Death Fics with a Twist

Happy Halloween! It’s the end of October, and as such, these are the last of my recs, carefully chosen for maximum Halloween appropriateness.

Title: One Minute, Counting
Author: Kaneko
Fandom: Pushing Daisies
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: short
Warnings: character death, but this is Pushing Daisies. Death is a negotiable condition.
Summary: Ned brings Emerson back from the dead.

Excerpt: “Oh hell no,” Emerson said, which wasn’t part of the speech he’d prepared in case this ever happened, but he’d allowed himself a certain latitude. (Improvised preamble. Cussing.)

Ned opened his mouth, no doubt to say something self-evident and time-wasteful, like: “I have some bad news” or “You had a pretty bad fall there, Emerson.”

Emerson held up his hand. “My death. My minute. You can wait for your own.”


Why I loved it: It’s hard to get Pushing Daisies fic to work - I should know; I tried repeatedly - but this one gets not only the voices but the character interactions just right. If Emerson had died on the show, I’m pretty sure that when Ned brought him back it would have gone just like this. Although it might not have managed to be quite this funny.


Title: if this was the cold war (we could keep each other warm)
Author: oflights
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R
Word Count: ~11,400
Warnings: language, serious medical condition, too much Sean Parker?
Summary: Mark is haunting Eduardo, in an annoyingly literal way.

Excerpt:He shuffles into his kitchen the next morning and fumbles blindly into his fridge, aiming for some orange juice that he can knock back a few aspirin with. He pours some into a glass, shuts the refrigerator door, and turns to see Mark sitting at his kitchen table, dressed exactly the same as the night before, typing on the same laptop.

Eduardo drops the glass of orange juice; it spills all over his counter and onto his socks, and he ignores it. “Oh my God, I’m going insane.”

“You spilled your juice,” Mark says without looking up, but when Eduardo simply stares at him some more, mouth slightly open, he glances up and squints. “Aren’t you going to clean it? It’s getting everywhere.” He looks down at where a stream of juice is snaking down by his flip-flop-covered feet, and winces and puts them up on another chair.

Why I loved it: Because it’s by oflights, who writes all the best TSN fic. Also because it features Mark suffering, which, let’s face it, I think suspect most TSN viewers have a burning desire to see. (And by “most TSN viewers” I of course mean “me.”)

But there’s far more to it than just Mark suffering. oflights writes such great TSN fic because she has an excellent handle on the characters: how they talk, what makes them tick, and what would make them freak right out. She’s also very good at creating an organic emotional progression, so that when the characters go from hatred or at least intense antipathy to love, the change feels real and not like an authorial manipulation. Death fics in particular have a lot of potential for emotional manipulation, but this story - although it is angsty - never feels like its toying with the readers for the sake of angst.

( Spoilers )