Stultiloquentia's Fic Recs

The Long Lists

The Short Lists

What I Like

I like stylish prose. A solid plot blandly recounted won't win me over, but I'm a sucker for a foxy metaphor. I like attention to power dynamics, especially queer ones. I like gen, het, slash, femslash, and everything in between and unclassifiable. I like women who love to top and men who cede control without blinking and don't mind when they don't have much of a choice. I read widely and ship casually, but the Tolkien recs have a lot of Elves and Men, the Jossverse recs have a lot of Buffy/Spike, and the HP recs, somewhat to my embarrassment, have a lot of Harry/Draco.

I like hugely physical couples who push the limits of their physicality in every direction — fighting is dancing is fucking — and when it all snaps you get a story to tell. I like grumpy banter between old colleagues. I like wit and shared bread-breaking among circles of friends. I like competence, and teamwork. I like it when an author makes use of her own real-life areas of expertise in interesting ways. For all my bloviations about believeability, I like hopeful endings, though not everything here is a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose, by any stretch. I like a good yarn.

I like talking about what I like. Here's my answer to the '101 Fic Kinks' meme.

I like feedback. Let me know if you agree with my "__ for __phobes" lists, and send me suggestions at stultiloquentia@yahoo.ca. Most importantly, feed the authors. Duh. Even the briefest, "I loved Insert Title Here! Thanks for writing!" will make their day.

I've linked to the author's main page, or the closest thing available, and to my favourite story by each, which was in most cases devilishly hard to choose. I've also made some handy race and pairing markings, because, like it or not, that's how many people surf. These labels are reductive. If I've got somebody fantastically misrepresented, please drop me a line.

Enjoy.

Newbie's Introduction to Fanfiction

No, seriously, it's awesome! There's great writing! It's a cultural phenomenon! We're, like, repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations.... really...

1. Fairy Tales (Trad.) - Sheldrake - In a Dark Wood - This is a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" for Yuletide 2006, an annual "obscure fandom" fic exchange whose archive is my #1 place to send newbies anyway. Lots of fic writers write gorgeous sentences or great plots, but it's rare to find someone with Sheldrake's classic control of theme and structure. Beautiful and gently philosophical, akin to listening to a good piece of music.

When she finds the library, she thinks she could probably live there forever and be reasonably happy. It almost looks as though someone might have tried -- there are spaces that look like nests, and others like cabins; structures sturdy or precarious, walls and beds and roofs made entirely out of books. She runs her fingers along their spines: Aesop, she reads, Ambrose. Andrewe. Anonymous. Andrewe's book is all fish. Nereydes are monsters of the sea, it says, all rough of body, and when any of them die, then the others weep.

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Christina Kamnikar - Disneyland - My best answer to the crucial question, "What do you do with a new fan who's just finished watching the series and is suffering withdrawal?" Send them to "Disneyland," an ensemble coda to Chosen that's a crisp, clever and kind, not goopy.

Someone's arm went around her, and Buffy jolted back, almost falling over into the soft sand.
"Relax. I just brought you some Kleenex. Dorkhead." Dawn's tone was sarcastic but her hands were gentle as she dabbed at Buffy's tears, then put the tissue in her hand. "Blow."

3. Stargate Atlantis - Synecdochic - Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose - Rodney, Afterwards: a strong sense of place and personality grounds a novella-length tale that's melancholy and subtle, but ultimately deeply satisfying. And it's set at a university, a personal bulletproof kink. Fan-level familiarity with the canon enrichens, but isn't necessary.

He is so distracted by the frantic two-week scrambling to find textbooks that don't lie and plan assignments and labs that make the most of the university's woefully-inadequate experimental facilities that he gets his final class cards to the registrar's office at four AM the day they're due. For the rest of the semester, he can't for the life of him remember what he calls the class without looking it up. It shows on his students' transcripts as "Practical Crisis Problemsolving", but in his head it will always and forever be "101 Ways The Geek Can Save You From Getting Eaten By An Alien", so much so he slips and calls it that in lecture one Thursday afternoon. His students chalk it up to one too many episodes of bad science-fiction television.

4. Harry Potter - Maya - Quality of Mercy - Maya is...Jossian: steel-nibbed, with hilarity on one side and heartbreak on the other. She makes me ache. She writes the best similes on three continents. She writes love, platonic and romantic, in all of its small, wacky gestures and accidental epic-ness. Her character insights, to put it bluntly, put her source material to shame. QoM (of the "post-HBP in which Harry gets saddled with Malfoy Jr. and has to learn to put up with him" genre) is her best effort. Active WIP, as of this writing, but it's worth sinking your teeth into even if she never gets to the end. Note: She's got stuff archived at FictionAlley and various places, but the best place to find new fic is on her livejournal.

Malfoy was stronger than he looked, the skinny wretch. He put Ginny down in her chair and then smoothed her napkin in her lap while Ginny smiled and Mrs Weasley beamed at his beautiful manners.
Harry cut his steak into tiny pieces of rage.

5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Kita and Jess - Six Foot Deep - Scalding, complex Buffy, Spike and Angel character studies from right in the middle of season six. Jverse fandom required reading.

