Rather random thoughts re: Sunnydale High

It's 3:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. This is almost certainly my own fault, due to my having stayed up 'till 5:30 a.m. writing and then slept in until noonish the last two days running. Oh, and eating chocolate brownies before bed. Bad me.

So now I will spam you with my random insomniac musings about the Buffyverse.

What did all the Sunnydale teenagers do for an education after the first high school was blown up and before the next one was built? There were three whole years in between. Did they get bussed to another district? Did they go on split shift with the middle school? Did the school board look at the teacher mortality rate and say "Screw this, let them homeschool for a few years while we regenerate our staff pool"?

Also: would Andrew have been caught up in all this? I'm thinking that he's Tucker's younger brother, and therefore wouldn't have graduated along with the Scoobies; I'm not entirely sure if this is hard canon or just my impression.

The insomnia!posts continue: meme!

Via spacedoutlooney: Top 20 Geek Novels according to The Guardian (UK). ( I have bolded the ones I have read. )

Comments problem

LJ hasn't emailed me a bunch of the comments on my most posts. Anybody else having this problem?

ETA: The answer is yes, apparently! And elisi nicely told me why.

Social dynamics, high school and the Buffyverse.

I hope nihilistbear will forgive me for linking to her post and my reply, which just sparked off my thinking about something. One-sentence summary: her post is about not being a nerd or geek, and my reply is about being one.

My brain being in fannish mode, this makes me think of the Buffyverse.

So? Willow's a nerd. Xander's a geek. Buffy, pre-series, is high-school popular, a cheerleader, the kind of girl who gets to be Homecoming Queen. When she becomes the Slayer and moves to Sunnydale, her social status drops, but she still has great hair and makeup and cares deeply about her pretty, girly clothes.

It's kind of an unlikely core friendship group for sixteen-year-olds. It's like the "one of these things is not like the others" game from Sesame Street. In fact, maybe that's one of the things that was cool and unusual about BtVS right from the beginning. In the midst of a whole lot of heavy metaphors for adolescent struggles, the core group of three accept each other exactly as they are. Buffy never tries to give Willow a makeover and "fix" her ala Clueless; Willow and Xander never question Buffy's devotion to fashion.

In a lot of ways it would've made sense for Buffy to befriend Cordelia and Harmony instead of Willow and Xander. (savoytruffle's recently-completed fic "There's Your Trouble" gives us an intriguing glimpse of an AU where that's exactly what happened.) In "Welcome to the Hellmouth" it nearly happens: Buffy meets Cordelia, she meets Willow, she likes them both, and then she's informed that she has to choose. She chooses Willow ... maybe because being the Slayer has taught her a little already about being an outsider, maybe because Cordelia's meanness is so over-the-top that Buffy can't help but realize there's something wrong with it, maybe 'cause by the time things have had a chance to settle she's already been through some serious life-or-death bonding with Willow and Xander, plus embarrassed herself so horribly in front of Cordelia that there's no hope of going down that road after all.

Anyway, Cordelia joins the group later, and we all know how that turns out. Even Harmony gets depth eventually. Kinda. And Buffy proves that she's back to herself at the end of "Earshot" by making fun of Jonathan behind his back. (That scene bothers me, actually, but is redeemed by Giles walking into a tree. Hee. And thus I prove that I can appreciate slapstick after all.)

Willow comes into her own in season 4, when she starts university. Her blossoming there is a joy to behold. Xander comes into his own in season 5, when he gets a real job. Buffy never really has a moment like that; her struggles to reconcile Slayerhood and normal life ebb and flow, but as far as being normal goes she was most successful in high school. The last we ever see of her, in "The Girl in Question," she's almost back where she started: dating some sexy mysterious guy, looking pretty dancing in a night club.

Hm, where am I going with this? Maybe nowhere at all. This isn't a well-planned essay, it's just thoughts spilling out of my fingers as I think them. I don't have a conclusion. I feel like resorting to aphorism: It takes all kinds to make the world, or something like that.

I could never identify with Buffy. It was Willow and Xander who drew me in. But the friendship amongst all three of them is strong, and realistic, and fascinating.

Fic update: Before the Time of Dawn (final chapter)

And here it is: the final chapter.

A big shout-out to everyone who commented along the way: thanks for all the kind and encouraging feedback. You rock!


Before the Time of Dawn (chapter 9 of 9)
By: shadowscast
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R for naughty language and implied sexual situations
Summary: Post-series Spike and Xander must travel six years back in time to prevent an apocalypse in the future.
Notes: This chapter is about 5000 words. Huge thanks to flurblewig for beta reading. Feedback and concrit welcome in comments or by email.

Click for:
Previous chapters in "Before the Time of Dawn"
Previous stories in the Fragments 'verse

Cross-posted to spike_fics
Cross-posted to bloodclaim

( Chapter Nine )