The Fic of a Snick

Buffy-gets-vamped fics are a dime a dozen. I don't have the taste for them, personally; I'm not all that interested in what Buffy would be like without a soul. That sounds too much like straight horror for me.

But: Buffy-gets-wolfed? Are there are there any of those fics? What if Oz had gotten a nip in before he was tranqued? What if she'd run into Veruca some night? It doesn't seem that unreasonable.

Seems to me a Buffy-and-Oz fic in which her dealing with being wolfy prompted him to finally deal with being wolfy could be very good indeed.

Merry Christmas to ladyofthelog, green_maia, and eilowyn. You are appreciated. :)

Remember, if you'd like a drabble of your very own, drop a comment here.

( 'Gonna See About That' - Dawn/Ethan - for ladyofthelog )

( 'Be Still' - Oz - for green_maia )

( 'Mature Themes' - Buffy/Spike, Dawn - for eilowyn )

Title: Oz, After the Apocalypse
Spoilers / Words: post-series / 2200 words
Character: Oz
Rating: PG

A/N: It is my birthday! I don't usually manage to write fic for other people's birthdays, so I'm stealing penny_lane_42's idea of posting fic on my birthday, instead. It is my gift to the world, on my birthday! Except, were I writing a gift to the world, one might expect a bit more of a crowd-pleaser, say, Seraphverse fluff. Instead we have highly experimental fic about Oz and doom and apocalypse and winter (title subject to finding something better - feel free to suggest), because that was what was feasible to finish while also working the first week of my new job. So, uh, enjoy! :p

Also, thank you so much everyone for all the lovely birthday wishes. And everyone should go read the fic angearia wrote for me, Solid Through, which is lovely Faith&Giles (or possibly Faith/Giles).

( The world ended. Oz didn't. )

'Verse: Winterpocalypse
Characters: ensemble - different characters in different fics
Rating / Words: PG-13 / 4k so far
Setting: post-series, so potential spoilers for everything
Summary: In the south there are monsters. In the north there's a deep freeze. Everywhere, every bit of black magic anyone has ever dabbled in, every taint of demon they've ever been marked with, is rising to the surface. In a cold, dark world, our heroes are struggling just to stay on the side of good.

Two Suckers in an Icebox - Faith, Giles (possibly Faith/Giles? Not sure yet) - PG-13. So far: 1 chapter / 2000 words.
Summary: Faith and Giles hole up in a cabin to ride out the winter that might be ending the world.
Part 1

Oz, After the Apocalypse - Oz, surprise guests - PG - 2200 words.
The world ended. Oz didn't.

Original entry posted at Dreamwidth. Feel free to reply here or there. ( DW replies)

Title: The Ones Not Kissed
Spoilers / Words: BtVS 3.8 "Lover's Walk" - 2000 words
Characters: Oz, Cordelia
Rated: PG

A/N: I was really itching to write something today, and what got written was this: the rest of a fic that I've had sitting around for a good year and a half, waiting for me to pick it up again.

I started it meaning to be shippy, just as an exercise, and failed miserably. My gen inclination continues apace.

( The first thing he sees in the hospital room is the vase overflowing with sunflowers and daisies and gladiolas. )

This ended up being the late-season Spike/Buffy/Spuffy recs list. It’s all S6 or later, all involving either Spike or Buffy or both and accompanied variously by Dawn, Tara, Oz, Illyria, Faith, and Nikki Wood.

Organized by season, because I felt like it.

S6

Old Year's Eve, by st_salieri
Dawn makes a discovery about Spike and Buffy and another discovery about herself. This is Dawn-growing-up fic, beautifully written and with the sense of weight and melancholy growing up brings.

untitled Valentine’s Day vignette thingy by theohara
Tara stumbles across Spike in the greeting card aisle, just before Valentine’s Day. Cue quiet companionship and sharing of respective relationship woes. One of those pieces I reread when I want to cry.

S7

Take the Heat, by Estepheia
Sometime before S7, Oz spots Spike in a crowd. What comes next is one of those moments of unexpected grace that never fail to move me. Plus, yanno: Oz!

Nothing Special, by deird1
Brief, quiet Buffy-and-Dawn sisterly fluff snuck in during the S7 chaos. I think I love this partly just because I love their sister relationship so much, and there isn’t near enough fic about it.

Microwave Meals (Quick, Easy, and Sometimes Satisfying, by quinara
And more S7 fluff, this time of the Spuffy variety. If I ever come around to liking S7 Spuffy, it’ll be because of folks on the flist like Quin and fics like this. Quiet, gentle, funny, hopeful.

