Horseshoe Nails
Apr 13, 2008
(Link is to the first story in the series.)
This is one of my favourite Firefly fanfics. The whole cast is perfectly themselves. The plot goes AU sometime between Objects in Space and the Big Damn Movie. This story is a good example of how a few small changes can change everything, and it’s also total wish fulfilment for me, changing everything about Serenity that I didn’t love, and leaving all the parts I did. (Not that I would have preferred to see the movie happen this way, exactly, but I’m happy to see it explored in fic.) There are five stories in the series:
- Two Gorram Days: while the others go off on a rescue mission, Jayne, laid up with a broken leg, is left to look after River. He finds this less difficult and more enjoyable than he expects.
- Kinship: Simon and Inara become friends, River and Jayne get closer, and Mal is in a bad mood.
- Bank Job: an alternate version of Serenity: Those Left Behind, featuring a girls’ afternoon in and the end of the Hands of Blue guys (Say what you like about Joss Whedon, the man can create some seriously creepy villains. Note to self: never watch Hush alone late at night ever again.)
- Miranda: alternate version of the Big Damn Movie, with enough changes to keep you on the edge of your seat, even when you think you know what’s coming.
- Prodigal: after Miranda, they all get to meet the family Jayne left behind many years earlier.
I don’t like Prodigal as much as the others, and there’s some squabbling at the end of Miranda that kind of annoys me (but much less than it would in another fandom, because Joss Whedon’s characters totally would intrude on each other’s private lives in just this way), but overall it’s an awesome series, set in a fandom that doesn’t have nearly enough fic. Dyce hits the characters’ voices perfectly, too.