Please keep this one going! I love him and dru together hardly any fics of them

Hi, I'm from the WA forum. I'm sorta canon blind, I actually just started watching Buffy, so bear with me.

Principal Snyder is very mean to Spike, and he reacts according to the situation. I liked that he didn't blow up or just stay quiet, it was very realistic. Spike seems like he doesn't approve of the curriculum, especially of reading Dracula. I could tell that he thinks that it is an unrealistic portrayal of vampires.

I didn't love how he talked, it seemed more country than British. For example, I don't think that a British person would really say "ain't" as part of everyday conversation. Instead, I would probably just describe his accent as British and write my dialogue normally.

The conversations themselves were very good. He was mean to his students, but what teacher isn't? The dialogue flowed well and I could easily tell who was speaking when.

I enjoyed reading this chapter, even with little prior knowledge of the fanverse.

Some spelling mistakes here and there, but those can be easily fixed. I also like the main character's personality. Spike is what I would expect from an immortal being that sees humans as just mere cattle for his drinking pleasure. Although I'm not sure why he would attack the demon at the bar. I guess to instill fear and make future questions easier? Or he was just grumpy? Ah well. If I could complain about any part of the chapter, it would probably be the whole "assault" on the demon hunter's stronghold. The response from the guards seemed just a little too subdued. I mean after not hearing back from the men who had been sent to the front gate, I would expect a much larger and organized defense. Plus being the guards of a demon hunter, wouldn't they have a more effective way of fighting vampires? Still, overall it kept my attention and did amuse me a bit.

Hello, I'm Paradigm of Writing from the review game and I'll be reading this chapter, #1 of Humanity like you requested.

I am fandom blind, like most of the stories I go into. Bear with me should I get something wrong about characters and all that jazz.

'William the Bloody... dull pain in his head'- So this is your opening line. I find it rather dull. The character awakes in pain, and it's in his head. That has probably been done before a million times over, and I don't see much quality about it. I'm not saying it's inept at all, but I find it dull just like the pain.

'He was lying on the ground in a pool of blood'- Okay, I'm rather curious as to why he's in blood. I'll admit it, that type of line always peaks interest in readers, and it piqued mine definitely. Then I realize that he's a vampire. Vampires drink blood, they need it to live. It would make sense for a vampire to be coated and sleeping in a pool due to their nature, so the drawing effect of that line lost it's effect really quick.

William recalls the carnage around him, and he tries to remember about what really happened the night before, and I'm glad you included this in the story. It definitely sucked me into the exposition of this story, and just the fact that a vampire is caught with their pants down is interesting enough.

You go into detail on what he and his love Drusilla were doing the night before, and I was enthralled. The two are feeding, and BAM, a mob suddenly appears! It's captivating, but the let down of this explanation was your word choice. It seemed bland, and not rather exciting as some action descriptions can be. You could've added a synonym for angry instead of that word, for it can make the reader sense more emotion from this crowd than just anger. Imagine a mob coming to kill you because you're feasting on humans. That crowd will be riled up, wanting to rip every ounce of flesh off of you. They'll be more than just angry, trust me! If you want a good example, think of the emotion in To Kill A Mockingbird, when a mob goes down to the jail to try and lynch Tom Robinson. Scout's father, Atticus gets in the way. You could practically sense the mob's contentment for him.

"What she dead?" Err, that's a typo I'm assuming. Change that to- "Was she dead?"

My pet peeve in all of writing is when people describe colors, and the words used as descriptions are on a first grade level. William's coat is black, right? Black is an elementary word, and it could've been replaced by midnight, onyx, shadow or something along those lines. It acts as a more powerful word, letting me actually get an image in my head of William standing there smoking in his jacket. Also, William was in water, and covered in blood. Do you think that his coat would only be black? You probably should add more to that to give the description a more lasting effect. And also... wouldn't the cigarettes not light due to being drenched by the water? It takes a long time for a soaked item to be lit aflame.

"-he didn't to think about that." - Okay, yet again... another typo issue. It should be: "-he didn't even want to think about that."

"Me and my girl were here yesterday." - Hmm... this is said correctly, and at the same time it's not. You can use this positioning of me and my, but it really has to follow the character's personality and how they talk. Is William or Spike illiterate or does he have a southern accent from the United States? If he does not, it really should be "My girl and I were here yesterday." That is grammatically correct.

Back to the color issue. Green... you could use a better word. Olive, forest, emerald, etc... All much better words than just green. Also, Brechen genus. Is genus like a classification of the vampire, or part of the scientific areas to classify organisms? If not, the 'g' of genus needs to be capitalized at it's a name.

The whole part about Spike punching the demon... you missed a few words that you can spot easily. It's flow was clunky, and the words definitely did not help create a fine, clear view of the action happening. Very stale, as I would deem it.

"Just at its edges turned red." - Color correction again. Red can be crimson, cardinal, lava, brick, mortar etc... A sunrise is more than just red. It has shades of red. Also, typo. It should be "Just as its edges turned..." Probably a fault of FanFiction's formatting.

"He grabbed the girl. She grasped. He brought her closer. She was intoxicating. She smelled like vanilla." - Okay, two things. This was action interspersed with details. It makes this sentence very clunky, and quite boring to read as the pauses are literally periods where you stop. Grasped should also be gasped. The description of the woman also was abrupt. Two details like that seemed very related to each other, so the action sequence should've been written as this, or at least along these lines-

"He grabbed the girl, she started gasping in his grip. He brought her closer to him. She was intoxicating; her body smelled like vanilla." The reason it's written this way is to have the action have more going on in it. The semi-colon conjoined the two details about the girl because they were very relatable.

