5 Gen Buffy-Centered Fics

[snickfic]

Almost done, folks! It seems I saved most of the genfics for last. Here are five, all fairly short, about Buffy Summers.

1. The Last Fingers of Leaf, by quinara
post-NFA
Buffy and Illyria. A dragon. Pizza. Combined, they’re an unexpected pleasure as the two find commonalities that I’d never have thought of. Poignant and elegantly written.

2. Feast and Famine, by mabus101
spans series
Buffy character study, via food. A rather heartbreaking fanwank of SMG's weight loss over the course of the show. Now I want to take Buffy home and let her eat as much as she wants.

3. The Long-Term Benefits of Sunscreen, by deird1
pre-series
Another character study, this time almost all in the form of questions asked of Buffy as she first comes into her Slaying power. The true wonder of this fic is how I can tell who's speaking just about every single line, with nary a dialogue tag in sight. Another fic that makes me want to give Buffy lots of hugs.

4. Please Don't Forgive Me, by jnb71976
S6
Tara and Buffy and the power of club soda to remove stains, if not other things. Buffy was so alone in S6; I love seeing any fic where she gets to connect even a little bit.

5. Three Jewels, by ladyofthelog
S8
These are a few moments of near-peace Buffy and Oz snatch together after she brings the crew to Tibet in the submarine. Almost shippy but not quite, this is lovely in its journey and heartbreaking in its conclusion.

Comments

[snickfic]

Ha ha. Yeah, I thought about writing up some classics for this year's session, but I'm pretty sure everything I might have recced I've already recced for a previous session.

And your right, Buffy in particular seems to attract very little genfic even compared to the other characters, which I find peculiar. It makes the good stuff that much more exciting to find. :)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I once read online someone say (not on LJ) that "buffy wasn't anyone's favorite character" in fandom which is an ASTONISHING thing to say. And dead wrong - but the amount of love she gets seems very small, considering that she's the protagonist of the show. If I went by fanfics, I'd assume she was a supporting character.

I do think gender plays into it a lot because we're used to men being the center of the story and women, not so much. (the comics betray this in a big, big way) I mean beyond the fact that people don't 'like buffy' that's pretty much all I've got.

Have you read the Buffy & Tara friendship fic clockwork_hart1 wrote to fill my prompt, "Talk to Me"?
http://clockwork-hart1.livejournal.com/11852.html She's also recently written a tara fic during Glory's torture in Tough Love, a Kennedy fic, Jenny/Giles, etc. Good stuff.

[clockwork-hart1.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're doing it again - the reccing thing (for which I thank you profusely) - you see what I mean about missing scenes being my crack now?

I'm glad they affect you enough to be doing this all the time!

And this top 5 list is so important because of everything you've said here - Buffy needs, no, deserves far more love than she's granted.

We're fixing this, yes?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Oh hon I haven't written my post yet rec'ing your Chosen fic or your Tara in Tough Love fic, so my work isn't near done! (And I also missed the deadline and didn't post anything on this season's Buffyverse top 5 - I AM PISSED WITH MYSELF.)

But trust, I wouldn't rec anything I didn't enjoy or think worth reading.

Buffy needs, no, deserves far more love than she's granted. We're fixing this, yes?

THE REVOLUTION BEGINS HERE.

[clockwork-hart1.livejournal.com]

I've not read enough, or bookmarked enough to merit doing a top 5 - and the stuff I read is so random that it would fit in no kind of coherent little niche - which is why, even though I was very aware of it - and have discovered many an awesome fic from it - I didn't participate.

But trust, I wouldn't rec anything I didn't enjoy or think worth reading.

Then I blush that you continue to find my work worth reading.

THE REVOLUTION BEGINS HERE

IT BEGINS NOW.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

the stuff I read is so random that it would fit in no kind of coherent little niche -

that's probably one of the biggest challenges. I wanted to do video recs but how to "catagorize" them? Last January I cheated a bit when I did my meta rec posts. I just didn't have my stuff together this year - but then again I just found two or three more amazing vids just this week, so I guess it's ok - I can do it on my own journal. but I like expanding the top 5 from just fic recs if possible.

I blush that you continue to find my work worth reading

Then prepare for permanent blush-mode, sweetie.

IT BEGINS NOW.

YES!

[snickfic]

I mean, I think Dawn and Willow both get more gen and friendship attention than Buffy does - I don't think it's solely a gender thing. But beyond that, I've got nothing.

