The Fargo Farrago (the saga's last update)

 Foreword

Fargo was written in May 2024. At the time, it was a last desperate attempt to alert Buffydom to the lost possibility encapsulated within the Dru Quartet. The overlooked or aborted story arc I'd seen in that eureka moment fourteen years before, written into the Quartet's latter two chapters. This was before I finally found a blog platform I could work, before Juliet Landau's podcast scandal and Sarah Michelle Gellar got the idea of continuing Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This isn't meant to be a jealous critique. Ms. Gellar is an extremely talented actress and has assembled a crack production team. I am sure Ryan Keira Armstrong has great ability and potential. However, from my perspective it's as if they're all groping their way though Carlsbad Caverns without a flashlight. As if they don't actually know which way to go.

And maybe I do. Maybe the route I've known and walked all these years is the one which was really meant to be.

I'm not sure myself, but it's held up all these years and was written to the same standard as all my publicly available works.

What if I actually got it right, and Sarah & Co. are actually engaged in a hopeless uphill struggle against the forces of fate and destiny?

It's often seemed like that to me. Everything I wrote came together as if by magic. Writing Dru's Quartet was easy, while it seemed Buffy took the wrong turn so many times (Whit Anderson, paused reboot, Whedon scandal, audio drama cancellation etc.)

So if there's anyone out there with a bit of initiative, seek out that secret Buffyverse where men still dream of Avalon...

The Fargo Farrago (May 2024)

It’s the 20^th and 21^st anniversary of Buffy and Angel’s respective cancellations, and regarding the chance of any Buffy-related resurrection the odds are against us and the situation is grim.

Or so Captain Kirk would say.

But he also said he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario.

And just the other day, I saw a quote which put its finger adroitly on the problem:

“We could luck out and get a Fargo situation where the show intelligently builds on the source material with a new creative lead, but that’s so rare I don’t really have much hope.”

                                                                        (Bacon_00 ; r/television ; January 2024)

On the face of it, Buffy ain’t coming back any time soon, if at all. And the belief that it so perfectly caught that turn-of-the-millennium teen zeitgeist that it shouldn’t even be attempted has genuine merit. Sometimes, you just can’t go home again.

However, there is a way, although it would unquestionably need a major fan campaign, the co-operation of all or part of the remaining cast, the help of an extremely powerful Hollywood mover and shaker (think Doomsday on acid) and indeed, a creative lead who could intelligently build on the source material.

Nor must it be forgotten that (as I understand it) Buffy has some of the toughest intellectual property (IP) contracts in the business, which will still stand inviolate when the Earth is a dead star hanging forlornly in space. That’s one reason there have been relatively few spin-offs.

Of all those ingredients, the creative lead might be the most difficult to procure. And how long would it take to create the necessary content?

I’d better start by confessing that I read and reviewed the first novel in Kendare Blake’s Buffy trilogy, and while she is a good writer, I thought it sucked.

So here’s the thing: while Whit Anderson’s Buffy filmscript (and Whit Anderson herself) was being canned, while the Buffy reboot languished in development limbo for five years before being put on “pause” (ie sent to hell and damnation), while Joss Whedon crashed and burned in the biggest inferno since the Hindenburg, and while the audio drama Slayers was being unceremoniously stomped on hard by Disney (now owners of Buffy’s license), there was a bit of secret history going on in the background. An angle nobody expected.

And you’ve never noticed. Not that I haven’t tried to tell you, but it was like whistling in the wind…

To explain, back in 2009 I was an autistic writer in Glasgow on the verge of a nervous breakdown. For fun and therapy, I decided to write a short story about Drusilla the vampire, taking place just after the end of Chosen.

And when I started writing, something very strange happened.

It was like Dru jumped out of her pocket Buffyverse, grabbed on to me for dear life and made it plain I was the one to finish her story.

Like I’d been chosen.

