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alixtiiTitle: Twenty Facts about St. Clare’s Academy Not Found in the Brochure [DVD Commentary]
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Faith/Kennedy
Timeline/Spoilers: 2017-2018 school year. Spoilers for all of Buffy and Angel.
A/N: For the Happy Endings ficathon. Yeah, I’ve just readjusted the entire concept of “late.” It wasn't the latest fic to be turned in for that 'thon, but it was very, very late. I'm talking months.
[Link to Original Fic]
Twenty Facts about St. Clare’s Academy Not Found in the Brochure
"Twenty Facts" was one of those stories which is really difficult to write. No, I take that back--"Twenty Facts" itself was easy to write. It was getting the idea for it which was so difficult, and the reason why the story was so late for the 'thon. I had written Faith and Kennedy, both together and separately, plenty of times before. These were characters I felt I knew very well and whom I was very comfortable writing. But coming up with a story that would say new things about their relationship and their interaction, coming up with a plot, I just couldn't do it. I had some idea of what I wanted to emphasize about their relationship and the life in which they found themselves, but not how to construct a story that would bring those facets forth.
What I had, however, was a setting, and a lot of accumulated fanon. I wanted to write a story set in my Watcher!verse, a universe where, among other things, Drusilla has a soul, Dawn is a watcher, and Faith is a gym teacher. Specifically, I wanted to write about the school where Faith is a gym teacher, St. Clare's Academy, a Catholic boarding school in Cleveland. I first put forth the idea of St. Clare's in my FF.net WIP "The Academy," a story that was intended to parallel the events of Buffy season 7 as the students--including demonologists, witches, and potential Slayers--strive to protect the school not only from the First Evil, but from the Inquisitore, an excommunicated Catholic order introduced on Angel (where they were briefly allied with Daniel Holtz). The only problem was, the idea for the story was much cooler than the story itself, and if it is ever finished or makes it way to my LJ it will have to be in a radically revised form.
The idea was for a school on the Cleveland Hellmouth, the way Sunnydale High was on the Sunnydale Hellmouth
I had touched on the school in other Watcher!verse stories, both those that were written and those which only existed in my head and on my outline. In "Eve of All Hallows," Maddy Summers visits Faith and Kennedy on Hallowe'en. In "A Chondrichthyes out of Hydroxylic Acid" it is a Cleveland cemetary Saffron ends up in after travelling through the interdimensional portal. In "Confessions of a Teenage Watcher," another FF.net WIP, and in the completely unwritten "School Girls," Dawn and her Slayer, Beatrice, visit St. Clare's. And many St. Clare's students go on to be successful witches, Watchers, Slayers, or members of the Initiative (more on that later). I even had a plot bunny for a "Wishverse" fic where Buffy goes to St. Clare's that I think I started writing, actually.
So I had all this backstory, all of these facts about my setting, but I couldn't think of a plot to act as a vehicle for their conveyance to the audience. So in an act of desperation, I thought: Why not just lay them all out, one by one? Both before this story had been written and since, there have been quite a few great fics using the "Twenty Facts" format. Why not use it here?
Nota Bene: Because this story is so entrenched in Watcher!verse backstory, I'm probably going to fill in the gaps to a greater degree than I use in my DVD commentaries, where I usually attempt to preserve any ambiguity. Despite this, all of the usual authorial intent disclaimers do of course apply.
1. In the 2017-2018 school year, St. Clare’s Academy houses 300 students, divided more or less equally between the four grades of American secondary education. Of these students, 180 are girls. Of those girls, three are Slayers.
2. 40 girls and 25 boys are Wiccan, sorcerers, or otherwise magic-users. (At least two worship chaos.) Roughly one-twentieth of the student body can lay claim to some sort of demon blood in their lineage.
The school is on a Hellmouth, and the demographics of the student body reflect that. I agonized over the numbers, and I'm still not completely satisfied--some seem to high, others too low--but the underlying message gets through, I think. The exact numbers are relatively meaningless.
3. The official uniform resembles the typical uniform at any Catholic school: dockers, a dress shirt, and a tie for the boys; a blouse and skirt for the girls. In addition, each students wears a red blazer (which is also part of the official uniform) and a cross (which isn’t).
The uniforms have two purposes. One is a narrative purpose: as Catholic school uniforms, they tie into a host (bad pun) of different cultural assumptions, and is fun to imagine--it's like D.E.B.S., only with magic and demons and Slayers instead of spies. On the functional level within the world of the Watcher!verse, the uniforms act as a different type of marker: a sign to vampires and demons to stay away, that students are not easy prey and should not be trifled with.
