Potential Rupert Giles Prompt Puppy (don't say "bunny" or Anya will freak, 'kay?)

[red_satin_doll]

ETA 10/08/13: Dead Things screencap

Has anyone ever written a Buffyverse fic in which Giles, not Willow, becomes the Big Bad? The idea occurred to me not long after reading  the episode notes for WTTH  by 2maggie2

In the Bronze, Buffy sees Giles up on the balcony, and he calls her attention to the others out there dancing -- she’s separate from them, with a duty to protect them.  (The scene gets called back in season six in Dead Things when Spike adds another layer to Buffy’s fundamental separation from others – but it starts here in the very first episode).

(Dead Things screencap courtesy of www.bloodqueen.com)

Maggie is talking specifically within the context of how Buffy is separated from her friends/family as the Slayer from the very first episode, but her comments brought back the memory of one of my first visceral reactions to the series.  There was something astonishingly creepy about the way Giles is suddenly "there", beside her, an older man next to a 16-year-old girl (foreshadowing Bangel), and I didn't have a "bead" on his character yet. The idea that he would turn out to be a villain who betrays Buffy and isn't what he seems, was as likely a notion as anything else.  All of which turns out to be true and false at the same time: he doesn't turn out to be a villain but he does have a dark past as the Ripper (as does Angel), he does betray Buffy at times (Helpless, LMPTM), he kills a man behind Buffy's back knowing she wouldn't approve (The Gift).

And when I watched the balcony scene in Dead Things ("Alone in dark with me") my mind was racing back to the parallel scene in WTTH, giving both scenes greater emotional power - foreshadowing squared to th nth egree. The writers surely could not have imagined any of these events when this was written and shot, bu bless* them for knowingly or unknowingly providing the bones right from the start for everything that was to come.

So if I'd had to guess which of the Core Four was most likely to become a Big Bad down the road at the time I was watching S1, I probably would have said Giles.  So it got me wondering if "Giles as the Big Bad" has been done as a fanfiction.  I can't imagine someone in the last 15 years hasn't played with the concept.  If Willow as the Big Bad was fraught with emotional turmoil, the drama and angst of Giles in that role could make LMPTM look like a Sunday cake-walk.

So, gentle flisters - point me the way to one that's already been written, or let that little puppy play around in your head for a while until you come up with something grand. FYI : I've decided to adopt the term plot puppy because: it's still a small, cute animal that you can stroke and love and huggle, and it won't upset Anya needlessly. In this case, a puppy with very sharp teeth that isn't nearly as harmless as it looks.

ETA: beer_good_foamy  and I both ended up rec'ing the same story in the convo thread below,  "All Set Down" desoto_hia873 , an AU take on The Gift (and as you know I seem to have a kink for those.)  Giles is forced to perform a terrible but necessary act.  It doesn't quite fit the "Giles as Big Bad" criteria but it really is quite good.

** (Yes, I know Joss is an atheist. So am I. Or maybe agnostic. Let's go with "undecided".)

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Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

WTTH is all about subverting expectations

*nods* Indeed the entire show is. I just remember that scene being the first that actually made my skin twitch for just a few seconds. And I love Giles as is, so this is not a "wish fulfillment" prompt. (Yes I get pissed about Giles leaving in S6 - I have issues.) But there's actually very little I feel the need to "fix" about the series, even when it drops the ball. (Economic/monetary issues being a huge one.) I'm not sure that fanfic isn't better to handle some of those things anyway because we can go into more depth than a 45-minute episode allows.

Certainly, they could have used Ms. Calendar's death as the catalyst.

I'm thinking more of a later seasons thing, where he's no longer so important as a teacher - trying to pull away into his own life (as he has been explicitly trying to do since the first episode of S4.) But yes, that very nearly happened, didn't it, with Giles rushing to kill Angel after her death, horribly inequipped to do so. And Jenny and Tara are the two major irreversible deaths on the show, two women on the fringes of the Scoobie circle who die violently at the hands of Big Bads; or in Warren's case, a "would-be Big Bad"; so there's a neat symmetry in the fact that in S6 it's Giles who once again rushes in to save the day, but this time is armed with magical reinforcement. (Clearly he's learned from that mistake at least.)

I do worry that readers would find it bash-y though.

Well that would be on the readers - or on the writer if they wrote it that way, in either case, I would disapprove. One of the great things about the show is how there is very little black and white, and I love the way two different people/POV's can be simultaneously wrong and right at the same time - ie the complexity. And there are enough really talented writers in this fandom that I'm sure someone could handle the story with similar complexity in the same spirit.