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Grab me by my ankles, I've been flying for too long.
Challenge #11
In your own space, create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
"I don't have time or space to write this BUT IF I DID here's what the fic would be" posts are totally fanworks, in my experience. So here goes.
Legit, no exaggeration, wingfic is a trope I'll always love. I've long had a soft spot for it - blame too many comic books and Greek myths at a young age - and a wingfic was the first thing I wrote in any fandom anywhere I both wrote a story worth reading and made something close to what was in my head. I'm still proud of it.
That the fic was for a completely mundane fandom where the most extraordinary thing about the canon were the acceptable breaks from reality in order to maintain a sense of drama made it all the more fun for me. Right now, my main writing fandom is one where wingfic has at least some minor plausibility.
I don't have time to write the Buffy wingfic I'd like to go read. But if I did, I'd blame this picture. And this one. And a lot of coffee. And andtheyfightcrime for encouraging me, indulging me, and coming up with at least half the good ideas.
Yes, it'd be Spike with wings. Of course it would be. Spike, Dru, Angel, Darla - all of them. The Master, too, probably. It's about 5% of vampires who grow wings, making it both established enough to be written about in Watcher records and rare enough Slayers might never meet such a vampire themselves. Likely it fed into some of the common European myths about bats and flight and such.
A vampire's wings start growing in a few weeks after siring, and take a couple of months to finish. During that time, the vampire's weak and vulnerable, and their wings are in their most fragile stage. Once fully grown, the wings can fold up and compress into the vampire's back - completely compress in, because they're magic. And because the way Buffy vampires work, there's still indications of the wings being there: heavily raised, scarred skin that looks a little like old hypertrophic burn scars. It's soft, and it's smooth, but not the soft and smooth of an ordinary back.
(Buffy: "So they really turn into bats?" Giles: "No, not quite.")
When the wings are out, they can be very expressive, sometimes not. It depends on the vampire and how carefully they're paying attention to those kinds of things. Most vampires who have them keep them in most of the time, because having them out is a huge vulnerability. They can grow back, unlike other limbs, because of how they grew in, and it's just as long a process as growing them for the first time. And it hurts worse, somehow.
Vampire wings aren't batlike. They're big, flappy, and leathery. Most of the time. Because Angel has feathers. Of course he has feathers. And that's completely unprecedented. And of course, during his first kiss with Buffy, his wings burst out, possibly even through his leather coat, and he runs and Buffy goes to Giles about it, who has nothing. His books have nothing. The carefully worded faxed requests to the Council turn up nothing. Some stuff on vampire wings. Nothing on them with feathers.
When a vampire's wings come out, they come out wet. They're not like a cat's claws that neatly retract; they're covered in glistening fluids and usually a little bit of blood. It smells a bit like the back of a butcher shop: wet. A very organic, bloody kind of wet. It's gross, and it doesn't smell good, and the fluids tend to be easily wiped off of flat, leathery skin. Not so much with feathers. Buffy offers to help Angel groom them - the Whirlwind all groomed each other, if they needed it - but he always turns down the offer, finding other ways to manage.
Angel flat-out refuses to take Buffy flying. No matter how hard she presses the "But they're beautiful!" angle, meaning every word. He'd say it's been a long time since he took someone up with him and is afraid of dropping her, which is true, but not the whole truth. As is typical for him.
(Buffy wants to know how Angel got to her bedroom window when there's no trees to climb. He says he did climb. Sort of.)
After "Innocence" his feathers are gone. Possibly molted and fallen all around, or possibly simply absent when he extends his wings again. That's when Buffy makes the connection and tells Giles about it, who's fascinating and somewhat astonished about the levels of interaction between the vampire and the soul, but with one case to study, he knows he won't get far.
Spike, on the other hand, makes the offer for flying pretty early. And he offers Dawn, who takes him up on it pretty much immediately, early in season 5. It's fun and exciting, and in season 6 he finally gets Buffy up in the night sky in his arms. She keeps her eyes closed tight, because she doesn't want to enjoy it as much as she knows she will.
