fic rec: Mirror Image

Mirror Image
by Lilachigh
Buffy, post-The Body.
Author's summary: A few weeks have passed since Joyce’s death and Buffy is finding life hard. Help arrives in a very strange way.

rec notes: via betterbuffyfics. This is wonderful. It creates a frozen-over Buffy and then breaks the ice on her grief. Lovely, and tear-inducing.

I have not abandoned the Buffyverse or Fireflyverse just because I have a new obsession, you know. I promise. I even suspect the whole Neela/Ray thing is a transmigration of Buffy/Spike. Think about it:
He's a punk, she's obsessed with her job. They fight all the time, but when you watch ER you realise he's always watching her. OK, so she's the one to swear in British English but still...I'm getting a Beatrix/Benedict vibe from them.

FIC: The Loneliness of the Long Haul Runner (1/1)

Damn new 'ship obsessions. Damn them all to hell. I didn't mean to write this tonight but I kinda of had the urge to have a go at Neela's voice. It's just up at LJ and silverlake for now, until I figure out the best way of including non-Whedon verse fic into this site.

Title: The Loneliness of the Long Haul Runner (1/1)
Author: SpikeDru
Rating: FRT, I guess. Damn, just when I'd figured out how to use dumb American ratings I have to learn a new system?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were, never will be.
Spoilers: set in early season 12 but no real spoilers
Content Warning: My, but I do like to swear. Nothing really rude, but if even the least bit of potty-mouth bothers you, avoid me.

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She’d started to run as a teenager and she’d never stopped.

One drizzling autumn morning, stood shivering and recalcitrant in the schoolyard, Neela Rasgotra had suddenly seen how to escape it all. Her parents’ proud and determined expectations, her friends’ talk of boys and kissing, her enemies’ sniping at her inadequacies. Bookish Neela. Neela the exemplary student. Neela the Nerd. She’d started to run.

[read the rest here]

Roomie fic

Every fandom has its fic kinks: the plot bunnies which repeat over and over. Buffy and Spike are put under a spell (wait, that really happened), Xander and Spike tied to his recliner, Mulder or Scully looking for the other one. With soap/drama set in the real world, the stories become more limited, due to the whole not-having-monsters thing. And a concentrated bout of reading fic reveals the core kinks. So here is a list of the components of a Roomies (or Reela, apparently) fic. Select a handful and make your own fic!

key things
- Ray with his shirt off
- Ray's t-shirts
- Ray's tattoos
- Ray's silver thumb-ring
- Ray being cocky (not that way)
- Ray being cocky (that way)
- Ray's guitar
- Ray shagging groupies loudly
- the walls of the flat being very thin
- Neela being prim
- Neela being innocent
- Neela having coffee/mocha skin
- Neela being really short
- Neela having good boobs
- Neela swearing in English English
- Neela dancing

plot bunnies
- one or other is naked or semi-naked in flat and is very conscious about it, despite them being doctors etc etc
- Ray gets beat up and/or shot and Neela has to treat him
- a playfight gets serious because Ray gets cocky (either way)
- Michael is killed in Iraq and Ray has to comfort Neela
- Neela is unhappy, realising that spoilering spoiler was a mistake, and turns to Ray for comfort
- Neela moves out and Ray realises he misses her
- Neela gets drunk and Ray has to handle her
- Neela realises she has a crush on Ray, they argue, they kiss and make up

PWP (where's the smut, goddamit!?)
- Ray and/or Neela have soft lips
- Neela pulls Ray close with his t-shirt
- Ray gets cocky (that way)
- they are big on the kissing, but always hold off on the rest

As always, there are the standard "end up marrying, having kids, blah blah blah" stories which seem to infest every fandom but I always assume those don't really count. I want *smut*.

I am, god help me, considering rising to the challenges over on Doctors in the House, with the proviso that I include either everything from the above list, or nothing.

I spoilt myself

My name is SpikeDru and I am a spoilerphobe.

Way back, back in the pre-LJ days, the pre-squee and even the pre-'ship, I loved reading spoilers. I was addicted to episode guides of the X-Files. I just ate them up, night after night. This was in the era in which, to get an episode ahead of the UK's air date, you had to have understandng friends in the States who could tape a load and ship them over.

But at some point I pledged to read no more spoilers. I know only as much as the UK tv listing for a given week. The Zipper Heard Around the World was a surprise to me, etc etc. And then, tonight, I fell off the spoilerfree wagon and I fell hard. I just read an episode guide to all the aired episodes in this season's ER. And I did it not out of a compulsive interest in Luka, which would be fine and understandable. No, I did it because I have a new 'ship. Look, there's even a website whose fic archive I am even now devouring: Ray & Neela.

