Comments | still_grrr: 156 fic: Upon the Face of Beauty

mabus101 in still_grrr

156 fic: Upon the Face of Beauty

Feb 08, 2010 04:32

Title: Upon the Face of Beauty
Author: Mabus101
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1726
Prompt: 156: Lovefest--Het Pairings
Characters/Pairing (if any): Xander/Illyria, Xander/Fred (sort of)
A/N:: Set in the DeadWarVerse. (Buffy is a vampire. Only Illyria and Angel survived the alley battle, and are working with the Scoobies. Plus a lot of other stuff not ( Read more... )

illyria, 156, btvs, fic, pg, xander, mabus101, fred

Comments 10

brutti_ma_buoni February 8 2010, 20:29:21 UTC

You know, for all the complexities of Fred-ness and Fred-less-ness you explore here, that is also very sweet indeed. Not a pairing I've ever considered, but there are possibilities in how you write them.

"I will hunt you down, strap you to it, and you'll be the sacrifice." This is *great*.

Glad to see you posting here!

mabus101 February 8 2010, 22:18:04 UTC

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Writing the pairing is...well, complex, for the reasons you noted; it has to work as a relationship and it also has to dig into the philosophy of identity and the issues of dating a demon.

I've written them before--they recently became a DeadWarVerse staple--so if you're intrigued I can point you to the rest.

And I don't know that I can get every prompt, but I'm gonna try to post here more often.

angelus2hot February 10 2010, 21:31:41 UTC

Interesting pairing you have here.

Great fic!

mabus101 February 11 2010, 07:31:28 UTC

Glad you enjoyed!

The pairing was pretty much an accident to begin with, an artifact of telling a story set post-Chosen and NFA. I didn't want to create OCs to pair characters with for concern about fan dislike, so I decided to "pair the spares" and realized that Illyria is an awful lot like Anya and a logical target for Xander's demon-magnetness.

deird1 February 12 2010, 20:17:50 UTC

How very fascinating...

mabus101 February 12 2010, 21:12:00 UTC

You seem a little underwhelmed. Have I disappointed you?

deird1 February 12 2010, 21:30:00 UTC

Not at all. It's just a fic that... promotes thoughtfullness...

mabus101 February 13 2010, 07:16:47 UTC

Oh, okay. :)

Sometimes I get that kind of response when someone is just being polite. Sometimes I give that kind of response....

brunettepet March 11 2010, 21:54:25 UTC

I really liked this. There was a feeling of yearning in Illyria trying to explain herself. It's interesting that even an old one has a need for understanding and connection. It's no wonder Xander's overwhelmed. This new girlfriend is the most complicated yet, and with his past history, that's really saying something.

mabus101 March 12 2010, 07:29:35 UTC

Very glad you enjoyed, then.

Xander's situation is even more complicated than immediately appears in this story--in context, he's been deeply disturbed by the death of Cordelia and the turning of Buffy, and then he spent at least a year under Buffy's thrall, with her driving him much deeper into an anti-demon perspective than he was even at his worst points during the show. It's all very embarrassing and disturbing now.

Conversely, Illyria has come to the conclusion that something must be deeply wrong with her expectations: if humans are so inferior, why are they in charge? They must know something she doesn't--and she wants to figure out what that is, so she can take over again. Xander, who should be dead several times over, is a clue, or so she thinks. And she needs to know quickly, because the only futures she can see arising from Buffy's...rampage is the only word I can think of...involve her death.

So...yeah, it's kinda complex. And you can see why I didn't try to explain any of it.