FIC: Walk Like Men

[lettered]

Title: Walk Like Men
Length: about 1,500 words
Rating: G-man!
Disclaimer: not mine, use of WTTH and "Angel" and Twelfth Night
Summary: Buffy and Connor.
A/N: Guess I got a bee up my butt with that post about ideas and not being able to write short fics, or something. I've had this forever. It stands alone, but I have so many ideas for what

Comments

hi hi and please don't shoot me dead

[seraphcelene]

I read Walk Like Men at lunch and then took a catnap and dreamt about Buffy and Connor. I have no clue what it was about, maybe just the fic in movie format which is how I read fic anyway. Who knows.

I like the idea for this. I like Buffy's initial uneasiness. I like how Connor is and isn't The Destroyer. I think you did a great job with what we got to see of Connor v2.0 in S5.

However, reading it was odd because it felt like effort, and that is not something I'm used to sensing from your writing. I think it's because of the recent discussions you've hosted on metaphor. When I came across examples of metaphor in Walk Like Men, I thought: "Oh, look, metaphor". It was as if you were trying too hard. Although, in retrospect, the fault could be with me as reader. Maybe the metaphor discussion is too recent and I failed to divorce the meta from the text.

There were moments that I thought worked really well:

it moves very fast, like the flip of a book back to the beginning, only faster

The shadows make her look older; the lines by her eyes are every alley in which she's ever fought. This was actually the first moment where I went, aha!metaphor, although I really really love the implication of what you're saying here.

When you're young you can always just shove things down. Lawd! Love that. Her age and experience, the way she's weighted down by the past seven years even though she isn't physically old and maybe I'm reading way too much into that. :)

Don't want a friend. Just coffee. [...] He takes her hand and she finds herself following. I love how sweet that is and easy. It just catches me.

Guys don't stake vampires. It's a girl thing. AND HOW AWESOME is that!!!

Love the shift from Connor to Destroyer when she's got him pinned to the wall.

There's just something like reprieve, like the laying down of a weapon

And I like how it ended with this very fragile moment, with forgiveness and the negotiation of a new terrain for Buffy as it concerns the men (or potential men) in her life.

OMG I'M GOING TO KILL YOU

[lettered]

I get what you're saying. The metaphors in this piece, except for the book and the lines=alleys (the two you picked out), are outside this fic. They have nothing to do with what's going on, which is kind of the bizarre thing I said might not really work in prose at all.

I wrote this piece months ago, so though I always try to think about metaphor the way I described it wasn't explicit and in the front of my mind, but even without that post at the front of your mind, I can see why you'd feel some of this was trying too hard. I'm not going to go into a long explanation about my mindset, but I was trying to approach writing this from a different angle (nothing to dod with the metaphors, just the *way* I sat down and wrote it, so I really, really appreciate your input here because it gives me a good way to evaluate how that approach worked for me, you know? So thanks!

And I'm glad parts of it worked for you and that you liked the ideas. Thank you so much for your opinions--I value them a lot!