4. The rector and headmaster of the school is a somewhat unorthodox Catholic priest who founded the school in 1967 as a way of keeping track of the Hellmouth which lies beneath it. He does not answer to the Bishop of Diocese of Cleveland, but rather receives his orders directly from the Vatican. The staff of His Holiness Pius XIII knows better than to be too specific in telling Father Marcus what to do. Roger Wyndam-Pryce hasn’t quite learned this lesson yet.
The first time I looked at the list of Roman pontiffs, I saw Pius X towards the bottom of the list and named the pope Pius XI. I completely missed Pius XI and XII lower on that list. Of course when my mistake was pointed out to me I changed it right away to Pius XII.
5. Dawn Summers replaced Roger Wyndam-Pryce as Fr. Marcus’ liason to the Council shortly after her elevation to High Watcher. The relation between St. Clare’s Academy and the Council of Watchers has improved notably since that time.
Roger ordered the hit on Faith in "Who Are You"; he and Faith don't exactly see eye-to-eye, so it's all and all a good thing he was replaced with Dawn. Not to mention it gives me an excuse to write a lot of stories with Dawn visiting Faith in Cleveland--especially now that it's Watcher!verse canon that Dawn and Faith were romantically involved prior to Dawn's leaving for Europe. Dawn's elevation to High Watcher occurs at the end of Divine Interventions.
6. The head of the language department is a Sister of Charity who knows not only French, Italian, and Latin, but several demon languages as well, including Fyarl and Drochnii. She has taught at St. Clare’s since the beginning.
Sisters of Charity are awesome. This particular teacher was referenced as early as "The Academy."
7. Ever since the year 2004, one of the best-loved gym teachers is the formerly-rogue Vampire Slayer named Faith. In 2006, she was pardoned by the President of the United States for the murders she was convicted of committing. She coaches the boys’ soccer team.
In 2006, she was pardoned by President Josiah Bartlett. But mentioning the West Wing crossover here would have distracted from the story I wanted to tell.
Also note that for two years, a convicted fugitive was teaching gym classes at a Catholic school. I'm sure the parents would have been thrilled.
8. In the spring of 2015, Faith traveled to the United Kingdom to visit the graves of fallen friends and comrades. When she returned to Cleveland, she was accompanied by a six-year old child named Madelyn and a thirty-ish woman named Kennedy. Madelyn eventually returned to her aunt in Britain. Kennedy never did leave.
This is a very quick summary of the events in my WIP To Live in Hearts--which, for over a year now, has been on my list of priorities as being my "next big project."
9. Kennedy now teaches history at St. Clare’s. She hates history, as it is full of dead men and battles no one remembers. She much prefers the present, which is also full of dead men, but she certainly remembers the battles. She also coaches the girls’ field hockey team.
It took me a while to decide what to make Kennedy's rôle at St. Clare's to be.
I had Faith and Kennedy coach teams because it seemed plausible that would happen. I knew I want Ken to coach a girls' team and Faith to coach boys, so I picked field hockey for Kennedy because it seemed to have the right "feel" and the uniforms involve skirts. (I am very shallow.) I pick soccer for the boys because I did, and because I just didn't see Faith coaching, say, football.
10. In the school year 2017-2018, Ohio is one of the twenty-seven states in which same-sex marriage is still not legal. There is a part of Kennedy that, much-needed civil rights aside, hopes that it never will be. That is the same part which fears that the moment the possibility of formal commitment appears will be the moment that Faith bids their relationship adieu. As long as their love dare not speak its name, then Faith doesn’t have to face the fact that she’s slept with the same woman for the last two years, and Kennedy doesn’t have to worry about losing her.
This, in particular, was one of the facets of their relationship that I was unsure how to work into a story other than announcing it outright (as I do here). It makes sense to me that Faith would find it easier to fall into a long-term relationship if she didn't feel the same impetus towards commitment was present
11. One day, Mr. Eutychus, the theology teacher, went home sick and Kennedy had to cover his class. Marriage, she informed the class deadpan, was a relation between a man and a woman that was sanctified by God. Any sexual activity outside the bond of marriage, including masturbation, was sinful. No one bothered to argue with her, although one student laughed.
Thomas Perrier passed a love letter to Robert Meyer. Kennedy didn’t say anything.