And maybe, that way Spike could finally shake the fucking notion that he was created solely for the purpose of keeping Angelus' property safe until he decides to return for it.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Automated Alice - Boy - Gay sex: a bit of judicious vandalism to some one-way street signage, and we're ready to roll, right? Great. But Shannon's so-AU-it's-pretty-much-original-fiction Xander/Spike smutfest opens up a window on gay club culture and sex in immediate, sure-footed and captivating detail. Rough trade and age differences, these are things I didn't get, before. It also happens to be the hottest piece of anything I've ever read anywhere.

The boy looks at Xander head on, gaze hot and challenging, like the rest of his young body, all legs akimbo, hands on his lean hips, drawing his jeans down a bit so that Xander can see a gap of white flesh under the waist band of his jock. Any man would be hard-pressed to find a sexier walking fetish. Magic-marker Xs mark the backs of his hands, showing he's firmly under age, or a little aggressive with the straight-edge politics, but Xander doubts that because this boy has the kind of body that can dance all night and fuck even longer, with or without chemical aid. X stands for Xander.

7. Lord of the Rings - Chelsea Nolan - The Rooster Man of Gondor - If you ever need one short story to explain why people read and write fanfiction, this is a good candidate. It's my favourite kind: one that takes some small, forgotten stone in the wall, chips away at the mortar and releases an unexpected flood of light from behind.

"Gondor is being evacuated! Grab your things and go!" The irate man slammed the door in his face.
"But I don't have anything," Rooster Man spoke to the dark wood door. "Just the sun, and the sky...and the rooftops, I suppose. How do I pack them?"

8. Shakespeare - Marna and Lea - With No Less Terror Than the Elements: notes toward uncovering Act IV, Scene ii of Richard II - This one's for the literature and critical theory nerds. The footnotes, dear god in heaven. I love this story; it's ingenious; but it's also the only story out there whose accompanying DVD commentary I love even more.

Quote from DVD commentary: This is the world's most overdetermined blowjob.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - macha - descant descending - Inanna's Quest. Lit, crit, prose, poetry. Fandom masterwork. This is why we play.

born to be a bank clerk, like any poet, but this ain’t William, and that world’s gone forever. still the best street fighter of any century he happens to be in, but wasted all wasted protecting a Slayer’s family and friends, fixated on keeping his promises, treated like dirt. gone, all gone. maybe.

10. Angel - Sylvia Volk - The Wanton Folly of Me Mum - Big, ambitious brain, adores a stylistic challenge. Mere days after the airing of the Angel series finale, Sylvia authored the definitive "Wanton Folly." "Keystone Vampires" is a romp; "Psychomachia" is a verbal tapestry full of nuns and angels and poets and sheep.

When Buffy at last burst into the lobby of Wolfram & Hart, she came with an axe in her right hand, Mr. Pointy in her left, catapulting through the glass doors with a resounding crash, and with fear and anticipation in her breast; it was a dark and stormy night; and the creature she pursued was muscular and glistening and red, bounding ahead of her in ceiling-high bounces, a trail of gore splattering behind, till Buffy tackled it and swung Axcalibur—and then it lay with heaving flanks, all oozy, spurting arterial blood from odd tentacular protuberances . . . and she exclaimed aloud, "Boy, I thought I lost this thing in San Francisco, but here it's tracked me all the way to L. A.," just as Angel and Spike sprinted up from opposite directions.

The Good Het

The physical is political.

1. Supernatural/BtVS - Femmenerd - The Sadie!verse - It was a toss-up between reccing this and Femme's "Glimpses" (Faith/Dean, and I am thoroughly OTP-ed). Whether you call it het, queer, queer het or otherwise, Femme's fanfiction is some of the most joyfully feminist I've ever read -- not because she writes strong, independent, well-characterized women (though she does), but because of something a bit less common: total fearlessness about writing specific details of female sexual experience. Here are women's bodies doing the weird, fantastic things they do, often veering away from the half a dozen templates three quarters of m/f sex scenes seem to follow. Those templates serve as a kind of privacy screen for writers: stay within them and we can write smut all we like without giving much of anything away -- things about our perversions, indecorousness, creativity. Things I happen to think are good. Let it be noted that Femme's porny details work only because her other details do, too. There's no such thing as a good sex scene that's not also a good scene, period. Femme writes about the quotidian with such affection in her voice that it's impossible not to see it afresh. In the Sadie!verse, Sam gets a friend who's a girl. It's great. But I sometimes feel as if all of Femme's fiction -- her Sam/Sadie, Faith/Dean, Buffy/Angel, Ron/Hermione, Sam/Hermione, Buffy/Sam, whatever she's up to on any given day -- is in dialogue with each other: a continuous, free-wheeling exploration of her best characters, female authorship, and the project of fandom.

Quote from "This Extra Rib": “Was I wet for you?” he asks, his deep voice incongruous with the fantasy, boiling her blood.

2. James Bond - Shalott - Queen of Spades - M/Bond. Read the quote. I mean, Good Lord. WHERE do you find fiction that has lines like that in it, and means them? Fan fiction, that's where.

"I will admit that it's something of an unfair advantage, being post-menopausal," she said, pressing her hair neat in the mirror.

3. Battlestar Galactica - Kate Andrews - Something Pretty - Excellent, muscular het-smut.

"It's in my locker. And don't go in the bathroom. Captain Apollo is whacking off."
      "In general, or for the thing?"
      "Naw, just in general."
      From behind the door, Lee shouted, "Captain Apollo is not whacking off."
      "Of course you're not sir."

