Have Been Posted
Congratulations to the Award Winners Click here for links to AWARD PAGES Thank you to our judges and those who sent nominations.  |
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Been here before and just want to see what's been added? What story links? What features? Check WHAT'S NEW? |
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Have Been Posted
Congratulations to the Award Winners Click here for links to AWARD PAGES Thank you to our judges and those who sent nominations. |
About The Gang That Runs This Site
A gang of seven runs this site: Mojave Moon, Midnight Blue, Milagro, Starke Raven, DarkSkies,TimeTracker and Outrider. And we recently added our first "consultant." LovePotion is going to be offering suggestions on Buck slash which folks will realize from our Mixed/Mixed-up Feelings about Slash page is not something the majority of us identify with easily.All of us have done considerable writing (and reading) in our lives, both for fun and as part of our jobs. Most of us have written fan fiction in other fandoms. Since we range in age from 30 to 56, some of those are older fandoms which never made the transition from the original print fanzines to the Internet. One of us is a librarian, one is an attorney/forensic search dog handler, one is a high school teacher, one is an elementary school teacher and four are government workers. Most of us have plans to write Mag7 fic. Just to show that we can take is as well as dish it out, what we do write will be posted here - in the separate site owner category, not in the recommended story categories [trying to avoid conflict of interest.]
Although most of us have our favorite character or characters in the series, we're all fond of the entire Seven as a group. None of us care to turn our favorites into plaster saints because their flaws and weaknesses are what make them interesting. [MidnightBlue wants us to note here that Buck has no flaws and only one weakness.] Nor do we have any interest in turning them into little boys - though we do on occasion enjoy stories that delve into childhood events that helped make the adult Seven the men they became.
We started this site because the wealth of Mag7 fanfic became unmanageable. We were all worried we'd miss something wonderful and we'd all wasted time hoping an indifferent story would get better [the really dreadful ones were usually obvious right away]. So we started pooling our good story URLs, begging more from good authors to whom we'd given feedback, getting some on lists where we lurked, etc. As other friends joined the fandom, we started passing around the URLs on a master email list. When figuring out which version of the list we were dealing with became cumbersome, this site was born. It's geared mostly for our friends whose taste in fanfic is similar to ours.
If others find some value in our recommendations, that's great. We're doing this mostly for the joy of finding great fanfic and sharing it with others. No one should take us any more seriously than we take ourselves. We don't see ourselves as pompous literary critics setting out rigid requirements for what entails good Mag7 fanfic. Our greatest hope is that this site will lead others to recommend good stories to us that we've missed.
Mojave Moon: I'm a county worker (recycling) who's been reading fanfic since the printzine days. Several times I've come to love a fandom prior to ever seeing an episode of the series, just from reading the fanfic. I've written fanfic in a few other fandoms but have been just a reader in Mag7. My favorite character is the Man in Black. I especially like him in stories about the entire seven or with Vin in either H/C or slash. Although I especially seek out stories about him, I often enjoy stories recommended by my friends in which one of the others takes center stage as long as they don't do wrong by Chris. My favorite episodes are Inmate 78, Nemesis and Obsession.OUR CATEGORIES:DarkSkies: I spend my days trying to cram a little knowledge into the heads of a horde of unruly children. I head home at night to read and write fan fiction. It's a creative outlet to relieve stress. I'm a member of several online fanfic writing groups and am now branching out into original fiction. I'm always striving to improve my writing and have spent the last year learning to love the art of critiquing someone else's work as a beta reader. I find that by actively seeking to improve someone else's writing, my own work gets better. I'll eventually try a story in this fandom. I admit to being the sensitive soul of this little collective. I tend to love stories that play on my heartstrings even if they stray somewhat from canon. I love Vin - whether he's St. Vin of the Tortured Soul, Terror Twins Vin, wisecracking Michael Wiseman Vin or the confident, warm, Vin I saw on the show. I do love good stories about any of the seven, but I don't get as caught up in a story that explores in depth something like the Buck-JD relationship. My favorite episodes are Sins of the Past, Manhunt and any episode that contains a scene that features Vin.
