browngirl

So, I have a pair of stories to rec today, because they fit thematically together, at least in my little head. This got longish, so I've put my reasons for reccing

igrockspock's Just Like A Waving Flag and

possibly_thrice's Asking No Duties, and No Conscience behind the cut.

igrockspock wrote Just Like A Waving Flag, which is mostly-gen with a little het and centered on Hikaru Sulu. When he was at the Academy he dated Gaila, and told her a story he doesn't tell often, about how when he was ten he and his father helped an Orion slave girl try to escape to freedom.

I love so many things about this story, but I'll settle on relating three: Ten year old Hikaru is beautifully characterized, both recognizably Hikaru Sulu and recognizably a child. Amaia is the kind of vivid, sentient OC that I exult in finding, the kind who expands the universe by being just as real as the canon characters, and no one would dare call her a Mary Sue. And the third thing is that I cried over this story, and every tear was to its credit, a mark of its excellence.

After reading that, read

possibly_thrice's story Asking No Duties, and No Conscience, which is a remix of

boosette's luminous "The More Adventurous Wanderer" (already recced widely and deservedly) from Gaila's POV. If one of the things "The More Adventurous Wanderer" was about was Jim helping Gaila as a fellow person with agency rather than making her a McGuffin (as was "Just Like A Waving Flag" about the Sulus and Amaia), this remix is about Gaila's agency, both in the most literal way (the scene of her climbing is so vividly described it made my digits tingle) and on subsurface levels too. I cheered for this one, as hard as and from much the same impulse as I cried before.