Spike, Nereus, Who Tells No Lies
A brief, dazzling peculiarity of a post-"Exodus" story. Suffused with tremendous compassion for the character as well as a strangling sense of impending doom, this is a lovely example of the way fanfic writers can successfully push the stylistic envelope, if they're talented enough.
Jane St. Clair, Always Hungry
Jane St. Clair is always technically competent, but her takes on the characters tend to be so orthogonal to mine as to leave me bewildered and shut out of her stories. Not so with this one. Pyro is a tricky character to write--a fairly ordinary, not especially bright, sullen seventeen-year-old going through earthshattering changes. It's not easy to convey the subterranean upheavals he must be experiencing, but Jane does it convincingly here.
Nifra Idril, A Pale Distance
A sympathetic, thoughtful Clark study of the kind this fandom could use a hell of a lot more of. Bonus points for sweet and plausible portrayals of the elder Kents.
Te, Crash
Ripper and Ethan in London. Genderfuck and doom. Short, brutal, porny: if you're in the mood for that sort of thing, this'll do it.
Pearl-O, Night One
Pearl-O and her love for sullen boys. I'm so not surprised she wrote X2 fic.
Since I watched the movie, I've been reading through Bobby/John fic, and I've been appalled by the number of stories which make Bobby cheating on Rogue with John apparently not an issue at all. Why honor a het relationship when it gets in the way of the big gay nub? (Not that I think a teenage boy cheating is unbelievable--but I'd like to get the impression that the author at least thinks it's unethical.)
Pearl-O avoids this issue by making John's attraction to Bobby (and perhaps vice versa?) a quiet and unspoken thing, expressed in a roundabout way. Honestly, it's about fifty times more believable of teenage boys than normal. The whole story has a dreamy, muted tone that feels right. Pearl-O's becoming a more subtle and thoughtful writer with each story.
Andraste, Ten Thousand Candles
It's a somewhat different take on Xavier than mine, but certainly a valid one, and I really appreciate the way this story takes seriously what was weirdly ignored by the movie. A delicate portrait of grief and guilt and coming to terms.
Shalott, Going Down
Hot and clever and I can always forgive someone for preempting my idea if she does it as effectively as Shalott does here.
I do think that this story needed to deal, if only for a sentence or two, with what Magneto did to Xavier at the end of the movie. That it doesn't is a flaw that unfortunately catches my eye more the more I reread it. But it's still damn compelling. I had to rec it.
Hope, Intervention
Well. Most of the fandom likes red!Clark much more than I do. If you like red!Clark, I think the odds are good you'll like this story. Me, I got on board for the Pete, who's pitch-perfect in his anger and affection. Damnit, why can't the show writers take the trouble to give Pete flesh like this? He's not the greatest character in the world, but the potential for stories like this is definitely within reach.
LaT, Courier
If I'm being perfectly honest, I have to admit that the ideas behind this story are not the most wildly innovative. But this story is far too full of lovely, clever, erotic details--as well as a highly-plausible characterization of a minor figure--for me to complain, really.