4. Farscape - Feldman - Scientist, Astronaut, and Nymphomaniac: The nine lives of John Crichton - May I interest you in a body-swap? My friend Kyria put it, "I like stories that throw people just slightly askew and then see how they react." This is such a good episode coda that I, and probably most of Farscape fandom, seriously have trouble remembering exactly where canon leaves off and this begins.

"Aeryn wanted me to give it to you. She said it wasn't fair that she had a hairbrush and all you had was salad."

5. Harry Potter - Arsenic Jade - Rule of Law - HG/SS. I have a big kink for this particular type of story construction: a couple hundred pages of smart people wrapping their brains around one specific magical puzzle. The McGuffin here is quite nifty, and provides ample opportunity for Close Quarters and Verbal Poignards. The supporting cast is warmly drawn, with just the right amount of gorgeous, incidental detail from their lives. Arsenic's other writing is equally leisurely, restrained and erudite, and unusually sympathetic to a wide range of pairings.

Hermione looked over at the sleeping snake. "I think he's still waiting to see if I'm telling the truth about the inside being warmer than the outside."
Harry reached out and put his hand over her heart, a shockingly intimate gesture even between the two of them. He said, "You're bigger than him. Just take him in and show him."

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Barb Cummings - To Grandmother's House - Barb writes my favourite Buffy/Spike relationship ever over the course of three novels and a passel of short stories. En route she hits unmatched numbers of my kinks and subverts a whole lot of dearly held squicks besides. In this installment: kickass pregnant woman.

"It comes down to this. You have the chance - and it may never come again - to save generations of Slayers from fighting an endless, hopeless war. And to save countless innocents from dying in that war. Or... to bring a demon line that's been extinct for millennia, clinging to a half-life through the destruction of those same countless innocents, back into the world for good." The patience in that worn and ancient voice was somehow far worse than any accusation. She took a demure sip of tea. "Think about it."
The pop and crackle of coals settling was the only sound. At last Buffy took a deep breath, turned to the Guardian, and said, "Do you have a bathroom? I really, really need to pee."

7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Glossalalia - Heterosexual Lesbians (Enjoy Yourself) - Buffy/Oz, just as whimsical as you'd expect.

And she's restless, and Oz is leaning back, arms folded over his chest, his body floating in the bright water. Out here, alone, he doesn't look underfed or anything. His skin's going pink in the heat and his hair's drooping. He looks perfectly comfortable, a little smile on his lips and a faraway look in his sleepy eyes.
He kind of looks like those snow monkeys steaming and going zen in Japan.

8. Harry Potter - Fourth Rose - From the Ashes - Loads of stories out there feature Harry-in-mourning: Ginny is dead (or evil); enter Draco to comfort, heal and turn him gay. Fewer go the opposite route. In this one, Draco dies, leaving behind two people who loved him and one unborn child. It's quiet, unsentimental, fair to all characters and friendly to slash fans.

Given the circumstances of Mr Malfoy's death, I suggested king Richard III's device Loyaulte me lie, but Miss Parkinson swore that Draco's spirit would rise from the grave to haunt us both for the rest of our lives if we dared to lay him to rest under such a Hufflepuff motto.

9. Tolkien - Altariel - At Sea - Am I weird for finding this one charmingly romantic?

‘For what,’ she continued serenely, ‘could be more pleasant than a morning spent at sea, breathing the salt air, feeling the gentle rocking of the waves, up and down, up and down…’
‘Lady!’ he said, urgently, and then stopped.

10. Stargate: SG-1 - Synecdochic - Countdown - Can I put always-already genderswap in this category? This casual, indulgent series stars one Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell -- call her "Cammie." She's half Mary Sue, half thought experiment, and wholely adorable. She has two great goals in life: uphold the noble legacy of SG-1, and gently, sneakily prod Daniel Jackson into falling in love with her. In another author's hands, this would be a forgettable little riff, but everything Syn writes is gold.

"But I'm what SG-1 got," she says, holding his eyes. "An' if I'm not gonna disgrace it, an' I will by God not disgrace it, I need to know what I'm gonna be up against.

Queer

Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive—recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word "queer" itself means across—it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), and English athwart. —Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies

1. Supernatural/BtVS - Hesychasm - The Devil's Gate - Plot-and-character-driven femslash, by God! What I love best is the sense of history and community in this story—twice over: Jo's people and Faith's. I'm less familiar with SPN, but I love the way Hesychasm handles all the little Jossverse references and reminders of people and places and triumphs and tragedies. She's created a world to play in: this story would make an awesome remix candidate.

"So what's your name?" she asked the older girl. "I guess you already know mine."
      "Faith."
      "And how'd you know I was here?"
      "Followed the scent of stupid."

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Automated Alice - Boy - Gay sex: a bit of judicious vandalism to some one-way street signage, and we're ready to roll, right? Great. But Shannon's so-AU-it's-pretty-much-original-fiction Xander/Spike smutfest opens up a window on gay club culture and sex in immediate, sure-footed and captivating detail. Rough trade and age differencess, these are things I didn't get, before. It also happens to be the hottest piece of anything I've ever read anywhere. *No longer available online.*

3. Shakespeare - Marna and Lea - With No Less Terror Than the Elements: notes toward uncovering Act IV, Scene ii of Richard II - This one's for the literature and critical theory nerds. The footnotes, dear god in heaven. I love this story; it's ingenious; but it's also the only story out there whose accompanying DVD commentary I love even more.

