Author's Notes
Reading these notes is not essential to understanding any of my stories, I just thought that it would be of interest to those of you out there who like to know things like this. I do, so I thought, heck! why not? Enjoy.
Andromeda
Call - I honestly can't remember if Call was the infamous first fic that all authors have to have or if that particular shame lands on Better Left. I'm going to say that it was Call only because its cheesier. Much, much cheesier. Every hormonal, female, teenage Andromeda fan worth her salt has to have an obligatory Tyr/Beka romance. Its kinda like the Logan/Marie sex cabin story of X-Men fans of the same demographic. When I wrote this I was all of the above. VERY all of the above. It isn't finished, and has been sitting as a WIP for quite a long time. The rest of the story is still sitting in my head though, so you never know. One of these days I might actually get around to putting it to paper (and then to screen).
Friend - Along the same vein as Call, but SHORT. Also a very early work as evidenced by the pretentious almost-poetry I was attempting to produce. I like it thiiiiis much.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Saddest Poem - I've recently discovered the term 'jumping the shark'. Apparently it means the moment that a show hits its highest point and then begins its descent into mediocrity. Buffy, for me, reached that point at the end of Season 2. I continued to watch right up to the bitter (crappy) end, and the show still had some great moments and episodes, but everything I loved about it was gone, EvilAngel (Angel in general, who knew then that we'd get him back) and EvilSpike&Dru. Thats right "EvilSpike&Dru", that ain't no typo. Don't get me started on the horrors that are a chipped/souled Spike and Spuffy. Spike and Dru are meant to be together, or if not, then in a beautiful (to watch) self-destructive triangle with Angel/us. Whew! End of rant that I hadn't even noticed I had started. This was a first for me, a poem-fic if you will. Along the lines of a song-fic but with poetry. I've always loved the work of Pablo Neruda, and I was just reading Saddest Poem one day and thought that it perfectly expressed the tangle of Spike, Dru, and Angelus. William was a poet. I was a little scared to post this one, I wasn't sure how people would react to mixing Neruda with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many thanks to my two beta-readers on this work, codenames Almond (my self professed anal-retentive perfectionist bitch) and Aayla. They reminded me that Neruda's words were supposed to be 'William' talking so I should remove the flowery language from what I wrote for 'Spike'. They kept me gramatically incorrect and in the big bad's character.
Lion's Share - Ever since I read Soft, by Juliatheyounger, I've been intrigued by a romantic relationship between Spike and Tara. Its not a popular pairing but you can find some stories if you look. I don't know if everyone has seen the last seasons of Buffy, so STOP READING NOW if you haven't and don't want to be spoiled. To read the notes with spoilers for the last 2 seasons of Buffy, highlight between the lines below.
With the death of first Tara and then Spike I was presented with the perfect situation. I really liked the heaven concept because not only did it give me an easy way to get them together, but it also gave me the disruption of their happy little romance, AND I got to play with everyone else who died. Now, they could both be free of their still living loves (ack! Spike loving Buffy *shudder*). This is only chapter one, so the "being free" hasn't been explained yet, or anything else I've just mentioned for that matter...oh but it will be, don't you worry. One of these days.
I got the name from my Genetics class (where I wrote most of chapter one). When discussing gametogenesis, the prof said that in oogenesis one of the egg cells gets the lion's share of the cytoplasm, i.e. the bigger portion. This too will come in eventually.
Earth: Final Conflict
Gentleness - Pretty Woman, it's not, and it's about Sandoval (see the review from fanfiction.net, *shakes head*). Sandoval was always my favorite character. The days of Liam (even though I prefer Boone), Lili, and Sandoval were some of the best E:FC made. I'm not so much into Renee, and what's with her hair? I don't really know where this one came from actually, just that I wanted to show Ronald from a non-biased perspective. Though I've probably (read: have) written him with my own bias. Everyone loved him for a little while after seeing the episode Sandoval's Run. I think I'm the only person I know who liked him before seeing that episode, and still liked him after without wanting to change him. He, like Spike and Angel, was great evil. I saw some of his more evil moments looong before Sandoval's Run (who believes in watching episodes in order? who I ask you?!) and have always enjoyed his character. He's cruel, tortured, harsh, intelligent, just all-around not nice, and multidimensional. That's the one that always gets forgotten. Yeah, when his CVI broke down he went to rescue DeeDee and he wanted her protected from him when it turned out that he couldn't escape. But when his CVI was back up and running he was still wearing her ring. That's the part of Ronald Sandoval I wanted, that part that does all the horrible things that he does, and hates the Taelons, and is out for revenge, but who remembers being in love.
Things She Knows - Ha! just like all great series (pretentious much?!) this one was not intended to be. Gentleness was supposed to be a one shot wonder. Until I started thinking about what happened after. My complaint with Pretty Woman was that it just faded to black and you don't see what happens afterwards, and with all the Pretty Woman comparisons Gentleness got, I didn't want to let that happen. And I wanted to look closer at the Sandoval I'd created, who wasn't only a vicious Protector and Taelon lackey. This part was a lot of fun for me to write because essentially its about me. I do everything that Sandoval does in this story. It's not the woman who is my avatar, its Ronald :) At this point I realized that the story couldn't end here. This was just a short, brief look at the man behind the monster, as it were. The books that I refer to specifically are Jane Eyre and Like Water For Chocolate; its canon for him to have a copy of The Prince.
Here With Me - This was originally intended to be "Things He Knows", a reverse of the second part focusing on what Ronald knows about his companion. I realized though that we know nothing about her at all from the previous two stories. My goal was to bring out Ronald from behind the mask of Sandoval. We don't know what she looks like, the only information about her physical appearance is given in this story and it is intentionally vague: hair long enough to be in a pony-tail and fingers that she thinks are short and crooked. Considering all this, it seems a little late for in-depth physical and personality descriptions. This is the story of the two of them, but its about Sandoval (heh, again see the fanfiction.net review for Gentleness). It's about his feelings, and his perceptions of the situations he finds himself in. It's about how he remembers how to be Ron with someone, instead of Agent Sandoval. Its the real ending of the first story, it's how he saw it happen, how his CVI remembers it, not the glossed-over version she tells herself in Gentleness.
Firefly
Here Without You - Written after seeing only 2 episodes of Firefly, my first 2: Ariel and War Stories. Inspired by what I thought was the line "No baby, its time to wake up." I was like WTF! that's his sister. The insanity that is "Other" Firefly Fiction grew from there. Later, after my darling Almond bought me the DVD set, I find out that I was just not used to the mandarin they use sometimes. He said "No Mei-mei, its time to wake up." My CSI world was effectively shattered. But then I watched Safe again and got over it. I'm still right about the incest vibe. This is probably my favorite of all my stories, as it best gets across the picture of the story that I saw in my head. The title is taken from the 3 Doors Down song by the same name. While writing this, I listened to it over and over and over again. If you know the song you'll see the connection. If you don't know it, go download it...er...that is go acquire it from a perfectly legal source.