Stuff about me: I would hope you can tell from my chibi profile pic, but just to alleviate all doubt, I am a chick. Also, I'm in college, and probably the biggest reason I'm writing fanfiction is that I have no other outlet for my love of writing and analyzation (thank you, AP English program). I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, which is awesome beyond reason, but don't take that to mean I'll stop writing fanfiction. No, I shall definitely continue with this for the foreseeable future. I'm also into drawing, and my work tends to be a mixture of realism and manga, though realism has been dominating my style with increasing insistency of late. Okay, why is it that my hobbies all seem to be the sort of thing I can get away with doing in class? Because, let me tell you, not helpful to my grades. Head desk. Anyway, aside from the aforementioned, I'm vehemently both conservative and Christian (LDS, specifically). But hey, my best friend, who I completely adore, is just as vehemently neither, and on top of that goes to the rival university of mine (which tends to be a big deal here). And, that's pretty much it for now.

I've been doing fanart a bit longer than fanfiction, so I was surprised how quickly I was sucked into it. Usually I wouldn't cave to this kind of profitless madness, but if I didn't get these things out of my head, I truly would go mad. Feel free to look at my deviantart page, by the way (that's where my homepage link goes to), where you will find the aforementioned fanart. Also a few scraps of fanfic I rather dislike now and didn't post here for that reason.

My Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Season 8": Since it's obviously the biggest thing by far I've done, I'll just rant a bit now about my favorite completed Buffyverse project. First and foremost, my goal with this story was to capture the spirit of the series. And to add a companion Buffy season to run alongside Angel season five, which seemed sad and lonely. I tried to keep changes to canon to the barest possible minimum, so of Angel S5, you need only disregard mentions of the Scoobies being in Europe or wherever, and the Buffy/The Immortal subplot of supreme stupidness in "The Girl in Question" (those bits struck me as very out of character anyway, so I have no qualms about overwriting them). Also, expect some definite crossovers throughout this thing. We all know that a season of Buffy means pain, death, love, angst, humor, friendship, and lots of demon butts getting kicked. I really don't regret that this couldn't be in TV format, because if it was, I wouldn't have been able to get inside characters' heads like quite like I did. Some of the major character arcs I tackled include Buffy becoming "cookies" (that one's important, because, even though I'm a hardcore Buffy/Angel shipper, I think she's got a long way to go before she gets up to the level he's reached by the end of Angel season five), Xander working through his grief for Anya and moving on, Willow using her post mass Slayer spell magic to help the Slayers in new ways and figuring out who she really wants to be with, Oz mastering his wolf and using it to fight demons alongside the Slayers, Dawn coming into her own as a character and joining the ranks of the show's other champions, and Giles getting used to being Watcher over several dozen Slayers at once. Granted, if you're looking for something with a sex scene of any kind, you are very much in the wrong place. I put in all the fight scenes you could possibly want, but I did not write that. My stuff will never surpass PG-13 levels on that subject. I know writing a new season wasn't exclusively my idea, but, again, if I'd just let this story sit in my head, my brain would have exploded.

My Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Season 9": It is now my current project! Main characters: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, Angel, Oz, and Giles. Recurring characters: Renée, Connor, Gunn, Anne, Illyria, Faith, Wood, Alex, Cole, Lorin, Sam, various newbie Slayers, Spike, and Drusilla. This is picking up exactly where "Season 8" left off, and that means Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, Xander/Renée, Dawn/Connor, Faith/Wood, and, yes, Spike/Drusilla (and don't spaz, Lorin/Sam and Alex/Cole will be in there as well, since apparently I wrote them well enough that people like them--which is just awesome, considering that they're OCs). Also, I'm pretty much fusing Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel together into one "show" for this, so to follow everything, it would help, in addition to having read "Season 8", to have watched Angel.

(If you ask me for a "Season 10", I will hunt you down and axe murder you, and that would just be tragic, so, in the words of Drogyn, don't ask, because I'm NOT writing it. I think forty-four fake episodes that will likely total 300,000 words should really be enough for everybody. If you are good readers, I may write various futurefics which follow the events of my two fake seasons for you, but nine will be the last in season form.)

Update, as of Thursday, October 29, 2009: Episode eleven is now up!

