It's More Joy Day! Also, it's Friday! So this is a very silly fic of an idea that may have deserved a more serious treatment but… eh. Here's hoping someone finds it fun.

Title: Eat the Rich
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy
Characters/Pairing: Buffy, Andrew
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~650
Summary: How Buffy blew up the Mayor twice and made a million dollars.



( Hello, gentle listeners, and welcome to SlayerPod. Today we have with us Buffy Summers, Slayer of the Vampyres. )

OK, so here's this year's holiday fic! A bit longer than last year's, and also less rhyming, but it has hockey references and zombie Christmas trees.

Happy whatever, everyone!

Title: Tree Bad, Fire Pretty
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, circa mid-season 2
Characters/Pairing: Buffy, Giles, OC
Rating: PG
Word count: 1475
Summary: Buffy helps Giles decorate the tree. Also, Buffy has to fight evil zombie Christmas trees. (Also, selling anything in Sunnydale, especially in connection with big events, is really asking for trouble, but somebody's got to supply the holiday paraphernalia...)

( I have several books and a prepared lecture on the pagan and bourgeois roots of Christmas trees if Snyder should happen to venture into the library. )

Woah, I wrote Buffy fic. It's been a while. Not sure why. But anyway, here's a plotbunny that got into me and wouldn't let go. This is kind of a ghost story, so feel free to consider it my contribution to Halloween.

Title: Olly Olly Oxen Free
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy, season 5/post-series
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~700
Summary: Dawn knows most of her memories aren't real. But she'd still like to know exactly when they became real. Isn't it weird that the monks just plonked her right into reality with memories so vivid that she honestly can't tell where they end and her real life began? How did that work, exactly?

Go then, there are other worlds than these.
- Jake Chambers, The Dark Tower

( Buffy says Dawn's just looking for an excuse to have two birthdays, which, hey, what would be wrong with that? Besides, Buffy has, like, three at this point. )

So before I go offline for a bit, I thought I'd post this fic. It's an expansion of an old drabble that I always thought could use a "But then what?" to get a bit more into their characters.

Title: Nice Girls Don't Stay For Breakfast
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy, s3
Pairing: Buffy/Faith
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~900
Summary: After the mess that was Homecoming and Slayerfest '98, Faith invites Buffy back to her motel for drinks. Fast forward a few hours and Buffy's emphatically NOT freaking out, just trying to figure out the best way to sneak out of a motel bed without waking Faith up.

( It felt weird, being the sneak-outer in this situation and not the sneak-outee. Not that she'd had a lot of these situations, obviously. Should she leave a note, or... OK, in her experience, correct protocol involved losing your soul and killing people, so pretty much anything she did would be better than that. Besides, Faith probably didn't want Buffy to be here when she woke up anyway. )
 
 

It's the annual holiday fic! I felt kind of bad about last year's fic and how it anticipated some real-life events, so I went extra fluffy this time. Happy whatever, everyone!

Title: A Slayin' Song Tonight
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffyverse (post-series)
Rating: PG13
Word count: 6x100
Characters: Ensemble
Summary: Five holiday decorations that can be used to slay vampires, and one vice versa. AKA the Scooby Holiday Meet-Up is about as peaceful as you'd expect.

In retrospect, renting a Cleveland hotel ballroom for the annual Scooby Holiday Meet-Up wasn't the best idea. But Buffy's tiny apartment wouldn't hold them all, and the hotel promised food, drinks and holiday paraphernalia at a very decent price (as thanks for clearing up that haunting three weeks earlier).

The vampire gang who (somewhat unwisely) cut the power and crashed the party without needing an invitation presumably weren't part of the service.

"Just once," Buffy muttered as she pulled a Christmas stocking over one vampire's face and staked another, "I'd like one holiday to go according to plan."

* * *

"Um… little help?" Dawn managed to get out as she bounced up and down on the back of the largest vampire. She wasn't sure what she'd been thinking when she tried to choke him with a holiday wreath; pine needles really weren't sharp enough to sever a vampire neck, and now he was trying to throw her off and she hated horsey rides and the eggnog she'd had wasn't helping, and -

When Spike dusted the vamp she tried for a graceful landing, but inertia disagreed and she crashed through the tree, sending angels, candy canes and baubles flying everywhere. "...Ow."

* * *

"OW! Sonofabitch!" Stepping on a bauble is painful even if you're a soulless denizen of the night. One vampire hopped around the room, knocking over the buffet table while trying to pull shards of glass out of his foot, then decided to take his rage out on the old man. "Any last words, grandpa?"

"Merry Christmas?" Giles handed him the gift Buffy had given him. "I suppose as my nemesis, this belongs to you."

The vampire ripped off the wrapping paper, took one look at the knitted sweater with reindeer motif, screamed and dusted.

