Commentary - Not Yourself
So, I asked for fic commentary requests. (I’m still happy to do more, if you ask me for one.)
This was written for dreamincolor, who requested a commentary for Not Yourself. You should probably read that before looking at this commentary.
The original fic still looks like it did, and my notes are the bits in blockquotes.
Not Yourself
This story was running around my brain for a very long time. My first notes just said “Angel/Illyria hatesex FTW!”
Fred opens Angel’s door one evening, walking barefooted towards his bed with a soft smile - and Angel sits up, startled.
“What are you-”
“Shhh.” Fred touches his lips with her fingers… and it really is Fred, her smell, her eyes, her skin, her voice talking in lilting Texan: “For tonight, let’s just be us.”
Of course, it’s not Fred. That’s kinda the whole point. But Angel would very much like to think that she is.
Not that there’s any choice - the others are gone, so it’s always “just them”, alone and angry forever - but Fred is here and kissing him, and Angel is aching with loneliness and fear and need, so he surrenders, kisses her back.
I tried to give some idea of what’s happened so far - especially in terms of how Angel’s feeling. I thought “alone and angry forever” pretty much covered it.
Tonight it’s him and Fred, Fred who is licking his neck, straddling him, running her hands across his bare skin, eyes bright with laughter as she - Fred - kisses him again, breath quickening as she shudders with feeling, Fred and him together, the two of them ripe with longing, it’s Fred who’s making him gasp, Fred whose breasts he’s kissing, Fred who’s making him come…
Seven “Fred”s in one paragraph. That’s over 10% Fred, word-wise. Angel really is trying very hard to convince himself.
Then she grabs his hair, pulls his head back with forceful hands, and says in a hard voice, “I am not Fred, Darla, nor anyone else you love” - and he’s jolted out of the fantasy with a gasp, coming in a rush of shocked despair.
(Darla will always be at the top of my list of People Angel Loves.)
Angel struggles into a sitting position, suddenly cold. “Why did you do that?”
Fred looks at him - no, not Fred, no matter how much she might look like her, Illyria’s eyes are distant and unfeeling - and asks, “Did you want to lose your soul?”
This is the first moment I thought of.
The idea of Illyria dressing up as Fred, and then forcefully reminding Angel that she wasn’t Fred, so that he wouldn’t lose his soul… I just loved the sheer twistedness of it.
Then, as if that’s all that needs saying, she climbs off him, and walks from the room.
She doesn’t mention it the next day. Or any of the days after that.
But he catches himself watching her, his eyes tracing the lines of her back as she walks through what’s left of Los Angeles.
He almost asks her - but although he opens his mouth to begin the conversation, the words just won’t be said.
She’s so horribly self-possessed. And Angel has no idea how to tell her she’s doing something stupid.
A teeny taste of what’s coming. Angel’s well aware that it’s a bad idea - but he can’t quite look away.
It’s Fred in his arms, Fred’s skin so warm and luscious, Fred’s breath against his mouth, Fred gasping with desire, Fred’s hands on him working expertly, Fred’s back arching, Fred he’s inside, Fred making his body tremble… Fred who wants him… Fred… Fred… Fred…
I loved this.
Angel repeating Fred’s name over and over (we’re now up to 20% of the total wordage) and talking himself into the fantasy… because, really, he’s well aware it’s not real. And yet he’s becoming totally obsessed with it.
Angel washes his face, and tries not to think.
He feels… cold. Cold and dead. But then, he always does - afterwards.
Just to point out the irony: Angel is cold and dead. He’s a vampire.
The other night, she was licking him, mouth moving skilfully, working him closer and closer to the edge of everything - how was he supposed to stay still under all that? - so he gripped the sheets and gave a sort of half-laugh …and Illyria threw him across the room. Laughter is off-limits.
Laughter is too close to happiness. And happiness is against the rules.
She’s called him names, told him he’s never been loved and never will be, cursed his name - always slamming him back to hideous, ridiculous reality one exact instant before he comes.
Tonight she was Fred, and she was gentle, tender, slowly kissing him with quiet longing, eyes on his, drinking him in, holding him as if he was her world…
(In some ways, Angel tends to see Fred as being extremely innocent.)
