The
mission's what matters.
So what's the mission?
In a way, you're looking at her.
Meet Faith Lehane.
The other Slayer. The forgotten
Slayer, a lot of the time. She was the girl the Scooby Gang left in the
crummy motel when they had their secret meetings. She was the girl
Buffy didn’t particularly want to invite over for dinner, or
Christmas eve for that matter, but she did it anyway because it would be
rude not to. Willow liked Faith until she started coming between her
and Buffy, and Xander liked Faith until he found out who gets to be on
top, but Buffy never really seemed to like her, except for that time
they went dancing and Buffy got a little taste of the wild side.
Ditching class, slaying vamps, want, take, have...ah, those were the
days. Buffy’s Mom liked Faith fine; she thought it was neat
that
this new girl could take over as the Slayer and risk her life every
night so her daughter wouldn’t have to. It’s not
like she
was Faith’s Mom; she was Buffy’s Mom. She was under
no
obligation to care about Faith, just like Buffy was under no obligation
to let Faith in when Faith reached out to her, and Xander and Willow
were
under no obligation to include her in the secret Scooby Gang meetings
and Giles was under no obligation to try to find her a decent place to
live. By the time Gwendolyn “You Call This An Occult Book
Collection Mr. Giles” Post came along and Buffy started to
make
an effort, it was too late; she had lost Faith already. And she never
did get her back. Even after Faith found redemption of a sort, or at
least started down the path toward it, Buffy never got her back.
Faith just wasn’t the sort of
person Buffy and the gang liked to socialize with. She was flashy and
fabulous and she told cool stories, but she was also reckless and
undisciplined and she refused to take being a Slayer seriously, as far
as the Scoobies were concerned; Faith refused to not have fun and she
refused to see being the Slayer as some sort of anchor around her neck.
She dressed and acted like a party girl and no one knew where her
parents were and there was a distinct aura of Wrong Side of the Tracks
about her. She was sexually experienced. She had a funny accent. She
kept saying “five by five” and no one knew what the
hell it
was supposed to mean.
The Scooby Gang made two big
mistakes with Faith, two mistakes that nearly led to disaster. First,
they underestimated her. This girl with the Boston accent and the
raunchy sense of humor living in the crummy motel, she must not be too
smart, right? Wrong. Faith didn’t read books but she read
people
well enough and she knew the Scooby Gang didn’t really want
her
around. Being invited over to Buffy’s house for Christmas eve
was
charity and Faith knew it. Faith knew Buffy didn’t really
want to
invite her over. And she pretended to have plans, but then she showed up
anyway. Interesting, that...
The second big mistake Buffy and the
gang made was misreading Faith completely. Faith reached out to the
people she felt she could connect with--she reached out to Giles, and
Angel, and especially Buffy. Only Angel really responded, and he was
also the only one who understood Faith even a little. Buffy just
didn’t really care for her and she was wrapped up in thoughts
of
Angel and what exactly she was going to do with her life after high
school--could a Slayer even have a life? As for Giles, he had other
things to think about too: he was still getting over the loss of Jenny
Calendar and then he had to deal with the news of Angel’s
return.
Giles and Buffy didn’t see what was right in front of them: a
lonely girl who felt disconnected from the world and overwhelmed by her
lot in life and just wanted some friends. They didn’t see
what
was right in front of them, but the Mayor did, and when he gave Faith
the love and the validation she had been searching for, she gave him
everything she had in return. Her loyalty, her love, and, nearly, her
life. She wanted to give those things to Buffy, but Buffy spurned her.
She thought she might give them to Gwendolyn Post, but Gwendolyn Post
was there to take things from her; to take advantage of her. Faith gave
those things to Angel eventually, but she had a long road to travel
first.
Faith was no saint, and she allowed an
evil man to use her. She didn’t think about the morality of
her
actions; she ceded her free will to the Mayor and became simply a
weapon in his hand. He pointed her and she went
“bang”. But
she did it because he cared about her. He showed it, not just by giving
her an apartment or buying her things, but by talking to her, by really
being interested in what she had to say. He showed it by caring about
the little things, like correcting her when she used profanity, or
telling faux-Angelus not to keep her out too late (a wonderful Mayor moment
in a whole season of wonderful Mayor moments) or trying to get her to
wear a dress or fix her hair so that it didn’t hide her face.
