Since the fandom I currently do the most reading in is Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, it should come as no surprise that this set of recommendations is all-Buffy, featuring stories set in the Wishverse and/or focusing on the waifs, werewolves and whores who continue to capture our imagination.

A piece that's actually over a year old now but still the first to come to mind is Mary Borsellino's Tied, a beautiful, haunting look at Oz and Tara that made me want to cry without being at all manipulative. And Mary's other Wishverse piece, Another I, is equally good although I suppose I could be a little biased because it's Buffy/Faith. But just a little.

Speaking of which...Orleans by Hth is truly amazing, even for her, which is saying a great deal. It's the first of her stories in which Buffy actually makes an appearance, and worth the wait. She manages to take who Buffy could be and strip the layers away until you can see right down to the core of what Buffy *is*, and the similarities between this Buffy (and her Faith) and their other selves will leave you feeling that you somehow know everything essential to both characers in a way no other depiction could possibly reveal. And it's Wishverse the way the Wishverse was meant to be--a really scary place frightening not just for the monsters which inhabit it, but because of the way it illustrates how easily looking into the abyss can change people, and how they still have no choice but to continue to fight even when the price they pay for victory is as high in its own way as that of surrender.

1st-plex: Memory by Spyke Raven is [add rec] And while the first part was the best, the whole series is definitely worth reading.

Girl 1 by Roz Kaveney is erotic, elegant, and chilling--and it's Lilahslash!, something of which, like good Giles stuff, there can never be enough.

The Gang of Four by Jim Loats is in some ways the ultimate Wishverse story. I don't want to spoil it by giving away the premise, so I'll just quote the summary: "What if "The Wish" weren't Anya's first time meddling in Sunnydale?" Also, the author's note says that this is his first attempt at fiction in ten years, and the fact that he's come up with something so cool after that long gives me hope should I ever start writing fan fiction again.

Alternative Lifestyle by A.C. Chapin is not technically a Wishverse story--although it does deal with an alternate (or rather, parallel) universe--but it's still one of my all-time favorite pieces of Buffy fan fiction so I'm going to include it anyway. If you have somehow missed reading this story, go read it now.

And while I'm on the subject of AU Buffys, I'm going to confess my weakness for depictions of Buffy where the Slayer, unable to cope with a tragedy which has destroyed her world, reinvents herself as a nihilistic club kid with a taste for sex, drugs, and putting multicolored streaks in her hair. And worse, that it only took two stories to get me hooked on this concept....

The first, Hope Is For Losers by Prophecy Girl, is a slightly dark but ultimately sweet Buffy/Faith piece in which Buffy never returned to Sunnydale after the events of "Becoming". What really struck me about this story was the immediacy of the voice, even for first person--you could believe that this narrator was a teenager, and that the author had really felt everything Buffy was feeling.

The second is The Last Summer by Annie Sewell-Jennings, which is a total guilty pleasure... Cross "On the Beach" with post-apocalyptic Buffy and Spike counting down the last days after nuclear armageddon by smoking, drinking, dancing and having lots of sex and you'll see why. And the language is its own pleasure--I can get off on her descriptions of Buffy's hair alone ("a mass of shimmering colors as it fell down her back like a distorted rainbow") before she even gets to the clothes.... .

Beads on her rosaries jangled as she turned her turn signal on and turned into her driveway, the peaches rolling in the bucket seat like a solar system of tangerine fuzz. The sun was setting, and she took her sunglasses off, revealing bejeweled and darkened eyes, covered in her layers of mascara and eyeliner, her mouth a boysenberry pair of silk. She was velvet sheathed in blackberry juice, decked out with rosaries wrapped around her wrists and wearing a silk violet dress that slid around her body like a snake's skin. It fell around her knees, and her feet were bound in sparkling violet sandals that had lilies embroidered across the slim straps. Armed with a bag of peaches, a cigarette, and a coy smile, Buffy walked up the steps to her house and into it, ready to share her fruit with her lover.

Bough by Sheila Perez. I didn't think Angel particularly needed an incest episode, but if anyone could do one well it's Joss and company. Anyway, despite some trepidation after seeing the trailer, I found myself liking "Untouched" and I even liked Bethany. Sheila's piece made me like her even more. I especially appreciated how well-written it was given the topic; what could so easily have been unreadable in the hands of a less talented author turned out poetic and packing a punch.

On the Way to Grandmother's House by Melymbrosia -- This piece is short enough that I want to say, just go read it--but she fits a lot into what I'm tempted to summarize as a "nameless vampire whores have feelings too" piece.

One of My Kind by Jen'fr--I'm going to leave aside for the moment the fact that this, like most songfic, did not need to be a songfic (and yeah, I know some people have no problem with songfic, but I just cringe when I see more than one line or at most one verse written out at the beginning of a story as if to justify its existence), and recommend it anyway because unlike most songfic this story stands on its own. It's also the only story I've seen about Sandy, the vamp from "[whatver the ep was]" and "Into the Woods", and between that and the sheer existential angst it evokes, I decided it belonged here.

And finally, some Verucafic....

Last but not least, archivist extraordinaire Kate Bolin has managed to collect the best of the recent crop of Darla/Drusilla fiction spawned by this season's Angel in its entirety at her site, Fin du Globe. (The name is the only thing I don't like about the site--I think it's pretentious--but the stories are of consistently high quality throughout and the design is simple and appealing and even better, adorned with Edwardian pornographic pictures). [add favorites]

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