gillo: (Spuffy gif)
[personal profile] gillo2022-10-31 05:27 pm

Five "Sunnydale After Dark" Exclusive fics

For me the year has been all about starting up our shiny new website, sunnydaleafterdark.com. Lots of work went into it from a dedicated team, and now it holds hundreds of fics, art and other cool things.

Many folks have reposted from elsewhere, but some of the material is exclusive to the site, so that's the only place you'll find it. Here are five stories worth the reading:

Not a Monster [NC-17] by Grief Counselling (formerly dampersandspoons) and Dusty - still a WIP but lots of chapters there already. Two outstanding writers at the peak of their form.

I Hear a Very Gentle Sound [R] by VioletMoon - a lovely, touching one-shot set in S6.

PS: Not A Date![R] by VeroNyxK84
S7 Spike gives Buffy care and support when she really needs it. Very sweet.

Aeternum in Anno [NC-17] by Chelle shortish but good as Buffy lives the year after Spike went up in flames.

Daisy in the Dark [PG-13] by Dusty. Spike can't stop visiting Buffy's grave. He meets someone else mourning a person they cared for.

Top 5 Spuffy artwork from Sunnydale After Dark and Elysian Fields (2022)

In the last couple of months, both of these Spuffy archives have expanded their rules to allow posting standalone artwork. Erotic art is thriving on both sites, but for this post, I'll link my more worksafe favorites that everyone can view without logging in. The ratings are what the artists put on the whole series in which the works are posted.

Morning (from "take me out, and take me home") by MillenialCryBaby (G)
I couldn't pick just one work from this incredibly sweet and pretty series, so I picked the one that includes thumbnails of multiple others.
Read more... )

Top 5 Tumblr Buffyverse artists active in 2022

Five artists worth mentioning for their entire oeuvre during 2022.

1. https://www.tumblr.com/whatshisfaceblogs

The continuing epic quest to draw each of Buffy's outfits for all episodes of BtVS.

More artists )
sparrow2000: (Default)

Five great Buffy 'verse vids from 2022

Here’s my final list for this year’s buffyversetop5. Five awesome vids created this year.

Spuffy Abridged by Double Dutchess. Done for this year’s Seasonal Spuffy with The William Tell Overture as the soundtrack, the editing in this is awesome. Also worth checking out is the vid it was inspired by - Buffy the Vampire Slayer Abridged by Rowena - the link is in the DD’s description.

More vids… )

Fanworks that are (mostly) new to me

Apologies. It's technically the 29th here as it's shortly after midnight, but I'm not focused on 2022 works with these fanworks. I just didn't realize how late it had gotten. 

Buffy Summers by Veruca - something about Buffy's expression in this image just gets me
The rest of the works are picking out their costumes for next Monday )

Top 5 Fics That Are New To Me

These fics may or may not be new, but I've found them in the past year.

Not Another Teen Massacre! by Yellow Caballero - Buffy comes to a Sunnydale where the kids already know how to save themselves, and they just might save her too.

Sunset by The Eclectic Bookworm - "Passions" but Jenny's pregnant.

Ask the Things You Shouldn't Mis0s by Punch Kicker 15 - Willow's spell lets MIss Kitty Fantastico understand human speech. Humans are complicated.

The Girl Who Courted Death by Off Your Bird - I'm giving you the author's summary 'cause it's just that good: Due to a misfortune of genetics, Buffy is never Called as a Slayer. Instead, she grows up in L.A. with a different set of challenges and trials, unaware of the supernatural world. That is, until a chance encounter with the Slayer of Slayers changes her life—and everything afterward—forever.

The Power of Voodoo by Lucid Screamer - Xander, who dressed as the Goblin King for Halloween, is creating a labyrinth in Sunnydale. WiP that's going in a very interesting direction.

My Five

Here are my five.

First, there's the Spuffy video I turn to whenever I'm trying to get the words flowing but having issues...



Then we have my personal favorite of all BtVS photomanips I've ever seen shared at this year's Summer of Giles: Family Portrait"> with Rupert Giles and Buffy and Joyce Summers.

An older fic, but one that was new to me and not only took me by surprise but made me interested in a pairing I'd never thought previously I could get behind (Spike/Willow) -
Heights.

My favorite Angel story of all time, starring Lorne and a special friend - Psychic Friend.

And I'll leave y'all with another favorite video to help get those Spuffy Muses flowing! There are some really beautiful shots of James/Spike here.

(no subject)

Five favorite Buffyverse stories, in no particular order :

1. OK, technically this isn't really a story however... The Art Project by [personal profile] st_salieri.

2. Flight to Egypt , Spike by [profile] powerofthebook.

3. Conundrum , William/Drusilla by [personal profile] rebcake.

4. 14 Forever , Random Slayer by [personal profile] perletwo

5. Nightswimming , Spike/Buffy by [profile] calove.

And while I'm at it let me put in a shout out for the very much missed, Open on Sunday , a source for many of the best Buffyverse works.

Top 5 Late 2021 Works

As we run our sessions over Halloween, there are always some new works from last year that didn't get caught up in the rec net. So here are some of them!

Willow in Triangle by girl4music looks at Willow's behavior generally as well as the infamous "gay now!" line.

