lit_gal | The Boys of Buffy

Okay, this is not necessarily pure canon, this is more my TAKE on canon so that people can understand where I'm coming from when I write my slash stories. So for all the Sentinel people I sucked into Buffy land, consider this Buffy 101 (LitGal style since I might have a bias or two... or three) 43 icons

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The family Aurelius (The Vamps)
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Once upon a time there was a really ugly vamp named the Master

(that's it, just the Master, like Cher or Prince or something) who had a rather strange taste in companions because he chose a whore who was dying of venereal disease. He made her his childe and named her Darla.

Now whores aren't really well known for faithfulness, and after a few hundred years she tossed him over when she found and turned a young Irish man named Liam.

Liam has some issues, including a father who could never be pleased. Since Liam couldn't please his Da, he did everything he could to embarrass his father. There wasn't a bar (or barmaid) that he hadn't been in. When he was turned, he still had issues. He got revenge by killing his family and terrorizing the whole town. His little sister Kathy, who he killed, called him an Angel when he showed up after dying, and Liam took the name Angel (or the Latin Angelus) as his vampire name.

Angelus loved to play with his food. Snack on a few nuns here, steal a bride from a church there. And one day he found a pure soul, a nun-in-training who had visions she believed were sent by Satan. He took her, tortured her, killed her whole family, drove her insane, and then turned her. Dru

still sees visions, but she talks to the stars and her dolls (especially Miss Edith) and many, many inanimate objects. One day she saw a sweet little poet on the street, crying after being rejected and ridiculed by the woman he loved. On a whim, Dru turned him and William joined the family.

William (whose friends had called him William the Bloody Awful Poet) had a hard time adjusting, and really would rather chase after Dru than kill,

but after Angel and Dru made fun of him, he turned into William the Bloody who proved himself by killing and maiming at Angelus' side .

Here comes the fly in the happy little vampire family (well one more fly since we already have Dru acting all nuts and Darla pretty much hating William and Dru calling Darla 'grandmother' which REALLY doesn't go over well with Darla). Angelus eats a gypsy and her family curses him with a soul. He goes a little nuts with guilt and goes running off. He catches up with his vampire family in China during the Boxer rebellion, and he is willing to put up with the killing and maiming as long as he only kills and maims the bad guys, but Darla is not okay with her darling boy turning into a do-gooder. In fact, she's really hacked off since William, who she hates, has transformed himself into a cold-blooded killer who defeats a slayer

(a mystical warrior woman destined to fight vampires). She demands that Angel reject his soul by killing a baby. He takes the baby, saves it, and runs away. He then spends the next century or so eating rats in alleys and avoiding baths.. Well, that's not entirely fair; in the 1920's he once saved a puppy.

Sunnydale, California
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Welcome to the Mouth of Hell. Literally. Turns out the Master of the Aurelius line tried to open Hell, and he got kinda stuck in the doorway, leaving the Hellmouth partially open. It hasn't been very active in the past, but now a young Slayer named Buffy Summers comes straight out of LA where she destroyed her school gym killing a vampire clan.

As new girl in school she has a chance to hang with the cool kids (like Cordelia Chase, cheerleader extraordinaire),

but she ends up with the geeky crowd who, quite frankly, are a lot nicer. Xander is the skateboarding dork. Jesse is the class clown type... well until he gets vamped and Xander accidentally stakes him. Willow is the math nerd with way too much cheeriness for one body. Even though Xander is a bit of a dork with a habit of running head first into things like railings, headstones, and demons

, he has dreams of being the star.

This desire to more than just a sidekick means he always puts others' needs ahead of his own, standing by his friends even though he has no special powers. Heck, his favorite world-saving or friend-saving move seems to be the Methos special: surrender. Funny enough, like Methos, he just keeps surviving anyway.

