A bit of chatter about how I write plus my second 'Firefly' ficlet:

[butterfly]

I think that my favorite part of the ficlet challenges is writing points of view that I never would have just done on my own. I've now written Spike from the inside (and damn, I think that writing him has made me go and like him. I can't stay indifferent to people whose skin I've written in. And wow, that sounds so icky and disturbing and Silence of the Lambs.), which makes me look at him differently. I've seen things from his point of view.

Much as I hate that I don't hate Spike anymore, I love that I can write him. Objectively. I have a big thing about writing from point of view. Whenever I'm writing from a character's point of view, I have to sympathize with them. I think the Buffy/Angel romance is melodrama at its most sappy melodramatic...ness, but when I wrote a Buffy-fic set Season Five, I had a 'shipper telling me how wonderful it is to read B/A forever-type fic. Because that's how Buffy came across for me then. That's what she was telling me to write.

Writing is from the inside out for me. I have to get inside. My muse is intrusive and pushy.

Written for ff_friday. And I'm not too steady on Mal's voice yet, I don't think. He's tough. I think that I understand where he's coming from, but I never did manage to see all of the aired episodes (which doesn't stop him from infecting the way I type).

High Wire Act

All decent folk know right from wrong.

But anyone who wants to stay alive knows that you can't always do right. And anyone who did wrong all the time wasn't to be trusted.

You had to walk a balance a'tween the two.

Kaylee, now she managed with rare skill. She was cheerful and sweet as the 'verse was wide, but knew what was needed to be done to save her skin.

The doctor and the Shepherd were tougher to note. The two of 'em appearing clean at first glance, and both hiding violence somethin' fierce.

Zoe... well, there wasn't another soul that understood him near as well as she did. She knew that right and wrong couldn't keep a body alive when guns were firing and she knew to take her pleasure where she could. They'd been lucky in finding Wash, who could fly like no one he'd seen and make Zoe smile like she almost didn't remember the worst times.

And then there was Inara, who was very much a lady and very much a whore. And she didn't see the wrong in either. Fine, strong woman who sold herself. And for all her talk of respectability, he'd seen how some of her 'clients' looked at her and there wasn't nothing right or clean about it.

Right and wrong were clear and solid. And sometimes they could be slippery and deadly.

And too often, they were all that and more, all at the same time.

And walking that balance became more like trying to decide which way you needed to fall to stay breathing.