MidnightBlue: I love Buck. He's without a doubt my favorite though I love good stories about any of the Seven. Because I liked Dale Midkiff in Time Trax (though not as much as in Mag7), I started watching Mag7 from the premiere, watched it again on TNT and am watching it again on Hallmark if only to lament the scene cuts and preemption's. One of the most important aspects of the show for me was the Buck--JD friendship and brotherhood. The biggest gap in this fandom for me is the dearth of Buck het fic. I have one Mag7 fic posted and another I'm working on with DarkSkies that's about half finished. I'm also working on the Buck sections of an AU created by Outrider. I agree with the others that if we're being snooty enough to be selective about the fan fiction we recommend, we should be willing to expose our own fanfic to the critical eyes of others. My favorite episodes are One Day Out West, Achilles and Working Girls but I love all the great Buck and Buck--JD scenes in the other episodes especially Serpents and Love & Honor. And I do have great appreciation for the rest of the Seven.
TimeTracker: I love Westerns but somehow missed Mag7 on CBS. I caught up to it on TNT because Dale Midkiff (beloved from Time Trax) and Eric Close (beloved from Now & Again) were in it. I have to admit that it only took a few shows before Ezra captivated me also. And even though they are my top three, I don't think that affects my love of good stories about others. Besides, who could love Buck and not love his interaction with JD or his friendship with Chris? And who could love Vin and not love stories with Chris? And because there are so few good stories that really flesh out Josiah and Nathan, I'm all the more excited when I find one. I've written fanfic in a couple of scifi fandoms but haven't gotten past being a reader in Mag7. It took me quite a while to find a great Mag7 crossover with my scifi favorite, Stargate - finally found One Day Out West by ZorroRojo. My favorite episodes are Love & Honor, Serpents and One Day Out West. Oh heck, and Working Girls, Lady Killers, Penance, Achilles, Chinatown - maybe I should just list my least favorites. But my least favorites have great scenes - the Jericho scenes with the six searchers in Inmate 78, the Chris-Vin scenes and Buck's bathtub scene in Sins of the Past, the Buck-JD conversation in Wagon Train, the Ezra's derring-do in Vendetta, etc., etc.
Milagro: Although I most love the Buck and JD relationship, there aren't enough great stories that feature it for me to center my reading on stories with the two of them front and center. [Those Chris -Vin fans are so lucky.] But I like all the rest equally second. My favorite episodes are Working Girls, Achilles and Lady Killers.
StarkeRaven: From the first episode, as I watched Ezra ride away from the fight only to have his honor win the battle with his self-interest, I've loved that gamblin' man. All the others grew on me too, though I think it wasn't until Achilles that I really came to love JD, despite his nice moments in Working Girls. (It's amazing I even noticed him then, considering Achilles was my first - and in the series, only - glimpse of Ezra's finely muscled physique.) If my high school students only knew the kind of reading I did - well, at least I don't teach English. My favorite episodes are Chinatown, Serpents and Witness [the first Maude episode].
Outrider: Mag7 wasn't really my primary fandom until a few months before MidnightBlue got the idea to start this site. I've written some fanfic in three other western fandoms. I love scifi series and movies as much as I do westerns. When it comes to reading, scifi dominates. I, especially love post-apocalypse scifi which often has a western feel to it. [Am I the only one who loved Postman and Water World?] After I offered to donate some space on my server for this site, I started to read the fic much more heavily -- although I think I'm here mainly to make us seven. I've started to write Mag7 fanfic in a scifi AU. I started this AU for another series quite a while back but it's actually more suitable for Mag7. I can't choose a favorite character among Buck, Vin and Ezra. Nor can I pick only three favorite episodes - loved Serpents, Working Girls, One Day Out West, Achilles, Lady Killers, Chinatown and Love & Honor. Although I didn't care for the prison scenes that ate up half the screen time, I loved the interaction of the other six in Inmate 78. I also loved the Vin, Chris parts and Buck's bathhouse scene in Sins of the Past as well as Ezra's stunt in Vendetta.
