*blinks*
I wrote unexpected fic: Devil's Bargain, Spike/Buffy PG13.
I know I write a lot of fic. But I really wasn't expecting to write this. I just went to bed before 8pm due to having accidentally switched the heating off on this cold night, and the flat being freezing till the radiators really kicked in again. And I was bored, so I looked at the sb_fag_ends prompts for January, which are just about to expire. What would have happened if Spike had kept his promise and not come back to Sunnydale after Becoming?
Well, no Lovers' Walk. But there's no long-term plot there. B/A being forced to face doomed love, plus the Willow/Xander slip... both probably would have happened in some other form.
But what *really* would have changed is having no Hostile 17. No inside gen on the Initiative. No familiar, if disliked, fugitive to protect from said Initiative. This is the story of what happened when the Scoobies believed in the Initiative at the start. It ain't pretty. (It's also the story of how secret government conspiracies should always have backups. But that's a minor point. And they should. Tch.)
I do like what ifs. Once you pick at a thread, a whole lot of stuff unravels. Tricky, in under 1000 words, but the two Fag Ends I've written for what ifs this month are definitely my favourite recent writing.
Do you like them? I've usually steered clear of counterfactual history, but I recently read The Shameful Suicide of Winston Churchill, in which London is imagined as Berlin post-WW2: what if it had been the divided city, Communist east versus consumerist west? Utterly fascinating what if. I wonder if I've been missing out.
I know I write a lot of fic. But I really wasn't expecting to write this. I just went to bed before 8pm due to having accidentally switched the heating off on this cold night, and the flat being freezing till the radiators really kicked in again. And I was bored, so I looked at the sb_fag_ends prompts for January, which are just about to expire. What would have happened if Spike had kept his promise and not come back to Sunnydale after Becoming?
Well, no Lovers' Walk. But there's no long-term plot there. B/A being forced to face doomed love, plus the Willow/Xander slip... both probably would have happened in some other form.
But what *really* would have changed is having no Hostile 17. No inside gen on the Initiative. No familiar, if disliked, fugitive to protect from said Initiative. This is the story of what happened when the Scoobies believed in the Initiative at the start. It ain't pretty. (It's also the story of how secret government conspiracies should always have backups. But that's a minor point. And they should. Tch.)
I do like what ifs. Once you pick at a thread, a whole lot of stuff unravels. Tricky, in under 1000 words, but the two Fag Ends I've written for what ifs this month are definitely my favourite recent writing.
Do you like them? I've usually steered clear of counterfactual history, but I recently read The Shameful Suicide of Winston Churchill, in which London is imagined as Berlin post-WW2: what if it had been the divided city, Communist east versus consumerist west? Utterly fascinating what if. I wonder if I've been missing out.