rhysiana | Entries tagged with fic recs

I've been accumulating bookmarks for over a week now, and rather than continuing to just trade them back and forth with individual friends, I think it's time for a list of favorites.

Canon-compliance:

long way home series by idrilka - I will follow idrilka into any fandom. This series is why I knew I would eventually end up watching the show, and it was the first thing I read as soon as I was done with the last episode. Post-canon (show w/a little bit of book detailing) continuation perfection.

The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts by aubreyli - The juniors undertake to rehab Wei Wuxian's reputation and inadvertently end up writing a sweeping epic love story. Nie Hauisang, patron of the arts, decides to help. Hilarity ensues.

aubade and flourish by annundriel - annundriel doing what she does best: sensual slice-of-life moments in time

A Civil Combpaign by ariaste - Jin Ling proves himself to be a true product of his parenting in his attempts to woo Lan Sizhui. Fortunately he has one uncle with slightly better romantic advice.

Joy in the Midst of These Things by Glitterbombshell - In which Wei Wuxian becomes the best baby juniors teacher Cloud Recesses has ever seen, much to Lan Qiren's anguish.

Gathered Herbs & Sweet Grasses by hansbekhart - Lan Sizhui growing up with Lan Wangji. Sweet and sad and poignant.

Inquiry by incendir - Another Lan Sizhui POV on his years growing up with LWJ; the title is a clue about the emotionality here. (Kicks off a very long series with a lot of outsider POV on the Wangxian relationship, gets a lot more into book!WWX being in Mo Xuanyu's body now.)

花无百日红; the flower that withers by yiqie - Post-canon case fic in which a time travel spell sends LWJ and WWX back through the events of canon to try to forgive/understand their younger selves. Be prepared for emotions.

AUs:

Marriage Principles series by Fahye - Canon divergence where Wangxian are betrothed from childhood, where the divergence does that cool thing where it sends out ripples through all of canon and prevents a lot of tragedy. My personal favorite thing is that it prevents Jin Guangyao from going full dark side, so we get a brief moment of an unholy alliance of understanding between him and Nie Huaisang. First fic is Wangxian, second fic is Xiyao.

what else is there? by mme_anxious - Super well-done swan princess AU, with LWJ as they one who gets transformed.

through a window softly by impossibletruths - Modern music grad students who practice music/riff off each other/flirt anonymously from their respective balconies in the same apartment complex. Everything's good and nothing hurts, wonderful characterization, hits all my personal buttons.

Love wakes me by dea_liberty - Modern coffee shop AU that reinterprets so many of the canon interpersonal conflicts in smart ways. It's going to stick with me because of LWJ's immediate reaction to finding WWX again after years of searching. "I live in this coffee shop now, because I'm never taking my eyes off that man again, thanks."

Some rare(r) pairs:

we can raise a little family by lanyon - Post-canon Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen wish baby fic. Please read for Jiang Cheng's immediate tired dad-mode activation.

Four Days in Lanling by halotolerant - Post-canon, in which Jiang Cheng asks Nie Huaisang to help turn Jin Ling into the kind of sect leader who might actually survive, and spends a while remembering how NHS maneuvered him into playing a major part in raising Jin Ling in the first place. Plus some smut and feelings get confronted.

our footsteps sing a reckless serenade by ThirtySixSaveFiles - Modern city magic AU featuring an arranged marriage between Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang. Read to watch Jiang Cheng slowly fall in love with his brilliant and constantly underestimated husband while being forced to deal with politics and potential magical disaster. (Background Wangxian + Wen found family, even more backgrounder 3zun.) I think this one is going to be a major reread candidate.

As Twitter has noted, now is the time for us GenXers/Xennials to shine, bringing forth our latchkey childhood skills of entertaining ourselves for hours on end! I am, in fact, so good at this, I'd already structured my life fairly ideally for the event of a social-distancing pandemic. Since M and I both work from home now anyway, nothing in our routine has changed except the cancelling of various outside appointments. Finally, I have a reason to live my best life.

That said, the news of the outside world is stressful, and as much as I'd like to say I'm using this time to write... I am not. My brain is very clearly in creative hibernation mode lately, and this only seems to have made it worse, so instead I will recommend other people's creative endeavors.

