This is a BtVS futurefic; what will the world make of the destruction of Sunnydale, and who's going to tell the tale..?
All settings and most characters are the property of the usual suspects, and are used without any intention of infringing their copyright. This story may not be distributed for profit.
I'm British, so's my spelling. Live with it.
Distribution FanFiction, Twisting The Hellmouth, Fonts of Wisdom. Other sites please ask before posting.
Several months after writing the first section of this story I came across Retrospective by M. Scott Eiland which deals with a similar theme, although I think we've handled it differently. All similarities are coincidental.
by Marcus L. Rowland
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Mythologizing The Mundane: A Review of
Sunnydale Nights by Dawn Summers, Milton House, 380pp £12.95
Reviewer: Graham Peabody
There have already been several attempts to fictionalize the last days of Sunnydale, the otherwise ordinary Californian town that was destroyed by the collapse of an underground cave system four years ago. This ambitious semi-autobiographical first novel, aimed at the young adult market, is a fusion of fantasy and magical realism in which high school students rub shoulders with demons, the narrator's sister Billie is secretly in love with a vampire, and the town literally falls into Hell. The author, genuinely one of the survivors of Sunnydale, moved there from Los Angeles with her mother and sister in 1996 and was only seventeen at the time of the town's destruction. Nevertheless the story's factual content seems to be entirely accurate; shorn of its fantastic trappings it would be an excellent account of the last few years of this town, and the violence (believed to have been triggered by toxic fumes from the caves beneath the town) that marred its final days. Some of the most startling details seem too good to be true but when checked are accurate; for example, most of the rock groups mentioned as playing in the town (such as Nerf Herder and Darling Violetta) are obviously fictional, but supergroup Dingoes Ate My Baby genuinely originated there, and its original bass guitarist really was a classmate of the author's sister.
Some elements show signs of derivation from other fantasy; for example, the enigmatic Slayers who lead the fight against the demonic gangs that terrorize Sunnydale are a lapse into the worst excesses of the costumed vigilante, and the witch Aspen who comes close to destroying the Earth but ultimately saves it is an obvious homage to the Marvel character Phoenix. Another character, the carpenter Xavier, actually refers to himself as X-man. These flaws aside, it is a gripping first novel.
A second, Angel City, is already in preparation. Its background is the freak smog that blacked out Los Angeles a few weeks before Sunnydale was destroyed. It will apparently draw on some of the same mythological background, although those who have read early drafts say that the characters Aspen and Charity are the only link between the two stories. The author is also believed to be considering companion volumes giving factual histories of these events, shorn of their fantastical trappings.
Overall a promising debut for this new author, which mines the rich seam of American mythology pioneered by Bradbury, Gaiman and others. Recommended for ages 13 and above.
Bookseller, November 2008
....we caught up with her on the high-school set used in most episodes of Billie the Monster Slayer:
SFX Magazine: Cordelia Chase, it's kind of you to spare the time for this interview.
CC: Kindness is my middle name... and if you'll believe that there's a bridge in Brooklyn that needs a new owner. (laughter) Oh, and call me Cordy.
SFX: Cordy, you play Janet Winters, mother of Billie and Eve Winters. It's my understanding that all three characters are based on real people, whom you knew in your teens in the real Sunnydale, and that another character in the series is based on you.
CC: That's right. In fact nearly all of the named characters in the show have some basis in reality. Eve Winters is based on Dawn Summers, of course.
SFX: The author of Sunnydale Nights, on which the series is based?
CC: That's right. She's also written many episodes of the series, and has script approval on the rest. I didn't really know her very well when she was a kid, she was still at junior high, but we've become good friends in recent years. She's largely responsible for my part in the show. Billie Winters, the Slayer, is based on the late Buffy Summers, her sister, who died in Cleveland a couple of years ago. We knew each other pretty well.
SFX: Were you friends?
CC: Not always. I think it'd be fair to say we were friendly rivals, occasionally not so friendly. I nearly married one of her exes, we're still good friends.
SFX: I take it the real Billie, sorry Buffy, didn't go out slaying monsters?
CC: You'd be surprised. (laughter) Dawn would be the first to admit that there's a lot of Buffy in the character, she was always in trouble in high school and had a thing for much older men. I was shocked when I heard she'd died but somehow we'd always known that she wouldn't make old bones.
SFX: How about Janet herself?
CC: Obviously she's based on Joyce Summers, Buffy and Dawn's mother. Again, I didn't know her nearly as well as I should have done. I only really knew the Summers family for three years; I moved to LA after graduation and only came back to Sunnydale a couple of times, both times for funerals, now the place is just gone. It's strange.
SFX: Was the real Joyce much like Janet?
