Nov. 29th, 2021

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November 29th, 2021 01:14 am - 100 days of enemy recs: 98. Buffyverse, Take 2
Okay, while Giles/Ethan is clearly the best enemyship in Buffy, there are kind of a Lot of them, so I gave it a second run.

Let's start by clearing the air: Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike. Both definitely enemyships! Both very much the biggest ships in that fandom, although it feels like twenty years in, Buffy/Spike has roundly won that shipwar. But I never really shipped either of them, I think because = well, if you've been following me for awhile, you might have picked up that I have a thing for characters who measure their lifespans in centuries. But I don't really have a thing for those characters dating teenagers. I don't think it's even really, like, a purity culture thing, I think it's just that, even when I was myself a teenager, it was a "no club that would have me as a member" problem. Like if you've reached your century mark and you still think dating teenagers is a good idea, then you're probably such a fuckup that the teenager could do better? I don't care how much destiny or fate you have on your side, you also have literally all the time in the world, let the cookie dough get nicely firm first. Buffy clearly has a kink for much older men, which I do not judge her for at all, but she's got plenty of time yet to shop around and find one who doesn't want to date a teenager, and that's basically always been my opinion on that particular shipwar.

But! There are plenty of other enemyships sailing that Hellmouth! So here are some other old favorites. In a "no AO3 links at all" special set, because Buffy oldfandom I guess has *really* not moved to AO3, but I was actually keeping bookmarks when I was reading it, and most of them still work!

  • One Time Thing by Killa
    Rating: NC-17
    Pairing: Angel/Spike
    Length: One-shot
    Summary: Just a variation on a popular theme. Set after "The Girl in Question." Angel and Spike drown their sorrows, with predictable results.


  • Slayers' Dance by [personal profile] erinya
    Fandom: BtvS
    Pairing/characters: Faith/Buffy, mentions Spike/Buffy, Willow/Kennedy
    Rating: PG-13; implied sexual content
    Length: One-Shot
    Disclaimer: So very, very not mine
    Prompt: 144. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy Summers/Faith Lehane. Buffy realizes that there may be more to how she feels about Faith than she thought.
    Summary: Buffy is confused. Kennedy tells her to stop being an idiot. Set post-Chosen, vaguely in Cleveland.


  • Romantic Dinner by [personal profile] missmurchison
    Pairing: Spike/Joyce
    Rating: G
    Summary: A romantic dinner gets sidetracked a bit.
    Special note: This is the last fic in a longer Spike/Joyce series set in an AU where a) Spike is not in love with Buffy and b) Buffy stays an only child. They're est rel in this one. The first three in the series sold me on how much better a story choice this would have been than Spike/Buffy, but they seem to only be available on wayback now that allaboutspike is down. I am not linking to wayback-only fic in this series, but here's my Pinboard bookmark linking to the whole series just to prove it was there.

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November 29th, 2021 11:27 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 99. Harry/Draco
I would be lying if I said the randomizer actually waited until the day 99 to give me this fandom, but it truly did wait until the last ten days! (and then I took the last ten days and put them in my own order, because the list was getting a bit thin.)

Harry Potter of course has no shortage of enemy ships (I used to ship Peter/Petunia, just because everybody had to pick a ship) but I couldn't not cover the good ship Guns 'n' Handcuffs. The Bang (and the Big) in "Big Bang". Going strong for 21+ years. (In fact, one of the first ever H/D authors just published a new H/D fic this week. Which I have not read yet.)

Harry Potter basically started as a crossover of a boys' school story and a fairy tale. And in the school story, you need a rival, like I mentioned in the Earthsea book. I feel like there must have been a lot of people (still are!) in Harry Potter fandom where that was the first book the school stories genre they had encountered - it was very unfashionable and had been for decades by the time the first Harry Potter book came out, for all that everyone from Jane Yolen to DWJ had already done wizardy versions of it - and so they were learning the conventions from HP, instead of nodding along to them. (I guess not everybody had pulled their grandma's old Grace Harlow books off the shelf in the back bedroom on boring summer afternoons.) But if you were familiar with the genre, you knew exactly what role Draco would play as soon as he showed up at the robe shop. And you started shipping it immediately.

I had a discussion elseweb recently about how you can see how some of what goes off in the later Harry Potter books is that JKR couldn't figure out how to transition from the school story/fairy tale pastiche into something else, when she got to the point in her story where she needed to, and you see that in Draco's storyline in particular. He needs and wants to be more than the stock genre antagonist but JKR never quite lets him, and that builds a character tension that is super useful for shipping, too.

Anyway, I have no idea how to come up with a set of three recs that in any way capture this pairing or my experience of it, so instead you get the first three fanfics I ever read for it that are still online (some of the first fanfics I ever read on an online fic archive.) Are they any good? I have no idea. Do I dare re-read them to find out? Nope. But here they are anyway!!

  • Love Under Will by [personal profile] bookshop
    Chapters: 16/?
    Pairing: Harry/Draco

    Summary: I don't even remember at this point and the website doesn't have one. Harry and Draco fall in love? Under will? I suspect?


  • Irresistable Poison by Rhysenn
    Chapters: 15/15
    Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
    Spoilers: All books
    Rating: PG-13

    Summary: I am 99% sure this fanfic is the first time I ever encountered the phrase "I want to be inside you". I believe it was uttered in the Astronomy Tower.


  • Scholomance by [personal profile] astolat
    Fandom:Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences, Explicit, Mature
    Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
    Complete Series
    Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
    Words: 37,392 Works: 6

    Summary: I have not seen anyone address the question of how much this series has in common with that other Scholomance series that just came out, so: I need to catch up on them both, but I just wish to remind everybody that this exists! Draco Malfoy walks into the Scholomance and walks out alive again!

(40 comments | Reply)


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