bironic

It seems china_shop is coordinating a fandom appreciation challenge whose first assignment is to "rec three fanworks by people you don't know and whose works you haven't read/watched/listened to/looked at before." Tougher than it sounded! I scanned through a bunch of fandoms on the AO3 today but didn't find a lot to rec by authors I wasn't familiar with. It's hard to take chances when you have limited time and want a quality story - which I guess is part of the challenge, to take that chance, because you may uncover someone new (to you) and good.

I did find this little slice of delight: Quantitative/Qualitative by norah, a short and humorous anthropomorfic:

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach," Qualitative continued, when Quantitative interrupted.

"Wait, how deep is that? How high? How broad? In metric or Imperial measures?" it demanded.

And, if you'll allow a bit of cheating, I recently (but not today) discovered these two new-to-me writers in Vampire Diaries fandom:

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is A Curve by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine) - Elena/Klaus, rated Mature - in which things progress from canon to a relationship of sorts, and the voices are right.

"I'm sorry. For throwing the stone at you. That was out of line."

Another man, a better man, would tell her, No, it wasn't, you were grieving and I was intruding and I'm sorry about Jenna, but she harbors no illusions about Klaus, and it doesn't surprise her when he only shrugs and says, "Don't worry about it, sweetheart. It's not like you could actually harm me."

I'm Crawling on Your Shore by smithereen - Alaric/Elena, rated Mature, warning for underage and father figure - in which they sleep together, and then they sleep together.

He's still wearing Stefan's t-shirt. She rubs her cheek against the familiar material, worn soft. His body feels so hot underneath the fabric, fever hot. Not like Stefan. She can hear his heart beating.

Ric's arm tightens around her waist, his fingers pressing. His eyes slit open, his whole body going tense against her for a second. He relaxes slowly, like it doesn't come easily. He unwinds his arm. "Sorry," he says. He moves like his neck is stiff.

Not sure what the other challenges will bring and if you'll see me there, but any excuse is a good one to find and rec new stories.