Inspired by a conversation with HCB in the shoutbox; I managed to rope her into doing Persuasion  but I'm hoping others will also get the bug.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do a Spuffy mashup with a Jane Austen novel.

There are several options. You can make it an all-human affair, set in the Regency period or updated (à la Clueless) to a more modern setting. You can keep the characters who they are but have their lives and stories fit with the storyline of one of the novels. You could even do a Regency/vampire mashup! I would love to read that  Buffy the Austen Slayer!

You can use any one of Austen's novels, provided you can make the storyline and the characters work for you. It's okay to massage the storyline to fit, and you can play with the Buffy characters as long as they're recognisable. You can also swap out genders - for example, if you think Buffy makes a better Darcy than Spike, well, Spike can take Elizabeth's role. No problem!

You could even, if you were feeling ambitious, use a mixture of Buffy and Austen characters. In a pinch, you could have one of the Buffy characters be reading/studying one of the Austen novels and be seeing parallels with their own lives.

Basically, let your imagination run riot!

(Also, if you have already done a Buffy/Austen mashup, please feel free to add it to this challenge, even if it was years ago! I will almost certainly still want to read it )

Suggestions - just ideas, not necessities! (Austen novel spoilers rampant from this point forwards!)

P&P - Spike might be a touch more personable than Darcy, but I could live with it  and you have a ready made Wickham (Angel) who corrupts young girls (Dru), not to mention a perfectly boring Mr Collins (Riley) who can't take no for an answer. Buffy would certainly make a suitably sassy Lizzy!

Persuasion - this is actually the one that started the whole idea  since Spike would be so good as Captain Wentworth! Possibly easier in a modern setting, but I would also love to see someone go full on Regency with it. Would IMO work great as a Regency slayer AU. You would need to find a good Lady Russell who had sufficient influence over Buffy - in a slayer scenario, Giles would be perfect, but I'm sure there are other options.

S&S - You could have Spike in place of Edward Ferrars, engaged to someone else (Dru? Harm?). Or you could go the other way and have Spuffy take on Marianne and Colonel Brandon (Spike is significantly older, after all...), which would also give Angel a chance to really spoil things as the dastardly Willoughby.

Mansfield House - you'd have to work hard to make Fanny and Buffy mesh, but I would love to see someone try. This is a long novel with lots of different themes and intrigues going on, so I feel like it would be ripe for cherry-picking things to suit your story. You could also have Dawn take on the Fanny role.

Emma - Buffy was queen bee at Hemery, so I don't think this one is too much of a stretch. Spike doing a Mr Knightley and adoring her from afar would be pretty adorable, and it could be very amusing to see Buffy attempting the matchmaker role... and she's certainly on a par with Emma Woodhouse in the field of denial and self-delusion about one's own feelings.

Northanger Abbey - rather melodramatic and silly, I know, but could be a lot of fun. I could see Dawn in Catherine's role, and maybe a twisting of background stories to allow Spuffy to happen. Or - and I could see this being highly amusing - it turns out that Catherine's fantasies about the dark and the Gothic are all true, which she finds out when she meets the Slayer! Catherine, of all the Austen characters, might be the best fit with a world where vampires roam.

All of these are just ideas and ramblings in case your imagination jump-starting, but I feel like there are a whole bunch of ways this mashup would work, and I want to read them allllll! So really, if you've an idea which remotely fits this challenge, I probably want to read it  go forth and Austenise!