The canon season eight: Okay, since you already know that I wrote a fake season eight, you can safely assume that I have some real problems with the canonical one. Canon or not, the comic just doesn't feel like the Buffyverse. Pretty much the only thing from it I truly love is Renée, and so of course she got killed off. (And although that felt true to the Buffyverse, Joss has done it so many times that it's starting to be predictable. He should surprise us with a lasting, functional relationship for a change, because we'd never see it coming. As long as it's not Willow/Kennedy.) Willow's magic is ridiculously over-the-top and so far it appears that all of her significant character development for the last couple of seasons of the show has been ignored. The spell to call Slayers worldwide was her redemption. Her hair turning all glowy and white was the symbolic proof of it. But apparently she's back to using very shady magic with no moral crisis to speak of. Not to mention that she'll still be around hundreds of years later as an inexplicably immortal Dark Willow, so the likelihood of her ever coming to her senses seems slim (though I don't doubt that the future Dark Willow thing will be retconned away at some point). Buffy's situation is just as bad (or worse). She stole to fund the huge Scottish castle, is still being a ridiculous cow towards anyone (namely, Giles) who is nice to Faith, and I'm not even going to go into the matter of Satsu, because then I'd just start twitching (yes, my opinion on that matter is greatly informed by my religion). And now it looks like she might be having an affair with Riley (who is MARRIED and who she could never even get herself to love when they were actually dating anyway). Who is this woman and what has she done with the heroine of this series? When exactly did her morals get so screwed up? I have no idea what's going on with Dawn or how it's even possible in this universe. What the heck is a thricewise, anyway? Apart from the insulting retconning which insists that he is still Dracula's butt-monkey, Xander, at least, is pretty much the same. Faith, on the other hand, seems to have sunk with the same character progression boat that took down Buffy and Willow. Was I imagining the progress she made? Did Angel accomplish nothing with her? She had ACCEPTED that Buffy was the one in charge. Jealousy issues: resolved. According to the comic, though, not so much. And Giles. Just because they don't feel he's necessary enough of a character at this point to appear in every issue doesn't mean they had to ruin the touching and excellent long-standing surrogate father/daughter rapport he has with Buffy. Got to give them points for Andrew's hysterical line about the mecha-Dawn, the stand-alone about the underground fake Buffy, and, again, Renée. But overall, I find the comic disappointing at best and mortifying at worst. But I'm not knocking the art. The art is excellent.

Angel versus Spike rant: Ever since I got sucked into über-fandom of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, everywhere I go, people seem to like Spike better. This I do not understand. Don't get me wrong; Spike's an awesome character, I just don't see how anyone could prefer him to Angel. I shall now deconstruct Spike's alleged merits by comparing his qualities with Angel's.

Looks. I don't care what you say, nothing will convince me that Spike is more attractive than Angel. I'm judging this by juxtaposing Spike against how Angel looks during Buffy seasons 1 and 2, and even through probably Angel season 2. The tall, dark, brooding mystery guy. His hair is awesome, his eyes are gorgeous, and overall he's right up there with Mr. Darcy in the BBC Pride & Prejudice. To quote Buffy, any girl with eyes would find Angel good-looking. I have to struggle to suppress squee mode every time he comes onscreen, especially when he's shirtless...okay, when he's shirtless, I am physically incapable of suppressing squee mode. Cough. Anyway! Spike merely looks cool. I don't really like the ramen noodles look of his hair, or the way his face is rather bony. Although I will admit that during that flashback to his fight against Nikki Wood, with the tousle-y hair and the outfit...wow...so much pretty...that scene gets him an Angel-worthy squee mode every time I watch it. Okay, moving on.

Lots of people like the "bad boy" thing Spike's got going. The accent and outfit definitely win him points. The smoking and alcoholism, though? Not so much. Maybe if we had to smell that every time we watched him, more people would realize how deeply unappealing that is. Because, seriously, that's gross. Angel, on the other hand, only smoked like two times onscreen; once in the flashback to the '50s, which was essentially a time period related thing that makes perfect sense even if it's irksome, and then when he used the cigarette to send Darla and Drusilla up in flames. And he rarely drank, but when he did, it wasn't usually enough to get him plastered. Okay, so as Liam, he was drunk about as often as Spike, but he's not Liam anymore. And Angelus drank even less frequently than Angel, from what we saw.

