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shadowkatWhy do we tell stories? Or rather more importantly, why do we listen to them? I know the answer of course, and there are many...but I think the principal one is to resolve an issue, a problem, a question, or an itch. To get an answer.
Just finished watching the two hour season premiere of the series House - In the premiere - House is in a mental hospital struggling with his viacodine addiction. The episode is not about his addiction or detox, but rather about him dealing with his inability to connect to others in a meaningful way. This was a tale I'd seen before told in a different way, for there are no new stories just new ways of telling them. From I Never Promised You A Rose Garden to Girl, Interrupted and of course who can forget One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - each tale about someone lost, friendless, who feels betrayed, alone, as if they can't trust anyone, including themselves, finding themselves again. Each time it is told, something new comes out of it. For the teller is different each time, and each teller gives a new twist, a new angle. The House tale had me in tears by the end of it...it spoke to me about loss, about moving on, about the fact that sometimes we can't fix things, and sometimes just being is enough.
When I was child - my friends and I told stories. One of my bestfriends, on the way to school, used to tell me what happened on the tv shows that I missed the night before. This was before the invention of VCR, DVR, cable, or the internet. I went to bed at 8, and on the east coast all the tv shows started at 8 or 9pm. Later when I saw the shows in reruns, I remember being disappointed - for they were not the same stories my friend had related to me on the way to school each morning. In a way she was telling me her own version, recreating the bits she liked, deleting the bits she didn't, and adding bits that she wished had been in it. Fanfic if you will. Another friend and I, used to take a show or book and create oral fanfiction from it - we'd tell long serial tales, either about our friends (real person fanfiction) or about the characters in a book, film, or tv show we loved. She'd tell me chapter one on Monday, and I'd tell her chapter two on Tuesday.
And when I thought about it this week, rolling the question around in my brain, why do we tell stories? I realized we always have, all of us, since the beginning. Whether they be a tale as simple as what we did at work today or one made up from our head with makebelieve characters, or a twist on a story that was already told, a what-if or a fill in the gap.
Our religions have that one thing in common, stories. Every religion has at its foundation a story. And the stories are incredibly similar...twists on the same tale, told from multiple perspectives. About sacrifice, pain, love, loss, and redemption. But mostly about what it means to be human, how to be good, and what happens when we aren't.
This is a long introduction to something I rarely if ever do in my livejournal. I don't tend to admit that I read fanfic. Especially B/S fanfic. Oh I admit it, but I don't talk about it too much, mostly out of embarrassment. And even though I've written fanfic, few have seen it - again embarrassment. Which I now realize is rather silly and stupid.
This month courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moscow_watcher's recommendations, I found a rather interesting fanfiction on the internet that addressed an issue that I'd been tossing about in the periphery of my brain in a new way. While reading it, I was or rather am also reading Bram Stocker's Dracula, and watching Season 3 of Dexter ( A noir cable tv series about a serial killer who attempts to handle his "homicidial tendicies" by killing only serial killers or individuals who murder others) - which in their own ways addressed similar issues but from other perspectives.
I think we can learn from each other's stories. And I think sometimes a story, a fictional one, can tell us things or rather show us things that we can't get from a simple conversation or lecture or rule book. Stories are morality plays...most of the time. Or at least that was how Patrick Stewart, who portrayed Jean-Luc Picard in STNG, once defined Shakespearean plays and Star Trek The Next Generation (STNG).
The fanfic - if you are at all curious, can be found here:
http://unbridled-b.livejournal.com/tag/forward+to+time+past
It is entitled: Forward to Times Past by Unbridled Brunnett.
The fanfic is a Buffy/Spike fanfic (I won't use the other term since I find it silly and offensive - yes, I am anal about certain things, I admit that. Combining people's names into one word makes me cringe for some reason). It is a time travel fic. It is also a what-if scenario - where the author through the fic struggles to answer several questions that have been nagging at her - questions that do not necessarily have simple answers. Questions I've seen the tv series Dexter attempt to answer, but from another angle. It is a story about a hero who goes back in time and allows herself to be taken care of, who in attempting make the best of a situation may have inadvertently caused things to go...well not in a good direction. It is a story about a relatively good and gentle man who becomes a horrible monster and tries to become a good and gentle man again and isn't quite sure he can. It is about the messiness of obsessive and passionate relationships that we adore on the pages of a romance novel, but don't quite work as well in real life. And it, for me at least, gets to the heart of why we tell stories...to stave off the darknees, to find peace of mind, to entertain, to have the happy ending, to understand what it is to be human, to attempt to understand why people do horrible things, or merely to survive.
When reading fanfic or any fiction, I am of two minds - part of me gets frustrated at times with the writer for not telling me the story I want them to tell or I think, oh the character would never do that, the other part says shut-up this is the writer's story, let them tell it however they wish, you might learn something. It is the tale inside their heads. It is how they see the characters. They aren't going to see them the same way you do. They aren't telling your story, they are telling theirs. All of the work and risk is on their end, all you have to do is listen. Listen. Not as easy as it sounds. For listening requires one to let go of one's own internal noise to do so.
The story takes place after Buffy's mother dies or immediately after the episode "Forever" in S5, where Spike attempts to help Dawn bring Buffy's mom back to life, with dicey results. The episodes "Intervention" through "Chosen" do not happen in this time line. It goes alternate universe after Forever. The author poses a what-if scenario - what if instead of attempting to kill Glory, Willow and Tara found a way to send her to an alternate dimension or time-line, and what if in the process of doing so they accidentally sent Buffy back in time to London, 1879, the year before William became a vampire. What if Buffy meet William the Bloody Awful Poet? This by no means is a new idea -herself_nyc did more or less the same thing. The difference is how the two author's tell it and how they choose to depict the characters. unbridled_brunett chose to tell a different tale than herself, in unbridled's tale - Buffy does not go to an alternate timeline, but a different time in her own timeline. Buffy changes the timeline. She changes William's life and she changes William himself. Nothing else that she is aware of. She also is changed as a result of it.
