#celia accidentally writes a jenny canon

[jennycalendar]

@andtheyfightcrime​ said: I think re: Angel, Jenny would be compassionate to a point because she knows what it’s like to be the black sheep of the family and reinventing oneself, and how he tries so hard to be good. But because you can’t have Angel without self flagellation (the Catholic, it jumps out) she would be firmly ok if you want to be married to your guilt instead of being constructive, then I can’t help you. Like you fucked up and whether I forgive you or not, it’s pointless because you don’t forgive yourself.

thank you so much for giving me an opening to talk about jenny and angel because i do agree with what you have to say AND i think that there’s so much to unpack there!?!?!?!? like??!?!?!

jenny’s relationship to angel has the very real potential to be something that evolves -- within canon we see it happen, albeit in tiny fractured snips that come about from the narrative crudely shoving jenny into random places and going “look :) drama :)” -- and i always wonder what that would look like. he’s had such a hold on her life. he charted the course that her life was supposed to take. everything she rebelled against and questioned was put into place specifically because of him. he was and in some ways is formative in the kind of person that jenny became. that’s a lot. (again with the jenny/buffy parallels......significant that buffy eventually hates jenny just as much as she goes out of her way to hate cordy and dismiss dru! significant that that shift towards derison and dismissal happens when it’s revealed that angel was a huge part of jenny’s life -- a monster that she underestimated, a responsibility that she was foolish with because she was chasing down a doomed romance. oof.)

so then in the season three that wasn’t, jenny is now looking at angel as the man who saved her life AND the monster who tried to end it, which is . a lot . i think she’d be really stringent about the difference between soul and no soul, in part as a coping mechanism to rationalize the trauma angelus put her through while still allowing her to love and admire angel. the fact that he tries so hard to be better clearly inspired her to risk her life (and, in canon, lose it) trying to give him a second chance -- that’s so powerful! she sees him as someone who is shackled by circumstance but is trying to be better, in part because she’s not close enough to him to fully Get how the guilt complex chains him down too.

which is to say that i think there is SO MUCH that could be done with angel’s role as this semi-iconic figure in jenny’s life, just as buffy is this huge presence in giles’s life. it’s a little different with angel and jenny (in part because angel is, y’know, Not A Teenage Girl), but there’s something interesting in this idea of them being so hugely combative? angel pushing this narrative of no obviously i am a horrible person for what i did to you, stop being so naive and jenny responding at first by trying to convince him that he is in fact good and then losing her patience and being like You Know What, Fine! Wallow All You Want, See If I Care.

(somehow that gets through to angel. which could in turn be sooooo interesting! buffy being jealous of the fact that angel does have this private and extremely personal connection with jenny upon which she, his girlfriend, is an intruder ... angel being forced into confronting his positive AND negative impact on jenny’s life, making his guilt a less nebulous, general kinda thing ... so much to do here. so much to think about.)

#replies #celia accidentally writes a jenny canon #(i wanna make a tag for this lmaoooo) #headcanon #meta #jenny and angel

[addiehour]

title: Amends. word count: 2,180 summary: instead of moping around for no good reason (canon), angel fights the First Evil by doing some good. and then he gives everyone some much-needed space.

notes: for @jenny-calendar!!!! i love u celia... ever since you suggested this i had, had, Had to write it.. thank u for being my friend

The first thing Calendar does when she comes back to life is cough up dirt.

She lies there, on the ground, coughing and wheezing and choking (hey, being buried will do shit to you) among what seems like an incredibly unusual amount of purple candles and some kind of bones. She props herself on one elbow to look around, surveying the pentagram-shaped thing she’s lying on, and then looks up and sees Angel.

“Welcome back,” he says quietly. Calendar sits up, holding her head, even though she can’t feel a headache. It’s sort of a spiritual pain.

“What...” she mutters, and he crouches next to her. She’s too-- in shock? Exhausted? Freshly re-alive’d? To react to his existence properly. God, she just forgot the word “reanimated.”

“I brought you back,” he explains, holding out his right hand, which has gone... pretty much entirely black; withered and burnt off in places. Calendar has never seen that kind of texture on a charcoal briquette, let alone someone’s skin. “I figured necromancy wouldn’t have the same kind of consequences for vampires, and-- well. What d’you know.”

“You killed me,” she mumbles, still holding her head. She’s not going to take his hand; she has no idea why he’s offering it to her. If he is at all; she’s too freshly reanimated to tell.

