Fanfic Author Appreciation, Day 2: BtVS and AtS

[selenak]

I fell in with the Jossverse through a couple of recommendations, by fellow Highlander fans, as it happens. Managed to catch two episodes of Buffy's season 1, then School Hard and the ensuing ones of season 2, and was hooked. Naturally, fanfic-seeking expeditions followed. Over the years, I've found so many great authors that it's incredibly hard to pick just one for this week. In the end, I decided on two, one for gen and one for slash.

Gen author of the day: honorh

Aka the Amazing Alaskaienne. One of my oldest and dearest net friends, but let's forget that for a moment: you want to hear about her fiction, and why you should read it post haste, if you haven't already. honorh, whose Buffy and Angel stories are here, can write lengthy epics featuring that amazing and rare thing, plot, and manage to be true ensemble pieces. You won't find a character bashed in her stories, or used just to make a statement. Everyone who shows up in her stories has a reason for being there, and isn't just Sunnydale or Los Angeles background decoration. Well-written and well-plotted as her longer stories are, though, I want to talk about some of her less well-known short stories which illustrate the point that this is an author who fell in love with the entire fictional world of the Jossverse, not just with character X or pairing Y, beautifully.

"Making the Call" belongs in the "missing scene" category of stories; in this case, it answers the question of how Angel found out Joyce had died to show up during Forever. HonorH lets Xander, in whose pov the story is written, tell him. The old tension between these two characters, their voices, their feelings for Buffy are dead-on, no pun intended, and Honorh even managed to work in a tie between Xander buying Cordelia a dress in The Prom, and Angel buying her new wardrobe in Disharmony.

"One Lucky Guy" picks up on the Spike and Riley conversation during Into the Woods. Believe me, fanfic written during season 5 featuring these two characters which treated them both with sympathy was rarer than an urn of Osiris. Read and enjoy.

Then we have HonorH's talent for picking up a hint of backstory and a one-episode-character and develop it into a moving tale of history and world-building: "Aurora" is her take on the monk we see in No Place Like Home protecting the Key, the Key backstory and the reason why the monks were willing to sacrifice their lives. Given that Dawn is Honor's favourite character, it's not surprising that this story about what was to become Dawn shines.

If Riley-and-Spike-sympathy-at-the-same-time was rare in season 5, fanfic about Robin Wood in season 7 was, and still is, almost impossible to find. But even if Principal Wood had become everyone's favourite recurring character, I'd still bet on Honor's story "Leather", which gives us his pov on his mother, Slayers in general, and Spike, being a gem of the genre.


Slash author of the day: rozk

Roz Kaveney writes with elegance and an uncanny ear for dialogue. She managed to get around several of my fanfic prejudices. For example, normally I really don't like pairings between characters who never or very rarely were on screen together. Doesn't matter whether het or slash pairings, I just can't see the point because for a relationship to work for me, it has to be interesting in canon already, with the sex as an additional dimension. Well, Roz wrote a saga pairing up two characters who had little to no screen time together and weren't exactly having chemistry then, and not only made me believe it completely but made me so interested in the relationship that I regretted when it came to its inevitable ending. Her multi-part Faith by Night saga, set during season 3 of BtVS with an epilogue taking part in season 1 of AtS, starts soon after The Wish and develops a relationship between Cordelia (at that point isolated from the Scoobie Gang and secretly working to earn money after her father lost his) and Faith. One of many reasons why this works for me is that Roz not only takes the time to build up the relationship from casual encounters onwards, instead of asking us to believe they'd jump into bed with each other at the first chance, but also takes the time to deal with the fallout one the relationship is over. Both stages take actually far more narrative space than the "secret couple" stage, and how rare and realistic is that in fanfic? You can find the saga, with her other stories, at her website here.

There are two more stories, short ones, I'd like to single out: "Bed of Bones" about the First Slayer, conveying an archaic atmosphere and poetry beautifully, and her take on what an AU even darker than the Wishverse would be like, "Girl One", in which Buffy, in a world where Wolfram and Hart and the Watcher's Council have teamed up before she ever got called as the Slayer, has become Lilah Morgan's project.

Comments

[honorh.livejournal.com]

*smooches* What a lovely self-confidence boost first thing in the morning! Thank you so much. It always means so much to me that you think my fic is good.

*is your sidekick for life*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*twirls you around*

You're the best sidekick ever, and I was immensely touched by your last post.