Anita Blake/Buffy the Vampire Slayer summary; meta on my move away from writing AB
This post has three things: An important safety tip on LJ, an Anita Blake/Buffy the Vampire Slayer summary, and a rambling dissertation on why I find it so damn hard to write Anita Blake these days.
Don't Cross the Streams
Important news tip about LJ - they are running a heavy cache on the site if you're not logged in, so new posts may not be showing up. Try refreshing, dumping your cache, and make sure you're logged in.
Summary
I think I finally figured out a new take on an Anita Blake/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover. More about that after the epic summary.
from averzierlia: The Darkness Inside (Anita Blake/Buffy)
In the Buffy-verse
Everyone in St. Louis knows who she is.
The vampires call her Crazy Anita, imaging false worlds where vampires are known, werewolves and witches are everywhere, and the supernatural is just another part of life. They say this crazy girl thinks she can raise the dead and kill the undead, but she's no slayer, no witch. She's just a girl.
(The vampires don't talk about the last two vampires who decided to go up against crazy Anita, to see if they could get a bit of entertainment before dinner.
Anita's still around. They aren't. You figure it out.)
Dawn Summers meets Anita Blake, biology doctoral student, on the second day of classes at the University of Missouri, when Dawn stumbles late into Anita's three o'clock biology lab. At first, Dawn's not sure what to make of the woman - she seems fine in class, but some of the other students tell Dawn that Anita had a mental breakdown a few years ago and went totally off the rails. Normally Dawn wouldn't pay attention to any of that kind of talk, but Anita reminds her far too much of Faith for Dawn's comfort.
As time progresses and Dawn gets to know more about Anita, does Dawn realize that something is not right with Anita. Something bad.
Only later does Dawn discover Anita's horrible secret - that once upon a time, Anita Blake closed her eyes and made a wish. A wish that, if undone, will destroy Dawn's entire world!
And now for some thoughts on the aforementioned summary:
See, there are a lot of mashups where Buffy and Anita both live in the same world, and differences in vampire physiology and preternatural situations are glossed over, or chalked up to Hellmouthyness. There are also several stories out there where Buffy characters get thrown into the Anita Blake world. To date, I haven't seen ones where Anita is tossed into the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world.
(Side note: If there are such fics, can you toss a rec my way? Thanks.)
I started the summary with the idea that I'd like to go on a rip of "Normal Again" (where Buffy wakes up in a mental hospital and realizes that her life in Sunnydale is just a hallucination, only this would be Anita waking up in the BtVS world), then realized that the idea was just a bit too depressing (even if I'm not writing the story for real). So it morphed into a "Wish" take-off, with Anita getting fed up with her life one day and wishing herself out of it, and landing in the Buffy world.
And while I know that the situation with vamp!Willow showed those of us on the other side of the fourth wall that things work more like alternate dimensions, there's the risk in the world itself that the Vengeance Demons would use the opportunity to make things hell for all involved, hence the tinge of danger at the end of the summary.
But yeah. An idea for a fic :)
Meta: And now, some thoughts on Anita Blake.
Those of you who have been around for a while will have noticed that I lost the enthusiasm for writing in the Anita Blake world a few years ago, soon after the Dear Negative Reader situation. I haven't been reading the latest AB books and have no idea what's happening in that world these days.
Unfortunately, this can happen at anytime, in any fandom, when the creative team behind your show/book/movie of choice decides to take the source material in a direction that doesn't gel with your take on things. I'm not saying they are wrong; it's their baby, they can do whatever they want with their stories. But as a fan, I retain the right to not be interested in change of direction.
Another example I can use myself is Supernatural. I was really into things for the first four seasons, but when they first started moving Sam onto the demon!blood addict thing, I started to lose interest as the direction the creative line took a) didn't mesh with my initial interest in the show, and b) didn't mesh with my interpretation of the characters. In the case of SPN, I didn't get all weepy and curse the writers to the heavens, I just found myself no longer wanting to watch the show when it aired, and not really minding if I missed an episode or two. Now I haven't seen most of this season and don't really mind.
Going back to Anita Blake: It took me a while to realize why I, Mhalachai, wasn't into the direction LKH was taking the books, and it has more to do with my particular preferred brand of heroine/hero. I prefer stories about the lone hero, removed from their support network and forced to overcome the odds without backup or support. Hell, I even started an AB AU where Anita was thrown back in time without any support from any of her guys (Switchback).
So, as Anita got tied to more people and things got more complicated, I found my interest waning. That wasn't really what I personally wanted to read, so I started to drift.
This disconnect does make me sad, as I love (present tense) the early AB books, a large part of which was Anita trying so desperately to maintain her independence in the face of those which would use her for her powers. My fave AB book is Obsidian Butterfly, in which Anita is more alone than usual, being off in New Mexico with only Edward and Olaf for support (a sentence which would make anyone shudder). I miss that character. But please don't get me wrong - power to the author in taking her character where she wants them to go. Creative control and all that.
There's an odd disconnect in trying to be enthused about writing fanfic while drifting away from the source material. Partly it's because I know that any AB I write now will be so AU from the books, but also because my obsessions interests have moved on to other loner heroes. My continuing fascination with John Sheppard may or may not have something to do with this.
