The 5 Things Meme and Related Thoughts

[alixtii]

Only wisdomeagle has asked for a Top 5 list so far, but if you want one don't hesitate to sign up here.

Things That Are Shiny
5. Dimes. (I like dimes because they're the smallest U.S. coin, but they're worth more than pennies or nickels. A handful of dimes is worth more than a handful of any other common coin.)
4. My name when sparkly.
3. The college ring I got "for Christmas" (there was a picture in my stocking) and will be waiting for me when I return to campus!
2. My flist.
1. Having a girlfriend.

I switched from the literal to figurative meanings of "shiny" about halfway through. Shiny?

I left a request for the top 5 Jossverse fics even she wouldn't write in wisdomeagle's journal, but she detected my evil plan:

This is clearly a trick question, because as soon as I start listing them I'll think, "Oooh, actually, if I set it then and changed that, maybe it could work!

But her ultimate answers (found here; scroll down a little) are food for thought, methinks. She says "no" to Summerscest, and I have to agree with her; while I'm not squicked by sibcest (far from it, God knows!), I just can't think of a way to make Buffy/Dawn work. They just don't have a relationship which is remotely sexualizable for me, no matter how much I would want to in principle. (And as to what principle that is exactly--well, I have meta planned on the subject, but I have a lot of meta planned and I haven't really written any since August.)

Her next "no" is "any threesome involving three guys and no girls" and again I'd agree with her, although again very possibly for different reasons. While I could see myself writing m/m if the right story idea came up, I still wouldn't write to excite. And while not all 3some fic is written to excite (kink versus literature mentalities, I still haven't excised that dichotomy!) a lot is, and the odds that I would randomly come up with an idea that, for purely story reasons, needed to be both m/m and a threesome--well, I would think they would be pretty low odds.

"Flat-out rape fic where the perp is not one of the Fanged Four or similarly soulless. Twisty semi-con, yes, rape, not so much." I'm interested in her qualifications here, because of course rape is squicky. The only straight-up on-stage noncon I've written has been with Dark!Willow in Divine Interventions because, logically, that is what she would do. (It wasn't fun to write, either, but I couldn't think of anyway to get out of it.) "Twisty semi-con" is more common in my ouvre, but still the perpetrators tend to the evil side (unsurprisingly): post-Illyria Fred, Illyria, ficlet!Amy (who is much more a power-hungry caricature than Watcher!verse Amy--see below for more on that subject.

She won't write anything where "Kaylee gets hurt without comfort." Ari adds that she feels "very strongly about this!" Kaylee is certainly the type of character who would inspire this type of feeling, although I think its less strong in me due to my position (I identify with Mal, Simon, and River more than Kaylee, whom I love but mainly see through my het male gaze). It's odd that there aren't really very many other characters who inspire that sort of feeling, thought. Perhaps Willow would have if BtVS had ended after its first eleven episodes and had been followed by a movie in which Willow got Xander even though he was more interested in Buffy (it's scary how well that maps, actually), but later-seasons Willow changed all that.

I abuse my favorite characters on a regular basis, after all. One of the major themes of the Watcher!verse is how Dawn's dark side allows her to be ideally suited to running the Council, after all. She's self-destructive and emotionally troubled. (Which is how I get away with her being a huge slut--see below.) Facing the Shadows--one of my favorite fics that I've written--was originally intended to be a Faith/Kennedy hurt/comfort, but I ended up spending over 3,000 words hurting Kennedy and giving her only a couple sentences' worth of comfort:

“Faith?” she asked. “Hold me?”

Faith found a clean spot on her forehead and kissed it, then wrapped an arm around Kennedy. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”

And Kennedy smiled, and let unconsciousness take her as she lay in her lover's arms.

Ari's last "never write" is Zoe or Wash being unfaithful. I probably wouldn't write this either, but note that while Saffron and Dr. Mathias are both on my Firefly Character Index, Wash and Zoe aren't; I've never written fic with them in it. While I approve in principle of having a happily married couple on television, their relationship never engaged me all that much (which is probably why there aren't very many happily married couples on television, and even less in the Jossverse). So this is another case of my agreeing with Ari for completely different reasons.

But the sentiment of not letting anything break up a beloved canon pairing is one with which I can sympathize: I don't like letting anything short of death break up Willow/Kennedy and Willow/Tara. I had Willow/Kennedy break up after Kennedy cheated (or did she?) for my Buffy/Kennedy femslash_minis fic Into the Woods, but I don't think I would do it again. I need to put up a strong front to resist all those who would bash Willow/Kennedy.

