This entry was written for hollowhearts' prompt, "rec 3 of your all time favourite fics and talk about why you like them".

These are all fic that I've read over and over, downloaded to my device and carried around with me like a security blanket. I have read them on public transit, bundled up in queues, and on dark nights without internet.

meditations ex post facto by singlecrow
Guardian | 9,253 words | PG | Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Summary: "It is very tedious,” Professor Shen agrees, setting down his cup of tea. “I admire your forbearance.”
“I have no forbearance,” Zhao Yunlan assures him. “I get drunk a lot and throw things.”
or, the lawyers AU that no one asked for.
     + This is the one fic that I've been carrying around with me lately - I have an old phone with storage limitations, so this really is my de facto desert island fic right now. I love it. It is team and minor shenanigans and being kind of incompetent at bits of your life and in a little bit of awe of those around you that have their shit together, who are accomplished and wonderful and great, and finding your people and maybe being more competent than you've let yourself realise. It's about idealism and the utter shit show that is administration and the world we live in in general, which is eminently relatable. It's also a stylistic delight, peppered with wonderful lines like, “I am a paragon of virtue. I have all my own teeth and I’m a lawyer. Any mother would be proud.” It reminds me of The West Wing and of Slings & Arrows, a bit, with the way that it approaches life, and it is just about the perfect length, to take me out of the world for a little bit, and return me happier, soothed.

Rumor Has It by gyzym
Glee | 8,351 words | R | Santana Lopez/OFC
Summary: In which Santana Lopez learns the hard way that a life can never be ruined, only lived, and lived, and lived.
     + I read this fic a lot during a time in my life where I was shifting gears a little bit and also actively seeking out in-person queer community, trying to shape my life into something other than it had been. That's kind of what this fic is: it takes Santana from the end of high school to her early thirties and has her meeting her people, figuring out what she wants to do with her life and building that. Santana reconciles with her past in this as a result of that process of finding herself, and that's an important narrative, I think.
I've a visceral negative reaction to the question, "If you could change anything in your past, what would it be?" Because it has felt like such an awful invasive question, and because I don't know who I would be, without that awful thing. Without any awful thing. This is a fic that takes that holistic view and has a character that embraces themselves in answering that question for themselves*, and I just really appreciate that.
*It's never explicitly posed, for the record.

(This Is) Not a Statement by seperis
American Idol RPF | 57,331 words | NC-17 | Kris Allen/Adam Lambert
"You get you don't have to take up a grand gesture lifestyle so I feel secure in your affections, right? I feel pretty secure."
     + It's been a few years, but I have read this fic so many times, and have done the thing where you finish reading and immediately begin rereading the fic - more than once, probably. I loved Adam and Kris' friendship in the beginning of this, how it doesn't quite follow the carefully set out borders of straight male friendship, how it reminds me of, like, intense female academic friendships from the era of Boston marriages, filled with a kind of queer romanticism and friendship in the absence or presence of a sexual relationship. I like the slow unfurling of that friendship into something else. I also like how Katy isn't "shrill", doesn't die, has her own goals, and the dissolution of their marriage is a slow thing. I like how Kris and Adam have fights, and talk about boundaries.
I like that this fic deals with sexual assault by a fleshed out original character, and that it is a teaching thing, a yes, men can be the victims of sexual assault and that assault is never excused, not the victim's fault. I like how fleshed out the characters and their relationships are, that Adam and Kris each have their own separate friend groups and coworkers, and also have relationships with the people in each other's lives.
There's a kind of lush pulpiness in this work that I am forever weak to, and a depth and intensity that I find really compelling; it has things to say, about the media representation of Adam Lambert and about relationships in general. I have a lot of fondness for it.

calvinahobbes prompted me with this after I'd put people talking to me about femslashy things on my wishlist for snowflake_challenge. February is coming, which means that, as I have for the last six years, the only fanworks that I'll be consuming or creating are female-centric ones, and since I'm a shipper there's a lot of femslash in that - Femslash February.