Sexism and the Victorians
The author's sense of the time period - now that I'm reading Stoker's Dracula, is actually quite adept. Even her language is similar. Formal. Careful. Cautious. With a sense of repressed sexuality. Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897.
In the Victorian Age - women did not have much power, they could work, but in limited roles. And their reputation was everything. Women according to the Victorians did not enjoy sex - it was something they tolerated. In Unbridled's fic - William sees Buffy from afar, weeping and impoverished on the streets of London, and takes it upon himself to help her. She's landed herself in a Charity Work House - which makes sense, after all she landed in the streets of London in clothes only a sailor would be caught dead in. She's indecent and poor. Her only skill appears to be nursemaid - since she had a little experience doing that with her mother. She's smart enough not to try and play the slayer. For fear of a)changing the timeline, and b)getting caught. Being quite taken with her, William hires her as a nursemaid for his mother. But keeps his distance, not wishing to impose or to be improper. He is a bit of a romantic and not comfortable with people. Happier with books, his estates, his dear mum, and well being alone. Yet, he does finally come home and see her and they become friends, and he is smitten. She's the one who makes the first move - because she is a woman of her time, forthright, to the point, and affectionate. And he is a man of his time, repressed, restrained, and careful.
The sexism the author plays with is the power play between the two of them, and William's mother.
Buffy (who goes by "Elizabeth" in the past since clearly Buffy wouldn't work back then) - they keep inside, to the grounds, instruct her on what she should wear, what her speech should be like (although, he to be fair, finds her charming and does not wish her to change in any way, even though his mother insists she must.) Anne, William's mother, tells him at one point - that he must be forceful with Elizabeth. That he must whip her into shape, now. Or she will become a difficult, headstrong, willful wife. Elizabeth who overhears this thinks to herself that Williams' father may well have done as much to Anne at one time. It was how women were treated back then. William shys away from it. He finds her charming. He wishes only to take care of her. To have a small wife and child that will stay with him always on his estates. But women for reasons he does not understand are not taken with him. It could well be that he goes for the wrong sort - Cecily, as Buffy notes, is a bit of a snob. And William is described by the writer as new money. So the writer plays a bit with classism - the way that William is ostracized for his station and how Elizabeth(Buffy)'s entrance into his life does not improve it any. Her presence actually hurts his social and professional standing in society.
William in this story is turning 31. He is unmarried and a virgin. Niave of women, of life outside of his business, schooling, and estates and books. He is filled with suppressed anger and longing. Buffy/Elizabeth realizes how deeply lonely he is, and she reaches out to him, in part out of her own lonliness and in part because a part of her gets off on her power over him - she realizes how she turns him on, that she can manipulate him through his desire for her.
It is her only power here and that may well be why she plays on it.
What struck me about this fanfic - and how it differs from other fanfic's I've read, is the sex scenes, the few there are - there aren't that many - are about pleasuring the male, not the female. We have graphic descriptions of Buffy giving William what amounts to a handjob and they are mostly from his point of few - how she is arousing him, seducing him. It is Elizabeth/Buffy who seduces William in the past, not the other way around. She corrupts him.
It's a heady feeling - her power over him. Her ability to make him vulnerable and weak, with just a touch. This is not subversive on the author's part - in male fiction, the woman is often the seducer - I've seen it in many novels written by men. So it is odd to see a woman writing it. And yes, I'm pretty certain the writer is female - she mentions her husband in one post and states she is female.
In the future, when Buffy returns back to her timeline - she visits Spike and instead of him servicing her in this manner, she gives him a blow job, again in graphic detail - it is the only graphic detail we get. The author does not gives us details on what he does to her or any other sex for that matter. Interesting choice - since most writers go the opposite direction. I wondered why. And I think I know - the author is commenting on the power dynamic between the characters. Buffy's only power over William in the past is her knowledge of sex, her sexual power. And since in Victorian times, women aren't meant to enjoy sex - she has to convince him of it. The author is also to a degree comparing Buffy to Angelus and Buffy to Dru.
There is a scene in the story - where Buffy gives William a hand job more or less against his will. He says no, tries to resist, but can't. Finally, when it is over, he pushes her away and leaves, leaves the premises, guilt-stricken, and remorseful. Convinced that he pushed her to it. That she thinks she has to repay him this way. Terrified that he has abused her.
It almost derails him. He also becomes a bit obsessed with her. Delirious with desire. Yet, because he loves her and wants to be good or esteemed to be good within his "moral structure", he refuses to have sex with her until after she agrees to marry him. He justifies it to himself with the belief that this gives him power over her - that she can't leave him now, that he can't lose her - that by having her, he claims her, she is his. It never occurs to him that she is not a virgin. Viriginity - the author delicately states is assumed. If a woman weren't a virgin in this society - she is a prostitute, a woman of disrepute. Buffy dares not tell him otherwise. Yet, here again, the author makes an interesting choice - instead of Buffy worrying that he thinks she's a prostitute or William for that matter thinking it, even though his associates and possibly his servants do, Buffy worries that William is blaming himself and William does blame himself - he believes that he forced her, that he convinced her to do it. That he was the one in power here, he's her caretaker, he's responsible for her well-being, she didn't know any better - and he gave into his baser urges.
The contrast to Angelus - is when Angelus does rape vampire!William repeatedly, in an attempt to break him. To control him. But he doesn't succeed. Angelus intended to do it. While Buffy merely intended to adore him, to give him pleasure and to give herself pleasure hopefully, not to hurt. As Angel later tells Buffy - when I was Angelus, I enjoyed breaking things.
