Hello hello! We are super happy to bring you the new interviews! Settle in and enjoy! 

First up is our Author of the Month: acekoomboom

Tell us how you got into Buffy the show and Buffy fanfic.

Reruns! I was born in ‘99, so I didn't see any of the show while it was airing. But I was a tv kid for sure, and I strongly remember season two always being on one of the rerun channels I liked when I was in elementary school.

Get ready to throw tomatoes, okay? I started reading Spuffy fic in middle school, and I started on Nauti Bitz’s website. Yes! The hardcore smut. I look back sometimes and I'm like… I can't believe 13/14 year old me was watching BtVS season six and reading Don't Stop. But I was also watching, like, The Tutors and Sex In The City, so I was seeing things I should not have been from all sides.

After that I found the Bloodshedverse, then Elysian Fields, then eventually AO3. I don't read Spike and Buffy on archive of our own anymore because I enjoy the community aspect of Spuffy so much, how this fandom has endured and revitalized itself, how alive it truly is so long after the show came out. Then I found SAD and started posting here too :) Which, side note, I really enjoy how unique this website feels in how image-centric it is. When you post a fic, it's the banner that pops up on the homepage. There are so many image and animation options when you're writing something in the shoutbox, chapter notes, comments. The banners that go along with the transcript library, the Scoobies of the month, the event announcements, all so freaking gorgeous. I have been loving that about interacting with this website. That part of it feels so very its own.

I haven't transferred all of my back catalog to SAD yet, mostly because I was writing as a cringy teenager and don't want to have to look at those stories. But cringe is dead and every stone placed is a piece of the journey, so I think I'll get around to it eventually. If you're curious to see any of it in advance I thinnnk it's all on Archive already.

Where do you find inspiration for your stories?

Mostly other art. Watching a movie that the Buffy characters would work well in or in an interesting way if they were in that setting, watching a show that's plot would be cool to plug into Sunnydale, hearing a song that strikes a chord with how the characters did/would feel. I have been writing a Spuffy time travel fic that uses Doctors Who (Matt Smith era) plots for over five years. It's my baby and I love it and it takes me sooooo long to add to it because I lose motivation and switch hyperfixations so often. It's only at about 60k words after all these years, but I'm going to finish it one day and it's going to be cool! You'll see XD

Who is your favorite character to write and why?

I think Spike, because oh how deeply and obviously he feels emotions, and how those emotions are wrapped up in over a century of conflicting emotions and traumas and defense mechanics. He such a strange dude, and it's really fun to get in his head.

Which story of yours are you most proud of and which was the hardest to write?

As this answer section might show, I'm very verbose. Ya girl can talk and talk and talk. For some reason, though, that does not translate very well to fanfiction. I have a really hard time making anything more than a couple thousand words. I'm a one shot author most naturally, that's just what I am likely to actually finish. I'm trying to commit to and actually cross the finish line on more long-form Spuffy, so we'll see what the future holds.

That being said, I feel like I need to break my answer for this up into categories. Multi-chapter, I’d say Pillar of Strength. I wrote the prequel and first chapter for it in 2016 and posted them, then lost the rest of the story when I lost my old ipod (I just so happened to lose it at the same convention where I saw James Masters live in concert with Ghost of the Robot when I was a preteen! It was such a small and intimate set, they did so good, it was amazing. Good Night Sweet Girl is still my favorite song by them) and abandoned the fic because it was so upsetting to have chapters of work disappear before I could post them. But I reworked and changed what that story ended up being altogether in 2023, and didn't finish the very last chapter until this year which should be up on here soon <3 

For drabbles I am feeling Holy Ground, because it shows so much of their history and their dynamic and puts a few fun headcanons in there that my mind can't stop thinking about.

For one-shots, my answer is Five Times Buffy Fell Asleep on Spike's Watch, Plus One Time They Look Forward To It. A classic 5+1 story that is actually an inverse of that trope, where the original five are short glimpses and the main chunk of word count is spent on the +1. Also, it was a Secret Santa gift for violettathepiratequeen and started an entire friendship between us, so it will have bonus points forever in my eyes :P 

As for the hardest fic I have written, it's absolutely the Doctor Who one I talked about in my first question. It has been five years, and the plot is all sorts of crazy complicated, and it's a very big bite to chew that I have created for myself. But I genuinely love it and am really hoping I'm able to make it into the fic I know it can be. I've had it titled as A Song From The River the whole time, so I think that's the name it will still have when it does get shared with the world 🫣

As a writer, what would you have changed on the show and why?

