my consistent post-series headcanon

[deird1]

My post-series Buffyverse tends to be full on contradiction. If you look at my fic, you'll find all sorts of couples, Buffy dying before Faith, Faith dying before Buffy, Giles dying before everyone... It's all a bit of a weird mess. (And I like it that way.)

There are a few things, however, that I definitely think happen. They always happen, no matter what else my fic does – and I get irrationally irritated every time someone else's fanfic contradicts them.

Here's my headcanon:

- They all end up where Andrew says they are in Damage, for at least that year. (Buffy and Dawn in Italy, Giles in England, Willow and Kennedy in South America, Xander in Africa)

- Only one person (don't care who) survives the battle at the end of AtS.

- Buffy and Faith are joint Head Slayers. They are also besties (or a couple).

- Willow and Kennedy never break up. Kennedy never stops feeling like Willow's heart still belongs to Tara.

- At least once, Kennedy and Buffy got extremely drunk together and had a massive session of complaining about relationships, exes, and romance in general.

- Dawn goes to university in Boston, and studies languages and ancient texts.

- Dawn and Andrew are best friends.



Minor things, but important in my head. I'd be interested to know what the rest of you have as your headcanon absolutes.

Comments

[deird1]

Interesting!

I have, admittedly, got wonderful fantasies in my head of Spike and Buffy ending up together, Angel being rueful and slightly sulky (but coming to all their Christmases), Illyria training Dawn in portal use... But the problem is, my brain is somewhat convinced that it is just that: a wonderful fantasy. When I'm writing, I can't quite manage to make it work - I always find myself defaulting back to a single survivor (usually Spike or Illyria).

[beer_good_foamy]

Illyria training Dawn in portal use

Yes pls

[elisi]

But the problem is, my brain is somewhat convinced that it is just that: a wonderful fantasy.
I think my thing is that it looks like a fantasy from the outside - the Happily Ever After that the Shanshu is supposed to be - but my interest lies in exploring that. How WOULD they get on? Could they make it work? If, say, Spike shanshued, how would he cope with being human? And could they make it work as a couple? Or if he didn't, how would they cope with the fact that she would die? And so on and on. (Don't get me wrong, sometimes I totally go for the OTT Happily Ever After...) But mostly I love exploring the complexities of the characters and the relationships. Which isn't possible if most of them are dead.

Illyria training Dawn in portal use...
Heh. In one of my stories, Illyria almost kills Dawn, trying to turn her back into energy.

ETA: This whole discussion prompted me to finally start uploading my long Spike/Buffy/Angel fic to AO3. The whole where I delve into allll the issues, and that quite simply wouldn't work if only one survived! :)