In the Watcher!verse, Willow and Kennedy stay together (mostly) in domestic bliss for five years until Willow finally goes dark again and Kennedy has to kill her. Which actually poses a problem as Kennedy walks out on the relationship (thus the "mostly") after the Dark!Willow noncon in Divine Interventions--I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to get them back together again, but it will involve Dawn having a one-night stand with Xander. (Watcher!verse Dawn is a slut, you know? By the time she marries Giles, she has already slept with at least Faith, Ethan, and Xander, and I'm sure the list will only get longer as I flesh out the universe more. During her marriage with Giles she sleeps with at least Giles, Faith, Kennedy, Beatrice, and Amy.)

Indeed, one of the reasons so many people die in the Watcher!verse is so that I'll have an excuse to switch around pairings without having to make people unfaithful.

All this thinking about characters and pairings is more or less continuing in the same vein from my last post in which I answered the "What characters/pairings can you write with your eyes closed" question. glossing asked "So would you say that your pairings are the same people across different stories?" and the question made me think and write about my writing process enough that it seems worth reposting here:

The Faith/Kennedy and Dawn/Giles dynamics are definitely the same people, since they're all set in the same universe (or else I've written a lot of unconnected stories in all of which Dawn has a niece name Madelyn) even if many of them were written to be read by themselves (since a lot are ficathon stories, although I think the femslash_minis people have gotten a grasp of my personal fanons). Those two pairings aren't pairings that I love for their own sake so much as pairings that made sense within the Watcher!verse (a lot of Dawn/Giles, for example, is set up by the Dawn/Ethan in Divine Interventions).

As for the miscellaneous stories, I think there might be slight differences in the way I characterize them. A lot of my ficlet!Amys are less three-dimensional than my Watcher!verse Amy, being power-hungry caricatures. The Eve that seduces the Scoobies in The Game isn't quite the same Eve that answers the 70 questions meme, because the first is an AU and the latter takes place in the Watcher!verse (don't ask me why). But the former Eve is somewhat OOC for Eve, so I would still think of it in terms as a "right" Eve and a "wrong" Eve, instead of several equally valid interpretations of the same character (as I might several different writers' Eves). ("The Game" was written for buffyverse1000, and I loosened my standards for OOC somewhat when writing that fic.) Despite living in drastically different universes, Watcher!verse Eve isn't all that different from the Eve who is working in a diner in Funeral; they still work from basically the same motivations, i.e. love for Lindsey, fear of the Senior Partners, fear of her own mortality, etc. I'm trying to do my best to simply pick up canon!Eve and drop her into these new situations with as little change as possible, while telling a story which reflects my values and the themes that I am interested in.

In general, I don't think my characterizations are drastically different even between unconnected fic. I try and get a "least hypothesis" of the character and motivation--what makes them tick in the closest possible world in which canon could be true--and only make changes if it serves the story (or my agenda) in some way. In my unconnected stories I have greater freedom to make such changes but don't utilize it indiscriminately.

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But in real life relationships, I think mutual protectiveness isn't squicky but is a good thing. One of my favorite things in fictional relationships is when the characters each protect each other with complementary skills, regardless of gender.

Hmm. I don't know if I'd use the phrase to "mutual protectiveness," but I'd agree the type of relationship you describe is healthy. Fred, even before she has romantic love for Wes, has his back; she's always willing to protect him if he needs protecting. That's good. But I don't know if I would call her "protective" of Wes.

Whereas, Wes is is protective of Fred, and in addition to being there to protect her, that seems to include the feeling that he should be there to protect her, that he has a sort of duty or obligation to protect her, and to me that he implies that he believes that she can't protect herself. Which in some cases is of course true--we all have situations with which we are underequipped to deal, and that's all the more true when there are annual apocalypses--but he seems to be coming into it with the assumption that she needs protecting which I (and she) find problematic.

Not wanting someone to suffer, ever, is in my IMO an unhealthy attitude when you're a real person in relation with another equally real person (or a fictional person in relation with an equally fictional person). Sometimes one has to let someone else suffer as a result of being an adult and making his or her own decisions. When you are the omnipotent author who holds the fictional character in your hands (or even a reader with the magical power to stop reading and make the story go away), however, the dynamic changes, because of course you do have the ultimate responsibility for everything they do and their lack of autonomy is simply an objective fact (if you believe that).

