Trivia / Origin Story

• Executive Meddling: After the author included a scene with Tony Stark (among a few others) speaking with George W. Bush (President at the time of the Civil War arc), a single Twisting The Hellmouth mod — who has described herself as a "Raging Republican" — declared that the scene violated policy, and ordered Worldmaker to "remove George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from the story.". He did so, following her instruction to the letter by subbing out Bush and Cheney's names for two fictional Republican politicians. The moderator, not being satisfied with that solution, then declared that, no, what Worldmaker was supposed to remove the entire scene. The author (not to mention several other popular writers and one of the other moderators, several of whom had identical complaints regarding this moderator using her own political beliefs as a "litmus test" by which she judged whether a story violated TTH's rules) left TTH permanently in protest.
  • The scene appears in its original, unedited and unchanged version, in the FF.N version, for people who want to judge for themselves whether it was out of line, or whether the moderator was trying to force her own personal politics into the writer's story.
• Fanon: The fact that Dawn Summers' middle name is given as "Marie" is a classic piece of Fanon, and is used in this story.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Early on in the story's publication history, the writer came under fire from a handful of readers for his supposed "mocking" of trans-people. Thing is, it wasn't actual trans-people who were doing the mocking. Turns out the story has a large following among trans readers of fan fiction who came to the writer's defense and applauded the relatively sensitive way the story dealt with the issue of dysphoria and the feeling of not belonging in your own body.
• Mutually Fictional: The Buffyverse and the Marvel Universe are fictional to each other, though in the Marvel Universe, Buffy only got two seasons and had a different cast.
• Mythology Gag: The cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the Marvel Universe is taken from several actors who were either wanted for a given role or auditioned for a role and got a different one. As a result Xander Harris was played by Ryan Reynolds, Charisma Carpenter played Buffy Summers, and Cordelia Chase was played by Sarah Michelle Geller.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The creator of Origin Story admits that, while he began with a carefully plotted outline, the story left the outline in the dust in the middle of Chapter Four and that these days, he's writing whatever comes to him to write, as it occurs to him to write it.

---