Speranza

A prolific writer in multiple fandoms, Speranza has most recently been active in the MCU, particularly Captain America. She spent several years in the 2000s primarily writing fic and making vids in the Stargate Atlantis fandom. She wrote in due South fandom beginning in 2001 and migrated to SGA in 2005, with a number of other ex-Sentinel dS writers. Anything for Love, a 2012 Vividcon vid she made with astolat, can be read as part fannish autobiography, showing how astolat seduced Speranza into a succession of fandoms that Speranza had previously insisted she would never be interested in.
She used to mod the SGA flashfiction LiveJournal community , the SGA noticeboard LJ community , and the Sherlock flashfic Dreamwidth community .
She currently serves as the archivist of the Due South Archive , and is also the moderator of the dS mailing lists DSX and DIEF. She was a moderator of LJ communities DSReporter and DSNoticeboard, modded the dS flashfiction community from its inception until 2007, and founded the community dS flashback.
In addition to her community-infrastructure work in her current and past fandoms, she has also run several multifandom writing challenges, most notably the Canadian Shack Challenge, the Inappropriate Elf Challenge, and the Tax Shelters Challenge.
In 2007, her post Dear Fandom: Could You Please Stop Saying That? called for fandom to stop saying that fanfic was illegal when it wasn't; in her response to that post, astolat made the first call for "An Archive of Our Own." Later, Speranza made the rallying cry for fandom "to own the goddamned servers".
Speranza: "No, I haven’t actually [written in every fandom]! You know I always used to joke that I’m the person who goes into a fandom and builds like the post office and the town hall and a subway. I go in and I live there for ten years and build infrastructure. I’m not on the cutting edge … But when I leave a town, it is built, my friend!" from Just a Fan from Brooklyn -- Speranza 
==Interviews==
* Slashcast Insider Interview with Speranza (October 2, 2012)
* These Curious Times Interview with Speranza (August 27, 2016)
==Francesca / Speranza / Cesca / Cesperanza / Ces==
Speranza first gained fannish fame in The Sentinel fandom under the name Francesca. When she first entered Due South, she wrote under a new name, Speranza, and made no reference to her Sentinel stories, perhaps wanting to see how her stories would be received if read on their own merits rather than through the lenses of already knowing and liking her work. Alternatively, she may have wanted to avoid the persistent Sentinel fans who kept asking her to continue updating The Nature Series.Liviapenn. Fanlore talk page comment, 9 October 2008. In 2014, Speranza said: "It also had something to do with the fact that there's already character called Francesca in DS, Francesca Vecchio. The name meant different in DS." An edit Speranza made to this Fanlore page, 21 November 2014. 
Regarding the origin of her fan name, Speranza said in 2016: "... it’s actually an Oscar Wilde reference; Lady Jane Francesca ‘Speranza’ Wilde was Oscar Wilde’s mother. She’s like a wealth of cool names – but Speranza was her literary pseud, so I took it for mine. She also claimed to be related to Dante – a total lie, but you have to love her for trying. Cesperanza is just the variant I came up with when Speranza was taken on social media." from Just a Fan from Brooklyn -- Speranza 
Speranza's LiveJournal user name is Cesperanza, and she also goes by the nicknames "Ces" and "Cesca". For many years, her LJ was subtitled "Like Men, Only Better," a phrase which has been taken up in some parts of fandom and acafandom as a way of explaining slash fiction in particular.
All these aliases account for the perplexing file structure of her website, Fanfiction by Speranza.
A fan in 2012 wrote: "Speranza has a very particular and identifiable voice when she writes - which was why it was a secret for like 5 minutes when she tried to write under a new pseud even in a new fandom back in the day...." (2012) 
==Writing Style==
mamaffy in ds_profiles says about Ces's due South writing:
:"She is just a wonderful storyteller. She can take an unusual idea (like Fraser, the criminal mastermind) and develops a detailed and convincing scenario that is true to canon, yet stretches it into something new. Her stories often have a complex overall plot with enough detail to make it unforeseeable. It's like watching the show sometimes, or reading a very good book with beloved characters. She involves crimes, action scenes, backstories, the bullpen, quirky events, and full-fledged OCs. Slash is plentiful and special but not always front and center. Every story has something different to it, and it's worth to read them all." mamaffy, due South Author Profile: Speranza posted on 30 April 2010 (Accessed 9 May 2010)
==Fan Comments==
===Unknown Date===
===2000===
===2001===
===2005===
==Influential Works==
* 4 Minute Window, MCU 2015
*All The Angels and The Saints, MCU, 2014
*Weddings, Plural, and a Yak, SGA, 2008
* Written by the Victors, SGA, 2007
*Things to Do in Denver When_You're_Dead, SGA, 2006
* Learn Something New
* A day in the life (Dead Zone vid), Dead Zone, 2005
*Until Midnight, due South, 2003
* Eight Sessions, due South, 2002
*Chicago's Most Wanted, due South, 2001
*With Six You Get Eggroll, due South, 2001 
*The Nature Series, The Sentinel, 1998
*The Sentinel by Jim Ellison, The Sentinel, collab with Miriam Heddy, 1998
=== due South === 
*Four Virtues
* Good Afternoon, Sir
* Beyond Embarrassment (Fraser/Kowalski, ~11,000 words). Wonderful spin on the magical realism in Due South. It's angsty, emotional, and very exciting to read.
*Kowalski Is Bleeding (Vecchio, Fraser/Kowalski, ~40,000 words). Vecchio rushes to be on Fraser's side when Kowalski goes missing. It's very angsty, has beautiful Fraser-Vecchio friendship, and great Vecchio POV. There is also a DVD commentary for this story that explains some of the decisions behind this fic; for example, the slightly unusual format.
* Ping (Fraser/Kowalski, ~6,900 words). One of her shorter stories, it's hilarious and much fun to read. Fraser pings on another man and Kowalski is not amused.
* Scrabble (Fraser/Kowalski, ~29,000 words). An unusual format. The story is told with parallel Fraser- and Kowalski-POVs, presented in a table next to each other. It's just a trip to read, to see how their thinking differs. There are links for two different browser versions to choose from.
*Some Strange Prophecy
*Believe You Me
*Covet
*Ten Things To Get Used To
*Hanged Man
*Next of Kin
*The Killer Replacements
===Other===
*Flying Blind
*Fat My Dust
*Friendly
*Permanent Record
* Seven Years
==Essays & Meta==
*One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries. (2000)
*What's The Story, Morning Glory (2003)
==References== 
Category:Vidders
Category:Fanwriters
Category:Challenge Moderators
Category:Community Moderators