Stalwarts And All

I’m trying to come up with a canon-compliant timeline for Buffy & Spike’s relationship (at least the part where they’re sleeping together) in season six.

This exercise is, in many ways, pointless. BtVS has notoriously lax continuity, and its timeline was clearly intended to be viewed with a laissez-faire squint rather than precision focus. But my current fic requires a locked time frame for their relationship, and I wanted to start with a solid base... so I’m trying to make it work.

Anyway, after playing around with the dates, I’ve come up with a relationship duration of 4 months and 19 days (from Smashed to As You Were). And this calendar:

My maths/inferences/suppositions/conclusions under the cut...

This is Buffy's rejection letter for re-admission to UC Sunnydale as seen in As You Were:

So many questions....

What prompted Revello Drive's change of name to Crestview?

Why, when the street is notably flat and devoid of views, was the decision made to go with Crestview?

Why does Crestview not have a street suffix? Is it too famous to need a last name? Is it the Beyoncé of Sunnydale streets?

Why is UC Sunnydale abbreviating its name to UCSD? Does UC San Diego (the school typically referred to as UCSD) not exist in the Buffyverse? If so, why?

When (and how) was the entire town of Sunnydale relocated 275 miles to the north?

Today is election day and that typically means I bust out my ‘Spike Compels You to Vote’ graphic. But, today, I don’t really need to, because today’s election is in Australia and that means over 90% of eligible voters will vote. And here’s why:

Australia makes it easy to vote both at polling stations and by mail.

Australia assumes that voting is a community activity that generally involves chatting to your neighbours and buying a democracy sausage (hot dog) and/or slice of cake from a pop-up stall (the profits of which go to the local school or community).

Australia makes it compulsory to vote.

I’m lucky enough to be a citizen of multiple countries and to vote in multiple countries. And, as someone who has experienced both the clusterfuck that is voting in American and the gentle pleasure that is voting in Australia, let me say: Aussies have it figured out.

To answer the inevitable questions about compulsory voting:

Shut up about personal liberty! Your government already compels you to do multiple things (obey laws, register births and deaths, submit tax returns etc). Adding occasional voting to your responsibilities as a citizen is not going to break you.

If you’re the kind of feeble-brained asshat who genuinely wants to throw your vote away - you don’t have to actual vote for anyone on the ballot, you just have to show up. You can toss you ballot in the bin unmarked. You can write in ‘Jon Snow’. You can scrawl ‘Fuck Compulsory Voting’ on the ballot, staple it to your head and walk out of the polling station singing ‘My Way’.

Yes, there are exemptions for illness, travel etc. No one’s getting fined if they have a legit reason for not making it to the polling station.

So this is the sort of admission that'll probably get me drummed out of the fandom but here goes... I don't love season three of BtVS.

While you sharpen your pitchforks, I'll explain.

I originally watched Buffy (more or less) in order as it aired and I adored it wholeheartedly from the very first episode I saw: The Witch.

I found season one completely delightful. I loved Giles and Willow and Xander and Flutie and Snyder. I loved the dialogue and the library and Angel's pretty, pretty boy-face. I loved the humour and the hurts. I loved the warmth and wit with my whole teen fangirl heart.

By the time we hit season two, I was officially head over heels. The Angelus story was just SO FRICKIN COOL. And, as if we weren't already spoiled for divine characters, season two gilded the lily with Oz and Spike. And the Xander and Cordelia relationship was insanely watchable. And Willow and Oz were achingly adorable. And hot-fuckity-dog was the Giles and Buffy friendship a thing of surprising and winsome beauty. And everything just kept getting better—more complex, more clever, more twist-ridden—as the season progressed, culminating in Becoming Part Two which was as close to perfect (in my teen girl opinion) as any TV show had ever been.

Season two (well, the latter half of it) raised my expectations for the rest of the show to stratospheric levels. I awaited season three with bated (and slightly hysterically fangirly) breath.

And then we got Anne. And it was all about Buffy, my least favourite character at the time, and my teen-self found it profoundly boring.

Then the meh Dead Man's Party. Then Faith, Hope & Trick, in which we met Faith... who I found on-the-nose and contrived.

And then we got the crappy Beauty and the Beasts. Then Homecoming. Mediocre episode after mediocre episode. And, well... Buffy's hair was terrible. And Giles's glasses were all wrong. And WHY THE ACTUAL ARSEING HELL WAS ANGEL BACK? I hated that the show brought him back. It felt like such a feeble cop-out and I felt utterly narratively betrayed.

