Story Title: Deep Dark Sky
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series
Link: right here.
Summary: All Connor and Dawn want is a nice weekend at the lake but a Slayer’s dream pegs them to die
Warnings: minor character death, murder, dysfunctional families
Characters: Connor, Dawn & Buffy Summers, Angel, Spike, Xander Harris, Faith Lehane, Andrew Wells, Kathy Reilley
Pairings: Connor/Dawn
When I Started: Here’s the thing, I don’t even remember this story and from what was left on the hard drive it was supposed to be written for the Multifandom Lyric ficathon and Married_n_Mich beta read it. The lyrics were from the Smashing Pumpkins….and not present in any form in what I had of the story. I was doing these challenges mostly from 2002-2004 so I guess it would date from then and I can find no trace of anything beyond the first four chapters online so I know it was never finished.
How I Lost My Shit: If I had to guess, it was a combo of the hellscape my life was then, starting a new job and a new fandom. I abandoned a lot of my Buffy stories twenty years ago as a result.
How I Finished My Shit: In preparation for this challenge, I yearly go over all those old Buffyverse stories and try to find one I know I DO have a shot of finishing if I simply concentrated on it so I’m grateful for the focus and the deadlines.

Title: Leaning on the Edge of E
Author: cornerofmadness
Fandom: Angel the Series/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41913600
Summary: Connor joins his father in the battle against the demon horde. After nearly dying, they have to set aside their past and look to the future, hoping they can learn what it means to be father and son
Ending Word Count: 34,412
How I Lost My Shit: I stopped with this story in 2004 when life took a very bad bounce and by the time I started recovering my writing mojo, I had drifted into other fandoms.
How I Finished My Shit: Thanks to wipbigbang. When I found this community a few years back I thought this would be a great way to set myself an external deadline (as my internal ones often don’t work out). I’ve been picking the stories I think most likely to be finished. This one has a few chapters that might have set it off course originally. I was writing them for my alpha readers and they might not work as well as I hoped but they work well enough.

Story Title: Strong As Death

Fandom: Angel the Series

Link: AO3
FFN

Summary: Holtz and Steven run into a very determined demoness who has plans for taking over Quor-Toth with the help of the Destroyer.

Warnings: Mention of masturbation as a sin (thanks to a character from the 18th century seeing it as they would have at the time), kidnapping, life in hell (literally)

Characters: Steven “Connor” Holtz

Pairings: none

When I Started: In 2003. I found Connor’s life in Quor-Toth to be both very interesting and underexplored by the series so I decided to expound on it.

How I Lost My Shit: Between depression and the rigors of grad school is probably the answer, that and shiny new fandoms. Honestly I’m not sure why this was never finished. It didn’t need much to get it done. I think I had a much more involved plot line in mind back then with the demon queen but after nearly twenty years I literally haven’t the foggiest as to what it might have been

How I Finished My Shit: When I first found this challenge I knew it would be a perfect venue for finishing all those long forgotten wips from the Buffyverse (I rather learned from this and didn’t publish too many wips in later fandoms) This was a hard year and I almost didn’t participate but thought this one would be easy to do since literally it only needed two more chapters to finish it off so that’s what I did.

Story Title: DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
By: Cornerofmadness
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel the series
Link: AO3 (I don’t have it up on FFN yet but I am grateful to the site. I lost more than half of the original story in a 2006 computer crash but luckily all 6 chapters were up there).
Summary: A year after Sunnydale collapses, Buffy and Faith head to L.A. for the Christmas holidays but it’s not going to be a silent night.
Warnings: violence, death of a minor character (I guess some would argue he’s a major character but I don’t assign that much importance to him)
Characters Buffy Summers, Angel, Dawn Summers, Connor, Faith Lehane (as the major players), Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Xander Harris, Charles Gunn, Fred Burkle, Lindsey McDonald, Amy Madison, Andrew Wells
Pairings: Dawn/Connor, Gunn/Fred, mentions of past Buffy/Angel & Buffy/Spike
When I Started: May 2003, let that soak in for a while. It feels like yesterday…
How I Lost My Shit: I was in the middle of a huge depression after an injury cost me my medical career. On top of that I was retraining and almost ready for the next career and nervous about that, had a major illness/death in the family and then a new fandom found me. Soon after I started publishing professionally and so much fanfic got forgotten. Not to mention that at chapter six, I managed to write myself into a hole at 26,000 words in by introducing Lindsey (and then his character being what it was in S5, sigh)
How I Finished My Shit: Honestly it’s all down to this challenge. When I first learned of it, I went back and pulled out all my old Buffy stories. I had always felt bad I had so many forgotten ones. I ranked the ones I thought I could finish after all these years and this was the one I tackled this year. I still have no idea what I originally intended with Lindsey but rather than retcon his chapter fifteen + years after the fact, I spun it a different way that I think works.

