Buffy The Vampire Slayer

on BtVS, scariness, things i said tonight, & things i said almost a year ago. almost a year ago i said the following: [info]diva_stardust mentioned underworld today. what do these two things have in common? well...my vision of BtVS. maybe i should start doing even longer form long form fic. i love joss. i love BtVS, & i love AtS too. i love each of the characters, except xander in moments. & i do have to admit that largely, i find anya pretty useless. but that aside, i’ve always wanted to see BtVS as pure, dark drama. i make jokes about david lynch twistedness & things like that. but BtVS as interpreted by lynch would be true horror. like the kind you have bad dreams about. & i hate to say that i’m disatisfied with whedon’s vision, but there are things that, if different, darker, i’d be like "whoa nelly" about. & i’m not talking about drastic changes. there’s an underlying cheesiness to a lot of things—mainly to the villains. spike’s even a victim of cheesiness time & again. angel, not so much. but whedon rescues himself from the velveeta with firefly more than he has anywhere else. so, anyway...here’s my two cents. or $1.02 maybe. what would i change? (& of course, this is a call for you to go all memey with what you’d change.)

warning, this is turning lots of things on their collective ear that may or may not need to be turned. & they might look decidedly twisted in the morning so that i say, once again, "the hell?!" & just because i reach, or throw something out in the ring, doesn’t necessarily mean that i feel this way all the time...

season 1—there are ways to be wrapped up in buffy’s teen drama without cringing. i can barely watch this season anymore. it was fun & funny & set us up for a lot of things in the future, but largely, it was just cheesy. other shows have done teeniness better. my so-called life for example. there was so much shock & awe in season 1—the mantis lady, the puppet, fruitpunch master, blah blah blah. as cringe-worthy as the relationship with angel was, it was the only thing that had any real mystery. angel was the only shadowy character whose motivations you didn’t know immediately. where would i go with this? confuse everyone’s motives. buffy’s our angela chase, willow’s our brainy rae-anne, xander is our brian krakow. we know our archetypes, and they don’t need to be stripped so bare. give us ambigious desires, give us ambigous characters. let us wonder if giles is a mentor or a lecherous guide. let us wonder if buffy is just a little self-absorbed cunt, or if she takes her mission seriously. let us wonder if willow would ever betray her friends to save her grades, or if xander would come on too strong without going all hyaena-y in S2. make the master scary, not a buffoon. make his minions scary. luke could be scary...brian thompson was terrifying as ABH in the x-files only seasons before. make us really, really frightened we’ll lose someone.

with that in mind, filter it through other seasons. give us scary vamps & scary demons. not pathetic bumbling monsters. throughout the series, there was never anyone as scary as faith. except maybe the first evil at points. no one was ever as twisted, as vulnerable, as potent, & as scared or real as faith. not even buffy at her worst.

gah. i can’t do this anymore. i feel like i’m critiquing whedon, which he deserves, because all work deserves criticism. & criticism isn’t always bad...usually it’s just picking apart.

but elegance is what the entire production lacks. AtS has elegance. firefly was majestic with it. BtVS never has that. compared to the firefly it’s saved by the bell with vampires. dammit joss, redo BtVS and give us villains as scary as the reivers. give us demons we can’t see that strike fear into everyone, good & bad alike. give us "hush" every goddamned week, but don’t let us see the gentlemen. give us elegance in our villains, not shempy minions who dress like shit & get taken down in 3.5 seconds.

call me shallow, but what do i want most? i want the factory to be closer to the factory (think 24-hour party people) than the shirt-tales treehouse (showing my age there). it should be a fucking fetish-ball all the time. it should be peopled with some seriously scary folks in seriously scary costumes. spike should have a floor-length coat & wear high-polish jackboots and a bondage collar. dru should wear a corset & panniers...all the time. there should be child minions in little hitler youth uniforms. & hangers-on in high fashion a la underworld. we should feel the decadence & darkness & see it apparent in everything. we get a glimpse of it with harmony’s art-deco bedroom, or in angel’s quan yin in the glass case. & in season 4, rather than laughing at the initiative & spike’s bumbling about with the chip, we need to see him go through the loss of that privelege, of the decadence, & darkness. see him really become dependent.

what do i want in violence? i want wirework & real badass martial artiness. i want throats ripped out & mouths & shirtfronts drenched with blood after a kill.