So, after five crappy episodes in a row, I decided the show had officially lost it. Shark had been jumped. I was done. I took my sense of narrative betrayal and my fickle teen heart off elsewhere. And I didn't give BtVS a second thought... because that's how TV worked in the days of yore. You missed a few episodes and the show moved on. And so did you.

The annoying thing is, of course, if I'd just held out for one more episode, I would have got Band Candy. And I know, with complete certainty, that the gloriousness of Band Candy would have buoyed my love for the show. And then perhaps I would have kept watching and got Lovers Walk and The Wish.

But I didn't. I left Buffy and her hideous frosted bangs behind and moved on without a backwards glance.

And then, a year or so later, I randomly caught season four's Harsh Light of Day. I had no idea who this Anya girl was or why Harmony was a vampire or where Angel had gone but... none of that mattered. Because the dialogue sang. The show felt gloriously smart and punchy. And the sets were gorgeous and the art direction was vibrant and the characters were all-grown-up. And I wanted MORE.

I was back.

I watched the rest of the show in order as it aired, loving it (and berating it and dissecting it and loving it again in turn).

I did, at some point, go back and watch season three in a clumsy fashion - out of order on DVD. And there were plenty of episodes I adored: Band Candy, Lovers Walk, The Wish, The Zeppo, Doppelgangland. But the Bangel plot (and I use the word 'plot' quite wrongly) felt like an overwrought clunker. And Faith never grew on me.

And that's how I viewed season three for years:

a season with half a dozen completely stellar (mostly Scooby-centric) standalones.

a season marred by an alternately plodding and saccharine Bangel storyline.

a season with an arc that focused on the three characters in the Buffyverse (Faith, Buffy and Angel) I found least compelling.

a season in which I was rarely emotionally engaged

Essentially, I viewed season three as thoroughly middling. I didn't consider it resoundingly bad; there were far too many good episodes for that. And it clearly wasn't the worst season. It wasn't lightweight and rudimentary like season one. It wasn't a character-destroying narrative mess like season seven. It just wasn't, in my opinion, a standout.

So, with those preconceived notions/prejudices firmly in place, it came as something of a shock to me when, years later, I started reading Buffy reviews and discovered that season three is almost universally beloved.

Other people, it turns out, flat-out love Faith. And they find the Mayor a walking delight. And think The Prom is sad, romantic and dreamy beyond all possible sad, romantic dreaminess. And rank Graduation Day as one of their top eps...

I found this random pulp cover and I choose to assume that the book was written by a member of Rupert Giles’s family. A disgraced uncle perhaps.

This morning I realised something that surprised me. While there are many elements of creating fanfic that I thoroughly enjoy, my favourite element, unquestionably, is the betaing.

When I wrote my first story, it never occurred to me that anyone would be willing to beta for me. I threw out what I assumed to be a doomed request for a beta, fully anticipating (as a feeble newbie writer) to be wholly ignored. It was a completely unexpected delight to find that there were multiple people willing to comb through my writing and improve it. 

New to the world of fanfic, the concept of betas seemed shocking. It just seemed implausibly wonderful that there were so many people willing to dedicate countless, uncompensated hours to helping stumbling writers like me. Me!?! A complete stranger. A crappy, first-time writer with an em dash fixation and a tedious habit of moving from American to English spelling without care or concern. 

The moment I received that first betaed chapter—crisscrossed with helpful suggestions and discerning edits; crisscrossed, essentially, with evidence of the kindness and competence of strangers—I fell instantly and enduringly in love with betas as a breed and hopelessly in love with fandom as a whole.

And, thing is, then I discovered the really juicy bit. I got to return the beta favour and discovered that, as divine as having a beta is, being a beta is even better. It's all the easy elements of writing and none of the hardship. It's reading, analysing and tweaking. Yes, to some extent, it's catching errors and word repetition and comma splices but, mostly, it's being given the privilege of playing with a new toy after someone else has done all the hard work of putting it together. It is, in a word, fun.

And, like so many acts that ostensibly involve giving rather than receiving, it has a huge side benefit for the giver. The act of dissecting, rather than just reading, other authors' work, forces one to consider the bare bones of writing from a new angle. Time spent combing through other people’s work has had a direct impact on how I handle attribution, pacing and punctuation. In fact, almost every facet of my writing has benefited from an alternate perspective.