Long Fics
Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) (series) 161,859 words in total - Technically a Teen Wolf AU, but so thoroughly AU that no canon background is required. If you like found family, craft stores, and people dealing with trauma and grief through pragmatic nerdy love and acceptance, then I cannot recommend this enough. I have recommended it before, and I likely will again, because this 'verse is my favorite comfort read, and I think I've read it through six times now. Bonus: Best ace rep I think I've ever read.

One of the Crazy Ones (series) 207,115 words in total - I just opened this to reread because I recently did a rewatch of Almost Human, this time actually taking the time to manually put all the episodes in their intended airing order (what Fox did to this show was a travesty of truly epic proportions), and this fic is the only thing that makes me feel better about the show ending the way it did, because this gives them the ending they deserved. Case fic with romance and also android "what makes a person a person" politics. Everything by this author is amazing. Not as easy to jump into without having seen the show, but hey, there's only one season, so it's not like it would take long to watch.

Switch (series) 230,867 words in total - You all know this one, right? The ultimate Star Trek: AOS Kirk/McCoy opus? My god, does this one put the slow in slow burn. And the way it really explores Kirk's background, lets us really roll around in the angst underlying his supposed impulsiveness.

Books
If you're looking for things that feel extremely close to home right now, there's Mira Grant's Newsflesh series, which, yes, has zombies, but I really don't think of them as zombie books because they are pandemic books. I'm currently wavering on doing a reread, because I keep thinking about them constantly, but also they might just freak me out extra. I was reading their companion book Feedback on my recent trip to Atlanta, and that was surreal enough even before all the social distancing and isolation stuff started.

I also recently caught up on Claire O'Dell's Janet Watson Chronicles, also known in my mind as Intersectionality Holmes, so if you're looking for Black queer Southern gender-flipped Holmes and Watson living in DC after a near-future second American Civil War, well, these are the books for you. Very good, might make you even angrier about politics than you already were.

If you're looking for a series to dive into, I recommend Seanan McGuire's InCryptid books, because I just finished the latest one, and loved it thoroughly. Books full of both glitter and deep ideas, in the finest urban fantasy tradition.

If you want something long and weird and wonderful, but also standalone, I recommend Max Gladstone's Empress of Forever, which I actually read last summer, but still think about all the time. What genre is it? Uh... well, as I said on Twitter at the time, I don't think Max Gladstone is capable of writing in one genre at a time, but it's got a near-future tech mogul and then space pirates and technology that might as well be magic and an intentional Journey to the West story arc.

I also read Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire at around the same time and now the two books are inextricably linked in my mind as amazing, wonderful, absorbing space adventures, though that one is much more about politics. Did you like The Expanse and/or CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series? Then you'll like this.

Oh, related but slightly less deep, I just finished Jessie Mihalik's Polaris Rising. Still lots of space politics and espionage, but with more of the feel of a romance, as the heroine is on the run from an arranged political marriage when she discovers there's more to her would-be groom's insistence that they marry than your average alliance. As the fourth of five children, she's actually a trained industrial spy, so she falls back on those skills to figure out what's going on. (Her love interest does verge a bit on the alphahole stereotype, though, so if that's a particular pet peeve, this might not be the best choice.)

I'm still working my way slowly through Marie Brennan's Turning Darkness Into Light, which is no reflection on how good the book is other than that I want to savor it, but also it's written in letters and diary entries and translation fragments with notes by the translators back and forth to each other, which is academic ephemera that I both love and can't read too much of all in one sitting because it gets a little too close to my own grad school days. Anyway, if you've been looking for an excuse to read the Memoirs of Lady Trent series, this is its follow-up volume, starring Lady Trent's granddaughter, and who doesn't love dragons and not-actually-Victorian explorers? (Secondary world, posits a society built on a Jewish rather than Christian analog, delightful worldbuilding.)

Crafts
To circle back around to the first fic I recommended, at one point the craft store-owning character mentions that Dimensions makes good cross-stitch kits, and it reminded me that not everything I do has to be a grand project of personal expression, so what I've been doing lately has been concentrating on finishing up several cross-stitch projects I had 98% finished except for the beads, so I can take them to get framed when it seems reasonable to go out again, and I also have a kumihimo beaded necklace kit that I plan to make my mother for her birthday. (Which is in just 10 days, so I really need to get on that.) I think right now is a great time for easy, "silly" little projects that don't take too much mental effort.

(That said, I also just ordered a tripod for my camera to see if I can set up a Twitch stream to teach beginner temari, just in case people are interested in learning a new craft. Given how long it's going to take to get here, though, that probably won't happen until next weekend at the earliest.)