So oh my god tl;dr - it's interesting how our interest or disinterest in source material can influence how engaged we are in fanfic.
I'm going to stop now.
Don't Cross the Streams
Important news tip about LJ - they are running a heavy cache on the site if you're not logged in, so new posts may not be showing up. Try refreshing, dumping your cache, and make sure you're logged in.
Summary
I think I finally figured out a new take on an Anita Blake/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover. More about that after the epic summary.
from averzierlia: The Darkness Inside (Anita Blake/Buffy)
In the Buffy-verse
Everyone in St. Louis knows who she is.
The vampires call her Crazy Anita, imaging false worlds where vampires are known, werewolves and witches are everywhere, and the supernatural is just another part of life. They say this crazy girl thinks she can raise the dead and kill the undead, but she's no slayer, no witch. She's just a girl.
(The vampires don't talk about the last two vampires who decided to go up against crazy Anita, to see if they could get a bit of entertainment before dinner.
Anita's still around. They aren't. You figure it out.)
Dawn Summers meets Anita Blake, biology doctoral student, on the second day of classes at the University of Missouri, when Dawn stumbles late into Anita's three o'clock biology lab. At first, Dawn's not sure what to make of the woman - she seems fine in class, but some of the other students tell Dawn that Anita had a mental breakdown a few years ago and went totally off the rails. Normally Dawn wouldn't pay attention to any of that kind of talk, but Anita reminds her far too much of Faith for Dawn's comfort.
As time progresses and Dawn gets to know more about Anita, does Dawn realize that something is not right with Anita. Something bad.
Only later does Dawn discover Anita's horrible secret - that once upon a time, Anita Blake closed her eyes and made a wish. A wish that, if undone, will destroy Dawn's entire world!
And now for some thoughts on the aforementioned summary:
See, there are a lot of mashups where Buffy and Anita both live in the same world, and differences in vampire physiology and preternatural situations are glossed over, or chalked up to Hellmouthyness. There are also several stories out there where Buffy characters get thrown into the Anita Blake world. To date, I haven't seen ones where Anita is tossed into the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world.
(Side note: If there are such fics, can you toss a rec my way? Thanks.)
I started the summary with the idea that I'd like to go on a rip of "Normal Again" (where Buffy wakes up in a mental hospital and realizes that her life in Sunnydale is just a hallucination, only this would be Anita waking up in the BtVS world), then realized that the idea was just a bit too depressing (even if I'm not writing the story for real). So it morphed into a "Wish" take-off, with Anita getting fed up with her life one day and wishing herself out of it, and landing in the Buffy world.
And while I know that the situation with vamp!Willow showed those of us on the other side of the fourth wall that things work more like alternate dimensions, there's the risk in the world itself that the Vengeance Demons would use the opportunity to make things hell for all involved, hence the tinge of danger at the end of the summary.
But yeah. An idea for a fic :)
Meta: And now, some thoughts on Anita Blake.
Those of you who have been around for a while will have noticed that I lost the enthusiasm for writing in the Anita Blake world a few years ago, soon after the Dear Negative Reader situation. I haven't been reading the latest AB books and have no idea what's happening in that world these days.
Unfortunately, this can happen at anytime, in any fandom, when the creative team behind your show/book/movie of choice decides to take the source material in a direction that doesn't gel with your take on things. I'm not saying they are wrong; it's their baby, they can do whatever they want with their stories. But as a fan, I retain the right to not be interested in change of direction.
Another example I can use myself is Supernatural. I was really into things for the first four seasons, but when they first started moving Sam onto the demon!blood addict thing, I started to lose interest as the direction the creative line took a) didn't mesh with my initial interest in the show, and b) didn't mesh with my interpretation of the characters. In the case of SPN, I didn't get all weepy and curse the writers to the heavens, I just found myself no longer wanting to watch the show when it aired, and not really minding if I missed an episode or two. Now I haven't seen most of this season and don't really mind.
Going back to Anita Blake: It took me a while to realize why I, Mhalachai, wasn't into the direction LKH was taking the books, and it has more to do with my particular preferred brand of heroine/hero. I prefer stories about the lone hero, removed from their support network and forced to overcome the odds without backup or support. Hell, I even started an AB AU where Anita was thrown back in time without any support from any of her guys (Switchback).
So, as Anita got tied to more people and things got more complicated, I found my interest waning. That wasn't really what I personally wanted to read, so I started to drift.
This disconnect does make me sad, as I love (present tense) the early AB books, a large part of which was Anita trying so desperately to maintain her independence in the face of those which would use her for her powers. My fave AB book is Obsidian Butterfly, in which Anita is more alone than usual, being off in New Mexico with only Edward and Olaf for support (a sentence which would make anyone shudder). I miss that character. But please don't get me wrong - power to the author in taking her character where she wants them to go. Creative control and all that.
There's an odd disconnect in trying to be enthused about writing fanfic while drifting away from the source material. Partly it's because I know that any AB I write now will be so AU from the books, but also because my obsessions interests have moved on to other loner heroes. My continuing fascination with John Sheppard may or may not have something to do with this.
So oh my god tl;dr - it's interesting how our interest or disinterest in source material can influence how engaged we are in fanfic.
I'm going to stop now.