And part of me liked him because he would not break, he would not even bend.
Caretakers
Buffy and William take turns playing the role of care-taker or parent.
In the past, William is the parental figure or care-taker. He corrects her. He buys her clothes. He buys her food. He is working. Her presence disrupts his life, changes his social standing, makes things difficult with his family, servents, business and friends. Yet, he prefers to have her there than not and he chooses to bring her into his life. Her only power in the past over him is sexual, is the fact that he adores her, that he can't bear not to be with her, that all he thinks of is her - to the detriment of the rest of his life. He does not hold her responsible and he gives her credit for her handling of his mother and her strides to better herself, to adapt to their ways, without changing herself completely. She learns to horseback ride, she wears the painful corsets, and she nurses his mother. And when she makes social faux pas, some rather dangerous that almost get her killed - she does take his direction to a degree. In Victorian Times - that was often the male and female roles. The man took care of the woman, he protected her, he provided her with guidance. I'm catching this in Stoker's novel.
In present day, Buffy is the parental figure or caretaker. And William/Spike is a vampire. A chipped vampire. Who can't make a living outside of gambling or doing bad things. He lives in a crypt. He is socially unacceptable. He is beneath her station, while in Victorian times, she was beneath his. He is the one with the sexual prowess and sexual experience. He is the one with the sexual power - here. He is the seducer. Except - once again the writer chooses to have Buffy pleasure him. And once again, the writer chooses to have Spike attempt to take on the role of caretaker.
The role is an uneasy fit. He screws up royally. She has to be his caretaker for their relationship to work. He has to follow her lead. Bend to her control. Live in her house, owned by her, with her sister. As opposed to Buffy living in his house, caring for his mother, he now lives in her's caring for her sister. Her friendship with Anne (his mother) is deftly juxtaposed with his friendship with Dawn (her sister).
In truth - Spike screws up more in the present than Buffy does in the past. But, instead of Buffy going back to the past - which is often the solution in similar time travel tales I've seen or read, where the man goes to the future, doesn't fit in, and the woman he falls for travels back to the past to join him - this does the opposite...here the man becomes a monster to live long enough to join the heroine in the future, although it was hardly intentional.
Moral Structure or Souls
The idea of a monster being redeemed goes back to fairy tales - such as Beauty and The Beast or Rose White and Rose Red. The prince cursed to become bestial because of his behavior. Love alone can turn him back again. In the series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike had to get a soul to become good. When pressed as to why, the creator of the story stated that the soul represented a conscience or a different moral struture than the demon's. It wasn't that Spike didn't want to be good, Whedon argued, or that his wanting wasn't sufficient, but that within the rules of the series he created - one cannot be good without a human soul. That doesn't guarantee you will be of course. Actually from a Doylian perspective - I'm thinking Whedon had written himself a bit into a corner with the whole Angel is good with a soul, bad without and was trying to write himself out of it without turning Angel into a complete anti-hero. The author of this tale has decided NOT to ignore Whedon's argument and struggles instead to address head on. To make sense of it.
She asks the question many of us have asked - can someone change? Can a sociopathic personality love? Can someone who chose darkness find light? She is questioning the black and white perspective and finding lots of gray. Do you need a soul or metaphorically speaking do you need a conscience to be good, or can you learn from other's examples? For that matter what is conscience? What is a soul?
In this story, Spike goes into business with a decidedly shady character to get money for Buffy. Buffy knows he is supplying her with the money, but chooses to ignore it. Chooses to ignore the fact that he may be doing it through nefarious means. Dawn finds out exactly what he is doing and attempts to stop him, but only makes everything worse and lands herself in the hospital with a potentially fatal chest wound. Dawn's injury - causes everyone to wake up. Giles wakes up and apologizes to Buffy for not providing her with a salary from the Watcher's Council. (Instead he'd given her an ultimatium - saying give up Spike to get the money. The Council apparently knew nothing about Spike and would have given her the money regardless.). Buffy wakes up to the fact that Giles is correct, without a soul, Spike is a loaded gun. Add to that the fact that he hasn't changed - he is still obsessive. In Victorian times he would not let her out of his sight, he followed her everywhere, he was obsessive, how could that be healthy? And Spike realizes that he has lost Buffy, that without a soul, he is nothing, so he goes to Angel to plead for one. Prior to this bit, it is important to note that Spike attempts to claim Buffy, to make her his, to make her want him - the thing that vampires do in the Anita Blake tales and Sookie Stakehouse series. Buffy and Spike both believe he may have succeeded.
Enter Angel, stage right. To disabuse them of these myths. Angel in this tale serves as a bit of a truthteller. And his truth's underline another theme of this tale - how we lie to ourselves.
We do, you know. Lie. Mostly to ourselves. More so than to anyone else, I think. I said this to a friend a few weeks back...as an epiphany of sorts. We lie to ourselves, I said. And. We are excellent liars. She responded - I try not to. And I, well, I just shrugged, smiled a bit wryly and shook my head.
Buffy lies to herself - she tells herself that souls matter. That Angel is different with one. That vampires without souls aren't the people they once were, they are demons nothing more or less. She tells herself that Spike succeeded in claiming her against her will - that this is the reason she can only think of him, still wants him, still desires him, after everything he's done. It has to be, because the alternative...is too horrible to consider.
Angel tells her the truth. He tells her that Spike asked him to get him a soul. But he couldn't any more than he can undo a claim, because claims, he tells Buffy, do not exist. They are a story, a myth, a fantasy that vampires like to believe. They are no more true than the rules that vampires can't handle garlic or can't enter a church. Just legends.
