Ramblings of a Little Luddite

Hi, my fandom name is sparrow2000, which you probably already realised since you're here on my journal! You can find me here on on Live Journal which was my first fandom home, on Dreamwidth and at AO3.

I've made my home in the Buffy fandom since 2002 when I stumbled across the Season 6 musical episode 'Once More With Feeling' which made me go 'what the hell is that!' I then had the surreal experience of watching the second part of S6 at the same time as I went back and started the series from S1. What intrigued me was to see the journey that made those relatively fresh faced teenagers from the high school years become the pretty damaged adults we see in later seasons. Over 20 years later, I'm still intrigued by these characters and all their myriad possibilities.

My main fandom obsession is one Xander Harris, mainly because he's not the one with the power and I was/am interested in his struggles and successes in the midst of the other main characters who do have power. I know he's not a particularly popular character for many people these days, but fandom is a broad church and our interests and obsessions are our own. And that's my plea to fandom - however you feel about any particular character or ship, we should accept our differences and not deny other people their passions and their pleasures – their fun doesn’t undermine our own.

With apologies to the late, great, much missed Anthony Bourdain...

I write in the Buffy 'verse. I started off with Spike/Xander, and have written a fair amount of Xander/Giles and a little bit of Xander/Oz and a few more unconventional pairings such as Xander/Lindsey. Over the last few years I've written a lot of Xander on his own because I find it fascinating to explore all the different facets of the boy and it's also fun to wind his key and see how he reacts to whatever new trauma I'm putting him through...

I'm also very grateful to have a wonderful beta in thismaz who first encouraged me to write and has ironed out a lot of my nastier habits over the years. She's not active in fandom anymore but I'm so happy that she continues to read my first drafts, listen to my wilder ramblings and talk me off the occasional fic-related cliff.

If you're new to my stuff, feel free to wander through my Master List - hopefully there is something for everyone there and they're arranged by date of writing and by Genre.

I read a lot less fic than I did back in the day, but over the years, apart from the Buffy 'verse, I've gone down reading rabbit holes in NCIS, Sentinel, Merlin and Sherlock. I read Slash, Gen and Het as the mood takes me - my only criteria is that the story interests me and keeps my attention.

I rec in any 'verse where I find good writing, because good writers should be supported and I believe in spreading the love. I have a series of genre-based rec lists mostly featuring Xander (what you're surprised!). Click on the link for Sparrow's Bat Shit Crazy Rec List Project. This list was last updated January 2020, and currently contains around 700 fic recs.

From October 2006 - October 2008 I posted faithfully every week at tamingthemuse through sun, rain and moving half way across the world.

Over the years some lovely people have voted for some of my stories at a few of the Buffy 'verse awards sites. I am very lucky to have such generous readers. Pets the pretties...




















































I was also chuffed to bits to have this fic recognised at the Shades of Grey Awards