…and then telling him bluntly that Wesley was much better in bed than he was, and Angel hadn’t pleased her at all.
Question: is Illyria implying that Fred slept with Wesley? Or that she did?
…I have no idea.
It’s like being repeatedly kicked in the face.
Illyria holds up the severed head, and inspects it carefully. “Weak vermin,” she pronounces. “It did not deserve so much of our time and attention.”
Trigger-happy godkings.
I wanted to show Angel being increasingly obsessed with the time he spends with “Fred”… and increasingly angry with Illyria.
He hates what he’s doing, and has no-one he can blame except her.
“It still has hostages somewhere,” Angel says.
“Well? We will find them and release them.”
He rolls his eyes, frustrated. “It just would have been easier if he’d been alive long enough to answer some questions. Next time, how about you don’t rip their heads off right away?”
“I do not take orders from you, vampire.” Her voice is scornful, dismissive. “I am more than you will ever be.”
I love writing dialogue for Illyria. She’s so fun!
Illyria drops the head, and kicks it aside.
Angel pushes Fred back against the wall, hands forceful, keeping her in place as he kisses her mouth, neck, collarbone. She gasps, and he moves his hands to her breasts, wondering if he can make her forget about self-control and scream when she comes.
This section? Incredibly tricky - mostly because I was writing it for a comm where NC-17 is off-limits. I had to keep it to an R rating… somehow.
Mostly, this bit is dealing with what Illyria just said to him: “I do not take orders from you.” Angel’s determined to prove her wrong.
He keeps her pressed back against the apartment’s faded wallpaper - no, the Hyperion, it’s the Hyperion, Fred and him together with the others downstairs - and manoeuvres one hand under her skirt, fingers scraping roughly against her.
I loved him flicking in and out of the fantasy, here. He keeps coming up with stuff he actually likes, rather than having to think about what’s actually going on.
She gasps again, and he stops.
“Angel-”
He presses against her. “You want me.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to keep going?”
“Yes!”
“Sure?” His fingers tease lightly and then pull away again.
“Oh God, don’t stop, you bastard!”
He presses his hand against her firmly, and Fred bites her lip, her body shuddering.
Fred, it’s Fred, Fred’s body pressed against his, Fred breathing fast and shallow, Fred he’s screwing.
She arches at his touch - then pulls her fingernails hard down his chest, smiling sweetly as he winces.
(Woo! Hatesex!
…we’re now fully into the swing of things. Angel can’t stand Illyria, and she doesn’t like him either.)
“Bitch.” But Fred kisses him, and - Fred, it’s Fred, she’s here - he kisses her back hungrily.
And then he grabs her wrists, pins them to the wall, and pushes inside her. She rocks her hips back slightly, making them both gasp.
And she looks at him, eyes full of hatred - but distracted, breathless, aching hatred - because Angel’s going to make her come and keep coming tonight, until she admits that, sometimes, she’s putty in his hands.
The two of them spend most of this fic trying to get control over each other. I think, for the most part, Illyria’s winning.
“Do you ever miss sunsets?”
I rewrote this scene so many times.
Originally, it was in an old abandoned factory, with Angel having just eaten someone - but as you can see it’s changed quite a bit…
I wanted to emphasise Angel’s growing darkness, and spent so long trying to get it to work, and then I realised that, actually, it needed to not be that scene. Instead, it needed to be a scene about Illyria being Fred. Angel’s darkness was just incidental.
“Sometimes.”
She’s sitting on the roof of the building, looking like Fred - her arms wrapped around her knees, and her eyes still fixed on the last orange glimpses of the disappearing sun. “I s’pose you could look at photos of them and stuff, but it doesn’t seem fair that you have to miss out on the real ones. They’re always kinda pretty, even on overcast days.”
“I remember.” Fred is sitting there - right there! - and he hates her for doing this, for looking so much like she isn’t a copy. Angel almost turned back and went inside again when he saw her - but who is he kidding? He can’t look away. And he hates her.
(Those last two sentences would actually sum up the theme of this fic quite well…)
“The sunsets in Pylea were interesting. Except having two suns changed the refraction completely, so we never really got them as orangey as they are here.”
