john/a lot of ppl. all of this author's stuff is preposterously amazing but I had to pick one as a representative. so let's pick john fucking the pain away through the cohort, his lyctors, and everyone else within grabbing range, including before and after the Resurrection and his daughter and his other daughter and his surrogate daughter and all the women in the world. john is depicted with such compassion and with no mercy. "the dove in the clefts of the rock" is so good it makes me want to barf too. bittybelle has an amazing faculty for packing a sentence or a paragraph with information, characterization, and beauty as densely as a neutron star yet making it all seem effortless.

gideon & the 9th. my comment on jeej's fic: "This is freaking unbelievably amazing and gives me everything I wanted and didn't get from canon. Gideon's evolution and character are perfectly fleshed out in a way that fanfiction is all about. You have such a wonderfully deft hand and your style has evolved so much into a beautiful direction that marries rly well with canon but also has its own zesty angsty unique spice. Write Alecto pls xoxoxoxoxo" jeej understands gideon's internal workings in a way that I don't think anyone else does (at least not anyone I've read, so if you find that person, direct their works to me pls) and this fic is really important to me for that reason. it respects her life so much in a way that makes me want to cry

gideon/cytherea. knuckle-bitingly sexy very slight canon divergence: what if palamedes hadn't interrupted just as "the old panic of confession seemed to rise up", and "dulcinea" groomed and manipulated gideon into becoming her cavalier to replace loveday? my comment: "it's really rare to find someone who writes a skillfully manipulative character who can think on both the level of that character and the one they're manipulating." Elldritch's cytherea is soooooo casual and careful and methodical and the starved orphan gideon is putty in her hands, in an extremely sick and believable way. and the kink/sex writing is so dark and twisted and mmnfnnfnfffff

alfred & cristabel, among others. an absolutely insane exploration of cristabel & alfred egging each other on, against a backdrop of all the other lyctors driving one another into sadomasochistic suicidal madness. the academic apologetics at the start warms the reader for what is to come. my comment: "I was already slavering and licking my chops at the footnotes and you did not disappoint!!!!! I’m completely fucking coocoo at John’s stupid memes being inscribed into divine writ and cited alongside the gospels. and the secret note… we need to talk more in this fandom about CILICES and HAIRSHIRTS and the SCOURGE!!! *clap emojis* [redacted spoilers] love the Lyctoral mutual destruction because real life has become so unreal that ripping each other’s bodies apart is the only way to touch the edge (my personal favorite headcanon). bravo!!!!!"

coronabeth/&ianthe, with a wide variety of side dishes. this is the quintessential corona fic, that explores two separate eras of grief in her life and all the ways that she has been fucked up and fucked everyone else up in her turn. her relationship with ianthe is so searchingly and intelligently explored, and fills in so much around the edges of canon in an unexpected yet "how-could-it-have-been otherwise" way, which is what the best fanfiction is meant to do. bpd coronabeth is my lodestone and this fic is my heartsong

pyrrha/g1deon/wake. can't believe this is less than 6k words, it feels like a whole world unfolding before my eyes. the pre-Rez stuff is so heartbreaking and sparely crafted and the tangled tension between wake, pyrrha, g1deon, the ticking clock in the background, and the keenly-felt deprivation of life and culture that john perpetuated on the resurrected world... music is so lacking in the TLT 'verse but I never realized it until this fic shot a bolt through my chest with the pain and joy of "me and bobby mcgee" - a masterwork

g1deon/john, plus g1deon/pyrrha/wake. the quintessential g1deon fic. this fic more than anything gave me an understanding of g1deon's mentality: his devotion to john, how he could let it fall by the wayside for wake, how he could live without pyrrha for so many thousands of years... an excerpt from my comment: "the split gideon/pyrrha perspective is so f***ing effective and tragic. I half-wonder sometimes why she was heartless enough not to tell him somehow that she was still alive, but tbh, some things you just can't tell. she's been dead and gone so long that he's calcified into a living rictus without her... and even if she did tell him, they can never have each other again the way they did before. GAWD." and yes the splattergore is PHE NOM EN AL