Anyway, my nugget of wisdom garnered from a tiny smidge of experience... If you're a new writer, don't be afraid to ask a bunch of strangers for help. Don't be afraid to ask multiple people to beta. Don't be afraid to offer to return the favour.

Observe Buffy’s top in the above pic. Is it tight – sure. Is it low cut – sorta. Is it underwear – no, not really. In fact, if she threw a jacket over it, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if she wore it out in public. Yet, Buffy and Spike spend the entire scene acting like she’s barely dressed. Buffy’s oddly embarrassed and Spike is averting his eyes from what, exactly? Buffy’s completely covered boobs?

The scene makes infinitely more sense in the shooting script. As scripted, Buffy is supposed to be wearing ‘a lacy bra.’ The clunky disconnect between the characters’ behaviour and the outfit suddenly makes sense. Clearly, when the decision was made to change the wardrobe, the script needed editing. Didn’t happen and it shows.

The truth is, with Buffy in a bra, the scene not only makes sense but it’s got a nice, subtle strain of tension. Espenson’s choice of a lacy bra is not random; a bra is intimate, it’s got connotations. Buffy’s decision to stand in front of Spike in a bra—not scurry away, not cover herself—is a statement about how she views him and their relationship. She would not, for example, stand around in a bra having a conversation with Xander. Her decision to reveal herself to Spike speaks to the intimacy they share and to the undercurrent in their interactions. And it’s a nice juxtaposition to their dialogue in which they’re both trying to affirm that their romantic relationship is over.

None of it quite works in what is essentially a tank top.

And the loss of the bra also kills a solid joke:

SPIKE: You look nice. BUFFY: Oh. Thanks. Traditionally, one wears something over this.

Worth noting that:

a) I have given exactly two and a half minutes consideration to the relative points totals. There’s a complete absence of hills here I wish to die on. Except Man U.

b) Spike wishes to make it known that he’s never had a personalised licence plate or paid money to hear music performed by Californian funk-rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Dear Tumblr Overlords,

Soooo... you deleted my original posting of this pic on the grounds that it contravened the Tumblr Community Guidelines. Since you provide neither explanatory details nor an appeals process, I am flying somewhat blind here.

I have pixelated two no-no words in the hope that they are the ‘adult content.’ The fact that both words would, I hope, be in the vocabulary of the average eight-year-old is (I assume) largely beside the point.

I have also pixelated the word ‘kittens.’ Just in case.

Cheers, Stalwarty

Am in a streamline-y, KonMari mood, so I decided to pull all my fic recs together into one post. So, forty Spuffy fics that spark joy...

Short(er) Fics

Not My Boyfriend by allmadinhere - Gorgeous, compact nugget of a story concept that ticks along with the perfect blend of tension and humour.

Closer by TheHouseKeeper - Poetic, awkward and beautiful post-NFA reunion story. It's Spuffy all growed up.

The Sharing Game by stuffandnonsense - Our post-series heroes teeter on the precipice between friends and lovers. My favourite kind of fic: rafts of wonderful dialogue with deep, insightful dives into character and relationship history.

Spike's Demon vs. Pants by ChryshCn - A delicious confection of a story - funny, sweet and smutty. Utterly edible. Also, if there exists a more perfect Spuffy fic title, I haven't heard it.

Something New by joycometh - Spike has a post Something Blue ponder. And an erection. A poke at Spike's season four psyche with clever turns of phrase, evocative description and lovely character insight.

Still Point by kalima - My favourite take on the Chosen fade to black scene. Pithy, pointed and properly good.

Ketchup Blood by kalima - Reiterating my point above re the proper goodness of kalima's writing. Divine post-coital chat set in season six. At Denny's.

Encapsulated by BillieLiar - Decidedly yummy take on the forced-to-share-a-hotel-room trope.

Daybreak by Sigyn - Gorgeous bit of writing. Intimate and specific and leaves one wanting to hug Spike until his bones creak.

Awake by betty crachit - Glaringly fab take on Spike (equal parts stoic, stumbling and smarty-pants in the face of adversity) with reams of crunchy, clever language. That the story also has a rock solid plot and a dollop of gorgeous smut is just plain showing off in my opinion.

New Year by Sigyn - A tender little season seven moment that digs into the nuances of Spike's soul. Plus there's cribbage.

Phone Call by anaross - Heart-smoosher of a oneshot that speaks to my nagging suspicion that Buffy would not ever really let herself love Spike.

The Day the World Turning Day-Glo by stuffandnonsense - Spike’s ex-girlfriends have a chat. It’s exactly and entirely as wonderful as it sounds.

