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Day 9 of the Fandom Snowflake Challenge: In your own space, rec at least 3 fanworks you thought you wouldn't like (because they weren't your fandom or they pushed against your boundaries or you thought you just wouldn't be interested) but you ended up loving. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Okay, I've already confessed to my weird seekrit Spike/Riley ship and offered recs on Day 3.  But it's a new day, so you're getting more.

Now, I have a lot of faults, not the least of which is being judgmental.  However, that does not extend to fandom's tropes, pairings, ships, and kinks.  If you love Conner/Principal Snyder, go to town, I say!  Which is not to suggest that there aren't things that squick me, personally, because there are.  And a big one used to be Xander/Giles.  This pairing just totally creeped me out -- it felt so wrong to me, and not in the good-wrong way.  But of course, sparrow2000 convinced me to give them a try, and while I don't generally go looking for Xander/Giles fic, I have to admit that some of it is amazing.  I'm going to rec:

1. The Giles Thing, by drsquidlove -- It's sort of a gateway drug to this pairing, because it starts with Xander and a young Ripper.  This story is totally engrossing, has a great, funny Xander voice, and is hot.

Another pairing that makes absolutely no sense to me is Xander/Ethan.  Why, oh why would this ever happen?  Well, these two stories answer that question:

2. Divine Possession, by The Spike, and Sacrament: Initiation Rites, by debchan -- Bizarrely believable and hotter than a hot thing.  Like, burning hot.  Scorchingly hot.  The operative word here is hot.

On the other hand, Giles/Ethan has always made total sense to me.  The subtext in canon feels pretty overt, too.  But despite the plausibility of the pairing, I've never had an interest in reading fic about them, until recently, and now I'm reading them quite a bit.  The story that did this to me is:

3. In the Morning of the Magicians, by Indri -- This is now my head canon about Giles and Ethan.  It's beautifully written, extremely compelling, and feels so dead-on that throughout reading it, I just kept thinking, "Well, of course it happened that way!  Nothing else could have happened!"  Really, an iconic BtVS fic.  A must-read, IMHO, as are the other two stories that along with this one make up The Magicians Trilogy: Halfway There and Ethan Rayne Versus America.


Enjoy!

I decided a few weeks ago that I would try to post something every day in January.  This came about because I was reading the journal of someone doing a 31-day posting thing, who said she was doing it to get over writer's block.  My problem is not so much writer's block; rather, it's finishing and/or posting what I'm writing.  So I figured daily posting might help me over that hump, even if all I was posting was a sentence or two about my day, or a piece of something unfinished.

Then yesterday, I saw that sparrow2000 was participating in the Fandom Snowflake Challenge -- for the first 15 days of January, there are daily fandom-related challenges.  Kismet!  So I'm going to try it, and then continue on my own for the rest of the month (hopefully).

Today's challenge is: 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. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.Here goes:

1. Remembered, If Outlived -- I picked this because it's the first story I ever wrote, fanfic or otherwise, and I wrote it at the height of my early love affair with Spander.  The experience of writing it was really wonderful -- I felt like it just poured out of me, as if I was taking dictation from outside myself.  I've had that experience since in short bursts, but never as completely as with this little story.  It's mostly about Xander, if Spander isn't your thing.

2. Found -- This is the first thing I wrote for a prompt, and with a word restriction, and unlike other stuff of mine that makes me cringe when I re-read it, this doesn't.

3. For My Pains A World Of Sighs -- I chose this because -- well -- it's probably the least popular piece I've written, or anyway, the one that gets the fewest comments, and I'm not sure why that is.  Maybe because there's a lot of POV that isn't Spike's or Xander's, or maybe because it's pre-chip, pre-soul Spike, or maybe because Xander doesn't make an appearance until the very end?  I'm curious.

Day one done!  And Happy New Year!