“And Willow...” he sighs. “Gave me back my soul. Anyway.”

“Oh,” Calendar says. “Oh-- Willow?”

“With your spell,” Angel adds.

This is too much to take in five seconds after she’s just come back to life. Calendar lies back down slowly, this time on her back.

“Merry Christmas,” Angel says, very softly.

Now Calendar really does have a headache. Either it’s a side effect of death, or Angel’s accidentally cursed her with something in the process of bringing her back to life. Either way, she’s too fuzzed-out to really comprehend what in Hell’s name she should be doing with herself, on Christmas Eve, after being dead for months. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you can Google.

“I don’t celebrate Christmas,” she says, much too inarticulately for Angel to catch a word.

Then she sits up again, remembering. She manages to rearrange her body into a mostly-standing position, stumbling to her feet (stupid clunky heels) before turning to look at Angel again.

“But I know someone who does.”

*

Giles isn’t asleep yet, mostly because he’s trying to get through the last section of the third volume of his collection of encyclopedias on vampires. It is, unfortunately, becoming extremely dull.

Calendar is not aware of any of this when she knocks on his door, rumpled and out of breath.

Giles answers. Calendar has to stifle a gasp-- he’s different, alone, and there’s something about seeing him after months of not seeing him, and she feels all the changes in him in herself, but he also looks just the same, and she missed him. She missed seeing his face; she missed him.

While Calendar is deconstructing Giles’ appearance to herself, Giles is busying himself looking first mildly surprised, then deeply saddened, then resigned, and then back to mild surprise. Calendar understands none of these expressions or her own thoughts, so she cuts to the chase.

“Hey,” she says. Not his name, not that she loves him, just “hey”. It feels like a solid enough start.

“Your hair,” Giles responds.

“What?” Calendar says, because Giles’ gaze is now definitively fixed on her head. He seems to be admiring her bangs, which is odd, because she doesn’t even know where they’re at right now. Probably somewhere strewn across her forehead.

“It’s usually quite perfect,” he says, marvelling. “It looks much more realistic now. How did you do that?”

“I got resurrected by a vampire who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Calendar says flatly. “Rupert--”

“Fantastic,” Giles says. “Good night.”

And he slams the door in her face.

Calendar looks at the door for a second, processing the fact that Giles really... just did that.

Then she kicks it open before he can lock it, shoving it aside and walking right in. She ran all the way here because God knows where her car is, and she got lost twice, and she is not getting shut out of his house.

“Rupert, what is wrong with you--”

“I didn’t invite you,” he says, looking confused.

“I figured I didn’t need an invitation, being your girl-- oh,” Calendar says as Giles touches her face. She swoons lightly towards him, almost not realizing it until he pulls away.

“You’re a remarkably tangible dream,” he says, stepping back.

“Oh,” Calendar says again, softer this time. She moves closer to him, reaching out a hand, and he flinches away.

“Or a very skilled demon,” he notes, half-smiling in a brutally wretched way. Calendar pulls her hand back, crossing her arms protectively. Giles almost turns away, but he stops when hears her voice.

“Rupert, it’s me.”

He pauses, looking half-guilty, half-wary of whatever it is that’s going on. Calendar doesn’t know who else has been here, who else might have impersonated her, but--

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” Giles says. And waits.

Calendar waits, too. For something, anything, to drop out of the sky and prove that she’s actually herself and actually here and that Angel brought her back and that she’s here now, she’s here, and all she wants to do is be with Giles right now. All she can do is be with him; she needs him...

“I’m real,” she whispers. Absolutely hopelessly.

Giles turns and enters his kitchen.

“No-- Rupert--” the only thing Calendar can really think to do in this situation is kiss Giles, because that would prove it was her, but she also can’t, she can’t do that, not while he thinks it isn’t her, because that would bring back too many memories, and, well, God, what is she supposed to be doing?

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” Giles repeats, pouring himself a cup of tea.

And that is how Calendar knows he’s said that before. To visions, to demons, to monsters-- it doesn’t matter. The reply has always been wrong.

But maybe, she thinks, he’s giving her a second chance. He wants her to be real. He knows, somewhere, somehow, that this is her, and he won’t just let her leave without proving it.

Which gives her the answer.

