marbleglove | Christmas plot-bunny: Buffy / The Nutcracker

I went to see The Nutcracker yesterday. It was oodles of fun. For several years when I was a child, my family went to see it every year, but at this point, I hadn't seen it for quite some time.

In this particular performance, whenever Drosselmeyer was on the stage, he completely dominated it: he had a great deal of presence. He's a rather dark and mysterious figure with an eyepatch but it also a source of presents and the joy of the party when he's there. He gifts the Stahlbaum parents with two life-size mechanical dolls that dance, and then gives the children, Clara and Fitz, a nutcracker doll. This is the Nutcracker of the title who fights the evil Mouse King on Clara's behalf.

The story is set in Germany in the 1890s.

So my thought is that Xander of the Buffy universe somehow gets thrown back in time. A common enough fanfic plot devise. He was no doubt fighting some evil demon in Germany in our time when it all went wrong. So there he is some hundred years in the past. Luckily, the Watchers are an ancient, international organization with more than a bit of experience dealing with the weird. So he contacts the local Watchers who are unfortunately not able to fix the situation but are able to set him up with a decent enough life.

His own experience (canonical) had given him a lot of anger for the Watchers, but in the past he discovers that there were a few things he had gotten wrong. They did not remove the potential Slayers from their families, and in this time and culture that was actually a problem: the young women were being raised to be completely passive damsels in distress. Something needed to happen. A simple mystical destiny doesn't change that much about a person.

So, he ingratiates himself to the parents of the most likely next potential and finds a way to be made Godfather to the potential-Slayer Clara. Knowing that someone (the Mouse King probably) is out to get her, he gives her a magical guardian in the guise of a Nutcracker.

He realizes how important it was for her to have someone else when she can't even protect her new gift from an annoying little brother.

Anyway, there's the fight and Clara comes through in the end to rescue her Nutcracker Prince.

After the fight is over, when Clara and the Nutcracker Prince are being entertained in the Sugar Plum Court, many of the performances are most likely martial in nature.

The next morning she probably girds her loins and asks to talk with her Godfather Drosselmeyer. He explains a few things to her and she goes on to become one of the more successful Slayers.

Merry Christmas to everyone except the Vampires and Demons.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know very little about Buffy (I watched the movie years ago and have only heard stuff in passing about the series), but I have watched (and read) several versions of the Nutcracker. Yours makes as much sense as any of them and more than most.

Just who is Herr Drosselmeyer? Why can he do so many things that no one else can? Why does he look down on the adults as if they were mere children? Why does he single out Clara for the gift/dream? What is the dream's purpose? Is it real?

You've explained everything. Thanks for sharing.

The various loose threads in this story wasn't something I ever even noticed when I was watching it every year as a kid. But when I was watching it this year, they really jumped out at me. Have you found any other version that explains it all?

I read one where it night was a dream given by Herr Drosselmeyer (I can't think of him without the Herr), who was a wizard (I think) to get Clara interested in being one too, but in that the boy wasn't explained.

In another the nutcracker was carved by a boy, who she later meets, and I must have got some vague matchmaker vibes, because I remember thinking that no matter how much these two liked each other a girl from a rich family would never be allowed to marry a wood wright, even if he was a master of his craft. That one didn't explain Herr Drosselmeyer. Or how exactly the dream came to be.

I really can't think of one that did. But I heard recently that someone is going to film the Nutcracker as an Action-Adventure and the first thing I thought of was that it should be "Tim Burton's The Nutcracker", maybe in stop motion. I'd watch it.

Yeah, something pretty bad would have to take place before a wealthy girl would be allowed to marry a wood wright. I suppose the family could have lost their wealth or Clara could have lost her reputation or something.

Ooh. Tim Burton's The Nutcracker would be pretty darn cool. Or what about M. Night Shyamalan's The Nutcracker?

That would be good, too. I wonder what the twist would be.

A twist, a twist... hmm.

We have the Snow Flake and the Sugar Plum courts, which both celebrate the death of the Mouse King but no real sense of the backstory there. We have Herr Drosselmeyer who has no known motivation. And we have the Nutcracker Prince who went through an odd transformation, was sent to protect Clara, and yet in the end requires saving and is her escort rather than guard.

