I remember how moody and introspective I am, and I revert back to staring at wine bottles." Heehee!) And, you know, read the rest of it too. :) I: Icyfire, aka Robin. Who I've already recommended in nauseating detail. Don't care. Go read her again. g There's a great bit in The Screams Inside: "[Jack's] arms performed an action they had not done in twenty years. They hugged his daughter to him." It's so perfect, because Jack and his emotions are on two different planets, and it's the perfect illustration of his issues at this point in the story. Blows me away. J: (This might be a long one) Jamie. In the Dark. Say it with me: Awwww.... g I love this story! I remember telling Jamie when I first read it that it's one of those stories that becomes part of your own personal canon...there's what's on the show, and there's what happens in this movie theatre, and they're both real, dammit! Jedi Princess. Code. I hate stories that tell someone's POV during an episode. Except I love this. So, whatever. And Conclusions: "You remind yourself firmly that this is not a bash - Vaughn day, and no matter how cute he looks when he's flustered, you do have a mission to complete." chortle JenC. You know, I'd feel bad about recommending her, since she's my best friend...except she's wonderful. Father Figure for a great Syd/Jack relationship; Walkabout for Laura's POV. Jennifer-Oksana. For the Love of the Game. Getting inside Anna Espinoza's head--scary and fascinating all at once. Loved it. Jessica S. Crumble. Vaughn POV (my personal favorite) with math jokes! Sorry, I need to clean out the tax preparer part of my brain. Tomorrow: Ks. Ls. eeep.
Day 4 (May 21, 2002) Recs already: K: Kara has got to be, hands down, the most prolific author in Alias fandom. She's got a gift for plot that--well, everyone knows my abilities in that area are limited. I think she's kind of a stream-of-consciousness writer, so her stories look like first drafts to me. I can't read her without doing mental edits. Possibly my problem, not hers. :) Of her stories, my favorites are Memory Loss and Broken. Karen T. Who'll Stop the Rain. One of those stories that I could easily see happening on the show. Great work with Dixon, making him more than just the token partner, and the scenes at home with Will and Francie are completely realistic. Kat. I love Kat. Have her blog on speed-dial, read all her stuff repeatedly...it's a thing. American Triangle deserves a blog all its own...remind me someone that I said that after this wave of fic recs ends? Easy is very NC-17, and I couldn't decide if I needed a shower or a cigarette afterwards. I loved Weiss in this story--he was the perfect best friend in this, as he was in the series until I wanted to smack him with a frying pan the last couple of eps. And The House that Jack Built is good Jackfic, and you don't often see the S/Vers wandering that way, so it doubly impressed me. You can read Merci by Kate Andrews, but you'll have to wipe off my drool stains first. Oh...my...mmph! And she does Ironic!Vaughn sooo well. Okay, we're gonna stop here for the night. The Ls are another page of stories, and, well, I'm still drooling over Merci. Yum. Yum, yum, yum.
Day 5 (May 22, 2002) L: Labyrinthine (aka Jess) is...what's the best way to put this? I think of her as the archetypal Alias fic writer. When you think about what makes Alias fic stand out from other fandoms--well-thought-out plots, sentences structured within an inch of their lives, imagery and symbolism that would make Byron weep with envy, and oh, yeah, angst--Jess has got all that in her stories. My favorites? Expired Ophelia (the balancing of Will's freaky nightmare, which takes place in five different rooms, and the different settings of his daytime life, is just brilliant), Fugue (yummy OverThinking!Vaughn) and Schism (more of the same, and even yummier). And can I just say, more Full Circle? Like, now? Ladyfiery. fans self Wow. Dude. Willporn. Good Willporn. Read Penance first, and then its quasi-sequel Candyland, but only if you're 18 or older. Lara. My favorite line of hers, from Marilyn and Rosie: "He longs for the days when he was competing with a ghost, a crazy reporter, and protocol." My favorite stories, though, are currently Spark and its sequel Repurcussions--great plotting, and cool little character bits for both the series characters ("Sloane greeted them with a brisk, 'Good morning, people,' and an evil eye toward Marshall, who had picked the wrong time to slurp from his coffee mug.") and the original ones (the CIA tech guys are a blast). Looking forward to her newest "monstrosity," as she calls it. Lexx with Mala: Half Circle of Hell. It makes sense that the only slash I've found in this fandom is a) femslash and b) also S/V UST. Cool! Speaking of Mala, Queen of the second-person POV (how the heck does she do it?). Can't pick just one story. Read 'em all. But I guess you could start with Pirouette for some really good Vaughn angst, and Silent Reverie for an one of my favorite endings ever.
