I haven’t forgotten my promise to give Buffy Season 8 another go, I’ve just had trouble laying my hands on the latest issues. And speaking of having trouble laying hands on something, how about a consideration of Buffy S5’s episode “Intervention,” in which Spike’s fascination with the Slayer leads to the making of a Buffy he can touch: the Buffybot.

In this episode, Buffy’s worried that being the Slayer makes it difficult for her to love, so she goes on a spiritual quest in the desert to sort her inner self out. Meanwhile, back in Sunnydale, very unspiritual things are afoot. Spike’s playing sexy role playing games with his new, incredibly lifelike and adoring Buffy robot, and hilarity ensues—until Spike is kidnapped by Big Bad Glory’s minions, who think that, since “Buffy” treats him as “precious,” he must be the Key in human form. One sniff of the vampire tells Glory what he is, and that he can’t be the human Key. But she can torture who IS out of him.

Buffy—the real Buffy (“the other, not so pleasant Buffy,” as Spike puts it)—comes home and is confronted by her friends, who say they’ve seen her having sex with Spike.

[“The who whatting how with huh?”]

Throughout my college years, I’d watch my sister squeal every Christmas as she unwrapped another Buffy DVD set. I didn’t know much about the series, but I was filled with that obnoxious self-importance that comes from having decided to be an Academic Who Reads Serious Things. I tried to have a conversation with my sister about Buffy.

“So,” I said. “It’s funny?”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t like funny.”

“It can be sad, too. And sweet, and sexy—”

“And there are vampires, right?”

“Yes. You see—”

“Sounds pretty silly to me.”

She sighed. “You have no clue.”

Almost ten years later, my eyes fiery holes in my head after having stayed up until 4 am watching Season 2, I gave her a call. “You were right,” I said. “I had no clue.”

[“That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!”]

 It takes a while for me to process things. It’s been about a month since The Guardian published an article offering several well-known writers’ advice for other writers, in the form of 10 rules. I read it eagerly, squinting at my iPhone while my 16-month-old son squealed and tore around the playroom in our apartment building basement. Some of the old saws were there (Adverbs: bad! He said, she said: good!), and while I don’t know everything about writing, I know enough to realize that no one should follow any of these rules zealously, because the result would be stiff and artificial. But I found myself feeling, oh, a little guilty of certain writing sins, and then came the anxiety, and then came Richard Ford’s Rule #2: Don’t have children.

It was a little mysterious. It came in the midst of seemingly sound advice, like that you should marry someone who believes it’s a good idea for you to be a writer, and that you shouldn’t drink and write at the same time. But no babies? Plenty of great writers had/have children: Joyce, Shakespeare (ok, he basically never saw them, but whatever), Toni Morrison, Alice Munro.... It didn’t seem to impede their genius. Or did Ford mean it in a personal happiness kind of way (i.e., “It’ll be hard on you to be a parent and a writer at the same time,” or “Writers make bad parents.”)?

[Throw out the baby with the bathwater?]