6am by acekoomboom - Buffy mourns Spike. Unflinching and punch packing.

In Such a Night by Dactylgirl - Exquisite, aching, body-cinching UST.

Comfort & Joy by Dactylgirl - Yet more exquisite UST (plus bonus lovely Giles and charming Scoobies).

Mr Talky Mouth by kalima - Luscious, lascivious, languid, lubricious—just all the L words really—little oneshot.

Cold by Sigyn - The filthiest, grittiest, prettiest language in Spuffidom.

Gunning for Buffy by the_moonmoth - Season five bite-y perfection.

Black Hole Confessions by OffYourBird - For anyone who watches the morning after scene in Wrecked and habitually hears the mental 'Good God, The Writers Arsed Up The Destroyed House Metaphor' klaxon... this story is the perfect fix-it. Metaphor (and character) done right.

Left for Yesterday by the_moonmoth - This WIP is just a wee, chapter-long nugget of setup but the_moonmoth is so flinging-flanging good that I don't begin to care. Her writing, dialogue and character-work are all shot through with charm, wit and warmth. Oh, and she swears thoroughly, properly and creatively.

You Came Back by FlightsofFancy - This story is just a lovely lovely lovely lovely lovely (repeat ad nauseam) continuation of the Hell's Bells scene. It perfectly captures and builds on the soft (green) glow of the pair in the moment.

Reciprocal by the_moonmoth - Divine smut and such deft timeline-manipulation that builds and maintains tension with fierce precision.

Long(er) Fics

Uncontrollable by sweetprincipale - Spike replaces Riley in the spiritually-compelled-to-boink-room during Where the Wild Things Are. Fuck or Die trope to the nth-iest of delicious nth degrees.

Indigo Overture by Rikki-oko - Beautifully paced and punchy romance with skilfully crafted characters. AH enemies to lovers trope done so, so right!

The Ewer of Enheduanna by the_moonmoth - Entirely different story, but I can echo my praise for Reciprocal - divine smut and such deft timeline-manipulation that builds and maintains tension with fierce precision. Also, it's just sodding wonderful.

Rules of The Road by Gort - Roadtrip-y, slow burn-y, build-of-affection-and-trust WIP. A story that takes the end of season five in a different direction but still feels wholly true to character.

College is Awesome by dampersandspoons - This AH story captures perfectly the clumsy, all-consuming teen desire for sex, connection and acceptance. It's also one of the funniest fics I've ever read. It's also loveable-sexy-nerd-William fic. It's also a rare example of a story in which the male romantic lead is cautious, clever and kind rather than masterful, all knowing and presuming. And, also, the smut is wonderful.

In For a Penny by bewildered and the_moonmoth - Spike time travels back to season four and good lordy does that make me happy. A WIP with lashings of snarky Giles and fabulously put-upon Spike.

Monsters by betty cratchit - A perfect UST-laden season four caper by an author with the most melodious and charming writer's voice ever in ever.  Perma WIP.

Beyond the Pale by FlightsofFancy - The most intriguing Initiative plot I've ever read. Conflict aplenty and top shelf character voices. The fab action sequences are just the icing on this WIP cake.

Books and Their Covers by JustTiff - A delectable AH take on Spike in a story with a beautifully calibrated slow, cinching, flirty build-up.

Ex Magic by bookishy - Deft writing, rock solid character voices, and a season seven plot that just bellows with interesting/clever/smutty potential. It’s the WIP I’m most excited to see continued.

In Heat by Nautibitz - This fic was my intro to both fanfic and smut. Even if it were shite, I'd still be sentimentally attached and rec the stuffing out of it. But it's not shite, not even close; it is, in fact, sublime.

Thursday's Child by Zabjade - Trauma and ensemble-y interaction and gender dynamics and gentle domesticity and high drama and moral complexity and slow build affection. Read it! Read it, I say!

Care by Sigyn - Good god this is a good premise: the Something Blue spell doesn't break and Buffy & Spike marry. What this is not is a breezy story making use of Spuffy's convenient canon engagement to make 'em bone ad infinitum. (Not that there's anything wrong with those stories; I personal eat those stories up with a spoon). But what Sigyn creates here is something more complex, clever and considered. She ducks none of the couple's flaws/impediments/limitations and ultimately she earns the bejesus outta the couple's happy ending.