“You weren’t ever in Pylea,” he says flatly.
She just laughs, looking at him with a lopsided Fredish grin. “Oh, Lord. Don’t tell me you’re getting forgetful in your old age.”
Fake. Actor. She’s sitting there looking so real.
“I haven’t forgotten. You’re a thief. You stole memories from her.”
Illyria’s voice changes tone. “And you are putrefying slime,” she says matter-of-factly. “You love this form - don’t pretend horror when I use it for my own pleasure.”
I think Illyria is seeing Fred as something to explore. A personality to enjoy, and experience. It’s fun. It’s pleasurable.
And she’s right. Angel doesn’t have a leg to stand on in this argument.
He doesn’t know what to say.
Fred stretches out her legs and breathes in the evening air. “I love it up here,” she says. “With this view, it’s almost as nice as Texas.”
I loved flicking quickly from Fred to Illyria and back again. Amy Acker did that on the show a few times - especially in the middle of The Girl In Question, mid-sentence - and the change of expression is stunning. Illyria is so obviously Illyria for a moment, even though she still looks like Fred…
They fuck, with the lights off - going purely by touch.
Notice the progression there: in the first scene, Angel probably would have called it “making love”, one scene ago it was “screwing”, and now it’s “fucking”.
Her hands on him, his mouth on her, it’s all skin and sweat and sharp breaths, and he can almost pretend she’s not Fred, not anyone, just a faceless woman from a world where his friends aren’t all dead. Almost.
(He’s beginning to hate sleeping with “Fred” nearly as much as he hates reality.)
But her scent - like this, she smells completely like Fred, and the smell tears him away from forgetting.
So instead he loses himself in the smell of her, and tries once again to believe that she’s here, and real, and his.
This is Fred he’s smelling, his hands are on Fred, it’s Fred he’s licking, tasting, it’s Fred who’s saying his name…
As Angel comes, Illyria digs her nails in sharply and says, “There is nothing good left in you.” - and for one terrible moment, he believes her.
…that’s all, really.
I hope you found this interesting!
This was written for dreamincolor, who requested a commentary for Not Yourself. You should probably read that before looking at this commentary.
The original fic still looks like it did, and my notes are the bits in blockquotes.
Not Yourself
This story was running around my brain for a very long time. My first notes just said “Angel/Illyria hatesex FTW!”
Fred opens Angel’s door one evening, walking barefooted towards his bed with a soft smile - and Angel sits up, startled.
“What are you-”
“Shhh.” Fred touches his lips with her fingers… and it really is Fred, her smell, her eyes, her skin, her voice talking in lilting Texan: “For tonight, let’s just be us.”
Of course, it’s not Fred. That’s kinda the whole point. But Angel would very much like to think that she is.
Not that there’s any choice - the others are gone, so it’s always “just them”, alone and angry forever - but Fred is here and kissing him, and Angel is aching with loneliness and fear and need, so he surrenders, kisses her back.
I tried to give some idea of what’s happened so far - especially in terms of how Angel’s feeling. I thought “alone and angry forever” pretty much covered it.
Tonight it’s him and Fred, Fred who is licking his neck, straddling him, running her hands across his bare skin, eyes bright with laughter as she - Fred - kisses him again, breath quickening as she shudders with feeling, Fred and him together, the two of them ripe with longing, it’s Fred who’s making him gasp, Fred whose breasts he’s kissing, Fred who’s making him come…
Seven “Fred”s in one paragraph. That’s over 10% Fred, word-wise. Angel really is trying very hard to convince himself.
Then she grabs his hair, pulls his head back with forceful hands, and says in a hard voice, “I am not Fred, Darla, nor anyone else you love” - and he’s jolted out of the fantasy with a gasp, coming in a rush of shocked despair.
(Darla will always be at the top of my list of People Angel Loves.)
Angel struggles into a sitting position, suddenly cold. “Why did you do that?”
Fred looks at him - no, not Fred, no matter how much she might look like her, Illyria’s eyes are distant and unfeeling - and asks, “Did you want to lose your soul?”