Most slayers work alone, and Giles

, the school librarian and a representative of the Watcher's council who guide and teach the slayers, would rather have his slayer work alone. Instead, Willow

and Xander

form the Slayerettes (back up players to the slayer, and does anyone else think that calling a guy a slayerette is a little emasculating??) They also call themselves the Scoobies (as in the Scoobie-Doo gang who always investigated supernatural crime.)

Angel also shows up after having a man named Whistler come and tell him to get over his century-long brood and get his ass in gear on the redemption front. Angel falls head over heels in love with Buffy, and Buffy falls for Angel (although she is temporarily freaked when she finds out he's a vampire). Xander is a little less forgiving. Xander starts by pointing out that Angel is handsome (and really, when he says this, it's not clear whether he's upset that the girl he likes is dating a handsome man or whether he's just noticing that Angel is handsome. After all, this is a character who later asks Willow to "gay him up" and points out that Spike is lithe and compact. Yeah, his straight card is a little bent.) Xander is even more pissed when Angel refuses to help Buffy against the Master. A prophesy says the Master will kill her, and Angel is willing to accept prophesy. Well, that is until a sixteen year old with a cross breaks into his apartment and reads him the riot act.

Angel is shamed into going with Xander to the Master's lair. They find Buffy dead, but Xander uses mouth to mouth to bring her back.

Stuff happens... stuff happens.... stuff happens, and then Willian shows up dragging a ill Dru who nearly died after a mob attack. Only, William isn't Willian anymore. He's Spike! (He took the new name because he has a thing for torturing people with railroad spikes.) He hopes the Hellmouth will save his beloved, and he attacks the school on Parent-Teacher night hoping to take his third slayer. Angel tries to bluff his way past Spike by using Xander as bait. Of course, he doesn't tell Xander this; he just lets Xander think he's being given away as a meal.

Xander isn't amused. Spike sees the ruse and accuses Angel, "his sire" of betraying him. Screams that Angel was his "yoda." Yeah, no subtext there at all. Spike later tells another character that he and Angel were never intimate "except that once," so the slash here is pretty well canon. Back to the story.... Spike almost kills Buffy only to be knocked out by Buffy's mom swinging an ax.

Several eps later, Buffy sleeps with Angel

and it turns out that a moment of perfect happiness breaks the gypsy curse since they didn't want the vamp to be happy. Curse gone, soul gone; soul gone, Angelus the nun-eating vampire is back. Now normally there is only one Slayer at a time, but since Buffy DID die, a new Slayer was called. Unfortunately, Kendra has the normal life expectancy of a Slayer and dies before reaching 16 at the hand of Dru who is very happy to have her "daddy" back all soulless, even if he is acting much nuttier than he ever did before the soul. He kills several people and even takes one shot at killing Xander

only to have bad luck get in the way (see demon magnet section). Later Angelus comes to the hospital to finish Buffy off after a fight, and Xander stands in his way. Angelus demands to know whether Xander thinks he can really stop him, and Xander admits that he probably can't, and everyone else there probably can't either, but he's not going to back down anyway.

Since Angelus doesn't want to take on the entire hospital staff, he leaves. Angelus decides to open a door to hell to prove his worthiness (and let's not think about what Angelus plans to eat after all the people are DEAD!!! Yeah, not big with the forward thinking there). Willow manages to shove Angel's soul back in AFTER Angelus opened a portal to hell, so Buffy had to throw the man she loved into hell to close the portal.

Yep, the angst levels here were a little high even for me. Of course, Angel is just sci-fi dead and he pops back out of hell a couple of months later Earth time (although he's there for over a century in hell-time).

Funny enough, Spike actually helped Buffy to stop Angelus since he didn't want the world to end any more than the humans did. In return, Buffy lets him grab Dru and run for South America. Dru is a little less forgiving and throws Spike over for a slime demon or a chaos demon (something like that). Either way, something with horns gets Dru, and Spike comes back to Sunnydale to drink and possibly watch the sun rise. When he passes out and nearly burns alive in the morning, that plan doesn't sound so good, so he decides to make Willow (who is a witch now), spell Dru back into loving him. He grabs Willow (and Xander who happens to be with her),

but his plan backfires, and he barely gets out of town before Buffy stakes him.