Stuff
To get life stuff out of the way first, I did go to teach at the folk school in the mountains back in the second week of December, and it turned out better than I expected! I ended up with 6 students instead of the 4 the office had informed me of (lesson learned: call a few days ahead to see if any of the local/standby students have been admitted), which is an entirely respectable and teachable number, and they were ALL beginners. I have never taught a class there where everyone was starting from the same level, and it was actually quite relaxing by contrast. They all learned the same things at the same time! Amazing! Several of them were already planning to come back next year, so of course this will never happen again. (Also, I just got the course review sheets back, the big thing causing me anxiety from last year, and no one had anything negative to say about my teaching, only about the new chairs in the classroom, which was totally fair; I complained about them as well.)

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Fics
I got basically nothing written over the holidays because M had shoulder surgery on Christmas Eve and then there were a bunch of family events as assorted out-of-town people came and went, most of which I wanted to go to (not least in part because it meant I didn't have to cook.) However, after holiday craziness was done, I finally managed two small things!

Beacon River - a Virgin River/Teen Wolf human AU mashup not!fic (Peter/Chris, with background Sterek and Berica mentioned)

This tiny ficlet/scene from my fiber witch!Dex Check Please AU, based on the tweet by the guy who tried to order a fisherman's sweater and ended up with a box of yarn instead (Nurseydex)

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Recs
So I have this self-inflicted problem where I know too much stuff, through both practical experience and osmosis from my spouse, about both guns and computers, to the point that I can't read most 00Q fic. But I have hit upon a blessed fic-writing duo who write magical 00Q fic that doesn't hit any of my weird "I have to x out of this now" thresholds: BootsnBlossoms & Kryptaria. Favorites so far:

Ordinary Numbers (the rec that sent me down this rabbithole via

swingandswirl), in which Q is a (very deliberately) ordinary government IT help desk minion that Bond gets routed to on mission by mistake rather than the actual MI6 support division. Then he keeps calling on purpose, of course, because Q is more helpful than any of them had ever been! And maybe also kind of wooing Q with, uh, unique trinkets from his travels...

Red Queen to Overwatch, a fabulous neighbors AU in which Q is the reclusive youngest Holmes brother and Bond moves in across the hall. Q starts looking into Bond just to confirm he wasn't someone sent to spy on/"protect" him for Mycroft, but then finds him actually interesting. Things progress from there... (Cameos by Mycroft, Sherlock, and John Watson, implied ace!Sherlock.)

Bewitched, a delightful Bewitched crossover in which Q is revealed to be Adam Stevens, Samantha and Darren's son from the show. His sister wants him to take a long-overdue vacation to come housesit for her, but a security threat means Q isn't allowed to leave without an escort. Bond gets assigned, of course, leading to them staying together in Tabitha's magical witch's cottage while Q tries desperately not to reveal that magic is real. The talking cats don't help.

And now some books. If you've been following the RWA implosion via Twitter, you'll understand the incredible glee I've taken in reading Adriana Herrera's Dreamer series, which follows a group of four friends, all sons of Afro-Latinx immigrants, as they grow into themselves and fall in love. The three books out so far are all m/m (looks like the last one with be m/f), and the first one's major stressor is the constant petty persecution of the two leads by the local Nice White Lady of exactly the sort the RWA has been dealing with; watching them deal with her is both relatable and satisfying. (Leads in that one: food truck owner and YA librarian, set in Ithaca.) The second one deals with the stressor of navigating income inequality, as well as different levels of white passing privilege. (Leads: millionaire philanthropist and social worker, set in NYC.) I haven't read the third one yet, but it's going to feature an activist professor and the ADA, with all the attendant law enforcement issues the previous two books have alluded to. (Set in Ithaca again.)

On the lighter and even tropier side, Jackie Lau's Holidays with the Wongs series of novellas has been utterly delightful to follow along with. If you like holiday romcoms, but wish they were more racially diverse, came with fewer surprise Christian morals in the second half, and were set in Canada, well, these are the books for you! They're just fun. Like the Dreamer series, there will be four of them, this time following a set of siblings whose parents and grandparents embark on a hilariously doomed plan to get all the kids set up. The first book's trope is a one-night stand that turns into more; the second one is some good old-fashioned exes snowed in together; the third one is fake dating with a side of suggestive Pictionary competition. I can't wait to see what the fourth one will bring!