Humor! This is obviously one of Spike's strongest selling points. He is hilarious, and I enjoy watching his antics very much. However, his hilarity revolves around him being a blunt and insensitive prat to everyone, so that doesn't really get him points. I mean, seriously, would you appreciate that if you were the one on the receiving end of his brand of biting sarcasm instead of in the audience? I know I wouldn't. Angel's humor comes more from him being something of a dork, which I find adorable most of the time. He can be funny without insulting people, but also without becoming a silly comic relief character like Xander. His humor is almost always at his own expense, and I like that, and there's really nothing to be held against him for it from any perspective.

Now, as for character. Angel goes through his incredibly frightening dark phases, sure, but he never took pleasure in violence the way Spike always did. Angel "helps the helpless", and has noble intentions. On Buffy, Spike generally (and yes, there are exceptions) only helped if a) there was an opportunity of killing something, or b) because he was trying to get in Buffy's good books so he'd have a shot with her. And that's putting it politely. Even when Spike has his soul, everything he does is for Buffy, or for proving he's just as good as Angel; not for the sake of doing something right. On the other hand, and here I like to use "Sanctuary" as the example, Angel would even go so far as to go against Buffy's wishes in doing the right thing. He helped Faith even though Buffy didn't want him to, and she said rather horrible things to him for that, but he wouldn't abandon his mission. Can you see Spike ever doing something like that? No.

Maturity. Something Spike entirely lacks. He's over a century old. If he's not mature now, he's never going to be. His relationship with Harmony, his pleasure in violence, stalking and having a robot version constructed of Buffy, selfishly perpetuating the relationship with Buffy even though it was clearly destroying her, not accepting responsibility for his past crimes, tormenting Wood about his mother, pestering Angel until he almost drove him insane, wanting the Shanshu largely just so Angel couldn't have it... it just goes on. Soul or no soul, the guy's an emotional teenager. Eternally. Yay? Angel may have been a worthless layabout as an Irish youth in days of yore, but, again, that part of him died (literally). As Angelus, he was a cold, cruel, manipulative villain (Angelus is actually one of my favorite villains of either series). As Angel, he fully accepts responsibility for every last thing Angelus did, even though it really wasn't his fault. He didn't push Buffy out of her comfort zone in their relationship, and he sacrificed his own feelings by leaving her, knowing that in doing so, the woman he loved was fair game for someone else to give her the normal life she wanted. He wanted her to find long-term joy, and had the strength to cut himself out of that equation. Listing all the other noble, mature things he does once he moves off to his own show would take up too much room, but I think I've made my point. Except that I do also want to mention how awesome of a dad he is. Watch him with baby Connor (so adorable), and then with angst-bomb teenage Connor. At that point, the kid wasn't exactly making parenting an easy job, but Angel was wonderful there, and once again cut himself out of the "happy, normal life" scenario of someone he loved when he gave Connor his fake memories.

Oh, and on the subject of their souls, and whether they wanted them or not. The fact that Angelus had a soul forced on him and absolutely hated it does not alter how good Angel was. In fact, it emphasizes that even further. Angelus is the demon. Pure, unadulterated sadism. Of course he doesn't want a soul, especially when he knows the good that soul is going to do while he's reduced to being a voice of temptation in the back of his own head. And, in turn, one of Angel's biggest fears was releasing Angelus, and he'd rather Angelus get dusted than be allowed to rampage around indefinitely before getting his soul shoved back in. As to Spike being pretty much the same, soul or no soul (sans his policy on killing humans), I don't see this as a particularly good thing. His goals are almost always selfishly motivated. He quested for his soul so he'd become worthy of Buffy (and probably to prove a point, which is also not a noble reason). He had no thoughts of redemption or becoming a world-saving champion; he just wanted the girl, and that was his last-ditch effort. He had no idea what he was really getting himself into. Once ensouled, he went insane and felt awful for how he'd treated Buffy, but then he turned around and unrepentantly taunted Angel with the season six "relationship" he'd had with her, and his new selfish goal became the Shanshu. Angel, on the other hand, actually signed away (I like to think that he only believed he was signing away) the Shanshu, which means he was also permanently giving up the possibility of being with Buffy for the sake of saving the world.

Conclusion? Angel wins. Hands down. And that was with hardly mentioning the Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike relationships. That is a rant for another day. Thank you and good night.

