I'm really liking your dialog. If I was the kind of person who laughed out loud, some of the things you've had the characters say would have made me laugh.

On the topic of including landmarks from Santa Barbara, Sunnydale already has a second high school across town. It is mentioned in the 2nd season episode with the Frankenstein quarterback. I can't remember the name though. I'm not sure why I remember it at all really. Kind of a minor detail.

The other part is that if Sunnydale is ONLY 20,000 people big? Which is probably the minimum I would accept given it replaces the Santa Barbara CUG in the Whedonverse, an area that holds 220,000 (yes, eleven times as many) in real life? That's 1100 high schoolers, based on statistical population averages. You saw how many kids were (and weren't) at SHS. Where were the rest, if not at another school or two?

He he he , I LOVE the freaked clerk scene!!

It's actually based on a real life moment (albeit not with that particular quote from American Pie). A friend of mine was going shopping before getting her breasts done, and sorta tripped over how to explain to the clerk that she needed bigger bras but wasn't sure exactly what size... and she didn't want to say why. So she just embarrassed the girl until she walked away. I laughed my ass off the entire time.

i would go with real places for the most part but i would leave in places like doublemeat.

Then again, I'm not sure I can see Cordelia going to Doublemeat or letting her friends go there, so does it really matter..?

as always, excellent work.

Thanks. ^_^

Good story Joe.

I think I'd be more inclined to read more if I didn't think you were going to leave Xander stuck and not able to return to his own form eventually. I understand the idea of him being stuck as a girl to be entertaining for a while, but 'meh'.

Tastes vary

Update: Haven't played ME. And the more I think about it, the more I see some interesting ideas in 'Xander stuck as a girl for a while.' I also read some review responses you did, in particular one in which you said he would EVENTUALLY end up able to return to his own body AND that he might not want to.

It's not a really out there idea, that he might prefer being in a female form. Seeing Xander change while remaining 'himself' might be interesting. I hope to see more soon.

Why do I have a feeling you're one of those people who didn't like Mass Effect 3 because it didn't end with a shot of Shepard and the partner of your choice in front of a house with a white picket fence, two point five kids, a varren, and a pristine Earth in the background?

Um. So the contemporary bit is for your amusement... and I guess some of the readers.
Regarding Santa Barbara - Sunnydale was described as a one starbucks town. It does however have an adjacent community college or full state college. So, no for me on Santa Barbara. Maybe somewhere smaller like Santa Clarita?

Um, it has an in-town college of a fairly decent size: UC Sunnydale. It's also the size and shape of Santa Barbara, is as big and populous as Santa Barbara in wide shots (mostly because they shot Santa Barbara for it), and we see a whole lot of town getting eaten by the Hellmouth in Chosen. So at that point, which do you believe: what your eyes are being shown or a one-off bit of dialogue from a hyperbolic high school cheerleader?

Mix the settings if you want but honestly I'm not sure that anyone outside of people that have been to Santa Barbara will notice. I'm surprised at Xander... honestly Cordelia in an underwear store... show some support and damn honestly she just helped him out... Ah well he's probably decently far into freaked out by now.

Well, as I pointed out to someone else? Googling "santa barbara chinese restaurant" is a lot faster and easier than coming up with a name and several menu items, if I want the girls to order Chinese takeout and actually mention that they're eating while eating. I'd rather not have a story that ends up invoking the Star Trek Toilet Debate.

More or less the same in this one, though it seems you were a bit more descriptive with the clothes, and added a few dialogue touches between Cordy and Xander. Still, altogether a nice chapter. An enjoyable read that keeps things fun and mellow, which, when dealing with either BTVS or the X-Men, is always a nice change of pace.

And alas, poor Michelle, will apparently never get that toaster.

On the post chapter notes, I'm on the side of using Santa Barbara. The show had a limited budget, and limited 'space' to build it's sets on, given those constraints aren't present in this medium, It just makes sense. Well, it makes sense as long as Sunnydale remains a major setting in the fic. It gives you ready made places to pull extra settings from, and I've read enough of your work to know, you'd provide at least some descriptive information on any of the less obvious establishments.

As to the schools, at the very least, I agree that's a downright necessity as long as Wilkins is a 'player' in the fics canon. Sunnyhell High is the central location in series because that's where they attended in seasons one through three, it's where, as they found out, the hellmouth laid beneath, but it was also so much rubble for multiple seasons/years. So another school (or more likely three or four...) had to have been in town.

Well, there wasn't much different to do here. I mean, I could have tossed in some sort techno jargon-packed cell phone shopping scene or something, but... I'm a technical person and even I can't get into cell phone shopping. I look shit up, go in, buy it, walk out.