Playing along following

swingandswirl, because I've been meaning to make an accidentally themed rec post anyway. "Accidentally themed" because I inadvertently went on a rock band break-up/make-up reading binge last month that went from true (epic) fic to original fic to pro-published trilogy.

Play Crack the Sky (series) by WeAreTheCyclones.

Summary (of the first fic, the one that started it all):

Excerpt from “Hale Pulls the Plug on the Future of Rock,” Rolling Stone, Issue 1203 – Oct. 2014
“Fans and music industry vets alike are left reeling in the wake of bassist Derek Hale’s sudden departure from Smokes for Harris. At a time when the foursome from Beacon Hills, California seems to be on the cusp of rock superstardom after just one double platinum record, Smokes has everything to lose.”

Excerpt from “Smokes for Harris: Gladiator,” SPIN.com – Feb. 2015
“Smokes for Harris gives in a little to the pop punk of yesteryear in their sophomore effort, but rather than pandering to fans of a lost era they elevate the genre in a way that hasn’t been seen in quite some time. Frontman Stiles Stilinski works double duty as singer and primary songwriter and proves that he can handle the task even without former bassist Derek Hale."

Yes, this is Teen Wolf. Yes, I definitely still recommend it to people with zero interest in its canon source material, because this is a gorgeous, genius AU. I'd read the first fic a while ago, because it ends up on lots of rec lists for good reason, but I didn't read the even more epic prequel fic that showed the origins of the band back then because 1) it wasn't finished yet and 2) I knew there was going to be angst involved and I wasn't prepared. This time through, though, I read everything, the prequel, the side fics, the outtakes, all of it, and it's just so good. The found family feels, the intensity of life on tour (mmmm, forced proximity), the longing as the main characters work toward actually believing that maybe getting back together won't end in disaster this time... Also, the end of the prequel skips back to the present, after the end of the first fic, and gives them the best happily-ever-after epilogue scene, so perfect for everyone involved I'm still smiling about it.

Swan Song (series) by earlgreytea68

Summary: There's a band, and it's reuniting...eventually...once the two core members of it stop making out with each other...

Do you enjoy older adults in your ficcish tropes? Would you perhaps enjoy an exhausted single father doing his best thrown into your intense rock band exes reuniting scenario? Maybe also a dog? A picturesque beach house slowly crumbling around them? Did I mention the delightfully scathing preteen children don't believe their dad was actually famous? And also have no idea there was a huge thing about shipping him and the lead singer together? They had a smushname and everything. I love everyone in this story.

I think this one works particularly well to read after "Play Crack the Sky" because there are such interesting similarities in how the couples within the bands ended up acting during the height of their fame, and how that affected their relationships, though in the instance of "Play Crack" it was mandated by the label, whereas in "Swan Song" it was more self-imposed, but also "Swan Song" positions their initial relationship in an earlier time. Lots of meta commentary about RPF shipping culture to be had, if one is interested in such things.

And then, because I wasn't willing to move on from rock bands just yet, I remembered I had a queer rock band romance on my Kindle that I picked up on sale at some point, leading to me reading the entire series.

Twisted Wishes trilogy by Anna Zabo (see content notes on these; they're good, but may not be for everyone)

Syncopation, still following in the m/m break-up/make-up theme, kind of, in that the lead singer and the new drummer the band has to pick up after the breakdown of their original band member used to know each other back in high school and there were unrequited feelings. ( Read more... )

Counterpoint, also m/m, really interesting in how it grapples with fame, as the guitarist for the band deals with his severe stage fright through the use of an alter ego for performances, leaving him with a very divided life of "with the band" and "not with the band." ( Read more... )

Reverb, m/f ft. a trans man, with the always popular celebrity falling for the bodyguard trope! ( Read more... )

I have no idea if anyone is actually interested in these but me, but if I'm ever going to do an end of the year book recs post on my non-fandom-related public blog, it'll be useful to have these thoughts to look back on.

April was an odd month. I actually read quite a few books, but also a lot of fic for a fandom I'm not even in and have consumed none of the canon content for, so that was fun!