"Oh, cousin. No, cousin, no; a king has no man at his side; nor at his back neither, not if he is wise. Keep your subjects on their knees, the more so when they draw near; if you would keep the crown, you must keep it well above their reach." This time he was quicker; he was down before Henry could move to prevent, catching up Henry's hand to examine it closely before finding and setting his lips to the tiny smear of blood on the knuckle.
Quote from DVD commentary: This is the world's most overdetermined blowjob.

4. Stargate Atlantis - Monanotlisa and Auburnnothenna - Ardhanarishvara - LONG, plot-and-character-driven genderswap, by God! Genderswap is an understatement. This thing has serious muscle, plus all the shiny drappings of character insight and action and politicking and backstory.

"Colonel?" Kate asks. She really wants to get Sheppard talking if possible. He — she — is in the most precarious position, trying to maintain command authority. Rodney doesn't have the same problem since he wasn't changed and the scientific contingent probably aren't as wrapped up in the concepts of masculinity as the Marines, anyway, while Teyla and Ronon are outside the normal command structure. Sheppard's the one under most external stress.

5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Kalima - Nicolette Says Jump - Nicolette/Spike/Xander. Brownies made them do it.

Yeah. Memory was cellular all right.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Anna S. - Subtleties - Xander/Spike. I'm linking to "Subtleties" because apparently it's the most addictive of all Anna's addictive output. A long, loose-limbed string of scenes, as casual as they are dazzling, they changed the way I think about the rules of storytelling.

The cat comes to visit them mid-fuck, which is startling—it's done nothing but lurk in closets and under furniture since Xander bought it a year ago. Poor pet-shopping logic: picking the one that shies away from your hand because you feel sorry for its geeky social awkwardness.
Some things change, though.
The cat is removed but after sex it comes back and settles on Spike's chest, folding itself up, paws tucked in. Furry collapsible luggage. Spike stares at it like a feline mirror, eyes to slitted eyes in some meaningful silent dialogue.

7. Harry Potter - A.J. Hall - Lust Over Pendle - My very favourite slash relationship for a hundred reasons. Vicars! Narcissa and Hermione and Neville and Draco, and and and it has vicars! These novels have everything to recommend them—drama and suspense and hilarity, but I have to highlight Hall's characterizations of Neville and Draco, which are stupendous. I promise you you'll finish the LOPverse (don't miss Geoviki's guided tour) and go out and ravenously read every other D/N story you can find.

"Hm. DeVries. That'll make you one of Charlie Device's grandchildren? Your father would have been be his youngest, the one who changed his name to deVries after the dragon hide financial futures trial, then?"
      Narcissa flushed.
      "He was acquitted on all charges."
      "I like that in a man," Mrs Longbottom observed dryly.

8. Harry Potter - Rather Bright Red - Sexing the Pumpkin: a love story - Stealth!Snape/Sirius Black. So, how many genderswap fics have you read that actually represent trans-identity? Yeah, me neither. This mad gem offers up a Snape who is gendered male but biologically female, who fits into HP canon by "living stealth." The wacky premise wouldn't work if Red were interested in crack!fic; she commits 100% to these characters, and brings all of her empathy, wit and information out to play. Her writing is nerdy, vile, absurd, hilarious, poignant and beautiful.

The thought of someone looking at, let alone touching, those foreign objects on his chest, small and scrawny and uninteresting as they were, made him taste sweet, pot-hazy vomit at the back of his throat, as if his dinner wanted to resurface amidst his growing hunger for the out of character foods marijuana always urged him towards. This time, he was craving a most unlikely incorporation, stranger than chips and chocolate cake combined: Sirius Black, complete with crooked grin, unkempt facial hair, and the intensity of someone left alone and bored all day every day. He had very simple desires, like stroking Snape's lip with his thumb, and letting the hammock gently draw them closer, until they touched from ankle to shoulder. Well, these would have been simple desires were he anyone but who he was—a man who felt not very distant from the spindly deviant he'd been when he first set foot in Hogwarts decades ago. He knew that only someone equally queer could ever really understand him or possibly love him (though in truth he didn't hold out much hope for love). If Black's queerness was in question, his fucked-upness was strong and true. Maybe that would be enough.

Buffy/Angel for Bangelphobes

You're a slasher. You ship Spuffy. Angel's a bore. Buffy's a Lolita. But you have a suspicion you might be missing some great fic. You'd give it a chance, but the rec lists, designed for shippers already good and sold on Bangel, are wearisome. Try these.

Jane Davitt - Possession - Heat and innocence in season one.

She waits until she's home, with her bedroom door locked, to go through the pockets, feeling dirty, feeling sneaky, feeling... good.
Research, she tells herself, spreading it out on the bed and kneeling beside it. Mysterious men need investigating.

Salieri - Absolution - Angel loses his soul.

"Absolvo te a peccatis tuis," she breathes, leaning in to kiss his eyelids.

