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agilebrit::beating the Muse back with a baseball bat::
No, no, no, no, NO.
I've been mulling various places I'd like to take the You Got the Stones fic. Remember the post about demonizing characters? I wanted to give Buffy a good excuse to [spoiler]stake Riley[/spoiler], because, as the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
highlander_ii pointed out, giving him a pass for [spoiler]being a vampire[/spoiler], when Spike gets treated like crap for being a "soulless, evil thing" no matter how hard he tries, would be bad. However, there's that whole pesky question of the soul. Couldn't Willow just give him one? It was the first spell she ever did, and the Orb of Thesula is apparently not all that rare, since they seem to be able to find one whenever they need it. So, where's the barrier to doing that? Especially since he's a fledge and hasn't actually killed anyone yet, being content to stay with his Sire in the vamp bordello. A conscience wouldn't weigh on him as heavily as it did on, say, Angel or Spike, who both had over a century of evil deeds to deal with.
I discussed withappomattoxco how I could do this believably. Maybe Riley could go to Glory and offer her the Key in exchange for Buffy--it would be quite a feather in his fledgling cap if he could vamp the Slayer, after all. So, yeah, that would be interesting...and then I realized that it would demonize Riley even more than I already have.
So, that puts that plot idea in the trash heap. I do not want to turn this into a Riley-bashing fic. I liked the guy. He made mistakes. All of them did. Let us please remember, for instance, that Spike wasn't the only one to try to rape Buffy (and that other character *cough*Xander!*cough* suffered no lasting repercussions from that; everyone was pretty quick to forgive him); Willow tried to destroy the world; Anya was a Vengeance Demon, Faith killed a man; Angel tried to kill them all and suck the world into Hell...the list goes on. But Riley's the only one who gets dumped on (yeah, Spike does too--but not by the fans, by the show's writers), even though, arguably, his sins were a bit lighter than those of the other characters.
Puts me between a rock and a hard place, don't it? (Heh. Sorry,honorh.) I think I may have a way around it, but it's going to require a bit of thought on my part. For now, the Scoobs are in rescue mode. Because, you know what? They liked him too.
No, no, no, no, NO.
I've been mulling various places I'd like to take the You Got the Stones fic. Remember the post about demonizing characters? I wanted to give Buffy a good excuse to [spoiler]stake Riley[/spoiler], because, as the lovely
highlander_ii pointed out, giving him a pass for [spoiler]being a vampire[/spoiler], when Spike gets treated like crap for being a "soulless, evil thing" no matter how hard he tries, would be bad. However, there's that whole pesky question of the soul. Couldn't Willow just give him one? It was the first spell she ever did, and the Orb of Thesula is apparently not all that rare, since they seem to be able to find one whenever they need it. So, where's the barrier to doing that? Especially since he's a fledge and hasn't actually killed anyone yet, being content to stay with his Sire in the vamp bordello. A conscience wouldn't weigh on him as heavily as it did on, say, Angel or Spike, who both had over a century of evil deeds to deal with.I discussed with
appomattoxco how I could do this believably. Maybe Riley could go to Glory and offer her the Key in exchange for Buffy--it would be quite a feather in his fledgling cap if he could vamp the Slayer, after all. So, yeah, that would be interesting...and then I realized that it would demonize Riley even more than I already have.So, that puts that plot idea in the trash heap. I do not want to turn this into a Riley-bashing fic. I liked the guy. He made mistakes. All of them did. Let us please remember, for instance, that Spike wasn't the only one to try to rape Buffy (and that other character *cough*Xander!*cough* suffered no lasting repercussions from that; everyone was pretty quick to forgive him); Willow tried to destroy the world; Anya was a Vengeance Demon, Faith killed a man; Angel tried to kill them all and suck the world into Hell...the list goes on. But Riley's the only one who gets dumped on (yeah, Spike does too--but not by the fans, by the show's writers), even though, arguably, his sins were a bit lighter than those of the other characters.
Puts me between a rock and a hard place, don't it? (Heh. Sorry,
honorh.) I think I may have a way around it, but it's going to require a bit of thought on my part. For now, the Scoobs are in rescue mode. Because, you know what? They liked him too.