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Too many are the best intentions.
There's a trend in Buffy fandom - at least, in the segment of the fandom that writes fic and posts it to the Archive of Our Own - to do large-scale full-series rewrites, primarily fix-its and canon divergences. The majority of these involve someone going back in time and living through a good deal of their past with the foreknowledge to avoid mistakes.
It's a trope that's unintentionally picked up a good deal of resonance in the wake of Avengers: Endgame, and it's a trope that's reliably done the same way in a lot of stories. I understand the impulse and impetus behind the base idea, and I like the "Dear Whedon, Fuck You, Strong Letter To Follow" approach the fandom is taking, and it's mostly the surface details of the mechanics that change. It's a fairly reliable idea.
As doing something fairly reliably isn't my jam, I wondered how I'd do a "relive one's life with timey wimey shenanigans" fic.
Then I thought how nearly all of the fics I've seen involve someone going back to the past and coming back to the present one day at a time. I haven't seen anything involving someone going to the future and then coming back to the present. Especially not with someone living their life day by day without the preparation of having gone through it at least once already, but instead with knowledge of what's to come.
Not so much "Buffy is shot from 1997 to 2005." More "Buffy is shot from 1997 to 2005 and gets sent back to 1997."
Or whatever date range you like. Could be 1998 to 2368 and back. Could be 1997 to 2001 and back. The important part is Buffy gets sent someplace later in the timeline and then gets shot back with knowledge of what's going to happen. It wouldn't be a "go back and fix it" situation because she doesn't know what, if anything, needs fixing, much less how to go about fixing it. She's working from incomplete information and a biased point of view, so there's no "kill Ben/ally with this person sooner/stay home that one night" checklist. Additionally, a lot of the fics have someone move through time willingly in order to make things better. Having someone moved against their will presents a new facet that I'd like to see explored.
Maybe someone said, "We need a Slayer here, now, in The Future. Grab her from that portal, and - oh, crap, we can't keep her here, send her back as soon as we figure out how to PUT her back." (Buffy: What the fuck.)
Maybe someone did want to send a warning to the past, and their method of grabbing Buffy from her present and putting her back didn't work out the way they thought it would, because these things need specifics they didn't think to provide. (Buffy: What the fuck.)
Maybe someone thought that bringing Buffy forward would solve their problems, possibly by grabbing her from a specific point in the past and circumventing the time in between, and things don't work out as planned, so she has to be put back as best they could. (Buffy: What the fuck, people.)
Maybe Buffy herself thought going to the future would give her a solid idea of what not to do next, but it just made things even more difficult. (Buffy: Oh, fuck me.)
Mostly, I'd like to see something meditating on and wrestling with Buffy's conflicting drives to both accept the destiny placed on her shoulders, as she did in the end of "Prophecy Girl," and to break the chains fate forged for her and be the one to say "I flunked the written." For Buffy to want to change things which haven't happened yet without knowing where she isn't supposed to end up would change her considerably.
Season 7 Buffy saying "The mission is what matters" has supporting context. Season 2 Buffy saying that would be chilling.
This isn't a story or narrative so much as an idea, and I don't know what else to hang it with, so I can't say what I'd do with it. Other than share it in the hope that getting it out might rattle a few other pieces into place, or at least that someone else on the internet might like the concept, too.
(Convincing people about what she now knows would be a hard sell. If she even wants them on her side for all this. "Telling them's going to change what I saw. Screw it, I'm telling them.")
("I've got a little sister coming, and -" Giles blanches, thinking that he didn't remember condoms on the police car. "Not you, you lusty stevedore" she tells him with a smile.)
It's a trope that's unintentionally picked up a good deal of resonance in the wake of Avengers: Endgame, and it's a trope that's reliably done the same way in a lot of stories. I understand the impulse and impetus behind the base idea, and I like the "Dear Whedon, Fuck You, Strong Letter To Follow" approach the fandom is taking, and it's mostly the surface details of the mechanics that change. It's a fairly reliable idea.
As doing something fairly reliably isn't my jam, I wondered how I'd do a "relive one's life with timey wimey shenanigans" fic.
Then I thought how nearly all of the fics I've seen involve someone going back to the past and coming back to the present one day at a time. I haven't seen anything involving someone going to the future and then coming back to the present. Especially not with someone living their life day by day without the preparation of having gone through it at least once already, but instead with knowledge of what's to come.
