hedda62 | insufficient and irrelevant

This is the Decidedly Non-Definitive Person of Interest Recs Post. I am really, really bad at bookmarking things as I read them (because I am going to be able to find the thing again no problem right?) so I've kind of been delving back and sticking fics on a list, but there's no way I can find them all again. So, partial list, some of my favorites, not by any means all, and with one exception everything here was posted (or last updated) no earlier than March of this year.

It was

yunitsa who first got me hooked, and her fics were the first I read, so the one 2012 fic that's on this list is East of the Sun, West of the Moon (everything she writes is beautiful, but this is my favorite). Finch/Reese, mostly pining (He puts the longing inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a bird, inside of a hare, locked in an iron chest at the bottom of his heart), set post-Bad Code.

Also entirely beautiful and full of longing and pain and the edge of satisfaction,

eris's minimum safe distance. In all other respects Finch seemed to treat his life like it was a Turing test in reverse. John could formulate a few theories about the calculus that had taken him from his hermitage at the library to knocking on John's door well after midnight, and he didn't like a single one of them.

For an abrupt change of tone:

enemyofperfect's ERROR: TOO MANY FEELS is pure crack but just delightful: the Machine sends Valentine emails with the intent of matchmaking (Finch/Reese, obviously). It was when Harold called his creation "sweetheart" and complained about the effects of Tumblr on her natural language production that I fell. Also: epistolary fic <3.

Also mostly but not entirely on the light (and short) side, Chapter Six: Harold Helps Out by

leupagus. Who can resist Harold reading "Bunnicula" out loud to Bear (and John)?

astolat has written lots of POI stories and they're all great, but my favorite two are Home Run (baseball, Reese tracking down Harold's origins, happy ending), and Employment Benefits (Finch/Shaw, Finch/Reese, Finch/Shaw/Reese, explicit), which I really think is two stories smooshed into one, but it doesn't matter since they are both enormously enjoyable.

Everything

livenudebigfoot writes has perfect tone and spot-on voices, and if the pairings aren't those I'd have chosen off the bat, I end up believing in them anyway. I'm not sure which is my favorite, but I'm really enjoying Armor, which is Finch/Fusco (seriously, just go with it). Warning: WIP, long, being updated slowly. Also clothing porn.

I posted the prompt for Edge In Your Affection by

killalla so I am bound to love the result, but I'd love it anyway: Root/Grace, creepy and sweet.

Speaking of Grace, she is one of the major characters in

Orockthro's Kick the Generator, a multi-chapter post-s2 dystopian adventure full of satisfying difficulties and solutions. And Shaw. :) (And Harold being lost without computers, and Carter and Elias running New York, and mm.)

Two great recently-posted plot-and-character-heavy gen fics: Where Circles End by

callmecathy (Nathan is alive! and he and Reese have to learn to get along) and Code Indigo by

pendrecarc (Shaw-centric, AU for "Relevance," lovely twist on canon). And a little less plot-heavy but oh-so-sweetly-painful, Let the Bough Break by

sarcasticsra, author chose not to use archive warnings for reasons.

And that's my list, and I will now immediately think of five others that must be added, but probably you won't get them tonight.