This is a fic that's been hanging around my hard-drive for quite a long time now. Bits of it had been annoying me, but I finally managed to pare it down to something presentable.

Anyway, it's called Claws of Dust, and is probably about PG - PG-13 in rating. S/B tendencies, though this is a Spike & Giles fic really, taking place in an alternate LMPTM. 4,911 words. Thanks to bogwitch for the beta she may not remember doing.

Giles wants some answers. Possibly more than he realised.

( Claws of Dust )

Tags:

ific

Just something I got thinking about today, probably linked to some of the stuff rahirah's been talking about.

In Ancient Greece, tragedies were always written about people from myth (or known figures, at least, since I suppose you could see Xerxes etc. in Aeschylus' Persians as an exception), which meant that every time your Athenian citizen popped along to the City Dionysia they would have been watching plays of stories they'd been hearing since birth, with characters that pervaded all the other plays on show. (For example, all three of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - the major players that we have - 'did' the Electra story of Orestes returning home and killing Clytaemnestra.)

With that you ended up in a situation where everything anyone ever did or said on stage was affected by what had gone before them. You can't see Odysseus pottering around at Troy without thinking, 'Mate, you're so not getting home any time soon,' because of what happens in Homer. You can't watch Oedipus Tyrannus without knowing how the story ends.

Sound familiar? The only problem with that is that it's really not familiar in our literature and in the stories we generally want to tell. A friend once told me that she didn't like reading the introductions to books before the books themselves, and fair enough; you don't want to spoil the ending, even if you then won't get the good imagery that needs a little hint the first time through - and when something's on the TV, you don't want people telling you what's about to happen. But why does everything have to be so linear? Does Pride and Prejudice have to be about the cheap will-they-won't-they thrills, or is there more to be found on a more leisurely read-through, watching how the they-will evolves, fragmenting and coming back together again?

Of course there is, and obviously there's nothing wrong with getting your thrills first time round and coming back for more, looking then for other thrills in some other novel with some other characters. But you're still always contained to that original novel. We've sort of got rid of the idea of creating something the same, but different, and seeing where that goes.

Apart, of course, from fanfic, which is one of the reasons I think it's so great. If you take your standard shippy fanfic, for example, you're pretty secure in the knowledge that X and Y will get together (and for the sake of example I'm going to take X and Y to be Buffy and Spike in the Buffyverse fandom because, er, that's where I live, folks!), and all you've got otherwise is the question of how that comes about. And with that, lets be honest, there aren't exactly infinite variables. However, in that sort of situation the variables suddenly become very important, and all of a sudden you're exploring things that never really bothered you when the question was simply will-they-won't-they. You have to start asking, for example, whether there actually does have to be some sort of major hurt-comfort-causing situation for Buffy to wake-up and see the William, or whether Giles and the Scoobies do have to (no matter how dubiously) act like bastards to Buffy and/or Spike and make the tables of loyalty turn in response. Does Buffy need to prostrate herself on the floor after Season 6? Does Spike? Are the churning cogs of the great fic-machine in the sky forcing the pair of them into pre-defined roles that are inescapable if they are to actually get together and stay together? Is there a story that has to be followed?

I have no definitive answers to those questions (though I'd love for them all to be 'no'), but it's extremely cool to be able to ask them.

Quinara.

I haven't really got a clue, but anyway...

I went to see a play tonight (why, yes, I'm very cultured on a Friday night, don't you know?) - Stephen Fry's Latin!, which in a Stephen-Fry-type vein was a send-up of public school, based around this twenty-six year old schoolmaster who was in a pederastic/paedophilic 'relationship' with one of his pupils, got found out and eventually ran off with the boy to Morocco. And it was very, very funny. (Seriously, I'd recommend it.)

I'm just wondering now whether or not it shouldn't have been more distasteful. It's not a particularly tasteful subject, after all. On the other hand, it was a two-man show, with only the two teachers (the main character and an older one) and none of the schoolboys, and outside of hardcore innuendo I wouldn't say any of it was particularly crude. And, after all, it was theatre, rather than realism on the telly.