He
thought she was beautiful but he didn’t want her sexually.
One
gets the impression from watching season three that he was one of the
very few men Faith had met in her life who didn’t want to use
her
that way. Though she would’ve been willing to allow that if
the
Mayor had wanted it--sex appeal was one of the things Faith knew she
had going for her and she used it to establish relationships--the fact
that he didn’t want it made Faith trust him, and like him,
that
much more...and eventually, she loved him.
Faith wanted to love, and be loved.
She did monstrous things when her love was spurned. But she was never a
monster.
She wanted Buffy to love her. The
attentive viewer didn’t need to wait for the Mayor (appearing
as
part of the First Evil) to tell Faith that in season seven to know it
was true. It was right there in front of us, as plain as that heart
drawn on the window...
And that’s the key.
That’s the mission. That’s what these stories are
about.
I always wanted to write a novel but like many
aspiring novelists I hemmed and hawed and found reasons to
procrastinate. I was afraid: afraid of prose, afraid of plotting,
afraid of writing descriptions of things. I played around with writing
in movie script format for awhile (which is a bitch, by the way--say
what you want about how difficult prose can be, at least with a novel
you can just start writing and there are no real conventions you have
to follow other than telling a good story. Movie scripts are as
complicated as the U.S. Tax Code and if you fail to follow the tiniest
little rule out of the approximately thirty-two billion little
arbitrary formatting rules then your script gets tossed unread) but it
wasn’t very satisfying; a movie script is more like the
blueprint
of a thing than the actual thing and I found it tiresome to always have
to worry about how long a line of dialogue was because you
can’t
let the page count get too high. I was in the middle of writing a Buffy
story in script format--this one, in fact--when I finally said screw it
and decided to write it as a novel. Partly because I was tired of being
a wuss. Partly because it was already three times as long as a movie
script is supposed to be. But mostly because I was tired of being a
wuss.
There are a lot of television
shows I’ve come to love--The West Wing, the Sopranos,
Deadwood,
the X-Files, Veronica Mars, Star Trek (Kirk and Picard and
that’s
it), the Simpsons, Farscape, the Office, the Shield. But only one has
ever inspired me to write. There’s something about Buffy the
Vampire Slayer (and Angel--I sort of count them both as one thing, even
though the shows were very different in tone and they’re
clearly
not the same) that sparked my imagination, that had me coming up with
stories in my head almost from the moment I started watching. (Which
was late, by the way. I didn’t get into Buffy until season
seven
was on the air, though I didn’t start watching with season
seven,
I started with season one, on DVD. Thank goodness, or I might not even
be doing this now. But I’ll leave the season seven ranting to
another essay.) I had heard of Buffy; the show, and Sarah Michelle
Gellar, were a media phenomenon. Sarah Michelle Gellar was on the cover
of Rolling Stone. Friends of mine whom I know have good taste were
watching it. But I refused.
Why? Kung-fu vampires. I just
couldn’t get past the kung-fu vampires. I’m sorry,
but a
vampire doing reverse spin-kicks just looks ridiculous to me. Still
does in fact, even now, after I’ve become such a fan of the
show
and the characters that I’m writing novels set in its
fictional
universe and setting up a website devoted to it. But, back to my point.
Once I started watching the show I saw its greatness, and I was hooked.
The greatness lay in its characters. That sounds like a meaningless
generalization; shouldn’t a great show have great characters?
Ah,
but there are great characters who have adventures, and then everything
returns to the status quo at the end of the episode, and then there are
great characters who really experience things, and are changed by them.
Captain Kirk was a great character. But on the Star Trek television
show at least, he was never changed by anything that happened to him.
He solved that week’s mystery, bedded the alien babe, blew up
the
enemy ship, made peace with the belligerent but ultimately merely
misunderstood aliens of the week and then it was time for a laugh with
Spock and McCoy--more properly a laugh with McCoy at Spock,
actually--and off to the next adventure. Kirk was allowed to grow in
the movies, but not the television show--television was a medium for
disposable entertainment. People didn’t want characters with
long
emotional arcs on television; they didn’t want extended
storylines and real consequences for the characters’ actions.