And...he says, in regards to souls: "The thing is - people with souls hurt other people all the time. They rape and kill each other. They start wars. Some of them struggle with morality the same way he has and they do it their whole lives." In a way he is talking about himself and he is talking about her. He is talking about Giles.
In the series Dexter - Dexter believes he has no soul, that there is something missing inside him that others have. Yet, we meet Miquel who romanticizes Dexter, who has a moral struture and conscience and wants to use Dexter as his weapon - wants Dexter to kill a defense attorney giving him trouble. Dexter has a code - he won't kill anyone who has not killed people themselves or in self-defense, when he breaks the code he anguishes over it. The question the writers' pose is who is the more monsterous, Dexter or Miquel? In the previous season they asked the same questions but in regards to a cop who bent the law to exert his own brand of justice and Lilah who did it to find love. Do the reasons justify the act? Each of the characters in Dexter's world struggles with their own morality, their own choices, are their struggles any less than Dexter's or more? Can Dexter stop being who he is? Is he monster? And why are we asking these questions? Why does it matter?
It's not like we haven't asked them before. Dexter is just the last in a long long series of vigilantes...from Batman to Angel...are any of them heroes? Can any of them be redeemed?
I said once to my mother over the phone...we were discussing our mutual love for the anti-heroes or tragic heroes in fiction, and we determined that we preferred them to the Dudly Do Rights or straight up style hero due to the fact that they felt more real. Flawed. More human. I remember stating that what interested me was the play between light and dark inside the human. No one is completely evil or completely good and yes, I've sat across a table from a hitman and I've met, via a third party, a serial killer or sociopathic personality. They weren't all evil, there was light, even though they'd chosen darkness. What fascinates me is why they chose the dark, and why others, like myself, choose light. And if we change? To what degree does free will come into play. Do we have a choice? OR are we made that way? And if we do choose dark, how do we live with it? I haven't met any Dudly Do Rights, Wonder Women or Supermen, no straight up heroes...not one. I've met flawed human beings who try on a daily basis to be good and often trip over themselves in the process, people like Gregory House and Buffy Summers, people like Spike and Angel and Lymond and countless others.
Angel also says to Buffy: "If Spike wants his soul back, if he is hunting a way to retrieve it, maybe that means he doesn't need one in the first place.." He pauses...and says that he is not telling her to be with him. It does not make Spike good. He is still a vampire. The same problems exist that drove him, Angel, away from her. But it is her choice to make and he is tired of broken things, and when he saw Spike - he was broken.
Buffy struggles with her own moral choices in this tale. To what degree is she responsible to Spike? She made him fall in love with him? Or did she? It is what she thinks. Although we are told by the writer that this is not so. Can she be his conscience? She realizes she didn't even try, she wanted the money, she wanted him, and ignored the rest. Perhaps she owes him more.
Obsessive Love/ Relationships
In this tale...the author doesn't appear to be sure...should we take back someone or be with someone that is potentially destructive? Is obsessive love a good thing?
Buffy questions her relationship with him. His obsession with her. The fact that he was never really happy in their relationship. He himself seems to realize it - he is either deliriously happy in her company or not. He can't be what she wants. He can't change himself to be the man she desires. She can't change him. And he can't change for her. He can't get all the lines, he doesn't know the rhythm or the words. And each day feels like an audition with the same words, that he just keeps forgetting. He wants to own her, he wants to be a part of her, inside her, never leave, because then he never has to worry about being rejected about being alone and left in return. The lonliness is what he fears more than anything else. And he clings to her like a heroine addict to avoid it. He sees her as both possession and savior.
Is it a vampire thing? No. The writer describes a similar attitude when he was human. It is human.
And Buffy questions it, it's source. And wonders if she should take him back. If she does, will it change anything? Since this is a romance, she takes him back and we get the happy ending, or so it seems. Yet there is a question mark at the end. One no one who responded to the fic seemed to pick up. She is giving him the second chance. Letting him be her partner.
Trusting him to patrol three days a week without her, and four with her. He lives in her house. He sleeps in her bed. He is allowed to be part of her family and friends. Much as Anya and Xander are. But in the back of her head, she knows he is a loaded gun and there is always the chance things can go wrong. He bit her once...he could again. There are no guarantees.
Yet, yet...as pointed out in the episode of House I saw tonight and well in Dexter, that is true of us all. When we trust someone, we are taking a risk. We do not know who they will turn out to be. We do not know who we are half the time.
Conclusion
Reading this fic made me see another point of view outside of my own and it reminded me of why I read stories, love stories, adore stories...because of that simple fact - to solve an issue with another head, another pov, to see another answer to the same question. I understood why a woman might choose to give a man who had hurt her a second chance, even if she may live to regret it, even if she might die as a result. And why a man might do the same. I saw why in some cases we move on - as Angel and Buffy had to. It was not the story I had in my head and it is not the story I would have told, which I think was to a degree the point in reading it. But it is a story worth reading all the same, fanfic or otherwise...even with the grammatical and style errors here and there, minor actually, that made me wish at times to copyedit.
Fanfic...people sneer at it online. Many on my own flist have. And so have I. I don't know why. Fanfic is no different than any other story. From the paintings on the cave walls to the tales in the bible which have been translated and retranslated and rewritten and adapted a million times, not to mention all the different versions. Stories are how we answer the questions. They are how we help one another, give comfort, provide wisdom, complain, whine, explain. Fanfiction is merely taking a story, a world, characters we love or that have to some degree or other triggered some emotional response - and telling others how we felt, what concerned us, and what we wondered about. Here - the fanfiction is the author's way of improving their writing, figuring out what their readers respond to, and answering questions niggling away at their brain. It is just another story we tell ourselves so we can go to sleep at night, not afraid of being along in the dark.
