tardis_stowaway | Lady-centric Avengers fic recs (Reply)

You know what the world needs more of?

If you answered "Siberian tigers" or "love, sweet love," you are technically correct. However, the answer I'm looking for today is "high-quality lady-centric fanfic set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe."

With that in mind, here are a few recs for fics I've enjoyed recently.

-Breakfast for Dinner by thingswithwings. 5,636 words. Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) joins the MCU Avengers. (No knowledge of Captain Marvel is required.) This story makes me so ridiculously happy. It's hilarious, well-characterized, and bound to give you warm fuzzy feelings. I tried to select a favorite part to quote before realizing that the entire story is my favorite part. However, here is one small taste that takes place while Carol and Natasha are crawling through some ducts to rescue Steve:

"Eh," Romanov says. Carol notices that she has magically managed to avoid getting any cobwebs in her hair or gross sticky grease on her uniform. And she doesn't even have magic. Carol has magic. Which isn't helping at all. "Steve getting kidnapped to fulfill some geneticist's racist sex fantasies is just another Wednesday around here."

"Oh," Carol says. Being an Avenger is different than working for the Air Force.

-our bruises are coming, but we will never fold by liveonthesun. 3,248 words. Peggy Carter gets a dose of the Super Soldier serum. This is a great what-if. I enjoyed the author's use of parallel structures, the exploration of Peggy's changing attitude about her powers, and the ending. I really enjoyed the appearances by the Black Widow and Pepper. Here's a sample:

The next week she's sitting at a desk, her muscles restless beneath her skin, aching to move faster, faster.

She could, if she wanted, flip the desk and run. She could run far and fast and not stop for days, run until her feet bled and her shoes wore out, until she was at the door of the arms dealer she's filing paperwork on and take out his operation in ten minutes tops.

There are only three people who know she could, though, and it needs to stay that way.

-The B-Team by twistedingenue. 40,100 words. Natasha and Clint accidentally get sucked into a parallel universe, and at first glance it seems like the darkest timeline: all of the Avengers in this universe are dead or permanently out of the picture, and SHIELD has been very nearly destroyed. However, the fight is being carried on by Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, and sometimes Rhodey. Can a small team of MCU characters who aren't superpowered white dudes with films named after them cover all the work of SHIELD and the other Avengers? (Answer: of course. Have you seen Pepper Potts?) This story has emotional heft and an exciting plot. The author does a great job handling a large cast, making sure every character gets an arc. There are some tremendously fulfilling moments that i won't spoil here.

Unfortunately, this rec comes with the caveat that the fic needs a beta reader with an eye for details of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. There were numerous uses of it's when the proper word was its, plus other homonym replacements and further grammatical boo-boos. I found these errors annoying, but they weren't quite severe enough to make me give up on a story that was fantastic in so many other ways.

There is also a sequel, For Those Who Mourn. The sequel seems similarly good so far, but it's a WIP. Both stories are Clint/Darcy.

Any fan works you've enjoyed recently, friends? While lady-centric Avengers fic is my happy place, I'm also happy to receive other recs. For example, I've been reading a fair amount of post-Winter Soldier fic with Bucky and would love to find more, and I'm always on they lookout for Sherlock fic with a sympathetic Mary.