LovePotion (consultant emeritus): Well, I love Buck, most especially his easy humor even at his friends' expense and his ability to tell emotional, painful truths without getting maudlin. Ezra is a fascinating character, and I love Chris because he's Michael Biehn. I get confused by folks who don't get how vicious Vin can be, nor how jaded Ezra is. Favorite episodes include: Vendetta; Manhunt; The Collector; Obsession; Working Girls; Lady Killers--oh wait, we were supposed to stop at three??
We cross indexed the story titles into a number of categories. 'Cause sometimes we're in the mood for funny and sometimes for sexy - and like that. The categories grew in number as we subdivided and found stories that just didn't seem to fit under the existing headings. We'll probably add more categories as we go along. So far, these are them:We started out with some basic categories-- one for each of the Seven, plus a category for a story about all of them. Then we cross indexed the stories into subject categories: "AU's/CROSS-OVERS/ADAPTIONS", "NOVELLAS/SERIES", "COMEDY", "ACTION", "H/C" and "DEATH FICS/TEARJERKERS". At first, we put anything funny in the COMEDY category. But somehow it didn't seem fittin' to put a fully plotted story with well developed characters like Annie's Call of the Wild or Hilary Fox's Alligator Alley in the same category with an hysterical, little gem like Ruby's Apastapickle. So the "JUST PLAIN FUNNY" (JPF) category was born. Then we added a category for sexy, little PWP's like Diamondback's Green Beer -- "JUST PLAIN SEXY" (JPS). All slash stories are otherwise found as a separate sub-category on the character pages. We use the term "slush" to refer to slash stories which have no explicit adult content. Then in the hope there might someday actually be enough good stories for a Het section - but knowing that there aren't now, we added a HET/ROMANCE category - Het being adult content, romance being het slush. One might suspect that in a series about seven gunmen fighting for justice, the ACTION category would be the biggest. But of course, that's rarely been the case in a fandom dominated by the sensitive sex. A large percentage of the stories are character driven rather than plot driven - relationships, character development & background, contemplation (internal monologues), observations, machinations, etc. So we have a relationship category labeled ostentatiously CHARACTER CONTEMPLATIONS & COMMENTARY (CCC). Then we added a category for CHILDREN & ANIMALS (C&A) in which we cross indexed stories about the men's childhoods, stories with children as key characters and stories about Cuervo the ATF cat, Chaucer the wonder horse, Peso the fractious, Linda B.'s The Cur series and other stories with animals as important characters. (And we squelched Outrider's attempt to call the category Children & Other Animals.) We added a HOLIDAY section because most of us aren't fond of the overly sentimental but sometimes a little over-the-top sentiment just seems right in a holiday story.
Finally, we found a few stories just too strange to categorize. So we added a category first called Simply Strange then renamed SUBLIMELY SURREAL for satire, stories of the supernatural, science fiction and other left-of-center stories. This category does not include stories in which the author deviated from canon characterization out of ignorance or in service of attributing to her favorite character all things wise & wonderful, brave & true. Then we let Dark Skies and Love Potion convince us to establish a separate KIDDIE CORRAL for the very best stories from the Kiddie AU's. (These stories are also not cross-indexed in the other categories.) Finally, we looked at some of the slash stories we'd tossed because they just strayed too far from canon characterization in the way the men talked and acted - just too mushy for us.
* * * DEATH DOGS FAN FICTION SITE MAP
Stories are cross-indexed. One story may appear in several categories. Stories with two to four main characters will be listed under the names of each. Stories with five or more will be listed under the All the Seven category. [We don't claim to be good at math.] Stories with explicit sexual content are marked with double asterisks**. Stories with no explicit sexual content but which are likely to be in the adult section of sites like Black Raptor due to reference to slash relationships are marked with a single asterisk* If an author has her own website or an index of stories on a website [and we know about it] we'll provide a link to it. Just click on her name. Send comments or suggested story URL's to
outrider@deathdogs.net 
If you are under 18 or are offended by sexual content -- stay away from the stories with **