Just finished watching the two hour season premiere of the series House - In the premiere - House is in a mental hospital struggling with his viacodine addiction. The episode is not about his addiction or detox, but rather about him dealing with his inability to connect to others in a meaningful way. This was a tale I'd seen before told in a different way, for there are no new stories just new ways of telling them. From I Never Promised You A Rose Garden to Girl, Interrupted and of course who can forget One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest - each tale about someone lost, friendless, who feels betrayed, alone, as if they can't trust anyone, including themselves, finding themselves again. Each time it is told, something new comes out of it. For the teller is different each time, and each teller gives a new twist, a new angle. The House tale had me in tears by the end of it...it spoke to me about loss, about moving on, about the fact that sometimes we can't fix things, and sometimes just being is enough.
When I was child - my friends and I told stories. One of my bestfriends, on the way to school, used to tell me what happened on the tv shows that I missed the night before. This was before the invention of VCR, DVR, cable, or the internet. I went to bed at 8, and on the east coast all the tv shows started at 8 or 9pm. Later when I saw the shows in reruns, I remember being disappointed - for they were not the same stories my friend had related to me on the way to school each morning. In a way she was telling me her own version, recreating the bits she liked, deleting the bits she didn't, and adding bits that she wished had been in it. Fanfic if you will. Another friend and I, used to take a show or book and create oral fanfiction from it - we'd tell long serial tales, either about our friends (real person fanfiction) or about the characters in a book, film, or tv show we loved. She'd tell me chapter one on Monday, and I'd tell her chapter two on Tuesday.
And when I thought about it this week, rolling the question around in my brain, why do we tell stories? I realized we always have, all of us, since the beginning. Whether they be a tale as simple as what we did at work today or one made up from our head with makebelieve characters, or a twist on a story that was already told, a what-if or a fill in the gap.
Our religions have that one thing in common, stories. Every religion has at its foundation a story. And the stories are incredibly similar...twists on the same tale, told from multiple perspectives. About sacrifice, pain, love, loss, and redemption. But mostly about what it means to be human, how to be good, and what happens when we aren't.
This is a long introduction to something I rarely if ever do in my livejournal. I don't tend to admit that I read fanfic. Especially B/S fanfic. Oh I admit it, but I don't talk about it too much, mostly out of embarrassment. And even though I've written fanfic, few have seen it - again embarrassment. Which I now realize is rather silly and stupid.
This month courtesy of
moscow_watcher's recommendations, I found a rather interesting fanfiction on the internet that addressed an issue that I'd been tossing about in the periphery of my brain in a new way. While reading it, I was or rather am also reading Bram Stocker's Dracula, and watching Season 3 of Dexter ( A noir cable tv series about a serial killer who attempts to handle his "homicidial tendicies" by killing only serial killers or individuals who murder others) - which in their own ways addressed similar issues but from other perspectives.I think we can learn from each other's stories. And I think sometimes a story, a fictional one, can tell us things or rather show us things that we can't get from a simple conversation or lecture or rule book. Stories are morality plays...most of the time. Or at least that was how Patrick Stewart, who portrayed Jean-Luc Picard in STNG, once defined Shakespearean plays and Star Trek The Next Generation (STNG).
The fanfic - if you are at all curious, can be found here:
http://unbridled-b.livejournal.com/tag/forward+to+time+past
It is entitled: Forward to Times Past by Unbridled Brunnett.
The fanfic is a Buffy/Spike fanfic (I won't use the other term since I find it silly and offensive - yes, I am anal about certain things, I admit that. Combining people's names into one word makes me cringe for some reason). It is a time travel fic. It is also a what-if scenario - where the author through the fic struggles to answer several questions that have been nagging at her - questions that do not necessarily have simple answers. Questions I've seen the tv series Dexter attempt to answer, but from another angle. It is a story about a hero who goes back in time and allows herself to be taken care of, who in attempting make the best of a situation may have inadvertently caused things to go...well not in a good direction. It is a story about a relatively good and gentle man who becomes a horrible monster and tries to become a good and gentle man again and isn't quite sure he can. It is about the messiness of obsessive and passionate relationships that we adore on the pages of a romance novel, but don't quite work as well in real life. And it, for me at least, gets to the heart of why we tell stories...to stave off the darknees, to find peace of mind, to entertain, to have the happy ending, to understand what it is to be human, to attempt to understand why people do horrible things, or merely to survive.
When reading fanfic or any fiction, I am of two minds - part of me gets frustrated at times with the writer for not telling me the story I want them to tell or I think, oh the character would never do that, the other part says shut-up this is the writer's story, let them tell it however they wish, you might learn something. It is the tale inside their heads. It is how they see the characters. They aren't going to see them the same way you do. They aren't telling your story, they are telling theirs. All of the work and risk is on their end, all you have to do is listen. Listen. Not as easy as it sounds. For listening requires one to let go of one's own internal noise to do so.
The story takes place after Buffy's mother dies or immediately after the episode "Forever" in S5, where Spike attempts to help Dawn bring Buffy's mom back to life, with dicey results. The episodes "Intervention" through "Chosen" do not happen in this time line. It goes alternate universe after Forever. The author poses a what-if scenario - what if instead of attempting to kill Glory, Willow and Tara found a way to send her to an alternate dimension or time-line, and what if in the process of doing so they accidentally sent Buffy back in time to London, 1879, the year before William became a vampire. What if Buffy meet William the Bloody Awful Poet? This by no means is a new idea -
herself_nyc did more or less the same thing. The difference is how the two author's tell it and how they choose to depict the characters. unbridled_brunett chose to tell a different tale than herself, in unbridled's tale - Buffy does not go to an alternate timeline, but a different time in her own timeline. Buffy changes the timeline. She changes William's life and she changes William himself. Nothing else that she is aware of. She also is changed as a result of it.Sexism and the Victorians
The author's sense of the time period - now that I'm reading Stoker's Dracula, is actually quite adept. Even her language is similar. Formal. Careful. Cautious. With a sense of repressed sexuality. Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897.