I tend to read more slash than anything else during the rest of the year. I like reading a lot of variations of the same story told over, and over. There's more slash so there are more variations available to me there and the size of slash fandom makes it easier to find works. I have deep roots there and I realised back in 2010 that it was really easy for me to read slash, but that I wanted to read more stories about women. Cutting male-centric fanworks out of my life completely was the easiest way, for me, to make sure that I consume fanworks about women. So, I sort of live in my own self-created fannish lesbian utopia for a month. Since I've started doing that the amount of fanworks I read about women has gone up in the other months, too; it's been a success for me, and I've made some really cool discoveries because of it. It's led me to all kinds of canons and there are all kinds of awesome femslash fanworks.

I need stories about women in my life. I need stories about queer women in my life. I am a woman, and I am queer. Those stories can be like water. Sometimes I'll run into a queer woman who will say something like, "It's a piece of shit, but it's got lesbians in it, so I'll be watching it." ...and, oh man. There's a Star Wars gif going around tumblr of Rey abruptly stopping when a ship is blown up in front of her, saying "the garbage will do" and abruptly turning and heading toward the Millenium Falcon; it's captioned with something like "when you have read all the good fic about your OTP." ...and that's it, it's that feeling, only I feel like very few of us have ever gotten used to consistently good content, we just want to see queer ladies represented and we don't have a whole lot of choices. I have watched some terrible, terrible media because of this.

Representation is so important. There's a quote by José Esteban Muñoz: "Heteronormative culture makes queers think that both past and future do not belong to them. All we are allowed to imagine is barely surviving in the present.” Stories are how we tell each other about our past and our future. Erasing queers from histories, from stories, can make it feel like we're not supposed to be here at all.

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NINJA by skoosiepants
Bandom/Disney RPF
Rating: PG-13
*We are your losers, your loud weirdoes, your science stars, your shy, retiring band geeks*, Kevin thinks, and sets off for the stage.
I love this fic, because, in part, I think it hits on one of the fundamental truths of high school, that you'll probably spend most of it convinced you're a loser or a freak. I also love that line, Kevin's interior monologue as he goes on stage, because it is awesome and defiant and it has stuck with me over, actually, a couple of months at this point. The fic is about Mike Carden of The Academy Is... and Kevin Jonas of The Jonas Brothers, and, well, pretty much all of bandom. It's an AU wherein Kevin and a number of other people are part of a wee little group in high school that have a secret music blog and a secret band. It's pretty wonderful. It's this fantastically detailed little universe and there are actual blog entries provided, complete with set-lists and blogger snarking. There's all of this awesome teenaged flailing that doesn't trip my embarrassment squick. It's fantastic.

The Call by mistokitt
Stargate: Atlantis
Rating: PG
The realization hit him fairly quickly at that point, he was sitting with the outcasts. The loners who weren't quite loners, but were never going to be a part of the clumps and groups and easily labeled segments of their peers. Sheppard smiled to himself. He was sitting with the future leaders of Atlantis.
I've been fond of this story for years at this point. It's this fantastic little alternate universe wherein Atlantis was discovered and fought over generations before the SGA gang arrived in canon and is now an uber military base/research facility/university. I love the amount of detail fleshed out in this, how the author explains so much of the mechanics of the 'verse and where the characters slot into it. The Atlantis depicted in here reminds me a little bit of the Battle School in Ender's Game in some ways, partially because of John's role as outsider and the relationship that he has to Atlantis. There's some excellent depiction of Sheppard's particular brand of neuroses in this meshed with his being a teenager. It's also this wonderful typically sideways John and Rodney love story. It's cute and original.

She's A Warm Body by weyrdchic
Glee
Rating: R
"Heart on your sleeve" is such an easy cliche to throw around. Lauren wears her heart on her belly and her biceps and on the tip of her acid-barbed tongue, because if you're going to assume all kinds of shit when she walks around the corner anyway, then why shouldn't she fucking own it?
I love the Lauren in this story, for how perfectly she fleshes out the girl that we see onscreen and for how incredibly kick-ass she is. I love her for her confidence, her cynicism, her anger, and her put-on indifference; she's this amazing teenager and fantastic person. This fic is about her and how she becomes part of the glee club. I love that for all that she's sometimes an observer in this fic she never ceases to be uniquely herself, is never a device through which other people's stories are told. There's some Lauren/Puck action in here and some other canon pairings as well but the story is essentially a fantastically executed character study. It's all the things that the Lauren depicted in it is; it's wonderful.