Which character do you enjoy writing the most? Why? (Yes, I admit it.) I should say that the response to Contrite Spirits was muted in comparison to many other similar-sized stories I've released onto the Web.Ĥ. Let me admit right here, though, that my statement about the the response to Contrite Spirits can be considered, ummmm, whining. I think the threat of religious themes raising its ugly head may have scared off quite a few people from reading it.

What really boggles me about the fairly low response to Contrite Spirits was that it got recc'd pretty much all over hell and creation, yet.I dunno. This may come as a surprise to people who actually liked the story, but the response to Contrite Spirits. Which of your stories received a less favorable response than you expected. I find it pretty amazing, especially considering the frigid reception it got when I first put it up on a Buffy/Xander fanfiction list.ģ. They don't remember the name, they don't remember the writer, but they sure do remember the plot. Yet, I've more than once come across people looking for it on fanfiction comms. I don't know why people like it (it's not my favorite), and I can understand why people might be turned off by it if they came across it with no explanation of why it exists (it was meant to be a single chapter in a larger round-robin story). As a result, a lot of newbies seeking out BtVS fanfic tend to keep stumbling across recs for Whisper in different segments of fandom, enough so that they eventually decide to check it out for themselves.īy contrast, the popularity of Dismay is a complete mystery to me.

In fact, Whisper lands on a lot of otherwise ship-centric rec lists in large part because it is gen. However, the two stories that tend to become popular in cycles is Whisper and Dismay.įor Whisper, I think it's because the story has been online since 2003 (eons in Internet terms) and it falls into a very, very under-served area of BtVS fanficiton: pure gen. This story straight up went in with the stance that there is absolutely nothing at all unusual about Xander's family or parents, even if it has been ravaged by alcoholism and emotional abuse. As to why? I think because it's a fairly unique 'Xander's real father' story - a subgenre in the Xander end of fanfic pool in which Xander's real father is invariably not Tony, or yes Tony but Tony himself is really a supernatural creature. The story that received the best immediate reaction was Cuckoo in the Nest.

The story that receives the best response seems to change every 6 months. Which of your stories received the best response? Why do you think that is? Furthermore, I wanted to write a story where the now-demonic Xander was doing something that at first seems pretty evil, yet he and his reasons for doing it are completely in character.Ģ. I basically wanted to write a 'Xander is a demon' story that essentially shot every single one of those clichés to pieces. The second inspiration was being sick and tired of reading yet another 'Xander's really a demon' fic in which Xander was 1) perfectly okay with being a demon 2) got a power that was the equivalent of all the X-Men combined and 3) became Xander-Stu to the zillionth degree. The first inspiration was a challenge that had sprung up on a Xander-centric BtVS discussion board (one that is now long defunct) to write a Xander-centric story set in the as-yet unaired S7. It had two different sources of inspiration. My very first Buffy fanfic posted anywhere was Revelations (as opposed to the first story I actually started writing, which was Whisper). The fact that Quantum Leap creator Donald Bellisario was a producer, scriptwriter, and director on the 1978 BSG series is merely a coincidence, I'm sure. The inspiration for this crossover was actually the result of watching an episode ( Experiment in Terra) from the 1978 BSG series that looked, sounded, and felt like a test-of-concept for what later becaome Quantum Leap. However, it does not live anywhere online, in large part because I haven't gotten around to uploading (truth to tell, I'm not sure I want to). A friend of mine sent me a PDF of it so that I could post it myself online somewhere. My very first fic published anywhere before the public eye was a Quantum Leap/ Battlestar Galactica (1978) crossover that lived very, very briefly on the AOL discussion boards back when AOL had less than 500,000 people and you paid by the minute. What was the first story you ever wrote? What inspired you to write it?

Fanfic writer ask meme