In the Victorian Age - women did not have much power, they could work, but in limited roles. And their reputation was everything. Women according to the Victorians did not enjoy sex - it was something they tolerated. In Unbridled's fic - William sees Buffy from afar, weeping and impoverished on the streets of London, and takes it upon himself to help her. She's landed herself in a Charity Work House - which makes sense, after all she landed in the streets of London in clothes only a sailor would be caught dead in. She's indecent and poor. Her only skill appears to be nursemaid - since she had a little experience doing that with her mother. She's smart enough not to try and play the slayer. For fear of a)changing the timeline, and b)getting caught. Being quite taken with her, William hires her as a nursemaid for his mother. But keeps his distance, not wishing to impose or to be improper. He is a bit of a romantic and not comfortable with people. Happier with books, his estates, his dear mum, and well being alone. Yet, he does finally come home and see her and they become friends, and he is smitten. She's the one who makes the first move - because she is a woman of her time, forthright, to the point, and affectionate. And he is a man of his time, repressed, restrained, and careful.
The sexism the author plays with is the power play between the two of them, and William's mother.
Buffy (who goes by "Elizabeth" in the past since clearly Buffy wouldn't work back then) - they keep inside, to the grounds, instruct her on what she should wear, what her speech should be like (although, he to be fair, finds her charming and does not wish her to change in any way, even though his mother insists she must.) Anne, William's mother, tells him at one point - that he must be forceful with Elizabeth. That he must whip her into shape, now. Or she will become a difficult, headstrong, willful wife. Elizabeth who overhears this thinks to herself that Williams' father may well have done as much to Anne at one time. It was how women were treated back then. William shys away from it. He finds her charming. He wishes only to take care of her. To have a small wife and child that will stay with him always on his estates. But women for reasons he does not understand are not taken with him. It could well be that he goes for the wrong sort - Cecily, as Buffy notes, is a bit of a snob. And William is described by the writer as new money. So the writer plays a bit with classism - the way that William is ostracized for his station and how Elizabeth(Buffy)'s entrance into his life does not improve it any. Her presence actually hurts his social and professional standing in society.
William in this story is turning 31. He is unmarried and a virgin. Niave of women, of life outside of his business, schooling, and estates and books. He is filled with suppressed anger and longing. Buffy/Elizabeth realizes how deeply lonely he is, and she reaches out to him, in part out of her own lonliness and in part because a part of her gets off on her power over him - she realizes how she turns him on, that she can manipulate him through his desire for her.
It is her only power here and that may well be why she plays on it.
What struck me about this fanfic - and how it differs from other fanfic's I've read, is the sex scenes, the few there are - there aren't that many - are about pleasuring the male, not the female. We have graphic descriptions of Buffy giving William what amounts to a handjob and they are mostly from his point of few - how she is arousing him, seducing him. It is Elizabeth/Buffy who seduces William in the past, not the other way around. She corrupts him.
It's a heady feeling - her power over him. Her ability to make him vulnerable and weak, with just a touch. This is not subversive on the author's part - in male fiction, the woman is often the seducer - I've seen it in many novels written by men. So it is odd to see a woman writing it. And yes, I'm pretty certain the writer is female - she mentions her husband in one post and states she is female.
In the future, when Buffy returns back to her timeline - she visits Spike and instead of him servicing her in this manner, she gives him a blow job, again in graphic detail - it is the only graphic detail we get. The author does not gives us details on what he does to her or any other sex for that matter. Interesting choice - since most writers go the opposite direction. I wondered why. And I think I know - the author is commenting on the power dynamic between the characters. Buffy's only power over William in the past is her knowledge of sex, her sexual power. And since in Victorian times, women aren't meant to enjoy sex - she has to convince him of it. The author is also to a degree comparing Buffy to Angelus and Buffy to Dru.
There is a scene in the story - where Buffy gives William a hand job more or less against his will. He says no, tries to resist, but can't. Finally, when it is over, he pushes her away and leaves, leaves the premises, guilt-stricken, and remorseful. Convinced that he pushed her to it. That she thinks she has to repay him this way. Terrified that he has abused her.
It almost derails him. He also becomes a bit obsessed with her. Delirious with desire. Yet, because he loves her and wants to be good or esteemed to be good within his "moral structure", he refuses to have sex with her until after she agrees to marry him. He justifies it to himself with the belief that this gives him power over her - that she can't leave him now, that he can't lose her - that by having her, he claims her, she is his. It never occurs to him that she is not a virgin. Viriginity - the author delicately states is assumed. If a woman weren't a virgin in this society - she is a prostitute, a woman of disrepute. Buffy dares not tell him otherwise. Yet, here again, the author makes an interesting choice - instead of Buffy worrying that he thinks she's a prostitute or William for that matter thinking it, even though his associates and possibly his servants do, Buffy worries that William is blaming himself and William does blame himself - he believes that he forced her, that he convinced her to do it. That he was the one in power here, he's her caretaker, he's responsible for her well-being, she didn't know any better - and he gave into his baser urges.
The contrast to Angelus - is when Angelus does rape vampire!William repeatedly, in an attempt to break him. To control him. But he doesn't succeed. Angelus intended to do it. While Buffy merely intended to adore him, to give him pleasure and to give herself pleasure hopefully, not to hurt. As Angel later tells Buffy - when I was Angelus, I enjoyed breaking things.