Okay, another year goes by and now Buffy and Willow are at Sunnydale U. Buffy takes up with a couple of guys. Willow, who is crushed after her werewolf boyfriend Oz

leaves her, takes up with another witch named Tara. Woo Hoo for some canon lesbianism!

Xander isn't at college. His grades were never very high, and his parental units were always a little neglectful. In a town full of vamps, Xander sleeps outside on Christmas Eve, preferring to risk vampires than risk his parents' drunken fights. So Xander is stuck paying rent to live in his parents' basement and working a series of sucky jobs. Spike shows up to grab a magical ring that makes him invincible, only to have Buffy take it back and send it to Angel (leading Spike to stick a few hot pokers through his sire's body, but he never does get the ring back. Spike's plans rarely work out well.)

Now none of the gang knows that a military group named The Initiative has moved a secret base into town. (You would think someone would notice an enormous military installation being built under the local university, but then again, this is a town where no one comments on the mayor turning into a giant serpent at graduation or the unusually high rate of deaths by exsanguination after being stabbed in the neck by a two-pronged barbeque fork.) The Initiative capture and test on demons, and when Spike comes to Sunnydale AGAIN (geez, Spike... get a clue, this place is not lucky for you), the Initiative captures him and shoves a chip in his head that fries his brain every time he tries to hurt someone.

Spike escapes and runs to (take a wild guess) BUFFY for protection. (Yeah, he can act a little brain damaged at times). Here starts the real Spike and Xander interaction with mutual insults, name-calling, and a brief time as room mates in Xander's basement. The two guys seem to bond in some loserly way when Spike goes through a depressed period.

Xander accuses Spike of wanting to bite him and even calls himself a "nummy treat." Um... o.O. Yeah, not bright to taunt the vampire, chipped or not. There's also a lot of Spike and Buffy interaction here with a spell even leading to some Buffy/Spike kissage. Funny enough, I was a fan of Spike and Buffy getting together since Spike liked strong women and Buffy had a thing for vamps (including a sordid little thing with Dracula). Unfortunately, when the Buffy writers wrote them together, it turned really ugly.

See, Buffy died to save the world after it turns out that a sister that just appeared in season five (Dawn), was the key to open a hell dimension. Glorificus opens the door, Buffy closes it by throwing herself in the open portal and falling to her death. Willow thinks Buffy is trapped in hell and uses big old magics to pull her back to earth. Turns out she pulled Buffy out of heaven, and Buffy is just a little screwy in the brain after that. Buffy starts a relationship with Spike based on assaulting Spike (which oh-buddy, Spike doesn't mind at all).

She keeps him secret (which does bother Spike but he goes along), and verbally abuses him (which he takes without a word). Then she tries to get rid of him, and he (hello, demon here) tries to force her to take him back. It's unclear whether it's an attempt to rape her or an attempt to get her to fight him the way she often does before sex, but either way she kicks his ass and then tells him to get out. He goes to Africa and fights a challenge to get his soul back. He wants to give Buffy the man she deserves, but Buffy never takes him back, soul or no soul. He still stays loyal to her.

After this, things are all weirdness. Tara gets killed and Willow goes evil only to have Xander save the world and save Willow's soul by offering to be Willow's first victim.