Right? Wrong.
Most of the television shows
I’ve mentioned above flew in the face of that theory and none
did
it with more guts and verve than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Buffy’s actions had consequences; not all of them were good
ones.
The first time she made love, a vampire lost his soul and tried to kill
her and all her friends. She became so wrapped up in herself after she
was magically returned from the dead that she didn’t even
notice
her sister and her two best friends self-destructing around her, and it
almost cost her all of them. And remember my opening paragraph about
Faith? Here were characters who lived and breathed, who fought for what
was right but could still be selfish, could still be vain, could still
be thoughtless and make mistakes. In other words, human beings. (Except
prettier than any of us.) I loved it. I grit my teeth through the
kung-fu vampires and didn’t really have a problem
with the
cheesy special effects--I like the original Star Trek show after
all--and after watching all of season one on DVD in a few
sittings I was entertained and intrigued. But season one was only a
taste of what was to come; it was a tasty little appetizer. Season two
was the meal.
After finishing season two--after
the deliciously snide villainy of Spike and the bewitching beauty of
Dru, the heart wrenching betrayal of Angelus and the lonely journey of
one strong, brave, big-hearted girl who just wanted to have her friends
and her guy and maybe a place on the cheerleading squad but had to save
the world instead--had to save it for everybody else, because she never
really got to live and be happy in it--I was hooked.
I was hooked on this writing, on
these epic stories of tragedy and betrayal and ultimate triumph that
always came with a cost, stories that nevertheless always found a way
to sneak in some welcome and occasionally wonderfully subversive humor,
and always made me smile. I was hooked on these characters, who seemed
like real people might seem if real people had to exist under those
circumstances, and were much better looking than anyone I know,
and had to live in a world of demons and vampires...and, um,
internet
robot guys. And unfortunately, a world of network censors and budget
and time
constraints too, but hey, whaddayagonnado? Every single important
magical
artifact just happens to be located in Sunnydale and Sunnydale has, as
far as I can tell, two streets and every single thing is within walking
distance even though the town is big enough to have, somehow, an
airport and docks with merchant ships in the harbor. Just deal with it.
I was hooked on these wonderful actors, who never mailed in a
performance, who always made me believe in this wonderful, dark, scary,
goofy kung-fu vampire-having world. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson
Hannigan, Eliza Dushku, James Marsters, Tony Head, Juliet Landau and
all the rest of the show’s wonderful cast of regulars and
guest
stars always had me believing. And laughing, and worrying, and that one
time, even tearing up a little (damn you, Alyson Hannigan, and your
uncanny ability to make me all like, sad and stuff when your character
is sad. Stop doing that!)
These characters, these actors,
this writing...together they all sparked something in me; they made me
want to come up with my own stories for all the characters, not just
the cast of Buffy but the cast of Angel as well. Part of it was the
road not taken: I thought Faith got a raw deal and always wondered how
things would have gone for her if she just had a little more luck, if
she just had someone (who wasn’t a big giant evil snake) to
care
about her. I always wondered what would have happened if Willow and
Xander had gotten together, and I thought that of the three people
Buffy became romantically involved with as the show went on
(I’m
not counting Parker, obviously), none of them were right for her.
(There was someone else, though, who I thought might be. I’m
assuming you’ve figured out who by now.)
Part of it was some small
dissatisfaction regarding the realities of producing a television show:
I always thought, for example, that as much as he was built up as the
worst vampire in history, Angelus ultimately didn’t get to do
much, when he got free in season two. He was rude and
sarcastic and he snuck into people’s houses and drew (really
excellent) pictures of them, and he killed one supporting character
that none of the main characters with the single exception of Giles
should really have cared much about. Buffy and Xander hardly knew Jenny
Calendar; Willow was fond enough of her, the way a student is toward a
favorite teacher, but you could hardly say she cared deeply about her.
