ISO really cool stories

[kindkit]

Thanks to a recommendation by sassbandit, I recently read helenish's story Take Clothes Off As Directed, a Stargate Atlantis AU set in a world in which human, or at least US-ian, culture is divided into two groups based on sexuality: subs and tops. This division carries much the same weight that gender does in our world and serves many of the same social functions. It's a fantastic premise, and although the story in the end didn't explore it as much as I would have liked, I'm still very glad I read it.

So, folks, can you rec me (fanfic) stories that do really innovative and interesting things like that? Stories that take their universe and give it a twist that changes everything, stories that genuinely reimagine and transform the text, or contest it, or bring out aspects of it that had been glossed over and ignored? They don't have to focus on gender or sexuality, and they don't have to be AU; it could be something as simple as calling into question the heroic-ness of the hero's actions, if the source text doesn't do that. Metafiction, agenda fic: it's all welcome so long as it's well-written and mind-blowing or at least mind-expanding in some way.

Besides "Take Clothes Off," other examples of the kind of thing I mean are Samdonne's "The Kids Aren't All Right" (I can't link to it because the URL I have is now listed as an "attack page" that's being blocked by my anti-virus program; anyway, this is the brilliant Iron Man story told as a Vanity Fair article) and gloss's Theses on a Philosophy of Power.

It doesn't matter if I'm not familiar with the fandom, provided the story isn't so fandom-dependent that it's incomprehensible to the uninitiated. I prefer gen and m/m slash, but all genres are okay, since I assume you're not going to rec me pure PWPs or pure shipfic.

Comments

[merrily]

Hi,

Here by the network function; commenting since I really like the parametres of your request. I loved both the stories you reference.

The thing that seems most what you're looking for is cesperanza's Written By The Victors (SGA). It's incredible -- a collection of texts (written by historians) arranged to tell the story of what happens after John Sheppard refuses to give Atlantis up. The texts are interspersed with more traditional third-person storytelling.

I can think of other things that change one key point to see what the outcome would be: copperbadge's Harry Potter AU, Stealing Harry, for example, where Sirius & Remus raise Harry, not the Dursleys. (If you'd like to follow up on looking at AUs for the qualities you're after, I have an extensive number bookmarked.

Anyway! Hope this was helpful. Am totally tracking this entry to see if there are more interesting things recc'd in this vein.

[lemposoi]

I wish I had something to really fit those specs, because those are excellent specs.

Astolat's The World Turned Upside Down (Master & Commander) has an early 19th century "plague" that body-sex-swaps those infected, and society deals by forcibly reassigning those people's genders but not taking away their military honours, etc. The author, Astolat, also wrote one Master & Commander fic with these kind of magic warrior bonds that a friend of mine swears is the best thing ever, but I haven't read it. If you really stretch the definition, there's Drastically Redefining Protocol (Merlin AU), in which the modern day British crown prince's prospective mate is a man.

I wish I had more original premises to link to. Good fics, though (the one I haven't read is reportedly so, anyway).

[lemposoi]

Oh, and if you haven't read it yet: Brownskirts: Fascism, Christianity and the Eternam Demon - a Buffy the Vampire Slayer essay (links to a PDF file).