Art Title: Fanmix For "Dream within a Dream"
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: the Series
Warnings: Some profanity in the songs
Link: AO3
Bragging Rights: I enjoyed this fic so much, but it was so hard picking songs! But I think the final choices are really good for the fic and balance the many POVs and relationships/friendships in the fic.



( Read more... )

Story Title : Like Stone

Fandom: Angel: the Series/Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Link(s): AO3 & FFN (not yet updated on FFN)


Summary - Twenty years after the battle with the First and the aftermath of Jasmine’s reign, life still isn’t easy for Buffy and Angel and their friends and family. Connor has been on the outside of his father’s life for years and isn’t particularly happy to be brought back in when Dawn shows up in L.A. with a case that requires his attention. But that is just the beginning of the badness threatening to swallow them all whole.

Warnings violence but nothing above what was on the shows

Characters: Connor, Angel, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Buffy Summers, Dawn Summers, Spike, Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, Charles Gunn, Kate Lockley, Lindsey McDonald, Lilah Morgan, Gwen Raiden

Pairings: technically gen fic but does contain Buffy/Angel, mentions of Buffy/Spike, original pairings for Spike, Dawn, Willow and Xander, Lindsey/Kate, Gunn/Gwen, mentions of Connor/Kate, Connor/Faith and Connor/original character and a fling for Connor & Dawn.

When I Started: June 2003 (OMG!)

How I Lost My Shit: I was going through a terrible time then, having lost my surgical career to an injury, retraining and going out for my first job in the new field, new fandoms beckoned. I was also beginning to publish professionally then which took a lot of my time and I felt like I had written myself into a corner with this story.

How I Finished My Shit: Last year I joined this community and finished another long-languishing Buffyverse fic and decided I would keep at it until I DID finish them all. I still have no idea where I was planning to go with this back in 2003 but I’ve sixteen years of writing under my belt at this point so here I am with a new plot based off what existed (the first three chapters) and that’s how I ended up with this monster.

Disclaimer - As always, Joss owns all characters. The only thing I own are the few OC’s you’ll see in here. Lyrics, poetry and prose will be marked appropriately so we’ll all know who owns them. In all cases, it’s not me.

Rating - R

Timeline – 20 years post series ending.

Author’s Note –Since this was started in in 2003, it was written before season five of Angel and before any of the comic book canon so it’s an alternative reality story (which is why Connor has a different last name. Origins hadn’t aired yet). I’m also amused that I predicted the return of the X-Files back then. I almost changed the show’s name here but decided to leave the show title as I had it back in 2003. Thanks to evil_little_dog and rahirah for betaing at least a part of this fan novel. To be honest as of this publishing I have NOT used rahirah’s edits because I’m pressed for time but I will. And a big thanks to penaltywaltz for the two soundtracks and art for this. I love it and you need to check it out! You can find them here

Author’s Note #2 Things Andrew did in Dead Things (namely the attempted gang rape of Warren’s girlfriend and her murder) and other murder/attempted murders in canon, guaranteed this was not a character I liked because he never paid a price for that. There are scenes were some of the characters are equally not okay with him later in this story.

Author's Note #3 In full disclosure, yes the story IS done but not all of it is posted. I apologize for that. I will be getting it all up over the next several days. Firstly, I had two professional writing deadlines in this middle of this (including one for today). Secondly, when I signed up for this, I had no idea how big this story was going to get. I was like oh, it'll probably end up 20K (it was 13,700K when I abandoned it). It's now over 100,000 words of new material. There's no way to edit it in time. I decided it would be a better reading experience all around if no one had to read my first draft. Better for my readers, better for the story. I'll put up draft two in its entirety within the next few days and then tweak it all later after its settled. So yeah...it's a novel. Again, two big bangs in a row so thank you for. I did, however just put up about another 7500 new words today as I had edited them previously back when I naively dreamed this would top out at 20K.

(My computer is acting up and I don't want to redo all this coding so it's going up a day early)

Art Title: Fanmixes For "Like Stone"
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: the Series
Warnings: None
Link: Fic | Art: Tumblr (Part 1) / Tumblr (Part 2) / AO3 | Music: 8tracks (Part 1) / 8tracks (Part 2) / Download (Part 1) / Download (Part 2)
Bragging Rights: So this one was a bit of a challenge, but in a really fun way. cornerofmadness had songs at the beginning of most chapters, and I wanted to incorporate those as well as other suggestions that were made, and as a lot of the already picked music is in some of my favorite genres, I had some music to add as well. I ended up with 38 songs between all that, and since the two main characters in the fic had never met, I figured the best thing to do was split it into two mixes, and focus one mix cover on each character while giving them similar front covers. I'm really really proud of this set, I am.



( Back Covers & Tracklists Below )