Day 6 (May 23, 2002) Relativity by Peregrine is unexpected at every turn (you're not going to believe what happens to Marshall, sexy (NC-17 sexy, kiddies) and...just funny: While I connect the dots of desire, Arvin asks me a question and I throw back an appropriate answer. My left brain is occupied with lust and my right brain works on his problem. That's called multi-tasking, and I'd be dead without it. I actually have a secret compartment in my cerebral cortex that I reserve for my CIA missions, but that's another story. There were a couple of bits near the end that didn't ring right for me, but overall a really kickass story. Pharo is one of the goddesses of Alias fic. Flawed is probably my favorite story of hers (VaughnSr stories...love VaughnSr stories!). No, Futility (I'm always inspired to write sappy futurefic based on this). No... My only...not even a quibble, really...she has these great one-word story titles that my brain refuses to process. "Ice is the one where...it's cold or something...?" (ha.) Phoebsfan. Journalists Anonymous. dies laughing Precious Jax. A Thousand Words. Hey, remember back when we thought "The Confession" inspired a lot of fic? g But this is a favorite. I'm on tenterhooks--tenderhooks? You know what I mean--waiting for the next chapter of An End to All Things. I love that this gives Vaughn the same kind of stake in everything that Sydney has. Oh, and Under the Influence. "If he only knew that Sydney could forcibly remove me with one hand and a foot while maintaining a conversation on the proper dinner wear to use at a bah mitzvah." hysterical giggling Drunk--Vaughn--love--drunk--Vaughn!!!! I know I've already recommended Rach. There's The Envelope (strong R), Jekyll Island (WIP) (shush, Rach, I like it), The Magic of Merlot (not that you can walk anywhere in LA in ten minutes, but that's okay), The Mornings Story (WIP, want more!) and last but never least A Stranger's Life. Rhiannon, aka Lizbet, who should really write more fic for this show. Or do a vid so I don't have to. Are you listening, Plague? Anyhow, Alternates will always be one of my favorite stories (and I adore the graphic that Hill added when she archived it at CD). sigh Miss Danny. My favorite Rhythm story is Love Letters and Kalashnikovs, but I just like her style overall. ("Now, final requests are pretty useless things; there's only one thing you really want--for them not to kill you--and that's the one thing they're not gonna go for.") Every time I wander past her author page on ff.net, I stop and reread that story, and it always makes me smile. (Sorry, kiddo--I know you'd rather make me cry.) RJ Anderson--The Ties that Bind--Awww! S/V wonderfulness! I can't get to Whirlpool Heart at the moment, because ff.net is down, but I'm sure it's just as good. Rocknpnay's The Usual Suspects. The last line of this story just makes it all work. It's amazing. Rocknvaughn's Behind the Scenes is another of those stories that I'm convinced must have actually happened, even if I never saw it onscreen. Jack and Devlin discuss the multiple problems that Vaughn's "handling" of Sydney may cause.
Day 7 (May 24, 2002) S: Sara C's The Curtain Rises has a great concept (I laughed myself silly throughout the first half) that gets bogged down a bit too much in shipperness (I can't believe I just said that. Who's been drugging my Coke Classic?), but you still have to read that first half. still giggling Souris is psychic (Answers was written before "The Confession"), funny and angsty (Do What You Have to Do is both), she can plot, dammit (The French Connection), and did I mention the angst (Reverberations)? Yeah. Love her. Sydney Real wrote A Day in the Life Of and...I believe the expression is "wig." Seriously. But in a funny way. Just read the damn story. Thorne needs to write more. Period, full stop. Nepravda is one of my favorite SydneyAngst pieces, and Modo Demum Veritas (NC-17) made me like Will. Stop that! V. Alexis wrote a fic in script format called Heist. I was really impressed with the use of the format--usually stories written as scripts leave me flat. I had some problems with the dialogue (lots of filler lines), but they might have just been more obvious because of the script thing. Valerina specializes in Vaughn angst (who doesn't?). Rain is a great example. Vlada's Truth Serum is a great AU of what Syd's life could have been, and Wants is a great look at Vaughn and Alice's relationship.