Glossolalia - Mystery Play - Shockingly dirty S3 B/A. This slips compellingly in between the canon scenes, giving lie to the notion that Buffy and Angel were—or meant to be—completely successful in their skittish chastity.

She touched him one night in January, took him deep inside, and the pleasurepain of it all didn't cease until May, until she returned the motion. Thrust the sword once as he watched her, eyes welling with memory, fucked him right through to hell.
Now that he's back, they circle each other with wary, weary eyes. Solid air, mansions of molecules and suburbs of oxygen, between them, maps and miles weighing down their hands. His chains rattle, her breathing whistles.

Yahtzee - Phoenix Burning - Post-Gift epic. Fandom classic.

Buffy glanced over at Sumiko; she was already under the covers, her eyes shut too tightly.
Sumiko sees a dangerous situation. The others see a big love story, Buffy thought. Markwith sees an opportunity—for good or for bad, I don't know. Angel sees some ghost from the back of beyond.
What do I see?

Trixie Firecracker - Amen - The First is wreaking havoc in Sunnydale; Buffy pays a visit to the Hyperion with Spike in tow. This piece is moody and sad, yet strangely kind-eyed.

"Don't ask me that," I shake my head. "Please."
      "Why not?"
      "Because you love Cordy." I laugh. It sounds funny when I say it out loud. Like an impossibility that Willow and I would have giggled over in High School. "Because everything's changed."
      His eyes are bright. "Not everything."

Chrislee - Fallen From Grace - Folks who sneer that B/A is all fluff and fat babies need to read Chrislee. Her kinks are very, very different from mine, but it's interesting, provoking writing that calls into question who these characters are, and why, and what they should strive for. Also, incidently, best use of Spike as foil/Fool I've ever seen.

“You won’t find him. He doesn’t want to be found,” Spike said.

Redbrickrose - All That's Best of Dark and Bright - Post-NFA. One of those rare writers who does justice to all three protagonists at the same time. The Spike & Buffy friendship is unusual, and gratifying.

"I love you."
      "I love you."
      "We don't work."
      "I know."

Vatrixsta Cruden - Hard to Forget - I hadn't read Vatrixsta for a while, so I was clicking through her homepage, going, "Nice...nice...nice, but I coulda sworn—" And then I got to this one and reread it straight through and murmured, "Aw, yeah, I knew I had her on the shortlist for a reason." Post-series; romance takes second fiddle to an excellent Buffy character study.

"Angel was going to come by," he added. "I talked him out of it. He's a bit on the raw side himself these days, as you can imagine. Shock to the system being a real boy after all. You'd do your damnedest to wreck things between you, and he's just stupid enough to let you, and then you're both in a state, and frankly, I don't have the patience to look after either of you."

Femmenerd - Waiting for the Apocalypse - I love this. Femme loves S/B and A/S and B/A and S/B/A with great and beautiful love, and it makes every one of her characterizations glow. This is post-NFA.

He blinked fast when he realized that she probably looked older than he did.
That was pretty hot.

TKP - Best Souvenir - Whistler never existed. Buffy and Angel meet for the first time, post-Chosen. Juicy and adult. The chemistry between Our Heroes snaps and zings, and TKP makes attention-stealing character moments out of dumb stuff like shopping for shoes. This is an easy read for Spuffy fen, because Spike's so far out of the picture that it's impossible to feel indignant on his behalf. I made a point of reccing TKP's long WIP, but since then she's written a gorgeous one-shot that I simply have to link as well: Ten Things that Pull Apart and One Thing that Holds Together.

They were going to have to “work a couple things out.” He was talking about stuff like manacles and toothbrushes and shirts with collars, she suspected. Talk about a rock and a hard place. She was stuck between staking the guy and buying him hair gel. Buffy sighed. Her life was weird. “Okay,” she said, “assuming I’m not going to leave you chained to a radiator while I work all this out, what would you need?”

Buffy/Spike for Spuffyphobes

You're a slasher. You ship Bangel. Spike's a bitch and Buffy's an asshole. But you have a suspicion you might be missing some great fic. You'd give it a chance, but the rec lists, designed for Spuffernutters, are full of maddening drivel. Maybe these'll help.

Kalima - Ketchup Blood - A short, sharp shock. The novella "Daemons Luminati," on the other hand, is equally schmoopless, but undoubtably a love story. Kalima always offers professional, unforgettable plots, scathingly good characterizations and wit in plenty.

"We reek of it. In either camp, we—" he pointed his finger at my chest, then his, "are an abomination." I tensed at that. At the thought that he was sneaking around and trying to hide it just as much as I was when he supposedly loved me so it shouldn’t matter, or at least if he was hiding it, he should be doing it for my sake, not his own reputation. Then I thought, god, I am a bitch.

Kita and Jess - Six Foot Deep - Brutal Buffy and Spike character studies more than any kind of Spuffy affirmation, but I say it's required reading no matter whom you ship. Season six.

And maybe, that way Spike could finally shake the fucking notion that he was created solely for the purpose of keeping Angelus' property safe until he decides to return for it.

Barb Cummings - Something Like the Sun - Here's the one that encapulates everything I love about the ship in potentia. I *think* this'll be comprehensible to folks who don't follow the Barbverse. Just read the warnings. And, if necessary, everything else Barb has ever written. It's worth the trouble.

