OK... not that.

As stress release tonight, I shall ramble about my Spuffy fanfic kinks. Then maybe I can actually fall asleep before 6 AM. :/

So, there is one thing I love, and that is the various kinds of "what if"s which manage to avoid the devastations of seasons 6 & 7. Don't get me wrong, I love canon, but for my fics I often love happy endings and I'll admit I find it very hard to believe in any real happy ending for Buffy and Spike after the emotional cheese grater that they put each other through in seasons 6 & 7. Although, I acknowledge that other people have the same problem with fics which have Buffy and Spike getting together pre-chip. For me, though, if they managed to become attracted to each other under one set of bizarre circumstances, I can see it happening under another set, and so for me half the fun is what kind of tale an author can spin and how much they can make me believe in this other progression to Spike and Buffy. (This is one reason why I love longer fanfic in most any fandom, particularly because my pairings tend to be enemies in canon. I like the tale to draw me in and make me believe in the characters' changes of heart.)

Anyway, for all of those reasons, I kind of love season 2-5 fic, and even have a particular softness for stories pre-canon.

I love AU stories where Spike meets Buffy before she's the slayer and falls in love with her.

Golden Usagi's Sideways is a favorite of this kind that I keep re-reading because I love it. I love it for Spike with no morals but a sense of honor, and for how he manages to get himself into one huge mess all over a pretty rich girl.

And there's Holly's In Omne Tempus. In fact, that could be one of my very favorite Spuffy fic, except for the character death in it near the end which just makes me sad, even if the author saw it as necessary to progress the story.

Botias' unfinished Persephone is worth reading if you love that evil, evil Spike (but aren't fond of dark fics).

KnifeEdge's West of the Moon, East of the Sun is epic (alt. season 5), and also combines elements of my favorite fairy tale. (I think her DUST is leaps ahead and really shows an improvement in her writing, but WoM, EoS is imaginative and fun, and I loved the chapters where Buffy is forced to face Spike's past and accept the reality of it.)

I know I said I don't usually like darker fic, and for that reason I tend to avoid the ones that have Buffy meeting Spike post season 2, while she's run away, but Herself's Let's Run Away combined the whole "oops, Spike's got a soul out of the whole Acathla debacle" with one of the very best endings to a fanfic that I have ever read, and so I can't help but rec it.

I like fics where Spike is on the side of good long before Buffy comes into the picture.

Enigmaticblue's Avocation is one of those based on the theme where Spike was cursed with the soul, rather than Angel. I love that he's still bitter and so very Spike.

Cloud Forest is currently writing Rewind. Shuffle. Replay., which is a brilliant rewrite of season one so far which incorporates Spike instead of Angel. Usually I don't like rewrites, because so many authors tend to simply retell the plots of the episodes, but this author has been filling in the spaces between, expecting the reader to have enough knowledge of the episodes that they only mention them in passing.

I like completely AU fics, too, with completely different world stories, but it's harder to keep the characterizations true, I think.

Dampersandspoon's At Your Service is one with a vampire/demon Spike.

The Enemy of Reality's Chasing a Dream (WIP) is another with a human Spike and a potential Buffy. I'm really loving the world here that the author is building.

And, I do love time-travel fic. I prefer the whole older and wiser Buffy or Spike getting a chance to try again, rather than Buffy/William, though. Somehow I have a hard time imagining Buffy being happy with someone like William. But there are a few Buffy/William fics that I like. Puddinhead's Yours, William is pretty brilliant, as is it's WIP sequel My Elizabeth (the author's research for historical detail is amazing, and I love her sense of humor in her author's notes.)

I have even been known to read entirely human AUs, although I prefer the one's with Spike as Spike and not William. (Nautibitz's Crash and Burn makes me verrry happy *grin*)


But you know what I've never really seen? I've never really seen a fic where Buffy goes back in time and meets vampire Spike pre-show. No, actually, that's not true. There was one that I read that had both Spike and Buffy going back in time (in an already established relationship) and met evil Spike and had a difference of opinion on whether to kill him or not. But nothing long and epic about, say, Buffy meeting Spike in the 1920s or something and and AU from there. That I would love to read....


OK, and now I want to go re-read a bunch of fics. I lost a lot of bookmarks when I sent my phone in for repairs. *sniff*

So, I was waiting to rec this one on the off chance that the author was leaving it incomplete, but she finally had a chance to update last week, and I sincerely believe she'll finish this WIP.

DUST by KnifeEdge
(NC-17)

Summary: She'd kicked his butt, taken the Gem and sent it off to Angel. Buffy thought she'd seen the last of Spike. Clearly, she’d been too optimistic. That he was in her house, in her room, waking her out of a sound sleep and asking for (okay, demanding) her help meant that something had to be majorly wrong. They weren't due for another apocalypse, but...why else would a vampire make a truce with the Slayer?

This story is just gorgeous. Not only is the storyline engaging, but the writing is incredible and the characterizations are spot-on. She's one of the few authors who makes me believe in the slow transition of Spike, without the benefit of chip or soul.

An alternate season 4. Due to some unknown mystery, all of Sunnydale is in an enchanted sleep and cut off from the outside world. Although Spike's stubbornness has gotten him into the town, he's not able to leave again, and the only one he's able to finally wake up is the Slayer. What follows is how the two of them manage to survive and their relentless, fruitless search for answers is taking months.

It currently stands at 31 chapters, and this last one was a doozy. Heeee~