deird_lj

She’s an inter-dimensional portal with an imaginary childhood; he’s a failed criminal mastermind who killed his best friend. And they’re perfect for each other.

Our topic for today…

Some fandoms have one main couple that everyone ships – and if you don’t, you’re seen as kind of strange.
This, however, is the Buffy fandom: weird couples are pretty much the norm. You can write Willow/Illyria, Gunn/Anyanka, and Mr Gordo/Miss Edith, and for the most part? No-one will bat an eyelid.

But there is one pairing that gets a very different reaction. When I mention that I’m a Dawn/Andrew shipper, people either say “What? Why?!”, or just back away slowly...
Which is funny, because even though it had never occurred to me, the first time I saw a Dawn/Andrew fic, I went “Oh yeah. Of course they’d be a couple. Why didn’t I ever think of that?” …and now I just don’t understand how people can’t see it.

So, I’m here today to tell you why Dawn/Andrew is so very shippy…

“It’s not like I knew she was mystical glowy Key thing – nobody keeps me in the bloody loop, do they?”

Let’s start with Dawn.

Dawn Summers is the younger sister of a Slayer. Or, depending on how you look at it, Dawn Summers is a big green glowing ball of energy suitable for dimensional travel.

Now, while the glowy-green bit of Dawn is important, it’s not really relevant for shipping purposes. (Exactly who do you ship a big ball of energy with, anyway?)
The only reason I bring it up is because
a) it is actually fairly central to Dawn’s existence
b) it has affected Dawn as a person
Mainly in the area of giving her several thousand good reasons to be angsty. Her issues have issues.

A while ago, for fic-researching purposes, I wrote down a list of every time someone talked about the Key while Dawn was around. The list came to three pages. And it included things like:

“She’s not real. We’re not her family. We don’t even know what she is.”

“The Key is too dangerous to be allowed to exist.”

“There’s no-one in there.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“Don’t touch me! You thing! Get away from me! You’re nothing, you’re a shadow! I don’t know what you are or how you got here!”

…like I said, issues. By the bucket-load.

Moving on…

Issues or not, there’s a fairly incredible personality there as well.
Dawn loves research, plays chess, steals jewellery, invents new food, puts a crossbow bolt through her living room wall, keeps a diary for over seven years (pre-existence, but still…), explodes marshmallows in the microwave, and loves wearing heels.
Beer-Good-Foamy had some more:

“…the girl who loved math, the girl who handed the weapon to Amanda, the girl who bragged about stealing lipstick, the girl who sat watch over Tara for hours, the girl who stood up to Spike without blinking, the girl who couldn’t cheerlead to save her life, the girl who refused to leave her dead mother to a poltergeist or say goodbye to her sister before the big battle…”

Dawn has a crush on Xander for years, before moving straight onto a crush on Spike.
She is willing to die to save the world – and when Buffy dies instead, she try her very hardest to keep living life, because it’s what Buffy would have wanted.
She is warned that her sister would turn on her, and instead of worrying about it, she just calmly starts carrying a tazer.
If she sees a problem, she wants to solve it – now – and she always wants to be involved. In everything.

“I’m not a part of this! I document – I don’t participate. I’m the detached journalist, recording with a neutral eye.”

Andrew, on the other hand, specialises in non-involvement.
He sees himself as the leader of the group (or rather… wishes he was the leader of the group), but as a general rule he’s more of a follower – happy to go along with almost any plan as long as he’ll be included. As Buffy puts it:

“He’s not evil – but when he gets close to it he picks up its flavour. Like a mushroom, or something.”

Andrew sees the world as an epic story. He is constantly ‘casting’ people into story-ish roles:

“A Slayer in action.”

“A fiesty waif with a fiery temper, and a vulnerable heart that she hides even from herself.”

“I used to be a pure Saiyan, and now I fight on the side of Goku.”

“Plucked from an ordinary life, handed a destiny…”

…weirdly enough, a lot of the time he’s kind of accurate.

Andrew cares about details – he wants things done properly. He’s the only person in the Summers household who actually reads the manual for the microwave.
Naïve as he is, he’s actually fairly bright. And he can read people quite well – in the space of a few episodes, he manages to get Xander and Anya talking honestly about their relationship, and he gets Anya and Spike to confide in him (both of them threatening to kill him if he tells anyone).
He’s a remarkably bad liar, but still manages to double-cross several people. And although he doesn’t have the strongest moral code, once he’s decided to do something, he sticks with it absolutely.
More than anything, he has a strong yearning for family. He doesn’t even care who the family is – Trio, or Scooby Gang – as long as he can join in.

