The Fic of a Snick

This is apparently the recs post of ficlets about people not Spuffy. I don't think Spike appears once in these fics. I ask you, what's the world coming to?

( Much Buffyverse fic goodness this way! )

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

Merry Christmas to you both. :)

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For rahirah: Spike/Willow
( The Road Less Bloody )

For quinara: Buffy+Illyria
( If at First You Don't Succeed, Kick Something )

Short short character study pieces here, some longer shippy angst, and something very silly.

Triplicate, by brutti_ma_buoni
A brief, chilling, sympathetic, entirely believable character study of Willow post-series. Not to be missed.

Reckless, by angearia
Another of Emmie's forays into Faith/Giles, this is the first one with explicitly shippy action in it, as well as a tour through Faith's head that'll just break your heart. A lovely piece.

Something, by gryfndor_godess
Absolutely gorgeous Spuffy suggestion of how things might have turned out post-S7 if Spike hadn't burned to death in "Chosen," but also very clever in subverting certain standard fannish expectations. Just excellently written. SEVERE ANGST WARNING.

Grauidus, by penny_lane_42
Lauren wrote happy fluffy established-relationship Spuffy mpreg! Awww. With possibility of more! I may be a wee bit biased about this one, folks. But: characterization is sympathetic yet clear-eyed, as usual with Lauren, and explicit mpreg details are few, for those of you who shy away from such. This is in the same fic universe as Infinitas Infinitio Infinitus, which is also lovely, but you can read this just fine without reading that.

Morning is Broken, by beer_good_foamy
And now for the very silly. One morning in S7, Dawn discovers beer bear in the fridge (good thing Spike wasn't living with them yet, eh?). It gets worse from there. Sort of a Jasper Fforde crossover, if you squint.

penny_lane_42 was talking about how much she hates Xander Harris, and it got me thinking about character bashing in fic. As I told her, I don’t hate Xander; he adds a nice flavor to the narrative soup. He provides comic relief (even when it isn’t funny). He asks stupid-yet-necessary questions. He’s useful.

And in individual terms, I mostly just don’t care about him. However, I see intellectually a lot of the problems other folks have with him. I can sympathize. You’ve got your mysogyny, your patronization of the girlfriend, etc.

( Yet I *can’t* deal with character bashing of Xander. Can’t. )

Well, whaddya know. Fic! I wrote this over at the small fandom and rare pairing drabblethon. (For which, incidentally, slippery_fish wrote me a lovely, angsty Faith/Giles ficlet. You should all go read it.)

I was going to clean it up and make it, I dunno, deeper or something. But then I didn't. So here 'tis.

Title: Little Red and the Big Bad
Spoilers / Words: BtVS 4.7 "The Initiative" - 1400 words
Characters: Willow/Spike (ish)
Rating: PG

( It’s a week after the fang disfunction that Willow sees Spike again, lurking behind a tree just five steps off the library-Stevenson shortcut. )

Another still_grrr drabble, this time for the prompt black and/or anxious. I got both. And hey! S3!

( Cured Skins of Dead Animals )

First, the masterlist for the Willow round at genfic_minis is up. There's some neat stuff there. I was particularly struck by brutti_ma_buoni's lovely reimagining of Willow pre-S7, What Comes Next, and snowpuppies's highly effective horror piece The Slow Slide Into..., but there's plenty more.

dollsome, I've just discovered, writes the of kind elegant, character-rich Dollhouse fic that I've been looking for and couldn't find until now. She writes primarily DeWitt/Dominic. I started with One's Your Foe and One's Your Flame, an AU one-shot off "A Spy in the House of Love" (possibly still my favorite DH ep), but there's lots more.

And, remember when I was looking for a trove of "Restless" icons, but couldn't remember where I'd seen them? I should have known it was ruuger. The batch I was thinking of are all here, including Miss Kitty Fantastico. Yay.

Title: Paper Gowns and Hospital Crowns
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, pre-series and circa 7.19 "Empty Places"
Characters: Willow, Xander
Word Count/Rating: ~1100; PG
A/N: Written for the Willow round at genfic_minis for velvetwhip, who wanted Xander, old photos, and a hat. Turned out, she got more than one hat.

Beta'd by the fabulous penny_lane_42. Honorable mention as a fannish resource goes to gabrielleabelle, for her Tribute to Willow's Hats.

Disclaimer: None of these character are belong to me. They are belong to Whedon, Greenwalt, ME, and co.

( The first time Willow ever visited Xander in the hospital, she followed his Uncle Rory down the tiled hallway, shivering in the air-conditioned chill and and clutching her wrapped package with determined unworry. )

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.

1. I noticed this with S4, but it's become even more obvious to me here: I prefer the serious eps the first time around, but I enjoy the happy/fluffy eps more in the rewatch. So, here, "Reptile Boy" and "Some Assembly Required" and "Inca Mummy Girl" are all good fun, whereas I found them horribly cheesy before.

2. Okay, this quote? This quote is ironic and way creepy when you take Darla into consideration:

ANGEL
I hated the girls back then.
Especially the noblewomen.

BUFFY
You did?

ANGEL
They were just incredibly dull.
Simpering morons, the lot of them.
I always wished I could meet someone...
exciting. Interesting.

See? Buffy's really not even in the picture here. It's all about Darla.

3. You know, "Lie to Me" is a just a great episode. It introduces bigger, more morally gray questions than we'd ever seen before, the Spike/Dru scenes are fantastic, the plot with Billy Fordham is interesting (even if the actor wasn't all that great), and that last scene with Buffy and Giles is perfect.

4. Willow. Oh, Willow. How much she changed in just two seasons. You'd think her transition from awkward nerd to quirky alterna-girl would be a positive thing, but it's pretty clear from her comments throughout S4 (especially in "Restless") that she didn't so much grow out of her nerdiness as learn to hide it better. The longer I look at her arc over the course of the series, the more I marvel at how consistent it is, for the most part, and how depressing. She never accepted who she was, she just kept trying to compensate for it, via her guitarist boyfriend (not that I'm saying that's why she was with him, but she definitely liked the cachet), progressively funkier clothes, and of course magic. Magic became a key element in her perception of herself.

In S2, she's still a total dork, but she's a sweet dork, a genuine, sincere person. By early S4, she's ceased to be a person I can relate to or would choose to be close friends with (although I have a serious crush on her hair). I'm curious now to see just when this transition happens; I remember that ep in S3 when she gets kidnapped being a major turning point, but I'll need to see it again to compare.

5. And, riffing on #4 - who could have predicted in S2 that the three characters in the season who'd change the most over the course of the series would be Cordelia, Willow, and Spike? And by 'change' I mean experience permanent development, not just a temporary post-resurrection depression or post-coital soullessness. (I'd imagine some people would put Buffy in this list, too - have I mentioned today that I still can't quite see Buffy?. However, it seems to me that most of her character growth is at least glimpsed by the end of S2, and that the next five seasons then riff on that growth.)