I asked a friend for a name for the theology teacher (because I wanted it to feel right on the theology teacher) and she gave me a name which has some deep significance for Christians. (It's Greek, I think.) Which doesn't sit right with me at all, because it's too over the top. It's like naming Faith Winters.
In my reading of this scene, the student who laughs is laughing with Kennedy, not at her. The true object of scorn is the Vatican. No one is bothering to argue with Kennedy not because they all believe the Vatican's sexual morality, but because no one is taking it seriously enough to argue with it. These kids masturbate and--when they can get away with it--have premarital sex with each other, after all.
Of course, I never explicitly establish how liberal the school is (other than the parts where they use magic to fight vampires, which isn't exactly in the Baltimore Catechism), show other readings of this scene are possible.
12. The last name on Faith’s passport is Lehane, and the birthdate is September 20. Kennedy is fairly certain that both pieces of information are incorrect. She has never seen Faith’s pardon.
I don't have a problem with the name Lehane itself, but I resent the high-handed way it was forced upon as fen. Until I see Faith called Lehane on my television screen, "Lehane" is fanon.
September 20 was picked by an appartment-mate when I called out of my room asking for a random date. Some things I can't choose for myself, because I'll try and pick something that fits perfectly thematically, and sometime's that isn't called for. Leaving things up to non-writers inserts a note of realism. Or Dada. I'm not 100% sure which.
This also characterizes the Faith/Kennedy relationship, of course. Regardless of whether Faith is keeping secrets from Kennedy or not (and I suspect Ken's right), Kennedy believes she is and tries to be okay with it.
13. There is a strictly enforced curfew at St. Clare’s, but every night Faith and Kennedy take the three students who are Slayers off campus and into the streets of Cleveland. The girls are out of uniform, of course; the vamps know better than to attack a girl wearing a St. Clare’s blazer. Rare is the night when each member of their party doesn’t dust at least a couple of vamps.
14. They return to campus around three in the morning. The girls slip into their dormitories, careful not to wake the other girls. Faith and Kennedy return to their apartment in the faculty dorm. Kennedy always gets the first shower, and when Faith is finished Kennedy is waiting for her, dressed in a different colored negligee.
15. Faith never did know how to be gentle, and Kennedy hopes that she never learns.
I like the effect of giving #15 a fact all by itself, even though 13-15 all sort of bleed into each other.
16. If you had asked her before she became a Slayer, Faith never would have figured she’d become a teacher, even a phys ed teacher. If you had asked her after she became a Slayer, she wouldn’t have figured she would become anything at all, except maybe dead.
Here, having already completed 3/4 of the "facts" setting the scene, I begin to touch on what the story is about. Here we see Faith's perception of herself before becoming a teacher, so that we can see her transformation in the next four facts.
17. Now that’s she has been teaching for well over a decade, she can’t imagine doing anything else.
18. In the years Faith has taught at St. Clare’s, there has been exactly four years in which there has not been a major apocalypse in Cleveland sometime between the beginning of April and the end of June. This is viewed by the graduating class as a sign of bad luck: each of those years, it rained on graduation.
It's a bit of a blase way to approach an apocalypse, but it seemed a realistic way for teenagers to react.
19. While many St. Clare’s students move onto college following graduation, some are immediately recruited into the workforce. Between the two organizations, the United States military and the Watchers’ Council of Britain is responsible for employing over 90% of these students.
Catelyn Love, one of my characters from "The Academy," is slated to appear in "Windows of My Soul" (or possibly in an independent story) as a member of the Initiative, working alongside Sam and Riley Finn (and causing just a bit of dissension in the ranks!). [ETA: I just realized it went the other way around. I had originally created Catelyn for WoMS, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
likedeuce asked about her history, specifically if she was a Slayer. And I decided that no, she wasn't--but she went to school with people who were. And that was the inspiration for "The Academy."]
20. Each year, after the commencement ceremonies are completed and the graduated students are busy hugging each other and signing everybody else’s yearbooks, Faith thinks about the life she never had. She never stood proud as someone announced her name and handed her a diploma. She never shouted in delight with her girlfriends over what colleges and universities had accepted her. But then she takes her girlfriend’s hand in her own, and looks at the eager but nervous faces of the students she has taught, and she knows that as long and difficult as her path has been, it has been worth it all.
I had to tie the last fact to Faith's emotional connection in order to bring a sense of resolution to the overall fic. I've never been above sappy sentimentality, and never will be.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Faith/Kennedy
Timeline/Spoilers: 2017-2018 school year. Spoilers for all of Buffy and Angel.