Ships! Oh, what the heck. I feel like procrastinating from studying just a little bit longer, so I'll give you my ships, whether they're canonical, wishful thinking, or a bit of both. You will notice a complete absence of slash, whether canonical or otherwise, because that just doesn't appeal to me in any way. I am very loyal to these pairings, and downright militant for some of them (usually they'll be among the first to be listed in each fandom).

Buffyverse: Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, Fred/Wesley, Cordelia/Doyle, Faith/Wood, Spike/Drusilla, Connor/Dawn, Xander/Anya (unless it's post "Chosen", in which case, Xander/Renée), Gunn/Anne, Graham/Vi (random, I know, but I like them both and they are under-appreciated), Riley/Sam (gets him out of the way, and they seemed very compatible in the approximately five minutes we saw them onscreen together), Giles/Jenny (Giles/Joyce also acceptable, but I'm not terribly outraged with canon for how that didn't develop).

Potterverse: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Luna/Rolf, Lupin/Tonks, James/Lily, Bill/Fleur, Arthur/Molly, George/Angelina, Neville/Hannah, Draco/Astoria...yeah, I'm pretty much sold on the canonical ships of this fandom. As for the kids: Teddy/Victoire, Rose/Scorpius.

The Office: Jim/Pam (YESSS!), Michael/Holly, Karen/Dan (I loved seeing Karen happily married to a lovable dork who isn't Jim. Good for her.), Andy/Erin.

Bones: Booth/Brennan (duh), Angela/Hodgins, Sweets/Daisy (they are HILARIOUS).

House: Cameron/Chase, Wilson/Amber, House/Cuddy, Foreman/Thirteen (FOURTEEN! _).

Firefly: Mal/Inara, Zoe/Wash, Simon/Kaylee.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Billy/Penny. Duh.

Dollhouse: Victor/Sierra (SO MUCH CUTE), Alpha/Echo (What? They're like Angelus and Darla. In what way is that not awesome?), Topher/Ivy (she totally has a crush on him, but he's too emotionally stunted to deal with her yet).

Pushing Daisies: Ned/Chuck. Saran wrap kisses! Hee!

Pride and Prejudice: Darcy/Elizabeth, Bingley/Jane. Of course, these conclusions are nearly two centuries foregone, but who cares?

Star Wars: Han/Leia. No, I do not ship Anakin/Padme. I tolerate it because that's how we got Luke and Leia, but I thought Padme would have been much better off with Obi-Wan. He's responsible, caring, and understanding, just like her. Curse that Jedi code of celibacy. And I know virtually nothing of what goes on beyond the six films, so yay, I guess, for Luke and that redheaded chick in the books.

Star Trek: Spock/Uhura.

Avatar: Zuko/Mai (at first I was perplexed by this, but then their insanely awesome dialogue and Mai following Zuko to Team Avatar sold me for them), Aang/Katara (it would help if he hit his growth spurt and got taller than her, but I still ship them), Sokka/Toph (meh, well, you win some, you lose some).

Naruto: Naruto/Hinata, Neji/Tenten, Shikamaru/Temari, Iruka/Anko, Chouji/Ino, Asuma/Kurenai, Minato/Kushina, and there need to be more chicks in that story so Gaara can get a girl! Wait. On second thought, I'll have him. Also, Sakura should probably go with Lee or Kiba instead of Sasuke, who is now a (seemingly) irredeemable psychopath.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward/Winry, Roy/Riza, Hughes/Gracia, Sig/Izumi.

Bleach: Renji/Rukia, Ishida/Inoue, Ichigo/Tatsuki.

Sabriel: Sabriel/Touchstone. So much love. Have yet to read the rest of the trilogy though, alas.

I have read the Twilight books. I own all four of them, two of which were obtained at midnight release parties. I pretty much like the canonical pairings as they are, though I would have liked to see Jacob/Leah. Aside from Jasper/Alice (excellent characters on their own, and both with great backstory, but their relationship itself is pure awesomeness), Garrett/Kate is the only other pairing I feel like mentioning. I adore them and wish Meyer would give us a short story about them and all of the other random vamps who turned up in Breaking Dawn. Overall, I currently have very little enthusiasm for this fandom. I got what I wanted: the ending. I didn't care how it ended, I just wanted to know what happened. Oh, and I saw the movie. I actually enjoyed it for the most part, even if Robert Pattison's "acting" made me laugh. He wasn't as bad as Hayden Christensen, at least, so I'll forgive him.