He still got chipped. He also got the tracker implanted in his back. The Initiative scanned him when they got him in, and because they hadn't seen anything like him before, wanted to cut him open to see what they had on their hands. When he opened his eyes on the table, he threw his wings out, hard and fast, giving him a couple seconds' surprise. Which was all he needed. When he went to Giles' later to get the tracker out, he had to unfold them there, and when he told everyone to take a step back, he meant it. Vampire wings are partly magical, and they're partly biological, too, and they're big.
(Xander shrieked a little. A manly shriek.)
They're big enough to fold up around someone in a hug, and big enough to hold someone close to him while lying in bed and facing each other, and keep his hands free to touch their face. Angel tends to keep his held carefully, but Spike is super expressive with them when he has them out - flinching, flapping, shrugging and spreading and raising and lowering them, all sorts of gestures that don't have an exact translation because it's such a different kind of body language.
After his grew in, the rest of the Whirlwind taught him how to fly. Mostly Angelus, who kept throwing him off of churches for the joke, same as he did with Dru. When Spike relates this story, decades later, he'd joke Angel shouted for him to spread them before throwing him off a church tower - as naughty a joke as S&P would've likely allowed at the time.
(The weight and shape of his coat over his wings is usually enough to keep his wings safe, and pressed against his back, so he can have them out and wear the coat at the same time. He doesn't fly with the coat on. He knows there's probably some kind of spell, but it's easier to tie the arms of the coat around his waist because it's not like he's going to get cold, no matter how high up he gets.)
When Spike has her in the air, she can feel the strength of his muscles, how they work, from her hands around his neck. It's not Superman flying because she feels the way his body moves with each wingbeat. It's a different kind of feeling than usual vampire vibes. Her first time up, the wind rushing past her that fast without anything in the way - the hood of her sweatshirt flapping like the world's most pathetic cape - is scary in a way she doesn't know how to process. It's a new kind of fear.
Their second time up, she thinks how Sunnydale looks almost pretty from far above. It's not so big from so far up. The cemeteries might have fog drifting over them, theatrically, depending on the season. All of it looks gentle and peaceful. She thinks, this is so rare, it should be so wonderful, but she can't let the worry or the threat go, not yet. She wants to be able to judge danger, and this is too alien for her to judge. But Spike stopped being worried about this decades ago.
("You come here often?" she whispers, to take some of the edge off. Spike laughs, "Not as often as I should.")
(He dreams about swooping down, flying up, getting Dawn safe, rescuing Buffy. He dreams about catching her in time.)
His fearlessnes draws her to him in a way she was never drawn to Angel. When they're in bed, and he has his wings tucked away, she rubs her hands over his back. He moves them a bit, inside. Enough for her to feel. She doesn't understand how it works, except that it does, and she has to accept it.
When he comes back in season 7, he can't put his wings away when he's crazy in the basement. He can't. They itch and hurt too much until the feathers fully grow in. It's a relief on so many levels when it's over, and he can put them away again. That's about when he gives Dawn one of the flight feathers as a gift. He doesn't hand it to her, but she knows it's his, because no bird on the planet has feathers that big. At least the size of her forearm. Glossy and beautiful.
Angel's wings were crow black and shiny. Spike's feathers are also glossy, but the markings are more of a magpie's. That kind of luster.
His first time up in the sky with feathers is like learning how to fly all over again.
Giles starts out genuinely fascinated at Spike's feathers. He still doesn't warm up to Spike as a person, even with a soul, but he's more polite for the sake of good information, since this is only the second time it's happened. It's an odd way to get closer to him, but it's effective. He gives Giles a couple less important, small feathers, and it turns out they're very powerful ingredients - and such a nonstandard ingredient there's no way to know how to use it to full effectiveness. But no matter, not when there's so much more work to be done to help the Potentials and defeat the First.
And it's not until after Spike's spat out of the amulet in Angel's office - corporeal and intact from the start, because why not shoot the moon here - that either of them manages to let someone else help them groom their feathers. They each let Buffy touch them, sometimes, but not grooming. It's far too intimate an act, not unless the other person gets it from having feathers themselves. And honestly, it's a pretty good way for them to get to a place of mutual compassion and understanding. All the better for season 5 to have a little more emotional coherence and continuity.