A/N: For the Happy Endings ficathon. Yeah, I’ve just readjusted the entire concept of “late.” It wasn't the latest fic to be turned in for that 'thon, but it was very, very late. I'm talking months.
[Link to Original Fic]
Twenty Facts about St. Clare’s Academy Not Found in the Brochure
"Twenty Facts" was one of those stories which is really difficult to write. No, I take that back--"Twenty Facts" itself was easy to write. It was getting the idea for it which was so difficult, and the reason why the story was so late for the 'thon. I had written Faith and Kennedy, both together and separately, plenty of times before. These were characters I felt I knew very well and whom I was very comfortable writing. But coming up with a story that would say new things about their relationship and their interaction, coming up with a plot, I just couldn't do it. I had some idea of what I wanted to emphasize about their relationship and the life in which they found themselves, but not how to construct a story that would bring those facets forth.
What I had, however, was a setting, and a lot of accumulated fanon. I wanted to write a story set in my Watcher!verse, a universe where, among other things, Drusilla has a soul, Dawn is a watcher, and Faith is a gym teacher. Specifically, I wanted to write about the school where Faith is a gym teacher, St. Clare's Academy, a Catholic boarding school in Cleveland. I first put forth the idea of St. Clare's in my FF.net WIP "The Academy," a story that was intended to parallel the events of Buffy season 7 as the students--including demonologists, witches, and potential Slayers--strive to protect the school not only from the First Evil, but from the Inquisitore, an excommunicated Catholic order introduced on Angel (where they were briefly allied with Daniel Holtz). The only problem was, the idea for the story was much cooler than the story itself, and if it is ever finished or makes it way to my LJ it will have to be in a radically revised form.
The idea was for a school on the Cleveland Hellmouth, the way Sunnydale High was on the Sunnydale Hellmouth
I had touched on the school in other Watcher!verse stories, both those that were written and those which only existed in my head and on my outline. In "Eve of All Hallows," Maddy Summers visits Faith and Kennedy on Hallowe'en. In "A Chondrichthyes out of Hydroxylic Acid" it is a Cleveland cemetary Saffron ends up in after travelling through the interdimensional portal. In "Confessions of a Teenage Watcher," another FF.net WIP, and in the completely unwritten "School Girls," Dawn and her Slayer, Beatrice, visit St. Clare's. And many St. Clare's students go on to be successful witches, Watchers, Slayers, or members of the Initiative (more on that later). I even had a plot bunny for a "Wishverse" fic where Buffy goes to St. Clare's that I think I started writing, actually.
So I had all this backstory, all of these facts about my setting, but I couldn't think of a plot to act as a vehicle for their conveyance to the audience. So in an act of desperation, I thought: Why not just lay them all out, one by one? Both before this story had been written and since, there have been quite a few great fics using the "Twenty Facts" format. Why not use it here?
Nota Bene: Because this story is so entrenched in Watcher!verse backstory, I'm probably going to fill in the gaps to a greater degree than I use in my DVD commentaries, where I usually attempt to preserve any ambiguity. Despite this, all of the usual authorial intent disclaimers do of course apply.
1. In the 2017-2018 school year, St. Clare’s Academy houses 300 students, divided more or less equally between the four grades of American secondary education. Of these students, 180 are girls. Of those girls, three are Slayers.
2. 40 girls and 25 boys are Wiccan, sorcerers, or otherwise magic-users. (At least two worship chaos.) Roughly one-twentieth of the student body can lay claim to some sort of demon blood in their lineage.
The school is on a Hellmouth, and the demographics of the student body reflect that. I agonized over the numbers, and I'm still not completely satisfied--some seem to high, others too low--but the underlying message gets through, I think. The exact numbers are relatively meaningless.
3. The official uniform resembles the typical uniform at any Catholic school: dockers, a dress shirt, and a tie for the boys; a blouse and skirt for the girls. In addition, each students wears a red blazer (which is also part of the official uniform) and a cross (which isn’t).
The uniforms have two purposes. One is a narrative purpose: as Catholic school uniforms, they tie into a host (bad pun) of different cultural assumptions, and is fun to imagine--it's like D.E.B.S., only with magic and demons and Slayers instead of spies. On the functional level within the world of the Watcher!verse, the uniforms act as a different type of marker: a sign to vampires and demons to stay away, that students are not easy prey and should not be trifled with.