what do i want for buffy? i really want to feel for her, even if it’s bad. i want to really see that the shallowness & the vanity is a coping mechanism for dealing with what she is. i want to see her go through periods where she wonders if she is just really a tool of the council, to see her acting as a tool. i want periods of nihilism. & periods of violent rejection of everything. & how cruel can i get? i want to see buffy really, really fall in love with spike but know he has to be a dirty secret, & see it tear her up because to love him she’s betraying everything. i want a junkie narrative, not a "just say no" campaign.

so yeah, i’m off base & all this probably sounds like crazy rambling. but i think this is why we write fic. because we can take the blinders off & take BtVS (or whatever fandom we write in) out of the cage it lives in & reach as far as we can. [info]herself_nyc takes it dark to new york, [info]lovesbitca takes it darker & to london, [info]redrover1980 turns it on its ear & into the cornbelt, [info]ladycat777 makes it pittsburgh nasty. i can go on, but all of those of us who read or write slightly outside of canon seem to be driven by the same things, & that’s to push the constraints that joss put on buffy & those who touched her. & i sense our reaction to it, our continuous wanking, is the source of part of the dissatisfaction with season 7. i finally get it now.

& tonight, while poking fun at steve severin (& possibly a little at siouxsie & the banshees), i said the following to [info]darling_effect who was strong enough not to get sucked in...

::wishes that ME’s vampires were half as scary as bob::

oh the places spike & angel could’ve taken everyone if we’d been really, really afraid the way we were of bob. i’m still freaked out by bob, possessed leland, & possessed coop. "i need to brush my teeth... how is annie? how’s annie? how’s annie?!"

gah. ME came close with the "early one morning" action, but no cigar. not even a cigarette. or a tipped cigarillo.

& i continue to wank... so yeah. occasionally, i have these fantasies about BtVS & AtS & how they could’ve been on HBO or showtime. i think about the following:

 spike with his existing beauty, vulnerability, slave-to-love-ness, snarkiness while being truly vicious. a complete & total study in contrasts—utter beauty & faithfullness that comes from something courtly & pure of heart while being the embodiment of demonic depravity. like strawberries & cream with broken glass.

 BtVS angelus being really, really scary in contrast to a sensetive, gentle, perfect-boyfriend angel who doesn’t creep me the hell out like angel really did. AtS angelus more of the same in contrast to something a man struggling between his baser & desires & some ideal of being true, pure, & courtly.

& it should be clear that the spike above learned his cruelty & depravity at angelus’ hands, & that spike is merely an innovative apprentice, while angel is the master. this angelus would still be about the art of the kill, while spike would be about the thrill of the fight.

& spike/angel(us)? oh yeah. like this.

 darla & dru as amoral succubi. not immoral, not merely evil, but so jaded they can’t even bother to care about anything but their own fulfillment. some days sweet & beautiful & in love with life & unlife, & some days their places are abbatoirs.

 the master (AKA fruit-punch mouth) not a buffoon. i was never satisfied with his depravity. his desire to kill buffy should have a strong sexual component. there should be deeper reasons for his obsession than just killing a slayer. his pursual of buffy should be marked with the same erotic charge as angel’s & spike’s.

 buffy as something rawer, more deeply split between the slayer & the girl. the girl as a front to hide the slayer & the slayer as a front to hide the fragile girl. the slayer something dark, like in the wish. & when buffy falls in love with angel, & with spike, it’s both parts of her in love—the girl in love with the parts of the men that are left, the parts of the men that the demon has enriched, & the slayer in love with the demon, a little slave to it, a lot fascinated by it.

& the sex? truly visceral. like some of the spuffy dailies from S6. dark, savage, intense, & beautifully tender all at once. & hey, she could have a little of that with angel before she has a lot of it with spike. dead things dailies style sex, only more of it. we should see buffy on her knees for spike in all senses. we should see spike go down, & not just on the buffybot. we should see buffy under the naked push-ups of gone, see her legs around spike’s hips, or better yet higher up so we know how deep (or where) she’s getting it. (guh. just thinking about it.) & no pretty broadcast TV soap kissing. cable kissing. it needs the realness of real kissing, that isn’t entirely pretty. where you see tongue, biting, teeth bumping. in the silhouetted scene at the end of tabula rasa we should see how urgent the kiss is, but see how soft it can be. see spike’s tongue push into buffy’s mouth, instead of the hard TV kissing we got.

we should see a languid bed scene in S2 with angelus, dru, & a broken spike experiencing dru’s pleasure vicariously, watching her with angel with a ringside lie-down. naked in bed with the woman he loves and the man she would leave him for.