gen john worldbuilding, with some john & alecto. the seven days of creation, post-apocalypse. marvelous characterization and very clever structure and a john that is so so so so understandable and so homely-sketched and human that the constant drumbeat of repellent death he cultivates like a garden around himself is almost, almost, almost offset. almost. seeing his relationship with alecto grow makes you understand just what is happening for him in a very upsetting way. this is really, truly excellent and I don't have to tell you about depression-blasting mitski and "the ice cream machines" to beg you to READ IT NOW

pyrrha/g1deon, pre- and post-Rez. yet another <5k work that rips my fucking heart out. a brilliantly paralleled pyrrha pov of the two kisses they gave each other: before g—'s death by nuclear bomb, and before pyrrha's death by ascension. my comment: "the mirrored single kisses... gideon being a nerdy devoted engineer (bad posture, shitty fashion, chapped lips, struggles to cry, giant heart) who pyrrha can't help but sacrifice herself for in every lifetime makes me sob buckets of sobs. extremely essential very well done and assigned reading for everyone"

nona/camilla. another one of those "a world in a sentence" authors, writing something that feels ripped straight from canon. a good nona voice (with a flash of alecto that punches through the text like a knife ripping through wallpaper) has a price beyond rubies, and stone top grieving longing suicidal camilla breaks me. that plus the achingly sensual sex language ("petaled swollen and ruined," "drawn helplessly tight on that talented and holy finger") just hooks this fic into my heart.

LUV me some christian exegesis in conversation with TLT themes. luv me some character explorations of the ninth. can't wait 2 read!

I think jeej described this as "in which ianthe tries to vat-baby-trap kiriona" so a of all yes and 2 of all it's a_big_apple so u know that shit is gonna be elegantly crafted

idk it just looks dope as fuck and i'm not even an au person like that! I'm just ever so interested to see where the author goes with the notion and how they choose to flesh out the OG lyctors and cavs that we didn't get to meet ^_^

After being visited by Buttons, Frenchie learns that he has until the new moon to bring Izzy back to life. But to do it, he'll have to open his box and confront the trauma he's been avoiding.

• how Ishmael's race is not often discussed, because society sees whiteness as the default
• Queequeg's classification as an other, but simultaneous deviation from then common tropes about non-white characters like the myth of the noble savage
• the link between homosexuality and cannibalism in 19th-century perceptions
• the myths built around Herman Melville due to his posthumous classification as a "great American writer"

In which Stede accidentally soft-doms Izzy; Edward solves his identity crisis; Izzy gets valued and panics about it; Stede invents aftercare; Ed learns to talk about things and Izzy experiences A Positive EmotionTM. Meanwhile, the crew only cares about workshops.

When Izzy leaves after dueling Stede, Ed is happy that everyone is alive, but he feels unsettled without Izzy around. During their separation he falls ill and experiences a number of alternate realities where Izzy is someone else's first mate. And Ed doesn't like that at all.

Footsteps on the wooden boards behind him alert him to Stede’s approach long before the man ever addresses him. It's only then that he realizes the crew themselves have fallen silent, and that Izzy has been sitting alone with his thoughts for longer than he’d like. Stede sinks to the floorboards, his back against the ship’s rail, his eyes on Izzy. His gaze is heavy. It settles into Izzy’s skin and burns there. He doesn’t meet Stede’s eye.

When Stede (sort of accidentally) curses Izzy to lose that which he loves most in the world he certainly didn't expect his own life to be on the line.

Izzy makes an attempt to find out for himself why Stede's sexual skills so effectively seduced Blackbeard. Unfortunately for both of them, Stede and Ed have never actually slept together, and Stede's completely out of his depth.

Dogs don’t sleep in posh beds under gentle hands. Dogs like him lick their wounds in the dark and guard their owners with teeth and talon. He was a guard dog. There are no pets allowed on the Revenge.

The man beside him shifted, digging the metal cuff further into Izzy's wrist. His arm was warm; his voice was infuriating. He had not stopped talking since Izzy woke up with a splitting headache, no weapons, and no way to escape. "This is unbelievably rude," said Bonnet.