So, I feel like there were a bunch of different things I could have said for this answer, but I decided to go for one of the more silly ones to which turned out to be something I actually feel serious about now that I'm writing it out haha. I vaguely remember the writers talking about how they had planned from the beginning to make one of Buffy's friends gay and so they were planting seeds in both Willow and Xander in the early seasons before they decided which one to have that storyline with. I one-thousand-million percent think it should have been Xander.

Of all of the side ships on the show, Willow and Oz are my favorite. I don't wish he stayed around, I like that he left in the fourth season and the things that breakup did to Willow's character, but with the show coming out when it did the bi erasure is so real. Willow truly loved Oz and enjoyed her physical relationship with him, and so I always headcanon her as bi and not lesbian. Irl queer people sometimes take a while to find their true orientations too, so it isn't odd to think that Willow was still discovering herself and hadn't found the right label yet or even known that she needed to.

You know who would have fit much better in the gay not bi category? Xander! The insecurities his character has, which has been attributed in most of the show to him not having any powers unlike nearly everybody else? Yeah it's that, but also his internalized homophobia. Xander cheats on the most popular girl in school? He's not actually attracted to her. With his childhood best friend that he could have had this whole time because she's always had a crush on him? He's not actually attracted to her either. The way he trips over himself to have a crush on the superhero new student, bubbly blond valley girl? Nope, not a real attraction there. It's always the girl he's “supposed,” to like that he does. It's performative masculinity and gender conditioning, and him realizing that he's not actually into women and having to deconstruct that—get a little bit more into his childhood drama and broken home then we did in canon—I'm telling you I have thought about it so many times lol. Maybe I'll make it a B plot in a fic one day. But considering my track record with being able to commit to long form… I highly doubt it haha.

It feels almost painful to think of depriving the world of the wlw representation of Willow and Tara, the first lesbian couple to ever kiss on tv. And the so-clear answer of which one of Buffy's show besties should be gay is Xander. So I propose bi Willow and gay Xander both existing. It's not all that odd to have a disproportionately ratio-d friend group when it comes to any kind of minority, considering people with similar life experiences or values tend to find each other. So yeah. That's my official answer.

Thanks you guys :)

Thank you, acekoomboom! We're so happy to have you here!

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Next up is our Commenter of the Month: harmony99

Tell us how you got into Buffy the show and Buffy fanfic.
I’m thinking I watched the movie in the theater because, hello, vampires and Rob Halford from Judas Priest had a song on the soundtrack 😂 I enjoyed the movie, so when the show came out I watched seasons one through six as they were broadcast (with periodic re-watches of the season one DVD that I was gifted by my sisters for a birthday). A cross-country job move and the bad taste of season six meant I didn’t watch season seven until I did a re-watch in 2012. 

I was feeling sentimental late 2022, did another rewatch and somehow stumbled on Passion4Spike’s author site that December and found more fanfic sites through her links. I discovered SAD when Dusty posted that her new works would be found here. 

I love how fanfic fixes some things and in other instances creates completely divergent worlds with the characters we know and love (and sometimes we also are treated to OCs).

What motivates you to leave comments?
I have such respect for our authors and the gifts they give us. These fabulous, amazing people give us such wonderful stories and I get so much enjoyment from this community. Also, when I see a new writer posts something or an author asks for comments, I want to let them know how their work touched me or made me laugh (or cry, as the case may be). Through chatting with people on Discord and reading authors’ notes, I have come to understand how nervous some people are about putting themselves out there and I try to honor and support them by taking the time to let them know they’re appreciated with a comment.

Do you also write or are you strictly a reader?
I have some “artwork” stories but I am primarily a reader.

Were you a lurker before you started leaving comments or did you comment right away?
I typically read while I walk on the treadmill and I have a bad habit of intending to leave a comment or thinking I’ve left one and I never get around to actually doing it, which I feel terrible about (Bruskiboo, I know you are one of the SADvent participants that I highlighted different parts of your “Santa Con Comes to Town” while I was on the treadmill and I don’t think I ever managed to comment--SORRY!).

So, to answer that question, I left comments right away but sometimes I am so engrossed that I don’t stop to comment on a chapter that I am really enjoying, resulting in commenting gaps. If I’m on the computer instead of my e-reader I am much more likely to comment.

How important is it to receive a reply from the writer when you leave a comment?
I know how crazy it can get to reply to comments, so I don’t mind if I don’t get a reply, but I do enjoy the dialogue that sometimes results.

Thank you, Harmony99. You are so amazing! You rock!

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And that's a wrap! Thanks for being here, everyone!
Chelle, Dusty, GetItDone, and GriefCounseling