antennapedia

I just have to tell you I adored your fic The Recalcitrant Schoolboy and the Stern Mistress of Pain. You made me look at gender play in a whole new light, and that scene with Xander and the bastinado? Classic. I'm sure from now on all my kink meme requests are going to feature Buffy sporting a strap-on and Giles in a merrywidow.

My most popular Core 4 smutfic, that one. When I saw "crossdressing" on my kink bingo card, this story was the last thing I expected to write. I knew there was a trope in early Giles fiction to write him in drag, thanks to that ASH role as Frank N Furter, but I hadn't wanted to go there myself. But the image was strangely compelling, compelling enough to be the seed the rest of the fic crystallized around. Once I had Giles in drag, I had to find another way to buck the trend and give the topic my own distinctive slant. Buffy in suit and tie with that space-black strap-on, yeah, nobody'd done that. Pinstripes, mmm. Pity the suit didn't survive the night, huh?

Willow in the leather corset was pure fanservice, though. I admit that. But she has great breasts and I wanted to show them off.

A pox on both your houses.

Once I had the idea of the Fourth Doctor in the Mercutio role, I couldn't rest until I'd written the pastiche.

I still can't get over your fic, "Never Again." I nearly scrolled past it when I saw the Giles/Spike/Buffy, but boy am I glad I clicked! You made me look at "Halloween" like I never had before, that's for sure. Who knew Giles had that in him?

That is awesomely creepy!

The creepiest thing is that Buffy consented to the whole encounter, knowing she'd forget. Spike, however, remembered, and I really wanted that hanging over the end of the story: the sense that he and Giles had unfinished business, unresolved desire and hatred and jealousy and need.

I loved "The Schoolyard Mysteries". Xander and Giles and all the new Slayers. Romantic silly fun! You need to write more like this.

Mysteries are such work to write! Locked room mysteries especially. I had no idea how hard they were when I started that story. I had to plot backwards, sort of. I also did a scene-by-scene chart mapping out who knew what when: the readers, each character, and the murderer.

It was strange to wind the romance subplot through all that, trying to keep that loose and flowing despite the sort of clockwork of the mystery. (Heh. Clockwork. Fitting, since the whole thing turns on the gadget made by Gradman and his assistant.) The Xander voice helped me there. Xander loosens everything up. Including an over-worked Giles. I nearly took the sex scene out, since I was in a no-pr0n-yes-plot phase when I worked on this. But I'm glad I left it in, in retrospect.

Edited at 2009-09-15 03:55 pm (UTC)

"The Engram of Stars" I loved this AU of the gang set 500 years in the future with Buffy slaying aliens instead of demons. Great job giving it a "classic" science fiction feel instead of the modern New Age type feel it normally has.

I love space opera, just love it in an undying way that makes me long to write it even though it's so out of fashion in lit'ry SF. (Hollywood hasn't moved on from it, of course. Hollywood SF is either military SF or space opera.) War in space opera is glorious, though, unlike the gritty wars of combat suits and big blocky troopships. Instead in this story I went for light sails and swift absurd two-man spacecraft, single combat, duels, and bitter personal vendettas. The artifact they're chasing after is pure space opera, the way it turns out to be a sword made of pure energy named "Dawnbringer", and that was just so much fun to write.