*shrugs* My mum has always been of the opinion that Stephen Fry and 'that lot off QI' are all too clever by half, and maybe this play's a symptom of that. But then again, it made me ask the question and has got me talking on LJ for the first time in ages, so it can't be all bad.

Quinara.

PS. To the LiveJournal Bots of Death that May or May Not Exist, but Who are Known to Be Thick: Were the events of this play to have happened in real life I would be disgusted and appalled. Undoubtedly similar situations have occurred, and they are awful. There is however a difference between fiction and reality.

Tags:

igeneral, reviews

Don't everyone fall over in shock now, but here's something I started ages ago in an attempt to make myself feel better, and, facing the need again, have now finished! It's rather unabashedly comfort-fic, so please expect the following:

• A very happy future world, showing Spike and Buffy in a long-term relationship
• Much gratuitous Illyria
• Cameos from Lorne and other assorted demons, with mentions of an intellectual and unjaded Giles as well as a not particularly wonderful Angel
• Philosophy researched from Wikipedia
• A bit of self-indulgent angst, but not enough to cripple.

PG-13/R, maybe? It's just a bit of fun, all in all - a little over four-and-a-half thousand words.

( What a Way to Make a Living. )

Tags:

ific

I don't like putting my age on the internet, and have in fact become more resistant to the idea of telling you after you whinged that it skewed your statistics when people didn't put a year on their profiles. I am not your statistic. Maybe that's why I don't care about the fact you can hide the year.

So, what, now I have to click through a bloody cut and 'confirm' I'm over 18 to read people I've specifically picked to be on my flist?? What kind of bollocks is that? Maybe I could just put in my age and unlock the wonderful greyed-out option that will let me un-collapse people's journals, but to be honest, I can't really be arsed. I'm not changing a weird, paranoid habit of eight years or more online for your petty attempts to coddle me. Because, guess what, two mouse-clicks and/or a quick edit on your information is not some sort of mammoth barricade for the kiddies to get over. All it may do is protect your slimy hide in court, and that's bollocks.

Seriously, I've been trying not to over-react, but, good God, sod you. My patience is really rather thin now.

Quinara.

Tags:

irants

Sorry for my drunken whinge the other night. It wasn't exactly very cheerful, was it? I'm happier today! (Yay!) Though it's true that I do need to sort out my layout for the big LJ cut-off. I still can't work out whether I'm doing it out of protest, or just simple laziness... I'd like to think the former. I can't say I'm looking forward to seeing the ads everywhere, and I certainly won't be getting a sponsored account, so it'll be goodbye to a lot of icons (the only feature besides the layout I use)... Expect to see a lot more of the sheep in future!

More than that though, and to be honest my main reason for posting, it was my seasonal_spuffy day yesterday, and so I've got some new fic:

The Public Face is a S8-influenced reunion fic, from Xander's POV (just to be different). I think it mostly came as a response to the fact that I find so many reunion fics follow a similar pattern, and while I love reading them all, I couldn't actually bring myself to hash out the same arguments. So with in a rather convoluted way I took them somewhere else...

Echoes is a bit of angst for the sheer hell of it (I think I might be moving into the realms of self-parody with angst these days). I'm embarrassed to say I quite like it, though it's more suited to 3 o'clock in the morning than any other time of day.

How's everyone else?

Quinara.

Tags:

ific, general

Halloween = drunkenness = inability to type.

I haven't posted in October, and now it's Noevember, so I suppose that's that. My paid account expires in a few days, which should be fun because I don't intend to renew it. Christ knows which three icons I'm going to choose. I need to sort out a layout as well, because my old sheep one doesn't really fit anymore now that the sheep have become ghosts. It'll probably be something really lame because I don't have the time to sort it.

seasonal_spuffy on Friday! I can see it going horribly, horribly wrong. Hopefully between now and then I'll have time to fix the godawfulness of the Xander-perspective Spuffy reunion thing I have going, but it might take some time. There's always the mini-fic I have as extra, but it's not exactly anything particularly satisfying.

I think I'll go to bed now.