4. The rector and headmaster of the school is a somewhat unorthodox Catholic priest who founded the school in 1967 as a way of keeping track of the Hellmouth which lies beneath it. He does not answer to the Bishop of Diocese of Cleveland, but rather receives his orders directly from the Vatican. The staff of His Holiness Pius XIII knows better than to be too specific in telling Father Marcus what to do. Roger Wyndam-Pryce hasn’t quite learned this lesson yet.
The first time I looked at the list of Roman pontiffs, I saw Pius X towards the bottom of the list and named the pope Pius XI. I completely missed Pius XI and XII lower on that list. Of course when my mistake was pointed out to me I changed it right away to Pius XII.
5. Dawn Summers replaced Roger Wyndam-Pryce as Fr. Marcus’ liason to the Council shortly after her elevation to High Watcher. The relation between St. Clare’s Academy and the Council of Watchers has improved notably since that time.
Roger ordered the hit on Faith in "Who Are You"; he and Faith don't exactly see eye-to-eye, so it's all and all a good thing he was replaced with Dawn. Not to mention it gives me an excuse to write a lot of stories with Dawn visiting Faith in Cleveland--especially now that it's Watcher!verse canon that Dawn and Faith were romantically involved prior to Dawn's leaving for Europe. Dawn's elevation to High Watcher occurs at the end of Divine Interventions.
6. The head of the language department is a Sister of Charity who knows not only French, Italian, and Latin, but several demon languages as well, including Fyarl and Drochnii. She has taught at St. Clare’s since the beginning.
Sisters of Charity are awesome. This particular teacher was referenced as early as "The Academy."
7. Ever since the year 2004, one of the best-loved gym teachers is the formerly-rogue Vampire Slayer named Faith. In 2006, she was pardoned by the President of the United States for the murders she was convicted of committing. She coaches the boys’ soccer team.
In 2006, she was pardoned by President Josiah Bartlett. But mentioning the West Wing crossover here would have distracted from the story I wanted to tell.
Also note that for two years, a convicted fugitive was teaching gym classes at a Catholic school. I'm sure the parents would have been thrilled.
8. In the spring of 2015, Faith traveled to the United Kingdom to visit the graves of fallen friends and comrades. When she returned to Cleveland, she was accompanied by a six-year old child named Madelyn and a thirty-ish woman named Kennedy. Madelyn eventually returned to her aunt in Britain. Kennedy never did leave.
This is a very quick summary of the events in my WIP To Live in Hearts--which, for over a year now, has been on my list of priorities as being my "next big project."
9. Kennedy now teaches history at St. Clare’s. She hates history, as it is full of dead men and battles no one remembers. She much prefers the present, which is also full of dead men, but she certainly remembers the battles. She also coaches the girls’ field hockey team.
It took me a while to decide what to make Kennedy's rôle at St. Clare's to be.
I had Faith and Kennedy coach teams because it seemed plausible that would happen. I knew I want Ken to coach a girls' team and Faith to coach boys, so I picked field hockey for Kennedy because it seemed to have the right "feel" and the uniforms involve skirts. (I am very shallow.) I pick soccer for the boys because I did, and because I just didn't see Faith coaching, say, football.
10. In the school year 2017-2018, Ohio is one of the twenty-seven states in which same-sex marriage is still not legal. There is a part of Kennedy that, much-needed civil rights aside, hopes that it never will be. That is the same part which fears that the moment the possibility of formal commitment appears will be the moment that Faith bids their relationship adieu. As long as their love dare not speak its name, then Faith doesn’t have to face the fact that she’s slept with the same woman for the last two years, and Kennedy doesn’t have to worry about losing her.
This, in particular, was one of the facets of their relationship that I was unsure how to work into a story other than announcing it outright (as I do here). It makes sense to me that Faith would find it easier to fall into a long-term relationship if she didn't feel the same impetus towards commitment was present
11. One day, Mr. Eutychus, the theology teacher, went home sick and Kennedy had to cover his class. Marriage, she informed the class deadpan, was a relation between a man and a woman that was sanctified by God. Any sexual activity outside the bond of marriage, including masturbation, was sinful. No one bothered to argue with her, although one student laughed.
Thomas Perrier passed a love letter to Robert Meyer. Kennedy didn’t say anything.
I asked a friend for a name for the theology teacher (because I wanted it to feel right on the theology teacher) and she gave me a name which has some deep significance for Christians. (It's Greek, I think.) Which doesn't sit right with me at all, because it's too over the top. It's like naming Faith Winters.