Let's start with the books:

The Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole. I actually read the first of these last year, and then the most recent one in May when it came out, but I'm just going to review the whole series together because they are all collectively SO GOOD. ( Thoughts on the individual books + novellas )

The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. ( A triumphant and unexpected-in-a-good-way conclusion to a long-running series! )

One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare. ( Historical romance + murder mystery )

And now, the fic! Why I got sucked into reading through a long list of McShep Stargate: Atlantis fics when I've never actually seen the show (though I'm at least familiar with SG1), I really don't know, but that was very clearly a super high-quality fandom, and I definitely enjoyed my deep dive into it. I started with this amazing list, and then read through the rest of the archives of Speranza, astolat, and Resonant.

I was right to distrust my 10-books-a-month pattern there, because indeed, it did not hold. This month I only read 4 books, in large part because I got hugely distracted by fic from fandoms I'm not even in.

First, the books:

Unmasked by the Marquess, by Cat Sebastian. ( Thoughts )

That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid series), by Seanan McGuire. ( Thoughts )

Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure, by Courtney Milan. ( Thoughts )

The Fixer (Games People Play 1), by HelenKay Dimon. ( Thoughts )

Now for the fic. Funny story: Back when Inception first came out, we managed to catch the trailer for it at every single movie we saw for months. Plus it was on TV constantly. And it pissed. me. off. I refused to see it. Two years later, M came home with the DVD, borrowed from a coworker, and I still wasn't interested. He ended up watching it while I was out of the house doing something else. It'd been a good 8-9 years without seeing the movie, and I'd never felt the loss. I understood as much as I needed to about it to get pop culture references, and that was fine.

But then. Then. I saw a piece of adorable Sterek fanart, and the artist said the slogan on Stiles' t-shirt was from a fic by an author whose name I vaguely recognized (gyzym), so I clicked the link... and it was not to a Teen Wolf fic like I expected, but instead to an Arthur/Eames straight up coffeeshop AU, and it was adorable. Just perfect. The dialogue! I've Got Nothing to Do Today But Smile (The Only Living Boy in New York)

So then I had to watch the movie. (Which I did while M was leading his GURPS campaign, so he wouldn't know I'd finally broken.) And then I was prepared to read the whole glorious canon-compliant domestic series. The backstory building here! The way they both end up meeting the other's family! (The way they both fell for a person who looks on the outside like all the things they were trying to get away from!) Wherever You Will Be (That's Where I'll Call Home)

And then, just for kicks, the Hollywood film industry AU. we were once cinema gods in the night

Also, as a final bonus, this same author has written a Hawaii Five-0 McDanno fic so perfect I don't feel the need to read any others. Curving Like the Ocean Toward You

I'm definitely not going to do all of these, but I've been thinking about what I'd rec for this one ever since I started gleefully opening tab after tab of other people's recs yesterday, so I guess I have to now.

This past year's fic reading was kind of defined by getting really irritated at Teen Wolf canon, which is more of a "when am I ever not?" event, but in this case specifically in the inconsistency of its characterization of Peter Hale, and how, by having him work with his own worst enemy in S4 for no apparent reason, they managed to break the entire basis of the show back to the very first episode.

Fortunately, the fandom is far more thoughtful than that, so here are three Peter-centric recs:

1) all the pain of yesterday by spikedluv, Peter Hale/Chris Argent - Amazing rewrite of S1 where an already widowed Chris moves back to Beacon Hills with Allison and discovers Peter didn't die in the fire after all. The last thing he expects to find is Peter in a coma.

Reasons I love this fic: Does such a great job of closing so many of the stupid plot holes left by canon, plus it features all of the adult generation as people who were friends before, who have lives and backgrounds and don't feel like they just met five minutes before the cameras showed up for filming. And there is mystery-solving, and angst and fluff and humor all in one!

2) What Goes Around by KouriArashi, Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski, eventual Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski - An AU built on the premise that Sheriff Stilinksi dies trying to apprehend Kate after the Hale house fire, and Peter meets Stiles at the funeral. When Stiles swears serious vengeance against all hunters, Peter recognizes a kindred spirit and offers him the option of teaming up with Peter to do just that, or staying Beacon Hills and trying to be a normal kid. Thus ensues a training montage of Peter raising Stiles and teaching him everything he knows, plus getting him training for the things he doesn't, and an extremely viciously satisfying string of takedowns of corrupt hunters.