I hit my stride like an ageing athlete who’d been training for twenty years and suddenly finds his peak form. Two crazed months later, Drusilla’s Roses had been written. I then suggested to the National Autistic Society Scotland (NAS) that I cross America blogging about autism and visit the Californian locations I’d used for the story. I also sent a copy of Roses to a certain Juliet Landau in Hollywood, equally certain I’d never get any reply.

Although I was autistic, I’d managed to live and work in Australia for a year twenty years before. But whether I could regain my previous form and function in the field again was uncertain.

Then the impossible happened, and I guess that’s where I got my motivation.

Juliet read Roses, was blown away by it, said so to me and we got into an email correspondence.

The NAS OK’d me to cross the world to California.

I did it, and met Miss Landau on Sunset Boulevard in March 2010. I always say that scene would knock spots off La La Land.

The NAS suggested I write a book about it, in order to inspire people with autism.

Against all odds, Dear Miss Landau was published in March 2012 to rave reviews.

Now here’s a critically important point:

Dear Miss Landau is a real-life autobiographical work involving a member of the cast and referencing Drusilla.

The copyright is mine.

Hence, Dear Miss Landau might (and, I stress, might) be the only Buffy-related product in the world able to circumvent Buffy’s teak-tough IP contracts and legally be filmed.

But what about a continuation of Buffy itself? I hear you ask.

This is where it gets interesting, and even more surreal.

Remember Drusilla’s Roses, which blew Juliet Landau away and got us into an email correspondence?

I didn’t stop there. Drusilla’s Redemption came next, in which an ensouled Drusilla travelled to Africa to save Xander and a village of children from the source of the slayers’ power and a reincarnation of the first slayer, thereby redeeming herself.

Miss Landau had just written a two-part Dru story for IDW Publishing, and I was preparing (quite illegally) to combine this with the third story in the series, Drusilla Revenant, when something truly surreal and strangely simple happened…

I was taking a breather between Redemption and Revenant, watching a certain Buffy episode on DVD, and I saw something.

A lost, unfinished or discarded story arc from the original series. Something which should have happened but didn’t, partly because Spike unexpectedly became a breakout character.

I emailed Juliet (imagine how surreal that was!), and told her I’d spotted something.

Looking back, I think I was in the right place at the right time, looking at the right thing from exactly the right angle. I was in the right frame of mind and I had the right amount of knowledge about the right character.

It all came together, and I just saw it.

Buffy’s continuation. Plain as day.

And it was so simple. A child could see it, but nobody else ever has.

Once I got back from the States I romped through Revenant, combined it with Juliet’s story, developed the story arc and delivered the payoff in Avalon, Catalina, where Dru went in search of Xander…

But there was one more tale yet to be told.

I think I once heard James Marsters say that Spike and Dru’s two hundred year old love story had to be resolved, and I had a crack at it. In Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, I sent them to north Afghanistan in 2019 where, among other things, they sorted out their relationship.

At that point, I got the very strong impression that I’d done what Dru wanted: I’d built up her story, turned the Buffyverse upside down, tied fiction and reality together and brought it all to something approximating a happy ending.

As, perhaps, it was meant to be.

Dru was satisfied with that.

That was 2013.

Since then, I have mentioned this at the end of Dear Miss Landau, blogged about it in the Huffington Post UK, tried to alert members of the cast at comics-conventions (Amy Acker seemed particularly interested one time) and pitched or mentioned the possibility whenever I reasonably could.

No one’s ever really got it, and I am left feeling as if I am the only man in the world with access to the restored print of Lawrence of Arabia while everyone else has to make do with the mutilated 1971 TV version…

I really would like the fans to be able to read the whole story of Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet, as it is actually meant to be. It works like this:

Dear Miss Landau and Drusilla’s Roses should be read together. This is where fiction and reality subtly intersected, and wackiness ensued.

Then simply read Drusilla’s Redemption, Drusilla Revenant and Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, in that order.