Even for me, there's Kaylee "Thou shalt not hurt my darling" Frye and Wesley, "But he's so pretty when he suffers" Wyndam-Pryce,

Downthread I've just discussed with executrix the way in which different characterizations support different types of interactions between character and author: Wes cries out to be hurt, Kaylee to be loved, and Dawn is somewhere in between. Is that a factor of their own self-assessment, i.e. Kaylee believes that she deserves happiness, while Wesley does not? I don't think I'd have quite as much satisfaction watching BtVS S3 Wes suffer--or if I would, it would be for different reasons (that he was supposed to be annoying back then).

I do break up Willow/Kennedy fairly often (*hides from fanboy shipper*

The fanboy shipper forgives you, and finds the image of himself as a rabid shipper amusing . . . because he doesn't think he is like that. I'm protective of Willow/Kennedy in particular, and Kennedy the character in general, just as you are protective of Fred--"because she gets bashed in fannish discourse"--just as I am protective of, say, Eve.

And I can't remember you ever committing any crimes against Kennedy, although I admit that I really get frustrated when yet another Willow shipfic starts with a totally gratuitous explication about how Kennedy was awful and cheated on Willow and then Willow saw the light as to how horrible Kennedy was and the fact that all the Scoobies detested the Slayer with a fiery passion. (And I wonder, what season 7 were they watching?) But I grit my teeth and bear through it because usually the rest of the fic is perfectly unobjectionable and I wonder, why do they have to bash? Does it bring them that much pleasure?

Sorry for the rant.

[wisdomeagle]

Whereas, Wes is is protective of Fred, and in addition to being there to protect her, that seems to include the feeling that he should be there to protect her, that he has a sort of duty or obligation to protect her, and to me that he implies that he believes that she can't protect herself. Which in some cases is of course true--we all have situations with which we are underequipped to deal, and that's all the more true when there are annual apocalypses--but he seems to be coming into it with the assumption that she needs protecting which I (and she) find problematic.

This is true, and I was thinking about this during dinner while pondering the larger question of protectiveness, and I agree that it's one of the most hugely problematic parts of their relationship, especially since it doesn't get resolved - it's just apparently something that Fred thinks she could live with (because part of Fred really likes to be protected by handsome men on horseback) and then it becomes a moot point, what with the death and all.

I was thinking, honestly, of Buffy/Angel, and how in many ways to me they epitomize the mutual protectiveness thing - they have each other's backs. Sometimes it wears on them, because both of them are fiercely independent, but I think ultimately they are glad of it. Because there Buffy is physically stronger, the particularly tricksy gender issue is somewhat diluted, which is nice, especially when Angel sees fit to remember it.

Not wanting someone to suffer, ever, is in my IMO an unhealthy attitude when you're a real person in relation with another equally real person

Hm. Well, I think it's a complicated thing and depends what we mean by suffer. In real person/real person and fictional person/fictional person relationships, there's often very little we can really do to prevent cetain kinds of suffering (the death of parents, the trauma of childhood, the agony of skinned knees, the neccessity of paying taxes), but we can suffer in tandem. I think "I hate to see you hurting like this; let me help you as best I can" is a better attitude to have towards a real life personfriend than "You're so attractive when you're sad, you know," for that way lies badness and dysfunction.

In terms of real people/fictional people (insert your own Joss/Wesley joke here), well, 's a whole 'nother thing - and I see you've thought about it more some below, so I'll save any thoughts I might have for replying to that comment.

Okay, now I'm curious as to how I actually do deal with Kennedy in my post-"Chosen" Willow/other fic.

Now We Are Six: she dies off-screen in "Chosen"
Faux Pas: Presumably an amiable breakup; she and her girlfriend show up at Willow's wedding.
What Is This Thing?: They've broken up because Willow doesn't think Kennedy understands her.
Their Spiral Text: no mention at all. I thought there was one, but I think I edited it out. Not because it's Kennedy, but because the scene where she showed up was draggy and long.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I think "I hate to see you hurting like this; let me help you as best I can" is a better attitude to have towards a real life personfriend than "You're so attractive when you're sad, you know," for that way lies badness and dysfunction.

Loll! Agreed 100% there. It's not so much "Not wanting someone to suffer, ever" that's the problem as "Not wanting someone to suffer, ever, and thinking that oneself can and should be the miraculous cure-all to suffering" which, now that I think about, is Simon/River to a tee, isn't it?