penny_lane_42 posted about some comments on ye ol' Whedonesque that complain about Spike/Spuffy fans taking over and making things meaningless somehow.

Now, I haven't read the Whedonesque comments, but I gotta say, the complainers may have something of a point.

After all, fandom is comprised of fans, of course, and if there are an excess of Spike/Spuffy fans, it'll affect the environment of the entire fandom. This means that a person who's not a Spike/Spuffy fan will be exposed to endless amounts of Spike/Spuffy material that they would otherwise not want to see.

I know, it sounds trivial. But it adds up. I mean, yeah, we have conversations about everything from Willow's hats to subversive B/A to how to punctuate 'Watcher's Council'. But the fact is, the looming cloud of Spike/Spuffy-ness looms over even those. After all, all those myriad of Spike/Spuffy fans may have, say, icons about the pairing/character. Or they may randomly burst out into squee about them (fangirls are so unpredictable).

This can be exhausting in the long-term, folks. Especially when you're just trying to enjoy a show you love...minus one particular pairing and/or character.

So here's for them. An entire fangirling post without any mention of Spike or Spuffy!



I have much love for the happy, fuzzy high school years. Okay, they weren't always happy (though, thanks to Willow's SPIKE sweaters, they were usually fuzzy). The library set is classic, and there's a naive innocence to the series. Of course, it also SPUFFY broke new ground very early on in Innocence when it threw a huge curveball into what had been a fairly standard teen vampire romance thingy. Gotta give props to that.

My favorite SPIKE part was actually Willow. Cause SPUFFY I related to little nerdy high school Willow a lot. She was SPUFFY adorable and quiet and kinda a Buffy-hanger-on, SPIKE but hey. That's Willow.

What were SPUFFY most interesting to me were the shifting dynamics of the Scooby gang. They started out as outsiders. The misfits that joined together. Okay, so maybe that premise had been done SPUFFY before, but never with so much charm. It's the snappy dialogue that made it work. Sucked me in and made me love the characters.

But it's the SPUFFY progress that matters the most. The ragtag group grew as SPIKE Cordelia and Oz joined up. And by the end of S3, they were recognized as SPIKE the saviors of the school (Well, Buffy was recognized as such, though it's pretty much a given that the students knew her friends helped). SPUFFY They went SPIKE from "Oh, we're such social outsiders!" to "Go us! People loves us because we keep them from dying!" in three years. That's SPUFFY fantastic.

Now, I don't SPUFFY talk about the early SPIKE seasons much in meta, but there is SPIKE something that I've always admired about them. In fact, that's pretty crucial to the entire SPUFFY framework of the high SPUFFY school years. One of those Jossian bits of genius woven throughout SPUFFY that holds it all together. Now, bear SPUFFY with me here while I walk you through it, but I think you're agree that it's pretty damn awesome SPUFFY SPUFFY SPUFFY SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE