Dreamwidth style system discussion

The Old Guard is a superhero movie about a bunch of inexplicably immortal mercenearies. >Superheroes are totally not my thing, I watched this movie because it had one of my Italian actor crushes, Luca Marinelli. Then I checked out the fic mostly only because sixthlight was writing in this fandom. See, I'm an extremely loyal reader. If I like an author I will try and read any stories they publish, no matter the fandom. I knew I was going to like whatever sixthlight was going to dish out. I was right. Also, Luca Marinelli played a medieval nobleman from my own hometown!And he was half of a canonical gay couple.

Predictably, my favourite stories are AU of the no-superhero-power kind. They can be read with little to no knowledge of canon and can be enjoyed as the tropetastic romance they are.

[https://archiveofourown.org/works/28066215/chapters/68759232](marriage of (in)convenience). Modern Royalty AU. In which my hometown is a small principality, Ruritania-style. Lolol. To be fair, Joe did know there were some things Nicky wasn’t quite telling him. But it didn’t matter to him who Nicky’s ancestors had been. What mattered was Nicky, who was kind, and thoughtful, and relentlessly committed to doing the right thing, including his share of the dishes. Really, what else did you need to know that someone was a keeper? I don't know why I have such a soft spot for modern monarchy romance but I just do. I'm very sad I can no longer link to the best of the lot, the X-Men royalty AU by Yahtzee (it's been published as proper romance! I bought it!).

Diplomatic Complications.A classic arranged marriage trope, but Yusuf is the nervous groom who gets shipped off to a strange country.

In The Heat of The Moment. This is history-flavoured fantasy and all names of historical locations should not be taken as referring to the serious historical nations/cities but, uh, places vaguely like them and vaguely located the same in relation to each other but with (checks notes) complete cross-faith acceptance of gay marriage, contact with the New World, and definitely no Crusades. We're all here for the arranged marriage romcom and that's just how it has to be. I also have, quite evidently, a thing for arranged marriage. :D This awesome story also comes as a podfic, by greedy_dancer.

The Pitt

except for breath, except for everything by sawdustdiamonds Pittsburgh Doctor Sentenced to Five Years in Drug Diversion and Theft Case. At 6:30 PM on a July evening, everyone in the city knew about Dr. Frank Langdon. This a WIP but it's one of the most powerful pieces of fiction I've ever read, It's emotionally devastating, brace yourselves. The best kind of what if/AU, the one which teaches you something about the fuckedupness of our world, in this instance the prison system in the US (the one in my country is equally inhumane).

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up with this meme, heh. Biting more than I can chew is the story of my life, basically. I'll just make a post whenever I can, my perfectionist tendencies be damned.

With this out of the way, this is surely another fandom that needs no introduction. I also know it's problematic for many thanks to JKR turning out to be a horrible, horrible human being. I totally can understand if you decide to give this a pass. I can still enjoy fic about this universe, though. I'm sure that my recs are familiar to anyone reading in this fandom, but they are big favourites for a reason, I guess. As usual, the stories I like the most are those that have little to do with canon, in terms of plot. I prefer fic set after the end of the war, preferably ignoring the blasted epilogue, with all our heroes grown-up (and fucked-up). I also was never into the Marauders, like at all.

To start you off, you could pick any of astolat's HP stories at random and be blown away by her talent. Most are Harry/Draco, but she just posted a Draco/Hermione fic only the other day. My favourite is House Proud, Harry/Draco, 23K, His house liked Draco Malfoy more than him. The snark, the fun, the romance. They slay me. The podfic by Lazulus is sublime.

Hermione Granger's Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run by waspabi. 93 K. AU for the Deathly Hallows, also huge canon divergence, Harry grew up as a muggle and never went to Hogwarts. It's also Harry/Draco eventually but the shipping is not the selling point. 'You're a wizard, Harry' is easier to hear from a half-giant when you're eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you're seventeen and late for work. Luckily for me Lazulus podficced this too. What a masterpiece.

What we Pretend We Can't See by gyzym. 131 K. Draco/Harry Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought. I've only ever consumed this as a podfic, which was made by the amazing FayJay.

I must say back in the day I read a lot of Hermione/Snape, but most of it is no longer accessible or err, a bit crap, when I was able to re-read it with more adult eyes. Still, I wanted to rec at least one story, which is really not quite romance (no HEA) but it has the big plus of having an IC Snape (so a complete dickhead): Chaos is Come Again by Aashby. There's some iffy consent, this was written well before content warnings were a thing. The story can only be downloaded from here, AFAIK. I'm also quoting the summary from that review because I'm lazy: "A decade or more after the defeat of Voldemort, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger work together to stop the Ministry from grossly misusing its power to solve wizarding Britain’s genetic problems. Starts with Marriage Law, and approaches near dystopian levels of corruption." There's a lot of plot in this fic. Lots of politics. Some spying/intrigue. Could have benefited from an editor helping the author with the pacing...Still, totally worth reading.

I also enjoyed Harry/Luna quite a lot, but unfortunately my pre-Ao3 bookmarks for the few good stories I'd found are all broken. It's so sad when we lose pieces of fandom history. :(

The Pitt

I don't need to rec avocadomoon to anyone who's into Mel/Frank. There's a reason her stories are the ones with the highest number of hits on the Ao3. My favourite of hers is Confidence Game. 72K. "Everything's fucking falling apart," Abby croaked, her voice thick with snot. "And you're - of course you're like this, you're fucking nice. Oh my God." "I'm not that nice!" Mel said frantically. I stole your husband, she thought. For example. How Mel and Frank could have got together after the end of S1. Meg has written several iterations of this, all wonderful. She gets how messy these two would be, how complicated everything would be...and she makes it work. In this one Abby is an antagonist. And yet so human you can't help sympathising.