As for Michelle... I know, right? Even when she hooks up with someone? She doesn't get credit for the conversion.

Establishments... I'm lame. It's time saver, pure and simple. I don't want to have to keep thinking of names and menus if they want to eat at restaurants. I don't want to create a menu board for Doublemeat Palace. I want to be able to pull up Google, toss in "santa barbara chinese restaurant", steal a name and menu, use it, and get on with my life.

High schools... 25% seems to be a good average for the <18 population of towns. So out of every 1000 people, 250 are minors. Assuming there's a perfect age spread of all 18 years, that means there are 55 high schoolers per 1000 people. A town of 20,000 therefore means 1100 high schoolers. So if Sunnydale is ONLY 20,000 people, in a space the size of Santa Barbara's CUG, which contains eleven TIMES as many people in real life? We definitely didn't see 1100 high schoolers in the series. Or even a building big enough to cope with that many. Where were the rest of the students?

I think you shouldn't merge the two towns.

Which I openly say I'm not going to do in the note.

Another good chapter ect. What I am curious about are the limits on Xander/ Michelle's shape shifting. Are they exactly the same as Mystique's own abilities? and if so does that include the wings and talons that she can grow now? In any case its interesting and nice in that I think it has so far managed to remain true to the show and keep the kind of teenage/ High school element.

That was never really defined in the story before and I've yet to codify it at any point in the story I've written thus far (twenty-odd chapters). She does spend time with a few Skrull, so she possibly could end either a better mimic than her 'mother'. Conversely, Dorrek VIII and Xavin are both more of 'combat shapeshifters', so she might end up better at the wings/talons/et cetera than the imitating people part.

Rather interesting to see what all is different, the green haired Cordy is better than the white, and the Emma bit was rather enlightening.

Yeah, I had someone do up some 'shops of Cordelia with white hair and realized it was pretty... eugh. Especially given her ethnic heritage; she won't get too especially pale but won't get too dark, so you lack the ethereal beauty of an albino but then it's not the contrast of Storm either.

In my opinion, name dropping will not add any level of immersion unless you live in or near the places mentioned. And speaking as a Texan, I think it'll just add more work for negligible pay off.

I've been to Santa Barbara. Therefore, I know that the Chases might like the Mexican at La Playa Azul rather than Texican Tom's Taco Tower. Or that Kai Sushi Shabu Shabu is one of the better places to get Japanese food. I also know the menu from Jack in the Box and a few other West Coast food chains, while I'd have to make up menu items if they went for burgers at a fictional joint. Et cetera and so on.

Joe, stick to Sunnydale as it is on the show. The only people who would get the references would be from Santa Barbara. It would only serve to confuse the rest of us. At least when you use Sunnydale as is, we can picture locations and people from the show. Natives of the area may appreciate the nod, but most people don't read fiction to see places they pass on the way to work. I know I'd rather not read about a story in my town, as I'd constantly be comparing descriptions and locations to actuality.

Except canon Sunnydale doesn't have - that we were told of - a Mexican joint. A Japanese restaurant. Clothing stores, be they chains or boutiques. Another high school, because where the hell did the kids go while SHS was rebuilt? Was education just called off for three years? Et cetera. I'm not talking about replacing anything, just using reality to supplement and fill holes in canon.

I really like that you're re-posting this story, I loved what you had when you first started the story and I'm finding myself loving it again.

As far as your question is concerned. I think the only problem I would have would be the addition of a second school, then it starts making Sunnydale to large. As Cordy said in the first episode "We don't really have a lot of town here".
Maybe you could do something like have another town just across a river or on the other side of the forest, something close enough that if you drive through the two towns you don't really notice that there are two. An example would be like Vancouver, WA and Portland, Ore, just crossing a bridge puts you in the other town, but overall unless you're really paying attention you can't tell the difference.

I was kinda iffy on the second school until I thought about three things:
1.) The Bronze. We see kids in it that don't show up in SHS scenes.
2.) The size of the town on maps and in wide shots. Cordelia might say there's not much of it, but visual evidence says otherwise.
3.) Where the shit did people go when SHS was all burned up? For municipal economic reasons, trying to go "Here, take our kids" would be an absolute last resort. The town would spend more money paying someone nearby to educate the high schoolers of Sunnydale for three years than they'd pay to run a high school in three years. A second (and/or third) school could have been augmented with temporary classrooms the way mine was at one point, the students merged in, and the cost increases kept to a minimum.

Personally I feel adding in real world places does in fact make the story easier to submerse one's self in. I say go for it*thumbs up*!!

I guess I just don't see the "extra work" level of typing "santa barbara japanese restaurant" into Google and reading what comes out, when the opposite is trying to think up an original restaurant and at least three or four dishes it might sell.