In your own space, create a fanwork. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
"I don't have time or space to write this BUT IF I DID here's what the fic would be" posts are totally fanworks, in my experience. So here goes.
Legit, no exaggeration, wingfic is a trope I'll always love. I've long had a soft spot for it - blame too many comic books and Greek myths at a young age - and a wingfic was the first thing I wrote in any fandom anywhere I both wrote a story worth reading and made something close to what was in my head. I'm still proud of it.
That the fic was for a completely mundane fandom where the most extraordinary thing about the canon were the acceptable breaks from reality in order to maintain a sense of drama made it all the more fun for me. Right now, my main writing fandom is one where wingfic has at least some minor plausibility.
I don't have time to write the Buffy wingfic I'd like to go read. But if I did, I'd blame this picture. And this one. And a lot of coffee. And andtheyfightcrime for encouraging me, indulging me, and coming up with at least half the good ideas.
Yes, it'd be Spike with wings. Of course it would be. Spike, Dru, Angel, Darla - all of them. The Master, too, probably. It's about 5% of vampires who grow wings, making it both established enough to be written about in Watcher records and rare enough Slayers might never meet such a vampire themselves. Likely it fed into some of the common European myths about bats and flight and such.
A vampire's wings start growing in a few weeks after siring, and take a couple of months to finish. During that time, the vampire's weak and vulnerable, and their wings are in their most fragile stage. Once fully grown, the wings can fold up and compress into the vampire's back - completely compress in, because they're magic. And because the way Buffy vampires work, there's still indications of the wings being there: heavily raised, scarred skin that looks a little like old hypertrophic burn scars. It's soft, and it's smooth, but not the soft and smooth of an ordinary back.
(Buffy: "So they really turn into bats?" Giles: "No, not quite.")
When the wings are out, they can be very expressive, sometimes not. It depends on the vampire and how carefully they're paying attention to those kinds of things. Most vampires who have them keep them in most of the time, because having them out is a huge vulnerability. They can grow back, unlike other limbs, because of how they grew in, and it's just as long a process as growing them for the first time. And it hurts worse, somehow.
Vampire wings aren't batlike. They're big, flappy, and leathery. Most of the time. Because Angel has feathers. Of course he has feathers. And that's completely unprecedented. And of course, during his first kiss with Buffy, his wings burst out, possibly even through his leather coat, and he runs and Buffy goes to Giles about it, who has nothing. His books have nothing. The carefully worded faxed requests to the Council turn up nothing. Some stuff on vampire wings. Nothing on them with feathers.
When a vampire's wings come out, they come out wet. They're not like a cat's claws that neatly retract; they're covered in glistening fluids and usually a little bit of blood. It smells a bit like the back of a butcher shop: wet. A very organic, bloody kind of wet. It's gross, and it doesn't smell good, and the fluids tend to be easily wiped off of flat, leathery skin. Not so much with feathers. Buffy offers to help Angel groom them - the Whirlwind all groomed each other, if they needed it - but he always turns down the offer, finding other ways to manage.
Angel flat-out refuses to take Buffy flying. No matter how hard she presses the "But they're beautiful!" angle, meaning every word. He'd say it's been a long time since he took someone up with him and is afraid of dropping her, which is true, but not the whole truth. As is typical for him.
(Buffy wants to know how Angel got to her bedroom window when there's no trees to climb. He says he did climb. Sort of.)
After "Innocence" his feathers are gone. Possibly molted and fallen all around, or possibly simply absent when he extends his wings again. That's when Buffy makes the connection and tells Giles about it, who's fascinating and somewhat astonished about the levels of interaction between the vampire and the soul, but with one case to study, he knows he won't get far.
Spike, on the other hand, makes the offer for flying pretty early. And he offers Dawn, who takes him up on it pretty much immediately, early in season 5. It's fun and exciting, and in season 6 he finally gets Buffy up in the night sky in his arms. She keeps her eyes closed tight, because she doesn't want to enjoy it as much as she knows she will.