“I helped you cast that demon out of the internet,” she says softly. Giles’ hand stops over the kettle. “And-- And I forced you to dance at the prom, and I got knocked out next to you, and I tricked you into a date, and I accidentally got possessed and had to take space from you for like three weeks-- God, that was awful-- and I shot a crossbow bolt into your back, and I tried not to betray you but I did it anyway, and then I tried to fix it, and I died, but I’m back, I’m back, I couldn’t stay away, I love you--” and she breaks free of Giles’ astonished gaze and looks away, willing herself not to cry because that would be so embarrassing. God.

“Jenny,” Giles whispers.

“Hey,” Calendar croaks, with whatever’s left of her voice.

And he kisses her, which is good, because otherwise she would have just started bawling, and he’s so warm, and she missed him (can you really miss someone when you’re dead? whatever, she did) and God knows what’s going on in the outside world but all that can just continue going on without her, because she’s thinking now she might just stay here in Giles’ arms for a week or a month or forever, maybe never leaving, and Merry fucking Christmas indeed, and then they break apart.

“Jenny,” Giles says, stronger now, smoothing her hair out. She leans her head against his chest.

“Rupert,” she manages, because a lot’s happening right now. Inside and outside her.

“What-- what happened,” Giles says, sort of flatly, without any actual question in the tone at all. It’s a very understandable thing to say, in Calendar’s opinion, because she has no idea either. Though, of course, she’s not keen on the idea of Angel coming in now to explain it to her.

“Angel used some kind of-- dark-- necromancy magic to raise me from the dead,” she says, more as a recap for herself than Giles. “Burned his hand off, too.”

“Oh. Good,” Giles says, and both of them laugh, the way they do about these very strange and almost not at all humorous things.

Calendar leads Giles out of the kitchen into his living room, where they settle into the same chair, with Giles sitting normally and Calendar sort of stretched out in his lap over the sides, and Giles moves her aside a little to get his tea, and she rolls her eyes at him, and he returns to pull her into his lap again, and this time they just sit together for hours, almost without moving.

And they talk, because Calendar has been dead for months, and so much has happened, and apparently nobody has done anything about Oz being a werewolf-- did she even know he was? She honestly can’t remember; nothing surprises her anymore-- and there were guns and masks and other slayers, and somewhere before and after and in between that Giles was hurt, and there are parts of the story where Calendar holds Giles a little closer, or they just stop completely and look out the window and wait for the moment to pass. And when Giles is done, Calendar looks him right in the eyes and says “Well, I’ve been dead,” and without thinking he just says “I love you,” and then they both do their stupid little laughing thing again, and Giles starts laughing less and crying more, and Calendar just kisses him. And kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

“What happened to my car,” she manages between kisses. Giles pulls back for a moment to think.

“It might have been sold,” he says. Calendar smacks the chair in frustration, and Giles jumps.

“I liked that thing,” she mutters. “Perfectly good Bug.”

“You could’ve-- punched me a little less hard,” Giles says, rubbing his arm, and Calendar remembers that stupid Punch Buggy game she always played with him, where he never actually ended up winning because of course she saw her own car first; she was the one who parked it. “I think sometimes I still feel the pain.”

And Calendar kisses him again, because this feels like one of those magic moments where all she has to do to fix everything-- absolutely everything-- is kiss him. And they haven’t had one of those moments in a while; she’d like to savor this one.

Unfortunately-- fortunately?-- Giles and Calendar can’t seem to just kiss; it becomes some kind of heavy-petting fest where Calendar has her hand shoved inside Giles’ shirt and Giles actually can’t really decide where exactly he wants to touch Calendar the most, and this devolves into some kind of (in Calendar’s opinion, sexy) wrestling match in which Giles loses his glasses.

“Hold on,” he says, removing his hand from her chest and fishing around for them in the limited Not-Giles space on the chair. Calendar helps, feeling for something Not-Giles, and occasionally feeling a whole lot of Giles, and at some point just openly groping Giles. “Jenny--”

“In the grand scheme of things, who even needs glasses,” Calendar says, shifting so she’s sitting directly on top of him, on her knees, kissing his neck, because she hasn’t done that yet and why keep herself from it? She could die again any minute.

“Jenny-- Jenny, you’re very sweet, b-but-- Ah--”

“Found ‘em.” Calendar holds up Giles’ glasses, bent and crumpled and a little bit sat on but definitely not broken. Giles fumbles at her hand a little bit before Calendar takes pity and just puts his glasses on for him.

He looks at her for a moment. Just looks at her. And she looks at him; memorizing his face, thinking about every kiss they’ve had, just waiting for the next one. Like they could go on forever.

