The stories listed here are in no particular order, and they span a wide range of categories and types, but they have one thing in common:  they're all among what I consider -- as a writer, not a reader --  the best of the best of HL fanfic. These are the stories I read to clear my palate after I've cleaned the poor, poorer, and all too often truly awful fanfic out of my inbox  --  along with the accompanying onlist fawning missives about how wonderful and delightful that piss poor story was.

(And therein lies one of the worst traps a fanfic writer can fall into -- believing her/his feedback. Nothing will freeze you in place and stunt your growth as a writer quicker than believing all those wonderful LOCs. Don't get me wrong, I love LOCs -- they're the life blood of a fanfic writer and they make me all warm and tingly inside. But I've been doing this long enough now that I take them with a grain of salt. A great big grain of salt. Fortunately, there's an instant cure for the LOC induced 'Look how wonderful I am' disease: reading the onlist feedback for a story you read and know was pure dreck. )

Like most of us, I have my guilty fanfic pleasures -- stories with major flaws that I read again and again because for some reason, they push my buttons. I may love them, flaws and all, but you won't find those stories here. The stories on this page are the ones I read  when I want to remind myself what really good HL fanfic is. These are the stories I read when I'm writing and want to remind myself how it should be done. These are the stories I wish I'd written.

Oops -- I lied! They have two things in common, and the second one is pairing. They're all -- with minor exceptions -- either Duncan/Methos stories, or Amanda/Duncan and/or Methos stories. One sided? Maybe. Limited? Probably. But I have an agreement with the muses that I don't even have to contemplate the combination of Richie and sex,  'Joe don't do no slash,' and most of the OCs I've read in HL fanfic should have earned the writer a good slap and an enema.

One more thing -- isn't there always? This list is not complete. If I waited to post it until I had every story I'm truly impressed with listed, it would never get posted. So I'm going to start small and add to it as time and inspiration allow.

Touch Me, Feel Me

Do you ever feel like you're writing a sex manual instead of a love scene? Does your beta ever complain that your sex scenes are too slot A tab B oriented? Does she plead with you to tell her a little less about the exact process of lube application and a little more about how the characters feel? I get that all the time -- it's one of the traps I fall into on a regular basis. Take it from me -- listen to your beta. When a good beta tells you she wants to know how the characters feel, she doesn't mean add a three paragraph description of the baby smooth texture of Methos' alabaster skin.  Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with a three paragraph description of that lovely, smooth, luminescent skin -- every delectable inch of it. From the tips of his nibble worthy toes to that deliciously sensitive spot just below his ear. She just wants a bit more than that, and these authors understand that.

Aristide/Mairead does feeling oriented description better than just about anybody. Journey inside the mind of Duncan MacLeod for his first time with Methos in  The Declaration  by Aristide.  It's funny, it's sweet, it's sexy, it's real, and it's hotter than hell. This is how it's done, people.

Same song, second verse. For another wonderful first time story, with a sex scene smack dab full of feeling, but from Methos POV this time, try  Duet  by Killashandra.

Once Upon a Time

Want to take Duncan and Methos a little bit off center, make them do or be things a bit, or more than a bit, unusual? Want to make them react in a way that's unexpected, or even -- gasp! -- uncannonical? If so, there is no substitute for a good back story. With the right back story, presented properly (or even improperly -- if I was all that concerned about propriety, I wouldn't be a slash writer), you can sometimes make things that would ordinarily seem out of character understandable, or at least forgivable.  And if you're dealing with  severe sexual dysfunction, a good back story is almost obligatory. Try writing an impotent Duncan story without a hell of a good back story and see what kind of reaction you get. (Not that anyone would write an impotent Duncan story-- it's always poor Methos who's got The Problem. The closest Duncan gets to sexual dysfunction is the occasional bad case of Virgin!Duncan syndrome -- which, IMHO, is actually closer to perversion than dysfunction.)

Here's one of my favorite examples of a great back story. Meet a severely dysfunctional Methos and a Duncan prepared to cross all boundaries to help him, in cm decarnin's epic saga of love, trust, and the joys of bdsm:  And Hades Followed Him.  It's not light and cuddly, and it's definitely not for the faint of heart, but her back story is so good and so complete that it makes her premise work. In cm decarnin's universe, yes, Duncan would do that, and yes, Methos would enjoy it.

This next story has been among my favorites since the day it was posted. It's unfinished -- and I've given up hoping it ever will be finished -- but it's well worth reading.  If you're writing, or planning to write, a story that needs lots of back story to make it work, you could do a lot worse than let Maygra show you how it's done. It's another sexually dysfunctional Methos, a randy Duncan, and a story that'll rip your heart out and shred it into little bitty pieces. It's "Nightmares and Shadows" by Maygra, and you can get there from  here.  Yes, I could put in a direct link to the story, but Maygra has her site password protected for a reason, and I respect that. Easy to follow instructions to get a password are on the linked page.

Now that I've preached and ranted about the importance of back story, here's a great story with a very unlikely premise -- and no back story. Not only does it have no back story, it's almost a PWP -- but even with those limits, Kamil manages to sell a premise that's so far out it's in orbit. I've never read a Virgin!Duncan story I could believe, and I still doubt I ever will, but in  Toeing The Line  Kamil did something I thought was even more unlikely -- she sold me a Virgin!Methos, lock, stock, and barrel.  And she also did something that's very, very hard to do -- she wrote a slash story that's sexy as hell and funny at the same time.