Five unexpected but fantastic works of fanfic
Hello, gentle readers of this lovely fandom. First-time poster here, because...I have recs! Now the challenge is to group them by five and somehow come up with creative categories for them. :)
1. Answering Prayers (Joyce/Angel, R) by velvetwhip. Buffyverse is deep and wide, but have you ever expected to find stories shipping Joyce/Angel? I confess I hadn't. The character of Joyce, who is not as fleshed out in canon as I'd have liked, absolutely comes alive with Velvetwhip's well-paced and restrained story-telling. It's an interesting POV that will have you question your previous opinions of Buffy, who is, in comparison, just a child. This nuanced, angsty story is full of both sense and sensibility, simultaneously clever and plausible, such that it's made a convert out of me! Rejoice for Joyce!
2. The Letters (the 84, Charing Cross Road remix) (Anya/Snape, crossover with Harry Potter, G) by dragonyphoenix. I confess I've tried really, really hard to stay away from Harry Potter, because I allow myself one obsession at a time, and right now that all-consuming role is taken up by BtVS. But I've made an exception for this story, because the way it invokes Alan Rickman's signature voice from the first sentence of Snape's first letter is truly spine-tingling, and oh-so-satisfying that I. Can. Not. (It helps if you're an Alan Rickman fan, I suppose. But even if you're not...wouldn't you have liked to give Anya her well-deserved second chance at happiness?) With an unlikely pairing until you start thinking about it, this story shines with its spot-on character voices. Ten points from Gryffindor!
3. When This Old World Starts Getting Me Down (Dawn/Gunn, Teen) by rahirah. Really? You ask. You think we need you to rec us a story by ra-freaking-hirah? Yes, well, OK. Point. But. Barb is known for Spuffy, right? Right. But this isn't Spuffy. And right in the middle of a comic canon arc with Dawn/Xander, who writes Dawn/Charles Gunn? Well, Barb, obviously, because she always does the unexpected. And there's something so right about this ship, by the end of the short story, that you will be amazed that you never came up with this ship yourself in the first place. (Also, I'm hoping that if more people read this, then Barb would continue with more Dawn/Gunn stories.)
4. Stitched Up (Buffy/Spike, Explicit) by bewilde. How wrong can a messed up spell get? Well, this is the Buffyverse, so the answer is: very. But Bewilde here takes it to a whole new level in the end result of an ensouled...sock! A sentient, soul-having, willful, scheming, planning, interacting, "helper of the helpless" sock! That wants Buffy to be happy! That will play match-maker to make sure she is! That will attempt to exhaust my stock of exclamation points with the unexpected piled on the unexpected!!! I want to adopt the adorable thing, the pondering, sighing, curling, napping, creeping sock. I want to write a poem in its honor, except when it comes to words that rhyme with "sock", my mind just goes to...uhm, nevermind. Go, read. Until you, too, start shouting, "Sock it to me!"
5. Heart Clogging (Buffy/Spike, Teen) by spuffy_luvr. Say you want to challenge yourself as a writer. You try a new ship. You write an entire story as a series of drabbles. Or haikus. You switch to first-person (or even second-person) narrative. You submit to a requester's truly strange plotline. But would you dare to attempt a whole story without pronouns? Because that's precisely what Spuffy_luvr does here, in ways only she can with her keyboard of audacity. And what a crackarific, crackatacular comic gold of a story it is! Extra kudos for having some of the characters not know all the pronouns. (Actually, as it turned out, I didn't know certain words were pronouns. Well, this story is educational to boot!)
1. Answering Prayers (Joyce/Angel, R) by velvetwhip. Buffyverse is deep and wide, but have you ever expected to find stories shipping Joyce/Angel? I confess I hadn't. The character of Joyce, who is not as fleshed out in canon as I'd have liked, absolutely comes alive with Velvetwhip's well-paced and restrained story-telling. It's an interesting POV that will have you question your previous opinions of Buffy, who is, in comparison, just a child. This nuanced, angsty story is full of both sense and sensibility, simultaneously clever and plausible, such that it's made a convert out of me! Rejoice for Joyce!
2. The Letters (the 84, Charing Cross Road remix) (Anya/Snape, crossover with Harry Potter, G) by dragonyphoenix. I confess I've tried really, really hard to stay away from Harry Potter, because I allow myself one obsession at a time, and right now that all-consuming role is taken up by BtVS. But I've made an exception for this story, because the way it invokes Alan Rickman's signature voice from the first sentence of Snape's first letter is truly spine-tingling, and oh-so-satisfying that I. Can. Not. (It helps if you're an Alan Rickman fan, I suppose. But even if you're not...wouldn't you have liked to give Anya her well-deserved second chance at happiness?) With an unlikely pairing until you start thinking about it, this story shines with its spot-on character voices. Ten points from Gryffindor!
3. When This Old World Starts Getting Me Down (Dawn/Gunn, Teen) by rahirah. Really? You ask. You think we need you to rec us a story by ra-freaking-hirah? Yes, well, OK. Point. But. Barb is known for Spuffy, right? Right. But this isn't Spuffy. And right in the middle of a comic canon arc with Dawn/Xander, who writes Dawn/Charles Gunn? Well, Barb, obviously, because she always does the unexpected. And there's something so right about this ship, by the end of the short story, that you will be amazed that you never came up with this ship yourself in the first place. (Also, I'm hoping that if more people read this, then Barb would continue with more Dawn/Gunn stories.)
4. Stitched Up (Buffy/Spike, Explicit) by bewilde. How wrong can a messed up spell get? Well, this is the Buffyverse, so the answer is: very. But Bewilde here takes it to a whole new level in the end result of an ensouled...sock! A sentient, soul-having, willful, scheming, planning, interacting, "helper of the helpless" sock! That wants Buffy to be happy! That will play match-maker to make sure she is! That will attempt to exhaust my stock of exclamation points with the unexpected piled on the unexpected!!! I want to adopt the adorable thing, the pondering, sighing, curling, napping, creeping sock. I want to write a poem in its honor, except when it comes to words that rhyme with "sock", my mind just goes to...uhm, nevermind. Go, read. Until you, too, start shouting, "Sock it to me!"
5. Heart Clogging (Buffy/Spike, Teen) by spuffy_luvr. Say you want to challenge yourself as a writer. You try a new ship. You write an entire story as a series of drabbles. Or haikus. You switch to first-person (or even second-person) narrative. You submit to a requester's truly strange plotline. But would you dare to attempt a whole story without pronouns? Because that's precisely what Spuffy_luvr does here, in ways only she can with her keyboard of audacity. And what a crackarific, crackatacular comic gold of a story it is! Extra kudos for having some of the characters not know all the pronouns. (Actually, as it turned out, I didn't know certain words were pronouns. Well, this story is educational to boot!)