Ooh, Buffy+Tara! I'm not familiar with that author. I'll put them on my list of things to look at. :)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I used to have a small list of bookmarked B & T fics in my old puter so I'm having to redo - this one is a lovely "deleted scene" where Buffy goes to tara for support after breaking it off with Spike in AYW, and tara needs some support as well. (I specifically requested a Tara who wasn't a "perfect saint".) Lucy is one of my newest fandom friends and she's lovely, and very talented - and she wrote it while in the hospital with a freaking feeding tube! (I am not worthy...)

I think Dawn and Willow both get more gen and friendship attention than Buffy does

Well if Buffy's not getting the friendship attention they do, then who are Dawn and willow getting it with? If not Buffy then obviously....Spike and Xander, respectively. Tara was Dawn's friend before Spike was, and they continue to have a warm relationship in S6 - Dawn LOVES Tara - and there are not nearly the number of Dawn & Tara friendship fics compared to Dawn & Spike. Now Xander was Willow's best friend before Buffy was (although Buffy seems to have been her first close female friend that we know of - or rather we don't know), so I can understand that, they have a lot of history in canon, significant moments etc.

But thousands of Dawn & Spike fics vs almost zero Dawn & Tara fics? Maybe it's not "gender" because people say they love Tara (if only because she's not Buffy), but nothing compares to the hypnotic quality of the shiny bleahed-blond vampire who also just happens to be a dude. And has many of the qualities people hate in Buffy. People love Tara's "wisdom" her "kindness" etc but they're not interested in her enough to explore her character or write about her.

So I'm back to square one. think it's largely unexamined; we don't mean to be "sexist", we like who we like, but we've been conditioned & encouraged to like certain things/qualities/people and reject others.

[snickfic]

While I absolutely agree that, as you say, "we've been conditioned & encouraged to like certain things/qualities/people and reject others," that doesn't explain why Willow seems to get more character studies than Buffy does, independent of any male characters that are in them, or why Buffy doesn't have, say, more genfic with Xander or Giles than has thus far been produced. That's what I'm saying. Even comparing like with like, Buffy seems to get less gen fanwork focused on her than other female characters, especially relative to the amount of time she spends on screen.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Even comparing like with like, Buffy seems to get less gen fanwork focused on her than other female characters, especially relative to the amount of time she spends on screen.

Now I'm really stumped. *ponders* This feels like it should be a post or a poll or something, because I'd really like to know, although the truth is there is no way to get an absolute objective answer to that. Because I know or know of plenty of fans whose feelings towards Willow run from disinterest to seething hatred.

I wonder if perhaps more people identify with Willow in terms of her being relatively ordinary, nerdy, smart but not particularly "special" - or at least not until Buffy comes into her life. (there's another drum I like to bang a lot; want some sticks?) Not a lot of us are the pretty, popular cheerleader, and I know there are people who don't identify with buffy because of that; Willow was in fact my first avatar in the early seasons. But Buffy didn't stay in that place - her struggles with jobs, money, depression, despair, having to drop out of college, her eroding self-confidence, as the daughter of a single mom with a missing father-figure and later as an older sister - are all things I can relate to very intimately. These are some universal struggles and issues; so I am still back to "I dunno" on the subject other than, people don't like Buffy for whatever reason. (And people do have their reasons, a'plenty.)

It may be that some people see something in buffy that they dislike in themselves (or other people they know), in the reverse of my loving her because I see things in her I identify with? This would make an interesting wider discussion, although I suspect it would turn into "I don't like buffy because (she's a bitch, an abuser, she didn't appreciate Character X, etc) that names the surface explanation but not the real reason underlying it.

[snickfic]

Yeah, I'm not sure, either. I think you're right that Buffy does have characteristics that make her less relatable as a character to a lot of us. Speaking from my own experience, I found Buffy a very slippery character my first watch through the show. It wasn't until I wrote her some as a background character that I started to get a feel for who she was and how she did things. Also I read a lot of meta, especially from people like angearia, that gave me a framework for how to think about it.

This as opposed to Willow, whom I actively dislike by about S4 in the series and definitely by S5, but whose outsider feelings in the early season I could relate to and whose late-season progression made sense to me. I think maybe for me it was some combination of Buffy's active disinterest in academics, her veneer of superficiality - I had trouble getting past those things to see the development in her character. Maybe also there's something in there about Buffy's leadership role that I had trouble getting ahold of. Leadership in general is not a quality I look for in my characters; in fact, I tend to be actively suspicious of male leader figures, and kind of just don't know what to do with female ones. That is something I am still working out for myself! (Speaking of, have you seen Orphan Black? The main character turns into something of a Buffy figure by the end of the season - a character who basically by dint of her flexibility and sheer force of will forms a group of Scoobies around her to help deal with the horrors they are facing. Very Buffy-esque.)

That's just my personal experience, but maybe others have some of those struggles? I don't know.