Please note that the Dru Quartet (what I call all four stories in their entirety) observes Buffy canon as much as possible. I would also firmly stress that all the stories were written to the same standard as Dear Miss Landau, and I’ve always actually considered Roses better than Landau.

Dear Miss Landau has been published and Roses and Redemption can be found in Archive of Our Own. I’m only holding Revenant and Graveyard back because they contain the resolution of the lost story arc and I would like the Dru Quartet legally to be published. I don’t want to add them to Archive of Our Own as I’m no fan of self-publishing, and I don’t want to just give away the secret of the lost story arc.

And at the moment, the Dru Quartet can only be classed as fan-fiction.

Hence the problem, and the need for a major fan campaign. There is precedent for this. Bjo Trimble and the Star Trek fans saved Star Trek for a third season in 1967-1968. More recently, money-mad football bosses wanted to create a European Super League. Not unlike Disney and Hollywood, they had money, power, contracts and lawyers on their side; but the football fans put their foot down as one and the idea was destroyed in eleven days flat.

You have the power if you will only focus and use it.

I know my limitations. Unlike Bjo Trimble, I am not an organiser or manager. However, I have created the content and have natural public speaking ability (rare for an Asperger). I am willing to do what I can.

But I am not writing this article to start yet another conversation. I am trying to tell you there is a chance, but you have to grasp it. Not have long arguments on social media about it.

Once I have posted this article, I will leave Reddit forever (sorry, I found you very nice) but I will post a copy of it on my Goodreads page, where I can be contacted. It’s up to you.

I would suggest the fans lobby for the Dru Quartet legally to be published, and for Dear Miss Landau to be turned into a film. There was even an attempt to turn Dear Miss Landau into a stage musical about ten years ago. It could be revived.

While I admit I’d mainly like to see the Dru Quartet legally published, I do wish there was some way it could be filmed. I can see it on an epic scale, but all four stories would depend heavily on nuanced portrayals by actors and time has gone by.

However, there may be a way: de-aging technology, AI, even plain old recasting…

As Mr Spock would say, there are always possibilities.

However, I think this is the best and only route out of the current situation, so I will add a few reviews here and hope to receive polite contact from a focused individual.

However, I know what can happen with social media… If I receive abuse, I will simply walk away from it all and the lost story arc’s resolution will never be revealed.

It’s up to you.

I hope there’s somebody out there.

Dear Miss Landau

“This is the best book I’ve read for ten years.”

(Tim Coates, former MD of Waterstones and WH Smith, on A Good Read, BBC Radio 4, July 2012)

“I read this constantly thinking ‘is this for real?’ An autistic Scottish man in his 40s has an obsession with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and writes a 250,000 word novel based on the character and ends up travelling to Hollywood and meeting the actress who plays her. You couldn’t make it up.”

(Chris Norton, Goodreads, October 2012)

Drusilla’s Roses

“I just finished your story. I thought it was great. I really enjoyed it. You managed to catch Drusilla’s voice and behaviour so beautifully. The sad, lost, haunted feeling of Dru was there.”

(Juliet Landau, August 2009)

“This is utterly beautiful and touching. As someone who’s written a Dru story where she gets her soul back, finds love and finds sanity, I have longed for such stories. This is the first one that came close to satisfying that longing. I love that she helped heal both Xander and Buffy - the two most wounded people after the fall of Sunnydale.”

(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)

Drusilla’s Redemption

“This is a beautifully written and disturbing novelette. I really do hope that the sequel will be available here soon. Since my own writing about Dru, I’ve never read anything else where I really felt more than just Dru’s craziness. Here I felt her heart and strength and saw her insight into the complexity of the human condition, including human evil in particular. Wonderfully done.”

(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)

"I cannot believe you break my heart by ending it there.  

This is beautiful and fearsome and full of poetry. I'm in awe.

I just wanted them to grow old together. I wish you had given them that.

Peace.”

(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)

I tried to find DeepBlueJoy, tried to tell her I did it…

The story isn’t over.