And yet everyone was weeping and wailing as if someone important had
been killed. The thing is, Joss Whedon had a wonderful cast and he
really didn’t want to have to kill off some of his regulars
just
to prove that Angelus was a bad ass, and I get that. But Angelus really
should have done more damage. But that’s television. Killing
off
your actors who are brilliant and wonderful and endearing and also
prettier than the rest of us and are especially also under contract, is
a big no-no. And then there’s the fact that these are the
only
teenagers on Earth who don’t swear--but no one swore on
television then except Detective Sipowicz. That’s network
censors
for you. And every single adventure conveniently took place two blocks
from Buffy’s house and there was almost no location shooting (even the
cemetery was on the lot.) That’s a small budget for you. And
I
always wanted to write a novel...
So I did. I came up with a story.
And another, and another. Pretty soon I realized I was coming up with a
whole alternate mythology for the characters...I was coming up with the
road not taken.
It started with Faith.
The first novel in my series
starts with Faith getting cut some slack for once.
Having just a little bit of luck...having someone to care about her.
And when you’re writing, the first rule is, listen to your
characters. They’ll tell you what they want to do, what they
want
to say, where they should be going, if you only listen to them. And
changing Faith’s circumstances meant that Faith herself would
end
up being changed. Not by me. By her experiences; by the road not taken,
the new path I had set her on. When she eventually makes her way to
Sunnydale, she’s not quite the Faith we’ve seen on
the
television show. She’s still flip and sexy and brash and
ballsy
but she’s not quite the same. And as she meets the other
characters, their lives change too...and a new world is set in motion.
Since it would be rude to try to
claim in the novels that Joss Whedon’s version of events
didn’t happen these stories are obviously set in an
“alternate universe” (I hate that term; it sounds
like
I’m writing comic books. But the term is essentially
correct.)
Since it’s an alternate universe I decided to change not only
Faith’s immediate circumstances, but some of the other
characters’ back stories as well. The first book picks Faith
up
as a Potential Slayer in November of 1997 (around the time Buffy was
first meeting Kendra), but Faith doesn’t reach Sunnydale
until
almost a year after that and the reader only learns about
what’s
been going on with Buffy and the gang once Faith meets them. I decided
that this
Buffy had a harder time of it...when Angelus got loose on
this world,
he did some damage...
So what’s the mission? What are these books about? What am I
trying to say?
Well, at their most basic level
they’re about me taking these characters I love, changing
their
circumstances, and watching what happens. This is a different world and
these characters have led slightly different lives. Oh, Buffy is still Buffy and Willow is still
Willow --I
think you’ll recognize
them
just fine. But there are differences. Some are small, some are major;
some are obvious from the outset, and some will come as surprises.
There are a couple of bombshells in the first book, and more in the
second, and they'll just keep coming after that, as the lives of these
characters evolve in very different directions. So if you find yourself
wondering why Buffy occasionally
refers to adventures she never had on the television show, remember
that this is a different Buffy. If you’re wondering why
certain
people don’t seem to exist, remember that this is a different
world.
I made other changes too; changes
having to do with those pesky realities of producing a television show.
I’m not producing a television show, so I enjoy quite a bit
more
freedom. I can go on location wherever I want. I have an unlimited
budget and all my actors are available all the time. There are no
network censors, so the gang can, you know, swear sometimes. They can
have sex.
A note about the sex:
Essentially, this series is
the story of a romance between two people. These people have sex,
because that’s what people falling in love do, and I
didn’t
shy away from it. It’s explicit in places. But it’s
not
gratuitous sex; it isn’t there just so I could write a sex
scene.
Writing porn is beneath me and I won’t do it. The first book, for example,
is nearly 500 pages in Word format and even in the shorter HTML format it's still very long, but only perhaps 5% of its length
depicts sex. But, again, it is
explicit in places, and I make no apology for that; Buffy the Vampire
Slayer and Angel could both be very steamy shows, especially after
Buffy moved to UPN. These characters always had sex, and it was erotic
(though tastefully so), and I don’t think depicting these
characters as sexually active in my novels changes the tone of the show
at all. Think of it as getting to see what happens after the director
says “cut”. But I’d like to remind anyone
who wants
to read the novels that they are NC-17, or NC-21 as the case may be (is
that a real rating? Well, whatever. You get the point. Not for the
kiddies.) Consider yourself duly warned.