“I just have all this involuntary empathy for Dawn. ’Cause she’s, you know, a big spaz.”

Andrew and Dawn have quite a few similarities. And this would be the first. They are both socially awkward, fairly klutzy, and really good at saying the wrong thing.
Dawn can get away with seeming cute, while Andrew generally has to settle for annoying, but they both frequently seem to have people rolling their eyes.

“Who?” “Tucker’s brother.” “Oh.”

Both of them have spent their lives being overshadowed by an older sibling.
They are both pretty used to having to prove themselves, because people around them just don’t take them seriously – they’re the younger ones. The junior partners.

“How’s my favourite chess partner? Still leading with your knight?”

Also? They’re both pretty smart. And pretty geeky.
Of course, people tend to notice the ‘smart’ in Dawn and the ‘geeky’ in Andrew, but then again…
Andrew is the person Buffy describes as “the brains of our operation”. And Dawn? Plays chess, reads Harry Potter, likes math… She isn’t as big a geek as Xander, but she certainly is compared to Buffy.

“He’s got cool hair and he wears leather coats and stuff…”

Let’s look at Dawn and Andrew’s romantic prospects. Other than, you know, each other.

When Dawn has a crush on a guy, she has a tendency to hero-worship him. He is brilliant, perfect, clever, exciting, funny… and almost inevitably completely unaware of her existence (romantically speaking, anyway).
In fanfic, pairing Dawn with a man generally involves her trying to prove that she’s right for him – despite him initially being much more interested in someone else (usually Buffy).
Pairing Dawn with a woman generally involves her trying to prove that she really is all sexy and grown-up – really!

Andrew, on the other hand, if mentioned in a romantic context at all, generally has to settle for loving someone from afar.

“I think you’re very mature for your age – but you’re still only fifteen.”

You see, the problem is that almost the entirety of Dawn’s social circle is comprised of people who used to babysit her. And all of Andrew’s social circle would like him to shut up.
And, for Dawn especially, most of them would never really consider going out with her. And as sexy as they find her, they’re still horrified whenever they realise that they think she’s sexy (witness the reaction of Willow and Xander in Him).

***

(This might be a good time for a brief interruption, in the form of a FAQ.
But isn’t Andrew gay?
I could go into a long detailed answer about this, but I think it can be summarised in one simple sentence:

IF YOU CAN WRITE XANDER-SLASH, I CAN WRITE ANDREW-HET.

And now, let’s return to our regularly scheduled programming…)

***

“Dawn is a typical American teenager: bubbly and sweet, with a hunger for fun, and a smile that lights up the room.”
*Dawn giggles and waves* “Hello!”
“Dawn used to be a Key. I… don’t really know what that means.”

Andrew, unlike most of the others, doesn’t see Dawn as a little girl. He sees her as his equal – and a pretty awesome equal, at that.
The thing is, Dawn will never have to prove to Andrew that she’s ‘good enough’. He already knows that she’s good enough. If anything, I could see Andrew hero-worshipping her, and wondering if he was good enough…

Plus, Andrew isn’t going to freak out about Dawn being the Key, and he isn’t really going to let her angst about it, either. It’s pretty hard to get all caught up in your own dramatically heart-breaking angst when the person you’re talking to will probably respond with “Wow! Cool story. I wonder if it would work as a comic book series… And hey – can you glow?”
There isn’t anything Dawn doesn’t know about created reality. And there isn’t anything Andrew doesn’t know about creating it.

“Buffy said if you talked enough, I’m allowed to kill you.”
“Not even.”
“Even.”

Like I said earlier, Dawn has a tendency to hero-worship guys she’s interested in. And this, for the most part, is not a very good thing.
What she really needs is someone she can love without hero-worshipping – and really, can you think of anyone harder to hero-worship than Andrew?

On Andrew’s side, what he needs more than anyone is someone who can love him and tell him he’s an idiot. I really can’t think of anyone more qualified than Dawn.

The thing is, the two of them will never ever have a great, epic romance – and that’s a really good thing for both of them.
Andrew will have someone who can bring him back down to earth, and Dawn will have someone who thinks she’s a star.

Fic? Fic please? Give me fic!

...which, unfortunately, I cannot do.
That was the main motivating factor behind this essay, after all – I don’t know anyone who writes Dawn/Andrew, and I really wish I did.
For my part, I’m a gen writer, and pairings aren’t something I tend to come up with. Instead, my post-series Dawn and Andrew are almost invariably best friends. That tends to satisfy my shipping cravings.

But for the record? If you happen to feel inclined to go all ficcy on my very favourite ship, I will love you forever, and send you many virtual hugs in gratitude…