She's sobbing into the blankets now, the dry wracking sobs of one who's shed too many tears over too many years. "I almost killed her!"
      "She almost needed killing." There's pain in his voice, but no sentiment. "That's your fucking raison d'etre, Slayer. Killing us."
      "Don't you get it?" she screams. "I wanted to kill her!"
      He is relentless. That's no small part of why she loves him. "Nature of the beast, innit? Question is, what're you gonna do about it?"

Fallowdoe - Spiegel im Spiegel - Post-Gift; a different kind of apocalypse. It is eminently clear that Fallowdoe is a musician. There are currents in her writing, like a symphony, like water: light and depth and colour and momentum. She creates piercing, breathcatching images that stay in the mind for days.

She smiled at him, and let the wasp loft up into the space around them, where it floated before her expectantly.
      “See? I can do things… they talk to me, you know. Not that they know it. Not much for brains if you’re pretty much wings and a stinger...”
      He didn’t smile back. Instead, he made a jump for the insect where it danced above their heads.
      He leapt forward, still perched with careful balance on the railing. In a swift, elegant burst of speed, he seized it between his left thumb and index finger. It was so fast she didn’t see his arm move.

Dutchbuffy - Take Heart - On a scale of inventive to bonkers, Dutchbuffy's an eleven. Grande dame of queasy adjectives, brilliantly lunatic similes, and plots stuffed to the gills with comedic horror and horrible laughs. "Take Heart" is Primeval-gone-wrong; Buffy's a ruthless spitfire; Spike's evil but horny.

Her eyes are downcast and he has to strain to hear her. "The four of us did an enjoining spell to kill Adam. The spell connected us all. It gave me my friends’ powers. I can’t undo it... the connection. And now instead of me getting their essence, they’re draining mine. My heart, my spirit, my mind, theyr’e all being consumed because of our link.” She pauses. “I need you to kill them."

Flurblewig - False Gods - Basement!Spike vs. The First. As heart-breaking as it is creepy and foul.

There's something wrong with this place.
      Well, yes. He had actually managed to work that one out. The big question, of course, is what to do about it.
      You need to get out of here.
      Well - maybe. Part of him feels like he belongs here; feels like he's come home. Other parts of him are horrified, but they're newer parts and he doesn't feel that he's quite so well acquainted with them. He's not sure they should have the final say.

The Deadly Hook - Does It Have to Mean Something - Hook has set herself the monster task of hashing out post-NFA Spike/Buffy honestly. By George, she's succeeding. Her insights are bang-on. The S6 prequel, "Dirty Back Road," is superb, too; its epilogue introduces DIHtMS.

There were rules to any universe. There had to be. And so what if she didn't understand magic or dimensions, or any of it.
      All she needed to do was find him.
      And that was something Slayers were made for.
      When she opened her eyes again, one hundred and forty-seven carefully counted deep breaths later, he was there.

Salieri - The Use of Memory - My favourite Spike Shanshu, thoughtful, romantic, eloquent. There's a gratifying bonus for A/S fen at the beginning of this one. :)

They weren't flirting, they weren't hanging on each other, they weren't feeding each other or indulging in some other sappy romantic display. They were simply sitting and eating, sporting matching bad postures with their elbows on their knees. They had obviously been patrolling, if the pair of discarded knives on the floor was anything to go by. Angel noticed in a detached way that the weapons hadn't been cleaned, and he winced at the ichor that was oozing onto the floor. But he still couldn't bring himself to care too much. It didn't matter.

macha - descant descending - If our corner of fandom has a masterwork, this is it. Just go and look; you'll see what I mean. I love Angel, and I treasure the voice she gives him here.

her views on love may not include hot chocolate, but she keeps them fed and warm and bedded down. her views on the nurture of fledglings, endearingly, do lean heavily to training-with-weapons. her views on the need for vampires are contested, but she means to win that argument. nevertheless she gathers, and she shelters them, and for the Slayer this is how she loves.

Spike/Angel for the Few Remaining Skeptics

Are there any remaining skeptics? Is this category even remotely useful? Well, if you haven't noticed by now, this entire recs page isn't about utility; it's about me having fun. More goodfic ahoy.

Frimfram - Mouthing Off - All of Frimfram's characterizations are extraordinary, but her William, in this piece and her novel, "The Other Side of the Tracks," is without parallel—cliché-smashing, fully realized, hilarious.

"No." Angelus was standing very still, rain pouring over him, looking strangely out of his depth. William had bitten off more than he could chew? Angelus was going to be choking on him for a long time.

Romany - His Body a Boat - Terse poetry disguised as prose.

“You got a point here, Spike?” Rolled out from under, kicked him across the room through a Bauhaus chair. “Hey, my chair!”
      “Ugly as fuck anyway.” Spike lunged back, re-straddled. “Point bein’, you don’t walk away while I’m talkin’. S’not polite.” Three punches for emphasis.
      Angel game-faced, grabbed an arm. Bit. Hard.
      Ow! Mother-fucker!
      Oh. Yeah.

Kita - Manus - Angel's blue-eyed boys, one lost, one maybe not. Like all of Kita's work, this reads like a kaleidoscope. Amazing stuff.

