Thoughts on Spuffy and Fandom

[eilowyn]

"This assessment of fan fiction in terms of realism--and the segmentation of fanfic communities that follows from this--are evident in, as one among many examples, the circulation of Buffy/Spike stories in the BtVS fandom. Stories about a vampire slayer and a vampire allow a great deal of freedom to manipulate or avoid any scripted reality. However

Comments

[kwritten]

hmmm....

[eilowyn]

Yes, hmmm....

[comlodge]

I only 'discovered' BTVS 18months or so ago and through Spike fanvids on youtube and became a Spike fan.

I missed all the fights in fandom:(. I understand they got a bit bloody but you know vampires, to be expected perhaps?

Sorry. As a johnny come lately I find the intro quote rather weird. Spuffy to me just meant a spike/buffy pairing the same as bangel meant angel/buffy. I mean I suppose bike could have been used but really?

[eilowyn]

Yeah, I'm relatively new to fandom, so I get a lot of my information second hand, but I thought this book using Spuffy as an example was interesting and worth sharing.

[comlodge]

Totally relevant and obviously great to get us all thinking and typing. I have read a little of the Bangel vs Spuffy rivalry and sort of glad that I missed it all. It would seen that some just don;t wish to play well with others and if you are a Bangel fan then you seem to have to deride and loathe Spike.

Thanks for posting this. :D

[slaymesoftly]

I didn't get into fandom (in the sense that I even knew it existed) until, I think, season 6. I may have found fanfiction before that in the process of looking for more information about Spike, but I really don't remember. I know I was reading for a long time before I actually learned about fandom, and I was blissfully unaware of the controversy swirling around my ignorant head. :)

I know I was writing (for myself) in a notebook by 2002, posting by 2003, and set up my website (Spuffy Stuff) in 2004. So at least by then, Spuffy was something I felt comfortable was understood by and appreciated by enough people that a web site by that name would attract readers.

[red_satin_doll]

Interesting post! I'll file this under "Everything I wanted to know about fandom but was afraid to ask

[drizzlydaze]

The thing is it seems to me that people want what they want, and sometimes the stories are hard to tell apart - yeah, there's the difference in the language/voice of the vampires (one broods and reads poetry, the other is flamboyant and wears nailpolish, but the basic story templates can be found in each pairing.)

This. Just this. Sometimes while reading Spuffy I find myself subbing in the names of other characters just to see how it goes. (And apart from the telltale speech patterns or habits unique to the character--those are extraneous, after all--they are sometimes eerily well fitting.) It's why I can accept things happening in canon much more than in fanon; there are so many interpretations of the same characters, my own included, that I really can only believe in Word of God. Canon can push things much further than fanon (believably). Even the 'OOC moments' did happen in the show, and technically aren't OOC because the characters did do them. Of course, I'm not referring to the deliberately OOC moments (like... someone really

[red_satin_doll]

*HIGH FIVE*

Sometimes while reading Spuffy I find myself subbing in the names of other characters just to see how it goes. And there's a degree to which that is completely unavoidable, because we all bring ourselves to the stories and characters, so "my Buffy" or "my Spike" or my take on a situation might look quite different to anyone else's. And my Buffy looks different from SMG's perception to Joss's to J.E.'s to - and on and on. We all insert ourselves - in fact, good writers I think know how to do that without entirely losing the characters. That's part of the appeal of AU fics - we can go off in any direction we want. (And, honestly? On the most technical level most if not all fanfiction is AU the minute we change or insert something, even one small thing from what was shown

[drizzlydaze]

I'll add the caveat that as receivers/viewers of the work we are each in a sense co-creators of meaning; f.ex. SMG's concept and Joss's concepts of the characters might be very different to each other, to JE or to ME or DG etc etc.

Oh yeah, definitely. To clarify, I mean some interpretations ignore large pieces of evidence that actually preclude those particular interpretations (thesaurus, please) from being... for want of a better word, valid -- better word, logical. You can't say Spike is just William unless you believe William is a mass murdering nut who also happens to enjoy having stalky shrines for his obsessions. Basically, what you said: there is only so far any character or situation can be stretched before breaking. A less extreme example would be more relevant--people ignoring his actions in As You Were or Seeing Red as evidence for understanding his character, for example. Which brings me to:

I know when I was watching the show I had those moments of "oh so and so wouldn't do that" just as you say; but looking over

[shapinglight]

I wish I had something meaningful to add to this post, but I don't. Except to say that I got into the fandom around the same time as Barb (though I didn't start writing fanfic until years later), and the first Spuffy fics I encountered were pretty dark, for the most part. Lynn's Chain series (sadly unfinished) influenced me a great deal.

I don't think the link of Saber's site works any more. I've often wondered what I'd feel about it if I re-read it now.

I think I'd go with the 'more honest' rather than 'more realistic' description too.

[eilowyn]

Do you have links for the Chain series?

And we'll go with "more honest" from now on.

[gingerwall]

Thanks for sharing this, I definitely agree with your whole analysis, especially about how the relationship being unplanned yet fitting together so well makes the relationship more realistic and meaningful.

[eilowyn]

Thank you!