redlance:

Ooh, boy. This is quite the question. Let me preface this by saying some of these fics require knowledge of the show and the characters. So, if you haven’t seen it, it might be worth checked it out. Of course, many might read just fine without those things. Honestly, I don’t remember. It’s been a while since i’ve gone through any of these. And I KNOW I’m probably going to forget ones, so I call upon our resident Bram Fanclub President @bramzambies to add her two cents, should she feel like it.

• My personal all time favourite Popular fic is Just A Little Insight by Misty Flores (or @nuthintasee on tumblr here.) But I suggest you just bookmark that for now, because if you start off with the best it’s only going to be downhill, you know?
• Then there’s the An Ever Fixed Mark series by Green Quater. This is the first installment.
•  Green Quaters also brings us Innocents Abroad. This might be my second favourite. Again, it’s been a long time, I just remember loving it.
•  Another GQ one is Fake Plastic Trees.
• The Closet by Janine is a classic.
• as is A Thin Line and its sequel.
•  Dear Brooke by @mysensitiveside FUCKING STILL KILLS ME TO THIS DAY.
• @quatorz Wrote one about Brooke’s Glamazon jacket. Dude, where is that one? I can’t find it. Did you not put it up?!
• I’m going to get yelled at for putting this one here, but it’s more to warn people than anything else. Soricha’s Deserted Challenges is… look. I’m not saying avoid it. All I’m going to say is that I read this about ten years ago and still haven’t recovered. And I managed to accidentally read it a second time somehow?? Totally forgetting the devastation until it hit me again and fucked me up a second time?? So, it’s obviously written well but like… man, read at your own discretion.
• The Truth About Tippy Typewriter (by Teara) is a title i definitely recognise, as well as the first few sentences, so if it stuck in my mind, it’s probably a good read. Also it’s just like… nostalgic as fuck with like AOL and chat rooms galore. Fabulous.

I’ve also written a few. Not that i’m recommending them, because they’re all OLD AND TERRIBLE now. But you can find those on ff.net and a few on ao3. Honestly, I wouldn’t touch anything other than Balance, The Show and maybe The Snowball Effect. Mostly because those are the only ones I don’t want to set completely on fire.

I hope this list gives you a nice starting point! The website that most of the links will take you to is @ralst‘s Passion & Perfection. A website where I spent countless hours over the years reading the stories gathered there, while uncomfortably curled up in a computer chair, staring at a PC monitor that was trying its best to give me cancer. It’s also where I happened to stumble across Popular and Brooke and Sam again for the first time since seeing bits and pieces of the show. Love at first sight. I have a lot of love for this website. 

Anyone else who has recs, please feel free to reply to this with them!

ALL of these, and I 100% agree about “Just A Little Insight” (holy shit), but also check out Ruminations on Accidents by harper_m! Set a while after the finale, as many fics for this ship are, in this one Brooke gets her life together and is in med school–and Sam shows up in her life again ODing on her operating table. They go from there and it is GREAT.