Laugh or you'll find yourself crying

[korilian]

Now I'm not posting this to be mean, but seriously even after you've turned down your disbelief-o-meter about ten notches this will still be the most absurd AU you'll ever come across... if your lucky.

I've been forcing myself through this, taking an occasional time-out to gawk open mouthed/ laugh my ass off/ fight of my inner feminist. It's taken me four tries so far, but we're making progress.

The premise is that woman can be abusers to. In this case the badly abused (by author) Anya and Buffy, with Xander as their helpless victim.
The author (surpisingly a woman!) dreamed up a list of anything goes torture and subjected our poor Xan to it. We're cheated out of the potentially interesting angst of this coming out into the open, by making Xander fess up while under a 'emotion suppressing spell'. His 'true' friends are horrified to find out how the helpless boy er... man has been mistreated. Thank God Spike is there to safe him and teach him all about true love. swoons. The writings pretty drab and sounds oddly enough like a self help brochure. Must be because they all spend so much time reading one out to us...

The BAD
Crash and Burn
By: Mistress Titania
Summary: Xander is in an abusive relationship with Anya. Spike has to help him recover. Will eventually X-over with X-Men.
Warnings: Graphic Descriptions of Xander torture, Domestic Abuse, Forced Prostitution, Non-Con, Eating Disorder, Slash(which will eventually get smutty), Language, mentions of past physical and sexual child abuse, Character Bashing (Anya, Buffy, Rogue, Jean Gray) No really? There's bashing?

And for balance The GREAT
Irony
By: Litgal
Summary: Xander wakes in the Initiative, but what could he have done to make them think he's a demon?
Warnings: M/M,Anal,D/s,Oral,VS

Comments

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. That story DID get written.

I remember when someone on the Nummytreats list asked if it was possible to create a "believable" situation in which Xander was in an emotionally/physically abusive relationship by Buffy or Anya during Season SIX of BtVS.

I wrote back to the author (privately) that it was possible but not terribly likely.

Furthermore, while I could see Xander maybe slipping into an relationship where he was the sub in an emotionally abusive relationship, I didn't think it was entirely believable with either Anya or Buffy (in most circumstances with Buffy, but with one exception as you'll see). The woman in question would have to be an OC and you'd have to write pretty to make it work, although I thought it was workable, given Xander's family background and his fear of turning into his father.

I didn't think it was at all believable that this sort of relationship dynamic existed with Anya. I think Anya was, without a doubt, the "top" when it came to sex in that relationship, and I think in any dominance games, Xander was the one who was usually chained to the bed. However, that's a different scenario than abuse.

[Side note: I'm also in the camp that Xander was not emotionally abusive to Anya, just that he sometimes he didn't think before speaking, which is something complete different. The fact is, Anya asked Xander at the beginning of their relationship to help her fit in with humans, so in his own clumsy way, that's what he was doing. Anya was the one who failed to speak up when she thought he was stepping over the line. However, when she did, it seemed to me that he invariably backed off. So I still remain utterly mystified on where some fans are coming from on that score.]

Now, with Buffy, given her mental state during Season Six, an unhealthy physical/emotional dynamic would be almost a given in any relationship with Xander. However, I think it would've been a situation where Buffy simply would be unaware that she was hurting Xander as much as she was, and not because she was causing pain deliberately. Xander, in that situation, might not say anything for fear of making Buffy feel guilty or hurting her even more, or through some misguided belief that he deserved to be punished because he helped pull her out of heaven. But again, my whole premise for that is based on lack of communication between sexual partners about where the boundaries lay in control games, as opposed to hardcore abuse.

Well, I sent this opinion to the author and never heard back. I also never saw the story that resulted, so I had (foolishly) thought that the author decided to drop it after a tidal wave of bad feedback on the idea.

While I can't say for sure that Mistress Titania was the one who asked, the plot sounds pretty close to the question I saw regarding an eerily similar plot set-up.

But Jesus on a pogo stick! Forced Prostitution? EATING DISORDER!?! WtF WtF WtF...

You THINK there's character bashing in that story?

[korilian.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, but it get's better!
One chapter on and we've found out that most of the worst abuse never actually happened!?! but was implanted into his brain to make him feel worthless, which at the very least explains why none of the others noticed the physical side effects that kind of torture would have.

This was kindly explained to us by a non-corporeal power that be that suddenly decided after sitting on his arse for millennia while the good guy's struggled, to become helpfull. He also turned Xander into a hermaphrodite complete with womanly attributes and told him to go shag Spike and Remy Lebeau. The stuff of true romance.

While I agree that abusive Anya isn't canon, I could actually picture a far eviler AU Anya sucking Xander into an abusive relationship. After all, he was in a round about way responsible for her loss of power and she was a man hating demon for a millennum. There were even a few plausible canon situations in which Buffy might have been corrupted (top of my head; she came back from the dead wrong after all. Or those shadow men managed to infuse her with the aspect of the demon and it rotted her soul). It is AU after all.

Of course despite the fact that I dreamed up an explanation in under ten seconds doesn't mean we're offered one in the story.

The truly odd thing though; I can't stop reading it! It's so lame it's hilarious!

[othercat.livejournal.com]

*waves tiny sign of total agreement*

[othercat.livejournal.com]

Brave soul! :>