With so many mysterious alliances, or lacks thereof, surely there's a way of making a twist. Probably about who the Mouse King really was, and what Drosselmeyer had to do with him and the courts. What do you think?

I think the Mouse King and Herr Drosselmeyer should be intrinsically linked. That you either can't have one without the other, or that they are parts of some whole. Maybe rivals or even the Mouse King is to his mysteriously leader (if we are fiddling with it, we might as well add characters) the way the Nutcracker is to Herr Drosselmeyer.

I don't think the Mouse King is dead. I see no reason a shoe would kill a mouse, frighten it away maybe, but not kill it.

I've often got weird, creepy vibes when Herr Drosselmeyer and Clara are together that I don't notice when he's with anyone else, so she has to be important. Maybe the Nutcracker was given so she'd have someone to protect. If she was raised to be a damsel in distress, she might need an extra push.

Herr Drosselmeyer fit himself into the family and so Clara sees him as the good guy and the Mouse King as the bad, but what if that is wrong?

Ooh, what if Drosselmeyer is the Mouse King:

As a king, he has certain responsibilities to his people (or mice, whatever) to act in their best interests. Somehow the Stahlbaum parents are doing something to harm him or his people so he has to attack them, but while he has been ingratiating himself with the parents, he actually does like/care-for Clara. So while he can't or won't call off the infiltration/attack in general, he does find a way to get her a personal protector.

Whatever it is the Stahlbaums are doing (and that the Mouse King is objecting to) the Snow Flake and Sugar Plum kingdoms are in favor of. So they are delighted to meet Clara and even more delighted to hear of the (temporary) defeat of the Mouse King.

What they don't know, however, is that Clara is still friendly with Drosselmeyer who now has an unsuspecting spy in the courts of his enemy. There could be vast amounts of political intrigue in the future of this story. (And, for that matter, the prequels as well.)

Oh, I like.

You've got everything covered except why she has to save the Nutcracker. I love political intrigue.

Let's see, this has to be bigger than just a household against the rats in the walls. First you've have to decide whether it was set in Russia or Somewhere Else.

Maybe the Nutcracker is the heir of the old king of the land and the Stahlbaums (and all there friends) follow the new rulers. The Snow Flake and Sugar Plum kingdoms are in favor of the status quo because they have lost too many of their people in the war and they are just glad it's over. (The fighting could have happened in the last decade or several decades ago.)

What about if the war was between here and the "somewhere else" (ie faerie or the like)? The Stahlbaums are all in support of the industrial revolution, want to teach the boys sports, the girls domesticity, and want to cut magic completely out of their lives. The Sugar Plums and the Snow Flakes are faeries of some sort that mostly want to cut humanity completely out of their society, possibly just being tired of fighting mortals.

The rats in the walls are not only in the walls between rooms but also in the walls between worlds.

Ooh, if the Nutcracker is the heir to the old king, say the old king's death was what allowed for the Industrial Revolution to happen at all. The Snow Flake and Sugar Plum kingdoms are just as happy to leave the mortal lands behind. Drosselmeyer has either saved or held the prince captive or something else of moral ambiguity until he set up a match that will thoroughly tie the fae and mortal lands together.

And we're still not sure which side is the good side and which side is the bad side, but they're both very sneaky and rife with intrigue, because, hey, intrigue.

Very good.

Now we just need someone else to write/film it so we can passively enjoy it.

Exactly. I'll delegate that task to you. Sadly, all previous attempts to snag someone to do my creative bidding have failed. :-(

Have I mentioned lately that I adore your random plot-bunny posts? I really wish I could just take this route with all of the stories floating around my brain, by they never stand for it. Always a pleasure to read!

Thank you! I've wondered if it was just annoying people that they're so undeveloped. I'm glad you enjoy them anyway.

I've occasionally had a few stories that rebelled against this method of extracting them from my brain, but it was getting really crowded in here.

Christmas plot-bunny: Buffy / The Nutcracker

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