so, I tried to write fic last night, but I was too tired. instead, I ended up vomiting my brains out on paper, which wasn't nearly as painful as it sounds. decided to post it, even though this is possibly of interest only to me. but if you've ever wondered what rock I suddenly crawled out from under, I'll show you.

Because I’ve been thinking about.
Spangel.


Not that I don’t think about them a lot already. Usually in graphic detail. But I’ve been thinking about them in more of an abstract way. How I love them. And I’m feeling a bit nostalgic.

I found the boys doing the nasty a long time ago, by accident. Well, ok, when I actually found the boys getting all sweaty, it was on purpose. But I found talk of them getting naked together with utter blind luck.

I was looking for a timeline. Been watching old episodes of Angel, kinda nostalgic, and as a virgo, I wanted order to the flashbacks. Wanted to know what happened when. The internet’s great like that. The other way the internet is great is that sometimes you google something and end up with something else entirely.

I went looking for a timeline, and ended up with a ship manifesto.

I was just…at first I was confused. Frankly, I’d never even heard of fan fiction, much less slash. I always had kind of fannish obsessions with television shows, but mostly my enthusiasm existed in a bubble, outside of 16-year-old first-period dishing with friends on what had happened on Dawson’s Creek (cringe), or the X-files. No one I knew watched Buffy, or when it aired, Angel.

But now here I was, reading this essay on how Angel and Spike were clearly romantically and/or sexually involved…or in the least, that they wanted to be. And I was flabbergasted and utterly intrigued by the idea…and what’s more, it didn’t feel like a stretch at all. It was just a bare-bones evidence kind of thing…the moments every spangel shipper knows. Anyway, I really…couldn’t deny the evidence. I hadn’t even seen Angel season 5 at that point, because when it aired I was without a television, busy drinking away my brain cells as a freshman in college. Even never having seen the UST and softer moments of that season, I was reading this thing and…well…jesus, two of my favorite male characters had been having sex right under my nose! On network television! I felt like my eyes had been peeled wide open, it was such a lightning-bolt revelation.

OTP at first sight.

Of course, I had no idea what an otp was at that point. And even when I finally figured it out, a year or so later, I thought it was kind of dumb, because I had no real pairing loyalty. Throw a bunch of bodies in a bed together, and I’m happy…show me how their canon personalities deal with one another, and I’m even happier. Basically I thought the exclusivity of the otp concept was bunk. But really, I already had one. Even though I’m a pairing slut, there’s no doubt that Spangel is the only non-canon pairing that I believe in my spangelly little heart of hearts happened off-camera. For example, I love me some spander but…I don’t think they were really doing it in the basement. Maybe post-Chosen/NFA? Who knows. Xander was a closet case, and Spike is sex on legs, so anything is possible.

But I digress.

So, fresh off of reading this essay, still kind of reeling (and feeling so naughty), I found myself some Spangel porn. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find Captain Peroxide and Deadboy, so I was able to mainline quality stuff right off the bat. And I felt naughtier.

The other thing I must confess, is that I’d never really thought of boy-on-boy action as hot. I’d never thought of it as not hot, either. I’d mostly just…not thought of it, except in a liberal I-support-the-right-of-people-to-love-who-they-want kind of way. I’d seen some commercial gay porn, but it was really scary commercial gay porn and not hot at all. God, I’m having flashbacks. Since then there has been Corbin Fisher (thanks to so_sharlemaine) and all is right with the world.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I was really surprised to find that this stuff was hot. Made me hot, even though I didn’t have any of those parts to empathize with, and suddenly I really understood why guys dug two chicks. As a bi female, I had always understood why it got *me* hot, but…why they enjoyed it was just a little baffling to me. But now I got it, because everything that you love about the opposite sex times two? Sign me up.

And yet, I felt odd, because I didn’t know that most of these writers, and the readers, were female.

So I lurked. I lurked alllll over the place, for a long time. I think if there was a pairing out there, I dipped a toe in at least once. Mostly I read spangel. I read the light stuff, the dark stuff, the really dark stuff, and I loved it all. Found human AU and went nuts with happiness. Never left feedback. Well, actually, except once. I remember I read something of Kita’s that I just loved so much, because it was everything I loved about the pairing, and I emailed her and felt very weird about doing it, but she was nice.

Since neither show was on any more and most of the fic I was finding was older, I assumed nobody was writing the stuff any more and if I emailed people about their stuff, they’d be like, wtf, who thinks about that any more. After all, a lot of the links I found were dead, and I just assumed I’d stumbled onto a ghost town, but one I was happy to play in.

And then I found LJ.

Finding the fandom on livejournal brought me out of my lurkerdom pretty quickly, because people were talking to each other now, and it’s easier to leave fb. But I didn’t find it until last fall. Look, there are people out there! It was exciting.

And then one night, I was really in the mood for some teen AU Spangel, and I’m pretty sure I’ve read it all…and I couldn’t sleep…and Won’t Back Down was born. First time I’d felt inspired to write in 5 years. I thought that part of me was dead, the writer.

Anyway, I don’t think I have to tell the people on my flist why I love spangel, since it’s mostly preaching to the converted. I’m not much of a meta girl. I just like making them do snarky, silly, sexy things together. If you are interested in an *actual* manifesto, since this isn’t one, I think my favorite ever is this one by Romany, who I don’t know but seems to have a similar history to mine and a much better knack for expressing it.



Mostly, I think I just love them because the pairing appeals simultaneously to the romantic and the realist in me. It’s a love story that, in one way or another, spans over a century canonically. Maybe a story about losing something and finding it again. Maybe instead, a story about finding something you always wanted, where you never thought you’d find it. About how people can still surprise you, even when you’ve seen everything. How maybe even that irritating person you’re inexplicably tied to can end up being the most important constant in your life.

Even when you want to rip their head off for being such a stick-in-the-mud pompous asshole, or alternatively, an irresponsible, abrasive, snarky little banty rooster.