When Buffy first came back from Heaven, she met Angel in a cemetery halfway between Sunnydale and LA. Still small and strong, but her eyes were glass; doll’s eyes. Wrong. She called herself “Version-two-point-oh”, tilted her head, showed him her neck. His mark was gone.
Angel came back from five hundred years in Hell with perfect recall and no physical signs of ever having been there.
But Spike came back from Wherever he was with the same old line bisecting his left eyebrow, and a new one on his right palm. Pale, pink-silvery trails, crossing lifeline and loveline. Skin badges, one from killing a single Slayer and one from saving all of them.

Germaine Pet - Vicarious - Their bed is crowded.

It was the only time Spike had ever asked him for anything.

Herself - Where They Have to Take You In - This is an oddball: several substantial chapters of Spangel interaction buried in a long, stylishly written, but in some ways exasperating Spuffy saga. The Spangel lurketh in part three. Much passionate feeling, and sex scenes to die for.

Spike laughed, but not merrily. "There's almost nothing that woman can't do if she puts her mind—or her something else—into it." His smile faded. "Didn't mean to talk about her now."
      "Me neither." Angel threaded his fingers into Spike's hair, tugged him against his mouth.
      "'Cept I miss her." He looked into Angel's eyes. "Do you ever miss her?"
      "That's ... more than I can afford."

Anna S. - Finger Exercise - She writes; we swoon. This is hardly a sketch, but she sketches a perfect arc of feeling that most writers couldn't sell in twenty chapters.

It's especially hard when I'm trying to get Angel and Spike together, out of the closet. I am trying to sneak up on them with the innocent whistle of meta, hiding the butterfly net and manacles behind me. I feel really dumb.

Poetry

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Sylvia Volk - The Wanton Folly of Me Mum - Published two nights after the finale aired. Definitive.

White lace nightie half-undone
White hair streaming down she eats
Rats bats stray cats
Milkmen mailmen policemen any men

Tolkien - Wild Iris - The Dead City - Beautiful, bare laments.

O, my brother,
pity our father,
who lit the ships
as though they were white candles
placed around his bed
against the dark

Tolkien - Alawa - An Elegy for Elfhild - Alawa uses Anglo-Saxon rhythms to capture the rough grace of the Dúnedain and the Rohirrim.

Softly then she stroked their noses,
ran her hand over rump and wither,
keen were they to carry her.
Wildly we galloped in golden mist-shroud
wind whipped hair as horses ran
free over fields followed the river
spring’s melt-water milk between willows.
We rode reckless over rolling grassland,
our voices soaring with sun’s rising
sang only the beauty of simbelmynë,
forgot that it faced forever westward.

Tolkien - Fileg - Home by Morning - "I wrote this as a sort of mantra, a promise and a focus as we struggle to reach home."

Whatever I grieve for, whatever I rue
There’s naught with the power to keep me from you

Harry Potter - Cedar - A Wolf By Half - A five-sestina cycle about Remus and Bill. 'Nuff said, I should hope.

Slowly, with his neck bare
Bill leaned back, exposing himself to Remus's teeth and
wishing for pain, distraction against the cold.
As Remus bit him, the sound of sea water
steel blue and clear
calmed the wolf inside.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Sobsister - Rhymes with Luck - A flash of insight into 6x10 "Wrecked." Flawlessly controlled rhyme and rhythm, like a porny Eve Merriam.

elision of the word / the one you wish you heard

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - macha - descant descending - Inanna's Quest. Lit, crit, prose, poetry. Fandom masterwork. This is why we play.

get used to it.
it's a golden age,
but it's not yours.

Stultiloquentia's Desert Island Top Ten Six

And of all of those, these I would bind.

Philosopher at Large - A Boy, A Girl, & A Dog - Ensemble - Hands down, the most unapologetic brainfood I have ever found in fanfic, awash with wit, deep thinking and piercing beauty. The notorious "Leithian Script Project" is Beren and Luthien in the vernacular, interspersed with blank verse commentary à la Derek Jacobi in Henry V. It's funny, saturated with anthropological oddments and snobby literary allusions, and brilliantly illuminates JRRT's entire oeuvre. Not for canon newbies, but I'd seriously recommend rereading The Silmarillion just so you can dive into this. P@L's characterizations, especially in Act Four, are larger than life and terribly human. Me, I want a Finrod for my very own. WIP, but enough present to satisfy.

All that was left of my mind was fear, and a longing to be free of it, as might a wild bird trapped in a burning cage know, and in my yearning I reached for that dream that had given me rest when no rest was to be had, and the Sea was there.
[at these words the Captain slides his arm across to grip his other shoulder, and he leans his head back against his friend's elbow in acknowledgment of the gesture, but doesn't hesitate or stop:]
And I understood at last, in the place beneath all speech, all mastery of words, beneath the biting roots of that fear that had devoured my wits more thoroughly than the Enemy's beast devoured my body, that it was no mere memory nor fancy born of my own wishfulness, but truth: that the voice of the Sea is wherever the Lord of the Waters holds dominion — and the salt currents run endless through our hearts, through every least inch of our flesh, through our brains and our bones living, and never can we escape the Deep, though it lies so near to us that we do not even mark it for the most part.

