For likeadeuce: Six Degrees From Hank McCoy (X-Men) to Elizabeth Swann (Pirates of the Caribbean). I cheated a bit by using 1602!Hank, and... well, you'll see. Spoilers for 1602 by Neil Gaiman as well as Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, and for PotC: At World's End.


( Avant! )

It's a good time to be a fan of the Marvelverse, with two ficathons coming in. Firstly, the 1602ficathon, which uses Neil Gaiman's 1602 as a basis, a universe in which the various Marvel characters - the X-Men, Spider-man, Daredevil etc. show up four hundred years early, in the last year of Elizabeth's reign.

Here are some of my favourite stories:

Soldier's Poem, which shows what became of Sir Nicholas Fury and Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, when they went, well, back into the future. Elizabethan!Fury was one of my favourite characters, so I was thrilled to have this, and the bleak dystopia with an element of hope nonetheless, and the determination to go on, feels just right.


Clearing the Air presents Scotius and Werner doing just that. Short and lovely.

Book of Hours presents Carlos Javier and Enrique, the future Inquisitor, their friendship and fallout. Any take of penknife's on any version of Charles 'n Erik would be good, but what I really appreciate here is that she does not flinch from showing us the differences from the "normal" versions. Enrique will become a man who burns witchbreed (other mutants) along with saving those who can "pass" (and who give their allegiance to him); this makes sense due to the different kind of childhood trauma Gaiman gave him (the Renaissance had no Holocaust, but it had something else, and Gaiman uses it inspiredly), but it's something not easy to deal with if, say, you're used to mainly movieverse Magneto.

Enrique's children, Wanda and Petros (aka Wanda and Pietro in the other Marvelverses), were at his side in 1602, both when he was burning other people and later when he was himself persecuted, and I often wondered what went on in their heads (which is why my one and only 1602 story, written a year ago, Days After, deals with them), so I was glad to find Survival, a story describing Wanda's life up to 1602, and uses one Katherine Pryde as counterpoint. It's terse and haunting, and the scene where Wanda realizes the Inquisitor (whose identity as her father she's not aware of) doesn't just know she's one of the witchbreed but is one himself is fantastic.

Not a part of the ficathon and in fact a WIP, but worth reading at once nonetheless (especially as this will add pressure on kangeiko to write the second part), is this 1602/Buffyverse crossover, in which a member of the Watcher's council makes a devil's bargain with Carlos Javier. To say more would spoil the moment where you go "of course, that's what they would be!"....

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Meanwhile, the xmmficathon was also due, so here are some treats set in the X-Men movieverse:


Mice: when Erik met Charles. One of the reasons why I love this pairing: they manage to mix intellectual discussions in their passes, and humour in their angst, or is it the other way around? Wry, captivating, and you can just hear the voices.

Conversations with Lady Lazarus: there have been several takes on just why Xavier made his decision about Jean; this question is also tackled here, but the story is more than that, it covers the entire relationship between the two from her childhood till X3. Inspired use of the Sylvia Plath poem the title alludes to. Charles' pov.


Phoenix: Lovesong, on the other hand, is a Jean pov, some years before X1, and shows Jean dealing with medical class, complete jerks who might have a point, and Phoenix within. Sharp and intense, and full of subtleties.

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Non-Marvelverse bonus recommendation: after watching Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, I expressed the wish for a story what would give us a look at James Norrington and Elizabeth after Elizabeth's "what did life do to you?" and before they show up at the Black Pearl the next morning. 'Til Death Do Us... by bimo does just that, and makes me happy.