ficpost: "Slinky, Untangled" Dawn/Tara

[wisdomeagle]

Title: "Slinky, Untangled"
Fandom: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Dawn/Tara
Rating: NC-17
Timeline/Spoilers: Futurefic, AU from sometime in S6
Notes: Backup fic for ricktboy in the femslash_minis Dawn round. He wanted ice cream sundaes, magic, no disapproving Buffy, and NC-17. The slinky described is sitting in my lap.
Words: 1564
Summary: Packing, distractions, and

Comments

[alixtii]

I usually don't like Tara/Dawn, since it's difficult to get to that place from canon, but of course you do the legwork here necessary to set it up and create an AU where it's not only believable, but it's natural.

Other people have said all the sophisticated stuff about theme and the slinky, so I think I'll just rely on squee as feedback:

Yay! Fic!

[wisdomeagle]

I like Tara/Dawn in principle because of the age differential, but worry that at some point, I'm just going to run out of ways to get there. (Not that this has stopped me with Willow/Giles, say, but still... ) And I lurve building AUs, especially when I get to hint at exciting plots (they blew up the college!) without actually having to write them. :)

[alixtii]

Well, both Willow and Giles go through partners pretty quickly, so it doesn't take all that much to sell me on it. I have a much more difficult time imagining Tara with anyone other than Willow. In this AU you've built, my assumption was that Willow died somehow (perhaps murdered by Warren?) because that's really the only way I can see the Willow/Tara relationship ending with Tara still comfortable enough around the Scoobies to date one.

Running out of ways to get there is a real problem for you, isn't it, due to your prolificness. The rest of us mortals are busying figuring out how to make it work the first time. (Since most of my fics are in the same universe, I really don't have that problem. But then, I'm not really a shipper.)

And as for AUs . . . usually that sort of thing would bother me as a reader, but for some reason when you do it, it never does.

[wisdomeagle]

I wasn't sure whether Willow had died or whether the S6 break-up had just been rendered permanent -- though killing Willow instead of Tara in "Seeing Red" is just about the best plot device ever for Tara/anyone fics. Which is one of the reasons why I keep thinking I should come up with something else, since that one's been done many, many times.

[alixtii]

Well, you evaded the issue nicely here. But yeah, I can see how that can become a problem.

Which is I think part of the reason that despite all the ways I loved Tara in canon, I pretty much never ever write her.

[hermionesviolin]

killing Willow instead of Tara in "Seeing Red" is just about the best plot device ever for Tara/anyone fics

You know, I think I've seen this plot device before, but it never ever sticks in my brain as a way to make Tara/anyone possible. I think because it would imply mourning!Tara during at least some part of the (back)story and I'm so opposed to S6 Willow that I would rather just not deal with her at all.