Barb Cummings - A Raising in the Sun - B/S, Ensemble - Go here for the deftly-written, sexy and often hilarious Barbverse trilogy (plus a few extras) that starts with a re-imagining of Buffy's resurrection and goes on to explore, seriously, what trials and tribulations might have occurred had Buffy allowed Souless!Spike the title of "boyfriend." Her style and bravura increase as the saga progresses; part one is hardly shabby, but by "A Parliament of Monsters" Barb is pounding out action scenes of unmatchable gleeful vigour, molten erotica, uncompromising horror and irreverent comedy all locked into one focused and hurtling plot. 3rd volume = WIP, but I trust the author to finish.

"Soldier Boy's just rightly jealous of the fact that you're my nymphomaniac." Spike plunked himself down on the couch with a bottle of Sam Adams and a plate of raw liver, which Buffy was given to understand was the vampire equivalent of Godiva chocolate. She didn't want to know what constituted the vampire equivalent of, say, broccoli or Spam. He propped his boots on the coffee table, vamped out, and pried the bottle top off with a fang, which, considering it was a screw-top cap, was a pointless display of macho vampire something-or-other and shouldn't look nearly as hot as it did. "Two bob says the World's Largest Cub Scout was lying through his pearly whites."
"Riley is innocent until proven guilty, hurrah for the overthrow of the Napoleonic code," Buffy replied loftily. "I mean, who hasn't had a perfectly harmless midnight rendezvous with a vampire in a deserted mansion at some point in their life?"

A.J. Hall - Lust Over Pendle - DM/NL - Armed with a classical education and a mischievous humour, A.J. Hall sails into the Golden Age detective thriller tradition of Allingham and Sayers: here be springer spaniels and vicars, mausoleums and greenhouses. A comedy of manners, glorious send-up of fan and fantasy writers, and a paean to family, this cluster of novels and short stories is expertly plotted, deliciously funny, and frequently terrifying.

"When Neville was in the Far East last month, they took him to a kite-fighting festival. It's a big thing out there, you know. You try and capture your opponent's kite by cutting its string. And to do that you dip the top few metres of your own string in stuff called manjha. It's basically flour and water paste mixed with ground glass. And when it entangles with another string, it's abrasive enough to cut it right through."
He looked up from the table, straight at Peter, although Peter was not entirely sure he was seeing him at all. The whites were showing all around his irises. His voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
"Sometimes I think I was born wearing an invisible coat of manjha. And I brush up against other people's lifelines, and they fray."

Maya - Quality of Mercy - HP+DM - Maya is...Jossian: steel-nibbed, with hilarity on one side and heartbreak on the other. She makes me ache. She writes the best similes on three continents. She writes love, platonic and romantic, in all of its small, wacky gestures and accidental epic-ness. Her character insights, to put it bluntly, put JKR to shame. QoM (of the "post-HBP in which Harry gets saddled with Malfoy Jr. and has to learn to put up with him" genre) is her best effort. Active WIP, as of this writing, but it's worth sinking your teeth into even if she never gets to the end. Note: She's got stuff archived at FictionAlley and various places, but the best place, by far, to find new fic is on her livejournal.

Synecdochic - Take these Broken Wings - SG-1 - Take: one Maj. Cameron Mitchell halfway between the original and the version from SG-1 10x13 "The Road Not Taken": disabled but not quite wheelchair-bound, honorably discharged, looking for a What Next. Add: one clone of Jack O'Neill from SG-1 7x03 "Fragile Balance": all the memories, talents and repressions of a 50-something Air Force general inside the body of a 17-year-old boy. Season with: a slightly devious sense of humour, Syn's memorable take on Clan Mitchell, and a plot to take over the world. I love this still-expanding universe for a zillion reasons, but here's one of the less common ones: it's a story with a protagonist with a serious disability that's about the protagonist, not the disability—that's not written at all as vehicle for hurt/comfort, but makes way for tons of interesting plot and character work. JD and Cam are a fascinating pair: both profoundly damaged, both extraordinarily blessed. The writing is mature, the world-building delightful, the characters, even the minor ones, will worm their way into your heart, the themes are sophisticated and kind. Don't expect any punches to be pulled, however.

Cam's one of the few of his generation who kept up knitting. He'd grown up with women; Momma and Gran'ma, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Emma and Aunt Sally. Households combine and shift and pack up and move in the family based on who's got newborns and who's overseas, and Gran'ma was always the matriarch undisputed, the one everyone came home to. Momma's inherited the title now; Daddy married strong. Cam had grown up knowing that there are things women only talk about when they've got needles to hand, and if he kept himself small and quiet and sat there with his hands busy, he could sit to listen. It's how he learned the ways of the world, and it's served him well over the years. It's a soothing hobby, too. Kept him from going crazy through more than one tour, and anyone who gave him shit usually shut up after getting their first pair of hand-knit socks.

macha - descant descending - Buffy, Spike, Angel, Ensemble, B/S - Inanna's Quest. Lit, crit, prose, poetry. Fandom masterwork. This is why we play.

no more the closing of portals with blood.
throw them all open.

the time for sacrifice is done.
you can't just buy off
sunny girls from
california with
six pomegranate
seeds and the
prospect of
six months winter.
they're gonna want to shop around,
flex the credit cards, model next years'
shoes, check out the shades.
you can't own them.
sooner or later,
they'll own you.

get used to it.
it's a golden age,
but it's not yours.

Updated July 18, 2008
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