We are super proud of our Scoobies of the Month for being incredible content creators! Heck, we are beyond proud of all of you. Whether you are here to drop stories, art, poetry, essays, or comments ... you are essential to this community, and we appreciate you so much!

First up, we have our Author of the Month: Blooddebt

Tell us how you got into Buffy the show and Buffy fanfic.

I started BTVS on a whim in late 2024 and fell fast and hard for the show because it's basically the blueprint for a lot of the tv and films I already loved. I'm in my late 20s now but it felt like something that would have been so formative to me if I'd first seen it as a teenager. It was like being able to see my skeleton for the first time, knowing it's where all my favourite things come from. I was always a Buffy fan, I just hadn't watched it yet!

This is a very old fandom, so I dove into as many fics as I could as a way to 'catch up' and learn how the community thought about these characters and this romance (I got so addicted to Spuffy that I couldn't survive an AO3 outage, which is how I ended up stumbling upon SDAD in the first place. Yay!). I'm a writer but had never written fanfic before, then after several months of reading I started to feel like I wanted to read something very specific that I could never quite find it. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, if there's something you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it!

Where do you find inspiration for your stories?

Funnily, it was my love for Fuffy that got me to write my first Spuffy fic. I'm a lesbian filmmaker and film critic and my work specialises in queer cinema and television, so I'm always watching things through that lens. It's always fascinated me how much Faith as a character influenced and foreshadowed a lot of Buffy's sexuality and how it relates to slaying and violence as shown later on in the series. Of course there's a lot of evidence for Spuffy since their first episode together, but I'm obsessed with the Spike and Faith scene at the Bronze in 'Who Are You?' because I think Faith clocked his desire for Buffy right then and there because she recognised a bit of herself in him, taking the lead on Buffy's desires before they ever occurred to her, as she always has! So, I wanted to write a fic where Spuffy themselves reflected on that crucial interaction early on in their relationship, which ended up being 'And you know why she does?' In general, I think Spuffy holds a lot of similarities with closeted gay relationships, and I find it fun to work that subtext in whenever I can.

(Content warning: SR discussion in the following paragraph) Since then I've written a lot more missing scenes set during season 6. The only thing I knew about the show before watching it is what Spike does to Buffy in Seeing Red (and it turned out that what I'd been told was much worse than what actually happened. Still, I didn't know), and so my first time watching season 6 I was so full of dread seeing all the pieces coming together starting from 'Smashed' it felt like a horror story to me. It still does in many ways, and writing 'Make It Wrong' has been a way to process how I feel about Spuffy as a horror/romance/tragedy during what is my favourite era of the show.

Who is your favourite character to write and why?

Buffy and Spike are both so fun to write for me because they are so action-driven, especially together. Because of my filmmaking background, most of my fics actually begin as screenplays before I convert them to prose, which is why they're all written in present tense. I try to write every sex scene like a fight scene and every fight scene like a sex scene, because the way Spuffy blurs the lines between the two is one of my favourite things about them.

Which story of yours are you most proud of and which was the hardest to write?

My favourite is 'Crawling out of my grave' for the overall concept but I like the work I did with switching and then merging Buffy and Spike's POVs in 'All the other animals are laughing'. 'The only thing that's different' has been the most difficult to write so far because I was inspired to write it while going through my own dark mental health period, and then I broke my leg which made things worse. Having nothing to do over the last 5 months because I couldn't walk is probably 90% of the reason that I was able to write so much fan fiction (my recovery is going well and I'm up and about now!).

'The only thing that's different' has been the most difficult to write so far because I was inspired to write it while going through my own dark mental health period, and then I broke my leg which made things worse. Having nothing to do over the last 5 months because I couldn't walk is probably 90% how I ended up writing so many stories (my recovery is going well and I'm up and about now!).

As a writer, what would you have changed on the show and why?

Season 6 is the best to me because every episode is so character-driven. It's so sad that didn't continue in season 7. I wish we could've seen more of that deeper interiority from Buffy instead of the writers bombarding her with an excessive amount of plot to distract us from really thinking about her feelings. Also, I wouldn't have resurrected Spike in ATS5.

(Blooddebt, we are so happy to have you here! And we hope your leg is mending! And, from Chelle, as a femslash writer in the Grey's Anatomy fandom, I am super fascinated by the work you do and appreciate you to the moon! And the parallels you talk about with Spuffy and the closeted gay community really deserves an essay with our Meta tag ... hint hint. :) Thank you so so so much for being here!)

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Next up is our Commenter of the Month: flootzavut (I need the story of this username, flootzzzz!)

Tell us how you got into Buffy the show and Buffy fanfic.
In 2016 they announced they were taking Buffy down off Netflix, and I'd dipped my toe in before, but I decided it was silly to miss out on a cultural behemoth while I had access. Three weeks later I was crying my eyes out and writing my first BtVS fic! June 2 will be the tenth anniversary of the first Buffy fic I ever posted!

What motivates you to leave comments?
I think it's not a coincidence that I'm a writer who loves receiving comments and I want to pass that pleasure on, but my main motivation is purely that an author writes something that speaks to me in some way and I want to let them know. Fandom is in large part a communal activity for me, and comments are part of being connected and sharing the love. I don't want to scream in my living room alone; I want to scream at the author!

Do you also write or are you strictly a reader?
So yes, I'm very much a writer; I have over 500 fics on AO3 over several dozen fandoms. I have no chill 🤭 

Were you a lurker before you started leaving comments or did you comment right away?
I've been in fandom properly since about 2013, but even so I feel pretty confident saying I jumped in with both feet and was a commenter from the get go. I'm telling you, zero chill over here.

How important is it to receive a reply from the writer when you leave a comment?
I love when I receive replies from authors, but I'm also aware how overwhelming it can be from the other side, so I very much never expect a reply, much less a prompt one. We all have other demands on our time and energy, and I would never begrudge an author prioritising other uses for it! So, it's nice, I do like it, but it's not desperately important to me.

(Your comments mean the world, flootzavut, and we always look forward to hearing your thoughts. And how amazing is it that Buffy is still bringing in new fans. New fans who, ahem, see the joy of Spuffy. We are beyond happy to have you here and can't wait to see what you do next. I hope the thing you do next is explain your awesome username below. <3 ) 

And that is a wrap for June. I (Chelle) am dying in the humid Georgia heat already. Feel sorry for me. Send me ice chips and all the portable fans you can find. Especially if they are bedazzled! ;) 

All the best,
Chelle, Dusty, GetItDone, and GriefCounseling 

PS, also, I am art impaired and can't make a Pen & Paint banner but like ... if someone wanted to write a fic about a heatwave that makes Buffy very very very cranky ... like ... punishably so ... and Spike rises to the occasion ... well, that would be just fine by me. ;) Ahem.