Gotta get a belly full of wine.

I've now finished watching all of Buffy, Angel, the Buffy movie, and "Scooby Road." And I legitimately can't wrap my head around the fact that I had Buffy and Angel fandom icons for years without knowing exactly where they'd come from. Fandom is weird like that. But in a good way.

Buffy remains a great show trapped inside of a good one, and Angel a good show inside one that's genuinely entertaining. It's weird, looking back on them - not just how TV storytelling and Western media have changed since they were broadcast, and how clearly they're constructed for viewing models and sweeps weeks requirements that simply don't exist anymore, but also in how familiar they seemed. Both from hanging around in fandom and being aware of the rampaging juggernaut that was one of the big fandoms for so long, and in their stories not being new anymore. Still good stories. But I've already heard them. So to hear them from the first place they were told took some time to understand how it was to tell them when they were new.

The next couple of weeks may be given over to wishes over fics that the fandom may have already seen to sometime in the last decade or so. You've been warned.

...I mean, are there any fics out there for Faith/The Groosalugg? There's got to be at least one by this point, right?

Spoilers are going to be a given here.

The more I think about it, the more I want post-canon Faith/Groosalugg adventures with swords, punching, acrobatics, and lots of quiet cuddling. By the time Buffy wrapped up, Faith was in a reasonable position to accept a long-term boyfriend-adjacent type person - not a significant other, but a noteworthy companion that she sometimes sleeps with - and his complete sincerity and gentleness wouldn't freak her out so much. She likes hero types, and he likes women who carry themselves like queens. It'd be a glory of a slow burn to openly admitting heartfelt affection.

Two powerful warriors astride the world. What could be better?

The answer to that is: Cordelia Chase going into politics.

If Whedon had written Cordelia out of the show for the duration of the actress' pregnancy and let her return afterward...if Cordelia never ascended to a higher plane, but showed up on the beach wondering where Angel was...and if she did, at some point, give Groo her visions...and left to figure out who she was without them...

...well, clearly, she'd show up in season five as a recurring non-villain antagonist to Wolfram & Hart as the only honest politician in LA. Which she happens to know is factually true!

Running and landing a spot on city council, looking to mayorship, and eventually the Senate, possibly even higher if she thinks she can make it. Which she knows she can. Because she's Cordelia Chase. She gets shit done. And because she and W&H often have similar goals of keeping LA running safely and smoothly, that'd lead to a lot of delicious storytelling opportunities over what it means to grow up, and to compromise, and how to be pragmatic about one's ideals without breaking them.

It'd give Groo a solid reason to find Faith, because he knows he needs a warrior to help him out with a given vision. And I can see him handling the belligerent sexual tension by sublimating it in elaborate Earth and Pylean courtship rituals, culminating in a candlelit dinner with the centerpiece being animals he hunted and butchered himself.

(Best guess for his name? Whatever it is, it means "small pink flower." Faith would tease him about it mercilessly, and he wouldn't mind a bit.)