Happy birthday, wesleysgirl!
First, don’t be misled: today’s birthday person, wesleysgirl, does indeed write extensively in the Jossverse, but (1) she also has a great recs list (http://home.comcast.net/~wesleysgirl/recs.html) which includes many fine TS and SGA entries, among other fandoms, and (2) she isn’t just “Wesley’s girl,” since I originally fell in love with her writing over at AllAboutSpike (http://www.allaboutspike.com/auth.html?au=252), and her own webpage (http://home.comcast.net/~wesleysgirl/fanfiction.html) includes a number of pairings, not all with Wesley, and not all (though mostly) slash. She is also writing, as well as recommending, in SGA. She is clearly an avid reader and a prolific writer, and I’m indebted to her for both reasons. This year, she’s been one of the big forces turning me on to Stargate Atlantis through her excellent story recommendations as well as her own fine stories, and last year, the series “Saturation” and “Pervasion” that she wrote along with Jane Davitt gave me something hot, involving, and moving to look forward to after work, helping to get me through some tiring and irritating days. The women active in the early labor movement used to proclaim, “Give us bread and roses!” because they knew that the spirit needs sustenance as much as does the body . . . and fiction provides the roses in my life. Plus, I really love reading about food in her LJ-I have yet to try any of the recipes, but I’ve mentally savored all of them. So she's got both parts covered! It’s a good idea to friend her to keep up with the imaginary noshing, not to mention to have the great pleasure of reading her stories as they are being written-recent examples: “Deciphering Fire” and “No Going Home.”
Where to start? Well, she has very helpfully divided up her fiction into categories by length and has then supplied ratings and pairings information, so I’d say you are safe to go with your own instincts. That said, here are just a very few of my many sentimental and critical favorites among her works:
“Seeing Distant Things As If They Were Close.” I believe that this was the first story I read by her; I know it’s one I’ve reread often. It’s Spander, ultimately, but what it is, best and most of all, is a wonderful set of character studies, of Xander and of Spike, but also, in a way, of Buffy, in the time following the loss of Xander’s eye. I find the writing very evocative, the voices pitch-perfect, and the moods and tones as finely done as a water-color. I recommend this story very highly.
“Least Obeisance.” This is another intriguing character study, in this case a very short slice-of-life encounter between Cordelia and Spike just after he’s lost the Gem of Amarra to Angel. Again, spot-on voice and characterization and effective mood--just astringent enough, with both characters at their sharpest, but never one-note.
“Ne M’oubliez pas.” This short G/W amnesia-fic really touched me, because it goes right to the heart of that difficult question: what makes one person love another, and how fragile and unlikely is that condition?
“Coming Around Again” series. This was written with Secondverse as a series of LJ tags at Christmastime; it’s heavy on the hurt/comfort and the schmoop (assuming I’m using those terms correctly!)-so if that’s what you are in the mood for, this is your dish. It made a great holiday gift, and I'm saving it up for next year, too.
“Saturation” series. Written with Jane Davitt. I’m not always comfortable with G/X, and I’m not a threesomes person, being intensely monogamous even in my fantasy life. But they did a fine, insightful job of looking at the complexities (emotional, even more than sexual) of integrating a third, wounded person (in this case, a shanshued Spike) into an already established paired relationship which is loving but complex. I found this series involving and intriguing.
“Act of Nature.” With Jane Davitt. Although this is G/X, not my favorite pairing, I found the setting beautiful and evocative and the premises of the story interesting. And it’s particularly worthy of mention because it gave rise to a novel, using the main OC, which is described here: http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/533574.html. I love that this can happen!
Of course, you could always start with her own selection of her shorter works; she picked what she felt was a good variety and asked her readers which might be best for the WriterCon archive. That list can be found here: http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/532829.html.
At the moment, her non-BtVS/AtS fic doesn’t appear to be up at her website (the location of all of the above), but can be found via the links on the right side of her LJ . . . or here:
SGA:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=wesleysgirl&keyword=Atlantis+Fic&filter=all My favorites so far: the thoughtful character study “The Way Oceans Do Not Sleep” and the powerful, painful “Two Left.”
Firefly:
http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/tag/firefly+fic
Supernatural:
http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/tag/spn+fic
(Boy, that tagging is neat!)
Thanks so much for many hours of reading pleasure, WG, both in fiction and in food! I hope your birthday has been a good one.
Where to start? Well, she has very helpfully divided up her fiction into categories by length and has then supplied ratings and pairings information, so I’d say you are safe to go with your own instincts. That said, here are just a very few of my many sentimental and critical favorites among her works:
“Seeing Distant Things As If They Were Close.” I believe that this was the first story I read by her; I know it’s one I’ve reread often. It’s Spander, ultimately, but what it is, best and most of all, is a wonderful set of character studies, of Xander and of Spike, but also, in a way, of Buffy, in the time following the loss of Xander’s eye. I find the writing very evocative, the voices pitch-perfect, and the moods and tones as finely done as a water-color. I recommend this story very highly.
“Least Obeisance.” This is another intriguing character study, in this case a very short slice-of-life encounter between Cordelia and Spike just after he’s lost the Gem of Amarra to Angel. Again, spot-on voice and characterization and effective mood--just astringent enough, with both characters at their sharpest, but never one-note.
“Ne M’oubliez pas.” This short G/W amnesia-fic really touched me, because it goes right to the heart of that difficult question: what makes one person love another, and how fragile and unlikely is that condition?
“Coming Around Again” series. This was written with Secondverse as a series of LJ tags at Christmastime; it’s heavy on the hurt/comfort and the schmoop (assuming I’m using those terms correctly!)-so if that’s what you are in the mood for, this is your dish. It made a great holiday gift, and I'm saving it up for next year, too.
“Saturation” series. Written with Jane Davitt. I’m not always comfortable with G/X, and I’m not a threesomes person, being intensely monogamous even in my fantasy life. But they did a fine, insightful job of looking at the complexities (emotional, even more than sexual) of integrating a third, wounded person (in this case, a shanshued Spike) into an already established paired relationship which is loving but complex. I found this series involving and intriguing.
“Act of Nature.” With Jane Davitt. Although this is G/X, not my favorite pairing, I found the setting beautiful and evocative and the premises of the story interesting. And it’s particularly worthy of mention because it gave rise to a novel, using the main OC, which is described here: http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/533574.html. I love that this can happen!
Of course, you could always start with her own selection of her shorter works; she picked what she felt was a good variety and asked her readers which might be best for the WriterCon archive. That list can be found here: http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/532829.html.
At the moment, her non-BtVS/AtS fic doesn’t appear to be up at her website (the location of all of the above), but can be found via the links on the right side of her LJ . . . or here:
SGA:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=wesleysgirl&keyword=Atlantis+Fic&filter=all My favorites so far: the thoughtful character study “The Way Oceans Do Not Sleep” and the powerful, painful “Two Left.”
Firefly:
http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/tag/firefly+fic
Supernatural:
http://wesleysgirl.livejournal.com/tag/spn+fic
(Boy, that tagging is neat!)
Thanks so much for many hours of reading pleasure, WG, both in fiction and in food! I hope your birthday has been a good one.