Once upon a time ago...in a land not so far away, I used to love this wonderful tv series. I watched it faithfully every week. Gene Roddenberry was a genius. The series was Andromeda.
My favorite characters on the series were Beka, Tyr, Rommie, and Trance. Least favorite Captain Dylan Hunt. I had such high hopes for my characters.
Beka was a strong willed woman that even though she had issues still seemed to be surviving fairly well in this world Tyr was all alone in this world due to his prides destruction. His species was based on Niechtze's idea of the uberman. He became a part of the crew even though there was a lot of distrust on both sides. Rommie is the ultimate geek boys fantasy. Trance was just fun.
However other kids started playing in his sandbox and kind of mucked things up. These characters became intolerably lame to me.
I was such a fan of the show that I even started a fan fiction award site. An Affirming Flame Archive. The site was named for two things. The first was the fact that it was the title of the second Andromeda episode. The second was that it was almost an oxymoron. Flames in the literary world of fanfiction (fanfic) are bad. Basically they tear a writers efforts apart without actually offering anything constructive. Of course, an affirmation is praise or acknowledgement of a work that is well done.
Wow did my love of the series change. I got so frustrated I issued a challenge to a some of the fanfic authors. I wanted a series of stories. The theme...Kill Dylan Hunt. I wanted him to die in the most horrific way possible in each episode.
The show brought James Marsters in to play the character of Charlemagne Bolivar. My hopes were lifted. Mr Marsters played Spike on BTVS (Buffy) and I adored his acting there. Unfortunately this turned out to be a one-off and not a recurring character. By the time Tyr's character was written out of the script I was ready to say goodbye. I couldn't stand Captain "Perfect".
The good thing about this was that I did find several fanfic authors in both the Andromeda and Buffy universes that I enjoy reading. The bad thing. I didn't keep the archive going. I should have and just continued to honor authors in other fandoms. There are still a lot of writers out there writing BTVS stories. I haven't seen much new Andromeda fic in several years.
I was originally going to post links to some of my favorite fanfic stories on my book club / review site. However, I decided it would be better to have it's own dedicated blogspace here.
At this point the recommended stories and authors will mostly be from BTVS and Andromeda. If you have an author in another fandom that you think is great let us all know by posting a comment. The only stipulations are that if there are ANY squick factors you must warn us before the link. Also absolutely no real person based fanfic or fanfic based off of another author's (published or non published) work.
Fanfic authors write for the joy or writing not the money. Let's make sure they get the appreciation that is due for their efforts.