And she knows tomorrow there’ll be much more talking and much less kissing-- you don’t just rise from the dead and get back together with your boyfriend, after all. There are things to discuss, rifts to mend, vampires to punch...

But for now, and after that, this is and will be enough. Just being together. Just knowing that, even if everything hasn’t come out alright, things are on their way there. This is the first moment of an atonement, half a scrape at making amends.

Calendar can respect that.

She looks out the window and pauses, hand on Giles’ shoulder.

“Rupert,” she says, getting up off his lap. He follows her, and she leads him over to the window, which is frosting over in the sudden cold. She puts her hand atop the chill glass, pressing her fingers against it. Giles leans over her shoulder to look closer.

“It’s snowing.”

#jenny calendar #buffy #. this is a damn rollercoaster of a fic #. like things just. happen. and keep happening #. so uhhhhhhhhh yeah not my best work but certainly the giftiest #. congrats on having a bisexual calendar lover for a friend kljdfkhkd #benfic

[jennycalendar]

2017 fic roundup

tagged by the incredible @catty-words!! which is a delight bc 1) cori is amazing and 2) i LOVE talking about my writing. so here goes

Total 2017 Word Count: 252,499 (.......that’s a lot wow) Total 2017 Hits: 7,515 Other 2017 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 653; Comment threads: 197; Bookmarks: 76; Subscriptions: 49.

Total 2016 Word Count: 61,766 (oh my GOD in COMPARISON i wrote. so much this year) Total 2016 Hits: 4,651 Other 2016 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 360; Comment threads: 55; Bookmarks: 38; Subscriptions: 15.

links and titles to 2017 works

i wrote. um. a lot. like a lot. didn’t realize how much until i had to compile an actual list and now it’s like....wow.

orpheus (4,721 words) that one time i wrote a giles/jenny orpheus & eurydice au. set during....s5-ish? i had fun with this

determination unmatched (1,576 words) set during school hard; ft. giles and jenny in the library and jenny panicking over her Commitment Issues.

the sunnydale high mortality rate (1,722 words) i’m PRETTY sure i wrote this in 2016 for jenny calendar day, but i posted it again as a standalone in january so. still counts sort of. jenny’s musings on life and death in sunnydale.

on gambles (5,577 words) a tara/faith au of the office; tara is a shy receptionist and faith is a flirty paper salesgirl.

bravery (50,445 words) IM GETTING NOSTALGIC because last time i did this fic roundup thing my goal for 2017 was to finish bravery??? and then i did??? and it was beautiful??? fjsfsdljk do i even need to summarize this fic; u all heard me talking about it at Some point or another....it’s a giles/jenny becoming au. i reread it recently and i feel like i’ve really improved since then, but it was a landmark fic for me and the first multi-chapter fic with a complex plot that i actually finished (and last lmao whoops). i love it still

first steps (5,740 words) the follow-up to bravery!! set during dead man’s party. kinda fluffy & pointless but it was still super fun to write

second chances (9,371 words) oh boy this fic is the only one from early 2017 that i’m still genuinely really proud of. set during s6; jenny comes back as a ghost, and only anya can see her.

impromptu vigil for the dead scooby mom (3,226 words) jenny dies in chosen instead of in passion, and giles copes.

missing (13,402 words) s3 jenny, from a world where giles died, forms an accidental supernatural connection with s3 giles.

conscious choices (6,708 words) MY CHEESY ROM-COM FIC. i love this one so much so much so much. told through emails, phone calls, and texts, giles and jenny fall in love (again, sort of) in s4 when jenny comes back into town.

mermaid magic (13,140 words) some anon sent me an ask once upon a time re: jenny as a mermaid and that ask spiraled into a lot of asks and then a tag on my blog and finally this fic. it was inevitable, really.

grand romantic gestures (10,558 words) this was without a doubt my secret masterpiece of 2017. femslash calendiles, set after passion. while attempting to cope with jenny’s death, gil stumbles across something surprising, and then things just start spiraling from there.

restraint (4,305 words) a prequel to on gambles, though they could be read in any order. faith attends the dundies and pines over tara (though she definitely doesn’t want to call it pining). also there is of course some jenny/giles content because i’m Me

forever (4,031 words) kind of still in progress?? various femslash oneshots (faith/tara, willow/buffy, and willow just being a lesbian in general)

irredeemable evil (5,919 words) jenny tries to get used to being a vampire. giles is desperately in love.