Reasons I love this fic: Canon was extremely light on anything that felt like real justice, thanks to the writers' love of bringing villains back from the dead, so this story satisfied that desire exceptionally well. It's also a great example of how to write likable (not to mention internally consistent) morally gray characters, which again the show never figured out. Plus it feeds my love of the use of media in fic, in that we get to see the hunters' reactions to Peter and Stiles' actions through their message board posts. Basically, I love everything about this fic, from the content to the structure.

3) Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) (series) by pprfaith, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, entirely non-canon-based human AU - Happily single lawyer Peter Hale who suddenly finds himself raising his sister's children (Laura, 10; Derek, 6; Cora, toddler) meets Stiles Stilinski, brightly tattooed yarn store owner who's the only one who's gotten Derek to talk by choice since the accident. Snark and romance and fluff ensue.

Reasons I love this fic: I confess I looked askance at Steter as a pairing for a good while, and it's still not really one of my main ships, but this AU 'verse? It is perfect. The reorganization of the characters' relative ages without anyone feeling at all OOC, all of the canon high school crew now pursuing their lives as creative adults who nevertheless remain tightly bound to each other through chosen ties of found family, the way that found family readily adopts newcomers in need, and did I mention it has the best asexual-in-a-relationship representation I've ever read? I love this AU so much I can barely articulate why; it is my happy place. I've read it twice already, and I'll probably do it again soon.

Because I was recently watching Tiger & Bunny again, was reminded of how well it conceptually pairs with Seanan McGuire's Velveteen vs. series. Sadly, those stories were only put into book form as limited editions, and I missed out on snagging copies *again* just a few weeks ago, but all of them are still available for free on McGuire's old LJ.

Anyway, if you enjoy worlds where superheroes have corporate sponsors (and digging into the nitty gritty of why that's bad and what it can do to both the heroes and the world), plus canonically queer characters of several stripes, I highly recommend it. Not as overtly humorous as T&B gets, since the series opens with Velveteen in her post-hero life and in fairly depressing circumstances, but the action picks up pretty much right away. (I'm actually not sure I ever finished reading the most recent stories; I should go check.)

Also, because I have several people I follow on Tumblr who are super into Detroit: Become Human (the fic and art, at least, not so much the game, which seems like the right choice, as by all reports the game is fairly garbage and I can under no circumstances let M play it because he will flip tf out over all the Detroit inaccuracies--but I digress), I keep thinking about how unfair it is that the Karl Urban show Almost Human only got a single 13-episode season (because Fox is the worst, as usual), and also what a crime it is that said show isn't 1) on streaming services everywhere now that it's been several years anyway 2) in the correct order. I bought the digital version of it for myself because I got tired of checking to see if it was on Netflix or Prime yet and rewatched it once, but have yet to go back and do a rewatch with the episodes all in their intended airing order.

(The order Fox aired them in, I shit you not: 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3, 10, 2, 9, 4, 11, 12, 13. I will never stop being mad about this. Of course it didn't have the ratings you wanted! You messed up all the plotlines in a high-concept futuristic sci-fi show, including the interpersonal character arcs that the audience was supposed to latch onto to get them through the worldbuilding! The show had Karl fuckin' Urban in it! This was not a hard sell, you guys.)

*takes a moment to compose myself*

As I was saying, this show was great, and so underrated, and did such a good job setting up a robot/human interaction arc that we never got to see come to fruition. The robot's line was decommissioned for having so much empathy it appeared to drive them insane? And now they brought one back to partner with a detective who hates robotic police partners on principle and has a wealth of issues surrounding the fact he now has a robotic prosthetic? And then the detective finds himself liking the robot more than most of the humans he has to interact with despite himself? Look at this angst! Look at this enemies to lovers potential! They go from the detective threatening to throw the robot out of the car to getting mad at him for risking himself to save the detective when he's kidnapped and the robot drains the last of his charge to get to him. (I need the show to be readily available on streaming services because it is tailor-made for the kind of fandom we have now.) Add in the fact the overly empathetic robot is played by a Black (well, biracial) man, which adds such an interesting layer to everything. I actually bought myself a book of academic essays on "Representations of the post/human" because I was having so many thoughts about this show (...which I have not delved into yet, but still! I have it!)

If you have watched it and need your soul soothed about its abrupt ending, I went through the AO3 tag and came out with some recs, the most important of which is One of the Crazy Ones, an utterly perfect two-part series that picks up where canon stopped.

Uh... I think I had at least one other thing where two unrelated works paired themselves in my mind, but I can't remember it now, so I'll leave it here.