This is the first moment I thought of.
The idea of Illyria dressing up as Fred, and then forcefully reminding Angel that she wasn’t Fred, so that he wouldn’t lose his soul… I just loved the sheer twistedness of it.
Then, as if that’s all that needs saying, she climbs off him, and walks from the room.
She doesn’t mention it the next day. Or any of the days after that.
But he catches himself watching her, his eyes tracing the lines of her back as she walks through what’s left of Los Angeles.
He almost asks her - but although he opens his mouth to begin the conversation, the words just won’t be said.
She’s so horribly self-possessed. And Angel has no idea how to tell her she’s doing something stupid.
A teeny taste of what’s coming. Angel’s well aware that it’s a bad idea - but he can’t quite look away.
It’s Fred in his arms, Fred’s skin so warm and luscious, Fred’s breath against his mouth, Fred gasping with desire, Fred’s hands on him working expertly, Fred’s back arching, Fred he’s inside, Fred making his body tremble… Fred who wants him… Fred… Fred… Fred…
I loved this.
Angel repeating Fred’s name over and over (we’re now up to 20% of the total wordage) and talking himself into the fantasy… because, really, he’s well aware it’s not real. And yet he’s becoming totally obsessed with it.
Angel washes his face, and tries not to think.
He feels… cold. Cold and dead. But then, he always does - afterwards.
Just to point out the irony: Angel is cold and dead. He’s a vampire.
The other night, she was licking him, mouth moving skilfully, working him closer and closer to the edge of everything - how was he supposed to stay still under all that? - so he gripped the sheets and gave a sort of half-laugh …and Illyria threw him across the room. Laughter is off-limits.
Laughter is too close to happiness. And happiness is against the rules.
She’s called him names, told him he’s never been loved and never will be, cursed his name - always slamming him back to hideous, ridiculous reality one exact instant before he comes.
Tonight she was Fred, and she was gentle, tender, slowly kissing him with quiet longing, eyes on his, drinking him in, holding him as if he was her world…
(In some ways, Angel tends to see Fred as being extremely innocent.)
…and then telling him bluntly that Wesley was much better in bed than he was, and Angel hadn’t pleased her at all.
Question: is Illyria implying that Fred slept with Wesley? Or that she did?
…I have no idea.
It’s like being repeatedly kicked in the face.
Illyria holds up the severed head, and inspects it carefully. “Weak vermin,” she pronounces. “It did not deserve so much of our time and attention.”
Trigger-happy godkings.
I wanted to show Angel being increasingly obsessed with the time he spends with “Fred”… and increasingly angry with Illyria.
He hates what he’s doing, and has no-one he can blame except her.
“It still has hostages somewhere,” Angel says.
“Well? We will find them and release them.”
He rolls his eyes, frustrated. “It just would have been easier if he’d been alive long enough to answer some questions. Next time, how about you don’t rip their heads off right away?”
“I do not take orders from you, vampire.” Her voice is scornful, dismissive. “I am more than you will ever be.”
I love writing dialogue for Illyria. She’s so fun!
Illyria drops the head, and kicks it aside.
Angel pushes Fred back against the wall, hands forceful, keeping her in place as he kisses her mouth, neck, collarbone. She gasps, and he moves his hands to her breasts, wondering if he can make her forget about self-control and scream when she comes.
This section? Incredibly tricky - mostly because I was writing it for a comm where NC-17 is off-limits. I had to keep it to an R rating… somehow.
Mostly, this bit is dealing with what Illyria just said to him: “I do not take orders from you.” Angel’s determined to prove her wrong.
He keeps her pressed back against the apartment’s faded wallpaper - no, the Hyperion, it’s the Hyperion, Fred and him together with the others downstairs - and manoeuvres one hand under her skirt, fingers scraping roughly against her.
I loved him flicking in and out of the fantasy, here. He keeps coming up with stuff he actually likes, rather than having to think about what’s actually going on.
She gasps again, and he stops.
“Angel-”
He presses against her. “You want me.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to keep going?”
“Yes!”
“Sure?” His fingers tease lightly and then pull away again.
“Oh God, don’t stop, you bastard!”