He still got chipped. He also got the tracker implanted in his back. The Initiative scanned him when they got him in, and because they hadn't seen anything like him before, wanted to cut him open to see what they had on their hands. When he opened his eyes on the table, he threw his wings out, hard and fast, giving him a couple seconds' surprise. Which was all he needed. When he went to Giles' later to get the tracker out, he had to unfold them there, and when he told everyone to take a step back, he meant it. Vampire wings are partly magical, and they're partly biological, too, and they're big.
(Xander shrieked a little. A manly shriek.)
They're big enough to fold up around someone in a hug, and big enough to hold someone close to him while lying in bed and facing each other, and keep his hands free to touch their face. Angel tends to keep his held carefully, but Spike is super expressive with them when he has them out - flinching, flapping, shrugging and spreading and raising and lowering them, all sorts of gestures that don't have an exact translation because it's such a different kind of body language.
After his grew in, the rest of the Whirlwind taught him how to fly. Mostly Angelus, who kept throwing him off of churches for the joke, same as he did with Dru. When Spike relates this story, decades later, he'd joke Angel shouted for him to spread them before throwing him off a church tower - as naughty a joke as S&P would've likely allowed at the time.
(The weight and shape of his coat over his wings is usually enough to keep his wings safe, and pressed against his back, so he can have them out and wear the coat at the same time. He doesn't fly with the coat on. He knows there's probably some kind of spell, but it's easier to tie the arms of the coat around his waist because it's not like he's going to get cold, no matter how high up he gets.)
When Spike has her in the air, she can feel the strength of his muscles, how they work, from her hands around his neck. It's not Superman flying because she feels the way his body moves with each wingbeat. It's a different kind of feeling than usual vampire vibes. Her first time up, the wind rushing past her that fast without anything in the way - the hood of her sweatshirt flapping like the world's most pathetic cape - is scary in a way she doesn't know how to process. It's a new kind of fear.
Their second time up, she thinks how Sunnydale looks almost pretty from far above. It's not so big from so far up. The cemeteries might have fog drifting over them, theatrically, depending on the season. All of it looks gentle and peaceful. She thinks, this is so rare, it should be so wonderful, but she can't let the worry or the threat go, not yet. She wants to be able to judge danger, and this is too alien for her to judge. But Spike stopped being worried about this decades ago.
("You come here often?" she whispers, to take some of the edge off. Spike laughs, "Not as often as I should.")
(He dreams about swooping down, flying up, getting Dawn safe, rescuing Buffy. He dreams about catching her in time.)
His fearlessnes draws her to him in a way she was never drawn to Angel. When they're in bed, and he has his wings tucked away, she rubs her hands over his back. He moves them a bit, inside. Enough for her to feel. She doesn't understand how it works, except that it does, and she has to accept it.
When he comes back in season 7, he can't put his wings away when he's crazy in the basement. He can't. They itch and hurt too much until the feathers fully grow in. It's a relief on so many levels when it's over, and he can put them away again. That's about when he gives Dawn one of the flight feathers as a gift. He doesn't hand it to her, but she knows it's his, because no bird on the planet has feathers that big. At least the size of her forearm. Glossy and beautiful.
Angel's wings were crow black and shiny. Spike's feathers are also glossy, but the markings are more of a magpie's. That kind of luster.
His first time up in the sky with feathers is like learning how to fly all over again.
Giles starts out genuinely fascinated at Spike's feathers. He still doesn't warm up to Spike as a person, even with a soul, but he's more polite for the sake of good information, since this is only the second time it's happened. It's an odd way to get closer to him, but it's effective. He gives Giles a couple less important, small feathers, and it turns out they're very powerful ingredients - and such a nonstandard ingredient there's no way to know how to use it to full effectiveness. But no matter, not when there's so much more work to be done to help the Potentials and defeat the First.
And it's not until after Spike's spat out of the amulet in Angel's office - corporeal and intact from the start, because why not shoot the moon here - that either of them manages to let someone else help them groom their feathers. They each let Buffy touch them, sometimes, but not grooming. It's far too intimate an act, not unless the other person gets it from having feathers themselves. And honestly, it's a pretty good way for them to get to a place of mutual compassion and understanding. All the better for season 5 to have a little more emotional coherence and continuity.