& the scoobies...

 xander should get really nasty at some point. we should see more the pack xander, only not with the hyaena action. we should see xander as angry, hurt, confused, & downright twisted as adolescent boys can be. he should have to redeem himself, have to win back buffy’s & willow’s trust. & i think maybe he should get a chance with both of them...to seriously fuck up the little group.

 willow. we should see the magic crack not as magic crack, but as power without the proper tools to control & use it. & we should see the development earlier. willow’s insecurities manifesting themselves through manipulation. like amy, only not so anvil-over-the-head MoTW malevolent. subtle enough that we see it through seasons (plural), without really noticing the seriousness until it’s too late. & she should have to redeem herself too.

 giles. just needs to be sexualized. he’s buffy’s mentor, her father, her moral protector. i think he should try to play closer to the council’s game of total control of the slayer. (the slayer as tool.) & a portion of that control should be over her sexuality. he should espouse some sort of moral imperative. & be redeemed through seasons (much like willow’s downward spiral) worth of learning how buffy ticks, how her not playing by the rules can make the slayer a better tool, or a one-woman army, how she can win that through control over her own body (including her sexuality). & that he should learn (perhaps instead of buffy—or with buffy) the way that slayers are created—the violation. & see buffy’s reclaiming of the situation (through "sleeping with the enemy") as a source of power, a search for wholeness.

 BtVS wesley. the truly sick fuck we see in AtS S3 with justine in the closet. i like wesley best when he’s twisted. i don’t buy sensetive wesley. well, maybe i do. but i’ve always seen him as truly perverse. like perverse in the classical perverse sense—a bit malevolent, intensely sexual, etc.

 gunn. i want to believe that gunn was a gansta & a truly bad mothafucka.

 fred. just not screechy. please.

 cordelia. wouldn’t change a thing, except her refreshing shallowness would have to change in tone to meet all the other changes. & her eventual enlightenment (before the ridiculous other dimension crap), would be different as well. AtS S1 & S2 cordy is my favorite. maybe some truly skeevy acting business. like porn.

& yeah, i realise i’ve left people out, but all of this has rather exhausted me.

& yeah, so i’m being critical of whedon. but i wouldn’t be critical if i didn’t love his show. there are just huge limitations with broadcast TV & i wish there’d been the freedom to show us something really, really spectacular. i keep going back to david lynch & twin peaks, but TP was the first & last time i remember truly being scared (shitless) by TV. the maddie ferguson murder scene? the most brutal TV ever aired. & it lasted across a commercial break like the AR in SR, but went further. the penultimate episode when coop goes into the black lodge to find annie blackburn—with little jimmy scott singing, the flickering light, & sheryl lee screeching? terrifying. really. the scene in the hospital with the one-armed man without his haliperidol? amazing. the moments when you just see bob for a flicker? & leland coming apart in the interrogation room, flickering back & forth between himself (a grieving father who raped & killed his dauthter) & bob (the demon who drove him to do it). we should see this brutality in the whedonverse. it would be deeply, deeply satisfying.

& at the same time, maybe other people don’t need the darkness. it’s rich, beautiful, seductive. & i think that’s why those of us who love spike & angel (in all of their parts) are suckers for. the beauty, the sexuality of darkness. the sexuality of evil. & now that i type it, it sounds really dumb. but i think that’s where i go with fic. that’s what makes up my!spike(TM) & so many other spikes.

the most fictacular relationship that typifies all of this is spike/jack in [info]herself_nyc’s "what she deserves" & "lovingkindness." i applauded for jack at [info]writercon. the spike/jack downward spiral is so beautiful. it’s sexy, it’s hot, it’s painful, & it’s ugly ugly ugly. that’s what i want with S6 spuffy. gah.

& i should stop now or i’ll never get to bed tonight. this is why we should have more fan-gatherings. & drink more. because stuff like this just keeps coming.

& why the bloody hell am i thinking so goddamned much about shows that are over. gah!