CC: I think so. Again, I didn't know her as well as I should. She was always so busy, bringing up two daughters and running an art gallery, but I knew her to be a loving mother, and someone who was always ready to help in a crisis. Her death [in 2001] probably affected me nearly as much as the loss of my own parents.
SFX: Now to the big question; which of the characters is based on you?
CC: Can't you work it out? (grins)
SFX: I hate to say it, but the name that comes to mind is Melody, simply because the actress playing her looks a lot like a younger version of you. Very slightly younger, that is.
CC: Good recovery (laughter). No, God forbid. You got that wrong, although I certainly moved in the same circles.
SFX: Who was the real Melody then?
CC: Someone I'd rather not name; we didn't part on very good terms, she was an air-head who had the worse possible taste in men, and the last time I met her... well, let's just say that it wasn't pretty.
SFX: Okay, my other candidate would be Helena Hunt. Based mainly on the names Hunt and Chase, and the first names ending in an "a".
CC: The bitch from hell? (laughter)
SFX: That's the one.
CC: And the alternative candidate wins.
SFX: Really? Helena Hunt?
CC: Really. What can I say? I was young, vain, and rich.
SFX: You've obviously changed considerably since then.
CC: My story reads like something the PR department might have made up. Briefly, my parents lost their money shortly before I graduated, which meant I missed out on college. When I moved to LA I tried to become an actress but ended up working for a private detective, which meant that I saw the worst that LA had to offer. I guess I grew up pretty fast. Then I was in an accident which left me in a coma for something like a year. When I came out of it one of my friends helped me get started up as an actress. I had some minor sitcom roles, then four years on the Cordy show. Dawn Summers wrote a couple of scripts for that, we became friends, and she recommended me for this role when it came up.
SFX: One thing a lot of our readers will want to know; was Dingoes Ate My Baby really a Sunnydale group?
CC: Sure was. In fact I dated Devon for a while, but things didn't really work out between us. The character Wiz in the show was Oz, of course. He was in my class, and his girlfriend was one of Buffy's best friends.
SFX: Oz would be Donny Osbourne, their original drummer?
CC: Daniel Osbourne and bass guitar actually.
SFX: There goes my rock cred. (laughter). Would Oz's girlfriend have been Aspen, or whatever the real girl was called?
CC: That's right. The real person is a close friend but prefers her privacy, so I'm not going to name her.
SFX: I won't ask if he's a werewolf, but did he really enter a monastery?
CC: That's right. Again, he would prefer that the monastery not be named so I'm not going to say more.
SFX: Andrew Wells, who directs the show, is also from Sunnydale. Did you know him in high school?
CC: Not really. He was a science nerd in those days and I was too full of myself to pay him much attention. I knew his brother Tucker a little better, but neither of them well. I think they plan to introduce a character based on him in season five or six, if the show lasts that long. Probably as comic relief.
SFX: How long do you think this role will last?
CC: Joyce died eighteen months after we graduated, I think Dawn is insisting that they play that part of the story as realistically as possible so I should have a couple of years to go yet. Of course I may turn up occasionally in flashbacks, or possibly as a ghost or something, after that.
SFX: Are there plans for a film?
CC: Yes, but... sorry, they're calling me, I've got to go hit a vampire with a fire axe.
SFX: Cordelia Chase, thank you.
CC: 'Bye... (exit pursued by makeup artist)
SFX Magazine, October 2017
...the court decided unanimously that paragraphs 3.01 to 3.15 of the contract applied only to works based on the original book, and that the author had no right of script approval for derivative works such as the series Sunnydale: The Next Generation, since the only points of commonality were locations in Sunnydale, a real place, and the word "slayer", an existing word in the English language. The judges did however uphold the original court's ruling on royalties and...
Summers v WBAOL, California Supreme Court, February 2021
27 INT TOMB - NIGHT
Standoff continues.
Hey granny, what big teeth you've got.
FEMALE VAMPIRE #4
All the better to eat you with, my dear.
BOBBY
Eat this, sucker!
BOBBY fires Uzi at vamp.
Bullets? Nyah, ha, ha! Foolish mortal, bullets cannot harm a vampire!
BOBBY
Silver bullets, sucker! And that's foolish Slayer, not foolish mortal.
FV#4
Oops...
Vamp. explodes.
Gotta get out, finish off the zombies, then back to the Bronze for my next set.
Bobby gets guitar, fires grapnel gun up, lifts out of shot.
28 EXT. TOMB, NIGHT
Clarissa and Oak are waiting; Oak is using his wand to maintain the spell repelling the zombie horde. Bobby appears on roof, rappels down to them
Oh Bobby, my hero
Bobby and Clarissa kiss, Oak looks impatient.