The rest of this had little interest in me, but I read it anyways. I unfortunately lost the attentiveness to want to continue, but I did because it would be right. The pacing was awkward, very awkward. One minute Spike in is the city of wherever he's at, the next he's in a forest raiding a castle. You need to slow that down.

You misuse semi-colons in this. Commas are also needed in areas too. Anytime you have the word 'but', as well as with 'and' in most cases it needs a comma, like so.

But Example "The man came closer, but Spike did not move." NOT, "The man came closer but Spike did not move."

You are consistent with the and aspect of commas. But, there are semi-colon abusage throughout. Sometimes you get it right, other times you don't. Here are examples where you did not do it correctly, with the actual way it should be.

"Time for your bath, and then we can play."
"Spike held her closer, but noticed something. Her skin was warm."

You had a typo when talking about the fourth guard. You put forth, as in to go forth. It's spelled fourth, when talking about a number.

All right, that's it! It certainly wasn't bad, but you do need to improve on the areas I mentioned when it comes to synonyms and antonyms, color description, pacing, description itself, and comma/semi-colon usage. Besides that, it wasn't all too bad of a story!

Paradigm

Ello, popped over from the WA and it is my honor to review this chapter.
The following criticisms are not meant to be mean or discouraging, just a blunt first impression and hopefully something helpful to you.

You've got some spelling/ grammar snags, nothing terribly major but disruptive enough to be mildly jarring. Things like "Spike was went looking for Drusilla." and "Warm blood. So thirty."

It's an interesting premise, I've always kind of enjoyed stories where supernatural bad arses get their supernaturalness stolen away because it makes for a nice character study and you can really go digging into what makes them them beyond the monster bits. Since this is only the first chapter and the voodoo doesn't happen till the end I can't say much on the execution of the premise just yet cause that wouldn't be fair but that being said it's still an interesting one.

Flow: at the risk of sounding harsh you've got some pacing problems. The chapters kind of whizzes by and it's difficult to get a firm hold on what's happening before the story sprints to something else. I realise this is probably just because you want to get to the 'good part' but the problem then is that by comparison other chapters are not going to be able to keep pace with this one and still be interesting. But if you slow other ones down you run the risk of making them feel like they are dragging. My suggestion is to go back through this chapter (which I think you said you already planned to,) and slow it down. You don't have to make it crawl but it but just kind of ease the pace down a notch.

One of the ways to do this would be to add some establishing description. You don't need much just enough to establish your setting a bit better and give the reader something to picture mentally while they read.

Another way is to flesh out some of your scenes. Spike awoke in a puddle of his own blood then realized his love had been stolen, but it comes across as if he is only mildly annoyed by these things. It might help to get in his head and see what's roving around in there as a consequence of what happened to him earlier. Also he doesn't seem particularly interested in his surroundings at all either and that coupled with the lack of description gives an sense that there's literally no one else around. Is there no one else around? Is he out in the midst of nowhere? in the street of a village? did he and Drusilla have a lair of sorts before the mob got to them?

Also the death of the bachelor is dealt with in the same kind of detached manner and while you don't have to dwell on every action your character does it would help the pacing if you fleshed some of his actions out. How did he convince the guy? I remember Spike being a smooth talking bastard with a wicked mouth and a wicked soul, surely him manipulating a guy into allowing him to stay the night would be worth a bit of fleshing out?

Also what time period is this set in? There's some elements that seem to be strictly medieval and they jar rather badly with the modern bits. I assumed it was present time or close to it just because of what is supposed to come later but there's some confusion.

I liked Drusilla's Dialog, it gives her that off the rocker personality you'd expect and it's nicely done without being too over the top, which isn't the easiest thing to pull off so kudos.

This was actually a really good, and well laid out AU. Spike was very enjoyable to read as a human, and as someone else who has a minor love of Drusilla, I can say I enjoyed her as well. Angel's reaction, and reunion with Spike was perfect. I'm a little upset there's no more, was really looking forward to the Scoobies reaction of who their new English teacher really is, and the cliffhanger on this particular chapter is brutal being it's the last chapter! Anyway, great story while it lasted! Enjoyed it a lot.

It reads much better with out the accent for Spike. Just read 6 & 7, nice to see Angel and SPike working together for a change.

Oh thank you! It's much easier to read now. This would be even better with some proof-reading though. Your contractions are a bit wonky.

So Dru got to Buffy, huh? I love how you didn't make both Spike and Dru all remorseful and with the righteous humanity all at once. Dru especially is caught between being a mad vampire and a pure traumatised Catholic girl.

Spike seeing the face of his salvation in Angel is heart-breaking. Doubly so, because Angel by now wants to be human - which Spike has achieved completely by accident. I love the Spangel overtones - Spike, even with his newfound conscience, looks at the Scourge of Europe and can only see home.

It's so nice to read a story which does justice to Spangel, Spuffy and Spike/Dru (Spru?). Being primarily a Spuffy shipper I am used to having to put up with a helluva lot of Angel-bashing and Dru-bashing. This is refreshing indeed. Looking forward to more updates!

I like your story so far and premise is definitely intriguing. But please, please, stop writing out Spike's accent! He speaks North London, we know, no need to write it out. Just writing his turns of phrase and speech cadence will bring him out fine.

Really like this story. I love the whole teacher student thing. I also cant wait for Angel and Spike to see each other. One thing that kinda bothers me though is typing Spikes accent out. It's really annoying to read. Besides that fantastic story.

please more

I love it as I have review before as a guest

I love it

Is it a British thing? Classic! I loved his reactions and found the Harmony bit amusing. Stupid Blonde V_V

Great story