An award - and some thoughts on Buffy/Angel
Yay! I've got a shiny award in the 4-th round of No Rest For the Wicked awards as the runner-up in the category "I Was Made To Love You" (best romance/fluff) for my fic A Ghost Story.
It's a big surprise because a) the story was written 3 years ago and b) it's a Buffy/Angel fic (while the overwhelming majority of my f-list are Spuffy shippers).
Anyway, the award made me think again about Buffy/Angel on TV and in season 8.
When I watched early seasons of BtVS for the first time, in 2000-2001, my daughter was slightly younger than Buffy. So I watched the show through Giles and Joyce's eyes. Besides, I was utterly spoiled up to season 4 and I knew from the very beginning that Buffy and Angel would go their separate ways in their respective shows. So, while I enjoyed their story a lot, I never felt invested enough to discuss them online or to read and write fanfiction about them (I vaguely remember composing an outline of a Spike/Dru fic I tried to get off the ground, but it hasn't worked out.)
Then, in 2002, I watched in quick succession season 5 (in spring), 6 (in summer) and I started watching season 7 in the fall with the rest of the world. I got hooked on Spuffy since "Intervention" and never looked back. It was Spuffy that lured me into the online fandom. It's still Spuffy that keeps me here. I love writing other pairings, but I always return to my OTP.
That said, I find the current developments on Buffy/Angel front interesting. For a long time the couple was mostly perceived and treated in media as the ultimate teenage romance. He is handsome and mysterious. She is perky and beautiful. Their love is sweet and doomed, because they belong to different worlds. It was so easy to see them as perfect romantic archetypes.
But Joss didn't aim for the romance - the Angelus arc demonstrated that Joss saw Buffy and Angel's story as a dark cautionaly tale. And now he finally can tell the tale his way, without TV censorship.
Ironically, for once, Buffy/Angel fans got what they wanted. Buffy and Angel had sex and procreated a child. Except their sex tore a hole in the universe and caused a demonic invasion. And their child is a soulless monster who's about to destroy our world. And the child's soul - the Seed of Wonder - will most likely be the bone of contention between mother and father, Buffy and Angel. The destruction of the Seed would destroy all magic and save our world, so Buffy will most likely go for its destruction. Destruction of the potential soul of her child that she was manipulated into procreating. While Angel, burdened by his daddy issues and soul issues, will have to make an impossible choice between his horrible soulless child and Buffy.
It's not a teenage romance anymore. Right now, Buffy and Angel are so screwed-up, that Buffy/Spike affair in season 6 looks fluffy in comparison. Joss uses Buffy and Angel to create an epic tragedy in the grand traditions of Sophocles and Euripides with eternal themes of love, sex, betrayal and death. It's intense, visceral and painful. It's a face-off or two worldviews, two agendas, two complex personalities who will fight, will shag and will hate each other till it makes them quiver, to paraphrase one bloody awful poet.
Finally Joss got the chance to fully realize all the potential of Buffy/Angel story. And for the first time I don't know what's in store for them. A have a couple of ideas, but I'm not sure. And I'm really curious to find out where Joss leads them. Although I will most likely hate the outcome - because I'm too invested in Buffy to get aesthetic pleasure from her trials.
It's a big surprise because a) the story was written 3 years ago and b) it's a Buffy/Angel fic (while the overwhelming majority of my f-list are Spuffy shippers).
Anyway, the award made me think again about Buffy/Angel on TV and in season 8.
When I watched early seasons of BtVS for the first time, in 2000-2001, my daughter was slightly younger than Buffy. So I watched the show through Giles and Joyce's eyes. Besides, I was utterly spoiled up to season 4 and I knew from the very beginning that Buffy and Angel would go their separate ways in their respective shows. So, while I enjoyed their story a lot, I never felt invested enough to discuss them online or to read and write fanfiction about them (I vaguely remember composing an outline of a Spike/Dru fic I tried to get off the ground, but it hasn't worked out.)
Then, in 2002, I watched in quick succession season 5 (in spring), 6 (in summer) and I started watching season 7 in the fall with the rest of the world. I got hooked on Spuffy since "Intervention" and never looked back. It was Spuffy that lured me into the online fandom. It's still Spuffy that keeps me here. I love writing other pairings, but I always return to my OTP.
That said, I find the current developments on Buffy/Angel front interesting. For a long time the couple was mostly perceived and treated in media as the ultimate teenage romance. He is handsome and mysterious. She is perky and beautiful. Their love is sweet and doomed, because they belong to different worlds. It was so easy to see them as perfect romantic archetypes.
But Joss didn't aim for the romance - the Angelus arc demonstrated that Joss saw Buffy and Angel's story as a dark cautionaly tale. And now he finally can tell the tale his way, without TV censorship.
Ironically, for once, Buffy/Angel fans got what they wanted. Buffy and Angel had sex and procreated a child. Except their sex tore a hole in the universe and caused a demonic invasion. And their child is a soulless monster who's about to destroy our world. And the child's soul - the Seed of Wonder - will most likely be the bone of contention between mother and father, Buffy and Angel. The destruction of the Seed would destroy all magic and save our world, so Buffy will most likely go for its destruction. Destruction of the potential soul of her child that she was manipulated into procreating. While Angel, burdened by his daddy issues and soul issues, will have to make an impossible choice between his horrible soulless child and Buffy.
It's not a teenage romance anymore. Right now, Buffy and Angel are so screwed-up, that Buffy/Spike affair in season 6 looks fluffy in comparison. Joss uses Buffy and Angel to create an epic tragedy in the grand traditions of Sophocles and Euripides with eternal themes of love, sex, betrayal and death. It's intense, visceral and painful. It's a face-off or two worldviews, two agendas, two complex personalities who will fight, will shag and will hate each other till it makes them quiver, to paraphrase one bloody awful poet.
Finally Joss got the chance to fully realize all the potential of Buffy/Angel story. And for the first time I don't know what's in store for them. A have a couple of ideas, but I'm not sure. And I'm really curious to find out where Joss leads them. Although I will most likely hate the outcome - because I'm too invested in Buffy to get aesthetic pleasure from her trials.