Guys
Zombies close in slightly
(much louder)
Guys!
Bobby makes rude gesture. Zombies close in some more.
Can't hold this much longer!
Bobby and Clarissa break embrace, Clarissa draws katana, Bobby picks up flamethrower.
Okay, on the count of three... three!
Oak ends spell, big fight
Script, Sunnydale: The Next Generation, episode 16, April 2021
..further news of the attack on teen star Greg Valance, popular hero of smash WBAOL hit Sunnydale: The Next Generation. Unnamed police sources allege that his assailant used the methods of Meat-Hook, the vampire hitman depicted in the show, but seemed to take care to avoid vital organs. Valance is reported to be in serious but stable condition. Meanwhile, police have issued composite pictures of an unnamed blonde male with a British accent in his twenties or early thirties who was seen near the crime scene...
CNN August 2021
Fans of Dingoes Ate My Baby will find themselves in previously unexplored territory with their new release Atlantis USA, an eight-hour rock opera. It takes as its theme the destruction of Sunnydale California twenty-five years ago, and draws on apocalyptic sources including the Ring Cycle, the Bible, Shakespeare, the Rocky Horror show, and 1950s monster movies. There are several homages to 2016-20 TV series Billie The Monster Slayer, which was also set in Sunnydale, and a vicious parody of the short-lived Sunnydale: The Next Generation (2020-21). Film and TV star Cordelia Chase (who played Janet Winters in the original TV series and was herself born in Sunnydale) is 'The Watcher', a narrator owing more than a little to Charles Grey's performance in the classic Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Writers and composers credited include most of the current group, several former members including the reclusive Daniel Osbourne (the group's original bass guitarist, now a Buddhist monk, who makes a rare personal appearance as the man-monster "Caleban" (sic.), his share of the royalties going to various charities) and at least a dozen unknowns. For this reviewer a highlight was a bravura performance of the classic Monster Mash, featuring all of the current and former group members, all of whom gradually morph into monsters as the song progresses.
The story is interesting but occasionally hard to follow, since some scenes are seen from multiple viewpoints and the action occasionally flashes back to the founding of the town by an act of ritual black magic, numerous earthquakes and other disasters, and (for as yet unexplained reasons) the Boxer Rebellion. An enigmatic cheese vendor appears in dream sequences to herald the worst disasters, including the death of key characters; Devon, leader of the group, has so far refused to explain his significance but he is rumoured to represent the decay of the milk of human kindness (transformed to cheese) and the prostitution of art (the sale of the cheese). Or possibly it's just a joke...
New Musical Express May 2028
Monster Slayer Or Monster?
For more than fifty years she has been the heroine of an enduring classic children's novel, repeatedly adapted to TV, Tri-Vi, and VR. Now the Weekly News-Enquirer can exclusively reveal that the woman fictionalised as "Billie the Monster Slayer" was a notorious juvenile delinquent, leader of the so-called "Scooby Gang" which terrorized a small Californian town for seven years.
Police and educational records excavated from the ruins of Sunnydale reveal that Buffy Summers, whose sister fictionalised her as Billie Winters in the popular novel Sunnydale Nights, was indicted for murder, resisting arrest, assault, and escaping from police custody. The records also strongly suggest that Summers or her associates
* Set fire to schools in Los Angeles and Sunnydale!
* Committed numerous break-ins!
* Robbed museums!
* Murdered Sunnydale's Deputy Mayor!
* Stabbed another student, leaving her in a coma for nearly a year!
* Desecrated numerous graves and robbed tombs!
* Took part in arson attacks on a church and several warehouses!
Unverified police reports name Summers as the instigator of a riot during her high-school graduation ceremony which led to the deaths of students, teachers and visitors including Sunnydale's mayor and the destruction of the school. Inexplicably nobody was ever prosecuted for this crime. Other incidents included repeated gang fight in the school, local clubs, and on Sunnydale's streets. Far from protecting the residents of Sunnydale, her gang was involved in the violence that culminated in the town's destruction.
Author Dawn Summers (67), now resident in Britain, refused to comment on these charges against her sister. Her attorney is expected to make a statement later this week. Actress Cordelia Chase (72), who played Billie's mother in the original TV series, said "Buffy was a personal friend and these charges against her are ridiculous. She was the victim of circumstances, a convenient scapegoat for crimes which the Sunnydale Police were simply incompetent to solve." Director Andrew Wells (73) supported her claims, adding that he was present in the last hours before Sunnydale was destroyed and personally saw Buffy Summers save several lives. However, the Weekly News-Enquirer has learned that Wells was himself the suspect in a series of robberies in Sunnydale in 2001-2, and was a fugitive at the time the town was destroyed...
