Title: Spike Wins the Soul in Kitten Poker
Creator: thenewbuzwuzz
Setting: “Life Serial”
Rating: G
Notes: Whoops, it’s late! I started posting this before midnight, I promise…
Major props to maryperk73703 for the irresistible prompt and to the_wiggins for betaing this thing into the night and gifting me with a stack of thoughtful comments taller than the poem.
Well, I say poem. This feels only borderline poem-y to me, but the poetry magnets made writing simpler in some ways, and I wasn’t going to do sentences.
Poker Notes:
I did some Poker Research for this and decided Spike and the demon were going to play Texas hold’em poker. It’s not what the demons play in Life Serial, but it’s a variant suitable for two players. As Wikipedia puts it,
“Each player seeks the best five card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards; the five community cards and their two hole cards…. If a player bets and all other players fold, then the remaining player is awarded the pot and is not required to show their hole cards. If two or more players remain after the final betting round, a showdown occurs. On the showdown, each player plays the best poker hand they can make from the seven cards comprising their two hole cards and the five community cards.”
Not that you’d notice from the text, but I headcanon that the demon brought his own weird card deck, so instead of normal-looking playing cards Spike got one card that was just an image of himself in his William days and another card that he thought was probably an ace of hearts. And that’s when things went south.
mysterious guest on game night
a burly shadow with fire eyes,
an appetite
not for cash or pets
but for souls
Spike’s lady
breaks out a funny pout
says, play against lurky
he’d give her the sun moon and bloody stars
and lurky looks gullible
it is on
stakes arranged
shadow wanker tears a doorway to the beyond
puts down a soul
a hypnotic sparkle feather
heart of the boy this vampire was
against a chance to eat his vampire essence
not scared
bring it
bluffing
to appear
powerful
dangerous
a casual bloodthirsty beast
a damned jerk and a predator too
hide allegiance
hide tells of weak human love
fiend presses on
it’s finished
ugly will see his secret
stupid soft self
then dust
he won’t surrender
fangs up
bite fast
but in half the time
that dipshit has cast
mojo takes hold
he did what Buffy wanted
will little bit be cross?
bright spell light singes
diamond fire grows
into icy hot fireworks of becoming
guess he beat the other
she’ll see a change
demon will return to him what once was
make him a man who
whom she could desire
—
Here’s a blurry photo of the words on my fridge.
Credit for materials
I used:
– some screencaps from kissthemgoodbye.net (Buffy, the basket, cave demon)
– some other screencaps I made myself from the HD episodes at hdbuffy.tumblr.com
– photos by Gimli62 (leopard cub), julochka (kitten), Kenn Wilson (playing cards)
– the Starter Pack and the Vampires Pack of poetry magnets from Geek Gift Shoppe
Thanks for reading! :) Feedback always appreciated. Let’s talk about the eerie resemblance between poker and Spike’s weird misleading posturing during his soul trials leading up to “Grave”! o/ Also, if anything was very confusing, feel free to let me know, and maybe I can fix that before reposting to EF and AO3.
Originally posted at https://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/718339.html
