Octaves of the Heart Interview with Mer
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| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Octaves of the Heart Interview with Mer |
| Interviewer: | Octaves of the Heart |
| Interviewee: | Mer |
| Date(s): | early 2000s |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Buffyverse |
| External Links: | online here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Octaves of the Heart Interview with Mer is posted at the Buffy website Octaves.
For others in this series, see Octaves of the Heart Interview Series.
Excerpts
I started reading fanfic after Crush, with my friend Keren, because we were so upset about how Buffy had treated Spike in that episode. We started writing shortly thereafter, when we discovered how many Buffy/Spike fics made the transition from hate to love implausibly quickly. We thought we could do better. We answered a challenge on the Death Marked Love site with a story that ultimately became the first in our Strange Bedfellows series. (The sequel series, Necessary Evil, is still unfinished). The fact that I'd had a bad breakup and needed something else to throw myself into for a while probably played a role too. I started writing fanfic on my own in addition to the co-written stuff because... I don't really remember why. I had a livejournal by then, I wanted something to put in it? Something like that.
Buffy and Angel inspire me because the source material's writing is so damned good, the characters so multifaceted, the references and dialogue so clever, the metaphors so deftly handled that they work on many levels at once. The blending of genres is damned near seamless. Also because they're about the triumph of sheer stubbornness over nature, nurture, destiny, and any other damned bossy thing that comes along. I like stories about groups of people that share a mission and a belief that they can make a difference, that have moral ambiguity in spades but also a belief that morality is important, that laugh at themselves, that are not about families transmiting their issues down the generations but about taking your fucked up self and making a family of other fucked up people that's better. Also that can laugh at themselves and have lots of kinky sex.
I can't comment on the appeal of het and slash because they're not really two distinct appeals for me. The relationships that appeal to me the most are those that combine two powerful people, some history, some trust, some mistrust, some propensity for power games, some animosity, some finding hidden kinship/similarities with someone who's been an enemy in the past. So I like Buffy/Spike, Buffy/Faith, Buffy/Wesley, Wesley/Lilah, Spike/Angel, Connor/Angel... sensing a trend? That's not the only stuff I've written or enjoyed reading, certainly, but it's my "bulletproof kink", the one that gets me in the gut.