Stranger Things: We Better Make a Start, by thefourthvine
Dec. 2nd, 2025 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runpunkrun posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fancakeFandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Steve Harrington & Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Rating: Explicit
Length: 11,087 words
Creator Link:![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
thefourthvine
Theme: Amnesty, Just Plain Fun, Platonic Life Partners, Everybody Lives/Nobody Dies AUs, Canon LGBTQ Characters, First Time
Summary: As soon as Eddie gets to the counter, Steve turns to him and says, "Back me up here. Kissing is no big deal, right?"
Steve Harrington is talking about kissing. Eddie's brain shorts out. "Uh," he says.
Reccer's Notes: Steve accompanies Robin to a gay bar where he discovers his skills with the ladies are transferable to guys. Robin and Eddie both have a crisis over it, though for different reasons. Very fun and very hot, with Steve at his himbo best.
Fanwork Link: We Better Make a Start
Pairings/Characters: Steve Harrington & Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Rating: Explicit
Length: 11,087 words
Creator Link:
Theme: Amnesty, Just Plain Fun, Platonic Life Partners, Everybody Lives/Nobody Dies AUs, Canon LGBTQ Characters, First Time
Summary: As soon as Eddie gets to the counter, Steve turns to him and says, "Back me up here. Kissing is no big deal, right?"
Steve Harrington is talking about kissing. Eddie's brain shorts out. "Uh," he says.
Reccer's Notes: Steve accompanies Robin to a gay bar where he discovers his skills with the ladies are transferable to guys. Robin and Eddie both have a crisis over it, though for different reasons. Very fun and very hot, with Steve at his himbo best.
Fanwork Link: We Better Make a Start
Fancake's Themes in 2025
January: (Not Really) Unrequited LoveFebruary: Ambiguous Relationships
March: Non-Sexual Intimacy
April: Outsider POV
May: Angst (With a Happy Ending)
June: Female Relationships
July: Working Together
August: Marriage of Convenience
September: Food & Cooking
October: Uncommon Settings
November: Mystery & Suspense
December: Amnesty
As always, our theme for December is amnesty. This month you can post recs for any past round—from any year—as long as the work hasn't already been recommended for that theme. Refresh your memory with a spreadsheet of previous rounds or search the comm for past recs.
Be sure to tag your recs with theme: amnesty in addition to the relevant theme(s).
If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.
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Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, Diefenbaker, Harding Welsh
Rating: Teen
Length: 4590
Content Notes: The author chose not to warn. AU from the end of Victoria's Secret as Fraser wasn't shot and he left with Victoria on the train.
Creator Links: MSSalieri on AO3, Salieri's old website
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Friendship, Cops and Crime, AU: Fork in the road
Summary: He’s in a booth around the corner, hands folded on the Formica table. It’s his jacket, the one he had on when he jumped onto the train, so Ray believes it’s him. But it’s not the guy Ray knew. His hair hangs to his collar. His eyes are dark with exhaustion, his face gaunt. He’s been gone nineteen months. It might as well be nineteen years.
Dief’s whine is thin, a little panicky. He’s shivering against Ray’s knee.
“Hello, Ray,” Fraser says.
Reccer's Notes: This is a tough story, but I keep going back to it from time to time because it's just so good. Set more than a year after Ray Vecchio stumbled and missed the shot so that Fraser left with Victoria on the train, Ray meets up once more with a very changed Fraser in a motel at the ass end of Canada, in a blizzard. It's sad, spooky, and wonderfully written. Powerful and haunting, and very much worth a read.
Fanwork Links: Dysmas on AO3, Dysmas on Wayback
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, Diefenbaker, Harding Welsh
Rating: Teen
Length: 4590
Content Notes: The author chose not to warn. AU from the end of Victoria's Secret as Fraser wasn't shot and he left with Victoria on the train.
If you'd much rather know about major AO3 warnings and be spoiled for the reveal at the end, click the arrow at left. SPOILERS
Ray doesn't realise until near the fic's end that it's Fraser's ghost meeting with him, as Victoria killed him then ran for the US border. But with Fraser's and Welsh's help, they catch her.Themes: Mystery and suspense, Friendship, Cops and Crime, AU: Fork in the road
Summary: He’s in a booth around the corner, hands folded on the Formica table. It’s his jacket, the one he had on when he jumped onto the train, so Ray believes it’s him. But it’s not the guy Ray knew. His hair hangs to his collar. His eyes are dark with exhaustion, his face gaunt. He’s been gone nineteen months. It might as well be nineteen years.