Quinara.

[ETA Random Tangent: BuffyWorld's back up!!]

So, the comics have been pissing me off somewhat. Despite the fact that I've pretty much stopped reading them I have not been able to escape the annoyance they breed within me. And so I wrote this instead.

Behold, the first Buffy-Xander friendship fic I've ever written (with a good dose of B/S and X/A thrown in for seasoning)! It's less than a thousand words, but I needed to get this off my chest. Who knows, maybe next time I'll deal with the nonsense that is Buffy and Dawn. (Does anyone know if Joss is an only child? Because they have to be the weirdest siblings ever...)

This is quite probably a U, but can I call it a PG for the street-cred? The title's a reference to the hideous concept (well, in this context anyway) of UST. No offence meant to the Bander people, of course, but your ship is not my ship - I feel it sailed long ago.

( Resolution. )

Tags:

ific, rants

I'm not quite sure.

Anyway, I don't know if this info has done the rounds yet, but is anyone else excited about the fact that David Tennant could well be playing Hamlet with the RSC?! (It's in the fourth paragraph.)

If you aren't me, the news that he's taking a break from Doctor Who to do it might make things a little bittersweet, but I haven't been watching for ages, so... ZOMG!

I'm saving up for my ticket now. I don't care if they're all wearing tea-cosies in some sort of abstract 'if Dobby could direct Shakespeare, what would he do?' travesty. I just want to see Hamlet again.

Aren't you glad I tell you about these things? :P

Quinara.

Tags:

igeneral, insanity

Hi everyone! I'm away from home learning Classical Greek at the moment, which is why I haven't been around very much (I thought the Internet access would be plentiful, but it really isn't - and it's all Macs, which I really don't understand...). Anyway, I hate to just turn up and ask for something, but I need to post something to writerconuk, and I'm having a few problems. I can't download the stuff I sent to myself as an attachment, and I need to get at the file. What I was hoping someone could do was let me forward my email to them, download the attachment and basically just copy the Word doc straight into a replying email. It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes, and I'd be so extremely grateful, because I want to get something up before the deadline at least, if possible.

*pleads with flist*

Thank you!

Quinara.

ETA: My crisis is, touch wood, averted... hopefully. Sorry for the pitifulness.

Hello!

I'm currently in the easyInternetcafé in Berlin and thought I'd say hi to everyone! It's a tad hard because not all the keys are in the same place (Y and Z have been swapped around, and that's being the most annoying at the moment). I hope everything's going all right!

Paris was great fun, though kind of expensive meal-wise. I'm quite proud of the fact that I still remember some French (apparently) - it got to the stage where the people in the cafés didn't need to break into English for me to buy something! (I only did French to the age of 13, so I think that's quite impressive - though my mum has been trying to drill it in from birth. I think some of it must've stuck.) I took far to many pictures of Roman emperors in the Louvre yesterday, so now I have pretty much the whole I, Claudius set to play with (including Livia and Messalina!). There was also this great statue of Aphrodite (other than the Venus de Milo), where she was leaning saucily against a pillar, much in contrast to Athene opposite. Despite the fact she didn't have a head.

We're probably going to see the new Harry Potter in German this afternoon, so that should be a laugh. I'll let you know how it goes - right now, though, I think we're going back to the hostel to wash because we took the overnight train and kind of smell... which I'm sure you wanted to know.

Speak to you soon!

Quinara.

Tags:

igeneral, holidays

And here I am to say that I'm buggering off and leaving you people for the delights of the choof-choof (is that how you spell that?), youth hostels and my friends. I'm sure we'll end up in an internet café at some point, but if not I'll see you all on the 19th, when I should have some cool photos of Paris, Berlin and Prague, and a much improved knowledge of Czech (considering knowing three more words would be a 100% increase - as a side note, though, Czech is extremely cool and when I win the lottery and/or have nothing to do I shall learn it; yay, Slavic languages!).

Whee! See you all later!

Quinara.

PS. Considering major wanks always seem to happen when I'm away, I'd be on your toes...

Tags:

igeneral, holidays