And today's entry
First, still lots of dates available! Pick a date and gimme a prompt. If you're not careful I'll babble about how I first met nursedarry or how I have weird diseases and/or weird crushes, or the round of applause I (and a guy) got returning to a party after a tryst in the backyard of a house for sale.
What. It was the 80s. *snicker*
But today is underappreciated pairings and I'm actually going to talk about two, three, four. My math is undoubtedly wrong...
A year ago I would have said Peter/Stiles, but it's becoming more and more popular (actually it's still only about 2.8% of the fics in Teen Wolf on AO3).
First up, from my very first fandom, Drusilla and Spike. It hit me how few people wrote this pairing when it was in a rare pairing challenge. How was this possible? There were lots of us writers back in the day, I'm sure of it. Hell, I ran a whole email list about them (well with Angelus as well).
There are 15000 Buffy fics on AO3. 314 of them have Drusilla/Spike as a pairing (hell, if you type in Spike/Drusilla you don't even get that as an option!). Of those, 42 are mine. I've written roughly 11% of the fics in that pairing on the current most popular archive, and they make up...I dunno, 3.1% or something.
And yet they're a canon pairing. They were beautiful together. He so devoted. She so nuts. So much history, rather canon or my own fanon. I've written them through a hundred and fifty years of history. And, yet, people (including myself) see Spike with Buffy or Willow or Angel much more, even after one of those fandom relationships became canon as well. People didn't like Dru; I had friends wanting me to kill her off in my fics. I had to explain why she would always be loved by Spike despite his true love for Willow in TEAOW&S. I love Dru.
Okay, moving on to a pairing that was never possible in canon because the characters never appeared on screen together. AO3 has all of six fics, one in German, for Buffy/Lindsey. Back in the day I think there were maybe five us of writing this pairing that made no logical sense. I would kill someone for Indie if she'd ever write more of her story (that also included Angel). Of course, I also have an unfinished fic for this pairing, and last year in a big bang for rare pairings that never happened, I was going to write a twist on my between seasons five and six 'where was Buffy' fic in which she ended up nearly prostituting herself to Lindsey in Emporia, Kansas until she remembered who she was. I dunno, maybe it was the good girl/bad boy thing (which also explains the huge popularity of Buffy/Spike). Maybe it was the connection of Angel. I just wish there was more of this pairing.
Switching fandoms now. Again I was like one of five people who loved and wrote Chloe/Lionel from Smallville. Season two cemented it for me. He was so...lecherous around her and she was so desperate to help Clark. And then in the next season when he and Clark body switched, in my world he so had sex with her! There was chemistry onscreen, and some whitehot fic. On AO3, there are 7500 fics in Smallville. Twelve are Chloe/Lionel. None are mine though I have written about sixty. Maybe it's partially my love of older men/younger women. And bad guys with brains. I dunno.
Finally, in my current fandom, would be Lydia/Stiles. This is almost a canon 'ship and yet hardly anyone likes it. I'm sure that's partly due to the whole slash only thing that exists in most fandoms (if you may have noticed, all the relationships I've discussed are het; I am very much an omnishipper). And, yes, I mostly write slash in this fandom, but not exclusively. I love Lydia. She's the smart Cordy of this show. I always said Cordy was basically my character, Laure, sans alienness and superpowers, but really Lydia is because Laure is super smart (except where men are concerned which is also Lydia like). Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I love the idea of Lydia/Stiles in fic, on the show, whatever. They play off each other so well. Definitely a friends to lovers thing. Out of the nearly 30000 fics on AO3, there are only 481 Lydia/Stiles. That's like 1.2% or something. Of those, 184 are also Derek/Stiles. Only one of the three I've written is purely Lydia/Stiles so I'm guilty of ignoring the pairing as well, but that's partly due to my Peter/Stiles obsession. (51 of the 815 fics are mine).
Honorable mention: Joyce/Spike. Yeah, I went there. *g* Rare pairings were made for me, dudes and dudettes.
What. It was the 80s. *snicker*
But today is underappreciated pairings and I'm actually going to talk about two, three, four. My math is undoubtedly wrong...
A year ago I would have said Peter/Stiles, but it's becoming more and more popular (actually it's still only about 2.8% of the fics in Teen Wolf on AO3).
First up, from my very first fandom, Drusilla and Spike. It hit me how few people wrote this pairing when it was in a rare pairing challenge. How was this possible? There were lots of us writers back in the day, I'm sure of it. Hell, I ran a whole email list about them (well with Angelus as well).
There are 15000 Buffy fics on AO3. 314 of them have Drusilla/Spike as a pairing (hell, if you type in Spike/Drusilla you don't even get that as an option!). Of those, 42 are mine. I've written roughly 11% of the fics in that pairing on the current most popular archive, and they make up...I dunno, 3.1% or something.
And yet they're a canon pairing. They were beautiful together. He so devoted. She so nuts. So much history, rather canon or my own fanon. I've written them through a hundred and fifty years of history. And, yet, people (including myself) see Spike with Buffy or Willow or Angel much more, even after one of those fandom relationships became canon as well. People didn't like Dru; I had friends wanting me to kill her off in my fics. I had to explain why she would always be loved by Spike despite his true love for Willow in TEAOW&S. I love Dru.
Okay, moving on to a pairing that was never possible in canon because the characters never appeared on screen together. AO3 has all of six fics, one in German, for Buffy/Lindsey. Back in the day I think there were maybe five us of writing this pairing that made no logical sense. I would kill someone for Indie if she'd ever write more of her story (that also included Angel). Of course, I also have an unfinished fic for this pairing, and last year in a big bang for rare pairings that never happened, I was going to write a twist on my between seasons five and six 'where was Buffy' fic in which she ended up nearly prostituting herself to Lindsey in Emporia, Kansas until she remembered who she was. I dunno, maybe it was the good girl/bad boy thing (which also explains the huge popularity of Buffy/Spike). Maybe it was the connection of Angel. I just wish there was more of this pairing.
Switching fandoms now. Again I was like one of five people who loved and wrote Chloe/Lionel from Smallville. Season two cemented it for me. He was so...lecherous around her and she was so desperate to help Clark. And then in the next season when he and Clark body switched, in my world he so had sex with her! There was chemistry onscreen, and some whitehot fic. On AO3, there are 7500 fics in Smallville. Twelve are Chloe/Lionel. None are mine though I have written about sixty. Maybe it's partially my love of older men/younger women. And bad guys with brains. I dunno.
Finally, in my current fandom, would be Lydia/Stiles. This is almost a canon 'ship and yet hardly anyone likes it. I'm sure that's partly due to the whole slash only thing that exists in most fandoms (if you may have noticed, all the relationships I've discussed are het; I am very much an omnishipper). And, yes, I mostly write slash in this fandom, but not exclusively. I love Lydia. She's the smart Cordy of this show. I always said Cordy was basically my character, Laure, sans alienness and superpowers, but really Lydia is because Laure is super smart (except where men are concerned which is also Lydia like). Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I love the idea of Lydia/Stiles in fic, on the show, whatever. They play off each other so well. Definitely a friends to lovers thing. Out of the nearly 30000 fics on AO3, there are only 481 Lydia/Stiles. That's like 1.2% or something. Of those, 184 are also Derek/Stiles. Only one of the three I've written is purely Lydia/Stiles so I'm guilty of ignoring the pairing as well, but that's partly due to my Peter/Stiles obsession. (51 of the 815 fics are mine).
Honorable mention: Joyce/Spike. Yeah, I went there. *g* Rare pairings were made for me, dudes and dudettes.