Read more... )

Top 5 poems of 2021

I guess my Spike fan is showing. Three of these are Spike-centric.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above the Cheers & Beers Poetry Reading by JayeMaru (Spike, G)
I like how Spike is both a reader of poetry and a poet in this work and how his life experience informs his reading of Wordsworth's poem.
Read more... )

Top 5 Late 2020 + 2021 Works

Just a reminder to everyone that tomorrow is the final day for mixed Classic + 2021 posts. Saturday kicks off our 2021 Flash Forward weekend until we close at midnight UTC on November 2!


Feel It Still by double-dutchess. Just when you think that Buffyverse vids have tapped everything, here's one on Spike (along with Buffy, the most overvidded character) and yet it feels fresh and energized and modern. Read more... )

Top 5 Kink in the Buffyverse Fics

1 “control” by The_Eclectic_Bookworm

Giles and Jenny switch up their usual roles for a change.

2 “The Edge” by TheSigyn

Spike and Buffy use role play and BDSM to overcome trauma in their pasts.

3 “Tradition and Protocol” by antennapedia

A dedication ritual between Watchers and their Slayers requires some painful experiences.

4 “Sanctuary” by DHW

A post-canon Buffy/Giles fic that puts Fifty Shades to shame.

5 “The Rough Stuff” by TheScholarlyStrumpet

Another Buffy/Giles PWP with BDSM vibes. What can I say, I clearly have a type. 😂

Top 5 Late 2020 Works

This list became unexpectedly difficult when two of the five recs I had prepped ended up linking to deleted accounts! That seems a high percentage in less than a year?

1) Five People Whose Loan Applications Were Approved At Sunnydale Securities Bank (And One Whose Wasn't) by beer_good_foamy. "So how does Sunnydale… work, exactly? Well, it's a long and complex story of corruption and denial, but let's check in with one of the cogs that make the wheels spin. Remember the loan officer who turned Buffy down in "Flooded"...? Here's his Sunnydale story in six installments, occasionally interacting with the main storyline." The devil is in the details, alright.

Read more... )

Top 5 2020 – The Final Five

1) Fiction Banners by teragramm. I don't tend to see these very often anymore unless a Big Bang fic is involved. I liked the sleek yet different look in these two works.

2) And I Won't Feel a Thing (The Rinse and Repeat Remix) by SegaBarrett. " Billy has everything he ever wanted." I like the fact that Billy having what he wanted doesn't change who he is, it's just the same steps to different music.

3) Vantage Point (Remix of Heights) by Corina (CorinaLannister). "Spike and Willow go on patrol together with Spike being the powerhouse fighter and Willow helping him out with her telepathic abilities. But who is helping who really?" I read this together with the original story (written last year) and found that it was the final lines in both the original and remix that stuck with me. Spike and Buffy as Heathcliff and Catherine is a little off to me, Angel being rather more Heathcliff-y. But then that says so much about Willow's frame of mind, she should know that. Spike reminds her, but she does tend to forget it.

4) Restoration by circular_infinity. Buffy & Angel's missing scene after her return. Part of what struck me about this story was the way Angel thinks of her with an artist's eye as he sees her again, "Part of her demeanor speaks of grief. It eases as she nears him, but it's still there like a layer of priming on a canvas."

5) Junior Deviants by Aadler. "Not everything fell apart in the last days of Sunnydale. Some things came together." First off, hardly anyone remembers or writes about Dawn's friends in early S7, especially since the show didn't either after the spinoff idea went nowhere. And this one has a nice surprise at the end. Second, so happy to see drabbles on AO3 since very few of them end up there!

Lastly, I didn't include this in my list because it's commercial not fannish – which in itself has become a harder thing to tease apart in these last 15 years given people's platforms on YouTube and fannish news outlets, Patreon and even commercializing individual websites. But I did find the concept of this quite entertaining: I've Never Seen "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" So I Watched The Pilot And Finale And Nothing In Between

4 Poems and 1 Filk from 2020

China Girl from Poetry by William Pratt - VERSUS by SPIKE by MissLuci (whole chapter rated R but poem is not sexual or otherwise graphic)
MissLuci wrote a whole multichapter story full of Spike's poems and Buffy's reactions to them!! This poem is about Spike killing Xin Rong, written from the perspective of pre-series soulless Spike. Note that the prose section at the bottom of the chapter is rated R for Spuffy smut.

Read more... )

5 assorted fancrafts

Only one of these is from 2020, but I received kind permission to post the list anyway, so here goes!

Customize your own Playmobil Spuffy by [livejournal.com profile] flowspuffy: I loved playing with Playmobil as a kid, so it was great to see a Playmobil Buffy and Spike at [livejournal.com profile] seasonal_spuffy this year.

More fancraft ahead! )

5 times handdrawn Spike (& co) art on Tumblr

Spike by scranndo

Spike and Xander by manabombs

Spike by dewberrysolar

Spike by flummoxed angel (plus bonus Giles and Wesley)

Buffy and Spike by astrangertomykin (could be considered slightly NSFW?)

Spuffy WIPs posted or updated in 2020

I don't usually read WIPs, but I am making an exception for these ones, because they're just so good or because I know they're going to be good. I may be cheating a bit here, as several of the WIPs in this list were not started in 2020, but since they all got updated this year I think it still counts. To compensate, two of them are REALLY recent.

Read more... )