sneaking in under the wire
I love doing this challenge.
Day 1
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.
I really don't pay much attention any more to whether or not anyone is reading my stories, and I believe that if you keep writing and trying to improve, whatever defines you as an author will change over time (hopefully), so I'll just rec some of my personal favorites.
As I'm too lazy to go look, I may have recced the first one already, but...
The End is the final story in the regular series known to my eternal shame as The Erotic Adventures of Willow & Spike, which actually was the second name for the series; the first was so awful I can't remember it. The series itself is over 50 stories long and was mostly written between seasons two and four when Buffy originally aired. Yep, been posting fic online for just about seventeen years. While the series began as a few smut fics, it grew and grew and developed plots and had character development and everything, all set within one year of the characters' lives. I wrote myself into a corner and "The End" wrote myself out of it. Along the way I made Angelus loving! Unlike most stories, I wrote most of "The End" before I started posting, so it's more cohesive. I will go to my grave believing this is one of the best things I ever wrote, and I finished it over a dozen years ago.
I could self-rec several of my Buffy stories, but, hell, I wrote hundreds of the things (and still write them) so moving along...
I've dabbled in a lot of fandoms (and not just during Yuletide), but I've only considered four to be biggies. After Buffy came DC Comics (mostly Batbooks well before the New 52). I wrote mostly Slade/Dick and Tim/Dick, but dabbled in other pairings. My favorite story I wrote is Bringing Him Home, a twisty 'what if' fic. "What if Dick had been killed by the Joker and Jason had lived? What then might happen if Dick came back to life as Renegade, set to make his family's life hell?" Primarily Dick/Tim, with a confused Tim, broken Dick, sympathetic Jason and a strong, stern Bruce, I'm most proud of my depiction of Alfred in this story. Alfred is the grandfather all these boys need.
I moved into Supernatural next, writing mostly Dean/Cas and Sam/Gabriel. I wrote a lot of dark fic in this fandom, but one of the darkest, and one of my favorites is The Consort in which God Cas took Dean as his unwilling consort and Sam and Bobby (with help from Crowley and Gabriel) tried to find a way to get the souls out of Cas, while Dean tried to placate a cruel and vindictive Cas. The fic is dark and full of non-con and Stockholm Syndrome and does not have a happy ending. I think the despair of all the characters comes across really well. Plus I brought Gabriel back to life in a way that works.
A rare crossover fic for me is a Buffy/Angel/SPN one, apokalypsis (revelation) which was set after Buffy and Angel ended and during Season 5 of SPN--my take on the Lucifer apocalypse and how Buffy and the Scoobies and Angel and his gang would react. It's 29000 words with no sex--definitely the first long fic I wrote with no sex--and I'm actually pretty proud of that. It was a blast to write; I managed to combine universes with different forms of vampires and demons pretty well; and, heck, I brought my favorite characters back from the dead: Lindsey, Lilah, Wes, Anna, and Gabriel (except he never died here). And, of course, the good guys won, then the gals went shopping and the guys sat around drinking beer and watching basketball.
After SPN came my current big fandom love, Teen Wolf, where I primarily write Peter/Stiles but have no true OTP and love several other 'ships. One of the fics I'm most proud of was written for 2013 polyamory big bang and is Stiles/Lydia/Derek (mostly Stiles/Lydia and Stiles/Derek). As it was written before the Nogitsune storyline, it ignores most of the "darkness" in Stiles and mostly is about the three working everything out in their relationship(s). Also the Sheriff just sighs a lot at his son. Hypothetically, How Did This Become His Life? is full of humor, sex, romance, angst, BAMF Lydia and BAMF Sheriff and a bit insecure Derek. Stiles mostly flails his way through the thing somehow ending up with two lovers who not only love him back, but get along well with each other, too. Oh, and while neither are Alpha werewolves, they are both so very alpha and Stiles is so very not.
Back around season two of Smallville I became obsessed with Chloe/Lionel and wrote them a lot (I think there were like six of us online who loved this pairing). Dark Night was one of the first I wrote and is set during that episode when Metropolis was burning due to Lex being possessed by Zod, and Lionel rescued Chloe. The fic has them holing up in his office and talking and drinking and finally giving into their mutual desire. There's a lot of really good banter as the world crumbles around them. In general I'm usually proud of my dialogue and it's particularly good here.
I've always been known for writing original characters. At first I didn't realize it wasn't "done" in most fandoms. Now I just don't care. I'm not known for writing Harry Potter fic at all because most of it revolves around an OFC. Crashing Down is just one of several in a series written before the revelation that Sirius and Narcissa were cousins, and I gave Narcissa a twin sister, Lilith, a Gryffindor who was Sirius' true love, but who, during the second war, ended up wed to Severus while he was undercover in the Deatheaters and gets pregnant by him. This is one of the darker fics in the series as Voldemort discovers Lilith has been faking being under Severus' spell and makes demands on her that nearly break Severus. There's a lot of arguing, a lot of fear, some unhappy sex, and everyone (but Voldemort) is miserable. I love making characters miserable. I love this whole series. Maybe some day I'll get back to it (and the AU of this AU that I started because I'm nuts that way.)
And, finally, a Yuletide fic from a couple years ago. I grew up listening to and loving the song "Ode to Billy Joe" and when someone nominated it, I added it to my list of 'willing to write' and got it. White Flowers is from the POV of the narrator as she remembers her life with Billy Joe one year after his death. Not knowing there was a film based on the song in which Billy Joe was gay, I wrote it that the girl got pregnant, hid the pregnancy from her family, miscarried, and what they threw off the bridge was the baby, with Billy Joe, in his depression, following soon after. What I'm most proud of are the inner strength of the girl who is determined to keep living despite losing her dream of a future with the man she loved and their child, and her displeasure at the weakness in Billy Joe that he left her to struggle alone.