Weekly News-Enquirer July 2053
Sunnydale: Town in California (old USA) destroyed by earthquake circa 2003 Old Reckoning, the story of its last days has acquired an accretion of legend reminiscent of Pompeii, Atlantis, etc., and is believed to have been the subject of numerous dramas in the electrical mediums then current. Unfortunately none survived the Collapse. Although various books and articles describing the incident have been preserved, their content is riddled with the superstition then common, and is so obviously fictionalised and mythologized that it is useless for serious students of the period...
The Universal Encyclopaedia, 200 Post Collapse (approx 2278 AD)
Incomplete song fragment circa 2010 Old Reckoning:
There's a lady who's sure good is worth fighting for
And she's slaying her way back to heaven.
She'll get there, she knows, overcoming all foes,
And the Scoobies will be there to greet her.
Ooh, ooh, and she's slaying her way back to heaven.
There's a sign in the mall for a closing down sale
'Cause the 'Dale won't be here come tomorrow
In the caves underground all the demons they crowd
And the battle they plan will be slaughter.
Ooh, it makes me shudder,
Ooh, it makes me shudder.
Let the girls cast the spell that opens up Hell,
And then let them go slay the monsters,
They'll fight them or die, there's no price that's too high
And the blood that they shed will redeem us.
Ooh, it makes me shudder,
Ooh, it really makes me shudder.
If there's a monster in your graveyard don't be alarmed,
It's just more fodder for the Slayer,
If someone's summoning ancient evil she'll see they pay the price,
If they're lucky they'll live to regret it...
Songs of the Old Reckoning, 312 PC
Since the first edition was published several scholars have pointed out that this supposed Old Reckoning song was in fact part of the play The Slayer of Sunnydale, first performed by the Sheriff of Baltimore's Players in 87 PC. There is good reason to believe that it is based on one of the authentic Slayer Cycle songs popular in the old United States prior to the collapse, and on earlier music in the so-called "rock" idiom. However, it should be emphasised that its true attribution is now uncertain.
Footnote to the second edition, 317 PC
Hundreds of millions of people died in the collapse of Old Reckoning society. Hundreds of millions more have devoted their lives to undoing the harm done by the collapse, rediscovering the technology that was lost, and preserving the old knowledge. We can say with reasonable confidence that this effort succeeded; our technology rivals or exceeds that available prior to the collapse, and most historical records have now been recovered and translated. It's an achievement that should fill us with justified pride.
"Should" is unfortunately the operative word in the last sentence, because the summit of these achievements, the zenith of our current attempts to recapture the events of a golden age, can be summed up in three words: Betty, Slayer Princess.
The exotic Old Reckoning name apart, the title still seems redolent with possibilities. Every child knows a Slayer song or two, or has heard one of the ancient stories. But to say that this series is rubbish is to cheapen rubbish. It has no redeeming features whatever, and is an affront to anyone who has ever devoted their time and energy to historical research. Not only do the values of this programme fail to stand up to close examination, they fail to stand up to any form of examination whatever. Occasional details ring true, but they are those small details which lend verisimilitude to an otherwise unconvincing narrative, as when the heroine is forced to indenture her sister to the "Magic Box" to pay off her mother's debts. Even in this scene important nuances are completely missed; Professor Fillmore has convincingly argued that in the original sources of the Slayer legend this phrase was an euphemism for temple prostitution, not the shop for witches and magicians shown in the programme.
To take these stories literally is to miss most of their true meaning. Yet Betty, Slayer Princess does exactly that, not once but again and again. It has been proved that the "blood-sucking fiends" of the Sunnydale legend were usurers and rapacious landlords, and that the Slayer was simply a rebel leader whose activities led to the sack of Sunnydale and the overthrow of the First, the lord of this Californian province, and his lackey the Mayor. By replacing them with monsters a complex tale of human suffering and revolution is reduced to simple sensationalism.
In short, this is a programme which should never have been made, which trivialises the true lessons of history, and which will inevitably be hugely popular. Meanwhile genuine works of historical research languish in obscurity. Perhaps the best that can be said about it is that it may encourage a small minority of viewers to look into the original myth, and the scholarship surrounding it. But for every scholar it inspires perhaps ten thousand viewers will have their ignorance deepened.
Journal of Old Reckoning Studies, last quarter 824 PC
Earth: Home world of the Human q.v. species, this planet is most notable for exports of cheese and other fermented products and for an extensive body of mythology related to the legendary Slayers q.v., supernatural warriors against evil. It has minor economic importance and is not recommended for tourism.
Encyclopaedia Galactica (Terran language edition) 3205 PC