Giles nodded. "I thought as much."

* * *

"Thanks, Will." Xander brushed off the ashes from the vampire that had been seconds away from a double shot of AB Harris Positive. "Also, huh. I never knew menorahs hurt vampires, but I guess...?"

Willow winced as she carefully checked the abruptly extinguished menorah for vampire-ass-related damage. "May just have been regular vampire fire allergy. It's just... I know I'm not so much with the monotheism these days, and I use crosses to fend off vampires and that's probably some sorta cultural appropriation, but it still feels disrespectful, y'know?" She carefully put it back in the window. "Right. Any more?"

* * *

The last vampire had had enough; nobody had said anything about an army of professional demon hunters. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, he grabbed one of the presents and ran for the door. He almost made it, but then something sparkly flew over his head, slipped down over him and tightened around his legs. He fell face-first, and barely had time to register that someone had landed on his back before a stake pierced his heart.

"Nice one, Blue," Faith said as she holstered the stake.

Illyria dusted off her quickly improvised tinsel lasso. "One does not mess with Texas."

* * *

"Is that it?" Buffy surveyed the damage. "OK, our security deposit's a bust. Aw, the tree."

"Yeah, a vamp did that," Dawn quickly said.

"And one threw your gift on the fire," Giles added. "There's evil for you."

Faith wrenched the remains of the tree upright. "Angel, you wanna be on top?"

Angel ignored Spike's laugh and instead gave Buffy a boost so she could tie Mr Pointy to the top of the tree. A warm glow spread from the few candles that were still lit as the gang stood around with their arms around each other. "Happy holidays, everyone."

For open_on_sunday's Song Title challenge:

Avant Gardener
Title from "Avant Gardener" by Courtney Barnett

"Sunnydale Plants & Garden, Tim speaking, how may I help you?"

(...)

"Weeding? Sure, we've got tools for that."

(...)

"Our most popular pruning shears are 8 inches."

(...)

"Not really. We have hedge clippers, but – "

(...)

"Poison? You mean herbicides? Sure…"

(...)

"…That quickly? No."

(...)

"What?"

(...)

"No, we do not carry flamethrowers. What on – "

(...)

"Um… sure. Thanks for calling."

(.)

Buffy hung up and turned to Giles. "Right, no help there. You're sure stakes won't work? Because - "

"Plants don't have hearts, Buffy."

They looked out at the triffids surrounding the Magic Box. "That's the last time I let Willow help Dawn with a science project."

Here’s a crossover I’ve thought about for a while. This is post-series Buffy crossed with the Flaming Lips song "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Part 1" (lyrics). You don't need to be familiar with the song to read it, but it’s a pop song so you can binge the entirety of this canon in 3 ½ minutes.

Title: All In A Day's Work
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy/Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~850
Warnings/Notes: Poking fun at national stereotypes.
Characters/Pairing: Buffy, Xander, Yoshimi
Summary: To be fair, Buffy wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to stop a giant robot about to attack Tokyo. But still, being told someone else would handle it felt a bit weird.

"What, you don't use machine guns in your movies?"
- Charles Bronson to Ingmar Bergman

( I'm afraid we cannot guarantee the safety of non-union workers on this task. )

For open_on_sunday's "Episode title" challenge:

Some Assembly Required
”Innocence”

“Do you want me to show you how to use it?” Xander asked.

Buffy looked at her birthday present. “Yes, I do.”

“Right,” he said, lifting up the brand new rocket launcher. “I’m pretty sure you flip this thing here and DUCK!”




“...Is everyone OK?” Buffy lifted part of the collapsed wall off them.

“I think so. Um, Giles? Was that an important wing of the library?”

“Let’s just say that on the off chance that anyone comes in here looking for school books, they will be disappointed.”

“Oh. Anyway, Buff, let me go steal an instruction manual as well…”

Title: The Queen, The Soldier
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy, beginning long, long pre-series
Characters/Pairings: Gen, OC-centred, but the gang shows up at the end
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~2400
Summary: Slayers always died young. Except for one, who did quite the opposite. This is her story. It begins like this: "Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a town. And in the town was a girl, who didn't want to die."
Written for spook_me and the prompt "Giant".

( In a gorge in the wilderness outside of town lived a giant. )

Here's a different zombie fic bunny that grabbed me. I hope it works.




Title: Building Character
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy, season 6
Rating: PG13
Word count: 1900
Summary: Written for zombi_fic_ation and the prompt "50. Buffy + any -- Buffy mostly came back right... mostly". Five perspectives on Buffy, after she comes back from the (slightly more) dead.

No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises, please

( It needed to be quick, and Baron Samedi was very eager to help. Seems Willow has good credit with gods these days. )