Wayward, by Devil Piglet
Nikki Wood shows up at the house on Revello; Spike is tasked with taking care of her. Long and mildly plotty and heavily angsty. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this fic around before and was positive it wouldn’t work, but lo! it does, at least for me.

Post-Series

Winds Blowing Chill, by brutti_ma_buoni
Rulesverse Buffy starts thinking about babies, but in the Rulesverse there are no quick fixes for the vampire reproduction problem, which leads to one of the more emotionally complex pieces of Spuffy babyfic I’ve ever read. Also: excellent Buffy voice.

Angels in the Architecture, by only_passenger
This is the closest I’ve ever seen to the long, character-study style genfic of Buffy&Faith post-Chosen that I keep wanting. They have such a fascinating dynamic and so many issues, and this explores a few of them.

The Last Fingers of Leaf, by quinara
Buffy and Illyria. A dragon. Pizza. Combined, they’re an unexpected pleasure as the two find commonalities that I’d never have thought of. Poignant and elegantly written.

Life in the Present Tense, by penny_lane_42
A long, delicious series of vignettes of Buffy, Spike, and Dawn living in Rome. Lirazel describes this as self-indulgent Spuffy fluff, but yanno, sometimes that’s just what a person wants. Rich and gorgeous and hopeful.

This was fun - feel free to keep telling me about fics I've never written. (Confession: now I kind of want to write these, or at least read them...)

For deird1:
My favourite one was definitely “Twelve Pine Trees”, and I loved the excerpt from Dawn's poem.

Hah. Little secret: Dawn’s poem was originally going to be a haiku. ‘Cuz what’s the one form of Japanese poetry that everyone knows? Plus it’s a crunchy, bite-sized form that seemed to fit rather well with the Buffyverse one-liner aesthetic.

But you may’ve picked up that I’m a poetry fan in general, so I had to at least look at some of the other traditional Japanese forms. By the time the main story was finished it was clear a bargain with as old a kami as they were dealing with would need to be written in an older genre than haiku, which didn’t develop as an independent form until the 17th century. From there it was a short step to trying my hand at a bit of kanshi, as written in Dawn-voice.

And I’m thrilled to hear you enjoyed that bit - I worried it might be a bit too esoteric or just plain weird for most folks.


For goldenusagi:
I loved your story Magical. You brought Tara and Oz together in such a believable way!

Hooray! Frankly, getting them from rivals to commiserating mourners was easy, once Warren shot Willow and Xander’s letter brought Oz back to town. But we all know me and how much trouble I have getting from friendship to shippiness in a fic, which is largely why the romantic development was so very understated (other than the fact that with Oz, everything is understated...).

Of course, the other problem was that I generally have as hard a time believing the hetting of Tara as I do the slashing of anyone else. But if anyone could do it, it seemed to me it’d be Oz, who IMO is by far the most dateable guy in the ‘verse. Plus he’s remarkably patient with the physical side of his relationships, which meant I could write a whole lot of emotional development before we finally get to the one fade-to-black sex scene.

Original first line, before I came up with the much punchier one with all the witchcraft-herbal/anti-wolfy-herbal thematic connections: He’d hated her for a few minutes once, but now Willow was dead and she was the only one who understood.

This probably goes without saying, but if you want to be surprised about what I'm working on, don't read, 'kay? :)

( WIP's )

nwhepcat is writing Ozfic! Buffyverse/Supernatural fic specifically, apparently gen, featuring Oz and Sam Winchester. Hurrah! One of the most inventive and wide-ranging authors in the Buffyverse is writing my werewolf! For that I'll cope with the SPN half of it - I've never actually seen a full episode of the show.

For those not familiar with her work, nwhepcat generally posts to her WIP's five days a week until they're done, and she's never dropped a fic that I know of.

Y'all may consider this a rec. :)

And another drabble. Incidentally, I'm still accepting prompts, no strings attached.

Fifth Sense
For angearia: Oz/Willow

He could smell it on her: the magic. The wolf probably read the whole scent like a fragrant guitar riff, but he couldn’t remember that. Human, all he smelled was the Willow-smell, apples and incense and organic fibers. But in the seconds-long dusk between, he caught the tang of other things, rich and deep, and it was no wonder to him how she could love them. He could distrust that tang, but he couldn’t hate it.

What he hated was how it seeped into the Willow-smell until, in the last wolfish moment before dark, he couldn’t find her at all.