Wesley/Lilah/Faith: An OT3 for the New Millennium?
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| Title: | Wesley/Lilah/Faith: An OT3 for the New Millennium? |
| Creator: | Jennifer-Oksana |
| Date(s): | c. 2004 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Buffyverse |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | http://www.imjustsayin.net:80/indemnity/wesfaithlah.html (Wayback, 2006) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Wesley/Lilah/Faith: An OT3 for the New Millennium? is an essay by Jennifer Oksana. It was hosted on the Double Indemnity fanfic archive.
The description for the essay was: "How to write a popular Wes/Lilah subgenre".
Excerpts
Let's get this out of the way first: yes, I'm fully aware that writing a threesome fic or series is usually an author self-indulging a kink and that characterization is the first thing to go when writing any form of threesome fic. That said, it's not precisely like threesome fic's going anywhere, that in and of itself, threesome fic is bad, or that it has to be third-rate porn. Why not talk about ways to make it better?So let's talk about why Wes/Lilah/Faith. There are a decent number of angles why the interaction between the three could lead to insane sextastic antics or mutual bloody death. Even though they haven't been in a scene together, things that two of the three parties have done together have affected the third rather heavily. Lilah helped fund Faith's descent into big darkness, which in a way was played out by Faith then kidnapping Wesley and torturing him something fierce. Wesley and Faith's unfortunate relationship in S3 of Buffy led in some ways to Faith's dark side getting out of control for Lilah to exploit. Lilah and Wesley's affair and its aftermath led to Wesley reconsidering the usefulness of Faith.
All this said, why write Wes/Lilah/Faith? Well...a few reasons.1) Shallow glory: three pretty, sexy people having sex. If you're good at PWP and have no problem writing a good one night stand, why not? Even with the possible problems, it's not like someone interested in a Wes/Lilah/Faith story will immediately say, "oh, but Lilah and Wesley would have to take Faith out for a series of dinners first!" because...no.
2) If you're interested in a trio, it's a good one. Love, intrigue, betrayal, histories that the other parties may or may not know about? All of these emotional dimensions are there. Add into the fact that it's also a trio that could do action/adventure and Wesfaithlah really is quite an entertaining set of people to write about having sex while fighting demons or buying a house or antagonizing Buffy and Fred.
3) It can be as fucked up and difficult as you want. Again, three people who Mutant Enemy allows to be taken to the edge in canon, let alone fanfiction. Murderers, manipulators, madmen, all of them. They don't have to get along. They don't have to like each other. If you want this to be Wesley's ultimate burn on Faith or Lilah, it works (they'd kill him for it later, maybe, but it could work on this angle). If you want it to be Lilah's ultimate manipulation, it works. So if you like making it difficult, boom boom boom.
4) Did I mention the shallow glory?