There are a few other changes
too, that come from me quibbling with inconsistencies on the part of
the show’s writers--for example, just how powerful are
vampires
anyway, compared to Slayers? In the first two seasons of the show,
Angel wasn’t exactly a conquering hero and he was nowhere
near as
strong or capable as he became on his own show, which was obviously due
to the fact that the writers weren’t sure what to do with him
at
first, and they certainly had no idea, in the beginning, that the
character would be spun off into his own series. In season five of
Buffy, Riley destroys a nest of vampires with a grenade, but in season
three of Angel a year later Angel survives a grenade blast. Are some
vampires more powerful than others? Maybe it’s the
Master’s
bloodline?
And how exactly does magic work
anyway? I always thought all the Latin gobbledygook Willow was made to
recite was a lazy way of depicting magic on the part of the writers, so
I came up with some rules of my own.
And how about the Watchers Council? These
bozos have been running Slayers and making sure the world gets saved on
a regular basis for thousands of years? Seriously? Giles is cool, but
the rest? Come on. The Council can still be jerks in my books on occasion, but at least they're no longer inept jerks.
There are a few other minor
things that don’t require any explanation from me, but
there’s one more rather major thing that does. I’ve
changed
what a Slayer is, slightly. Don’t worry, they’re
still
cute, sassy teenage girls who kick vampire butt while tossing off
quips, but I added some things. I started thinking about what it must
be like to be a Slayer--you have to think about these things if you
want to write characters as if they’re real people, and if
you
don’t want to write them that way then what’s the
point?--about what it’s like to be a teenage girl who goes to
school and laughs and hangs with her friends and then goes out and
kills things every night. Because that’s what Slayers do,
that’s what they are--it’s all right there in the
name. I
wondered about that dichotomy, which is innate in all Slayers.
They’re hunters, killers. And I gave a lot of thought to the
“rules” regarding Slayers--there’s one at
any one
time (or there was until Buffy bent that rule) and yet, from watching
the show, it seems that at any one time there are thousands, possibly
tens or even hundreds of thousands, of vampires in the world too. How much of a dent can
a Slayer really make? Does it make sense that a Slayer should only be
as strong as a vampire when there are thousands of them and only one of
her? So Slayers are stronger than the average vampire in my stories.
But not just stronger. I always thought it was great that Angel (and, I
assume, all vampires) had such heightened senses on the show and I
decided Slayers should share in that a little. It’s part of
the
dichotomy: the hunter in these girls, the animal in them.
It’s a
change, but I think it works well and it also serves to play up the
differences between these girls and regular people--because there are
differences, big ones. Even on the television show, Buffy always felt
separate from her friends, from humanity...she always felt that burden.
And Buffy and Faith will both feel it keenly in my books as well.
Sometimes, they’ll even revel in it.
It’s a new world. Things
are changed, and people have led different lives. Partly because I
wanted them to. Partly because it’s inevitable now; once you
make
one change in one character, there’s a domino effect once
that
character comes into contact with others: if you’re true to
your
characters, you have to let them respond naturally. I have sixteen
novels planned and a general outline of most of the stories. Starting
with the first book, which ends during what would be early season three
of the show, I’m going to explore all the major events and
some
of my favorite episodes of both Buffy and Angel, but with my own twist. Things will not turn out
exactly the same, and sometimes they’ll turn out wildly
different. Again, that’s partly because that’s how
I want
it and also partly because it’s inevitable now. When this Faith
eventually meets the Mayor she
won’t
be the same girl he seduced and used; she can’t be, or I
wouldn’t be writing true to her character as she’s
developing. When this
Buffy meets Riley and the Initiative, when this
Willow meets Tara, when this
Angel has a son, when this
whole world is
changed for the worse by Cordelia’s inadvertent wish that
Buffy
had never come to Sunnydale...things will be different.
The road has already diverged. I’m just following where it
leads.
I’m hoping you’ll
want to come along for the
ride.
Disclaimer:
Series trademarks, all publicly
recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their
respective
owners. No money is being made from these works. No copyright
infringement is
intended.
