Buffy/Angel post NFA
Jun. 7th, 2006 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth I've reached 'Why am I bothering' point on Project Paranormal already, and I'm only up to their Halloween story.
All 21 Slayers are sitting around at the house doing bugger all.
I don't buy 21 being all the Slayers the spell activated, for a start. Would be a bloody stupid and futile move to have a mere 21 Slayers.
Kennedy is apparently one of the Slayers that have been sitting around. Along with Vi and Rona. Vi had been mentioned already, with what seemed to me to be a personality transplant. Kennedy is mentioned for the first time. I'd rather assumed she was with Willow, but no, and entirely without comment (not mentioning why/when/how broken up).
Now Faith has arrived, and Buffy is jealous and growly and... Who hit rewind on that relationship? They were getting along!
Spike hasn't been mentioned. The Immortal hasn't been mentioned.
Buffy and Angel are snapped back to the holding pattern they were in in season *3*, and all Angel's subsequent development and context has been vanished. All the people from his series are just gone! And there was some line about B & A always just knowing each other, and hello, seriously not.
I'm tired and cranky and not phrasing this diplomatically.
But... All the history and relationships seem to have been stripped down. And I do not like it.
What would I do with the B/A 'ship after NFA...
I think I'd go with the parental thing. Buffy raising Dawn, Angel raising Connor. If they got back together there would be step-parent issues around each other's teenage wards. That would be a new angle.
Like, part of why Angel broke up with Buffy was because he couldn't give her children and a regular life. Well, Buffy *has* a child - Dawn, who was made from her, and she had to look after. And Angel has a child, all grown up now, but hey, he can share that one with her. And Connor admittedly has a bunch more parents, which complicates things. So, to keep symmetry, bring Buffy's (Dawn's) Dad back into the picture.
You'd end up with a new kind of 'normal' family, a complicated reconstituted one. Opportunities to make a point about 'normal', and a way to nudge the impasse that B/A had ground to a halt on.
Also, necessity of Angel relearning Buffy, as a grown woman not a teenage girl (however weight of the world carrying she was, he never knew her outside high school).
And Buffy learning Angel as a workaday guy. The guy with a job and an office and dodgy employer/employee relations. And dorky taste in music. Not mysterious dark stranger high school crush, the guy he grew up into being in LA.
And I'd like to mix their attitudes to money back together. Buffy flipped burgers rather than charge for her services, and at least in theory as the Slayer still worked in secret. Angel charged money from an office and advertised with flyers, and vaguely planned a TV spot. You cannot get more opposite in approach. How would they reconcile that?
This is sounding ultra domestic. Yes, of course there would still be monster slayage. As a family, even. But the monsters always reflect challenges of that particular stage of growing up.
So this stage is, they've got these different norms and values now, in the everyday things. They overlap in 'save world, whatever the cost'. Also in 'save offspring, even if hurts friends and world'. Shared contradiction, fun. But in how they live their daily lives? Massive differences. Corporate CEO (bad at it though I think he was) vs burger flipping and school counsellor. Utterly different experiences there. Delinquent offspring, but Angel kicked his out then mindwiped him. Dawn got cuddles and repaying. Different actions, sure, but different attitudes in the responses.
The differences in Buffy and Angel are pretty massive. Boiling it down to 'their love is so starcrossed!!!' is rather missing the point. Even if Angel could have sex, their relationship would be wildly bumpy.
Actually, I'd like to write a scene where she realises he's hiding behind the 'can't shag' issue to not-deal with every other issue between them. That would be fun.
I have no intention of writing Buffy/Angel. I don't write much, and I want to write Giles. But I started poking the relationship to see if I could see anything worth writing about in it, and this came out.
Course I've been awake way too long now and this may not actually make sense. *shrugs*
Also, I just finished reading that fic, and it was like
lalalalala, party! Ghost! /ghost. Oh by the way, I set up a major life changing decision without consulting anyone. Good? *all shrug*
and the point of this story was?
how can they have so many characters and so little character interaction!