Dief’s whine is thin, a little panicky. He’s shivering against Ray’s knee.
“Hello, Ray,” Fraser says.
Reccer's Notes: This is a tough story, but I keep going back to it from time to time because it's just so good. Set more than a year after Ray Vecchio stumbled and missed the shot so that Fraser left with Victoria on the train, Ray meets up once more with a very changed Fraser in a motel at the ass end of Canada, in a blizzard. It's sad, spooky, and wonderfully written. Powerful and haunting, and very much worth a read.
Fanwork Links: Dysmas on AO3, Dysmas on Wayback
Mo Dao Zu Shi: House on Haunted Hill, by JustAWanderingBabbit
Nov. 30th, 2025 11:31 pmfull_metal_ox posting in fancakeFandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi
Pairings/Characters: Gen, background M/M (Everything implied no specifics); Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao & Nie Mingjue; Song Lan | Song Zichen/Xiao Xingchen, Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue, Song Lan | Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen, A-Qing, Original Character
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 6,330
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, OC POV, Outsider POV, Neurodivergent Character POV, disability as a communication obstacle, heavy verse-specific content
Creator Tags: Communication is hard when you're dead, We ain't afraid of no ghosts, We've been dead for years, Bad jokes because writer is in a mood, NaNoWriMo Breaktime, ghost hunt - Freeform, mystery haunting, Undead Investigation Team
Creator Links: (AO3)JustAWanderingBabbit; (Tumblr) ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
justawanderingbabbit
Theme: Mystery & Suspense, Casefic, Just Plain Fun, Outsider POV, Post-Canon
Summary: The Vermillion Peony Tree has stood for two hundred years... It might stand for two hundred more.... Given no one's stupid enough to annoy its guardian.
In which a possibly familiar Original Character meets a group of very familiar Night Hunters, attempting to clear a haunting from an inn built maybe a bit too close to the Burial Mounds.
(Part of the Mending the Pieces Universe.)
Author’s Notes:
* Not every monster or ghost you go after is a real monster. Sometimes the ones you have to worry about are the living people.
* Which, of course, was the message of the early Scooby Doo Adventures. Wish they hadn't lost that later on.
Reccer's Notes: A post-canon Halloween Scooby-Doo homage in which sapient fierce corpses Nie Mingjue and Song Zichen and demi-undead Meng Yao, incognito and under aliases, have become a wandering occult investigation trio. (Or, to the inn stableboy who can see ghosts Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing, a quintet.)
(JustAWanderingBabbit is the sort of author who maintains a repertory company of sorts; POV character Ah Bai is an OC who recurs in several of her MDZS works.)
Fanwork Links: House on Haunted Hill (AO3-locked).
Pairings/Characters: Gen, background M/M (Everything implied no specifics); Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao & Nie Mingjue; Song Lan | Song Zichen/Xiao Xingchen, Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue, Song Lan | Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen, A-Qing, Original Character
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 6,330
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, OC POV, Outsider POV, Neurodivergent Character POV, disability as a communication obstacle, heavy verse-specific content
Creator Tags: Communication is hard when you're dead, We ain't afraid of no ghosts, We've been dead for years, Bad jokes because writer is in a mood, NaNoWriMo Breaktime, ghost hunt - Freeform, mystery haunting, Undead Investigation Team
Creator Links: (AO3)
Theme: Mystery & Suspense, Casefic, Just Plain Fun, Outsider POV, Post-Canon
Summary: The Vermillion Peony Tree has stood for two hundred years... It might stand for two hundred more.... Given no one's stupid enough to annoy its guardian.
In which a possibly familiar Original Character meets a group of very familiar Night Hunters, attempting to clear a haunting from an inn built maybe a bit too close to the Burial Mounds.
(Part of the Mending the Pieces Universe.)
Author’s Notes:
* Not every monster or ghost you go after is a real monster. Sometimes the ones you have to worry about are the living people.
* Which, of course, was the message of the early Scooby Doo Adventures. Wish they hadn't lost that later on.
Reccer's Notes: A post-canon Halloween Scooby-Doo homage in which sapient fierce corpses Nie Mingjue and Song Zichen and demi-undead Meng Yao, incognito and under aliases, have become a wandering occult investigation trio. (Or, to the inn stableboy who can see ghosts Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing, a quintet.)
(JustAWanderingBabbit is the sort of author who maintains a repertory company of sorts; POV character Ah Bai is an OC who recurs in several of her MDZS works.)
Fanwork Links: House on Haunted Hill (AO3-locked).