Across the Universe

Strawberry Fields -- Recap

hollydb — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 00:55:18 GMT

So I finished Chapter 29 of Strawberry Fields today. I've even managed to get me a couple new betas who have the chapter now.

Strawberry Fields was last updated on February 26, 2008. That's right, nearly 10 years have passed. I'm not sure if anyone who's still in fandom was following that story or not, but even if they were, ten years is a freaking long time. I had to reread the story to remember what all had happened and one of my new betas hasn't read the story at all. To spare her the time of reading through the previous 28 chapters, I put together a "quick" recap. The recap ended up being more than 3 pages long, which isn't all that surprising, given the fic itself was over the 80k mark when I initially abandoned it.

Since I now have a summary of what happened on hand, I thought I'd share it here so anyone who was reading Strawberry Fields back in the day and wants to read the chapters I put out now doesn't feel obligated to start from the beginning.

- AU from Only Have Eyes for You; Spike corners Buffy in the high school. He’s there to make a deal with her regarding Angelus, but before he can say anything, they get possessed and make with the smoochies.

- This leads Spike and Buffy to becoming reluctant allies much sooner than Becoming. Neither likes it, but they begin working together, and the more time Spike spends around Buffy, the more he realizes there was more to the kiss.

- Events otherwise unfold more or less as they did prior to Becoming, with Buffy and Spike becoming closer. They both admit there is a mutual attraction, only Spike is more open about wanting to pursue it.

- Spike holes up in a crummy motel rather than going back to the mansion. He’s visited by Dru before Angelus confronts Buffy in the cemetery, who has Acathla’s sword. She pins Spike to the wall with it to keep him from interfering with Angelus’s plans. Spike loses a lot of blood and passes out.

- After the confrontation with Angelus in the graveyard, and finding Kendra dead in the library, Buffy goes to Spike’s motel room, where she finds him pinned to the wall and covered in blood. She removes the sword so he falls to the ground, but being mostly starved and drained of blood, Spike goes feral and bites her.

- Spike realizes what he’s doing and forces himself to pull away from Buffy. She assures him she’s fine, but he knows better. He also knows he needs more blood so he gathers some from the bagged supply he has on hand. This leads Buffy to realize Spike has stopped hunting.

- Spike takes Buffy home so she can eat something to help her regain her strength since he drank so much of her blood. They’re alone for a few minutes before Joyce comes inside. Conversation continues as it does in Becoming Part II. Joyce kicks Buffy out of the house.

- Confrontation with Angelus/Acathla is same as in the show, including Angel getting his soul back. Buffy, heartbroken, consents to leave town with Spike, who is also a bit heartbroken after seeing Buffy kiss Angel. He takes her to LA.

- After eating at a greasy diner, Spike takes Buffy to a motel room, where they have sex. Buffy is distant and mourning, though, and Spike falls into a jealous fury realizing she’s using him as an Angel placeholder. He becomes possessive and bites her, which leads to an unintentional claim.

- Buffy comes to the realization that she needs distance from Spike, because she does have feelings for him but she’s still very much mourning Angel and what happened. Furthermore, she’s terrified of what she might have to do to Spike, should he become the monster he was before. After a couple days with Spike in the motel, she writes him a note and leaves. Later, she finds a note he’d written her in her pants pockets. His note tells her that he knew she was going to run and that he’ll find her. He also leaves her a lot of money to survive on until they reunite.

- A few days later, Buffy is in deep physical pain (due to the claim and being separated from Spike). She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, but figures it might have something to do with Spike biting her, so she visits an LA library to research vampire bites. While she’s there, she prevents Fred (from AtS) from being sucked into an alternative dimension. A green, horned demon (Lorne) breaks through and escapes.

- Fred takes Buffy to her apartment, where Buffy tells her about demons, hell dimensions, and apocalypses. Fred insists that Buffy stay with her. Later, Fred finds out that one of her neighbors is moving and suggests that Buffy use the money Spike left her to secure her own space. She likewise offers to help Buffy land a job at the library.

- While Buffy was well enough to save Fred’s life, she’s in escalating pain due to the claim and being separated from Spike. Fred eventually talks Buffy into going to a doctor, even though Buffy knows her issue isn’t medical.

- On the way back to Fred’s apartment, Fred and Buffy are ambushed by vamps. Buffy can barely stand now, but commands Fred to run. The vamps are about to attack when Buffy’s pain vanishes. She realizes Spike is with her, and together, they lay waste to the vamps.

- Buffy is very happy to see Spike, but she’s also pissed about whatever’s happening to her. They argue about the claim; Buffy gets angrier when she realizes Spike bit her because he was upset that she was mourning Angel. In mid-fight, Buffy hears Fred scream and tears off to help her.

- Fred has landed herself in the middle of a group of vampire hunters, including Charles Gunn. The hunters saw Spike and Buffy making out (which happened right after he showed up and before they started arguing) and assumed they were both vampires, given their super strength. Buffy tells them she’s the Slayer. When she realizes they don’t know what that means, she claims Spike is also a slayer to prevent the hunters from targeting him.

- Gunn seems to know something’s not right, but he saw Buffy and Spike dust the vampires in the alley, so he figures they’re all right to cut loose. One of the other hunters, Briggs, disagrees, but Buffy, Spike, and Fred are allowed to leave.

- A lot of discussion back at Fred’s apartment building.

- Spike wants to pursue whatever he and Buffy started back at their motel room, but Buffy is adamant on mourning Angel as well as separating anything she feels for Spike from whatever mystical bond has them tied together. She asks Spike to try to be her friend first.