*grumble sulk*
All 21 Slayers are sitting around at the house doing bugger all.
I don't buy 21 being all the Slayers the spell activated, for a start. Would be a bloody stupid and futile move to have a mere 21 Slayers.
Kennedy is apparently one of the Slayers that have been sitting around. Along with Vi and Rona. Vi had been mentioned already, with what seemed to me to be a personality transplant. Kennedy is mentioned for the first time. I'd rather assumed she was with Willow, but no, and entirely without comment (not mentioning why/when/how broken up).
Now Faith has arrived, and Buffy is jealous and growly and... Who hit rewind on that relationship? They were getting along!
Spike hasn't been mentioned. The Immortal hasn't been mentioned.
Buffy and Angel are snapped back to the holding pattern they were in in season *3*, and all Angel's subsequent development and context has been vanished. All the people from his series are just gone! And there was some line about B & A always just knowing each other, and hello, seriously not.
I'm tired and cranky and not phrasing this diplomatically.
But... All the history and relationships seem to have been stripped down. And I do not like it.
What would I do with the B/A 'ship after NFA...
I think I'd go with the parental thing. Buffy raising Dawn, Angel raising Connor. If they got back together there would be step-parent issues around each other's teenage wards. That would be a new angle.
Like, part of why Angel broke up with Buffy was because he couldn't give her children and a regular life. Well, Buffy *has* a child - Dawn, who was made from her, and she had to look after. And Angel has a child, all grown up now, but hey, he can share that one with her. And Connor admittedly has a bunch more parents, which complicates things. So, to keep symmetry, bring Buffy's (Dawn's) Dad back into the picture.
You'd end up with a new kind of 'normal' family, a complicated reconstituted one. Opportunities to make a point about 'normal', and a way to nudge the impasse that B/A had ground to a halt on.
Also, necessity of Angel relearning Buffy, as a grown woman not a teenage girl (however weight of the world carrying she was, he never knew her outside high school).
And Buffy learning Angel as a workaday guy. The guy with a job and an office and dodgy employer/employee relations. And dorky taste in music. Not mysterious dark stranger high school crush, the guy he grew up into being in LA.
And I'd like to mix their attitudes to money back together. Buffy flipped burgers rather than charge for her services, and at least in theory as the Slayer still worked in secret. Angel charged money from an office and advertised with flyers, and vaguely planned a TV spot. You cannot get more opposite in approach. How would they reconcile that?
This is sounding ultra domestic. Yes, of course there would still be monster slayage. As a family, even. But the monsters always reflect challenges of that particular stage of growing up.
So this stage is, they've got these different norms and values now, in the everyday things. They overlap in 'save world, whatever the cost'. Also in 'save offspring, even if hurts friends and world'. Shared contradiction, fun. But in how they live their daily lives? Massive differences. Corporate CEO (bad at it though I think he was) vs burger flipping and school counsellor. Utterly different experiences there. Delinquent offspring, but Angel kicked his out then mindwiped him. Dawn got cuddles and repaying. Different actions, sure, but different attitudes in the responses.
The differences in Buffy and Angel are pretty massive. Boiling it down to 'their love is so starcrossed!!!' is rather missing the point. Even if Angel could have sex, their relationship would be wildly bumpy.
Actually, I'd like to write a scene where she realises he's hiding behind the 'can't shag' issue to not-deal with every other issue between them. That would be fun.
I have no intention of writing Buffy/Angel. I don't write much, and I want to write Giles. But I started poking the relationship to see if I could see anything worth writing about in it, and this came out.
Course I've been awake way too long now and this may not actually make sense. *shrugs*
Also, I just finished reading that fic, and it was like
lalalalala, party! Ghost! /ghost. Oh by the way, I set up a major life changing decision without consulting anyone. Good? *all shrug*
and the point of this story was?
how can they have so many characters and so little character interaction!
*grumble sulk*
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Date: 2006-06-07 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-06-09 02:38 pm (UTC)