gensplosion!

FANDOM: Star Wars (Prequels)
FIC LINK: What Is My Heritage? and Coming Home
AUTHOR LINK: Potboy
RATING/WARNING(S): G | violence, brief references to sexual violence
WIP?/WORD COUNT: Complete | 7,700 and 18,300 respectively
MAIN CHARACTERS: Qui-Gon Jinn, Yoda, Dooku

FIC SUMMARY: Two stories focusing on Qui-Gon Jinn as a young padawan, never quite able to fit in. In the first, Qui-Gon asks to be sent home to figure out where he belongs. In the second, Dooku enters the game and Yoda meddles.
Best read together.

RECCER'S NOTES: I rarely read "character as a Youth" stories, since the child protagonists are too often depicted as smaller, blander versions of their adult selves, but this story proves me wrong. Qui-Gon is remarkably well-written: he feels like a real person (who happens to be a child) and the essence of his character shines through every thought and action, in his choices and the way he reacts to events. He is himself, forty-odd years earlier, fundamentally different but lacking nothing. Dooku, too, is not-himself yet himself. There's no hidden seed of darkness: the darkness is right there in the open, yet he's a Jedi and a firmly moral person, albeit one whose morals do not necessarily agree with yours.

Excellent characterisation which does justice to all three main characters, some very sharp criticism/examination of the Jedi Order and finally, a stonking good adventure story. (Also a very satisfying answer to the question of who the hell was Qui-Gon's master: both, of course.) I love it, I love it, I love it.

Eight hundred years of Jedi experience, Yoda thought, and he was not prepared for this. So many Masters and Padawans, taking the same routes, making the same responses to the same problems, and after a while you no longer saw the faces. Only the process, only the Order itself in its monumental evolving beauty.

How had this boy happened now? A thousand years ago there had been Jedi like this - obeying the Force in their own way, and obeying nothing else. Strange, wild, uncomfortable beings, untameable, splendid, chaotic. A thousand years ago they had been needed, to fight the Sith. But the Sith were dead, and what the galaxy required now was Jedi who could bring order, and exist in order.

Given two W fics for the same fandom, I refuse to choose. Have both, and may they serve you well.

FANDOM: Attack on Titan
FIC LINK: wound deep in your chest, heartless
AUTHOR LINK: 100demons
RATING/WARNING(S): T | swearing, canon-typical violence
WIP?/WORD COUNT: Complete | 4,400
MAIN CHARACTERS: Levi, Hange Zoë, Erwin Smith

FIC SUMMARY: Be good or Levi will carve you up with his knives. Eat your greens or else Levi will come and cut your eyes out while you still breathe.

RECCER'S NOTES: A delightful, believable fic about Levi's early days in the Corps. (It also begins by quoting a Margaret Atwood poem, and how can you go wrong after that?) The language is vivid, precise, and humorous, and Levi and Hange's interactions are a thing of beauty.
Horse shit and sunrises.

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FANDOM: Attack on Titan
FIC LINK: We Are The Lost, We Are The Hunters
AUTHOR LINK: PresquePommes
RATING/WARNING(S): G | Mild spoiler for the first episode of Season 2 (ch. 35)
WIP?/WORD COUNT: Complete | 2,700
MAIN CHARACTERS: Levi, Sasha Braus

FIC SUMMARY:
"He realizes very quickly that of all people he could have been lost in the forest with, Sasha Braus is, without a doubt, the most preferable."
Because if the 104th was a graduating class, Sasha is the one who'd be voted "Most Likely To Survive Under Extreme Circumstances," and everybody who writes this scenario seems to forget that the extent of Levi's wilderness survival skills is made evident by one simple statement:
"Look at all these big-ass trees."

RECCER'S NOTES: This fic made me crave more Sasha-and-Levi stories. There aren't any, of course, and this is hardly surprising since I'm not sure the two have even spoken in canon, but despite (or perhaps because of) how dissimilar they are, here they come together wonderfully. Sasha's voice in particular is a joy.