He presses his hand against her firmly, and Fred bites her lip, her body shuddering.
Fred, it’s Fred, Fred’s body pressed against his, Fred breathing fast and shallow, Fred he’s screwing.
She arches at his touch - then pulls her fingernails hard down his chest, smiling sweetly as he winces.
(Woo! Hatesex!
…we’re now fully into the swing of things. Angel can’t stand Illyria, and she doesn’t like him either.)
“Bitch.” But Fred kisses him, and - Fred, it’s Fred, she’s here - he kisses her back hungrily.
And then he grabs her wrists, pins them to the wall, and pushes inside her. She rocks her hips back slightly, making them both gasp.
And she looks at him, eyes full of hatred - but distracted, breathless, aching hatred - because Angel’s going to make her come and keep coming tonight, until she admits that, sometimes, she’s putty in his hands.
The two of them spend most of this fic trying to get control over each other. I think, for the most part, Illyria’s winning.
“Do you ever miss sunsets?”
I rewrote this scene so many times.
Originally, it was in an old abandoned factory, with Angel having just eaten someone - but as you can see it’s changed quite a bit…
I wanted to emphasise Angel’s growing darkness, and spent so long trying to get it to work, and then I realised that, actually, it needed to not be that scene. Instead, it needed to be a scene about Illyria being Fred. Angel’s darkness was just incidental.
“Sometimes.”
She’s sitting on the roof of the building, looking like Fred - her arms wrapped around her knees, and her eyes still fixed on the last orange glimpses of the disappearing sun. “I s’pose you could look at photos of them and stuff, but it doesn’t seem fair that you have to miss out on the real ones. They’re always kinda pretty, even on overcast days.”
“I remember.” Fred is sitting there - right there! - and he hates her for doing this, for looking so much like she isn’t a copy. Angel almost turned back and went inside again when he saw her - but who is he kidding? He can’t look away. And he hates her.
(Those last two sentences would actually sum up the theme of this fic quite well…)
“The sunsets in Pylea were interesting. Except having two suns changed the refraction completely, so we never really got them as orangey as they are here.”
“You weren’t ever in Pylea,” he says flatly.
She just laughs, looking at him with a lopsided Fredish grin. “Oh, Lord. Don’t tell me you’re getting forgetful in your old age.”
Fake. Actor. She’s sitting there looking so real.
“I haven’t forgotten. You’re a thief. You stole memories from her.”
Illyria’s voice changes tone. “And you are putrefying slime,” she says matter-of-factly. “You love this form - don’t pretend horror when I use it for my own pleasure.”
I think Illyria is seeing Fred as something to explore. A personality to enjoy, and experience. It’s fun. It’s pleasurable.
And she’s right. Angel doesn’t have a leg to stand on in this argument.
He doesn’t know what to say.
Fred stretches out her legs and breathes in the evening air. “I love it up here,” she says. “With this view, it’s almost as nice as Texas.”
I loved flicking quickly from Fred to Illyria and back again. Amy Acker did that on the show a few times - especially in the middle of The Girl In Question, mid-sentence - and the change of expression is stunning. Illyria is so obviously Illyria for a moment, even though she still looks like Fred…
They fuck, with the lights off - going purely by touch.
Notice the progression there: in the first scene, Angel probably would have called it “making love”, one scene ago it was “screwing”, and now it’s “fucking”.
Her hands on him, his mouth on her, it’s all skin and sweat and sharp breaths, and he can almost pretend she’s not Fred, not anyone, just a faceless woman from a world where his friends aren’t all dead. Almost.
(He’s beginning to hate sleeping with “Fred” nearly as much as he hates reality.)
But her scent - like this, she smells completely like Fred, and the smell tears him away from forgetting.
So instead he loses himself in the smell of her, and tries once again to believe that she’s here, and real, and his.
This is Fred he’s smelling, his hands are on Fred, it’s Fred he’s licking, tasting, it’s Fred who’s saying his name…
As Angel comes, Illyria digs her nails in sharply and says, “There is nothing good left in you.” - and for one terrible moment, he believes her.
…that’s all, really.
I hope you found this interesting!