Ever Sun, Ever Moon by St Ephiny - This WIP is absolutely laced was fraught, palpable tension and it's just heart-thumpingly good. St Ephiny is such a fabulous storyteller—handling character, timelines, dialogue and action with such aplomb—that she's able to push the characters to emotional extremes and still have them feel entirely grounded, believable and true.

My Life Closed Twice by anaross - The most delicious, articulate, nuanced, moral, tough, bitchy, swoon-inducing iteration of Spike in fanfic.

Ketchup and the Crocodile by yellowb - Post resurrection, Buffy runs away to New York. A beautiful, subtle and deliciously genuine story.

Joss Whedon is American. James Marsters is American. The writers and producers are wall-to-wall North American. Spike is English. Shit's gonna go wonky occasionally. I (largely) accept this. Regardless, I want to whinge about the four English-Dialogue-Produced-By-Americans screw-ups that most grated for me.

The first one is when Spike tells Xander to 'fag off' in Doomed. Fag off is not (and could never be) an expression of defiance or dismissal. The only possible meanings for fag are: a cigarette, a gay person, a school pupil who does chores for an older student, or fatiguing drudgery. The phrase is IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM synonymous with 'fuck off'. And Brits have approximately fourteen-billion expressions—bugger off, get stuffed, piss off—that could be used in place of this clunker. The line is nonsensical twaddle—an American writer putting random British-sounding words in a blender and hitting puree—and it pains me.

Issue two: the subtle but consistent misuse of the word ‘right’. For example, in this line from Gone:

SPIKE: Buffy's a great mum. She takes good care of her little sis. Like when Dawn was hanging out too much in my crypt, Buffy put a right stop to it.

Nope, just nope. The word ‘right’ (when used as an intensifier) is a synonym for ‘very’. It functions in much the same way as the intensifier ‘real’ does for Americans:

It was right nice = It was real nice

He was right angry = He was real angry

But you wouldn’t say ‘Buffy put a right stop to it’. Substitute the word ‘real’ for the word ‘right’ in that sentence and you’ll notice that it doesn’t feel quite correct. It’s not an egregious error obviously; it’s just subtly, fractionally off. Which would be fine... except that the line was written by a professional writer with a professional script editor and we live in an interconnected global age and ‘fractionally off’ is still annoying.

There’s another subtle misuse of ‘right’ in The I in Team:

SPIKE (to Giles): You right bastard.

Again, try the substituting ‘real’ for ‘right’. You’ll notice that, while technically correct, the phrase ‘You real bastard’ doesn’t quite feel like a natural usage. The natural usage—the one you’d use 99% of the time—is: ‘You’re a real bastard’. 

Similarly, the natural usage for a Brit is: ‘You’re a right bastard’.

On to pronunciation...

Spike's accent was a stumbling block for me early on with the character but then, joyfully, Fool For Love came along and gave me the ability to headcanon most of the accent slip-ups. Not only did we learn that Spike's accent is canonically Mockney, we also learnt that he had potentially been in the States for decades before his arrival in Sunnydale. So, I largely made my peace with the accent; I stopped thinking of it as inconsistent Estuary English and just labelled it Spike’s idiolect (a complicated cultural mishmash resulting from a deliberate attempt to disguise class markers and from long habitation on both sides of the Atlantic).

That said, there are two pronunciation screw-ups that still chafe. The first is in Harsh Light of Day, when Spike says the word 'squirrels'.

Now... accents shift, it's natural. A couple of decades in America would have had a huge impact on his pronunciation. But I'm going to state categorically that the word 'squirrel' is almost unique in that, the way you say it as a child, is the way you will always say it.

(Side note: as a Londoner living in California, I'd say the words least likely to change to American pronunciation over time are: mum, squirrel, herb and tune.)

Anyway, here's the difference in the pronunciation of squirrel. It's huge. No Brit would ever adopt the American pronunciation naturally/gradually/organically. Particularly not a Brit like Spike who makes a point of holding onto his English parlance and persona.

Ok, on to my last whinge...

While I'm begrudgingly willing to put 'squirrel' in the quibble category—I'm 99% sure that Spike'd pronounce it the English way but, technically, he could have adopted the American pronunciation—his pronunciation of 'poofter' in Crush and 'poof' in Doomed is just plain wrong.

It's a British word. If you're going to use it (and it's offensive, so I wish you wouldn't) you have to bloody use it correctly. Unfortunately, he gives the word a long 'oo' sound like in boot or goose. It should be a short 'oo' like foot or wood.

Anyway, worth noting I think, that one of my four complaints (squirrels) is a simple pronunciation goof that is in no way the fault of the writer.