Must. Resist. Urge. To. Quote. Python! Grrr! Argh!

ZachsMind | July 19, 06:39 CET

It's a fair cop.

syrcharles | July 19, 16:52 CET

Watcher: [singing] Bravely bold the Slayer rode forth from Sunnydale. She was not afraid to die, oh brave Buffy. She was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways, brave, brave, brave, brave Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was not in the least bit scared to being mashed into a pulp, or to have her eyes carved out, and her elbows broken. To have her kneecap split, and her body burned away, and her limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Buffy. Her head smashed in and heart cut out, and her liver removed, and her bowels unplugged, and her nostrils ripped and her bottom burned off and her penis...(no, something can't be right there)
Buffy: THAT'S, that's quite enough, Giles.
The original version of 'Walk Through the Fire' from "Once More With Feeling"---with sincere apologies to 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and 'Sir Robin'.

The Lady Pele | July 19, 20:16 CET

Also good fun: 'Once more with Giles', and 'Once more, all naked, all gay.'

Caroline | July 19, 21:04 CET

"Giles rises to his feet and hurries to her side. He whips off his glasses in a manly way." from Once More with Giles---LOL! I laughed until my sides ached! Most excellent parody!

The Lady Pele | July 19, 21:36 CET

Ugh. Maybe it's because of my personal experience with a few people that write it, but fanfiction really turns me off. Even when it's well-written - which most of this stuff really isn't.

toddster | July 19, 21:50 CET

For me, fan fiction generally does not work when writers insist on the shipper stuff. If a person can't write the characters as they are, they should just write whatever story they want to tell without using someone else's characters. Whoever wrote the first shipper oriented prose, their stuff was probably good, but two hundred thousand shipper stories later it's just become formulaic.

Whedon created some pretty damn fine characters. I don't see the logic of someone who claims to be a fan not at least attempting to write true to those characters if they're going to write Whedonesque fan fiction. It gives those of us who try to do fan fiction right a bad name.

ZachsMind | July 20, 06:01 CET

I think 95% of the ff out there is trash. And there's a place for trash. (I don't want sushi every day, sometimes I want a bag of chips with a big dollop of mayonaise) Then there's that 4% that's so good (shippy or not) it seems better than the series, with characters that are as close to canon as you can get, but a little more defined, 3-dimensional. Those are hugely satisfying.

[ ... ]

Oh, for a different phrasing.

Caroline | July 20, 14:06 CET

Can I assume all this 'shipper' and 'shippy' talk is referring to 'relationships' in some way? If so, then...

Whoever wrote the first shipper oriented prose, their stuff was probably good...

The first fan fiction I ever heard about online was Kirk/Spock slash. So no, this stuff doesn't exactly have the most highbrow of origins. ;-)

toddster | July 21, 15:20 CET

ah, were they "Spirk Shippers"---eww. Bad acting, no emotion---forget I said that. ;^)

The Lady Pele | July 22, 05:43 CET