And part of me liked him because he would not break, he would not even bend.
Caretakers
Buffy and William take turns playing the role of care-taker or parent.
In the past, William is the parental figure or care-taker. He corrects her. He buys her clothes. He buys her food. He is working. Her presence disrupts his life, changes his social standing, makes things difficult with his family, servents, business and friends. Yet, he prefers to have her there than not and he chooses to bring her into his life. Her only power in the past over him is sexual, is the fact that he adores her, that he can't bear not to be with her, that all he thinks of is her - to the detriment of the rest of his life. He does not hold her responsible and he gives her credit for her handling of his mother and her strides to better herself, to adapt to their ways, without changing herself completely. She learns to horseback ride, she wears the painful corsets, and she nurses his mother. And when she makes social faux pas, some rather dangerous that almost get her killed - she does take his direction to a degree. In Victorian Times - that was often the male and female roles. The man took care of the woman, he protected her, he provided her with guidance. I'm catching this in Stoker's novel.
In present day, Buffy is the parental figure or caretaker. And William/Spike is a vampire. A chipped vampire. Who can't make a living outside of gambling or doing bad things. He lives in a crypt. He is socially unacceptable. He is beneath her station, while in Victorian times, she was beneath his. He is the one with the sexual prowess and sexual experience. He is the one with the sexual power - here. He is the seducer. Except - once again the writer chooses to have Buffy pleasure him. And once again, the writer chooses to have Spike attempt to take on the role of caretaker.
The role is an uneasy fit. He screws up royally. She has to be his caretaker for their relationship to work. He has to follow her lead. Bend to her control. Live in her house, owned by her, with her sister. As opposed to Buffy living in his house, caring for his mother, he now lives in her's caring for her sister. Her friendship with Anne (his mother) is deftly juxtaposed with his friendship with Dawn (her sister).
In truth - Spike screws up more in the present than Buffy does in the past. But, instead of Buffy going back to the past - which is often the solution in similar time travel tales I've seen or read, where the man goes to the future, doesn't fit in, and the woman he falls for travels back to the past to join him - this does the opposite...here the man becomes a monster to live long enough to join the heroine in the future, although it was hardly intentional.
Moral Structure or Souls
The idea of a monster being redeemed goes back to fairy tales - such as Beauty and The Beast or Rose White and Rose Red. The prince cursed to become bestial because of his behavior. Love alone can turn him back again. In the series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike had to get a soul to become good. When pressed as to why, the creator of the story stated that the soul represented a conscience or a different moral struture than the demon's. It wasn't that Spike didn't want to be good, Whedon argued, or that his wanting wasn't sufficient, but that within the rules of the series he created - one cannot be good without a human soul. That doesn't guarantee you will be of course. Actually from a Doylian perspective - I'm thinking Whedon had written himself a bit into a corner with the whole Angel is good with a soul, bad without and was trying to write himself out of it without turning Angel into a complete anti-hero. The author of this tale has decided NOT to ignore Whedon's argument and struggles instead to address head on. To make sense of it.
She asks the question many of us have asked - can someone change? Can a sociopathic personality love? Can someone who chose darkness find light? She is questioning the black and white perspective and finding lots of gray. Do you need a soul or metaphorically speaking do you need a conscience to be good, or can you learn from other's examples? For that matter what is conscience? What is a soul?
In this story, Spike goes into business with a decidedly shady character to get money for Buffy. Buffy knows he is supplying her with the money, but chooses to ignore it. Chooses to ignore the fact that he may be doing it through nefarious means. Dawn finds out exactly what he is doing and attempts to stop him, but only makes everything worse and lands herself in the hospital with a potentially fatal chest wound. Dawn's injury - causes everyone to wake up. Giles wakes up and apologizes to Buffy for not providing her with a salary from the Watcher's Council. (Instead he'd given her an ultimatium - saying give up Spike to get the money. The Council apparently knew nothing about Spike and would have given her the money regardless.). Buffy wakes up to the fact that Giles is correct, without a soul, Spike is a loaded gun. Add to that the fact that he hasn't changed - he is still obsessive. In Victorian times he would not let her out of his sight, he followed her everywhere, he was obsessive, how could that be healthy? And Spike realizes that he has lost Buffy, that without a soul, he is nothing, so he goes to Angel to plead for one. Prior to this bit, it is important to note that Spike attempts to claim Buffy, to make her his, to make her want him - the thing that vampires do in the Anita Blake tales and Sookie Stakehouse series. Buffy and Spike both believe he may have succeeded.
Enter Angel, stage right. To disabuse them of these myths. Angel in this tale serves as a bit of a truthteller. And his truth's underline another theme of this tale - how we lie to ourselves.
We do, you know. Lie. Mostly to ourselves. More so than to anyone else, I think. I said this to a friend a few weeks back...as an epiphany of sorts. We lie to ourselves, I said. And. We are excellent liars. She responded - I try not to. And I, well, I just shrugged, smiled a bit wryly and shook my head.
Buffy lies to herself - she tells herself that souls matter. That Angel is different with one. That vampires without souls aren't the people they once were, they are demons nothing more or less. She tells herself that Spike succeeded in claiming her against her will - that this is the reason she can only think of him, still wants him, still desires him, after everything he's done. It has to be, because the alternative...is too horrible to consider.
Angel tells her the truth. He tells her that Spike asked him to get him a soul. But he couldn't any more than he can undo a claim, because claims, he tells Buffy, do not exist. They are a story, a myth, a fantasy that vampires like to believe. They are no more true than the rules that vampires can't handle garlic or can't enter a church. Just legends.