Neela: Weeks could go by and we might never see each other...
Ray: Months, even........ welcome, roomie!
Neela: ... God, I'm gonna regret this.

There are quotes and icons and there's even a term for this specific ship (roomies) and, well, I may have downloaded some caps in order to make my own icons...and I've been watching ER from the first episode so where the hell did this sudden obsession come from? I'm gonna claim the punk doc made me do it...

fic: Even Cowgirls... Part 2

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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by SpikeDru

Spoilers: post-Objects in Space, eventually for the Big Damn Movie
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Notes:
He had such dark eyes in the dim light, felt discomforting for their intensity to be focussed on her for once. Like the floor was quivering 'neath her feet. Or maybe that were the artificial grav playing up again.
There are all sorts of ways to feel blue, and the women of Serenity feel them all.
Hopeless amounts of thanks goes to my beta Kelly, for getting me to talk right. Or wrong. Or however it is Kaylee talks.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1 : The Best Little Whorehouse on the Rim

first published February 2006

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2: She Wore a Pink Ribbon

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Kaylee loved the engine room and always had. Sure, back home she had liked engines and had an uncommon skill at making them purr like fire-warmed cats but Serenity's engine room was different. She could sleep here, cradled in her hammock and rocked by the ship's lullaby rhythm. Technically, it was a public place like the lounge and the galley and the bridge but really it was hers. Only the Cap'n and Wash came down here without lookin' like intruders in her domain and she figured that was the right of it. She an' Wash were the ones who dirtied their hands in the innards of the ship, the ones who got the girl to do everything the Cap'n asked.

Sitting on the steps down into her realm, Kaylee held the cold metal of a spanner against her face till it grew warm with her tears. Maybe she could toss it in the engine, then tell Mal that they weren't going nowhere till he and 'nara had made their peace. Or had it all out in a big fight. Followed by some big loving. The way Kaylee saw it, all that not having sex was making the Cap'n's balls do his thinkin' for him.

[click here for the rest of the chapter]

fic rec: Unobserved Observations

Unobserved Observations
by pelirroja_ljc
Breaking my habit of only reading fanfic on Sunday and I'm glad I did. This is a lovely Inara-centric character studyset some unspecified time in the series. She's really got Inara's phrasing right, as well as having a very nice tone.

that writing meme

10 ways to know you're reading a SpikeDru fic:

1. It's been at least three months since the last one.
2. The POV is strictly held in a given chapter or scene because
3. There'll be stuff about perception (e.g. the differing views in Hurt/Comfort).
4. At least one English English word will slip though the net.
5. There's a technical word for it, which I have forgotten, but lots of descriptive sentences will take the form "pronoun verb adjective noun, blah blah blah" instead of being two seperate sentences. E.g. "There were hurried noises as the walking wounded reboarded the bus, the mosquito whine of Andrew a distant irritant." from Nineteen Days.
6. Spike or Mal will be partially nekkid. (well, Mal will be in Cowgirls when I get to the right chapter).
7. There will be almost no "he said" or "she said", or thesaurused versions (she exclaimed).
8. Canon is your friend and the story will dart between canonical elements like a fish in a stream (i.e. no AU, rarely any OC). Well, OK, Kali Dances is AU, but I started writing it before Angel series 5 aired and finished it after.
9. It won't be epic or mammoth and will rarely be in chapters (Cowgirls is the first to come out as a WIP in chapters).
10. It won't use the whole cast. I tend to pick two or three characters to use and I don't feel the need to cram all the others in just to show that I'm using them.

fic: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Part 1

Yes, I'm putting up Chapter 1 before 3 and 4 are finished off despite the fact I always worry about finishing WIPs. I should update every fortnight - leave me rude feedback if I don't.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by SpikeDru
Spoilers: post-Objects in Space, eventually for the Big Damn Movie
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Summary: Her touch was usually a commodity and her palm had tingled with illicit pleasure at being freely given.
There are all sorts of ways to feel blue, and the women of Serenity feel them all.
Notes: This fic was basically inspired by Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins - or more precisely by the title. Each chapter's title is also a title of a Western film (or a variation thereof). Chapter 1, The Best Little Whorehouse on the Rim, focuses on Inara. Later chapters focus on others.
first published January 2006

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1: The Best Little Whorehouse on the Rim

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It was the finest outhouse on the stinking moon. The wood was smooth and sand clean, and the red tiled floor gleamed. Nandi's girls clearly took care of it. A couple of flimsy moving images hung on either wall: a restful sunset over a beach and a sweet meadow wavering in a spring breeze. Unlit incense rested on a little ledge to one side, ready to banish any unwelcome smells. The back of the wooden door was hung with silken embroidery scenes and the crystals hanging in the small star-shaped window twinkled with the brash sunlight from outside.

Inara sat and cried.

[click here for the rest of the chapter]