Many excellent stories have been recommended, but a few of my favorites haven’t been. That needs fixing. My absolute favorite has gotten a nod, but the previous recommendation didn’t address what I love about it, so I’ll review it here anyway. While I think each of these stories are great simply for reading, I particularly advise anyone who wants to write to look at these and take apart how they're done. They've each taught me a lot.
I'm not really good at "here's a list of what I liked about this thing," so I've written more review-style comments. I've tried to include enough information in each so you can get a sense of if you'll like it yourself. I know I go on about style a lot, but, well, that's the way I think about stories.
In alphabetical order:
Donegal Street by wayland (33k words)
Donegal Street is
the best exploration of Willow's addiction and recovery. Hands down.
Set a year after Tabula Rasa, Donegal Street uses the framework of a reconciliation story to explore Willow's addiction as what it is: a mental illness. It touches on everything from the fallout of such an illness on the family to Willow's motivations for starting--and not stopping--her use of magic. The grief, the shame, the upheaval of everyone's life: all palpable, never overdone, and hauntingly real.
The reader spends four claustrophobic days with Willow and Tara: the spotlight is bright, harsh, and lingers on the characters' flaws, oftentimes casting deep shadows over their strengths. The treatment is not unkind, however, and is demonstrably born of a deep appreciation for the characters. It is respect, not malice, that drives this unflinching look at their actions and motivations, and the result is characters that feel very real. There are no saints in this story, only people.
From chapter one, Donegal Street demands your attention, so go to the story prepared to think. The careful reader will be rewarded with a far richer experience. The story is told at every level of writing: word choice, sentence structure, and POV are all pulled into play to show the movement of the story. The changing use of language is as powerful at showing character movement as anything else; moreso than what the characters tell themselves, certainly, because those are often lies. The words on the page may thin, but don't think that means the moment is simple.
There are no simple answers on Donegal Street, but it is well worth the trip. Just remember to pack some tissues.
Night of Broken Glass by Junecleavage (112k words)
Inspired by
Aimée & Jaguar, Night of Broken Glass takes Willow and Tara to WWII Berlin. Those familiar with the original need not worry: Willow and Tara get their happy ending.
The story takes place in 1943, five years after the eponymous
Kristallnacht. Nazi Germany provides a fascinating setting for reimaging a great number of characters and themes from BtVS. They feel surprisingly at home.
While there are anachronisms abound, the
mood feels accurate. Fear, violence, and death are ever-present (even more than Sunnydale), and rightly so: Willow’s ethnicity and orientation are matters of life or death. There’s a constant sense of dread, but it often plays out as a drive to live today, because tomorrow may never come. The German people, from the Good Germans to the Nazi soldiers we meet, are never simply dismissed as evil. The villains we do encounter are clearly psychotic individuals who have risen to their positions due to the environment; they’re not just bad because they’re German.
There are a lot of moving pieces in Night of Broken Glass: a lot of character stories that interweave. Though the core of the plot is driven by the love story between Willow and Tara, the camera frequently leaves them behind to visit other characters. I tend to prefer a more consistent point of view, but the camera movement here is done well and comes together for a dramatic climax that wouldn’t have worked as well without it.
A remarkable quality of this story is the use of sex scenes. Not only do they provide for a lot of characterization and character development, they each matter to plot. All while being ridiculously hot. It’s a magical amalgam.
Night of Broken Glass is tense, violent, and full of close calls. Provided you can stomach that, it is a compelling and exciting read. (And the sex. Did I mention the sex? 'Cause . . . the sex.)
Waiting for Dani by JustSkipIt (95k words)
I told myself I wasn’t going to repeat anyone else’s recommendations, but Waiting for Dani is my favorite story here, so I can’t just skip it. (I think I'm so funny.)
Waiting for Dani opens with an instantly recognizable image: Tara sitting in the dark, staring out a window, and waiting. The story, however, is far from familiar. Set in a fantasy world, Tara is the highest of high nobility, having inherited both title and magic in a matriarchal society. Though it takes place in a fantastical setting, the core of the story is Tara’s character development and understanding of the complex social structure in which she lives. At the center of both is Dani (read: Willow).
The story is told in the first person as Tara recounts her life story to the reader as she waits. She tends to relate only the thoughts and feelings she had at the time of the events she describes, which allows the reader’s understanding of the world to grow with Tara’s. There is, however, occasional commentary from the “present” Tara, enough to convey a sense of foreboding: from the opening it is clear that Tara waits because something terrible has happened, but we don’t know what.
JustSkipIt exploits this tight point of view, the unreliable narration of a young, flawed, and naïve woman, to deliver a powerful kick to the gut. Though the feedback throughout the story is wonderful, other readers may piece together what’s wrong before you do: if you don't want it spoiled, you may want to save reading the feedback for a highly-recommended second read.
Waiting for Dani I believe holds the honor of having the
least graphic sex scenes that JustSkipIt has posted. They style fits the source of narration: a twenty-year-old girl too embarrassed to go into detail. Though not explicit, they are emotional and key to the plot movement. (If you somehow don’t know where to read graphic sex by Deb, just look at her author entry in the archives. You’ll find some.)
Readers unfamiliar with fantasy may be intimidated or put off by the opening chapter, which is dense in titles and history, but rest assured that it not the style of the majority of the piece.
Waiting for Dani is an utter joy to read, not to mention an absolute must for writers who want to understand why the hell they should care about point of view.
P.S. An outline for a sequel has been written, so maybe if we shower enough love and attention on this story, Deb will take the time to write that. *insert winning smile*
What Would Willow and Tara Do? by dlline (2k words—exactly, by MS Word’s count)
Every community has clichés. Even ours. In this highly-meta and very funny piece, Willow and Tara take us to task.
Just . . . go read it. It’s 2000 words.
Required reading if you want to write on the board.
By the way, the rest of this short-fic thread is also delightful, particularly if you like really hot, well-written sex. I would further recommend her longer fiction, but since they’re
published books, they’re not posted on the board and therefore don’t qualify (they are, however, board stories at their core.)
If you want specific story content, post a request in the "Looking For.." thread.
