Blood Ties

Liberation: plotty, UST and other -tensions soaked story around Mike, Henry and Vicki, solving a case in the aftermath of the Father Mendoza incident. Mmmmm.

Dollhouse

For Those Rebellious: futurefic, in which Priya-Sierra and Tony-Victor are trying to figure out who they are after the Dollhouse.

It starts somewhere: Topher backstory, mixing bright, cheerful and absolutely chilling, very appropriate to the character.

Iron Man

Chaos Magic: post-Secret Invasion, just pre-World's Most Wanted, this is a great Tony Stark portrait at this point.


Momo

Several Architects: lovely, lovely Michael Ende fanfic which as much of what Ende wrote is also great meta on the art of storytelling.


Oresteia

Last Days: Clytemnestra, ruling in Argos, encounters Odysseus. Sharp and memorable.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Das Lied von der Erde: the story of Wotan and Erda, great to read even if you're not familiar with Wagner's interpretation of Norse mythology. (BTW, the story is in English, not German, non-German speakers.)


Twin Peaks

And Devil Makes Three: absolutely awesome story about the first meeting and subsequent first case Albert Rosenfield shares with Dale Cooper. The snark, the suspense and the mixture of funny and creepy rules, and the character voices are brilliant.

And a treat for friends of Doctor Who and the Latin language:

In Pompeium: given that the family from Fires of Pompeii was from the Cambridge Latin Course, this is only fair!

Some time back, ide_cyan recommended the series Blood Ties to me, and I've now watched the first season. With a few caveats, I liked it, for the following reasons:

- the main character and detective around whom the show is centred is a woman, Victoria "Vicky" Nelson, and not the vampire who is also in the cast, which avoids the obvious Forever Knight/Angel comparisons from the get go
- Vicky, while attracted to Henry (that would be the vampire), doesn't swoon over him or abandon all her other ties; her connection to her former partner Mike is presented as strong, and there are reasons unrelated to Henry why they broke up to begin with and don't get together (there are sparks, but they also tend to argue most of the time)
- Vicky is believable competent at what she does; she's also believably an adult woman, and a professional with experience (there is a great scene where Henry is ready to give her an "you've never killed a human being, you don't know what it will do to you" speech, and she calmly tells him that she did shoot a man in her cop years, and no, she won't ever forget it, but she knows she can do it if it's the only way to protect others)
- Vicky's sidekick Corinne (btw, hooray for relationships between two female characters, and while they do occasionally discuss the guys, they mostly talk about the cases) is a geeky goth girl
- Henry earns his living as a comics writer (and -drawer; I have read the first of the novels, and there he writes trashy romances; I can't decide which cracks me up more, and considering Henry's supposed to be Henry Fitzroy, aka Henry VIII. bastard son who died with 17, the whole trashy romace writing just seems sublimely fitting, but I can see why they wanted something visual for a visual medium and hence made the switch)
- Mike is the absolute antithesis to one of my least favourite tropes in either pro or fanfiction, the Insignificant Other, aka the fiance/boyfriend/husband /alternate love interest just there to be dumped for the more exciting bad boy/supernatural guy/romantic hero; see above re: his relationship with Vicky.
- there is a female pathologist who could give Oz lessons in the art of deadpan acceptance of the supernatural and dry humour
- the show has a nice sense of humor

The caveats? Well, let's start with the third episode, aka the voodoo episode, which is just plain embarassing. (Also with a very questionable racial subtext.) Skip it if you want to watch the show, and read Barbara Hambly's series about Benjamin January (starts with A Free Man of Colour) instead. Someimes the production looks really cheap and studio-bound. Also, sometimes all the previous detective and cop shows I've seen make me yell at the screen "but that wouldn't happen, where's the backup!" or procedural niceties like that, which are ignored to heighten the suspense. I could have done without the crazy evil priest as well, but that two parter offered some really good character scenes for Vicky, Mike and Henry, so that didn't make me roll my eyes too much.

All in all, I'll be looking for season 2.