Birthday wishes

Happy birthday to phenway. You are an amazing woman, Sarah. Since I've known you, you've been through several difficult situations and you've come through each with beauty and grace. I hope today has been a marvelous one for you.

You've got your Xander pants on, husband.

executrix posted HERE about, among other things, whether people who have more than one fandom choose them for complementarity or diversity. The only two fandoms I'm heavily involved with are BtVS/Ats and FF (and only because "That Seventies Show" doesn't exist as a fic-oriented fandom *mourns the ForHyde*), and I think in a lot of ways, FF is The Buffyverse In Space.

Joss definitely reuses character templates. Wash is Xander; Simon is a lot like Wesley; River is some combination of Fred and Dru; Kaylee is Fred; Jayne is Spike; Mal is everything I think Joss wished Angel could have been and didn't quite become. [This is not to say that there's a one-to-one correlation between the characters; for example, although they are similar, Wash and Xander are different enough that they are distinct characters.]

Joss also revisits story arcs from the Buffyverse. Can nobody have a good birthday?!?

What interests me in the similarity between these two shows is the problem is created for me as a fic writer. Because many of the characters are so similar, I find that it's really tempting to, say, just dress Wash up in Xander pants and neglect the nuanced treatment his character deserves. Does anybody else have this experience or does the similarity between the shows actually help you as a fic writer?