The First Evil rises and demons try to kill all the potential slayers and hell threatens to come popping open. Spike spends time living in Xander's apartment and Buffy's basement. Anya, the ex-demon Xander almost married, gets killed trying to defend a dork. LOTS of the potential slayers die, and considering these are average 15 year old girls, this is a little ick. Willow does this big mojo and makes every potential into an actual slayer. Now considering the First got to come into this world because there were TWO slayers and that unbalanced good and evil, I don't even WANT to think about what is going to come through now that there are dozens if not hundreds of slayers. *shudder* Spike sacrifices himself with a magic amulet only to be reincarnated first as a ghost and then as a real vamp in order to save ratings on Angel, The Series. And during the fight with the First, Xander got his eye poked out and gained tons of weight. I like to pretend this never happened which is why so many of my stories ignore canon after the Initiative.

Demon Magnet
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Okay, in my story, Xander is a demon magnet, so am I exaggerating? You tell me. In 10th grade, his substitute teacher turns out to be a preying mantis

who likes to eat virgin boys. Two episodes later a zoo-keeper trying to pull the mystical spirit of the hyena into himself accidentally zaps Xander and three others.

The whole pack eats the school mascot alive (a pig). Luckily, Xander is off trying to rape Buffy and getting his ass kicked when the rest of the pack eats the first principal.

Then a spelled Halloween costume turns him into a soldier,

and an Incan mummy

comes to life, falls in love with Xander, and eats several people. When she tries to eat Willow, Xander offers his life instead giving Buffy time to kill her. (Yeah, his love life is worse than Blair's, but wait, it gets worse). Cordelia is his only human love-interest, but keep in mind she becomes a demon later on Angel, the Series.

She hides her interest in him and then breaks up with him on Valentine's Day. Turns out there this other witch at school (and yeah, they have a lot of witches and werewolves at this school. My school just had jocks and guys who sold weed). He asks the girl to cast a spell, but it goes wrong and every woman in town loves and wants to kill him. Dru even falls for him and calls him her kitten, fighting Angelus to keep him safe so she can turn him.

A mob of angry love-struck humans distracts her from vamping him.

Then he goes under cover with the swim team and nearly gets turned into the swamp thing when the coach puts demon steroids in the steam room.

Faith, the slayer who comes along after Kendra, throws him on the bed and rides him hard after a fight... a lovely first-time memory.

When he later tries to help her when evil gets its claws in her, she tries to choke him, and Angel has to save him. His longest relationship is with Anya, a vengeance demon with a thousand years of making men's manly parts fall off.

She cursed Sunnydale at one point, but Giles broke her power center sticking her in a human body again. Xander leaves her at the alter leading her to temporarily go back to the vengeance business. Dracula shows up in Sunnydale and thralls Xander so that he starts eating bugs and talking like Renfield.

He hits on a woman in a hardware store just to have her tie him up and try to kill him to open the Hellmouth. Turns out she's a vamp.

Yeah, Xander has a reason for asking Willow to "gay him up." Unfortunately, the consensus is that if he was gay, he'd just attract male demons.

So why Spike and Xander?

Xander attracts demons anyway, and at some point you have to assume he's doing something to attract the less than human crowd. Xander is as loyal as they come, willing to walk into a fight even if he has no chance of winning. And yet, he seems to win far more than you would expect him to win. Spike is equally loyal, sticking with Dru even after she was injured. Each of these men has been consistently stepped on by love and underestimated. I like the idea of them together because if their loyalty ever turned to each other, I can see them holding on to each other forever.

So why Angel and Xander?

Because Xander was the only one in the series willing to kick Angel's butt (at least verbally) and point out when Angel was being a broody SOB. At the same time, Xander is a beta boy. He is very happy to follow and be the backup guy who you can always count on to back you up. Angel definitely has a desire to be the Alpha dog. He challenged the Master and enjoyed his dominance over Spike and Dru. With Xander he could be boss guy without having to force Xander to submit since Xander is submitting boy already.

So hopefully this rather skewed background on Buffy the Vampire Slayer will help you understand my stories.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ambersnake

You're supposed to update Broken Revenge, not come up with lovely little things like this!

But lovely it was, and a nice bit of insight to your take on the boys :)

From:

The Boys of Buffy

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