Fanon thoughts.

[butterfly]

So, liviapenn was saying smart things about fanon.

Which, naturally, led me to consider my own uses of fanon.

Xander's family was fanon way before it was canon. It was pretty much accepted that his family bit the big one. But other Buffy fanon ideas have, over the course of the show, been Jossed into oblivion. Spike being evil before he was turned was a huge fanon belief before Fool for Love aired.

To move into the specific subject that livia mentioned, there's tons of fanon that's contradicted by the show that people still use. Childe and Childer being a favorite of mine. Well, a favorite to make fun of. Even the Master didn't use those terms. Spike and Angel probably wouldn't ever, expecially when you consider the mocking of Anne Rice that they had going on in School Hard. Also, we know that vamps don't cry blood. We've seen weepy vamps. No blood tears here, mate.

The biggest mischaracterization in slash is the bitchifying of Buffy. You want Xander to move to L.A. to live with Spike, Angel, and Doyle, that's all fine and good, but you lose me completely when you imply that Buffy isn't affected at all by Xander leaving until he mention aforementioned foursome. Whether or not you share my deep conviction of Buffy's affection for Xander, the show does, in fact, show that she cares about him and would miss him if he left (The Freshman, Normal Again).

Making Buffy a bitch just makes the author look bad. And it's interesting that many slash fics with Xander do that, because in most fandoms, you only bitchify the canon girlfriend. So, it's to me, you're saying that Buffy is so important to Xander that he couldn't leave unless she became the bitchiest woman who ever lived.

And while we're talking about Buffy, let's talk about Willow-Sue, a character with no foundation in show canon. Willow is smart. Willow is even cool sometimes. Willow is not the Uberhero of All Time, able to fight harder than Buffy, be the most understanding person in the world and steal boyfriends in a single bound.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Minion seems to be used.

Okay, yes, by Harmony.

Actually, the Spike thing is interesting, because Angel isn't his Sire. Which is Joss becing a bitch really, but, it's canon. And, yeah, Darla taught Angel things, but she was not thinking of him as a child.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Ok, if you wanna get really technical, Joss said (after he retconned the whole fucking S/A thing in order to do FFL and keep Marsters around without making both his leading men slashier than they already were- but I digress into bitterness here) "a Sire is anyone further up the line. So Angel is Spike's Sire in that sense, and so is Darla."

However. Spike clearly referred to Angel, and only Angel as his Sire, not once but twice, and in front of others. So he at least obviously *thinks* of Angel(us) as his Sire, whereas his relationship with Drusilla has always been that of lover. An easy interpretation would be that Drusilla sired him (ie bit him, Made him, Turned him , etc.) as seen in FFL, but that Angelus taught him what he needed to know in order to survive, hence the Yoda line in School Hard.

And obviously Darla did not think of Angelus as a CHILD, the very word is pretty much why I use the alternate spelling, because the thought of that kind of thing makes even my kinky slasher self go EW! She did, however, clearly see him as a posession of sorts, she showed him off to her own Sire and yet had no qualms about hitting him over the head to save her own ass. Additionally, she did train him well, and that is what counts in terms of this argument. He survived her attack(s), and in the end, he survived HER.

I do not claim that all 'Sire/Childe'relationships are, as is commonly assumed in fanon, in some way romantic. However, with regard to the Fanged Four, a veritable plethora of familial terms have been used in canon (Grandmother, granddaughter, my boy) which leads me to believe we are at least supposed to assume some sort of bonding took place that went beyond the "norms" of what we see portrayed with other, less long lasting vamps in the Jossverse.

And, as I said, I will have no choice BUT to keep on using the word, until Joss sees fit to provide us with an alternative. Considering he can't even get Spike's age down pat, I shan't hold my breath.

Re:

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Well, the reason that I don't think Childe is appropriate is because it does make me think child. Plus, I can't picture any of our vamps thinking it with a straight face.