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alixtiiTitle: Experience
Fandom: Firefly/Jossverse RPF
Pairing: Jane Espenson/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Jane knows the complex of eccentricities and plot-devices, but the flesh-and-blood woman in front of her is another thing entirely.
Rating: PG-13
Experience
Joss sort of implodes at his first look at River. They bring him out of his faint with smelling salts, but even after it's clear that he's not all together psychologically, and it's agreed it's best that he not be faced with any of his (previously) fictional creations any time soon.
But Jane is more interested in the young woman in brown coveralls who stands next to the girl. She's instantly recognizable, of course; River could pass as Summer's twin sister--no, she could pass for Summer, the likeness is uncanny--and Kaylee's resemblance to Jewel is no less. On some metaphysical level, Jewel-in-character is Kaylee, and that's what they have in front of them: a carbon-copy of Jewel's body and, inhabiting it, Kaylee's mind. There's a part of Jane which refuses to believe that this isn't Jewel, which is constantly waiting for her to break character.
Jane's written these characters. She didn't create them, didn't plan their arcs, and so doesn't feel Joss' guilt over their miseries, but she has put words into their mouths, emotions into their hearts. She feels like she knows them, even if they wouldn't know her from Eve, intimately even.
. . .
She takes Kaylee out to lunch at Maria's. As they talk, it becomes clear just how much she is Joss' creation; she completely has the power to surprise Jane. Still, every word, every gesture, is tinged with the familiar, if not the predictable. Jane feels like she's been reunited with an old, close friend, and Kaylee is instantly amiable, as Kaylee is, despite the strange situation.
"It's sort of like sex," Kaylee says, and Jane almost chokes on her sandwich. "I mean, you've been inside me. Sort of. You know me pretty well, I reckon."
Jane wonders if this is why Joss reacted so strongly to the appearance of the Serenity crew, if it was a visceral realization of the way they have, well, violated these people without the characters' knowledge or consent. Still, Jane doesn't let it trouble her overmuch; the way she treated Kaylee in particular yields no regrets. The things she gave Kaylee--a dress, a dance, a buffet table--hopefully make up for the distress she may have undergone during Jane's episode.
Jane looks across the table and doesn't know what to say to the erstwhile vehicle for comedic melodrama who is suddenly flesh and blood in front of her. "I'd like to know you better," she says at last, truthfully. The Kaylee she wrote was an adorable complex of eccentricities and plot devices. The Kaylee in front of her is a woman, living and breathing right in front of her, and Jane is suddenly extremely aware of the fact.
Kaylee smiles, and it's not an act break, or a reaction shot, or anything else written into a script to send a deliberately coded message to the eventual viewer, but a genuine display of real emotion, and in its way it's more beautiful than anything ever written on a page, or put up on a screen, could ever be. It's . . . unmediated.
. . .
Jane thought she knew a lot of things about Kaylee. She knew how she would react in certain situations, what she would say, but there are some occasions which never occurred to Jane, and some times when words just aren't necessary. And Jane, who works almost exclusively with words, finds herself outside her element.
It never occurred her to ask whether Kaylee liked her sex rough or gentle, or to wonder what the curve of her breasts would feel like. If asked the color of Kaylee's eyes she would have been forced to resort to looking at a photograph of Jewel. Now she knows these things, and it's not in order to write a story, to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, to introduce a joke or produce an epiphany. Instead, all of her storyteller's frameworks, designed to twist what is and present it as something else, as part of an overarching narrative designed to evoke, and to purge, pity and fear, to distract someone from the mundanities of their life and to entertain them, all these fall away as she makes love to Kaywinnit Lee Frye, and she is left with the experience alone.
Fandom: Firefly/Jossverse RPF
Pairing: Jane Espenson/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Jane knows the complex of eccentricities and plot-devices, but the flesh-and-blood woman in front of her is another thing entirely.
Rating: PG-13
Experience
Joss sort of implodes at his first look at River. They bring him out of his faint with smelling salts, but even after it's clear that he's not all together psychologically, and it's agreed it's best that he not be faced with any of his (previously) fictional creations any time soon.
But Jane is more interested in the young woman in brown coveralls who stands next to the girl. She's instantly recognizable, of course; River could pass as Summer's twin sister--no, she could pass for Summer, the likeness is uncanny--and Kaylee's resemblance to Jewel is no less. On some metaphysical level, Jewel-in-character is Kaylee, and that's what they have in front of them: a carbon-copy of Jewel's body and, inhabiting it, Kaylee's mind. There's a part of Jane which refuses to believe that this isn't Jewel, which is constantly waiting for her to break character.
Jane's written these characters. She didn't create them, didn't plan their arcs, and so doesn't feel Joss' guilt over their miseries, but she has put words into their mouths, emotions into their hearts. She feels like she knows them, even if they wouldn't know her from Eve, intimately even.
. . .
She takes Kaylee out to lunch at Maria's. As they talk, it becomes clear just how much she is Joss' creation; she completely has the power to surprise Jane. Still, every word, every gesture, is tinged with the familiar, if not the predictable. Jane feels like she's been reunited with an old, close friend, and Kaylee is instantly amiable, as Kaylee is, despite the strange situation.
"It's sort of like sex," Kaylee says, and Jane almost chokes on her sandwich. "I mean, you've been inside me. Sort of. You know me pretty well, I reckon."
Jane wonders if this is why Joss reacted so strongly to the appearance of the Serenity crew, if it was a visceral realization of the way they have, well, violated these people without the characters' knowledge or consent. Still, Jane doesn't let it trouble her overmuch; the way she treated Kaylee in particular yields no regrets. The things she gave Kaylee--a dress, a dance, a buffet table--hopefully make up for the distress she may have undergone during Jane's episode.
Jane looks across the table and doesn't know what to say to the erstwhile vehicle for comedic melodrama who is suddenly flesh and blood in front of her. "I'd like to know you better," she says at last, truthfully. The Kaylee she wrote was an adorable complex of eccentricities and plot devices. The Kaylee in front of her is a woman, living and breathing right in front of her, and Jane is suddenly extremely aware of the fact.
Kaylee smiles, and it's not an act break, or a reaction shot, or anything else written into a script to send a deliberately coded message to the eventual viewer, but a genuine display of real emotion, and in its way it's more beautiful than anything ever written on a page, or put up on a screen, could ever be. It's . . . unmediated.
. . .
Jane thought she knew a lot of things about Kaylee. She knew how she would react in certain situations, what she would say, but there are some occasions which never occurred to Jane, and some times when words just aren't necessary. And Jane, who works almost exclusively with words, finds herself outside her element.
It never occurred her to ask whether Kaylee liked her sex rough or gentle, or to wonder what the curve of her breasts would feel like. If asked the color of Kaylee's eyes she would have been forced to resort to looking at a photograph of Jewel. Now she knows these things, and it's not in order to write a story, to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, to introduce a joke or produce an epiphany. Instead, all of her storyteller's frameworks, designed to twist what is and present it as something else, as part of an overarching narrative designed to evoke, and to purge, pity and fear, to distract someone from the mundanities of their life and to entertain them, all these fall away as she makes love to Kaywinnit Lee Frye, and she is left with the experience alone.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 03:36 pm (UTC)everthis week so far.And this raises the very interesting question about how to write a story about how real life's not like stories
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 03:58 pm (UTC)Yes, I knew you would catch and appreciate the meta-irony that Jane, as a fictional character, is pretty much completely wrong about everything.
Although I'd have to ask if real life really is unlike stories, or whether we construct our experiences into narratives just like we do in stories. But that's my post-structuralism shining through.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 04:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 08:51 pm (UTC)