on heroes (6,054 words) look i GET that slayers have to be the one-girl-in-all-the-world thing but i hate the cpr scene with romantic undertones so like. i wrote this. with semi-gratuitous mostly-platonic jenny/giles because i’m Me.

fortune favors the bold (2,768 words) jackaby fic!!!! for my traumatized ghost girl and her mess of a paranormal detective boyfriend, who both very clearly have no idea how functioning relationships work, but they love each other so they muddle through. written before i read book 4 bc i was afraid jackaby and jenny wouldn’t get a canonical love declaration & kiss. everyone please read jackaby 4 me

loving parents (6,259 words) am i ever going to finish this? who knows? giles and jenny are expecting a baby in some alternate v happy s5. literally just scooby shenanigans and wish fulfillment.

closeness (1,532 words) my headcanon for giles and jenny’s first kiss!! soft and tentative.

friends with extras (788 words) leverage; sophie/nate and pillow talk. not my best work and i don’t think i really Got their dynamic, but i think someday i might return to write fic for them? maybe? canon gave me so much already so i don’t really feel the need. 

many kinds of magic (2,394 words) my favorite thing about this fic is the fact that i felt 0 need to explain why jenny was alive. she’s just There. willow and tara fall in love, aided gently by jenny. except not really bc lbr willow and tara need NO help to fall in love, so jenny just listens and offers advice.

imperfections (76,843 words) someday i really will come back to this. maybe. hopefully. i wrote it while i was sorting through Sad Feelings and i don’t......have.....those feelings anymore, which is Excellent for me but kinda bad for this fic. anyway. faith and jenny form a friendship in s3 (or: a braveryverse rewrite of season 3 where jenny is alive).

pint-size potential (7,212 words) the first fic in what will hopefully be a series of short fics!! giles is charged with the care of baby buffy summers, a potential who isn’t likely to become a slayer (according to the council).

adapting (3,327 words) sequel to pint-size potential! giles adjusts to his life in sunnydale; buffy throws things and gets excited about animals

inevitability (4,881 words) post-chosen faith/buffy; soft and hesitant and frightened but both of them are still determined to try.

Favorite Fic: DEFINITELY grand romantic gestures. like i love all these fics (and i feel like the calendiles day fics were some of my best. jenny as a sarcastic smitten mermaid??? giles and jenny passive-aggressively emailing?? jenny and buffy forming a tentative friendship over the fact that they both loved giles???) but grand romantic gestures was swoony and gorgeous and sapphic and incredibly romantic. i’m so so proud of it and i want it to get Lots of attention but it. does not. so like...please go read & review

Hardest Fic: definitely missing, because i was writing it under time constraints and i felt like it wasn’t good enough the whole time. but it surprised me by turning out to be really nice!! i went back and reread it and. solid work celia.

Do You Plan to Take Prompts in 2018? oh totally!! i don’t know if i’ll Complete them but i’m definitely down to take them.

What was the best thing about 2017? wow this is hard. this is hard and i really like that this is hard. the best thing about 2017 is 100% that i cannot decide what the best thing about 2017 is. i have a lot of options and a lot of friends and a lot of happy things that i did not have last year. i feel very good about that.

What was the worst thing about 2017? that i didn’t Actually meet robia. but there were so many good things that balanced it out!!

Any last thoughts for 2017? i’ve been saying for a while that 2017 felt like a stepping-stone year towards something better for me, but i think it was actually a damn good year as a whole. i think i need to stop thinking of things as a journey towards happiness and start just...enjoying whatever journey i’m on.

Goals for 2017

FINISH THE TOP-SECRET DETECTIVE AU and find a title and start posting it!! it’s intricate and gorgeous and i can't wait to show it to u all

write more femslash!!!!

stop telling myself i’m not writing enough. i was telling myself that all this year aND I WROTE OVER 250,000 words SO CLEARLY I AM DOING PRETTY DAMN WELL WHEN I’M NOT EVEN TRYING

tagging @regenderate and um i’m not sure if i can think of other people that cori didn’t tag?? i love my small corner of the buffy fandom but it’s. difficult 4 tagging people. so like if u see this ur tagged congrats

#tagging meme #fic roundup #LOOK. LOOK AT ALL THE FIC I WROTE #EXCITING #(pls do go read grand romantic gestures....or my new fic....start my 2018 off right)