And...he says, in regards to souls: "The thing is - people with souls hurt other people all the time. They rape and kill each other. They start wars. Some of them struggle with morality the same way he has and they do it their whole lives." In a way he is talking about himself and he is talking about her. He is talking about Giles.
In the series Dexter - Dexter believes he has no soul, that there is something missing inside him that others have. Yet, we meet Miquel who romanticizes Dexter, who has a moral struture and conscience and wants to use Dexter as his weapon - wants Dexter to kill a defense attorney giving him trouble. Dexter has a code - he won't kill anyone who has not killed people themselves or in self-defense, when he breaks the code he anguishes over it. The question the writers' pose is who is the more monsterous, Dexter or Miquel? In the previous season they asked the same questions but in regards to a cop who bent the law to exert his own brand of justice and Lilah who did it to find love. Do the reasons justify the act? Each of the characters in Dexter's world struggles with their own morality, their own choices, are their struggles any less than Dexter's or more? Can Dexter stop being who he is? Is he monster? And why are we asking these questions? Why does it matter?
It's not like we haven't asked them before. Dexter is just the last in a long long series of vigilantes...from Batman to Angel...are any of them heroes? Can any of them be redeemed?
I said once to my mother over the phone...we were discussing our mutual love for the anti-heroes or tragic heroes in fiction, and we determined that we preferred them to the Dudly Do Rights or straight up style hero due to the fact that they felt more real. Flawed. More human. I remember stating that what interested me was the play between light and dark inside the human. No one is completely evil or completely good and yes, I've sat across a table from a hitman and I've met, via a third party, a serial killer or sociopathic personality. They weren't all evil, there was light, even though they'd chosen darkness. What fascinates me is why they chose the dark, and why others, like myself, choose light. And if we change? To what degree does free will come into play. Do we have a choice? OR are we made that way? And if we do choose dark, how do we live with it? I haven't met any Dudly Do Rights, Wonder Women or Supermen, no straight up heroes...not one. I've met flawed human beings who try on a daily basis to be good and often trip over themselves in the process, people like Gregory House and Buffy Summers, people like Spike and Angel and Lymond and countless others.
Angel also says to Buffy: "If Spike wants his soul back, if he is hunting a way to retrieve it, maybe that means he doesn't need one in the first place.." He pauses...and says that he is not telling her to be with him. It does not make Spike good. He is still a vampire. The same problems exist that drove him, Angel, away from her. But it is her choice to make and he is tired of broken things, and when he saw Spike - he was broken.
Buffy struggles with her own moral choices in this tale. To what degree is she responsible to Spike? She made him fall in love with him? Or did she? It is what she thinks. Although we are told by the writer that this is not so. Can she be his conscience? She realizes she didn't even try, she wanted the money, she wanted him, and ignored the rest. Perhaps she owes him more.
Obsessive Love/ Relationships
In this tale...the author doesn't appear to be sure...should we take back someone or be with someone that is potentially destructive? Is obsessive love a good thing?
Buffy questions her relationship with him. His obsession with her. The fact that he was never really happy in their relationship. He himself seems to realize it - he is either deliriously happy in her company or not. He can't be what she wants. He can't change himself to be the man she desires. She can't change him. And he can't change for her. He can't get all the lines, he doesn't know the rhythm or the words. And each day feels like an audition with the same words, that he just keeps forgetting. He wants to own her, he wants to be a part of her, inside her, never leave, because then he never has to worry about being rejected about being alone and left in return. The lonliness is what he fears more than anything else. And he clings to her like a heroine addict to avoid it. He sees her as both possession and savior.
Is it a vampire thing? No. The writer describes a similar attitude when he was human. It is human.
And Buffy questions it, it's source. And wonders if she should take him back. If she does, will it change anything? Since this is a romance, she takes him back and we get the happy ending, or so it seems. Yet there is a question mark at the end. One no one who responded to the fic seemed to pick up. She is giving him the second chance. Letting him be her partner.
Trusting him to patrol three days a week without her, and four with her. He lives in her house. He sleeps in her bed. He is allowed to be part of her family and friends. Much as Anya and Xander are. But in the back of her head, she knows he is a loaded gun and there is always the chance things can go wrong. He bit her once...he could again. There are no guarantees.
Yet, yet...as pointed out in the episode of House I saw tonight and well in Dexter, that is true of us all. When we trust someone, we are taking a risk. We do not know who they will turn out to be. We do not know who we are half the time.
Conclusion
Reading this fic made me see another point of view outside of my own and it reminded me of why I read stories, love stories, adore stories...because of that simple fact - to solve an issue with another head, another pov, to see another answer to the same question. I understood why a woman might choose to give a man who had hurt her a second chance, even if she may live to regret it, even if she might die as a result. And why a man might do the same. I saw why in some cases we move on - as Angel and Buffy had to. It was not the story I had in my head and it is not the story I would have told, which I think was to a degree the point in reading it. But it is a story worth reading all the same, fanfic or otherwise...even with the grammatical and style errors here and there, minor actually, that made me wish at times to copyedit.
Fanfic...people sneer at it online. Many on my own flist have. And so have I. I don't know why. Fanfic is no different than any other story. From the paintings on the cave walls to the tales in the bible which have been translated and retranslated and rewritten and adapted a million times, not to mention all the different versions. Stories are how we answer the questions. They are how we help one another, give comfort, provide wisdom, complain, whine, explain. Fanfiction is merely taking a story, a world, characters we love or that have to some degree or other triggered some emotional response - and telling others how we felt, what concerned us, and what we wondered about. Here - the fanfiction is the author's way of improving their writing, figuring out what their readers respond to, and answering questions niggling away at their brain. It is just another story we tell ourselves so we can go to sleep at night, not afraid of being along in the dark.