- Since they can’t be separated without severe physical pain due to the claim (the pain itself being something that will fade over time), Buffy suggests they move into the free apartment together. This will allow her to get to know Spike on her terms apart from apocalypses or ex-boyfriends. Spike is skeptical this will work, but is willing to try anything. The only thing he asks is that Buffy allow him to sleep in the same bed with her. She thinks this is a bad idea but agrees ultimately, since he hasn’t asked for much.

- The first night together, Buffy learns that Spike is a cuddler who gets handsy in his sleep. She decides to camp it on the sofa. Spike wakes up and realizes she’s no longer in bed with him, finds her on the sofa, and carries her back to bed. He then takes the sofa for himself.

- Buffy is confused as to why she awakes in bed. She finds Spike on the sofa and asks what happened. He’s also confused as to why she left their bed, and when she tells him that he was saying things to her and touching her in his sleep, he becomes aroused.

- This distracts Buffy to the point where they’re about to have sex before she remembers she’s trying to maintain distance. She ends up bolting out the door and to Fred’s apartment.

- Buffy spends the day with Fred, trying to get some distance from what happened that morning with Spike. When they get back to the apartment, Spike is gone. Buffy is concerned that she scared him off with being hot/cold; Fred, who has watched them together, assures her that Spike will be back. Indeed, someone knocks on the door and Buffy rushes to open it, relieved until she sees who’s on the other side.

- It’s Charles Gunn, who has come to tell her that his men (led by Briggs) grabbed Spike when he was out on a blood run. The men are curious about slayers and are holding Spike hostage to draw her out so they can learn more about her. Only Gunn was opposed to this.

- Spike told Gunn where to find Buffy and to give her a message not to come after him, though he knows she will. Buffy gears up, ready to go get her vamp back.

Yes, this is where I left it for nearly a decade.

The new chapter should be out soon.

Wherein I ramble. A lot.

hollydb — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 19:04:42 GMT

So I’ve been doing a lot of fandom reminiscing over the last week. My thoughts are jumbled on this, but I wanted to get it out there somewhere.

The original worlds I’ve built since leaving fandom are where I feel I belong. The Sinners & Saints series, when it’s finished, will be a personal literary achievement—first series plotted and completed. I love that world—it took me a long time to get to know it as well as I knew Buffy. And that, I think, was the single hardest thing about transitioning from fanfic to original work. I’d played so long in Joss’s sandbox, with established, towering castles and recognizable features, that starting in an empty one was a shock.

I’ve been reminded in the last week alone how rewarding fanfic is on a creative level. Writing original work is incredibly fulfilling, but I’m throwing my work out there against an overcrowded wall, and it gets buried almost immediately. The romance market is oversaturated and that’s never going away. Self-publishing has made the job of becoming a best-selling author, or even a reader’s autobuy author, damn near impossible. This would be problematic for me if I cared about the money, which I don’t. I mean, would it be nice to receive EL James’s royalty checks? Of course. But I have always written for me first, readers second, and money third.

But it’s been such a long time since I’ve had readers—readers who actually follow me and care about what I write—that I’d forgotten what that felt like. Publishing can be very lonely. Now, I have made some terrific friends and my work has been well reviewed, but it does feel a bit like shouting down an empty hall and waiting for something other than your own echo to shout back.

I have an ambitious writing schedule plotted for 2017 and 2018. Right now, I’m working on Book 6 in the Sinners & Saints series (of a planned 8 books) and a modernization of Pride & Prejudice. And while I don’t have new fanfic plans, part of me has been ensnared by the idea of not only finishing the WIPs I’d left behind, but tackling one final fanfic that I’d started twelve years ago but never shared because I was writing it so sporadically. Granted, coming back to Strawberry Fields seems more likely, but I’ve learned to never say never.

I don’t know if this will happen, but I’m thinking about it. Sometimes the pressure of publication can be overwhelming to the point of blockage. I felt this way in fandom once, too, which is why I created the Ameeya penname. And I’m already seeing a difference in my writing quality when I don’t feel pressured. For instance, the Pride & Prejudice retelling is a book I will self-publish, so I only have my own standards to live up to, and it’s coming very smoothly. The Sinners & Saints book is one that will be with my publisher, Totally Entwined Group, and it follows a book that was not only enormously difficult to write (because, among other things, I channeled my grief about watching my father die through the heroine), but one that I feel is probably the best thing I’ve ever written. So how do you top that by your own standards?

What I don’t want to do is get anyone’s hopes up about Strawberry Fields…but at the same time, I feel tugged toward that story in a way I haven’t since I first got blocked on it. Were I to come back to it, I’d likely start posting from the top, and maybe not posting at all until I had it complete. And maybe this feeling will go away, but it’s lasted longer than any of my old Spuffy pangs have since I left. And there’s no rule out there that says you can’t do both. My mind is just structured to be either/or—it always has been. But writing for fun is why I write. I want to have fun telling stories.

So if the urge here remains another week…who knows? I decided on a whim to re-up Echoes and Possession, and I’m very glad I did. I feel like they are home, where they should have always been. Even though the same stories will be told in original form elsewhere, they will be different enough (and in ways they weren’t the last time) to be their own thing. That’s another thing about leaving the fandom—it was a while before I could shake Buffy’s influence. They didn’t feel like new works, rather works that were trying too hard to not look like retouched Buffy fanfic. What I have planned for both of them should address this—if not entirely, then at least to my satisfaction.

I will say I’ve recovered my old outline for SF as well as the original Word.doc. I’ve also recovered my outline for Sacrament, as I left that with one chapter to go. And I found, after some digging, the six chapters I’d penned on a fic I never posted but shared privately with a few close friends. It was going to be dark and ambitious, and part of me would still like to do that too. But who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow? That’s why I don’t want to say this is definitely happening. But were it to, I wouldn’t mind. I’d just have to find the time.