Not so much "Buffy is shot from 1997 to 2005." More "Buffy is shot from 1997 to 2005 and gets sent back to 1997."
Or whatever date range you like. Could be 1998 to 2368 and back. Could be 1997 to 2001 and back. The important part is Buffy gets sent someplace later in the timeline and then gets shot back with knowledge of what's going to happen. It wouldn't be a "go back and fix it" situation because she doesn't know what, if anything, needs fixing, much less how to go about fixing it. She's working from incomplete information and a biased point of view, so there's no "kill Ben/ally with this person sooner/stay home that one night" checklist. Additionally, a lot of the fics have someone move through time willingly in order to make things better. Having someone moved against their will presents a new facet that I'd like to see explored.
Maybe someone said, "We need a Slayer here, now, in The Future. Grab her from that portal, and - oh, crap, we can't keep her here, send her back as soon as we figure out how to PUT her back." (Buffy: What the fuck.)
Maybe someone did want to send a warning to the past, and their method of grabbing Buffy from her present and putting her back didn't work out the way they thought it would, because these things need specifics they didn't think to provide. (Buffy: What the fuck.)
Maybe someone thought that bringing Buffy forward would solve their problems, possibly by grabbing her from a specific point in the past and circumventing the time in between, and things don't work out as planned, so she has to be put back as best they could. (Buffy: What the fuck, people.)
Maybe Buffy herself thought going to the future would give her a solid idea of what not to do next, but it just made things even more difficult. (Buffy: Oh, fuck me.)
Mostly, I'd like to see something meditating on and wrestling with Buffy's conflicting drives to both accept the destiny placed on her shoulders, as she did in the end of "Prophecy Girl," and to break the chains fate forged for her and be the one to say "I flunked the written." For Buffy to want to change things which haven't happened yet without knowing where she isn't supposed to end up would change her considerably.
Season 7 Buffy saying "The mission is what matters" has supporting context. Season 2 Buffy saying that would be chilling.
This isn't a story or narrative so much as an idea, and I don't know what else to hang it with, so I can't say what I'd do with it. Other than share it in the hope that getting it out might rattle a few other pieces into place, or at least that someone else on the internet might like the concept, too.
(Convincing people about what she now knows would be a hard sell. If she even wants them on her side for all this. "Telling them's going to change what I saw. Screw it, I'm telling them.")
("I've got a little sister coming, and -" Giles blanches, thinking that he didn't remember condoms on the police car. "Not you, you lusty stevedore" she tells him with a smile.)
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Hmm! That is indeed an interesting point. In the first case the story would be something of a mystery, because neither we nor anyone else would know why Buffy was doing something since we don't know the future. In the second, the nature of the story would be changed.
However, yes, visiting the future wouldn't allow one to know all the small actions that led to the eventual outcome, nor would the person in question (such as Buffy) be as convinced of how their own actions contributed to the unwelcome outcomes. Consider, for example, the issue of climate change. It is different for a Buffy who lived every day and then looked back.
Maybe someone thought that bringing Buffy forward would solve their problems, possibly by grabbing her from a specific point in the past and circumventing the time in between, and things don't work out as planned, so she has to be put back as best they could. (Buffy: What the fuck, people.)
Maybe Buffy herself thought going to the future would give her a solid idea of what not to do next, but it just made things even more difficult. (Buffy: Oh, fuck me.)
Either of those would be pretty interesting, alright.
Season 2 Buffy saying that would be chilling.
Or Doppleganger Buffy anyway.
("I've got a little sister coming, and -" Giles blanches, thinking that he didn't remember condoms on the police car. "Not you, you lusty stevedore" she tells him with a smile.)
Haha!
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This subject is so interesting to me because I'm mostly a Buffy/Angel writer/reader and time travel is not that popular in our little subset of fics compared to what I've seen of, say, Buffy/Spike.
Also, this: ("I've got a little sister coming, and -" Giles blanches, thinking that he didn't remember condoms on the police car. "Not you, you lusty stevedore" she tells him with a smile.) is absolute brilliance. Thank you for the laugh!
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You're welcome for the laugh. Always happy to share.