In my reading of this scene, the student who laughs is laughing with Kennedy, not at her. The true object of scorn is the Vatican. No one is bothering to argue with Kennedy not because they all believe the Vatican's sexual morality, but because no one is taking it seriously enough to argue with it. These kids masturbate and--when they can get away with it--have premarital sex with each other, after all.
Of course, I never explicitly establish how liberal the school is (other than the parts where they use magic to fight vampires, which isn't exactly in the Baltimore Catechism), show other readings of this scene are possible.
12. The last name on Faith’s passport is Lehane, and the birthdate is September 20. Kennedy is fairly certain that both pieces of information are incorrect. She has never seen Faith’s pardon.
I don't have a problem with the name Lehane itself, but I resent the high-handed way it was forced upon as fen. Until I see Faith called Lehane on my television screen, "Lehane" is fanon.
September 20 was picked by an appartment-mate when I called out of my room asking for a random date. Some things I can't choose for myself, because I'll try and pick something that fits perfectly thematically, and sometime's that isn't called for. Leaving things up to non-writers inserts a note of realism. Or Dada. I'm not 100% sure which.
This also characterizes the Faith/Kennedy relationship, of course. Regardless of whether Faith is keeping secrets from Kennedy or not (and I suspect Ken's right), Kennedy believes she is and tries to be okay with it.
13. There is a strictly enforced curfew at St. Clare’s, but every night Faith and Kennedy take the three students who are Slayers off campus and into the streets of Cleveland. The girls are out of uniform, of course; the vamps know better than to attack a girl wearing a St. Clare’s blazer. Rare is the night when each member of their party doesn’t dust at least a couple of vamps.
14. They return to campus around three in the morning. The girls slip into their dormitories, careful not to wake the other girls. Faith and Kennedy return to their apartment in the faculty dorm. Kennedy always gets the first shower, and when Faith is finished Kennedy is waiting for her, dressed in a different colored negligee.
15. Faith never did know how to be gentle, and Kennedy hopes that she never learns.
I like the effect of giving #15 a fact all by itself, even though 13-15 all sort of bleed into each other.
16. If you had asked her before she became a Slayer, Faith never would have figured she’d become a teacher, even a phys ed teacher. If you had asked her after she became a Slayer, she wouldn’t have figured she would become anything at all, except maybe dead.
Here, having already completed 3/4 of the "facts" setting the scene, I begin to touch on what the story is about. Here we see Faith's perception of herself before becoming a teacher, so that we can see her transformation in the next four facts.
17. Now that’s she has been teaching for well over a decade, she can’t imagine doing anything else.
18. In the years Faith has taught at St. Clare’s, there has been exactly four years in which there has not been a major apocalypse in Cleveland sometime between the beginning of April and the end of June. This is viewed by the graduating class as a sign of bad luck: each of those years, it rained on graduation.
It's a bit of a blase way to approach an apocalypse, but it seemed a realistic way for teenagers to react.
19. While many St. Clare’s students move onto college following graduation, some are immediately recruited into the workforce. Between the two organizations, the United States military and the Watchers’ Council of Britain is responsible for employing over 90% of these students.
Catelyn Love, one of my characters from "The Academy," is slated to appear in "Windows of My Soul" (or possibly in an independent story) as a member of the Initiative, working alongside Sam and Riley Finn (and causing just a bit of dissension in the ranks!). [ETA: I just realized it went the other way around. I had originally created Catelyn for WoMS, and
likedeuce asked about her history, specifically if she was a Slayer. And I decided that no, she wasn't--but she went to school with people who were. And that was the inspiration for "The Academy."]20. Each year, after the commencement ceremonies are completed and the graduated students are busy hugging each other and signing everybody else’s yearbooks, Faith thinks about the life she never had. She never stood proud as someone announced her name and handed her a diploma. She never shouted in delight with her girlfriends over what colleges and universities had accepted her. But then she takes her girlfriend’s hand in her own, and looks at the eager but nervous faces of the students she has taught, and she knows that as long and difficult as her path has been, it has been worth it all.
I had to tie the last fact to Faith's emotional connection in order to bring a sense of resolution to the overall fic. I've never been above sappy sentimentality, and never will be.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 11:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 12:01 pm (UTC)I want to see all the Joint Chiefs and stuff underestimating Dawn and only Bartlett--under the recommendations of one Samantha Finn--taking her seriously.
I'm glad you enjoyed the commentary!