In “Crossing the Final Taboo,” Kristina Busse describes the ways television fans, through their fan fiction, interpret media texts as well as provide commentary on series’ characters and narrative.  Busse notes that fan fiction reveals “some of the appeals of the series as it externalizes and openly displays the more repressed aspects of the show and the unconscious desires it evokes.” (Fighting the Forces, 207) Most academic discussion of fan fiction has centered on slash and what it reveals about the erotic desires of female fans.  Het fic, fiction focusing on heterosexual relations between characters, has received less attention, partly because there have been few strong female protagonists about which fans could write. The emergence of strong female leads (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer) opens up a new fictional space for fans and reveals important aspects about female sexuality that have yet to be discussed.

In addition to featuring the strongest female character ever to appear on TV, Buffy has more explicitly drawn a connection between violence and sexuality. This was most apparent in the series’ depiction of Buffy’s violent sexual relationship with Spike, a storyline that received a great deal of public attention. While stirring debates among fans, the Buffy/Spike pairing has been very popular among on-line fans making Buffy/Spike fan fiction a particularly active locus to examine how Buffy fans engage the canon and write explicitly about the nature of female desire.

This paper examines the ways in which some of the most frequently archived and widely rec’d Buffy/Spike fan fiction diverge from or build upon the canon to discuss the ways in which fans resist/ critique the sexual politics embedded within Buffy’s narrative.